It's surreal to read this thread full of WWII aircraft used in a game while reading a three book historical series on WWII. You know, the real one.
Last night was the story of a British armored car driver who's entire crew was killed by a Panzer 88mm shell and who was found sitting in the driver's seat with both feet sheared off by another. In typical British understated fashion, he thanked his rescuers and complained, "If I only had one foot I could have driven back myself."
He died from hours of blood loss and shock an hour later, and is buried in a small town a few miles outside of Tunis.
The descriptions of what it was like to have 88mm shells rip by at chest height (sometimes disintegrating a poor squishy human who got in the way) as it headed for a woefully unprepared American tank force who had already nicknamed their tanks "Ronsons" after the lighter and lighter fluid company for their flammability, sounds downright disheartening and freaky. Modern artillery and the forces involved when a shell that big hits something, are frighteningly impressive.
One U.S. Tanker who's tank took a near-miss from an 88mm down the side if the turret described how he watched as a trench the size of half of an 88mm shell pushed into the side of his tank and made the armor plating glow instantaneously white hot and then drop to a hot red glow that warmed that whole side of his body as it cooled. And technically the German Tiger missed. Six more inches to the center and it would have been inside with whatever was left of him.
These weren't high-explosive rounds either. Just a really large piece of metal flung at really high speeds.
Infantrymen said the low whump and crack of the air they made going by at chest height could leave you breathless if they were close enough. Good lord.
Other interesting and lighter things... I never knew the Allies dug out tons of tunnels to use as military headquarters inside the Rock of Gibraltar, nor that Eisenhower had a strange infection that caused him to have a bunch of extra mucus for a year and a half after he left the wet cold tunnels and moved his command post into Algiers after the Allies landed (very badly) in North Africa.
Also never knew Ike wanted a Staff of no more than 150 at his Algiers HQ which he couldn't control and grew to 400, and them to well over 2000 officers inhabiting virtually every building in Algiers as the War went on. No Army can function without paperwork and piles and piles of it.
They don't ever seem to put "rubber stamp desk pounder" missions in the video games. Heh.
