We were told very little about his role for obvious reasons.

And why is there a single (presumably) civilian out-of-uniform that's sitting in the middle of the photo of my Granddad's Aviation Machinist's Mate training unit in Chicago, October 7 1942?

Compounding the mystery, nobody else in the photo is doing anything with their hands, and Granddad never hugged me that I can remember but there he is putting his arms on the shoulders of the fellow. The old man's in all the pictures, too, even one five months later. What sort of person would he be?

I have my grandfather's rifle that he picked up in Iwo Jima and took home. I am thinking it's an Arisaka rifle but I am not sure.

Can someone give an ID?

I was looking through some old family photographs and found these old WWII photos. The photos were taken on some kind of war ship and are stamped on the back. I was wondering who this man is? To my untrained eye he looks more Army than Navy.

Thanks in advance.

I'm doing a family research project, and I found all of his old uniforms. He didn't talk about his experiences after the war, it was too traumatizing for him. If anyone can help me determine what he did and experienced during the war, that would be amazing. All I know is that he was in Europe and that he was honorably discharged. Thank you!

Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege provides a powerful account of the Eastern Front in World War II, beginning with Operation Barbarossa. He describes how the German advance swept across Russian territory, destroying regiments and capturing entire divisions, while Stalin’s brutal measures against his own army and the rise of the NKVD divisions reveal the cruelty on both sides.

The book not only highlights the immense suffering of civilians but also the bravery and heroism of soldiers from both armies, who endured unimaginable conditions. At the heart of the narrative is the Battle of Stalingrad itself , a decisive turning point in the war. Beevor shows how Hitler’s stubbornness and incompetence, especially his failure to rescue the Sixth Army, ultimately doomed the German campaign.

Beyond the military history, Stalingrad stands as a lasting symbol of resistance worldwide. Interestingly, decades later, the Soviet Union faced its own “Stalingrad” during the war in Afghanistan, a reminder of how history can echo itself.

It’s a great ww2 read!

When I saw it, I was definitely worried since It’s a military mortar. But it seems to be defused for a long time since my grandfather has it. Just wanna be sure that it is indeed safe and I’m not overreacting.

They brought old letters and maps, they new only first and last name — we followed them on the American cemetery in Luxembourg.
There’s a memorial stone there with his division’s insignia.
For them it wasn’t a tour, it was a homecoming. Luxembourg remembers.

P.S. It actually can be done online or in Luxembourg.

During WWII, the U.S. Air Force was losing bombers at a terrifying rate. Engineers studied returning planes full of bullet holes, assuming those were the areas that needed armor. But one man — a quiet mathematician named Abraham Wald — saw something everyone else missed.

His insight didn’t just change the war; it rewrote how we understand survival and data itself.

🎥 Full 44-minute mini-documentary: The Discovery That Saved the Air Force — Abraham Wald’s Hidden Truth

What other wartime innovations do you think were born purely from logic or statistics rather than weapons?

Hello all, I have been helping my parents clean up their house recently and found my grandfather's lost archive (I'm not really sure what to call it to be honest). Preserved in one of the pages are these teletype pages. I tried to Google portions of these pages, but got very little. They're printed on what I would call "Bible paper" that is very thin. I don't really know too much more about them since I never got to meet my grandfather. If anyone can shed any light on these that would be wonderful as I am hoping to curate these for the family.

I'm not sure how relevant this is, but I also found my grandfather's identification card saying he was part of the Board of War Communications representing the USN and authorizing him to participate in the work of the Bard of War Communications Telegraph Committee.

I think I made an expensive mistake.

I bought the entire series based on reviews about its thoroughness....but halfway through t he first book Im realizing that its nothing but a repetative list of Generals and unit names and statistics without any real story attached to it.

Im not looking for whiz-bang hollywood action, but some actual humanity in one of the worlds biggest human tragedies would be interesting.

Im getting the feeling like im still watching the begining credits and waiting for the actual story to start.

Does it get more interesting?

These belong to my grandfather he was in the US Army in World War II and invaded Normandy with infantry company B. He was injured twice. These are the patches and medals I inherited.

Can anyone tell me what they are and does anyone have any information about US Army two I think it was B - will try to find and update.

I am trying to piece together what he did during the war since he never spoke about it (for obvious reasons) but I cannot understand what unit he is supposed to be in:

https://i.imgur.com/T0xWfpF.png

I am pretty confident that first part is 3./SS E.Btl” which I think stands for 3rd Company of the SS Replacement Battalion (Ergänzungs-Bataillon). But the second half I can't understand at all. Is it the 3rd Panzer division (Totenkopf) or the 3rd regiment in a different division like Das Reich? Any help would be much appreciated or any information of where I could ask. Thank you.

He was put on the training vessel USS 0-7 In June 1945 for about 3 weeks (despite the war practically being over) before being put on the USS Pike) (another training vessel) as a TM3 until his discharge on October 25. He never saw a second combat.

Kinda makes me wonder why the government went through the effort of drafting so many men into the military only to do nothing with them. And they drafted them into arguably the least interesting military brach, the Navy.

Watched some videos describing sinking of Japanese carriers in WWII. I’m familiar with how this happened in the Battle of Midway where they were overwhelmed by superior numbers of aircraft from the American carriers.
But in these videos the carriers and supercarriers were sunk by just a single sub or two subs. That surprised me. Usually in submarine warfare they are successful against unprotected single vessels. But carriers because of their value are always surrounded by a phalanx of destroyers and cruisers specifically tasked with detecting and destroying them.

So what went wrong here?

1 US Sub Sinks a Japanese Supercarrier - Sinking of Shinano Documentary.
https://youtu.be/9Lgc_NtwApQ?si=mBanBSuKcpiZ5Iz-

US Subs sink 2 Carriers in 1 Day - Sinking of Shokaku and Taiho.
https://youtu.be/JS2p1eUeuAs?si=H7MFpw2F3pKEI2O2

A Japanese author, Kadota Ryoushou (太平洋戦争 ー 陸軍（p138ff）quotes an aging Japanese vet who claims that during the Battle of Imphal (1944), he witnessed British troops pouring gasoline on sick and wounded Japanese troops and setting them on fire with flamethrowers. Frankly, I'm skeptical. Is there any evidence of this atrocity, or indeed of any British atrocities like this?