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Hamas Slam Palestinian Official's Visit To Auschwitz

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Auschwitz

GAZA (Reuters) - The Hamas Islamist group in charge of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday denounced a Palestinian official's visit to the site of a Nazi death camp in Poland, and called the Holocaust in which 6 million European Jews perished an "alleged tragedy."

Ziad al-Bandak, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who governs in the occupied West Bank, had made a rare visit by a Palestinian official to the site of the Auschwitz death camp late last month.

"It was an unjustified and unhelpful visit that served only the Zionist occupation," said Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas. Hamas rejects Israel's existence and interim peace accords reached by Abbas' more moderate Fatah group with Israel.

Barhoum further called Bandak's visit to Auschwitz, a camp where the Nazis killed 1.5 million people, most of them Jews but also other Polish citizens, during World War Two, as "a marketing of a false Zionist alleged tragedy."

He said he saw this as coming "at the expense of a real Palestinian tragedy," alluding to Israel's control over territory where Palestinians live and seek to establish a state.

Israel was founded as a Jewish state in 1948, several years after the wartime genocide occurred.

Islamist extremists have taken to denying the Holocaust happened as part of a narrative rejecting Israel's existence, often at the encouragement of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called the genocide "a myth."

Israel and Iran have been locked in a dispute over an Iranian nuclear program the West fears is intended to produce atomic weapons. The West has imposed sanctions on Tehran to try and force it to rein in the project. Iran insists its atomic work is intended solely for peaceful purposes.

Iran is an ally of Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in 2007 from Abbas' Fatah group. Gaza, home to some 1.5 million Palestinians, many refugees or descendants of those who fled or were driven away when Israel was founded, is separate and isolated from the other Palestinian territory of the West Bank.

Israel tightly monitors Gaza's frontiers, and cross-border violence is frequent with militants often firing rockets at Israel and Israel staging deadly bombing raids against militant targets in the coastal territory.

Bandak's visit to Auschwitz, where he laid a wreath at the invitation of a group working for tolerance in Poland, was a rare one by a Palestinian to the death camp site. Muslim officials from other countries have also paid respects there.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; editing by Todd Eastham)

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See What's Left Of The Manhattan Project

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Manhattan Project

As World War II raged overseas, the United States tapped its best talent and resources for The Manhattan Project, a program to create the first nuclear weapons.  

Click here to see the sites >   

Research and development took place at more than 30 sites across the United States. In 2008, photographer Martin Miller visited two production complexes that served vital roles in the construction of the atomic bomb in the early 1940s.  

The top-secret site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee was home to three huge manufacturing plants, X-10, Y-12 and K-25, involved in separating Uranium 235 (used in the Atomic Bomb) from Uranium 238. The Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington is where plutonium was manufactured. 

Radioactive materials were then sent to the national laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico where the atomic bomb was assembled and tested. 

The collection of photographs are both haunting and mesmerizing. Miller has been kind enough to share some photos with us. You can view the whole Manhattan Project series here or check out more of Miller's work on his website.   

Alpha Calutrons, 1st-Stage Source of Hiroshima Bomb Uranium, Oak Ridge, TN 1943



X-10 Reactor, Pilot Plant for Production of Nagasaki Bomb Plutonium, Oak Ridge, TN 1943



Control Console, X-10 Pilot Plant for Production of Nagasaki Bomb Plutonium, Oak Ridge, TN 1943



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How A Last-Minute Decision Led To The Nuking Of Nagasaki

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nagasakiDays after Hiroshima, a deadlier atomic bomb was bound for an armaments factory in Kokura – until bad weather forced a change of plan. In an extract from his new book, Nagasaki, Craig Collie gets inside the cockpit of the plane that dropped Fat Man.

Born out of a small research programme, the Manhattan Project began in 1942 as a joint American-British-Canadian project, and was responsible for producing the atomic bomb.

nagasaki

A secret US government advisory group made recommendations for proper use of atomic weapons. It never questioned whether the bomb should be used on Japan, only where it should be dropped.

The preference was for a large urban area with closely built wooden-frame buildings densely populated by Japanese civilians. The project’s target committee recommended detonation at altitude to achieve maximum blast damage.

Five cities were proposed as targets: Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, Kokura and Niigata. The armed forces were instructed to exclude these cities from conventional firebombing: the project director, General Leslie Groves of the US Army Corps of Engineers, and his team of scientists wanted a 'clean’ background so the effect of the bomb could be easily assessed. They also wanted visual targeting without cloud cover so damage could be photographed.

Henry Stimson, the US Secretary of War, was concerned that America’s reputation for fair play might be damaged by targeting urban areas. General George Marshall had a similar view, believing the bomb should be used first on military targets and only later on large manufacturing areas after first warning the surrounding population to leave. Both men’s views were ignored.

People in Hiroshima became aware that their city was not being subjected to the incendiary attacks of other cities. A rumour spread that President Truman’s mother had been imprisoned in Hiroshima Castle, that the American military had been instructed to spare the city.

Groves’s first choice was Kyoto. It was largely untouched by bombing and was psychologically important to the Japanese. Its surrounding mountains would focus the blast and thereby increase the bomb’s destructive force.

Stimson, who had visited Kyoto in the 1920s, knew its status as Japan’s intellectual and cultural capital and considered its destruction to be barbaric. He argued for Kyoto to be dropped from the list and eventually won Truman over to his view.

On July 25 1945 General Thomas Handy issued on their behalf an order to General Carl Spaatz, the Guam-based commander of US Army Strategic Air Forces, to 'deliver’ the first 'special bomb’ as soon after August 3 as weather permitted visual targeting. The target was to be selected from a list of four: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and, added that day, Nagasaki.

The sub-committee had decided not to specify military-industrial areas as targets since they were scattered, and – apart from Kokura, which had a huge munitions factory in the middle of the city – generally on the suburban fringes. Aircrews were to select their own targets to maximise the effect on a city as a whole. The greatest impact would be achieved by aiming at the centre of a city, where the population was densest.

It wasn’t clear how the mass killing of civilians would drive the Japanese to capitulate. Japan’s cities had been firebombed since March, setting a precedent for targeting non-combatants, without any surrender resulting. Stimson had to settle for persuading himself that the project was not intentionally targeting civilians, in the face of clear evidence to the contrary.

Hiroshima, Monday August 6 1945

Little Boy took 43 seconds to fall from the B-29 Enola Gay, flying at 10,000m, to a preset detonation point 600m above the city. A crosswind caused the missile to drift 250m away from Aioi Bridge. It detonated instead over Shima Surgical Clinic. Working like a gun barrel, thousands of kilograms of high explosive propelled one piece of the unstable uranium isotope U-235 into another piece. A nuclear chain reaction was triggered when the two pieces pressure-welded to supercritical mass.

The explosion had a force equal to 12,500 tonnes of TNT, and the temperature rocketed to more than a million degrees centigrade, igniting the air in an expanding giant fireball. At the point of explosion, energy was given off in the form of light, heat, radiation and pressure. The light sped outwards. A shock wave created by enormous pressure followed, moving out at about the speed of sound.

In the centre of the city everything but reinforced concrete buildings disappeared in an instant, leaving a desert of clear-swept, charred remains. The blast wave shattered windows for 15km from the hypocentre – or, as it is more colloquially known, 'ground zero’. More than two thirds of Hiroshima’s buildings were demolished or gutted, all windows, doors, sashes and frames ripped out. Hundreds of fires were ignited by the thermal pulse, generating a firestorm that rolled out for several kilometres. At least 80,000 people – about 30 per cent of Hiroshima’s 250,000 population – were killed immediately. The figure is possibly nearer to 100,000; the exact number will never be known.

At the instant of detonation, the forward cabin of Enola Gay lit up. Colonel Paul Tibbets, the commander of 509th Composite Group and the command pilot on the Hiroshima mission, felt a tingling in his teeth as the bomb’s radiation interacted with the metal in his fillings. A pinpoint of purplish-red light kilometres below the B-29s expanded into a ball of purple fire and a swirling mass of flames and clouds. Hiroshima disappeared from sight under the churning flames and smoke. A white column of smoke emerged from the purple clouds, rose rapidly to 3,000m and bloomed into an immense mushroom. The co-pilot, Captain Robert Lewis, wrote in his log, 'My God, what have we done?’

Marianas Islands, Tuesday August 7 1945

At the US Army Airforce base on the North Pacific island of Tinian bomb parts were being checked before they were installed in Fat Man’s metal casing. On the neighbouring island of Saipan the US Office of War Information was designing leaflets calling on the Japanese to petition their emperor to end the war. It planned to airdrop 16 million leaflets on 47 Japanese cities over the next nine days.

It said (in translation), 'TO THE JAPANESE PEOPLE: America asks that you take immediate heed of what we say on this leaflet.

'We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2,000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate.

'We have just begun to use this weapon against your homeland. If you still have any doubt, make inquiry as to what happened to Hiroshima when just one atomic bomb fell on that city. Before using this bomb to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, we ask that you now petition the Emperor to end the war. Our President has outlined for you the 13 consequences of an honourable surrender. We urge that you accept these consequences and begin the work of building a new, better and peace-loving Japan.

'You should take steps now to cease military resistance. Otherwise, we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war. EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.’

Tokyo, Wednesday August 8 1945

While the leaflet campaign began over Tokyo, the Japanese set out to block American propaganda broadcasts from Saipan, Manila and Okinawa. With army encouragement, newspapers and radio tried to nullify the message in the leaflets. An editorial in the Tokyo daily Asahi Shimbun ran the headline, strength in the citadel of the spirit. Regardless of the intensity of the bombing and the number of cities destroyed, it said, 'the foremost factor to decide the war is the will of the people to fight and how well they are united to fight… now we have to strengthen the citadel of the mind.’

At the same time the government of Japan filed a protest through the Embassy of Switzerland in Tokyo against the government of the United States for its use of the new inhumane weapon. It was described as 'a new crime against the whole of humanity and civilisation’. The worst manifestation of the new weapon was only now becoming apparent. Radiation had been a marginal concern during the development phase of the atomic bomb. The physicist Dr Norman Ramsey, the head of the Los Alamos Laboratory team on Tinian, was surprised to hear that Tokyo Rose, the English language voice of Japan’s propaganda broadcasts, was claiming large numbers were sick and dying in Hiroshima. They were reported as suffering from some unknown disease, not from burns from the bomb’s blast. Reports of radiation sickness were appearing in the American press.

The Manhattan Project’s director of scientific research, J Robert Oppenheimer, told the Washing-ton Post on August 8 that there would be little radiation on the ground at Hiroshima and it would decay rapidly. He continued to hold this view long after the war, despite evidence to the contrary. The Manhattan Project’s official assessment summed it up: 'No lingering toxic effects are expected in the area over which the bomb has been used. The bomb is detonated in combat at such a height above the ground as to give the maximum blast effect against structures and to disseminate the radioactive products as a cloud. On account of the height of the explosion, practically all of the radioactive products are carried upward as a column of hot air and dispersed harmlessly over a wide area… In the very unlikely and unanticipated case that these radioactive particles should be suddenly precipitated to the ground, the amount of radiation could be very high but would remain so for only a short period of time.’

The report doesn’t say what it considers a 'short period of time’. The uncertainty is consistent with the recollection of Stimson’s undersecretary of war, John J McCloy. 'When the bomb was used, before it was used and at the time it was used, we had no basic concept of the damage it would do.’

Tinian Island, Wednesday August 8 1945, pm

The hook of an overhead crane was slipped carefully into a metal loop on Fat Man’s bulbous body. The fully armed weapon was winched gingerly and carried sideways like an abattoir carcase out of the shed. It was lowered on to a transport dolly, sitting close to the ground on large rubber tyres. Technicians covered Fat Man with a tarpaulin. A prime mover pulled it across the asphalt, escorted by armed military police, photographers and technicians. Travelling slowly but smoothly for more than a kilometre, the cortege made its way to a floodlit loading pit. The dolly was wheeled on tracks over a three-metre pit. A hydraulic lift raised the bomb and its detachable cradle so the crew could wheel the dolly away. The tracks were removed and the bomb rotated 90 degrees and lowered into the pit. It was almost 10pm.

The B-29 Bockscar was towed alongside the loading pit. With its pitside landing gear run on to a turntable, the bomber was positioned over the pit, its forward bomb doors open. The hydraulic system again whined into action and Fat Man rose to a point just below the open doors. A plumb line enabled the bomb’s metal loop to be lined up accurately. With little clearance from the plane’s catwalks, this was a delicate operation. With a shackle locked on to the bomb, the live weapon was cautiously winched upwards into the plane. A single shackle held the bomb and the adjustable sway braces bearing on it. Bockscar was approaching 'mission-ready’ status. At 11pm the crew members of Mission No 16 dropped their wallets on the beds of men not flying that night and crossed to the briefing room.

Tibbets, the pilot of the Hiroshima mission, opened proceedings with a few general remarks. Fat Man was a different bomb from the one used on Hiroshima, he told the men. More powerful, and able to be mass-produced, it would make Little Boy obsolete. Tibbets wished the crews good luck and handed over to the intelligence officer Colonel Hazen Payette. Major Charles Sweeney would carry the bomb in Bockscar. Captain Frederick Bock would fly Sweeney’s plane, The Great Artiste, still fitted out with the measuring instruments installed for Hiroshima. They would record data transmitted by capsules that Bock’s plane would drop as soon as the bomb was released. Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Hopkins would fly The Big Stink with film cameras, scientific personnel and the official British observer.

The communications officer reported that the weather was expected to be rough. Two weather planes would report on conditions at the targets just before the mission’s arrival. A typhoon was gathering over Iwo Jima. The mission would involve flying some five hours through turbulent weather in complete radio silence and carrying an armed atomic bomb. It was an unsettling prospect. Payette conceded the Japanese might recognise the purpose of three unescorted B-29s, so the altitude at which they were to fly towards Japan was raised from the normal 3,000m to nearly 6,000m. The price of flying at the higher altitude would be greater fuel consumption. The rendezvous point for Hiroshima had been Iwo Jima, but that was no longer practical with the prevailing weather. They would rise to 10,000m at Yakushima off the south coast of Kyushu. From that small island they would proceed in formation towards Kokura.

Tibbets finished the briefing by stressing two directives. One was that the planes should wait no more than 15 minutes at the rendezvous point before proceeding to Kokura. The other was that Fat Man should be dropped visually. They must be able to see the aiming point to minimise the chances of a wasted drop. The additional, unstated reason was to allow the effect of the bomb to be photographed. The meeting closed with a short prayer by Chaplain William Downey and the crews went to their mess hall for a pre-flight snack.

After the briefing, Sweeney walked around aircraft No 77 on the hardstand. (The name Bockscar was not yet painted on – that would be done years later when it was installed in a museum.) He checked the aircraft’s surface and looked for telltale fluid on the tarmac below it. The bomb-bay doors were open and he looked inside. Fat Man was waiting there silently, as if taking the nap that Sweeney had not managed to grab. The bomb’s boxy tail had rude messages to Emperor Hirohito scribbled on it in crayon. As Sweeney backed out from the fuselage his heart jumped. An admiral was there standing alongside him, watching silently. 'Son, do you know how much that bomb cost?’ the admiral asked. 'No, sir.’ The admiral paused for dramatic effect. 'Two billion dollars,’ he eventually informed the command pilot. 'That’s a lot of money, Admiral.’ 'Do you know how much your airplane costs?’ 'Slightly over half a million dollars, sir,’ Sweeney replied. 'I’d suggest you keep those relative values in mind for this mission.’

Kokura, Thursday August 9 1945, am

A front was blowing in over eastern Japan from the China Sea. Smoke from the overnight bombing of neighbouring Yawata to the west was now drifting across Kokura. The sky was still hazy with broken clouds. Because of the wind change it hadn’t cleared as the weather plane had predicted. Some landmarks were visible. Others were hidden below patches of cloud.

Bockscar and The Great Artiste arrived at Kokura at 9.20am. On board Bockscar, the radarman, Sergeant Ed Buckley, and the navigator, Captain James Van Pelt, used the radar scope to line up the target, the armaments factory in the middle of the city. Standing orders were that it had to be sighted by eye. Van Pelt called to Sweeney, 'Two degrees right. One degree left.’ 'That’s the target,’ said Buckley. 'I have it in range. What’s our true altitude?’ 'Give me one degree left, Chuck. Fine. We are right on course,’ continued the navigator. 'Roger,’ said Sweeney. 'All you men make damned sure you have your goggles on.’ The crew put on their purple protective goggles. Grey clouds were scattered below. The ground was obscured by dark smoke from Yawata’s burning steelworks. 'Twenty miles out now, captain,’ said Buckley. 'Mark it!’ Van Pelt continued his commentary, 'Roger. Give me two degrees left, Chuck.’ 'You got it, boy!’ The pneumatic bomb-bay doors opened with a humming sound. From inside Bockscar’s Plexiglass nose, the bombardier saw Kokura unfurl 10,000m below. He noted the railway yard a kilometre from the armaments factory, but features were covered after that. With his eye glued to the Norden bombsight, the bombardier, Captain Kermit Beahan, could find nothing apart from smoke and cloud to fix the crosshairs on.

'I can’t see it. I can’t see the target,’ Sweeney called into the intercom. 'No drop. Repeat, no drop.’ He banked the plane sharply to the left and swung around for a return approach.

The bomb doors closed.

Bockscar rolled in again over Kokura with the noise of the bomb door mechanism opening and the rush of air outside. Through his rubber eyepiece Beahan saw the stadium, then the cathedral, then the river near the arsenal, then… the same impervious screen and no munitions factory. 'No drop! No drop!’ he cried out in frustration.

'Sit tight, boys. We’re going around again.’ Sweeney wheeled into another turn. As the plane came in for its third run, the crew were anxious and edgy. Van Pelt pointed out the stadium was near the arsenal. Beahan responded that the stadium was not the aiming point. Through the Norden, he saw streets and the river, but once again the munitions factory was shrouded. Again, he reported no drop. The tension released a rush of comments: 'Fighters below, coming up’ (Dehart); 'Fuel getting very low’ (Kuharek); 'Let’s get the hell out of here!’ (Gallagher); 'What about Nagasaki?’ (Spitzer). 'Cut the chatter,’ Sweeney said.

The radio operator Sergeant Abe Spitzer’s comment, meant as a rhetorical question to himself, made sense. Fuel was getting dangerously low and the hornets’ nest of defence they had stirred up below was an unacceptable risk for a plane carry-ing so destructive a weapon. Sweeney conferred by intercom with Beahan and the weaponeer, Lieutenant-Commander Frederick Ashworth. They decided to leave Kokura and head for Nagasaki, 160km to the south. The weather there didn’t look any more promising than Kokura, but the only other approved target, Niigata in northern Honshu, was too far away for their remaining fuel. Sweeney gathered his composure and asked the navigator, 'Jim, give me the heading for Nagasaki.’ Van Pelt gave a direction and pointed out it would take them over the Kyushu fighter plane fields. 'I can’t avoid it, Jim,’ Sweeney said. Fuel was critical, they were an hour and a half behind schedule and Fat Man was still live in the bomb bay. Bockscar turned south for Nagasaki.

Sweeney said to his co-pilot, Lieutenant Don Albury, 'Can any other goddamned thing go wrong?’ On the ground at Kokura, an all-clear had sounded before the Americans’ aborted bombing runs began. People were out of the shelters and getting about their business when they heard the aircraft engines high above them. However, this wasn’t the massed formations they associated with firebombing missions. They assumed it was a reconnaissance mission. Some noted the two planes made three passes over the city, the drone of their engines fading and returning each time. Then the planes disappeared, never to return. Kokurans got on with their lives, the struggle to stay afloat in a war-ravaged country.

The Japanese today have an expression, 'Kokura’s luck’. It means avoiding a catastrophic event you didn’t even know was threatened.

Nagasaki, Thursday August 9 1945, am

Bockscar headed across the north of Kyushu towards Nagasaki with The Great Artiste trailing off its right wing. There had been no opposition from Japanese fighter planes. A check of fuel reserves by the flight engineer, Sergeant John Kuharek, confirmed there was not enough to get to Iwo Jima and maybe not enough even to get to Okinawa – particularly as they were still carrying a five-tonne bomb. Major Sweeney asked Commander Ashworth to join him in the pilot’s area. Sweeney was the officer in charge of the plane, Ashworth the officer in charge of the bomb. Major decisions had to be made jointly.

Sweeney said, 'Here’s the situation, Dick. We have just enough fuel to make one pass over the target. If we don’t drop on Nagasaki, we may have to let it go into the ocean. There’s a very slim chance that we would be able to make Okinawa, but the odds are very slim. Would you accept a radar run if necessary and we can’t see the target? I guarantee we’ll come within 500 feet of the target.’

'I don’t know, Chuck.’ 'It’s better than dropping it in the ocean.’ 'Are you sure of the accuracy?’ 'I’ll take full responsibility for this.’ 'Let me think it over, Chuck.’

After a few moments of thought, Ashworth told Sweeney that he had decided to risk returning to Okinawa with the bomb. He could not agree to the radar drop. No one in the plane said anything. Ashworth looked perplexed. Even though he had ostensibly made his decision, he was still torn between three unwelcome alternatives: disregard orders to target visually; return to Okinawa and risk the lives of the crew; or dump the billion-dollar bomb into the ocean to ensure the lives of the crew. For some minutes, torment and doubt prevailed in Ashworth’s mind until he spoke again to tell Sweeney he had reversed his decision. He now agreed they should drop on Nagasaki, whether by radar or visually. The crew cheered.

At 10.50am Bockscar and The Great Artiste arrived from the north-west, high above Nagasaki at 10,000m. The 20 per cent cloud cover of the 8.30am weather report had grown to 90 per cent as the front moving in from the China Sea blanketed the city, hanging at two or three thousand metres. Sweeney swung Bockscar over the bay and north towards the cloud-covered downtown area. Beyond that was the more westerly of the two valleys running up from the city centre, the Urakami. Cloud had broken a little on the outskirts, but was thick at the centre of the city. Sweeney instructed the crew to put on their goggles, although he left his off. He’d already experienced how little visibility they allowed.

The navigator and the radar operator coordinated the approach to the aiming point, Tokiwa Bridge on the Nakajima river in downtown Nagasaki. Beahan fed data into the bombsight. 'Right. One degree correction to the left. Good,’ recited Van Pelt. Buckley reported, 'We’re coming in right on course. Five. Mark it.’ They were two minutes away. 'I still can’t see it,’ muttered Beahan. 'OK, Honeybee,’ encouraged the skipper, 'but check all your switches and make damned sure everything is ready.’ One minute to target and there were no dry runs.

The bomb-bay doors opened and the plane shuddered as it caught the air stream. They would remain under radar control unless Beahan could see the target and lock on it. 'I’ll take it,’ came the bombardier’s excited voice. 'I can see the target.’ There was a substantial hole over the mid Urakami valley with some scattered low-lying cloud below. Through the gap Beahan (the 'great artiste’ that the bomber was named after), could see an athletics track. It looked nothing like Tokiwa Bridge, 4km away on the other side of the ridge separating the two river valleys. He put the Norden crosshairs on the oval track. 'You own it,’ said Sweeney. A tone ran through the radio system indicating 15 seconds to go. Beahan was silent, concentrating, the automatic bombsight locked on the stadium where sports events had long since ceased to be held.

At 11.01am the shackle was released and Fat Man tumbled out, diving down. Wires snapped, the radio tone stopped abruptly. Bockscar lurched upwards. 'Bombs away,’ announced Beahan, and corrected himself. 'Bomb away.’ Sweeney turned sharply to port at a steep angle. In The Great Artiste the bombardier shouted, 'There she goes.’

Nagasaki, Thursday August 9 1945, midday

The horizon burst into a super-brilliant white with an intense flash, more intense than Hiroshima. From the air, a brownish cloud could be seen spreading horizontally across the city below. A vertical column sprang from the centre, coloured and boiling. A white, puffy mushroom cloud broke off at 4,000m and sped upwards to 11,000m. Fat Man took 43 seconds to fall to its detonation point 500m above a tennis court at 170 Matsuyama-cho. From the ground, a huge fireball could be seen forming in the sky. The bomb exploded with a bright blue-white light like a giant magnesium flare. A powerful pressure wave followed with an explosive rumbling. The view from the ground of the white vertical cloud was obscured at first by a bluish haze, then by a purple-brown cloud of dust and smoke.

Almost everything within a kilometre of the hypocentre was destroyed, even earthquake-proof concrete structures that had survived at similar distances in Hiroshima. People and animals died instantly. Heat rays evaporated the water from human organs. A boy standing in the shadow of a brick warehouse a kilometre away saw a mother and children out in the open instantaneously disappear. Tightly packed houses of flimsy wooden construction and tiled roofing were completely obliterated. The explosion twisted and tore out window and door sashes, and ripped doors off their hinges. Many buildings of brick and stone were so severely damaged that they crumbled and collapsed into rubble. Glass was blown out of windows 8km away.

The detonation flash lasted only a fraction of a second, but ultraviolet light coming from it was sufficient to cause third-degree burns to the skin and to cause heavy clay roof tiles to bubble up to one and a half kilometres away. Clothing ignited, telegraph poles smouldered and charred, thatched roofs caught fire. Paper spontaneously incinerated 3km away. As in Hiroshima, black clothing absorbed heat and charred or caught fire; white and light-coloured material reflected the ultra-violet rays. Patterns in people’s clothing were duplicated in the patterns of burns on their skin.

Fat Man was a most democratic weapon, dispatching the good, the bad, the ugly and the ordinary with equal finality and equal indifference. Anyone within a kilometre of the hypocentre without some sort of cover was reduced to ashes.

The Pacific War had been Japan’s belligerent attempt to rectify a trade difficulty. The United States, its main source of oil, had refused to do business while Japan maintained its occupation of China, and Japan had resorted to invasion as a means of obtaining resources. Except in the short term, it hadn’t proved productive.

Japan’s post-war economic miracle was, ironically, the product of a stand-off between its former enemies. Occupation fashioned Japan into a peaceful pro-Western democracy, but the balance of global power was moving. The Communists prevailed in China, and the Cold War changed Allied economic policy in the Far East. Japan was to be a bulwark against Communism, and in 1947 it was given $400 million to underwrite an economic plan.

With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 came $4 billion of orders for Japanese supplies. (The prime minister Shigeru Yoshida called this war 'a gift from the gods’.) Japan’s industry surged, restoring its people’s incomes to near pre-war levels. Out of the disaster of the Pacific War, Japan was able to become the global economic and trading power that it had tried to become through conquest.

Those who survived would see the sun rising on a new Japan. But in Nagasaki on the morning after the attack people had no comprehension of a future. And the atomic bomb would stalk them with lingering and deadly radiation that would claim many more victims. Perhaps 40,000 died on the day from the blast and 40,000 more from injuries and radiation illness. No one knows for sure.

'Nagasaki’ (Portobello Books, £20) is available for £18 plus £1.35 p&p from Telegraph Books (0844-871 1515)

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Photos Of Tourists Flocking To Watch Atomic Explosions [SATIRE]

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Atomic BombOn Aug. 6, 1945, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The blast killed around 140,000 people and ravaged 90 percent of the city. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. An estimated 40,000 more perished.

That was 67 years ago today. More than half a century later the threat of nuclear weapons remains a challenge.  

Jump straight to the pictures > 

In order "to keep the reality of our post-atomic era fresh and omnipresent," Los Angeles-based photographer Clay Lipsky created a series of photographs in which he imagines a world where people gather to watch atomic bomb explosions. Tourists flood the Internet with cell-phone images of close-up mushroom clouds, in turn, bringing "new levels of desensitization" to the threat of nuclear weapons.   

"I am not trying to be 'shocking' in fact I feel my series is more sarcastic than anything else," Lipsky told us in an email. "We live in an interesting time and our perceptions are very much influenced by visual media. Hopefully people will see deeper into 'Atomic Overlook' and not just take it for face value."

The composite photos use shots taken over the last eight years as the artist traveled around the world.

No tourists were harmed in the making of this series, Lipsky jokes.  

You can see Lipsky's full artist statement here and more of his work on his website

[via io9]







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Here's What Hiroshima Looked Like 9 Months After It Was Hit By An Atomic Bomb

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Today marks the 67th anniversary of the A-bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. Home to about 250,000 people when the bomb was dropped, a single 4,000 kg uranium bomb is thought to have killed over 140,000 people in 1945.

Today, Hiroshima held a ceremony in Hiroshima's peace park with the grandson of Harry S. Truman, the president who ordered the dropping of the bomb, in attendance. About 50,000 others gathered as well, the AP reports, among them representatives from about 70 countries, as everyone took a moment of silence.

This video from the National Archives (342-USAF-11074) shows the city nine months after the bomb. It was produced by the US military to survey the effect of the blast on buildings, but also shows how much the widespread devastation in the city.

NOTE: The video is long and has no audio. It's worth skipping through the film to see its highlights, which include a panorama at 6:35 and a view through a Torii gate at 9:06.

 WATCH:

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Giant WWII Bomb Found Beneath Holland Airport

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bomb wwii air force

Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam services 48 million people a year.

It's also been hiding a gigantic unexploded World War II bomb beneath Terminal C.

Peter Allen of the Dailymail reports that builders "digging around" uncovered the device deep underground — and one can only wonder what the workers' initial reaction sounded like. The terminal was closed, needless to say, and Army bomb disposal units arrived on the scene.

Officials had to conduct a major evacuation of the site, and the military thinks it will take upward of days to render the bomb inert, due to complex and very old chemical fuses. Though it's relatively normal to find unexploded ordnance (called "UXO") all over Europe, it seems highly unlikely that one would go undiscovered beneath the busiest airport in Holland.

To make matters worse, a "miscommunication" later the same day resulted in the Dutch Air Force scrambling to respond to a hijacked plane landing at the same airport.

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Watch A 550-Pound Bomb From World War II Explode In The Middle Of Munich

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A bomb from the World War II era that was discovered Monday night by workers at a demolition site had to be exploded because it couldn't be diffused, Reuters reported Wednesday. 

While there are "tens of thousands of unexploded munitions" throughout Germany, this one had to be exploded because of concerns about its stability, Gawker reported Wednesday.

"Unexploded bombs are becoming more dangerous by the day through material fatigue as a result of ageing and through erosion of safety elements in the trigger mechanisms," a former bomb disposal chief told Spiegel Online last year. 

Watch the entire bomb explosion, which caused hundreds of Munich residents to be evacuated from the center of the city:

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Defunct Military Planes Are Reborn As Amazing Works of Art

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bone yard project painted planes

For defunct military planes, the common resting place is a "boneyard," where retired aircraft are stored or used for scrap metal.

Looking at the old planes, gallery owner Eric Firestone envisioned a different sort of recycling, using the old planes not as sources of metal, but as unique canvases for unconventional artists, and the "Bone Yard Project" was born.

Curated by Firestone, Carlo McCormick, and Medvin Sobio, the exhibition Round Trip: Art From The Bone Yard Project featured planes painted by graffiti and street artists, who produced some amazing designs that evoke the nose art that marked many World War II planes.

Unfortunately the exhibition, in Tuscon, Ariz. ended earlier this year. But the gallery was able to share some awesome photos with us.

This DC3 was redecorated with ink and latex by Retna, an artist from Los Angeles.



This painted plane is titled "Warning Shot."



The artist duo Faile calls its version of a Beechcraft C45 "Naughty Angels."



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World War II Veteran Carried A Pile Of Bomb Shrapnel In His Knee For More Than 65 Years

Desperate Trends From Early 20th Century Britain Show What REAL Austerity Looks Like

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women, WWII

Those who have lived during wartime or the Great Depression know that desperate times call for desperate measures.

British journalist Hunter Davies uncovered some of the most interesting austerity trends — for example, cooking sheep brains for dinner — in his book Cold Meat and How to Disguise It: A History of Advice on How to Survive Hard Times.

We've compiled some of the top trends here.

Families cooked sheep's brains for dinner to counter food rationing in WWI

Most sensible families were already in the habit of saving food, but the Ministry of Food also encouraged citizens to "experiment with food they had never tried before," namely oft-discarded parts like "nettles, dock leaves, whale meat, or ... sheeps heads or brains," says Davies. 

"Bread, fish, offal and vegetables were not on 'coupons,' as rations were called, and were usually available in season," writes Davies, "but almost every other item of food, such as sugar, tea, butter, margarine, cheese, jam and sweets, were all strictly limited to around 1-8 ounces per person."

Source: Cold Meat And How To Disguise It: A History of Advice on How To Survive Hard Times



People used DIY guides to build their own radios and record players in the 1930s

"Millions of husbands who set up home in the 1930s were being exposed to an avalanche of books, magazines and newspapers instructing, nay, commanding them to Do It Yourself," recalls Davies, whose father came of age during WWII.

The range of items to make was astonishing: One magazine called Hobbies Handbook taught men how to DIY everything from guitars to electric clocks to lamps and gramophones. 

"Many of these were must-have gadgets and adornments of the times, which every household longed to have, but they were still very expensive in the shops and beyond the reach of most ordinary working folks," says the author.

Source: Cold Meat And How To Disguise It: A History of Advice on How To Survive Hard Times



Fearful parents enrolled their kids in "funeral clubs," which acted like life insurance

"There was a sliding scale whereby you could insure against a child dying before the age of five, which cost only a few pennies a week, but all you got back was £3 when they died," explains Davies.

"Or you could insure them up to the age of ten and get more money back, but of course you paid for more. It was an age when all classes had large families—and lost many of them before they grew up." 

Source: Cold Meat And How To Disguise It: A History of Advice on How To Survive Hard Times



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They Just Discovered A Bunch Of Awesome WWII Spy Gadgets

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Dogs in WWII

A rare wartime book documenting the ingenious James Bond-style gadgets invented by British 'spooks' to help prisoners of war escape has been discovered.

The 1942 classified catalogue contains the designs for the covert equipment including tiny compasses concealed in gold teeth and coat buttons.

Many of the inventions were the brainchild of Christopher Hutton - a real-life 'Q' from the James Bond movies - who worked for the government's little-known MI9 agency.

Less than 100 of the instruction manuals were printed and given to US intelligence officers who were lagging behind the British in espionage design after entering the war late.

The 76 page book details what the gadgets were and how they were made and concealed in innocuous domestic items.

The gadgets were placed in food parcels and sent to British PoWs in camps like Colditz or the 'Great Escape' prison, Stalag Luft III.

Some of the fascinating gadgets include maps of Germany printed on silk so that they didn't rustle and crammed inside pencils, vinyl records, cigars and pipes.

Another map was hidden under the surface of 54 playing cards that, when pieced together, formed a large map of Germany and Europe.

Small hacksaws were secreted in dart boards while a tiny camera was hidden inside a cigarette lighter and small radio receivers in cigar boxes.

The extremely rare copy of the book called 'Per Ardua Libertas' - Liberty Through Adversity - that has come to light was a dummy version retained by the London printing company.

It is now being sold at auction by a Devon man who inherited it from one of the executives of the company.

The page that contains the playing cards shows a corner of the surface of the Queen of Clubs peeled back to expose part of a map.

The instructions read: "Each pack is one map. 48 cards covered a map. The 4 Aces are a small map of Europe. The Joker is the key. The outside card contains the instructions."

For the compass concealed in a gold tooth, the instructions reads: "Tooth - Gold Fitting made to measure.

"Small medium luminous compass fits in jaws on left and thin gold tube holding message or map slides on the two prongs at the bottom. They are concealed through being in between the cheek and the gum."

Lionel Willis, a specialist at auctioneers Bonhams which is selling the book, said it was an exceptionally rare find.

He said: "The MI9 department was set up in 1939 to aid escapees and resistance fighters.

"They very quickly realised that two things were vital if you were going to escape in a foreign country and they were a map and a compass.

"They produced maps on pieces of silk that could be rolled up and secreted in extremely small spaces inside innocuous domestic items and this books show how they were concealed in things like pencils and cigars.

"Food parcels and rations packs were sent to prisoners of war and every sixth parcel contained some of these inventions that helped them escape.

"The British were way ahead of the US and in 1942, after America had entered the war, the US intelligence service sent a group of people to London to see what we were up to and how we were doing it.

"MI9 produced this book to give to the Americans, probably less than 100 were printed.

"Very few of these catalogues are known to have survived. I believe the Australian War Museum has a copy.

"It gives a fascinating insight into the ingenuity employed to assist the war effort."

As well as PoWs, Allied spies and resistance fighters were also sent the gadgets to help them either escape or outsmart the Nazis

The book is being sold by Bonhams next January with a pre-sale estimate of £800.

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Five Statistics Problems That Will Change The Way You See The World

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roulette

Even a rudimentary look at probability can give new insights about how to interpret data.

Simple thought experiments an can give new insight into the different ways misunderstanding of statistics can distort the way we perceive the world.

We've selected five classic problems solved in unconventional ways that can help one get a new way to understand the way that data can be misleading and the story on the surface can take people in the wrong direction.

The Monty Hall Problem

Say you're on a game show where there are three doors. Behind two of the doors, there are goats. Behind one of the doors, there is a brand new car.

The host says that once you pick a door, he'll open one of the doors you didn't pick to reveal a goat. Then, you have the option of either staying with your door or switching to the last unopened door. 

Do you switch or stay?



Answer: Switch

This is actually based on a real game show, and the result has been the source of controversy for years. 

Essentially, when you first made the selection, you had a one in three chance of correctly selecting the door that had a car behind it. Switching raised that probability to two in three that you'll select a car. 

Said another way: A player whose strategy is to always switch will only lose when the door they initially selected has a car behind it. A contestant who selects either of the two doors with a goat behind it and then switches will always get the car.

Here's a final way to look at it, provided the contestant selected Door #1

Door 1       Door 2       Door 3      Result if Stay #1     Result if Switch

Car            Goat          Goat         Car                         Goat

Goat           Car           Goat         Goat                       Car

Goat          Goat           Car           Goat                     Car

Source: The Straight Dope



The Birthday Paradox

You run an office that employs 23 people. What is the probability that two of your employees have the same birthday? For the purposes of the problem, ignore February 29. 



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WWII-Era Love Letters Washed Ashore During Sandy

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ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS, N.J. (AP) — Love letters from World War II written by a New Jersey woman to her boyfriend washed ashore during Superstorm Sandy.

A 14-year-old found the 57 letters inside a box walking along a beach in Atlantic Highlands the day after Sandy struck. They chronicled life for Dorothy Fallon and Lynn Farnham from 1942 until the week before they married in 1948. The Vermont native served in the Pacific during the war.

Kathleen Chaney tells WNBC-TV in New York she started playing amateur detective as her son dried the letters.

She left a message on a website where she learned Farnham had died in 1991. A niece contacted her to say 91-year-old Dorothy Fallon Farnham is in frail health in Asbury Park.

It's believed the letters floated from the Rumson area down the Shrewsbury River into Sandy Hook Bay.

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We'll Never Forget This WWII Vet Telling Us How He Met The Most Famous Marine In The World

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Aside from repeating his accomplishments over and over in bootcamp ("Only Marine to be awarded five Navy Crosses, Sir!"), the closest I had ever been to anything relating to Chesty Puller was the night-time prayer I'd say to him as I crept into my sleeping bag, beneath foreign stars.

That was until I met Daniel Fruchter, an Army World War 2 vet who says he personally coordinated artillery fire for Chesty during Guadalcanal.

Apparently Fruchter tried to tell Chesty once that firing artillery at Danger Close range might get him court marshaled.

Chesty didn't respond well.

Hear the rest:

 

Produced by Daniel Goodman and Geoffrey Ingersoll

"Goodnight, Chesty, wherever you are."— Marine Corps

A special thanks to the United War Veterans Council for their help on this story.

SEE ALSO: Pearl Harbor Vet Tells Us How He Survived One Of The Worst Attacks In US History

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Code Breakers Finally Crack The Mysterious Cypher On The WWII Carrier Pigeon

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Pigeon

A coded message from the Second World War found tied to the remains of a carrier pigeon in a chimney contains details of German tank movements sent by a British soldier, a team of Canadian researchers believe.

The letter was discovered by David and Anne Martin while they were ripping out a fireplace at their house in Bletchingley, Surrey, thirty years ago.

They discovered the bones of a pigeon and were about to throw them away when they noticed there was a red container attached to one of the bird's legs.

It is now believed the message, which had stumped Britain's finest codebreakers, was battlefield intelligence from a British Army paratrooper pointing out German tank and infantry groupings to RAF Bomber Command.

Inside was a small slip of paper with a series of 27 coded messages, made up of a mixture of letters and numbers.

The couple sent it to Colin Hill, curator of the Pigeons at War exhibition at Bletchley Park, but he found the code, believed to have been sent by a unit in Normandy shortly after D-Day to Bomber Command, impossible to crack.

Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, to examined code in November this year. The eavesdropping agency also appealed for former codebreakers to come forward to suggest how the code might be understood. Daily Telegraph readers also sent in their suggestions.

But it is a team of Canadian researchers at Lakefield Heritage Research who claim to have cracked the short-form code, using a First World War artillery code book.

The message was sent to XO2 at 16:45 and contained 27 codes, each made up of five letters or numbers.

The destination X02 was believed to be Bomber Command, while the sender's signature at the bottom of the message read Serjeant W Stot.

The message reads:

AOAKN HVPKD FNFJW YIDDC

RQXSR DJHFP GOVFN MIAPX

PABUZ WYYNP CMPNW HJRZH

NLXKG MEMKK ONOIB AKEEQ

WAOTA RBQRH DJOFM TPZEH

LKXGH RGGHT JRZCQ FNKTQ

KLDTS FQIRW AOAKN 27 1525/6

It can now be revealed the message was sent by Sergeant William Stott, a 27-year-old paratrooper from the Lancashire Fusiliers who was parachuted into occupied Normandy on a reconnaisance mission.

It is believed he was sent there to assess the strength of the German occupation in that area, and then sent the message to HQ Bomber Command at RAF High Wycombe.

His message told RAF officers that he was updating as required, and he was also requesting information after being parachuted behind enemy lines early in the morning.

He was killed in action a few weeks after sending the message, which has now been partly decoded by the Canadian research team.

Gord Young, a researcher from Peterborough in Ontario, said: "We have been able to unravel most but not all of the so-called unbreakable code of the pigeon remains.

"The message is indeed breakable."

The researchers now believe the message reads: "Artillery observer at 'K' Sector, Normandy. Requested headquarters supplement report. Panzer attack - blitz. West Artillery Observer Tracking Attack.

"Lt Knows extra guns are here. Know where local dispatch station is. Determined where Jerry's headquarters front posts. Right battery headquarters right here.

"Found headquarters infantry right here. Final note, confirming, found Jerry's whereabouts. Go over field notes. Counter measures against Panzers not working.

"Jerry's right battery central headquarters here. Artillery observer at 'K' sector Normandy. Mortar, infantry attack panzers.

"Hit Jerry's Right or Reserve Battery Here. Already know electrical engineers headquarters. Troops, panzers, batteries, engineers, here. Final note known to headquarters."

Other parts of the code require further deciphering but Mr Young thinks they may be confusing on purpose to dupe German soliders who may have picked up the letter.

He said: "Maybe these are 'fillers' just to confuse the Germans or anyone else who might have got the message.

"We have written to the Canadian War Museum to see if they can find somebody who understands artillery short forms."

The task was complicated by the fact that all the code books and computers at Bletchley Park, the wartime predecessor to GCHQ, were destroyed after the war.

The Royal Pigeon Racing Association believe the bird probably either got lost, disorientated in bad weather, or was simply exhausted after its trip across the Channel.

Due to Winston Churchill's radio blackout, homing pigeons were taken on the D-Day invasion and released by Allied Forces to inform military Generals back on English soil how the operation was going.

The crack team of birds were a secret wing of the National Pigeon Service - which had a squadron of 250,000 birds during the Second World War.

They can reach speeds of 80mph, cover distances of more than 1,000 miles and are thought to use the Earth's magnetic fields to navigate.

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Photo Found Of Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Mushroom Cloud Splitting In Two

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Mushroom cloud hiroshima

A rare photo showing the mushroom cloud from the Hiroshima atomic bombing in two distinct parts, one above the other, has been discovered in the city, a museum curator said Wednesday.

The black-and-white picture is believed to have been taken about half-an-hour after the bombing on August 6, 1945, around 10 kilometres (six miles) east of the hypocentre.

"The existence of this shot was always known in history books, but this is the first time that the actual print has been discovered," said a curator at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

"A shot showing the mushroom cloud split into two like this is very rare."

The photo was found among articles related to the atomic bombing now owned by Honkawa Elementary School in Hiroshima city, she said.

The best-known pictures of the aftermath of the bombing were taken from the air by the US military.

An American B-29 bomber named Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb nicknamed "Little Boy", turning the western Japanese city into a nuclear inferno and killing an estimated 140,000 in the final chapter of World War II.

Three days later another atomic bomb -- "Fat Man" -- was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, claiming the lives of another 70,000.

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A British Team May Have Found Dozens Of WWII Fighter Planes Buried In Burma

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ww2 fighter plane spitfire

An excavation team searching for a stash of Second World War era British Spitfires in Burma says it has found a wooden crate believed to contain one of the planes, but it is full of muddy water.

It was not immediately clear how much damage the water may have caused, and searchers could not definitively say what was inside the crate.

But British aviation enthusiast David J. Cundall, who is driving the hunt for the rare Spitfires, called the results "very encouraging."

"It will take some time to pump the water out ... but I do expect all aircraft to be in very good condition," Mr Cundall said from Rangoon, Burma's main city.

The single-seater Spitfire, which helped Britain beat back waves of German bombers during the war more than six decades ago, remains the most famous British combat aircraft.

Britain built a total of about 20,000 Spitfires, although the dawn of the jet age meant the propeller-driven planes quickly became obsolete.

As many as 140 Spitfires – three to four times the number of airworthy models known to exist – are believed to have been buried in near-pristine condition in Burma by American engineers as the war drew to a close.

The wooden crate located in northern Burma was found in Myitkyina in Kachin state during a dig that began last month. It is one of several digs planned nationwide, including another near the airport in Rangoon.

Mr Cundall said the search team in Kachin state inserted a camera into the crate and found it was full of water. It was unclear what was inside the crate, he said, but the water will be pumped out during an operation that could take weeks, he said.

The go-ahead for excavation came in October when Burma's government signed an agreement with Mr Cundall and his local partner.

Under the deal, Burma's government will get one plane for display at a museum, as well as half of the remaining total. DJC, a private company headed by Mr Cundall, will get 30 per cent of the total and the Burma partner company Shwe Taung Paw, headed by Htoo Htoo Zaw, will get 20 per cent.

During the project's first phase, searchers hope to recover 60 planes: 36 planes in Mingaladon, near Rangoon's international airport; six in Meikthila in central Burma; and 18 in Myitkyina. Others are to be recovered in a second phase.

Searchers hope the aircraft are in pristine condition, but others have said it's possible all they might find is a mass of corroded metal and rusty aircraft parts.

Mr Cundall said the practice of burying aircraft, tanks and jeeps was common after the war.

"Basically nobody had got any orders to take these airplanes back to (the) UK. They were just surplus ... (and) one way of disposing them was to bury them," Mr Cundall said. "The war was over, everybody wanted to go home, nobody wanted anything, so you just buried it and went home. That was it."

Stanley Coombe, a 91-year-old war veteran from Britain who says he witnessed the aircraft's burial, travelled to Burma to observe the search.

It is "very exciting for me because I never thought I would be allowed to come back and see where Spitfires have been buried," Coombe said. "It's been a long time since anybody believed what I said until David Cundall came along."

SEE ALSO:  The 21 Craziest Things The TSA Found In Travelers' Luggage This Year

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One Of Hitler's Rare Kamikaze Rockets To Go On Display In Britain

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hitler rockeyA rare kamikaze-style rocket capable of launching a direct hit on Buckingham Palace will go on display in Britain almost 70 years after Hitler had it made in the hope it would help destroy London.

This manned version of the fearsome V1 was developed because the aim of the 5,000 original rockets was so poor.

Fitted with small cockpits, 150 were built so they could be flown accurately into targets.

However, none of the rockets ever flew in anger, largely because flying them was effectively a suicide mission with pilots expected to parachute out into an airspeed of 550mph moments before a target was hit.

The Fieseler Fi103R Reichenberg rocket, one of only six left today, was found by the Allies at the end of the second world war.

Initially, it formed part of an enemy aircraft exhibition at Farnborough in 1945, before it was decided the V1 should be classed as munition rather than an aircraft and was given to the British army's bomb disposal unit.

It was in 1970 that a Kent museum acquired the plane and began to have it restored as part of a £40,000 project.

Specialists in Munich painstakingly sourced missing period instruments in full working condition and gradually restored the rocket to its 1945 condition.

The modified V1s were favoured by Hiter because they could be steered by pilots in the direction of a target.

Trevor Matthews, of the Lashenden Museum near Maidstone, which has now owned the plane for more than 40 years, said: “With a pilot you could aim it at a strategic target, like Buckingham Palace, until the last moment when they were meant to bail out. It was totally kamikaze.

“The Germans dropped the idea in the end, largely because airmen realised it was a suicide mission. Also at the time they were being tested the Allies were overrunning their launch sites.”

The original V1 rockets – known as Hiter's vengeance bombs – were launched by Germans from France and Holland to bomb London. The 5,000 that were built killed thousands of people and could carry enough explosives to destroy several buildings.

The other five kamikaze-style doodlebugs are in museums in France, Holland, Germany, the US and Canada.

Mr Matthews said the museum's doodlebug, which is 28ft long, has a wingspan of 22ft and is fitted with an Argus 109-014 pulse jet engine, was "now in full working order".

"Although you would never get permission to fly it," he added.

SEE ALSO: Documents Reveal Hitler's Epic Rant To Senior Nazis 8 Days Before He Died

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Man Refuses To Give Up On A WWII Spitfire Hunt That's Consumed Him For Years

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Spitfire

The hunt for 36 lost RAF Spitfires at a Burmese airfield may not be completely over despite the failure to find a single rivet belonging to the aircraft.

Almost two weeks ago David Cundall’s dreams were - it seemed - about to be fulfilled.

The Lincolnshire farmer and warplane hunter had finally achieved his aim of digging at precisely the spot where he believed Spitfire after Spitfire had been buried as the RAF left Burma.

For 16 years, Mr Cundall, 62, had been convinced that dozens of Spitfires were buried in their shipping crates, including 36 at Mingaladon, a former RAF base that is now Rangoon International Airport.

This week, however, his archaeologists and the delegation sent by multi-millionaire backer who had helped fund his search will be heading home, privately accepting there are no Spitfires.

Mr Cundall himself is defiant in his belief that Burma will give up the Mark XIV Spitfires he is convinced were buried there in 1945 and 1946.

Last night he declared: “I will prove to the world that there are Spitfires down there. I am more convinced now than I have ever been before.

“Of course I am not giving up. I will politely prove my critics wrong.”

He added: “My morale now is higher than it has ever been.”

This was despite the fact that when he and the archaeologists dug an exploratory trench at Mingaladon, they found nothing.

After site observations and scouring hundreds of 1940s’ documents, the independent archaeologists concluded no Spitfires had ever been buried at Mingaladon, and suggested privately that the hunter might have swayed by servicemen’s rumours.

One member of the Wargaming delegation muttered despairingly about “white man’s folly” - but Cundall simply says that the archaeologists dug in the wrong place and gave up too early.

The moment Mr Cundall had been striving towards for more than a quarter of his lifetime seemed to have arrived when he and his team flew into Burma on January 7 - in the teeth of scepticism, but with a Burmese digging permit, and financial backing from Victor Kislyi, 36, the Belarusian behind the online computer game company Wargaming.net, who fancied a real-life “Indiana Jones adventure”.

He also brought geophysicists, old soldier Stan Coombe, 86, Cundall’s star witness, and the independent archaeologists: Martin Brown, 47, Rod Scott, 49, and their leader Andy Brockman, 51.

In the tropical heat and rising tension, *The Sunday Telegraph* found a colour code for the gravity of any situation: the pallor of Tracy Spaight, the leader of the Wargaming delegation.

A former schoolteacher who had studied the 18th Century Enlightenment to postgraduate level, he seemed to struggle to comprehend the Burmese approach to business and bureaucracy.

When the JCBs rumbled through the Mingaladon airfield gate to be stopped after five yards for want of the ’correct’ permit - Spaight’s face suggested white alert, approaching translucent.

But a ’correct’ permit was eventually obtained. The site was blessed by a Buddhist monk.

To the frustration of Cundall, who insisted he already knew where the Spitfires were, careful geophysical surveys were also conducted to identify promising digging spots.

Last Tuesday, only about a week later than Cundall expected, digging began.

And by Wednesday morning, he was convinced it was all going wrong.

“All this trowel scraping! They’re jumping up and down when they find a nail,” he said.

The archaeologists proudly held aloft a piece of pierced steel planking, (PSP) part of a makeshift wartime runway or road: clear evidence of ’conflict activity’.

Staying under the shade, representatives of Cundall’s Burmese agents, the Shwe Taung Por (STP) Group seemed bemused; PSP is the stuff that was recycled to make half the garden fences in Rangoon, including the row of houses bordering the dig site.

The Burmese also couldn’t understand the determination of these Westerners to concentrate on Mingaladon, when, with Mr Cundall’s help, they had already found and announced - what they believed was a crate containing a Spitfire at Myitkyina, in the north.

Mr Spaight, however, paled at the ramifications of digging at a military airfield close to an area of conflict with rebel groups.

And now, with the help of archive documents, the archaeologists were constructing a picture - which showed no records of any crated Spitfires arriving in Rangoon to be buried.

Mr Brockman insisted the buried Spitfires legend was “absolutely worthy of investigation.” He also suggested you might have better luck looking for Spitfires in Rangoon market.

The records showed old Mark VIIIs being broken up and sold for scrap.

“If you found an old wok, it might contain metal from a Mingaladon Spitfire.” Suddenly everyone was “backtracking”. “The archaeologists are backtracking,” said Mr Cundall.

“Cundall’s backtracking,” said a Wargaming executive.

Increasingly convinced there were no buried Spitfires, the Wargaming delegation had a plan.

They would dive in a nearby lake, encouraged by a local suggesting that a retreating American squadron dumped all sorts of things there when Rangoon fell to the Japanese in 1942.

They considered getting Scuba diving equipment from Thailand, and worried that the lake was overlooked by what appeared to be military barracks. The plan was shelved.

On Wednesday night Mr Spaight, now an alarming shade of pale, told Mr Cundall bad news. The Burmese authorities had revoked his digging permit.

They worried that digging so close to Rangoon’s only international runway might undermine it and cause a collapse.

Mr Cundall threw his hands in the air, exclaimed “We’ve lost it!” and sank into a chair with tears in his eyes.

The next morning there was a compromise. Digging could be done, but only by night, when no planes were using the runway.

But there was no digging, and instead a series of crisis meetings. Mr Spaight was ghostly.

Another grown man was crying, muttering “I believed him, I believed him. He’ll keep going and going.”

He added: “Saying the Spitfires are there, over the rainbow. It’s white man’s folly.”

As Wargaming and the archaeologists prepared to go home, they privately conceded that there are no Spitfires to be found.

They said shipping records suggest that in 1945 and 1946, when Cundall insists the planes were being buried, there were in fact no crated Spitfires arriving in Burma at all.

They also discounted Myitkyina, where Cundall and his Burmese partners insisted they had found a waterlogged crate that might contain a Spitfire.

Mr Brockman, 51, the lead archaeologist, said the timber structure at Myitkyina, whose murky interior was inconclusively filmed by Cundall’s Burmese partners using the Englishman’s car reversing camera, was probably an empty Japanese bunker.

Mr Cundall, however, remains convinced he can find Spitfires. Unmoved by the archaeologists’ arguments and the imminent departure of his Wargaming backers, he said he now planned to prove everyone wrong by going to Myitkyina and finding a Spitfire.

“Get me a digger and I will show you a Spitfire in a day,” he said.

“You will see it with your own eyes. There are 18 of them down there. I am 100 per cent certain of it.”

He claimed the archaeologists and Wargaming “took over” and dug in the wrong place at Mingaladon. The archaeologists vigorously dispute this, saying that they clearly agreed the location of the trench with him before they started digging.

Told that the archaeologists claimed that no crated Spitfires arrived in Burma in 1945 and 1946, and that the RAF actually kept meticulous records of their aircraft in Burma, Mr Cundall said: “Well, I disagree.

"There is overwhelming evidence, so many eyewitnesses but the archaeologists don’t trust eyewitnesses.”

He added that the lack of documentary records could be explained by paperwork going missing somewhere between Burma and London, and by the RAF wanting to bury the Spitfires quietly, rather than leave written evidence of what they had done.

Clearly stung by the fact that his Wargaming backers appear to have stopped believing him, Cundall said: “All of sudden everything I have done in 16 years is supposedly wrong.

“But they are basing their comments on archaeologists who say they can’t find anything about it in the records, so therefore it didn’t happen.”

He said many observers failed to understand the bureaucratic complications of digging on an active airfield in areas peppered with sensitive fibre optic cables.

“People sat in their armchairs saying 'where are these Spitfires?’ don’t’ understand the difficulties.”

He added: “I believe it is better to have tried and failed than never have tried at all.”

Although the Wargaming delegation is preparing to leave Burma, the company will continue to fund Cundall, meeting the expenses of his Myitkyina dig.

Yesterday, in what appeared to be a deliberate show of unity, the excavation team returned to the site to begin preparatory digging in Cundall’s preferred area.

Mr Spaight said digging would continue until the moment they left, which would probably be Tuesday.

He said the expedition had always been about much more than just Spitfire hunting.

“We would love to pull a Spitfire out of the ground, but we have always said this is about the story, the background, the archaeological research.

“No-one has been able to come here and dig for the archaeology before. We feel so privileged to have been given the opportunity to do so.” The imminent departure of the archaeologists and his Wargaming backers seemed to please Mr Cundall.

His buoyant morale, he explained, was because he would now be able to go to Myitkyina with his Burmese partners, but without the 21-strong entourage that was the Wargaming delegation and their archaeologists.

"There is nothing worse than having 21 'experts’ telling me how to do things in 21 different ways."

He would press on to Myitkyina “as soon as possible”. "I can’t wait," he said.

The hunt for the missing squadrons is not - yet - entirely over.

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Russia's Old Soldiers Remember The Country's Bloodiest Battle

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russian tank parade

Russia has marked the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad with memories of survivors and fallen soldiers as President Vladimir Putin warned the country can be 'invincible'.

Safron Ryzhakov, 90, did not flinch as the cannon salute rang out across Volgograd's Square of the Fallen Fighters, sending drifts of wet snow down from a roof onto the crowds below.

"The worst thing was the German artillery strikes," he told The Sunday Telegraph as he peered through rheumy eyes at the phalanxes of soldiers marching by the tribune. "They worked us over good and proper. I lost many friends."

Seventy years to the day, this southern Russian city – once called Stalingrad – on Saturday commemorated the end of the battle that turned the course of the Second World War. More than one million soldiers perished here in five months of bombing and fierce house-to-house fighting.

The victory of Soviet forces in a clash of appalling terror and violence turned the tide of Adolf Hitler's war in Europe, forcing the retreat that would eventually send German troops all the way back to Berlin.

President Vladimir Putin flew in to Volgograd to honour the dead on Saturday afternoon, after a military parade of 650 soldiers had passed through the city centre followed by a veteran T-34 tank puffing blue fumes.

A handful of elderly veterans, some smothered in medals, came to watch the march past – braving cold and slush to celebrate victory and honour their fallen comrades, who fell in one of the greatest pitched battles in history. In another decade there may be none of them left.

"Stalingrad will forever remain a symbol of unity and invincibility of our people, a symbol of genuine patriotism, a symbol of the greatest victory of the Soviet liberator soldier," Mr Putin said at an evening commemorative concert. "And as long as we are devoted to Russia, our language, culture, roots and national memory, Russia will be invincible."

Mr Ryzhakov's Soviet 321st Division helped protect the pincer movement that encircled and crushed the German Sixth Army to the west of Stalingrad, leading to the final capitulation of General Friedrich Paulus's troops on February 2, 1943. He recalls fighting Italian and Romanian troops, as well as Germans. "That sticks in my mind most of all: the pale blue dress uniforms of the Italians lying dead, scattered in the snow," he said.

Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, his surprise invasion of the Soviet Union, in June 1941 and 14 months later Panzer companies had reached the Volga.

The Battle of Stalingrad would be a decisive moment for both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army: a furnace in which the future course of war was forged.

By summer 1942, Paulus's Sixth Army had struck deep into the Soviet heartland, winning battle after battle. But the German soldiers were already feeling the strain. The retreating Red Army poisoned wells and poured petrol on supplies of grain: there was a constant, wracking thirst, and cases of dysentery and typhus began to rise.

Still, the Nazis advanced across the Don and on Aug 23 Stalingrad became an inferno as Heinkel bombers dropped thousands of tonnes of explosives on the city. An estimated 40,000 people died in the first week of bombardment.

"The first three days were a slaughter," recalled Petr Kovalenko, 85, pointing down the road from the tribune on the Square of Fallen Fighters. "I was standing in a bread queue just over there when the bombs hit. There was a hum in the sky and you looked up and there was an armada of planes. A piece of shrapnel hit me in the back."

Soon the German forces were inside the city and Hitler had such high hopes for a swift victory that Josef Goebbels had to tone down propaganda, emphasising the toughness of the fighting.

Soviet forces gave desperate resistance, refusing to relinquish their hold on three beachheads and withdraw to the east bank of the Volga, knowing that if the Wehrmacht crossed the river, southern Russia and the Caucasus would be in Hitler's grasp. Josef Stalin ordered "not one step back" and General Vasily Chuykov, the Soviet army commander in the city, told his soldiers to dig trenches as close as possible – sometimes 30 yards - from German positions, keeping the aggressor constantly under stress and guarding against air strikes.

In another canny move, Chuykov created "breakwaters"– buildings among the ruins that were occupied by small detachments of troops, who held them like fortresses to disrupt the advancing German units. The battle soon descended into "Rattenkrieg", as the German soldiers called it – rats' war, a grinding struggle fought out in cellars, basements and shattered shops.

Red Army snipers such as Vasily Zaytsev – played by Jude Law in the Hollywood film Enemy at the Gates– notched up scores of kills. Meanwhile, Soviet artillery kept up a constant artillery barrage from across the river, answering similarly ferocious firing from the west.

Worn down and surrounded by a Soviet counter attack north and south of the city, Paulus finally capitulated, infuriating Hitler by giving himself up rather than fighting to the death or committing suicide. Ninety-one thousand Axis soldiers surrendered.

After 70 years, the victory at Stalingrad remains burned into the national psyche as an emblem of grit and defiance. It is also a powerful motivator for Mr Putin, who is given to hinting darkly at foreign states plotting Russia's downfall.

"Today we are putting huge resources into the rebirth of the Russian defence industry," Dmitry Rogozin, a deputy prime minister and hawkish ally of the president, told the crowd of 20,000 at the parade.

"Every enemy must see that, understand that, feel that. Let anybody who thinks of plans to seize our country remember Stalingrad." As if to underline his words, a pair of new truck-mounted Iskander ballistic missile units stood parked at the end of the square, with more rocket launchers and tanks on display behind them.

The patriotic theme continued on Mamayev Kurgan, the ancient Tartar burial mound in Volgograd topped by a giant statue of Mother Russia waving a sword. By her feet lie tens of thousands of Stalingrad in mass graves. A stream of mourners climbed the steps to lay carnations at the statue and an eternal flame in the nearby Hall of Military Glory.

Among them were activists from the ruling United Russia party, Mr Putin's legislative sledgehammer in parliament. They carried a banner reading, "We are proud of the past and we believe in the future".

"I just saw a veteran pour a glass of vodka on General Chuykov's grave and drink a second one in tribute, breaking down in tears," said Alexei Sharbelsky, 44, a party worker. "We must preserve this memory and emotion of Stalingrad, and pass it from generation to generation."

Units of Cossacks in shaggy hats filed past and children posed for photographs by the graves of heroes. Many people spoke together of whether the name Stalingrad – removed in 1961 - should be returned to the city. In recent weeks, 50,000 of the city's residents signed a petition in favour of the change.

Vladimir Kazachkov, 75, was – unsurprisingly - in favour of giving Josef Stalin's name back to the town. He stood nearby holding up a portrait of the dictator. Underneath was written: "Today is a Day of Victory and Stalin is the Supreme Commander in Chief of the Victors.""You can't cut down trees without woodchips flying," said Mr Kazachkov, who was five at the time of the battle and hid in a cellar under his parents' kitchen.

"Stalin made some mistakes, he killed some people, but he won the war and rebuilt the country. And people here fought for Stalingrad, not Volgograd."

Away from Mamayev Kurgan, down below the hill and across the railway tracks, Valentina Savelyeva, 75, was spending the day in quiet reflection at her ramshackle house at 1 Kubinskaya Street.

Mrs Savelyeva was five years old when the bombs started raining down in 1942. Her father Timofey was away at the front; first near Moscow and then in Stalingrad, manning an anti-aircraft gun on an island in the middle of the Volga as the Germans planes swept overhead.

"Father came home just once and told us, "We will stay and die in our city'," remembered Mrs Savelyeva. She would never see him again. In September 1942, her two-year old brother Gennady died of diphtheria as the intensity of the battle increased, and hunger and disease began to take hold of the thousands of civilians who remained in the city. She and her mother and grandmother abandoned their home a month later – it was soon swept from its foundations and left in a crumpled heap by the force of an explosion.

The three of them dragged a sack of potatoes and a few possessions to a ravine that cut down to the river near the Red October steel plant.

"The oil tanks nearby had been hit and the Volga was a sheet of fire," Mrs Savelyeva recalled. Irregular soldiers had burrowed into the side of the ravine, creating tiny living spaces, each with a front door ripped from a ruined house.

"We crouched in the burrow, peeping out," said Mrs Savelyeva. "The potatoes lasted as week. When the incendiary bombs fell we would rush out and cook them on the flames."

After that the family survived for three months by eating lumps of clay from the river bank. "It was slightly sweet and I would suck on it all day long. My mother collected water from the Volga. There was blood floating downstream. She would crouch down and skim it away with her hand, and then filter the water into a saucepan with a piece of cloth."

The aerial bombardments were unremitting. Once, Mrs Savelyeva and her grandmother were trapped as their burrow was covered by debris. A group of Soviet soldiers poked their rifles through the earth to locate the door and then dug the pair out with their trowels.

On another occasion a family who had carved out a larger bunker all asphyxiated when it was buried in an explosion.

"I'll never forget the moment when the bodies were dug out," said Mrs Savelyeva. "There was girl a little older than me. She had clumps of hair in her hands that had she torn out in desperation as she choked to death."

Not until three years ago did she find out the fate and final resting place of her father. Military records, only recently made widely available, show he died near the Volga on October 16th, 1942, and was later reburied with tens of thousands of others in a mass grave on Mamayev Kurgan.

"I lived here all my life, close to the Kurgan, and I never knew he was just up the hill," said Mrs Savelyeva. "I'm still alive and I'm glad my father's name will live in stone. But I feel an emptiness inside."

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