I write the article a week in advance, and last week it all went wrong. At some point previously I'd found a link to a website that gave some details of the last days of the War in a small village in Germany called Werden. Which was located on the edge of Essen.
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| A pair of semi-complete Maus at the Krupp works in Essen, one is wearing a Tiger turret as a hat. |
From the information available it seemed like an interesting story. I spent some six hours trying to find out more, even then I had to admit defeat. It was not helped that Werden is apparently also the German word for "Will" and a few Wehrmacht units have that in their motto.
I could not even confirm which US unit captured Werden as two sources give differing units, which leads us to the unpleasant idea that there's actually two Werden's in Germany.
The original website can be found here, but google translate makes a hash of it.
Thus with no article, and no time I was left with a bit of a problem for this week. Luckily, I have in my links folder an interesting
PDF book on the introduction of the helicopter into the US Navy in the middle of World War Two. Which is a rather interesting read, so I'll have to leave you with that. I was rather surprised to find out that both the US and Royal Navy operated helicopter carriers during the war. with he idea of carrying a single depth charge which they could punt in the direct of any spotted U-boats.
Next week we've got a proper story of tall sailing ships, boarding parties and sailors wearing women's dresses!
Image credits:
tanks-encyclopedia.com,
cgaviationhistory.org and
vertipedia-legacy.vtol.org
