Some years ago I wrote on ARM Netzahualcoyotl, the last WWII Gearing class in service worldwide. Mexico also was the very last user of the WWII Fletcher class, however unlike Mexico’s FRAM-modernized Gearing, in 2001 ARM Cuitláhuac remained “frozen in time” to a WWII technology level. (USS John Rodgers (DD-574) during WWII.) (ARM Cuitláhuac, the former USS John Rodgers, in 2000. It was the last Fletcher still in service anywhere in the world.) the Fletcher class These were the US Navy’s workhorse of WWII. When the design was finalized in 1939 it was the largest and best-equipped destroyer i ..read more

Air America, the now-famous “front company” airline of the CIA, flew WWII aircraft alongside modern types during the Vietnam War. By now Air America has already been thoroughly written on elsewhere. Less well-known is a similar setup in the same timeframe, also using WWII aircraft: Continental Air Services Incorporated. (C-46 Commando during WWII.) (C-46 Commando of CASI at Long Tieng, Laos during 1975.) the C-46 Commando During WWII the USA’s most famous transport was the C-47 Skytrain, the military adaptation of the Douglas DC-3 which remains perhaps the best era-adjusted airliner of all t ..read more

For Stalingrad, covered in part 1, Josef Stalin had an idea (however wrong) but no ship. Meanwhile in the United States after WWII, the US Navy had an incomplete ship, USS Hawaii, but was looking for ideas on how to finish it. (USS Guam during WWII.) (photo via All Hands, the US Navy’s magazine) (End of the road for USS Hawaii on 20 June 1959 as it is towed to the scrapyard.) the Alaska class the battlecruiser in the US Navy The US Navy had interest in the then-new battlecruiser concept outlined in part 1. As part of the 1916 naval funding, six Lexington class battlecruisers were authorized ..read more

I have not done a 2-part series for a while and these are two ships I have been wanting to write about for some time. USS Hawaii and Stalingrad were two warships of roughly the same type and of similar firepower, both born (directly or indirectly) out of WWII. Both were made at different times for totally different reasons, each had a unique life and in the end, neither was finished. (How it started: artist’s rendition of the Soviet battlecruiser Stalingrad.) (How it ended: the never-finished Stalingrad for use in weapons tests.) what was a battlecruiser The “battleship era” is generally boo ..read more

The Spanish CETME is a well-known Cold War assault rifle, and the West German G3 even more so. It is less known that both trace their lineage to a WWII German assault rifle which did not see combat. (The WWII German StG-45(M) assault rifle.) (photo via Forgotten Weapons website) (Spanish soldier during the 1950s with a CETME Modelo A, the StG-45(M)’s postwar “child” firing aluminum ammunition.) (The Heckler & Koch G3, a 7.62 NATO descendant of the two above firearms. This particular one was used in a shootout with Kenyan police in February 2022.) (photo via Nation newspaper) part 1: the ..read more

Heinkel’s He-274 high-altitude reconnaissance-bomber did not serve one single day in Luftwaffe colors during WWII, however after the war it was a useful addition to the rebuilding French air force. the He-274: what it wasn’t The He-274 was not part of the “Amerikabomber” project. Contrary to how it is often presented today the Amerikabomber; a strategic bomber with round-trip range between Europe and the USA; was never a high priority in WWII Germany. Ideas had been tossed around as early as the 1930s but officially, a basic project was not even finalized until April 1942. The idea waxed and ..read more

I would like to wish a Merry Christmas to all wwiiafterwwii readers. Below is the Rocket, the newspaper of Redstone Arsenal, AL from 23 December 1952 – 7 years after WWII and 71 years ago today. Santa Claus is on a JB-2 Loon. If the Loon looks like a WWII German V-1 buzz bomb, there is a good reason, because that is what a Loon was. the V-1 Germany’s WWII buzz bomb, the V-1, was officially the Fieseler Fi-103 and also referred to as FZG 76 (anti-aircraft training device #76, a security cover). The V-1 buzz bomb was basically an unmanned airplane powered by an Argus As-014 pulsejet. It was 27 ..read more

WWII was obviously a war of monoplanes. The conflict was fought by types like the Corsair, the Spitfire, the Hellcat, the Mustang, and so on; and ended with Me-262 jets already in combat. None the less all the major nations had biplanes in differing roles and some served in the USA’s military past the war. (A pre-WWII photo feature of the N3N-3 Canary trainer.) (N3N-3 Canary after WWII. The markings, 48-star flag flying, and the automobile styles in the parking lot would seem to date this between the end of the Korean War in 1953 and Alaskan statehood in 1959.) biplanes and WWII The United S ..read more

The USSR’s most-produced tank of WWII, and most successful during that war, was the T-34. After WWII many nations received this tank, one of the more obscure ones being Laos. (Soviet soldiers with a T-34 during WWII.) (Lao T-34 during the 2010s.) (Ex-Lao T-34s in the Russian Federation during 2020.) The path by which these T-34s came to Laos and then “returned” to Russia is quite winding and interesting. For starters, they didn’t really “return home”, at least not in the strictest sense of the words. They are all Czechoslovak post-WWII production, having first gone through Vietnam. Czechosl ..read more

I debated on this topic as perhaps it is too bland for general reading, but perhaps readers will be interested not only in WWII military technology but how decisions about it was made in later decades. (The launching of USS Dyess (DD-880) during WWII. A third of a century later, USS Dyess would be one of the Gearing class candidate ships for the study below.) There were many proposals to upgrade WWII warships. For every success like the GUPPY submarines, many more proposals never saw daylight. They were too expensive, or mechanically impossible, or just dumb ideas to begin with. Today they su ..read more