WWII photos

[Broncojohnny]

no shit? that's amazing

My grandfather on my mom's side actually missed the war and signed up right as it was ending. He ended up being part of the occupying force of mainland Japan. Anyway, one of his favorite stories he used to tell me was that in boot camp they had target practice where a .50 cal (or maybe it was .30?) was mounted on a half track and they would have a plane fly over, towing a target, his squad was in the half track and would shoot at the target. Naturally, him and his buddies would get smart ideas and shoot up the ass end of the plane and fuck around while doing this. He told me that one time they got the bright idea to take apart all the ammo boxes, roll out the belts and take all the tracer rounds out. I believe he said every fifth round was tracer. They took all these tracer rounds and loaded them all up onto one single belt and used it to fire at this target. Not only did the gun look like a laser while doing this, he said the barrel of the gun got so hot that you could see the rounds going through it and after a short while it melted and drooped.

[talisman]

My grandfather on my mom's side actually missed the war and signed up right as it was ending. He ended up being part of the occupying force of mainland Japan. Anyway, one of his favorite stories he used to tell me was that in boot camp they had target practice where a .50 cal (or maybe it was .30?) was mounted on a half track and they would have a plane fly over, towing a target, his squad was in the half track and would shoot at the target. Naturally, him and his buddies would get smart ideas and shoot up the ass end of the plane and fuck around while doing this. He told me that one time they got the bright idea to take apart all the ammo boxes, roll out the belts and take all the tracer rounds out. I believe he said every fifth round was tracer. They took all these tracer rounds and loaded them all up onto one single belt and used it to fire at this target. Not only did the gun look like a laser while doing this, he said the barrel of the gun got so hot that you could see the rounds going through it and after a short while it melted and drooped.

Fucking awesome.

[HarrisonTX]

What is this picture?

HEAVY HEAVY Anti-Aircraft work. Those are tracer rounds, and the shutter is opened for an extended period of time. When the fields of fire are inter-locked like that, nothing can get through (in theory).

The picture is a bit misleading due to the fact that not that many rounds were in the air at once, but it is still bad ass.

[propellerhead]

Picture 10: Isn't the USS Lexington parker here in Texas?

[David]

Picture 10: Isn't the USS Lexington parker here in Texas?

Lexington CV16 is in Corpus. CV2 in picture 10 is sunk.

[Darren M]

Google Earth Nagasaki and Hiroshima.... They look as if nothing ever happened there. Well, from space anyway.

[68RR]

[QUOTE=helosailor;93376]There are some awesome pictures there.
This I thought was especially good...

That's the Nov 2, 1943 attack on Rabaul and Simpson Harbor. My dad's outfit, the 3rd Attack Grp., was one of the Groups flew it. Here's some of photo's the guys have shared with me over the years..

Bill

[jw33]

My grandfather on my mom's side actually missed the war and signed up right as it was ending. He ended up being part of the occupying force of mainland Japan. Anyway, one of his favorite stories he used to tell me was that in boot camp they had target practice where a .50 cal (or maybe it was .30?) was mounted on a half track and they would have a plane fly over, towing a target, his squad was in the half track and would shoot at the target. Naturally, him and his buddies would get smart ideas and shoot up the ass end of the plane and fuck around while doing this. He told me that one time they got the bright idea to take apart all the ammo boxes, roll out the belts and take all the tracer rounds out. I believe he said every fifth round was tracer. They took all these tracer rounds and loaded them all up onto one single belt and used it to fire at this target. Not only did the gun look like a laser while doing this, he said the barrel of the gun got so hot that you could see the rounds going through it and after a short while it melted and drooped.

Similair story. During the work up for a six month deployment we used to go to Fort AP Hill for a two week field exercise. It was pretty much all bullshit, but one afternoon our company was scheduled to do a live fire at dawn and then at night fire on the same range. It wasn't any big shit, just plain old M-16 stuff. The thing was that this was an Army range and quite a bit different than the USMC ones back at Camp Lejeune. The longest target was probably 200m, it was all automated pop up targets, and you fire from a comfy fighting hole with sandbag rest. No one was keeping score and they were handing out ammo like candy. So I'd say there were maybe 50-60 of us on the firing line at once with about three full rotations to shoot one after the other. As the daytime firing got under way everything was going "great". Then there was a huge group (everyone) who started piling up the tracer ammo and loading them into magazines that ended up being 2-3 full magazines per person that were all tracers. As it got dark they shut the range down and had a quick class on what to shoot at and where not to shoot when dark. Don't shoot past here and don't shoot over the berm. Yeah right, whatever.... They wanted every dick-skinner on the firing line at once for the night fire and they poped a few flares. At first when they said go folks were shooting down range like normal and then some idiot blasted off up at the flare. That's all it took. 99% of the people opened up buck wild on the flares on three round burst with tracers. It looked like Baghdad in 1991. Who knows where all that shit landed, but it was pretty damn funny.

[SS Junk]

If I were to ever be able to go back in time, this would be the place.

[helosailor]

That's the Nov 2, 1943 attack on Rabaul and Simpson Harbor. My dad's outfit, the 3rd Attack Grp., was one of the Groups flew it. Here's some of photo's the guys have shared with me over the years..

Bill

Man, those are incredible! Thanks so much for sharing, and thanks to your Dad for his service.

[Gargamel]

AWESOME, AWESOME PICS.... Great Thread....

[Broncojohnny]

Picture 10: Isn't the USS Lexington parker here in Texas?

The original didn't survive those photos, the replacement is now a museum in Corpus.

[Broncojohnny]

If I were to ever be able to go back in time, this would be the place.

If you go to Pearl Harbor you can stand on the deck of the Missouri where they signed, it has a plaque in the deck, it is pretty amazing.

[GhostTX]

LIFE Magazine

Rare color photos from LIFE:

More in the link

http://life.time.com/history/d-day-rare-color-photos/#1

[bpawl]

awesome pics, thanks