163 obscure facts from the depths of WWII history. Even Mike might not know these.
Born in Moscow to an Indian Muslim father and a European-American mother, Noor Inayat Khan was a pacifist writer of children's stories rooted in Indian spiritual traditions before volunteering for the SOE's Special Operations Executive. She was the f…
British intelligence obtained the body of a homeless Welshman named Glyndwr Michael, dressed him as a Royal Marines officer 'Major William Martin,' and planted fake documents suggesting an Allied invasion of Greece instead of Sicily. They even create…
Brigadier Orde Wingate's Chindits — officially the Long Range Penetration Groups — were formed to operate deep behind Japanese lines in Burma. In March 1943, 3,000 men crossed the Chindwin River and operated for three months behind Japanese lines, de…
British woman Pearl Witherington was rejected three times by SOE before being sent to France undercover as a lingerie saleswoman. When her commanding officer was arrested, she took command of 3,000 Maquis fighters. Under her leadership they derailed …
British woman Pearl Witherington was rejected by the SOE three times for field work before finally being sent to France in 1943. Working undercover as a lingerie saleswoman, she built one of the most effective sabotage networks in Occupied France. Wh…
British inventor Geoffrey Pyke proposed building an aircraft carrier from 'Pykrete' — a mixture of 86% sawdust and 14% water frozen together. Pykrete was as strong as concrete but would float. The ship, called Habakkuk, would have been 2,000 feet lon…
On October 14, 1943, Jewish prisoners at Sobibor escaped after killing 11 SS men with axes and knives. Approximately 300 escaped through minefields, only about 50 survived. The Nazis demolished Sobibor, built a farm over it, and planted trees attempt…
Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, a Jewish refugee from Lvov (his entire family in Poland was murdered in the Holocaust), was recruited to the Manhattan Project to work on the implosion lens calculations for the atomic bomb. He developed the Monte…
German Luftwaffe pilot Leutnant Franz Stigler spotted a badly damaged American B-17 bomber named 'Ye Olde Pub,' piloted by 2nd Lt. Charles 'Charlie' Brown, limping across the North Sea on the way back from a bombing raid over Bremen. The B-17 had los…
Klaus Fuchs, a German-born British physicist, passed atomic secrets to the Soviets from inside the Manhattan Project for five years. He provided detailed descriptions of the implosion mechanism, the plutonium core, and the Trinity test results. His i…
Attu Island, in Alaska's Aleutian Islands chain, was the only part of U.S. territory to be occupied by Japanese forces during WWII — the Japanese captured it (along with Kiska Island) in June 1942, just days after the Battle of Midway. The U.S. launc…
At Camp Manners Creek in Australia, the U.S. Army's 682nd Amphibian Tank Battalion became so homesick that their commanding officer organized an elaborate 'invasion' of their own camp as a morale exercise, complete with amphibious tanks, fake radio b…