Less Knowns of the World War 2

Italian Tanks - WWII

2019-02-11T11:40:00.000-08:00

There are over 20 tanks served to Italians during the World War II. In this post, we will be examining the most important ones.

Italian Soldiers

Fiat 3000: The Fiat 3000 was the first tank to be produced in series in Italy. It became the standard tank of the emerging Italian armored units after World War I. It was a light tank with 6 tones of weight. Its standard version had two 6.5 mm machine guns. The Fiat 3000 (Model 21) was first used in action in February 1926 in Libya. With Italy's entry into World War II in June 1940, a limited number of Fiat 3000s were still in service

Fiat 3000

L3/33: The Carro Veloce 33 (CV 33) or L3/33 was a tankette originally built in 1933 and used by the Italian Army before and during World War II. The original CV 33 carried two-man crew protected by 12 mm of welded armor and was armed with a single 6.5 mm machine gun. It was 2.7 tones and its length was 3.03 m.

L3/33

P26/40: The P 26/40 was an Italian World War II heavy tank. It was armed with a 75 mm gun and an 8 mm Breda machine gun, plus another optional machine gun in an anti-aircraft mount. Its weight was 26 tones. Design had started in 1940 but very few had been built by the time Italy signed the armistice with the Allies in September 1943 and the few produced afterwards were used by the Germans. Its length was 5.80 m.

P26/40

P43: It was a medium tank. The P43 or P 30/43 was developed by FIAT and Ansaldo simultaneously with P26/40, which was supposed to be a heavier version. It was about 29 tonnes. The gun used in P43 was the 75/34 mm cannon. Its length was 8.16 m.

P43

Fiat M14/41: The Fiat M 14/41 was a four-person medium tank that served to the Italian Army. That 4 person medium tank with commander/gunner, radio operator/machine gunner, loader, driver, was very useful for Italians because of its speed. It was about 14 tones.

Fiat M14/41

Italians tanks were useful in fight because they were perfectly produced by well-known brands. Their max speed statistics were much better than the other countries' tanks. But we can't tell the same thing about their guns and armors. Hope to see you again in another post !

Japan Aircraft Carriers - WWII

2019-02-09T13:10:00.001-08:00

If you haven't seen the other posts about the aircraft carriers you can see them here. In this post, we will take a closer look at the Japan Aircraft Carriers which were the parts of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF).

Flag of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF)

Japan had several crucial ships in their fleet during the World War II and we are going to see them and their features throughout the writ.

Soryu : She was launched in 1937 first from Kure, Japan as the leader ship of the fleet of that time. Soryu was the fastest aircraft carrier in the world of her time. She was present at several important wars such as the Pearl Harbor and Battle of Midway. Soryu was sank by an explosion which occured because of an attack from the U.S aircrafts. She was caught in the middle of refueling of her aircraft fleet and sank after the explosions.

Soryu

Ryuho : Ryuho was a converted version of a depot ship, Taigei. After Taigei was drydocked she was converted into an aircraft carrier with her renewed carrier. She also took her name after the renovation. Ryuho's first mission was to transport a crew with their vehicles. During the mission she was hit by a torpedo and spent approximately three months for repairs. After several more transporting duties, Ryuho, participated in the Battle of the Philipinne Sea. Next month, she found herself transporting the crews and vehicles again. After the ups and downs and the war, she was scrapped in 1946.

Ryuho

Hosho : Hosho was the first aircraft carrier of Japan and also was the first purpose-built vehicle of the world. Despite being designed with a cruiser style deck and hull, after some flight trials, she got modificated to make the take offs and landings smoother. Hosho was present at several wars against China and played crucial role. In 1942, she was being modificated for the WWII adaptations but she was still not useful as expected for open-sea trips. After the WWII, she was being used as a crew transportation ship.

Hosho

Akagi : Akagi was designed as a battlecruiser at first. With the help of the Washington Naval Treaty, she was converted into an aircraft carrier and the Japan paid 36 Milllion USD for that process. Akagi, with her triple-flight deck and six in-guns, had a unique design. She was the most expensive ship in her fleet and she had an additional modification in order to be able to participate in the Pacific War. Akagi had participated in almost every important scene such as the Pearl Harbor, Port Darwin Attack, Indian Ocean operations and the Battle of Midway. In the Battle of Midway, a weakness had revealed itself. Her firing systems were old compared to her enemies' and also they were bad positioned. After going through some rough aircraft attacks, Akagi, was taken down by an American Pilot's bomb in the Battle of Midway.

Akagi

In this post, we took a closer look at some of the important members of Japan Navy fleet. Hope to meet you at another one!

British Infantry Tanks - WWII

2019-02-08T14:59:00.000-08:00

British Army came a long way about developing their tanks during the World War II. At this post, we will be talking about some of these tanks. Especially the important ones.

Some Airborne Division Soldiers

Carden Loyd Tankette: We wanted to talk about it because it is one of the smallest tanks of the WW2. Its height was 4 ft 0 in(1.22m), width was 6ft 6.5in(1.94m), length was 8ft 1in(2.46m). It became a classic tank design worldwide, was licence-built by several countries. It was produced between 1927 and 1935.

Carden Loyd

Infantry, Mk I, Matilda I(A11): Although being slow and only armed with a single machine gun, the Matilda had some success in the Battle of France in 1940, thanks to its heavy armor which was an advantage against the standard German anti-tank guns. It was in service from 1938 to 1940. The Mk I designed in 1935 by Sir John Carden. It was designed for quick delivery as well as low cost.

Matilda A11

Infantry, Mk II, Matilda II(A12): With its heavy armor, the Matilda II was an excellent infantry support tank but it had limited speed and armament. It was the only British tank to serve from the start of the war to its end. It was in service between 1939 and 1955. The Matilda was first used in combat by the 7th Royal Tank Regiment in France in 1940. It was started to be designed in 1937.

Matilda A12

Light Tank Mk III: This design, invented by Sidney Horstmann and exclusively used on lightweight vehicles, was also used up to the Light Tank Mk VI of the British Army. Apart from being relatively easy to build, compact and lightweight, it had the advantage of having a long
travel, and of being easy to replace when damaged in the field.

MK III

Light Tank Mk V: The biggest change from the Mark IV to the Mark V was the introduction of a three-man crew. The turret now carried the commander and the gunner who was also the radio operator. The armament of the Mark V was an improvement over the earlier Marks; a 0.5 inch Vickers machine gun was added to the existing 0.303.

MK V

British tanks were not as effective as the German tanks but they realized it too late. After all of those blitzkrieg and various losts taken by the infantry branch, the war's end could been seen almost with the naked eye. But that time was the time that British army started to improve their tanks. With the agvantage of outnumbering the enemy as the Allied Power, they won the war.

U.S Navy's Aircraft Carriers at WWII

2019-02-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

United States Navy had several types of aircraft carriers. All of them served for the US Navy with different roles such as transport, arming etc. In this post, we will take a look at some of these aircraft carriers and their qualifications.

USS Boxer : It was an Essex-class aircraft carrier. Its first launch was on 14 December 1944 and named by the daughter of a US Senator from Louisiana. The ship was one of the "long-hull" designs of the class. Like other "long-hull" Essex-class carriers, Boxer had a displacement of 27,100 tones (26,700 long tons; 29,900 short tons). She had an overall length of 888 feet (271 m), a beam of 93 feet (28 m) and a draft of 28 feet (8.5 m).

USS Boxer

USS Ranger : It is one of the oldest aircraft carriers of the US Navy. Duty of this ship began in 1925. Ranger, had a narrow hull due to its size and one inch of armor on the hangar deck. Through to space limits, the carrier was equipped with geared turbines. The design was modified to include an island, increasing the ship's displacement to 14,500 tons. Ranger was armed with six 40 mm quadruple mounts and forty-six 20 mm mounts. It also was armed with eight 5-inch (127 mm)/25 caliber guns, which were removed in June 1944. The carrier was one of the first U.S. Navy ships mounted with light automatic weapons to defend against dive-bombing attacks, and was initially armed with forty .50 cal machine guns.

USS Ranger

USS Essex : It was the lead ship of Essex-class aircraft carriers. After the end of the war, she was modernized in the early 1950s as an attack carrier. It cost 78 million USD for US Navy. Essex moved to the Pacific in May 1943. Departing from Pearl Harbor, she participated with Task Force 16 (TF 16) in carrier operations against Marcus Island.

USS Essex

USS Hornet : It was a Yorktown-class aircraft carrier. During the World War II, in the Pacific Theater, she launched the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and participated in the Battle of Midway and the Buin-Faisi-Tonolai Raid. Hornet was attacked by a dive bomber. In 15 minutes, Hornet was hit by three bombs from Aichi D3A "Val" dive bombers. After being heavily damaged by an anti-aircraft fire, it crashed into the carrier's island, killing seven men and spreading burning aviation gas (Avgas) over the deck.

USS Hornet

USS Hornet II : It wasn’t a Yorktown-class like the Hornet I. It was an Essex-class aircraft carrier. It was built during the World War II. It was named USS Kearsarge at first, but was renamed in honor of the prior USS Hornet, which was lost in 1942. On 11 June 1944, Hornet launched raids on Tinian and Saipan. The following day, she conducted heavy bombing attacks on Guam and Rota. Now it’s a museum ship at the USS Hornet Museum in California.

USS Hornet II

In this post, we take a look at the aircraft carriers of the U.S Navy. Hope you find what you are looking for or this post satisfies you. Hope to meet you at another post!

Bomber Aircrafts of WWII

2019-02-06T11:00:00.000-08:00

Bombardments, for their requirements such as well-skilled pilots, well-designed and efficient

aircrafts and etc. have always taken big places at any war, especially at WWII. In this writing, we will take a look at aircrafts which are considered as the bests at bombing.

A photo from Budapest bombardment.

1. Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless : Considered as one of the mainstays of the U.S dive-bomber fleets. With its capability of being able to fly from both carriers and land bases SBD-5 became a fundamental piece of the fleet. It was not the only skill of its, SBD-5 was also a high-speed diver and was doing it smoothly. SBD-5's design is inspired from Northrop-BT I and after serving with good rates it was replaced by a more powerful aircraft, SB2C Helldiver.

Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless

2. Junkers Ju-87 (The Stuka) : The nickname is derived from the German word "Sturzkampfflugzeug" which corresponds to dive-bombing in ENG. Stuka started to serve in Luftwaffe after the Junkers company won an award on a dive-bombing competition. After getting to service, Stuka, became a symbol of the German Blitzkrieg. Stuka was kind of showing-off at fronts with its almost perfect accuracy and decent speed. Also well-known with the sirens which are installed on the plane before it took off by the German soldiers. Sirens were used to distract the enemy and to identify the Stuka.

Junkers Ju-87 "The Stuka"

3. Junkers Ju-88 : Besides being a bomber, it was used for discovery flights, supporting missions and so. Ju-88 achived its first flight in 1936. After that flight, Ju-88, served to the Luftwaffe till the end of the war. With its high speed records especially achieving 480 kph without any loads made its name heard all around the world. Ju-88 was as recognisable as the Ju-87 with its high speed bombing skills and the other features. 10.774 numbers of Ju-88 were built in total.

Junkers Ju-88

4. Boeing B-29 Superfortress : Considered as the most modernist aircraft by many authorities. With various new technology systems, B-29, gave a new impulse to WWII. This model got to drop the first nuclear bombs to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They are also known with their Soviet copies. Soviets disassembled the B-29 that landed to Manchuria and copied them down to the last detail and produced under the name of Tu-70 and Tu-4.

Boeing B-29 Superfortress

5. de Havilland DH-98 (The Mosquito) : Despite being criticized a lot by the authorities due to its unarmed first design, DH-98, at its first prototype flight proved itself with its performance. Especially versus the Nazis, Mosquito, was very efficient since the Germans did not have any aircrafts to put against the Mosquito. DH-98 is still remembered as one of the most efficient ones of the WWII aircrafts.

de Havilland DH-98 (The Mosquito)

In this post, we took a look at the generally and well-known bomber aircrafts of the WWII. We hope you will get the information you are looking for or learn something. Hope to meet you at another post!

"A Step-Aheads" of U.S Infantry (1942-'45)

2019-02-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

In World War II there were open terrain situations as much as street alley combats. For some authorities open terrain combats were way more difficult than the others because they required more strategical intelligence. Open terrain combats are well known with the synchronized artillery moves and shots. And this is the subject we are going to see and talk about the tanks the most. Tanks are way more useful in the open fields but we can see that they are used in the streets in the WW2 as well. There are many tanks can be mentioned for the U.S Army services but there are some special tanks which were a step ahead from the others when it comes to efficiency.

An M4 towing an M1 heavy gun to the battlefront.

From now on, you will be able to find the most efficient and the most used tanks of the U.S Army.

M26 Pershing : A U.S heavy tank produced as a replacement of Sherman in the last months of the war

M26

M18 Hellcat : One of the fastest tanks of the WWII fronts with its top speed (88 km/h). It was an essential tank for the U.S artilleries for a long time with its high manoeuvre skills. In addition to that, it had the highest kill-to-loss ratio among the all tanks serviced to the U.S Army.

M18 Hellcat

M4 Sherman : Another long-serviced tank of the U.S Army. Its the most negative characteristic was not being able to be effective as the enemy tanks despite being produced in huge numbers.

M4 Sherman

M10 Wolverine : One of the most effective tank destroyers of the U.S Infantry with an open-top. Besides being a destroyer, M10, was serving as a motor carriage and was well on it.

M10 Wolverine

M4 Sherman Jumbo (M4A3E2) : A strong destroyer also a variant of the M4 Sherman family. Started to be built in '44 and 254 were built in total. Serviced as an assault tank mainly.

M4 Sherman Jumbo (M4A3E2)

In this post, we wanted to share a list of our opinions. I hope you will find what you are looking for or at least have an idea after reading this. See you at another post !

Tanks with High Expectations: German Panzers

2019-02-04T04:51:00.000-08:00

Germans had 2 types of tanks on their mind. The main tank was the Panzer III medium tank, supported by smaller numbers of the howitzer-armed Panzer IV. After they having faced with Soviet T-34, they noticed that they had to develop these tanks.

The Panzerkampfwagen III (Panzer III) was a medium tank developed in the 1930s. It was designed to fight against other armored fighting vehicles. As the Germans faced the T-34(Soviet heavy tank), more powerful anti-tank guns were needed, and since the Panzer IV had more development potential, it was redesigned to face with the enemy tanks. The Panzer III had 15 mm of rolled homogeneous armor on all sides with a 10 mm on the top and a 5 mm on the bottom. Those were considered weak in battle, and were upgraded to 30 mm on the front, sides and rear in the Ausf. D, E, F, and G models, with the H model having a second 30 mm layer of face-hardened steel applied to the front and rear hull.

The Panzerkampfwagen IV (Panzer IV), was a medium tank developed in 1937. The Panzer IV were the most numerous German tanks and the second-most numerous German armored fighting vehicle of the World War 2. Its weight was about 25 tons. The main reason of developing these tanks was being able to fight with T-34. It was an important development and Germans kept producing it till end of the war. Panzer IV was the most used German tank for sure. More than 8 thousand were built. The prototype required a crew of five men; the hull contained the engine bay to the rear, with the driver and radio operator, who doubled as the hull machine gunner, seated at the front-left and front-right. The turret was offset 66.5mm placed at the left of the chassis center line, while the engine was moved 152.4 mm to the right.

Panzerkampfwagen V Panther, was a medium tank used especially on the Easter and Western Fronts in Europe from 1943 to end of war. It was designed to replace the Panzer III and Panzer IV. It was one of the one of the best tanks of World War II. While having essentially the same engine as the Tiger I, it had more efficient frontal hull armor, better gun penetration, was lighter and faster. It was cheaper than the Tiger I. Its weight was 44.8 tons. With forty to eighty millimeters of armor and a high-velocity Kw.K.42-75 mm gun, the Panther was a formidable opponent on any front.

Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger, was a heavy tank fought with the Panther. It was about 55 tons. The 56-calibre 8.8 cm long KwK 36 was the best option for the Tiger. While the Tiger I had been first announced, it was over-engineered and was using expensive materials with labor-intensive production methods. The Tiger differed from earlier German tanks with its design. It had balanced mobility, armor and firepower, and was sometimes outgunned by their opponents.

A Brief Summery about The First Modern Assault Rifle: StG:44

2019-02-03T07:43:00.000-08:00

During the World War II, Hitler was expecting his engineers to be creative more than ever. Orders he gave were so certain. He made sure that everyone understood the main thing; Hitler did not only want to win the war he also wanted to crush his enemies while winning.

When engineers first started to work on the StG:44, their aim was to make the Nazi Army better than ever on the battlefield. While the StG:44's development process was going further, everything the Nazis had were submachine guns and the Karabiner 98k (also known as the Kar98). When Hitler was told about the StG:44, he found it promising and wanted it to be finished as soon as possible to be sent to the battlefronts. When it was brought to the battlefield, it was liked by the infantry soldiers. The reason being, the StG:44 gave them the opportunity of guarding themselves by not needing other soldiers while marching further among the streets.

Before the StG:44, they needed a protecting fire from the others to be able to go further. With this feature, the guns’ other capabilities got approved too almost without being tested. It was almost so easy to see that the StG:44 made the Nazis to be a step ahead for a while but after the war has ended, we can see that the difference made by it was not that effective, at least was not enough to make them win. Overall, the StG:44 still is accepted as the first modern assault rifle in the world and as the inspiration source of many modern rifles like the M4 Carbine and the AK-47.

The Most Popular Tanks Served to the Red Army

2019-02-02T16:26:00.000-08:00

The Soviet Union had more tanks than the rest of the world. At the beginning of the World War II, the most used tank by the Soviet services was the T-26 with its light armored body and 45mm gun which is capable of penetrating into the most Nazi tanks' armor. The BT Tank series, based on a trusted suspension system of that time, were usually armed with the same 45 mm gun and were one of the fastest tanks in the world.

T-37

The Red Army also used thousands of light reconnaissance tanks such as the amphibious T-37 and T-38 tanks. These had limited combat value; although highly fast, they were armed only with 7.62 mm machine guns and had very thin armor. The Red Army also had about 400 T-28 medium, multi-turreted tanks, which were in most ways equal to the German Panzer IV. This design dated back to 1931 and was old-fashioned. The T-34, originally designed as a follow-up of the BT series, but with its heavier armor and heavy dual-purpose gun, it became the most valuable medium tank in the first half of World War II.

T-34

The T-34 were replaced almost all over of other Soviet tanks. The basic design was good enough to keep it battle-worthy beyond 1945, with its upgraded heavier guns, new turrets and other modifications. The second important design was the KV-1 tank. These had the same excellent 76.2 mm guns as the T-34, and had the same Kharkiv model V-2 diesel engine. However, the KV had a torsion bar suspension and had much heavier armor than the T-34. Overall, as an agreed claim by the most of the world, we can say that without the T-34, Russians would have had more difficulties in the battlefronts, especially in the Eastern front.