WWII Pics

[Kagath]

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/03/18/captured-blog-the-pacific-and-adjacent-theaters/

Found these on Shacknews. Some incredible stuff.

[Canuck]

Wow!  This one makes the defense of Baghdad look tame.

[CeeKay]

 

[deadzone]

Those pictures are just incredible and haunting. 

[Blackjack]

The aircraft carrier is the original USS Lexington. I seem to remember it having a very distinctive white paint design to its tower, in history books I read. This Ships blog has a little sumary of the ship:
http://warship-pics.blogspot.com/2009/01/uss-lexington-cv2-aircraft-carrier-pics.html

In 1943, a new carrier received the same name and a different ship number (CV16 I think). I remember reading how the ship managed to survive torpedo and bomb hits, but something ignited the blast presumably shown in that photo.

Some of the photos there I recognize, but in other places/books they're often severely cropped due to space limitations, so it's nice to see them full size.

The Alaskan theater photos are very interesting. It's a topic rarely ever covered much in history books, and while there weren't a huge # of casualties, there were some Medal of Honor winners and some interesting, albeit small, battles.

I got to visit the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Annex/Museum at Dulles again the other day and I never really get tired of taking photos of fighter planes and the like.

[rickfc]

Those pictures are just incredible and haunting. 

+10000.  Thanks for posting.  Incredible.

[Roguetad]

I have a ton of respect for anyone who has sacrificed or served, military and civilian, but there's something about our warriors from WW2 that leaves me in dumbstruck awe.  I served with a lot of really good people during my short 8 years in the Marines, but I remember to this day the few times I had the chance to speak with pacific campaign Marines from WW2.  

My boxing instructor during college was an Iwo Jima vet and retired Marine.  He spoke with us about his experience as a boot 2nd Lt landing on Iwo Jima.  What he talked about in a matter of fact manner left all of us in shock with our jaws on the floor for 60 minutes.  As a boxing coach, he used to grade us based on whether we drew blood or not.  If neither of us drew blood, we both got C's or lower for the match.  If either drew blood or were the leaker of blood, but fought well, you got a B.  Oh man, we've lost most of that generation now.  They're mostly memories and stories.  

I remember one retired Marine Colonel, a really humble and good man, talk about running through defensive lines with his 1st Sgt cracking heads with their shovels (entrenching tool - "e-tool").  For whatever reason, the bad guys didn't have helmets, so anyone without a helmet got an e-tool to the cranium.  He said they did that for a couple of hours...before finally clearing out the lines.  I never looked at my little folding shovel the same way again.

[deadzone]

Roguetad - I was thinking the same thing yesterday when looking at all of the photos but I couldn't come up with a good way to say it like you did. 

It just seems like war, while always horrible, was extra-horrible back in those days.  Maybe it's simply a different type of horrible because it was more hand's on with less tech than today.  I am in no way making light of what our Military faces today because I know it's just as terrible. 

Any type of war is never good.

 

   

[YellowKing]

It just seems like war, while always horrible, was extra-horrible back in those days.  Maybe it's simply a different type of horrible because it was more hand's on with less tech than today.  I am in no way making light of what our Military faces today because I know it's just as terrible.

I think modern warfare definitely has the capability to desensitize us to the seriousness of it all. After all, killing a target who looks like a little white blob from a predator drone *has* to be less traumatizing than cracking someone in the head with a shovel. On the other hand, the precision of modern warfare allows us to minimize civilian casualties in a way we just couldn't do in WWII so it's probably a fair trade-off.

[Turtle]

We also haven't had a real slugfest of an attrition fight, and our military does all it can to prevent that.  WW2, without a lot of the high tech targeting and battlefield support, was about sending men right into the maw to get the job done.

[Eel Snave]

Plus, WW2 captivates us here because it was really the only war that the States has fought that had a clear good guy and bad guy.  I mean, combine the fact that we were on the side of the good guys and all the amazing stuff that the soldiers did when fighting and it just strikes you in a certain way.

Those pictures are all incredible.