Lakesidetrader

Holding History in your Hands. "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Dedicated to Buying, Selling & Trading Military Collectables.

[Military History Now @MilHistNow]

On this day in 1939, Germany invades Poland. The resulting world war, which continues for six years, eventually draws in 70 countries and claims the lives of untold millions.

[Wolf of X @WolfofX]

In 1944, during the Battle of Saipan, U.S. Marine Marvin Strombo took a silk Japanese flag from the body of a fallen soldier named Sadao Yasue.

The flag was no ordinary souvenir. It was a Yosegaki Hinomaru, covered with handwritten messages from Sadao's family and friends, all wishing him a safe journey home.

Strombo carried it back to America, but he never thought of it as a trophy. Before leaving the battlefield, he made himself a quiet promise that one day, if he ever had the chance, he would return it to the family it belonged to.

Seventy three years later, at the age of 93, he flew nearly 10,000 miles to Japan and placed the flag into the hands of Sadao's younger brother.

It was the first belonging from Sadao that his family had seen since he left for war. His remains were never found.

For the Yasue family, it felt as though a part of their brother had finally come home.

A promise made on a battlefield in 1944 was finally kept in 2017, proving that even after decades of silence, one act of compassion can still bring peace to a family that never stopped waiting.

[Dr Helen Fry | WWII Historian @DrHelenFry]

Audie Murphy, America’s most decorated WWII soldier, was a 5'5" farm boy who single-handedly held off an entire German company in France for over an hour by standing on a burning tank destroyer to fire its machine gun.

He later became a Hollywood actor!

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Hardcore

[God & Country @GodandCountryy]

We don’t know them all but we owe them all.

[Jeremy Wayne Tate @JeremyTate41]

A WWII veteran returns to Utah Beach, the Normandy shore where D-Day unfolded. This Memorial Day, we remember the Americans who never came home, the heroes who gave everything so we could be free.

[ArchaeoHistories @histories_arch]

A 1000 years before modern metallurgy existed, Viking blacksmiths were somehow forging steel so pure it should have been impossible...

Ulfberht sword is one of greatest unsolved mysteries in the history of warfare and craftsmanship. Since first examples were discovered, archaeologists and metallurgists have been left completely baffled by what these blades represent. Over 170 swords bearing the runic-style inscription "+VLFBERHT+" have been recovered from sites scattered across Europe, with the majority found in Rhine River valley, Scandinavia, and as far east as Russia. They date primarily from around 800-1000 AD, placing them squarely in the heart of the Viking Age.

What makes these swords extraordinary is not their age or their ornate design. It is what they are made of. When scientists subjected Ulfberht blades to modern metallurgical analysis, the results were shocking. The steel contains a carbon content of up to 1.0 percent, classifying it as true crucible steel, sometimes called wootz steel. Crucible steel is forged at temperatures exceeding 1,600 degrees Celsius, hot enough to fully liquify the iron and allow slag and impurities to float away from the metal completely. The result is a blade with almost zero impurities, extraordinary flexibility, and a strength that far surpassed anything else available in medieval Europe at the time.

Here is the problem... European blacksmiths of the Viking Age did not have the technology to reach those temperatures. The standard method used across Europe during this period was bloomery smelting, which produced a metal called wrought iron filled with slag and impurities. To remove those impurities, smiths had to laboriously fold and hammer the metal repeatedly, a process that helped but never fully eliminated the problem. The resulting weapons were brittle by comparison, prone to bending or snapping under the stress of combat. Soldiers often had to stop mid-battle to straighten their swords by hand or under their foot. An Ulfberht blade would never require that.

The knowledge and equipment needed to consistently produce crucible steel of this quality was not independently developed in Europe until the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, roughly 800 to 900 years after the Ulfberht swords were being made. The only comparable steel being produced during the Viking Age came from workshops in Central Asia and Persia, particularly in regions near modern-day Iran and Afghanistan, where craftsmen had mastered crucible steel techniques centuries earlier.

This has led researchers to one of the most compelling theories surrounding the mystery. Viking traders and warriors had extensive contact with the Islamic world through the Volga trade routes, exchanging furs, amber, and slaves for silver and goods from the East. It is entirely possible that Ulfberht steel was imported raw from Central Asian or Persian sources and then worked by Frankish or Scandinavian smiths who understood how to shape it but did not fully understand how to produce it themselves. The name Ulfberht itself appears to be Frankish in origin, suggesting the swords were likely produced in the Frankish regions of what is now Germany or France.

What deepens mystery further is that researchers have identified two distinct categories of Ulfberht swords. The genuine high-carbon crucible steel versions represent the minority. Majority of 170 plus recovered blades are actually crude imitations, made from inferior bloomery iron and bearing a slightly different spelling of inscription, with the crosses positioned differently. This tells us that even during Viking Age, counterfeiters existed. Ulfberht name carried such enormous prestige and commanded such high prices that lesser smiths were willing to forge inscription onto inferior blades to deceive buyers. Owning a real Ulfberht sword would have been the equivalent of carrying a weapon of legend, a status symbol as much as a tool of survival.

#archaeohistories

[Roman History @romanhistory1]

Happy birthday Rome. Rome was founded on 21 April 753BC

[Military Support @MilitaryCooI]

100-year-old WWII veteran Anthony DeMarco took this flag from a fallen Japanese soldier on Tinian. DeMarco served in A Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division. His service took him to the islands of Saipan and Tinian, where he saw combat as part of his company's mortar section.

🎥 BenMarkJackson

[Military History Now @MilHistNow]

Soldiers from Canada in action around the Falaise Pocket in France. August, 1944. A million Canadians served in the Second World War. That's out of a total population then of just 11 million.

[Marc J. Randazza 🇺🇸 🇮🇹 🇧🇷 @marcorandazza]

Stan Nelson. Last survivor of D-Day.

[Love Classical Music and Movies 🎺🎻💖🎥🎬 @AlexTran677026]

Do you know this legendary movie?

[ABMC @usabmc]

Dec. 16, 1944 - Deep in the Ardennes Forest, one of the most brutal battles of World War II began — the Battle of the Bulge.

Adolf Hitler’s last-ditch effort to split the Allied lines, this surprise attack by roughly 250,000 German troops created a bulge in the American front.

Caught off guard, U.S. forces faced freezing temperatures, challenging terrain, and relentless enemy fire.

For more than a month, 600,000 American soldiers fought through snow and ice. By the end, thousands of Americans had given their lives in what British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared as “undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war.”

By late January 1945, American resilience turned the tide. The Allies held firm, breaking the German advance and sealing the fate of the Third Reich.

The Battle of the Bulge remains a testament to American courage, sacrifice, and determination in the fight for freedom.

[Military History Now @MilHistNow]

On this day in 1937, Nanjing falls to the Japanese army. Over the coming weeks, the occupiers will slaughter tens of thousands of the city's civilian inhabitants. Some peg the death toll as high as 300,000. Historians will refer to the massacre as the "Rape of Nanking."

[Military History Now @MilHistNow]

On this day in 1944, Patton breaks thru Germany's Siegfried Line. "Fixed fortifications are a monument to man's stupidity."

[Dreams N Science @dreamsNscience]

This is how World War II planes fired bullets without destroying the propeller!

🎥 technology_elm

[PEAK @Filmfanatics__]

This scene 💔

[hw97karbine @hw97karbine]

British sergeant with a captured Japanese sword and cap in Burma in May 1945

[War Monitor Clips @WarMonitorClips]

Pershing vs Panther, Cologne tank duel 1945