Picture of the day. (1 Viewer)

[michaelmaltby]

 

[Wurger]

 

[at6]

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How did a German helmet get into the picture?

 

[michaelmaltby]

Germans (General Faulkenhausen + staff) trained and equipped the Kuomintang in the '30s until Hitler arrived and the Axis was formed.
Alexander von Falkenhausen

 

[michaelmaltby]

 

[michaelmaltby]

Shinpachi wrote: ".... ROC announced that they had bombed the Shanghai International Settlement "mistakenly".
They did not mind the zone from the beginning IMO..."

Shanghai was 'opened' as a second front to relieve the Kuomintang army from the Japanese to the north where the fighting was open country and the IJA was prevailing everywhere. By selecting Shanghai as a battleground the Kuomintang was reckoning on the international reaction/outrage to witnessing urban warfare day-in-and-day out .... (imagine that there were 'spectators' living protected in Stalingrad in September, 1942 ... through to January, 43 ...)

The world saw what it wanted to see ... in Shanghai people just stepped around the bodies .. or their bearers did .... and the war dragged on. This was China, brutal as the Japanese were in Western eyes, the Japanese conducted themselves by the exact same rules/tactics that Chinese Generals had used in wars with their own, since the Han dynasty.

When the Emperor spoke on the radio, August 1945, and the Japanese forces put aside their arms, IJA comprised 1.25 million in China + 900,000 in Manchuria + 1.75 million civilians. (numbers edited).

That it ended thus is, in my mind, nothing short of miraculous.

My sources here "The Search For Modern China" JB Spence; "Shanghai: Stalingrad on the Yangtze"

 

[michaelmaltby]

 

[syscom3]

WASP pilot Celia Hunter in the cockpit of a P-47 Thunderbolt,

 

[michaelmaltby]

 

[michaelmaltby]

ija_5th_division-_landing_on_malayan_beach-2-_december_1941-jpg.616152

 

[syscom3]

B-17E 41-9122 "Eager Beavers" of the 11th Bomb Group, 42nd BS on Guadalcanal 1942. Hit by flak Bougainville near Shortland Harbor 1/2/43. 9 KIA. Missing Air Crew Report 46482. Pacific Wrecks

 

[Capt. Vick]

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ija_5th_division-_landing_on_malayan_beach-2-_december_1941-jpg.616152

Look! The camera man got there just before them.

 

[michaelmaltby]

... just doing his job as ordered

 

[michaelmaltby]

Indochina, 1940

 

[michaelmaltby]

 

[cammerjeff]

Nice picture, really shows how small an airframe the G3M has, it looks small compared to the Lockheed next to it. Also rare transport version of the G3M.

 

[syscom3]

Ground crew push an 80th Fighter Group P-40 into concealment, China-Burma-India theater

 

[syscom3]

The Hawker Monoplane F.36/34 interceptor prototype Hurricane, registration K5083 powered by a 1,025 h.p. Rolls-Royce Merlin "C" engine, driving a Watts two-blade fixed pitch wooden propeller designed by Sydney Camm and flown by test pilot Sammy Wroath in flight on 16 March 1936.

 

[michaelmaltby]

Shanghai residents flee to the International canton to escape the street fighting, 1937

 

[michaelmaltby]