OT: War in the Pacific pictures

[MrMurphy]

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/20 ... #more-1547

Well worth a look.

[RIHMFIRE]

Americas Finest!

[win92]

nothing but admiration for the guys who served I gotta think that the Pacific was an awful meat grinder though?

[GonnePhishin]

Excellent photos, most of which I've never seen before. Thanks for the posting.
Question:
Does anyone know what kind of light tank is in pic#22- Is it a General Lee, light tank or General Stewart?
Also Picture #27 is a classic pose of the American soldier in WW2-Outstanding.

[new pig hunter]

take a look at Picture 2, Pearl Harbor ..... left center, the 3 waterspouts.

I watched a recent "Nova" show that postulated those waterspouts are from one of the Jap mini-subs.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/07 ... -2009dec07
http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-053.htm
http://techland.time.com/2010/01/04/pea ... e-arizona/

Cheers,

Carl

[Ysabel Kid]

Excellent!

[MrMurphy]

Should be one of the little M3's.

The two Thompson pics with the drums are unusual, but they're early war shots. They standardized on the stick mags since they're easier to carry a lot of, don't rattle when you move and don't take any brains to load and don't need winding.

Oddly enough the PPSh-41, which was normally issued with 71 round drums, went to sticks later on for the same reason. They originally issued a guy 2-3 drums, later, they'd issue 1 drum, maybe two and a couple sticks.

[gak]

Great pics - thanks! Although I wasn't around then, in a sense they "take me back." The ones of the B-29s have a special poignancy to me as my dad was a 29 pilot. With his flying stories later, I feel like I know these planes personally! He fortunately never saw combat, but as a 29 (and earlier in the war 17, 24, 25 etc) instructor pilot stateside was on his way to Guam literally as the war ended. They (had) needed more combat pilots in the PT0 as reinforcements and as the press was on to prepare for the planned invasion of Japan. (Ironically, we were later stationed just a ninety minute drive from Nagasaki) He continued on to Guam anyway along with with other pilots--with a slightly revised mission: to fly the then-abandoned 29s home. He and the very sparse crews they were given had to fix many of the planes, even rebuilding some of their own engines to make them last the long flight home, and had to scrounge the island dump for a lot of the critical parts--some of them getting pot-shot at by remnant Japanese troops on the island. One of the cracked up planes depicted here could have been him,... but thankfully for him, our family and especially me - wasn't!
(Btw, my Inland M1 carbine is from that dump--found NIB and brought back behind his pilot seat!).

[olyinaz]

Just FYI: There is a "War in the Pacific" app for the Apple iPad as well. It's actually an interactive book, but you can buy it from the app store.

Oly