Army oddities with the command. For everyone and about everything

Text: Victor Shtompel
Illustrations: Anubis

At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the KV-1 heavy tanks (this is not the time-worn abbreviation KVN, but the initials of Marshal Klim Voroshilov) were very popular with the Red Army. The tank weighed 47 tons and terrified not only the enemy, but also the tankers themselves, because it was almost impossible to drive it due to problems with the chassis. But even a paralyzed tank is worse than a pile of civilian scrap metal. This story is proof of that. In 1941, another KV-1 stalled in no man's land. The enemies immediately rolled out the harmonicas for a tasty trophy. They knocked on the armor for a long time and asked the crew to surrender. Our people didn’t understand German, so they didn’t give up. There was no ammunition left to smoke them out after the battle, so the Nazis short-sightedly took the KV-1 in tow with two light tanks. They pulled - and they started the Soviet heavyweight, as they say, from the pusher! After which the KV-1 easily, like a couple of tin cans, dragged the enemy vehicles into the location of the Soviet troops.

Turetsky's demarche

In the early 70s, Turkish student pilots gained flying skills at the air base in Pompano Beach (USA). During the next flight, the engine of one of the training aircraft stalled, which the pilot reported to the dispatcher, not without alarm. The answer came immediately: “Base - Turkish board! Eject!" Hearing this, all Turkish pilots pressed the eject seat button. As a result, the United States lost six still fairly new carrier-based attack aircraft A-4 Skyhawk: one with a stalled engine and five absolutely serviceable...

Diamond of his soul

In the 15th century, Duke Charles of Burgundy, nicknamed the Brave, dreamed of conquering Europe and believed in the magical power of the 55-carat Sancy diamond, which he wore in his helmet like a cockade. Once, in a battle with the army of Louis X, a pebble really helped him. That time, the Duke was offered to fight with the strongest enemy warrior and thereby decide the outcome of the battle. Karl accepted the challenge, dashingly drove into the outlined circle and, squinting, stood against the sun - under the stormy ridicule of his enemies. When the knights got closer, Karl behaved even more strangely - he began to furiously twist his head (his own). Of course, these convulsions could not help but cause a new wave of laughter. Imagine the surprise of the fighters when the Duke’s opponent began to blink, and then completely covered his eyes with his hands. The diamond in the Burgundian's helmet simply blinded him! All that remained for Charles the Bold was to pierce the unfortunate warrior with a spear. Which is what he did.

* - Note Phacochoerus "a Funtik:
« In general, in these cases you should not rely on diamonds. A man's best friends are a sudden attack and artillery cover. So Charles died in 1477 at Nancy, and his talisman went to a Swiss soldier who, unknowingly, used a strong pebble as a flint - he struck a fire for his pipe with it. Sik, damn it, transit Gloria Mundi! »

One day, in 1746, the French stormed the British Fort St. George in East India (the war was fought for trade and colonial primacy). There was no quick victory, and the attackers spent a year and a half in despondency under the walls of the besieged fortress. The French did not receive provisions: in off-road conditions, the pack elephants were stuck up to their ears in mud. The once brave warriors reached extreme exhaustion and fainted from hunger. The garrison of the English fortress uninterruptedly received provisions from the sea (the fort was prudently built on the shore). At the end of the fifteenth month of the siege, an English soldier raised a good piece of ham on his bayonet for a laugh. Two battalions of French, swallowing saliva, completely laid down their arms.

Imagine: 1943, in the skies over Holland, the pilots of the British Air Force pushed aside the aces of the Luftwaffe. Moreover, they also managed to deliver well-aimed bomb attacks on enemy ground units. To divert attacks from strategically important objects, the Germans built a fake wooden airfield and carefully disguised the real hangars. The project turned out to be large-scale: wooden planes, hangars, towers with searchlights. Anti-aircraft guns stuck out menacingly from the ground and were ready to meet the enemy with the power of all the trunks cut down in the nearest grove. Fortunately, the plan was unsuccessful. All work had to be stopped after an English bomber flew over the wooden airfield, dropping a single bomb on the fake planes. Donnerwetter! It was also made of wood! This example alone would allow us to appreciate the subtlety of English humor. However, the story is not over. After dropping the wooden bomb, it was decided to urgently replace all the mock-ups with real fighters: the British would decide that the airfield was still not real and would not fly to bomb it again! Alas, a small mistake crept into this excellent plan: the British arrived - and with ordinary bombs they smashed the Nazi planes to pieces. At the end of the operation, a pennant was dropped on the heads of the despondent Hans with the mocking words: “But that’s another matter!”

The same ones go into battle

In the 16th century spanish conquistadors began the non-peaceful development of the virgin lands of America. The decrepit Senor Ponce de Leona also decided to put together his own detachment: his friends told him that in a distant land there were springs that returned youth to a person. Wanting to save on recruits, de Leona recruited the oldest and sickest soldiers into the detachment and with these antiques landed on the peninsula, later called Florida. Pointless water procedures in all sources in a row continued until strange group the athletes were not killed by the warlike Indians of the surrounding tribes.

And they are all Mao

In the relations between the two great neighbors, the USSR and China, things never came to an open war. However, by the 1950s, ideological differences and banal suspicion had so heated the situation on the border that local conflict. At first, the Chinese put up posters along the border with the image of Mao Zedong looking down menacingly. In response, Soviet soldiers, in front of each portrait, put together a temporary toilet without a back wall. However, we failed to soak the enemy in the toilet: the Chinese quickly came to their senses and replaced the images of Mao with posters with bare asses. What to do? The Soviet border guards, without hesitation, moved the toilets, and placed their portraits of Mao in front of the Chinese asses. This is where the confrontation ended: not wanting to get involved, the Chinese removed all the posters.

In the 15th-16th centuries, the Turks were recognized leaders in the production of gunpowder siege weapons. The caliber of their most powerful guns reached 920 mm (for comparison: the caliber of the Tsar Cannon is 890). But these giants were able to fight even in the First World War. When the Anglo-French squadron successfully stormed the forts in the Dardanelles, the desperate Turks rolled out 20 cannons firing stone cannonballs weighing 400 kg to protect the strait. It is ridiculous to measure the destructive power of such a projectile in TNT equivalent, because it could not penetrate armor. But the fact remains: when the first of the launched cannonballs crashed into the side of the battleship Agamemnon, the captain in horror ordered to leave the battlefield - probably deciding that asteroids had begun to fall into the bay. The battle was won without him, but the poor fellow suffered from ridicule for a long time.

Our craftsmen also made wooden airplanes, and even managed to fly them. For example, the U-2 celestial slow-moving vehicle, which the Germans contemptuously called “Russ-plywood,” was popular. Due to the low speed characteristics of the U-2, flights were made at night so that the enemy would not see it. During the day, such planes only amazed the imagination German pilots, and even then with his caricatured appearance. History has preserved only one case when a U-2 pilot emerged victorious from a battle with a Fritz fighter. Here is how it was. Having run into the enemy in the air, Soviet pilot, without hesitation, he landed (a light car could land on any garden bed) and hid the plane behind a barn that turned up. The enraged German ace, who did not have enough space to land, shot out the wall of the barn, flew past and began to approach for a second maneuver. Our pilot described an arc and hid behind another wall. Fritz went into a dive again. This cat and mouse continued until the fighter flew away in disgrace, having consumed almost all its fuel.

It's not good to cheat

After the Great Patriotic War, an old man served in the Baltic Fleet for the benefit of the Fatherland minesweeper"Oka." Compared to his peers, he stood out with his striking appearance, because in the time of the ship’s foggy youth, “Oka” was the personal imperial yacht and bore the name “Standard”. The interior of the ship consisted of mahogany furniture in the wardroom, paintings, carpets and vases with the monograms of Nicholas II. Even the shine of the Oka copper coins aroused admiration. But the years took their toll: at the end of the 50s, the ship was withdrawn from the active fleet. In retirement, “Oka” still managed to work part-time in cinema, starring in the film “Midshipman Panin”, after which it was finally written off. It was an exciting moment for the crew, and not only because of the bitterness of saying goodbye to the ship. It’s just that you can always grab something from a decommissioned ship that stirred your soul. In the end everything was taken away. And to the headquarters Baltic Fleet Documents started flowing from Oka. One of them read: “During a difficult passage through a stormy Indian Ocean a storm wave, breaking the porthole, burst into the wardroom, tore the Persian carpet from the wall and carried it into the open sea.” The chief of logistics of the Kronstadt naval base, who certified this act, smiled sadly into his mustache and wrote below: “The piano, apparently, too.”

An experienced officer knows many ways to sabotage what is, from his point of view, a stupid command order without formally violating anything. In such cases, the great Admiral Nelson, with the humor characteristic of the British, raised a telescope to his gouged out eye, looked for a long time at the signal flags and announced to the entire deck: “I don’t see the order! We will act as God tells us!”

Controversial military decisions difficult situations and there have always been plenty of oddities in the armed forces of Western states. Speaking about what military pranks, oversights by relevant authorities and gross violations of safety regulations could have turned into, most experts agree that many of the emergency incidents ended successfully only due to ordinary luck.

Saboteur John McCain

American Republican Senator John McCain, before he sat down in the comfortable chair of a senator and started criticizing everyone and everything, managed to do so many things that it’s hard to believe that there are so many problems in the life of one very specific person. McCain began to do great things while still at the US Navy Academy - during his studies, the young cadet was reprimanded more than a hundred times by management.

McCain's offenses included numerous violations of the Charter, violation of military discipline and internal regulations, rudeness and hazing with commanders. McCain's connections and influence from relatives helped him avoid severe punishment - John's father and grandfather built a brilliant career and rose to the rank of admiral.

However, the descendant of the military did not achieve much success and graduated from the Naval Academy among the first from the bottom of the list in terms of academic performance. McCain crashes his first multi-million dollar plane while serving in Texas. The commission that investigated the incident came to the unequivocal conclusion that the pilot’s unprofessionalism was to blame, however, the son of an admiral with a large number of stars on his shoulder straps escapes punishment with flying colors and is transferred to serve out of harm’s way - in Europe.

But here, too, McCain is unlucky - in one of the flights, the valiant knight of the Stars and Stripes of the Air Force managed to “unwind” the fighter by catching on a power line support. And again I was lucky - I didn’t get hurt and didn’t bear responsibility. However, the most interesting page in the biography of John McCain is his service on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. Many military historians attribute the blame for the incident, due to which the aircraft carrier was put out of action for a long time, to our hero. “Officially, of course, the cause of the explosion was called a technical malfunction,” explains military historian Boris Litvinov.

“Despite the fact that the Phantom, due to a power surge, fired a missile, the explosion of which caused serious damage, many sources claim that McCain was also involved in this, however, the authority of the father again did its job,” he added.

According to historians, McCain could quite rightly be awarded the star of the Hero of the USSR, because during his entire career as a pilot, the American professional destroyed more than 25 aircraft.

The submarine that sank itself

Dangerous, but no less strange incidents often happen with submarines - clever structures designed to hunt the enemy in the vastness of the world's oceans. Experienced submarine officers with dozens of combat campaigns behind them still can’t believe the reality of what happened, but “you can’t erase a word from a song.” The American submarine Teng, with one of the most experienced crews, hunted for Japanese ships in the Pacific Ocean at the end of 1944.

The fifth military campaign was quite successful - a couple of days before the events about which we'll talk, the Tang submarine destroyed five enemy ships. After the final approach to the target, the crew was left with a fully serviceable submarine, and in the torpedo tube there was one torpedo unused for its intended purpose. It was decided to use it to attack the surviving escort ship, which could not be sunk during the previous call.

Having taken comfortable position to fire the remaining torpedo, the commander gives the order to open fire. After some time, the observer, who was on the bridge with the captain of the submarine, reported that he clearly saw the trace of a torpedo heading strictly to the left side of the submarine. The captain of the submarine, an experienced sailor Richard O'Kane, realizing the seriousness of the situation, gives the order to evade the torpedo and full swing go right.

“The captain was most surprised when he realized that the torpedo was not moving in a straight line, as all torpedoes do, but in a “large arc,” explains retired Navy officer Alexey Ovechkin.

Despite all possible measures to prevent a collision with a torpedo and detect the launch point, it was not possible to avoid a collision with ammunition - the torpedo flew into the stern of the Tenga.

The whole drama of the situation with the American submarine lay in the fact that Captain O'Kane, realizing in which direction the situation was unfolding, gave the order to batten down the hatch in the wheelhouse. This decision simultaneously saved those who were on the bridge and greatly complicated the survival of those who remained in other compartments. The captain and several crew members who were on the bridge, thrown out by the explosion, turned out to be the luckiest - the rest of the crew had to fight for their lives, getting out of the sinking submarine.

After all the survivors of the mysterious torpedo attack and those who rose to the surface of the water were picked up by Japanese ships, captivity occurred in the fate of the American submariners. Only in 1945, after the prisoner of war camp in Omori, Japan was liberated by American troops, was it possible to find out the real reason sudden appearance of an enemy torpedo. To the surprise of the Americans themselves, there was no enemy in the area - the Tang was caught up with the very last torpedo. Having left the torpedo tube, the torpedo moved for some time in the given direction, but then its steering mechanism was somehow damaged and in a “large arc” the American torpedo entered the “tail” of the submarine, from which it was fired.

Aegis didn't help

Tragic problems with a torpedo, a rocket explosion on the aircraft carrier Forrestal are just some of the troubles that befell naval forces USA. One of the most serious and most unpleasant American military incidents is the test of a low-flying missile interception system. The BQM-74 subsonic target missile, fired at a US Navy destroyer to test the reliability of the anti-missile system, did its job. Despite the fact that the US pays increased attention to the anti-missile system, the vulnerability of ships to missiles approaching the ship at an altitude of several meters above the water turned out to be obvious.

The ship's artillery and the AEGIS combat information control system detected the target missiles and even managed to issue a command to the systems to fire, but they were unable to intercept the “blank” flying at subsonic speed. Adding color to the emergency incident with the American destroyer is the fact that the destroyer’s crew knew in advance what actions needed to be performed in similar situation, and indeed, the very nature of the exercises was clearly demonstrative.

However, as often happens, everything went wrong, and ultimately a remotely controlled target missile crashed through the side of the ship, seriously injuring two sailors. Experts explain that if this happened in combat conditions, the ship would be guaranteed to sink, especially considering the fact that many anti-ship missiles accelerate significantly above the speed of sound during the final leg of their flight. The scandalous incident during the exercise not only put the American destroyer Chancellorsville out of action for several months, but also gave rise to a whole host of rumors about the impossibility American ships stand up for yourself in case of danger.

US Navy specialists subsequently developed an entire modernization program electronic systems ship, aimed at increasing the response speed of the ship's anti-missile system, however, as experts explain, if the ship's BIUS could not cope with one missile, the launch of which everyone knew in advance, then in combat conditions, when a destroyer can be attacked by a whole flock of cruise missiles, the chances of the survival of the huge ship and its entire crew would be zero.

May 9th, 2016

War in the Arctic.

A German submarine discovered an Allied transport carrying fuel, ammunition to Murmansk, military equipment and the tanks surfaced and launched a torpedo almost point-blank at the ship. A huge blast wave tore off the tanks standing on the deck and lifted them into the air. Two tanks fell on the submarine. The German submarine sank immediately.

Radio.

At the beginning of October 1941, the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command learned about the defeat of its three fronts in the Moscow direction from Berlin radio messages. It's about about the environment near Vyazma.

English humor.

Well-known historical fact. The Germans, demonstrating the supposedly impending landing on the British Isles, placed several dummy airfields on the coast of France, on which they “planed” a large number of wooden copies of aircraft. Work on creating these same dummy airplanes was in full swing when one day in broad daylight a lone British plane appeared in the air and dropped a single bomb on the “airfield”. She was wooden...! After this “bombing,” the Germans abandoned false airfields.

For the king.

At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in 1941, some cavalry units were given old checkers from a warehouse with the inscription “For the Faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland”...

English humor performed by a torpedo

A funny incident at sea. In 1943, in North Atlantic A German and an English destroyer met. The British, without hesitation, were the first to fire a torpedo at the enemy... but the torpedo’s rudders jammed at an angle, and as a result, the torpedo made a cheerful circular maneuver and returned... The British were no longer joking as they watched their own torpedo rush towards them. As a result, they suffered from their own torpedo, and in such a way that the destroyer, although it remained afloat and waited for help, did not participate in hostilities until the very end of the war due to the damage received. There is only one mystery left in military history: why didn’t the Germans finish off the Anghichans?? Either they were ashamed to finish off such warriors of the “Queen of the Seas” and the successors of Nelson’s glory, or they laughed so hard that they could no longer shoot….

Clip.

Unusual intelligence facts. In principle, German intelligence “worked” quite successfully in the Soviet rear, except in the Leningrad direction. Germans in large quantities they sent spies to besieged Leningrad, providing them with everything they needed - clothes, documents, addresses, passwords, appearances. But, when checking documents, any patrol instantly identified “fake” documents of the German
production. Works the best specialists forensics and printing were easily detected by soldiers and officers on patrol. The Germans changed the texture of the paper and the composition of the paints - to no avail. Any even semi-literate sergeant of the Central Asian conscription identified the linden at first sight. The Germans never solved the problem.

And the secret was simple - the Germans, a quality nation, made the paper clips that were used to fasten documents from stainless steel, and our real Soviet paper clips were slightly rusty, the patrol sergeants had never seen anything else, for them the shiny steel paper clips sparkled like gold...

Old master.

An interesting story, which is difficult to verify, because this is not officially recorded. In Izhevsk, during the Great Patriotic War, mass production of PPSh assault rifles was launched. To prevent the barrel of the machine gun from heating up when firing, and to prevent deformation, a procedure for hardening the barrels was worked out. Unexpectedly, in 1944 there was a defect - during test firing the barrels were “velocated”. Special department Of course, I started to look into it - to look for saboteurs, but they didn’t find anything suspicious. They began to find out what had changed in production. We found out that for the first time since the start of production, the old master was ill. They immediately “put him on his feet” and began to quietly monitor him.

To the amazement of the engineers and designers, an interesting detail was revealed - the old master urinated in a quenching tank with water twice a day. But, the marriage disappeared!?? Other “masters” secretly tried to urinate, but it turned out that this particular person was required to participate in this “secret” procedure. They closed their eyes and continued to perform this secret function for a long time...

The master retired when the plant switched to producing the famous Kalashnikovs...

No man is an island.

On July 17, 1941 (the first month of the war), Wehrmacht Chief Lieutenant Hensfald, who later died at Stalingrad, wrote in his diary: “Sokolnichi, near Krichev. In the evening, a Russian unknown soldier was buried. He alone, standing at the gun, spent a long time shooting at a column of our tanks and infantry. And so he died. Everyone was amazed at his courage.” Yes, this warrior was buried by the enemy! With honors...

It later turned out that it was the gun commander of the 137th Infantry Division of the 13th Army, Senior Sergeant Nikolai Sirotinin. He was left alone to cover the withdrawal of his unit. Sirotinin, took up an advantageous firing position from which the highway, a small river and a bridge across it were clearly visible. At dawn on July 17, German tanks and armored personnel carriers appeared. When the lead tank reached the bridge, a gun shot rang out. With the first shot, Nikolai knocked out a German tank. The second shell hit another one that was at the rear of the column. There was a traffic jam on the road. The Nazis tried to turn off the highway, but several tanks immediately got stuck in the swamp. And senior sergeant Sirotinin continued to send shells to the target. The enemy brought down the fire of all tanks and machine guns on the lone gun. A second group of tanks approached from the west and also opened fire. Only after 2.5 hours did the Germans manage to destroy the cannon, which managed to fire almost 60 shells. At the battle site, 10 destroyed German tanks and armored personnel carriers were burning out. The Germans had the impression that the fire on the tanks was carried out by a full battery. And only later did they learn that the column of tanks was held back by one artilleryman.

Yes, this warrior was buried by the enemy! With honors...

One tank, a warrior in the field.

Also in July 1941, in Lithuania, near the city of Raseniai, one KV tank held back the entire offensive for two days!!! 4th German Tank Group Colonel General Gepner.tank kv

The crew of the KV tank first burned a convoy of trucks with ammunition. It was impossible to get close to the tank - the roads ran through swamps. The advanced German units were cut off. An attempt to destroy a tank with a 50-mm anti-tank battery from a distance of 500 m ended in complete fiasco. The KV tank remained unharmed, despite, as it turned out later, 14 !!! direct hits, but they only left dents in his armor. When the Germans brought up a more powerful 88-mm anti-aircraft gun, the tank crew allowed it to take a position 700 m away, and then shot it in cold blood before the crew could fire even one shot!!! At night, the Germans sent sappers. They managed to plant explosives under the tank's tracks. But the planted charges tore out only a few pieces from the tank’s tracks. The KV remained mobile and combat-ready and continued to block the German advance. On the first day, the tank crew was supplied with supplies local residents, but then a blockade was established around the KV. However, even this isolation did not force the tankers to leave their position. As a result, the Germans resorted to cunning. FIFTY!!! German tanks began to fire at the KV from 3 directions in order to divert its attention. At this time, a new 88 mm anti-aircraft gun was pulled to the rear of the tank. It hit the tank twelve times, and only 3 shells penetrated the armor, destroying the tank crew.

Not all generals retreated.

June 22, 1941 In the strip southwestern front Army Group “South” (commanded by Field Marshal G. Rundstedt) delivered the main blow south of Vladimir-Volynsky on the formations of the 5th Army of General M.I. Potapov and the 6th Army of General I.N. Muzychenko. In the center of the 6th Army zone, in the Rava-Russkaya area, the 41st Infantry Division of the oldest commander of the Red Army, General G.N., staunchly defended. Mikusheva. The division's units repelled the first enemy attacks together with the border guards of the 91st border detachment. On June 23, with the arrival of the main forces of the division, they launched a counterattack, pushed the enemy back across the state border and advanced up to 3 km Polish territory. But, due to the threat of encirclement, they had to retreat...

Grenade on planes.

During the defense of Sevastopol in 1942, the only case in the entire history of World War II and the Great Patriotic War occurred when the commander of a mortar company, Junior Lieutenant Simonok, shot down a low-flying German plane with a direct hit from an 82-mm mortar! This is as unlikely as hitting a plane with a thrown stone or brick...

From airplanes without a parachute!

A pilot on a reconnaissance flight during his return noticed a column of German armored vehicles moving towards Moscow. As it turned out, there was no one in the path of the German tanks. It was decided to drop troops in front of the column. They brought to the airfield only a complete regiment of Siberians in white sheepskin coats.

When German column I was walking along the highway, suddenly low-flying planes appeared ahead, as if they were about to land, having slowed down to the limit, 10-20 meters from the surface of the snow. Clusters of people in white sheepskin coats fell from airplanes onto a snow-covered field next to the road. The soldiers got up alive and immediately threw themselves under the tracks of the tanks with bunches of grenades... They looked like white ghosts, they were not visible in the snow, and the advance of the tanks was stopped. When a new column of tanks and motorized infantry approached the Germans, there were practically no “white pea coats” left. And then a wave of planes flew in again and a new white waterfall of fresh fighters poured from the sky. German offensive was stopped, and only a few tanks hastily retreated. Afterwards it turned out that only 12 percent of the landing force died when they fell into the snow, and the rest entered into an unequal battle. Although it is still a terribly wrong tradition to measure victories by the percentage of living people who died.

On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine a German, American, or Englishman voluntarily jumping onto tanks without a parachute. They wouldn't even be able to think about it.

Elephant.

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II only killed an elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

Camel.

The photograph shows Stalingrad during the Great Patriotic War. The 28th Army, which was formed near Astrakhan, took part in the heavy battles near Stalingrad. By that time there was already tension with the horses, so they gave out the camels! It should be noted that the ships of the desert coped with their tasks very successfully. And a camel named Yashka even took part in the Battle of Berlin in 1945.

Shark.

During World War II, Americans got the jackpot...in the stomach of a shark! The shark managed to “manage” the sunken Japanese destroyer, and the Americans accidentally got hold of a secret Japanese code.

Deer.

There are also very exotic cases of using animals in the Great Patriotic War. An entry from the diaries of Konstantin Simonov, about the story of one colonel, how he suffered in the war with reindeer transport. “They are too unpretentious animals! They are so unpretentious that they eat nothing but their own reindeer moss. Where can you get it, this moss? If you give him hay, he shakes his head; if you give him bread, he shakes his head. Just give him moss. But there is no moss! So I fought with them, with the deer. I carried the load on myself, and they went looking for their moss.”

A cat is known from the stories of participants in the hardest Battle of Stalingrad. Through the ruins of Stalingrad, the cat made his way at night from the Soviet trenches to the German ones and back, receiving treats in both places.

Hare.

There is a known case when, during positional battles near Polotsk, shooting suddenly stopped simultaneously on both sides. It turned out that a hare ran out into the neutral zone and began carelessly scratching its shed side with its hind paw.

A sad, but entertaining and instructive fact about the Second World War.

In his memoirs of General Eisenhower, D. Eisenhower, " Crusade to Europe"), recalled a conversation with Marshal Zhukov.

Russian method of attacking through minefields. German minefields were very serious tactical obstacles that led to large military losses. Marshal Zhukov, during a conversation, spoke quite casually about his practice: “When we approach a minefield, our infantry attacks as if it were not there. We consider losses from anti-personnel mines to be approximately equal to those that machine guns and artillery would have caused us if the Germans had decided to defend this area with large forces of troops, and not minefields" Eisenhower was shocked and could not imagine how long any American or British general would have lived if he had used such tactics. Especially if the soldiers of any of the American or British divisions found out about this.

On a ram with an open hatch!

Fighter pilot Borya Kovzan, returning from a mission, entered into battle with six German fighters. Having been wounded in the head and left without ammunition, Boris Kovzan radioed that he was leaving the plane and had already opened the canopy to leave it. And at that moment he saw rushing towards him German ace. Borya Kovzan again grabbed the helm and directed the plane towards the ace. The pilot knew that during a ramming operation he should under no circumstances turn aside. If you turn, your enemy will beat you with a screw. He, of course, will also break his own screw, but theoretically he will be able to plan, at least in principle, and there will certainly be nothing left of the “victim.” This is a war of nerves. Well, if no one turns, then glory and honor to the two!
But the German ace was a real ace and knew it all, and didn’t swerve either, and both planes crashed head-on, but the German ace’s canopy was closed, and the seriously wounded Boris Kovzan flew unconscious through the canopy that was open by coincidence. air. The parachute opened and Boris Kovzan Twice Hero of the Union landed successfully, but first to the hospital, of course.

Unformatted!

The Germans who fought on the eastern front completely refute the stereotypes we have based on films about the Second World War.

As German WWII veterans recall, “UR-R-RA!” they had never heard and did not even suspect the existence of such an attack cry from Russian soldiers. But they learned the word BL@D perfectly. Because it was with such a cry that the Russians rushed into an especially hand-to-hand attack. And the second word that the Germans often heard from their side of the trenches was “Hey, go ahead, fucking m@t!”, “This booming cry meant that now not only infantry but also T-34 tanks would trample on the Germans.

Another interesting fact WWII about pilots.

An order was received to bomb the bridgehead occupied by Nazi troops. But the dense anti-aircraft fire of German guns burned our planes like matches. The commander changed course a little - he felt sorry for the crews. They would have burned everyone before reaching the bridgehead anyway. The planes bombed the usual forest area next to the German bridgehead and returned to the airfield. And the next morning a miracle happened. The impregnable bridgehead fell. It turned out that the carefully disguised headquarters of the central German group was completely destroyed at night in the same forest area. The pilots did not receive any awards for this because they reported that the order had been carried out. Therefore, the headquarters was destroyed by someone unknown. The headquarters was looking for someone to reward, but they never found real Heroes...

Glamorous pink planes.

You can find many similar photographs of aircraft from World War II. But in reality, these planes did not look so gray and gloomy. In fact, they were a glamorous pale pink fighter from the Second World War. And this is not an accident.

Some fighter aircraft during World War II were so specialized that they only flew in certain time days. The beautiful pink RAF aircraft of the US No. 16 Squadron had a very big plus - they became almost invisible at both sunset and sunrise. And these “glamorous” fighters look really fun. And in fact, it was a really smart tactic to make stealth planes even then.

Gas attack in the metro.

The subway is the best shelter during air raids, everyone knows that. But in the subway you can be subject to a gas attack!

Do you think those in this photo are victims of a gas attack? No, it's just a normal night on the tube for Brits. When German air raids over London became almost regular, the unperturbed British quickly adapted to sleeping right on the subway. And while the Germans were bombing London, the British people slept together - gathered in a gigantic but well-mannered “heap”. Seriously, look at the guy in front of the photo: he didn’t even take off his hat in the subway during the bombing... apparently it’s more comfortable to sleep in. Unfortunately, Muscovites cannot boast of such photographs. Firstly, in Stalin's times, taking photographs in the metro was prohibited. It was considered a military facility, so there are only a few photographs taken during World War II in the Moscow metro, including those specifically for Life magazine.

Obviously a “staged” photograph - Muscovites during air raids.

Life photojournalist at the Mayakovskaya station, at a time when Muscovites are taking cover from another air raid. Usually the raids began late in the evening, with the onset of summer twilight. There is a motionless train on the tracks. As you can see, standard wooden trestle beds are prepared in advance to accommodate small children. And one more thing: young and middle-aged women are dressed relatively well.

Spacesuits for babies.

Gas masks are not suitable for children, and yet somehow it was necessary to protect children from possible gas attacks. Thus, special devices have been developed to protect children in the event of a gas attack. Watch how mothers use a special pump to pump air into spacesuits for children. But it was thanks to these pumps that none of these children could fall asleep. It’s interesting that the mothers themselves were without gas masks, how were they going to breathe?

A plane without a wing.

This is the Avenger, a torpedo bomber from the USS Bennington, piloted by pilot Bob King during the Battle of Chichi Jima. He didn’t want to upset his loved ones, friends and family... so he managed to pull his plane out of a tailspin and fly to the airfield on this wounded plane without a wing! There is a legend that since then no one has ever denied the pilot Bob King a free drink at the bar.

Giant ears.

As funny as it looks, these are really big ears. This guy doesn't rest, but listens to the sky. In essence, this is a huge listening device. And the most interesting thing is that it really worked. AND the best way There was no way to hear the noise of bomber engines then. There is nothing high-tech about this setup, you simply plug a giant cone into your ear and listen to the sound of German pilots and planes. Elegant, effective and simple. The most popular caption for water photos during World War II was: “I just heard someone fart. Most likely, Goering’s pilots are already on their way to us.”

Half of you will be a fence, and the other half of you will be prisoners...

The fact remains that war is truly hell. And this is no longer a joke. And for the soldiers of the Red Army in 1941, it was hell on earth. Rare photos, which official propaganda does not like.

In 1939, Stalin and Hitler happily divided Europe in half by signing the famous pact. In 1941, Hitler beat Stalin by several days and was the first to attack the Soviet Union. Then, in 1941, as a result of Operation Barbarossa and taking the USSR by surprise, the Germans captured about 5,500 thousand prisoners of war - that’s five and a half million soldiers and officers. For such a number of prisoners, the Germans naturally did not even have the opportunity to build such huge camps in the first days of the war. Therefore, the Germans solved the problem this way: “Half of you will be a fence, and the other half of you will be prisoners.” Without a roof over their heads, with ruthless Nazi guards, they could only cuddle together at night to keep warm. At night, these camps were hell. The losses were so unfathomably great that only prisoners of war Soviet soldiers According to the Germans, more than 3.3 million people died.

7. Living statue Freedom.

In this photo you can see 18 thousand American soldiers standing in a formation that is very reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty. This photograph was used as an advertisement for war bonds during World War II.

Notice that if you just look at the base of the statue you will see a dozen soldiers standing there. But pay attention to the angle of the photo: This is not Photoshop - it simply didn’t exist then. And the image has almost ideal proportions. How did they do it? Well, the number of soldiers in the statue's formation increased exponentially the further away they were from the camera. For example, 12,000 soldiers took part in the formation of the torch alone. The entire statue, from feet to torch, is almost three hundred meters long.

Donkeys in World War II

TO In addition to elephants, camels and horses, donkeys also took part in World War II!

The donkeys, of course, did not want to go to war, but they were too stubborn to return home.
"Donkey Corps" was military unit, deployed in 1943 for the invasion of Sicily. Bad roads and difficult conditions for conventional vehicles forced the use of donkeys in Sicily! True, sometimes, because of their stubbornness, soldiers had to wear them...on themselves!

American children did the same greeting as the Hitler Youth!

Another interesting and little-known historical fact about the Second World War.

This is not a shot from the chronicle “What if the Nazis had won the war?” . This is a real photograph taken in an ordinary American classroom.

As you can imagine, as a result of World War II, and thanks to Hitler and stamps, many perfectly good things were destroyed forever. Like the tiny mustache, the swastika as a symbol of good luck, and all the hand signals that look anything like "Heil Hitler." But in fact, Hitler did not invent any of these symbols, but simply used them.

For example, in 1892, Francis Bellamy decided to come up with the American oath, as well as a characteristic hand gesture that should be made during the oath of allegiance to America, after the words "... one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

And it's a fact that for decades, children across America happily performed the "Heil Hitler" gesture, which was known in America as the Bellamy salute. But then the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini appeared in world history. When he came to power, he revived the so-called Roman salute, and Hitler thought it should be adopted, and a little later he adopted it as his Nazi salute. This caused obvious controversy when America entered World War II. It was somehow wrong for American children to do the same greeting as the Hitler Youth. Thus, during the war, Roosevelt adopted a new salute proposed by Congress - placing right hand on the heart.

Thanks to the bra war?

An interesting historical fact about World War II, but it was the reason for the popularity of the bra among women. The fact is that before World War II, women did not really want to use this wardrobe accessory. But when men went to the front during World War II, women had to take their place in factories and factories. And as welders, and as turners, etc., and a serious question arose about the safety of some parts female body. An industrial plastic bra was developed, which this girl is demonstrating.

By the way, it was in 1941 that a patent was received for a special cut of a bra made from natural materials, which finally solved the problem of poor fit of the bra cup to the body. And in 1942, a patent was issued for a length-adjustable bra clasp.

In war, of course, as in war, however, comic situations also happened .

1941 During active preparations for the attack on the USSR, the Germans, as is known, did their best to hide their true plans, showing off the supposedly impending landing on British Isles.
One of the means to intimidate the enemy was the placement on the coast of France of several dummy airfields on which a significant number of wooden copies were placed German fighters.
The work on creating these same dummies was in full swing when one day in broad daylight a lone British plane appeared in the air and dropped a single bomb on the “airfield”.
It turned out to be wooden. After this incident, the Germans stopped all this kind of work....

The story with the airfield had the following continuation. After the British dropped a wooden bomb, the Germans decided: let's place real planes at this false airfield, because the British, knowing that
This airfield is false, they will be mistaken for mock-ups. Two days after the German planes relocated, the British bombed this airfield again. But with real bombs. At the end of the bombing there was
the pennant was dropped with the words: “But that’s another matter!”

41st year. Our KV-1 tank stalled in the neutral zone. The Germans knocked on the armor for a long time and asked the crew to surrender, but they refused. Then the Germans hooked the KV with two of their light tanks to pull it away.
our tank to its location, and open it there without interference. The calculation turned out to be not entirely correct. When they started towing, our tank started up (apparently there was a “push start”), and dragged the German tanks
to our location. The German tank crews were forced to abandon their tanks, and the KV dragged them to our positions.

During Polish campaign, during the capture of Vilna, one of our BT came under fire from Polish anti-tank rifles. He was under this fire for more than an hour, supporting his infantry, until he was finally knocked out.
Inspecting it after the battle, they counted 21 holes in it. Of the bullets that fired through them, only the last one hit the engine and broke it, and another one casually touched the leg of the crew commander. All other hits
did not in any way affect the combat effectiveness of the tank. This and a number of similar cases were the reason for our refusal to produce anti-tank rifles.

In 1939, experiments were carried out in the USSR on landing tanks. We tested dropping the T-38 onto the water. After successful experiments, a “brilliant” idea was born - to reset the T-38 into the water with its crew.
The reset was made, and fortunately, the crew received only minor injuries, after which they were awarded orders. Such experiments were not performed again.

In 1944, the Yak-9K aircraft, armed with a 45-mm cannon (!), went into production. A projectile fired from a 45-mm aircraft cannon penetrated 48-mm tank armor, and there is no need to talk about aircraft.
There was such a case: Four Yak-9K regiments of Major Kleshchev met four Focke-Wulf 190s, who, not realizing our weapons, launched a frontal attack. Ours accepted it. One salvo, and 3 German
the plane was torn to shreds. The last German barely escaped, very surprised at the result of the frontal attack. And this regiment shot down 106 aircraft in 2.5 months.

For a year and a half in the First world germans there was no way they could shoot down the heavy plane "Ilya Muromets", which gave rise to the legend about its powerful armor protection. Only at the end of 1916 a whole bunch of German
fighters fell on the lone Ilya Muromets, who was conducting deep reconnaissance. The battle lasted about an hour and the Germans failed to shoot him down. The plane made an emergency landing, shooting all the tapes
onboard machine guns and even cartridges from Mausers, only after 3 out of 4 engines failed. The Germans discovered more than 300 holes, which plunged them into complete despondency.

On June 25, 1941, two batteries of the German infantry division near Melniki (Army Group Center) were completely destroyed in hand-to-hand combat by units of Soviet troops emerging from encirclement.

From the First World War. The UB-17 boat and its captain became famous because the captain, seeing an ordinary English transport through the periscope, decided to attack it with torpedoes. Since there were no guards nearby, he
decided to surface and fired a torpedo at the transport, which, in appearance, was nothing special - it only carried trucks on the deck. It turned out that the transport was camouflaged in this way,
and he was actually transporting ammunition, which, when detonated, sent one of the trucks flying, which fell on the boat, drowning it with its entire crew...

At the very end of the First World War famous writer J. Hasek, the author of the unforgettable Schweik, served in the Austro-Hungarian army. One day he came across a group of our soldiers (about ten people). Deciding that he had already
fought back, decided to surrender. And our soldiers were so tired of dying for the capitalists and bloodsuckers of the working people (the agitation also helped quite well), that they forced Hasek to accept
their surrender. And he returned to the unit with them and with a donkey loaded with rifles.

During World War II, a Turkish submarine sank with almost its entire crew because the cook’s cutlets were burnt and he opened the hatch without informing anyone to ventilate the room. Boat
was on the surface, after some time the captain gave the order “urgent dive” and... the boat sank. Only the captain was saved - he was on the bridge and managed to jump.

From the memoirs of the late General Lebed.
“One of the T-62 tanks fired, taking up a position on a small, very flat field under the purely symbolic cover of two or three stunted trees. Before the platoon of Afghans concentrated under cover
tank and fired rather randomly along the slopes. A special feature of the T-62 is that the spent cartridge case is extracted out through a small hatch at the rear of the turret.
The tankman slowly moved the barrel, looking for the target. Found. Shot. The tower spat out the cartridge case. which hit an Afghan soldier in the face and chest. Two of his comrades, having put the machine guns on safety and switched
they were placed behind their backs and the injured man was dragged somewhere to the rear. The rest huddled even more tightly behind the tank and continued to fire even more energetically. Shot. Another soldier caught a cartridge case, and two comrades
they dragged him to the rear. Before my eyes, within one minute the platoon melted by one third. Truly, eccentrics decorate the world."

A long time ago they told about such a case on the Soviet-Chinese border in the 70s or 80s of the last century (when the situation there was on the verge of conflict). Chinese border guards placed a toilet in the immediate vicinity
proximity to the PCB in such a way that, walking out of great need, they showed our Great and Mighty Motherland their skinny butts. Then our border guards, using Russian ingenuity, placed on our side
directly opposite their toilet is a portrait of the then Chinese Secretary General.
The Chinese had to rearrange the toilet...

About the fighters of the invisible front.

Recently there was a program about our today's counterintelligence officers. They told such a case... There was a nimble diplomat in the American embassy, ​​whom the surveillance system could not keep track of.
He left the embassy in a car and evaded surveillance through Moscow gateways. Our counterintelligence officers were terribly tired of this matter and they resorted to a trick... Once again American diplomat
flies in his car through the Moscow gateways from ours and then CRACK... The car is in a landfill, the diplomat is in intensive care... Ours, in the dark part of the arch, in one of the courtyards, dug a steel pole.

In 1944, the Japanese adopted the Ki-84 Hayate fighter. In terms of performance characteristics, it was a powerful machine: at an altitude of 6000 m it overtook all Allied fighters! But they did not cause much harm to the Americans.
There were many reasons for this, but here is one of them: the engine of this Japanese miracle of technology had to be disassembled and washed AFTER EACH FLIGHT!!!

The teacher said during the class:

He worked as an instructor in Vietnam, teaching the Viet Cong how to use Dvina missiles...

This means that the missiles themselves with launchers, as a rule, were located in fishing lines, so as not to be noticed prematurely from the air. It was then 1968 or 1969... He no longer remembered exactly.
And in the intervals between “firing”, the rocket men lived a normal life: they cleaned and washed the rockets, studied and guarded objects. And then the alarm sounds: “candy wrappers” are coming with “thunders” (F105 - thunderchief -
was then used as an interceptor for guarding candy wrappers with bombs), all the rocket launchers, who is where, and how they are dressed - it doesn’t matter, they roll into bunkers, removing the covers from the rockets as they go, and in the confusion they don’t notice much...
A volley follows, more than one battery fires - there were a lot of them - three candy wrappers and one tander fall, the rest are torn apart... A parachutist flies from one of the candy wrappers. Joyful Vietnamese peasants with AK-47 at the ready,
rush to rice field, where he should fall... ours will follow them, shouting: “We need him alive!” Well, they run up to a silent scene: the pilot falls to the ground, alive, but with a belt dangling from his chest
secret (at that time) Soviet AKM-59 assault rifle! Maybe this is our pilot? no, definitely not ours. Who then sold the machine gun to him?

a showdown begins and it turns out that the machine gun of lieutenant “so-and-so” is not in place, that is, on the lieutenant’s shoulder... And according to the numbers (only Soviet advisers in Vietnam at that time were armed with AKMs, and
they were numbered), this machine is his! Here comes the joy...

The GeBists arrived, took the lieutenant and the pilot with them, then, however, they released the lieutenant, but with the strictest order - not to let him go on any more business trips! Why is that all?

And here's what happened:
They washed the rocket, and the rocket has a PVD sensor on the nose, the machine gun was in the way, and l-he hung it on a belt on this tube... Then there was an alarm, there was no time for machine guns, the order was to fire a salvo and the rocket, “pressing” it to itself
machine gun, went to the enemy plane... Further, more “laughter”... An explosion never occurs from contact - it is non-contact. The missile exploded 6 meters from the aircraft, with destructive elements other than steel
rods, the machine gun also flew... But - it shows more resistance to the air, it was thrown into the air a little... During the explosion, the catapult accidentally went off under Amer’s pilot, him and his seat
was thrown up, and when the parachute opened, according to the pilot, something hit him in the neck from above, and he lost consciousness, which is why he also could not explain the origin of the appearance of the machine gun
on his chest - because the machine gun fell on him, already falling down - the speeds were high, but the seat, apparently, had not yet come off the pilot, because the machine gun belt did not cut the pilot’s neck...

This is how planes were sometimes shot down with machine guns... :)

I can’t vouch for the veracity, but it went like this:
During Brezhnev's reign, there were constantly small skirmishes on the Soviet-Chinese border. And after the death of Leonid Ilyich, Andropov came to power. He summoned the Chinese ambassador and in an informal meeting
warned that if there is another provocation, let them kick themselves.
The Chinese ignored this, because... Another skirmish occurred, of course with losses on our side. Then Andropov ordered one area, I don’t remember the name, to set 12 degrees and open fire......
In general, the Chinese calmed down after that. And pilots who fly over this area are surprised that grass doesn’t grow on the Chinese side.

Arab-Israeli War, Egypt

The Soviet Air Force squadron was in the center of the desert. The only entertainment is combat missions. Water was strictly limited, they didn’t even wash their hands, but cleaned them with a special paste from a tube. In short, wilderness. During some
On the occasion of the great Arab holiday, they announced that “we are not fighting today.” The pilots finally decided to relax.
But at the end of this celebration of life, an order came from headquarters for an urgent flight to intercept, because... unexpectedly, Jews have a different opinion regarding the schedule for today.
An order is an order, and those pilots who were still standing helped load their friend into the cockpit, because he could no longer do it and... The MiG flew away. About 5-10 minutes later, they suddenly realized what they had done
and... instantly sobered up. The one who flew away was a Hero of the Soviet Union, the best ace of the regiment, and so on and so forth... TRIBUNAL?
But after a while the plane appeared again over the airfield and even... landed. Everyone rushed to the car. The lantern opened and our Hero fell into the arms of his friends with a happy smile... victoriously raising
up 2 (or 3?, I don’t remember: confused:) fingers! He shot down 2 Mirages!

In modern on airplanes, any shaking of the hands leads to the car throwing from side to side. Therefore, the condition of our pilot led to the fact that the MiG behaved in the air in a way that was typical for
an inexperienced Arab pilot. "But under the skin of the lamb there was a lion!" :lol: Which is what the Israelis fell for.

Another case. It was after the war. The Russian officer was driven by a German, since there were not enough of his own.
They drive once and then the car breaks down. The German looked and said he couldn’t fix it. Some part has failed. The narrator did not mention which one specifically. They stand smoking. Another car is coming towards you.
They stop her and ask her to help. The Russian driver took one look, scratched the back of his head, looked around and cut out this detail from the beets that grew nearby in the field. “You’re not far from here, you’ll finish your meal,” he said.
I moved on. The German sat down, started it and drove 5 km. to your destination. Then the German says to the officer: “Now I understand why you won the war!!!”

After the war, a great variety of different warehouses were formed
weapons, captured and our own, under open air, which, according to army habit, had to be guarded day and night.
And they had a battalion commander there, a very angry one, who also “especially liked to check the posts after...”
and sent a lot of soldiers to camps, to build dams, etc. In those Stalinist times, they gave a lot to an enemy of the people for sleeping on duty...
Everyone was very afraid of him, but physiology took its toll, and the soldiers, no, no, and fell asleep at the post, fortunately, they had to stand with a 3-line rifle, leaning
With your back against the wall and your chin on the rifle, you could stand standing...
But this rifle has one peculiarity: the bolt opens, if slowly, then silently, and in the rear position, when you press the trigger, it falls out completely. (For
purges, etc.) Somehow the battalion commander crept up to one post, and the soldier was sleeping, standing up. He quietly removed the bolt from his rifle and went to check further posts. After a minute
the soldier woke up and realized that it was a skiff... And because... These were front-line soldiers who survived in difficult conditions, and had seen enough death, he quickly realized and ran in the other direction, to
neighboring post, and asked a friend for the shutter. (All parts are interchangeable)
He returned to his post, loaded his rifle and waited for the battalion commander. Because everything happens at night, in conditions of poor visibility, then it is necessary, according to the regulations, to hear steps, shout out to the person walking, stop, and then it begins
procedure for approaching the post. What did the battalion commander give a damn about? he had the shutter in his pocket.
This is what the soldier took advantage of, putting a bullet in a stranger at the post right between the eyes. Then he took his bolt and returned it to his neighbor. And he called the guard to the incident.
So everything was written off... And no one else quietly checked the posts...

Our scouts got into the habit of taking the Germans' language. The Germans are tired of this. They began to be vigilant. There's no way you can get through. Well, our people crawled at night, tied the cable to the barbed wire, on which
Germans had tin cans hanging. And from 8 pm they started tugging at her.
How the Germans began to get nervous. Run, fuss, shoot. Our people are sitting in the trench, laughing, but the German is not sleeping.;) He is nervous. They kept me going until 3 am. They cured the Germans' nervous system. He stopped responding. After
Why did ours crawl and get hold of their tongues?

Cannons from the Russian-Turkish War fought near Moscow.
It would seem that in that grand battle that was on the outskirts of the capital in the winter of 1941, every detail has been studied and everything has long been known, however...
Few people know that on one of the front sectors decisive role played by Russian cannons manufactured at the Imperial Gun Factory in Perm back in 1877. And it was in the Solnechnogorsk region -
Krasnaya Polyana, where the 16th Army, drained of blood by long battles, fought under the command of Konstantin Rokossovsky.
K.K. Rokossovsky turned to G.K. Zhukov with a request for urgent assistance with anti-tank artillery. However, the front commander no longer had it in reserve. The request reached the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.
Stalin’s reaction was immediate: “I also do not have anti-tank artillery reserves. But in Moscow there is the Military Artillery Academy named after F. E. Dzerzhinsky. There are many experienced artillerymen there.
Let them think and report back on a possible solution to the problem within 24 hours.”

Indeed, back in 1938, the artillery academy, founded in 1820, was transferred from Leningrad to Moscow. But in October 1941, she was mostly evacuated to Samarkand.
About a hundred officers and employees remained in Moscow. Training artillery was also transported to Samarkand. But the order had to be carried out.
Helped Lucky case. Worked at the academy old man, who knew well the locations of artillery arsenals in Moscow and in the immediate Moscow region, where worn-out and
very old artillery systems, shells and equipment for them. One can only regret that time has not preserved the name of this person and the names of all the other employees of the academy who, during the day
carried out the order and formed several high-power anti-tank defense fire batteries.
To fight German medium tanks, they picked up old 6-inch caliber siege guns, which were used during the liberation of Bulgaria from the Turkish yoke, and later in Russian-Japanese war
1904-1905 After its completion, due to severe wear of the barrels, these guns were delivered to the Mytishchi Arsenal, where they were stored in a preserved state. Shooting from them was not safe,
but they could still withstand 5-7 shots.

As for shells, at the Sokolniki artillery depot there were a large number of captured English high-explosive fragmentation shells from Vickers of 6 inches caliber and weighing 100 feet, then
there is a little over 40 kilograms. There were also primers and powder charges, repelled in civil war from the Americans. All this property has been stored so carefully since 1919 that it could well
used for its intended purpose.
Soon several fire batteries of heavy anti-tank artillery were formed. Academy students and officers sent from military registration and enlistment offices became commanders, and Red Army soldiers and students became servants.
8-10th grades of Moscow special artillery schools. The guns did not have sights, so it was decided to fire only direct fire, aiming them at the target through the barrel. For ease of firing the gun
dug into the ground up to the hubs of wooden wheels.

German tanks appeared suddenly. The gun crews fired the first shots from a distance of 500-600 m. German tank crews initially mistook shell explosions for the effects of anti-tank mines. Judging
Apparently, the "mines" were very powerful. If a 40-kilogram shell exploded near a tank, the tank would turn over on its side or stand on its butt. But it soon became clear that they were hitting
from cannons. A shell hit the tower tore it down and threw it tens of meters to the side. And if a 6-inch siege cannon shell hit the forehead of the hull, then it would go right through the tank, destroying everything.
your way.

The German tank crews were horrified - they did not expect this. Having lost a company, the tank battalion retreated. The German command considered the incident an accident and sent another battalion in a different direction,
where he also ran into an anti-tank ambush. The Germans decided that the Russians were using some new anti-tank weapon of unprecedented power. The enemy offensive was probably stopped
to clarify the situation.
Ultimately, Rokossovsky’s army won on this section of the front for several days, during which reinforcements arrived and the front stabilized. On December 5, 1941, our troops moved to
counter-offensive and drove the Nazis to the West. It turns out that the Victory of 1945, at least to a small extent, was forged by Russian gunsmiths back in the 19th century.

Britain, 1940, a Hurricane made an emergency landing near Hull, 2 pilots got out. The farmer who watched the landing gave them tea and then called the nearby airfield.
They sent a car from there.
The pilots spoke impeccable English, but suspicions arose that they were deserters from the British Air Force. The Air Force leadership decided to put these people on trial, but the pilots said that
they are... German prisoners of war from the camp in Karline. However, the camp leadership reported that all the prisoners were in place.
The Air Force command was determined to prove at all costs that they were deserters and did a great job of searching throughout the country for the unit from which they escaped.
Only on the eve of the trial, the camp commandant reported that an unscheduled inspection revealed the absence of 2 prisoners.
It turns out that 2 Luftwaffe pilots, dressed in work overalls, calmly walked out of the camp gates. Then they freely entered the airfield, climbed into the Hurricane, took off and headed for
Germany. However, when they reached the coast, they ran out of fuel.
The prisoners were returned to the camp, heavily laden with gifts from the English pilots, who were amused by the story.

Germany, Plan Gelb has already been developed, final preparations are underway before the offensive... Two officers of the Wehrmacht General Staff are tasked with delivering secret documents regarding the offensive,
in a group of troops located on the border with Belgium. The documents clearly show that Germany will attack France, in short, the Gelb plan in a condensed form.
Well, these officers got on the train and went to the border. We drank and ate. Of course, the Russians drank not like ours - a little schnapps, a little Bavarian sausages. They are going. Here at one of the stations they
they meet either a classmate or an acquaintance, or, in short, a Luftwaffe officer. Well, they sat down, drank to the meeting, remembered their youth and the Luftwaffe officer told them that there would soon be a station there
My unit is located, let's go out, sit, celebrate the meeting, and then I will take you to the train, which leaves in 2-3 hours. The officers agreed. We went out, arrived at the unit’s location, sat down, drank, and had a snack.
It’s already good for them - in a word, they missed the train. They began to tear out their hair, and the Luftwaffe officer told them: calm down, get on the plane right now, we’ll be there in no time. His rank was either major or colonel.
They boarded the plane, as I understood, something like our U-2, that means they were flying. It seemed like they arrived on time, began to descend, the lights of the airfield were already visible - they landed shortly. They come out (they shout “Heil Hitler” (joke), they see
Soldiers are walking towards him; if you look closely, they are Belgians. Well, they’re panicking, they say they’ll figure it all out right now, they’ll look at the documents and there won’t be a war.
The Belgians came up, well, they checked the documents, all that - the Germans - they say they got lost, forgive me, let me go. The Belgians took them to the checkpoint, sit and wait - right now, they say, we’ll find out what to do. They asked for command, and
then he tells them, let them go, fortunately it’s not far from the border, we don’t need complications with Germany and so on and on. While the car was being called, while this and that, the officers at the checkpoint decided to burn secret documents - only in
They put the stove in (well, I won’t say that, as luck would have it, they didn’t have matches, and the gas in the lighter ran out) when the Belgians come in, tell them that’s it, you’ll go home right now, and they see that the Germans are burning something.
They took it away, revered it - oh, the insidious Hitler, he wanted to attack us. Documents to the General Staff, the Germans were also sent somewhere. They're sorting it out. Such documents came into my hands. Back and forth, the Germans were soon transferred
to their own, and those to the Gestapo. As soon as they found out what happened, everyone began to run, jump, what to do, the plans are known to the French. It came to the Fuhrer. “Our” officers, all three, are already in the Gestapo to the fifth generation
They split, they say, enemies and thousands and thousands. Herr Hitler apparently thought - redoing the plan would take time, resources, the moment of surprise of the attack would be gone, redeploying the troops would also break and called Canaris,
They say we need to make sure that the French think that we have slipped them some misinformation, and we will attack according to the old plan. So they decided. “Our” officers from the Gestapo to a hotel, awards for them, promotion in ranks,
in the newspapers, they say how we deceived everyone, and on and on.
The French and the allies, meanwhile, read the documents and thought that intelligence had also reported that the officers were really up for awards, the troops were standing on the border just as it was written in the plan - this is not good,
Hitler is clearly cheating. We thought some more and decided that this misinformation was full of water.
And a couple of days later, the Fritz, without redeployment, as written in the Gelb plan, attacked and defeated everyone. As German intelligence later said, the Allies did nothing to prepare for the attack,
relocated, not this, not that.
The entire disinformation operation took the Germans about a week, and then all the officers were sent to the Eastern Front. Awards and titles were retained.

History of the First World War, not a story.
In the Mediterranean Sea, one of the German submarines delivered a cargo of rifles and other weapons to some of the Arab tribes in North Africa, who shitted the Italians. In response, the grateful leader of the tribe gave
to the Germans it seems like a white camel. In order not to spoil relations with the allies, the Germans accepted the gift. Since the animal clearly did not pass through the submarine’s hatch, they tied it to the periscope and determined what the
depth when diving, but so that the camel’s head still sticks out above the water. We went back to our base in the Adriatic and were able to deliver the gift. And dive into it several times
had to. One day this happened near some fishing schooners. You can imagine how the fishermen felt when the head of a madly screaming camel swam near them!

1944. Western Ukraine. The T-34 got stuck in a ravine. Naturally, he couldn’t get out. At night, the Germans, estimating that the crew had left, drove up the T-4 and hooked the “thirty-four” with a cable. After a series of selective
German curse words, they pulled out the tank. And he took it and went to his trenches. The Germans, frightened, backed up, and the T-34 contemptuously sneezed its engine, strained and pulled them along. Mortars began to fire in tandem, but to no avail. The Panzer commander tried to climb out through the top hatch, but received a shrapnel in the head and calmed down, spreading his brains.
As a result, ours returned on their own, dragging 4 prisoners and a trophy on a rope.

It is known that the German command, just before the start of the offensive against the USSR, sent various kinds of saboteurs into the territory of the Soviet Union - and especially in the uniform of Red Army officers.
When hostilities began in the very first weeks of the war, many saboteurs were discovered and eliminated. The reason for this was documents. No, with seals, signatures and paper - everything was in
ok, but... the metal clips with which the military IDs were stitched were made of stainless metal (while the Soviet originals were covered with
rust). This is how the German quality of its agents ruined it.

In the glorious city of Elektrostal, Moscow region. ( former station Calm during the Second World War), at the metallurgical plant of the same name named after People's Commissar E. Tevosyan, one grandfather, a hereditary metallurgist, worked in his time
in the Nth generation, Honored Order Bearer, Honorary Citizen, etc. and so on. In general, a person with whom not only the director of the plant, but even the secretary of the city party committee was always the first to greet, for a long time
asked about life...
In general, this grandfather knew, as usual, a lot of different entertaining stories, one of which was just about the Germans, our ShKAS and about whether it’s easy to tear something from another.
Grandfather said that the Germans simply loved our ShKAS aircraft machine gun Uddet (their People's Commissar military industry), so he generally just went into hysterics and drank miserably
schnapps and only because it was impossible to tear up this ShKAS at German factories.
Allegedly, the meticulous German will take everything into account, and select the necessary German analogues of the steel grade at the Thyssen and Krupp factories, repeat everything micron to micron, but the machine gun just doesn’t work. It seems like everything is all over again
It’s going fine, the German twin, as expected, shows a terrible rate of fire, and then suddenly it cracks and breaks. First one thing, then another.
Meanwhile, the Russian ShKASik keeps shooting and shooting and doesn’t care, he doesn’t even think about breaking down.

In general, the grandfather told everyone present a terrible secret (which the whole of Elektrostal probably already knew) that it turns out that some springs on the Russian ShKAS were made in a very intricate way. And material
for these springs, a spring tape with wire, just like they did in Zatishye.

The secret was (approximately)
First, several special types of spring steel were welded. Usually this smelting was entrusted to one single team at the plant, which was best able to do it; the metallurgists even took into account
certain weather conditions outside (temperature, humidity, cloudiness), specifically opening the roof of the workshop wide open. Maybe the priests even baptized each of these melts, my grandfather no longer remembered exactly
But, like, it wasn’t that simple from the very beginning.
Then the resulting castings were forged, as usual, and after a long cycle of hot drawing through dies, thin wires were gradually obtained from them.

Next, factory craftswomen (only women were allowed to do this work) used special equipment to weave braids out of wire. Each pigtail, depending on the future purpose of the spring,
had its own special weaving pattern: wires of different types of steel were woven into it in a certain order, the number and diameter of the wires in the “braid” was also different from time to time.
Then these braids were woven together into even larger braids, those into even larger ones, etc. until we received such a “wattle fence” as thick as an arm. Next, this wattle fence was heated in an oven until it became plastic and
they were forged in the forge shop until they formed a single dense piece, forming either a strip or a rod. And only then, from the resulting workpiece, either a tape was rolled for tape springs, or a wire was pulled,
for wire ones, respectively.

The steel was already sent in this form to our arms factories, where ordinary-looking, unremarkable springs were made from it.
And the poor Germans, meanwhile, are simply exhausted because they just didn’t give, but everything is breaking down for them. It seems that the chemical composition is the same, and the X-ray and microscopic analysis of the domains are the same, and
hardness after hardening and the spring is also calibrated after capping in exactly the same way. But no, the machine gun fires a little and the German steel breaks, what are you going to do!

The secret was clear. Roughly speaking, in the memory of the metal of the spring, when it was still the original braid made of different wires. Of course, the equipment of that time had such a small variety of metal structures
I couldn’t figure out why the Germans screwed up with a copy of ShKAS.
That was the story.

Quite recently, I read in the magazine World of Arms that it turns out that in the 20s it was the Russians who held the palm in the use of “braided” springs in automatic weapons. Then they pulled themselves up
Pendos and Germans in the late 30s.

During the Great Patriotic War there were cases of Russian psychic attacks. This is how eyewitnesses tell about it: “The regiment rose to its full height. An accordion player walked from one flank, playing either the Vologda picks “Under the Fight”, or the Tver “Buza”. Another accordion player walked from the other flank, playing the Ural “Mommy”. Young, beautiful orderlies walked to the center, waving their handkerchiefs, and the entire regiment uttered the traditional mooing or grunting, which dancers usually emit when things are heading towards a fight, to intimidate the enemy. After such a psychic attack, the Germans could be taken in the trenches with bare hands, they were on the verge of mental insanity.

Story 1.
My grandfather fought from the first days of the war and ended it near Keninsberg.
The story that happened to my grandfather happened after another injury. Having received another bullet in the leg during the battle, my grandfather ended up in the hospital. Despite the level of medicine at that time, but thanks to the professionalism of military doctors (for which the Russian Army has always been famous), the wound healed successfully, and my grandfather was getting ready to go back to the front. And then one evening, after lights out, he felt severe pain in his lower abdomen. Got out of bed and went to the doctor. And the doctor was an old Russian grandfather who had been a doctor, probably, back in the First World War. The grandfather complained to him of pain and asked for some pill. The doctor felt his stomach, went into his closet and took out a large bottle of alcohol. I took two glasses and filled them to the brim. “Drink,” said the doctor. Grandfather drank. The doctor waved another glass himself! “Lie down,” the doctor commanded. Grandfather lay down on the table. From such an amount of alcohol, drunk on an empty stomach (war!), the grandfather immediately passed out... He woke up in the ward. No appendix. But with a headache... These are the people who defeated fascism!

Story 2.
My grandfather had a friend Misha, a terrible goofball, but at the same time an artillery lieutenant.
This friend commanded a multiple rocket launcher (as it is now called) called "Katyusha". It was good, or bad command, but the machine ran and made a lot of noise.
It was the summer of 1942. A Katyusha battalion was redeployed near Stalingrad; one of the cars simply stalled along the way (the auto industry is the auto industry, either in 1942 or 2010). We dug around and repaired it as best we could using improvised means. They rolled it up, of course, for a successful repair. Well, let's go catch up with ours. By Russian authenticity maps, naturally, got lost...
The steppe, the road to an unknown destination, and then suddenly they see a column of dust in the steppe. They are slowing down. Binoculars to your eyes - a German tank column. Rushing like at home - brazenly, like at a parade, above the tower hatches are the sleek faces of the Krauts.
Uncle Misha, either out of fear or out of impudence after drinking alcohol, turns the car with its front wheels into a ditch (Katyusha is a terrible weapon, but the aiming ability is almost zero, and it only hits squares with a canopy) and fires a salvo with almost direct fire. The first rows were set on fire - the devil was in a panic. Such a mess - 8 tanks are about to be scrapped..
Well, “Katyusha”, on the quiet - “legs, my legs”... They gave Uncle Misha a Hero (the crew - Slava), but they only took him away immediately for being 20 minutes late from vacation to the train (immediately after the award - okay, they didn’t put him in the penalty box ). The special officer turned out to be a bastard; the train remained in Moscow for another day. It looks like a fairy tale, but General Paulus stopped the offensive for a day. These days, German intelligence frantically searched for the positions of our troops. Well, they couldn’t believe in the one and only “Katyusha” that shot out of a drunken fright...

Story 3.
One day alone Soviet part on the march she went too far ahead, and the field kitchen was left somewhere behind. The unit commander sends two Kyrgyz soldiers to find her; they don’t speak Russian, it’s of little use in battle, in short, bring it. They left, and there was no news from them for two days. Finally, they come with backpacks filled with German sweets, schnapps, etc. One of them has a note. It is written (in Russian): “Comrade Stalin! For us they are not languages, and for you they are not soldiers. Send them home.”

History 4.
In August 1941, in the Daugavpils area, Ivan Sereda was preparing lunch for the Red Army soldiers. At this time he saw a German tank moving towards field kitchen. Armed only with a carbine and an ax, Ivan Sereda took cover behind her, and the tank, driving up to the kitchen, stopped and the crew began to get out of it. At that moment, Ivan Sereda jumped out from behind the kitchen and rushed to the tank. The crew immediately took refuge in the tank, and Ivan Sereda jumped onto the armor. When the tankers opened fire with a machine gun, Ivan Sereda bent the barrel of the machine gun with blows of an ax, and then covered the tank’s viewing slots with a piece of tarpaulin. Next, he began to hit the armor with the butt of the ax, while giving orders to the Red Army soldiers, who were not nearby, to throw grenades at the tank. The tank crew surrendered, and Ivan Sereda forced them to tie each other's hands at gunpoint. When the Red Army soldiers arrived, they saw a tank and a tied-up crew.

History 5.
My grandfather served in aviation. At the field airfield, in the distance, there was a toilet... Sitting there, that means my grandfather, doing his business... It was getting dark. There were knots knocked out of the boards in the wall of the toilet. So my grandfather noticed three German intelligence officers coming out of the forest. Well, when they approached, he shot them down with a pistol. Received the Order of the Red Star.
The dudes clearly did not expect that fire would be opened on them from the toilet...

History 6.

Memories of one of the veterans

At the beginning of December of the same 1942, we stood on the defensive in the Round Grove area. Soon I had the opportunity to meet the foreman again. It was like that. He comes up to me and says:
- As directed by the platoon commander, assign me three soldiers. We need to bring a hot lunch and vodka from the field kitchen. She is two kilometers from our front line, in the forest.
I carried out the order. The sergeant major and three soldiers took the empty canisters and went to the company kitchen. To get to it, they had to go through the forest, then pass through a small clearing in which there was not a single tree, and then go back into the forest, where there was a kitchen.
The unexpected happened (although can this be called unexpected in a war?). When leaving the forest, one of the fighters was killed. Fortunately for the survivors, this happened when leaving the forest into a clearing.
The fact is that tanks had previously passed through this clearing and made a deep rut. One soldier lay down in it, and the sergeant major and the other soldier quickly returned to the forest and disguised themselves.
The one lying in the rut was relatively safe. He tried to slowly crawl across the clearing, but heard the whistle of bullets next to him. However, the soldier was not at a loss.
He quietly took the stick, took off his helmet, put it on the stick and raised it above him. Continuing to move in this position, I heard that shooting was coming at the helmet. How long did it last more than an hour. Finally the shooting ended. From fatigue and tension, the fighter dozed off right in the rut...
The sergeant major and the soldier, who were in the forest, realized that the German “cuckoo” sniper, who was firing and hiding in a tree, had run out of ammunition. They began to slowly approach this very tree. Approaching the pine tree, they saw a “cuckoo”.
The foreman shouted: “Hyunda hoch!” - and began to aim at the German with a machine gun. There was a rustling sound. A rifle flew from above optical sight. Then the shooter himself came down.
The foreman and the soldier searched him, took away his weapon, lighter and smoking pipe. The German was sorry to part with the pipe. Muttering incomprehensible words, he began to cry. The pipe was really great. It depicted a dog's head with glass eyes. When the smoker inhaled the smoke, the dog's eyes began to glow.
Making sure that former sniper disarmed, the foreman pointed his finger at him - they say, go to where you shot, there the Russian Ivan is lying in a tank rut, bring him to us.
The German understood and approached the sleeping soldier.
“Rus Ivan, com,” said the fascist. The fighter woke up and saw a German in front of him. The sergeant major and the second soldier, having watched what was happening, burst out laughing. The same two were not laughing. The foreman patted the shoulder of the man lying in the tank rut and said:
- Instead of a hundred grams, you will get half a liter and a can of American stew. This is how this tragic and at the same time funny story ended.
Unfortunately, due to the passage of time, I have forgotten the names of the characters involved. Not a single meeting of fellow soldiers of the 80th Guards Lyuban Order of Kutuzov Rifle Division took place without memories of this curious incident.”