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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Friday, December 22, 2017 10:04 AM

54light15

Yeah, and the army officer who was told that aircraft were approaching Oahu said, "Don't worry about it., It's probably B-17s froom the States."  Nope. 

 
And if what I've read is correct, some of those B-17's showed up at about the same time as the first wave of the Japanese attack.
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Posted by DSchmitt on Friday, December 22, 2017 11:46 AM

tree68

 

 
BaltACD
My Father-in-Law (RIP) was in the Navy and served on a PBY observation/patro plane in the Carribean - he swore to his dying day that they saw and attacked a Japanese submarine on one of their patrols.

 

I would not be surprised if he was telling the truth.  I'm sure something like that was kept pretty quiet.  And recall that the Navy duty officer at Pearl didn't believe the skipper of the Ward, either...

A family friend (and I think he was related to my step-grandfather) spent time in a German POW camp.  I'm told he said that "Stalag 13" was fairly accurate, including the hilarity that occasionally occured.  They didn't assign the "best and the brightest" to the camps.

 

 

     

 

Some Japanese transport subs did sail between Japan and Germany. The US navy sunk I52 (Japanese sub) in the south Atlantic.

Also there is a Japanese sub on display in Seawolf park Galveston TX.    (I was not able to confirm this from other sources)      

 

According to    http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=103767

       

 

 

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Posted by 54light15 on Friday, December 22, 2017 12:55 PM

German subs traveled up the St. Lawrence river almost as far they could. One sank the ferry boat to Newfoundland. The Caribou, I think it was called. In one of Lowell Thomas's books about German subs in the First World War, a sub came into New York Harbour in 1916. They surfaced and the crew came out on deck and the general feeling was, "Let's tie up the boat and go over there, the hell with the war. " But duty called and they went back out to sea.

In the Second World War, This may be B.S. but bodies of German submariners were found on Fire Island. In thier pockets were bar receipts and ticket stubs from various places in Manhattan. Maybe that's true, but it's a heck of a story. Don't recall where I read it. 

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Posted by jeffhergert on Friday, December 22, 2017 3:23 PM

https://www.pacificwrecks.com/ships/

This website has a listing of lost ships of all combatants in the Pacific.  It has the I-52 sunk west of the Cape Verde islands.  According to this site, no fleet size Japanese subs are displayed anywhere, but midget submarines are displayed, including one in Texas.  The Texas boat was salvaged from Pearl Harbor.

The real prison camp near Hammelburg I beleive was 13-B, but I don't have my books with me to confirm.  I don't think it was a Luft-Stalag, or at least not completely airmen.  It wasn't on Patton's Third Army direct drive, but he did send a mission to try to liberate the camp.  His son-in-law was a prisoner whom I recall was captured in North Africa. The mission didn't suceed.

Tree, are you sure he meant Stalag 13?  While I enjoy Hogan's Heroes, their conditions (nevermind their underground operations) were a lot better than accounts I have read.  I think he may have meant "Stalag 17".  A play and later a movie (which Hogan's Heroes is loosely based on) about POWs in Germany.  One of my favorite movies.

Jeff 

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Posted by tree68 on Friday, December 22, 2017 3:26 PM

jeffhergert
Tree, are you sure he meant Stalag 13?  While I enjoy Hogan's Heroes, their conditions (nevermind their underground operations) were a lot better than accounts I have read.  I think he may have meant "Stalag 17"

Could be - I wasn't sure of the name of the movie and 13 stuck in my head for some reason.  I don't know that he was alive when "Hogan's Heros" was on the air.

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Posted by ORNHOO on Friday, December 22, 2017 6:20 PM

The real prison camp near Hammelburg I beleive was 13-B, but I don't have my books with me to confirm.  I don't think it was a Luft-Stalag, or at least not completely airmen.  It wasn't on Patton's Third Army direct drive, but he did send a mission to try to liberate the camp.  His son-in-law was a prisoner whom I recall was captured in North Africa. The mission didn't suceed.

Jeff 

 

[/quote]

I think he was referring to this camp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_XIII-C

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Posted by Convicted One on Friday, December 22, 2017 10:11 PM

BaltACD

Just watched an episode of 'Big Valley' from 1966 'Last Train to the Fair'.

Departure from realities.

....

 

You really think that ranchers in the 19th century American west all  had perfectly placed hair, freshly pressed clothing, and flawless teeth?

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Posted by 54light15 on Saturday, December 23, 2017 1:01 PM

Well, I did read about it in a book that I have called "The Colditz Myth" which has a map of the main British POW camps and it's called XIII13C. 

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Posted by DSchmitt on Saturday, December 23, 2017 2:27 PM

jeffhergert
https://www.pacificwrecks.com/ships/ This website has a listing of lost ships of all combatants in the Pacific.  It has the I-52 sunk west of the Cape Verde islands. 

So it was sunk  off the coast of Africa in the North Atlantic not South Atlantic. 

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Posted by DSchmitt on Saturday, December 23, 2017 2:38 PM

A few years ago I saw a post (Don't remember if it was Trains or ww2 forum) about several German officers being transfered from one POW camp to another. It said they were given train tickets and traveled unescorted. During the trip, if asked, the claimed to be Dutch.

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Posted by Sunnyland on Thursday, December 28, 2017 3:19 PM

for sure, Hollywood takes liberties with all kinds of history.  A friend who saw Unstoppable and took physics said if train went around a curve like that at the end with wheels raising, they'd fall over.  I still enjoy the movie and seeing trains, so I just tune a lot of it out.  Two of Dad's fav movies was The Train and Von Ryan's Express, I have both on VHS tape, good stories and good shots of trains.  My parents and I all were disgusted at Jane Fonda's behavior in Hanoi. When I watched the PBS Ken Burns special on Vietnam, some of the guys interviewed  said that really hurt.  They all adored her and for her to be so disrespectful toward them was something they never forgot.  My Dad never saw another movie with her in it and to this day, I still don't like her.  Met a guy who was Nam vet and he said his VFW post has her picture in the urinal.  Dad would have loved it.  

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Posted by seppburgh2 on Thursday, December 28, 2017 6:56 PM
"The Train" starring Burt Lancaster as an SNCF engineer was a great RR movie with SNCF steam last hooray.  The most amazing scene is the derailment where the spinning pilot wheel locomotive comes to rest above a camera.  That shot was pure happenstance.  In setting up the cameras, there was one extra so in a “why not moment” that camera was set up in a hole facing the rails.  Never figuring that camera would capture anything.
Well, after the noise of the derailment calm down, the director and crew were amazed to hear the camera still running in the hole.  Wow, of all the different angles filmed of the derailment, this was the most dynamic and made the cut..

Well worth a view and a bucket of popcorn!    

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Posted by Paul_D_North_Jr on Friday, December 29, 2017 6:44 AM

54light15
. . . And did General Mcauliffe really say, "Nuts!" I would think he said something a little more...you know. 

I thought that too, but here's this from Wikipedia: 

"The choice of "Nuts!" rather than something earthier was typical for McAuliffe. Vincent Vicari, his personal aide at the time, recalled that "General Mac was the only general I ever knew who did not use profane language. 'Nuts' was part of his normal vocabulary."[6]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_McAuliffe 

Also from that entry:

"A southern extension of Route 33 in eastern Northampton County, Pennsylvania, completed in 2002,[11] was named the Gen. Anthony Clement McAuliffe 101st Airborne Memorial Highway.[12]

That's about 20 miles from me, and I drive that limited access road a few times each year.  I have no idea why it's named after him - no local connection of which I'm aware - other than to honor a WWII hero, which at the time may not have been done anyplace else in the U.S. (looks like a few places have been named after him since then). 

- PDN. 

"This Fascinating Railroad Business" (title of 1943 book by Robert Selph Henry of the AAR)
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Posted by wanswheel on Friday, December 29, 2017 12:29 PM
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Posted by wanswheel on Friday, December 29, 2017 12:35 PM
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Posted by Maine_Central_guy on Friday, January 12, 2018 5:47 PM

Whistlingyall haven mentioned 'atomic train' yet

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Posted by tree68 on Friday, January 12, 2018 6:24 PM

Maine_Central_guy

Whistlingyall haven mentioned 'atomic train' yet

And I know exactly where that ALCO locomotive from the movie is currently running...

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Posted by Overmod on Friday, January 12, 2018 6:41 PM

tree68
And I know exactly where that ALCO locomotive from the movie is currently running...

What ALCO locomotive is that?  I only remember MLW units being used (and a pathetic waste of perfectly good locomotives, too!) and there ARE important  differences.

 

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Posted by tree68 on Friday, January 12, 2018 7:09 PM

Overmod
What ALCO locomotive is that?  I only remember MLW units being used (and a pathetic waste of perfectly good locomotives, too!) and there ARE important  differences.  

Gotta give you that one.  Although about the only place you'll see MLW is on the builder's plates - everything else says "ALCO."  Same with the RS18u's on the Adirondack.

MWHA 642, nee MWHA 2042, nee BCR 642.  Probably the only repainted DL locomotive not in DL's grey and white.  There are still several other MLWs on the line still in BCR green and green.

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Posted by 54light15 on Wednesday, May 23, 2018 5:03 PM

Back to Hollywood. I just watched "Something to Sing About" with the always-superb Jimmy Cagney. It's filmed in 1937 and he takes what I assume is the Super Chief to Los Angeles. It has early EMD power in the Santa Fe Warbonnet scheme and stainless-steel coaches  too. A great film, like all of Cagney's. 

Recall how he dances down the stairs in "Yankee Doodle Dandy?" He does that in this film and then dances UP the stairs. There's also a scene of him dancing on a floor keyboard just like Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia in "Big." Must have been the inspiration for that. 

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Thursday, May 24, 2018 7:05 AM

Just saw a rerun of "Criminal Minds", the second episode with Frank and Jane.  The train station is supposed to be Washington but the scenes were actually shot in LA Union Station and it's pretty obvious.  My wife and I went through LA Union Station last year on our circle trip and she recognized LA without any trouble, either.

The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it. Paul
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Posted by 54light15 on Thursday, May 24, 2018 9:41 AM

The film "Union Station" with William Holden was filmed at Los Angeles and also in the Chicago underground freight railway in later scenes. 

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Posted by BaltACD on Thursday, May 24, 2018 10:25 AM

54light15
Back to Hollywood. I just watched "Something to Sing About" with the always-superb Jimmy Cagney. It's filmed in 1937 and he takes what I assume is the Super Chief to Los Angeles. It has early EMD power in the Santa Fe Warbonnet scheme and stainless-steel coaches  too. A great film, like all of Cagney's. 

The 1937 Super Chief was all Pullman.

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by 54light15 on Thursday, May 24, 2018 10:32 AM

The 1937 Super Chief was all Pullman.

That was the way to travel! To have a brand-new Cord 812 to run around California in would have made it even better! 

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Posted by Firelock76 on Friday, May 25, 2018 8:19 PM

Well, I was fooling around on the You Tube last night, and found a REAL anachronism.

It was a premiere episode of the 1964 TV series "Peyton Place."  It starts with one of the characters coming home on a train  to the aforementioned town, and there's a great run-by shot of the passenger train, pulled by a steam engine.

In 1964.  Don't we wish?

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Posted by Convicted One on Tuesday, May 29, 2018 8:55 PM

54light15
came through a tunnel and the tank blasted its boiler and it blew up with a cloud of steam. I was nine years old and I knew that was nonsense.

Just watched "Battle of the Bulge" twice this weekend. What is it exactly about that sequence you find hard to believe?

Yes, there is caternary above the track, but the locomotive is definitely a reciprocating piston  steam engine....chugging smokestack, steam whistle, the whole 9 yards.

I doubt seriously that the tank would have survived the ordeal, but the movie never shows anything beyond the smoke and steam billowing out of the tunnel, so either way they leave that to the imagination.

I had a harder time with the movie's claim of a 50 hour "game clock" marshalling the action. The real battle spanned over weeks. 

I had two uncles that fought it that battle. One was serving under Patton, the other was part of the American detachment serving under Montgomery. The two "found" each other in the same foxhole, after months apart. That seems harder to believe to me, but it happened.

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Posted by Shadow the Cats owner on Wednesday, May 30, 2018 9:00 AM

The Battle of the Bulge when it started the Germans had enough fuel to do a nonstop attack against us for 100 hours.  They needed to reach Antwerp in that timeframe.  If they failed the entire attack failed.  

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Posted by 54light15 on Wednesday, May 30, 2018 1:33 PM

It's been at least 50 years since I saw the film, but I sure don't recall seeing a steam locomotive in it. Some flatcars with artillery on them but that's all. I could be wrong, however. The real thing is, was a train attempting to reach Bastogne in 1944? 

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Posted by Convicted One on Wednesday, May 30, 2018 6:09 PM

I actually encounter a lot of movies with pretty good train sequences in them. Movies you hardly if ever see mentioned here on this forum.   The 1952 movie "Narrow Margin" for example. Or the 1954 Frank Sinatra classic "Suddenly".

At times I consider posting reference to such movies here, just to see how others might enjoy them also, rather than just continuing to drag out the same handful of movies over and over again just to complain about the same inconsistencies as was mentioned last time.  But then I remember that these perennial critics actually derive their pleasure from raining on someone elses parade, so I don't bother out of concern that their responses might just sour the movie for me as well. "Better not to know" sometimes? 

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Posted by Convicted One on Thursday, May 31, 2018 6:23 AM

54light15
. The real thing is, was a train attempting to reach Bastogne in 1944? 

 

Well,.....you know how "trendy" real estate can be. Once demand for a location is established, then "everybody" wants to go there. Laugh

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