On June 25, 1942, an American submarine took a photograph through its periscope that would become one of the most famous images of the entire war: a Japanese destroyer caught at the exact instant it was sinking. But the submarine that took it, the USS Nautilus, already had a remarkable story behind it, and that story starts a few weeks earlier.
Nautilus was one of the US Navy's big, older boats, a long range submarine commanded by a sharp and aggressive officer named William Brockman. At the Battle of Midway in early June 1942, Nautilus had thrown itself right into the middle of the Japanese fleet. Brockman fired at Japanese warships, got spotted, and drew a furious depth charging in return. The Japanese destroyer Arashi was left behind to hunt and kill him while the rest of the fleet steamed on.
Here is the twist that ties it all together. Once Arashi finished dropping depth charges on Nautilus and figured it had done its job, it raced off at high speed to catch back up with the Japanese carriers. An American dive bomber commander named Wade McClusky, lost and low on fuel and desperately searching empty ocean, happened to spot Arashi's long white wake cutting across the sea and decided to follow it like an arrow. That wake led him straight to the Japanese carriers, and minutes later American bombers tore three of them apart in the strike that decided Midway. So the same submarine in our June 25 story had, weeks earlier, unintentionally helped hand the United States the most important naval victory of the Pacific war just by surviving.
Then came June 25. Nautilus, now operating in dangerous waters close to the Japanese home islands southeast of Yokosuka, picked up the destroyer Yamakaze, a modern warship built in the late 1930s. Brockman maneuvered into position, stayed hidden, and fired. The torpedo struck home and the Yamakaze went down quickly, taking essentially her entire crew of more than two hundred men with her.
What makes this sinking legendary is the photograph. As the destroyer was going under, the crew of Nautilus captured the moment through the submarine's periscope. The image is haunting in how clean and calm it looks: a warship caught at the exact instant of its death, photographed by an enemy the dying sailors could not see and never had a chance to fight. That picture later ran in Life magazine and became one of the defining images of submarine warfare, because it captured the whole terrifying nature of it. There was no duel, no exchange of fire, no warning. Just a hidden hunter, a single torpedo, and a ship full of men gone in minutes.
It was a small action by the numbers, one destroyer against one submarine. But coming right on the heels of Midway, it was another sign that the war beneath the waves had become one of the deadliest and most one sided forms of fighting in the entire Pacific, and that Japan's ships were no longer safe even in their own front yard.
Un 24 de Junio de 1945, se celebró el primer desfile en honor a la victoria del pueblo soviético sobre los nazis en la Plaza Roja de Moscú.
Más de 200 estandartes nazis fueron arrojados a los pies del Mausoleo de Lenin como símbolo de la derrota del nazismo ante el comunismo.
Más de 31.000 soldados soviéticos marcharon victoriosos, organizados por regimientos que representaban los distintos frentes de la guerra, algunos aún heridos de la batalla, protagonizaron el desfile más emotivo de la historia militar.
La última fotografía del Almirante Isoroku Yamamoto, tomada en Rabaul justo antes de que fuera derribado y asesinado en abril de 1943, siempre me ha fascinado. Yamamoto, Comandante en Jefe de la Armada Imperial Japonesa y autor intelectual de Pearl Harbor, fue asesinado el 18 de abril de 1943, durante la Operación Venganza... una misión precisa de los EE. UU. para interceptar y derribar su avión sobre Bougainville en las Islas Salomón. Un final trágico para uno de los mayores genios militares y almirantes de Japón.
85 years ago, on June 22, 1941, at exactly 4:15 AM Moscow time, more than 3 million German soldiers opened artillery fire and began pouring into the Soviet Union. Operation Barbarossa, the greatest invasion in human history, had officially begun.
Almost four years later, at the cost of 27 million Soviet lives, Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and the rest of the German scum would be dead, and the flag of workers and peasants would fly high over the Reichstag in central Berlin.
The Third Reich didn't TOLERATE J*wish control.
The Third Reich didn't TOLERATE Degeneracy.
The Third Reich didn't TOLERATE barbarity.
The Third Reich didn't TOLERATE Race mixing.
The Third Reich didn't TOLERATE capitalist greed.
The Third Reich didn't TOLERATE political disunity.
The Third Reich didn't TOLERATE treasonous speech.
The Third Reich didn't TOLERATE falsity in Newspapers.
The Third Reich didn't TOLERATE mass immigration.
The Third Reich didn't TOLERATE rampant unemployment.
The Third Reich didn't TOLERATE anti-Christian sentiment.
The Third Reich didn't TOLERATE the communist agenda.
The Third Reich didn't TOLERATE weakness.
And yet, our modern society accepts ALL OF THOSE THINGS now.
After everything, I believe I can safely say...
I'd rather be speaking German.
Normandia, D-Day czerwiec 1944. Amerykanie umacniają przyczółek. Widoczna jest skala największej operacji desantowej w historii. W tle niemieccy jeńcy pod strażą. Ciekawy detal: po bliskim wybuchu większość z nich instynktownie pada lub kuli się – jeden stoi niemal nieruchomo.