History is like this.
My grandfather knew one veteran, grandfather Vanya. Once they were sitting with the peasants and with this grandfather Vanya, drinking on May 9, celebrating the holiday. And grandfather Vanya, already solidly drunk, seriously says: “Now I will tell you guys how I “died” in the war.” Story from his face.
Believe it or not, I'll tell you what I saw. I had my first fight, I was 19 then. Bullets whistle, heads cannot be raised, and the battalion commander shouts: “Attack!” Somehow I got out and ran after everyone. I run, yelling with all my might: “Hurrah!”, It seems that it’s not so scary when you yell. From left to right, ours are falling ... And I can already see the enemy's trench. I kicked in the run ... and then it was as if someone poked me in the chest with a fist - briefly like that, and immediately it became cold in my chest. I fell, I was surprised: who hit me, there seemed to be no German nearby. He touched his chest - a hand in the blood. "Does that mean it hurt me?" I wanted to jump up - no way, my arms and legs do not obey, I just lie with my head and turn in all directions. Then somehow he stopped hearing (although everything around him screamed and thumped), it was difficult to breathe, his eyes closed. Well, I think I'll lie down for now, if I don't die, I'll get up. And he seemed to fall asleep.
Then suddenly I realized that I was already on my feet. I think: “In, alive, thank God.” I looked around - it’s already quieter, ours are visible somewhere in the distance, which means that the Fritz were knocked out of the trenches and driven further. Let's catch up with ours. What about a rifle? I look, some one of us lies nearby, his head is covered in blood. Well, I picked up his rifle and ran... And then, guys, believe it or not... I'm running, but I don't have a rifle in my hands. Even though I took it. Well, that means I hurried, returned, grab it, but I can’t take a rifle. I still, once again grab - and I can’t take it, somehow my hand passes by and that’s it. I did not understand anything. I sat down on the ground and I'm sitting, what I'm waiting for - it's not clear.
Here our group is walking, the officer is leading, they are going far, but I see the lieutenant's shoulder straps (I immediately began to see somehow very sharply). They are looking for the living. I run to them, yelling: "Brothers! .." But they do not hear. I ran up to them, I salute, I say: "Comrade lieutenant, but I'm alive, only wounded." And they, men ... they, such bastards, pass through me. I got angry, let's catch up, grab them by the shoulders. And again, the hand is like with a rifle, only it passes through the air, but I can’t touch them. And so, you know, only half a centimeter is not enough to touch, and there is no way I can overcome this half a centimeter. I looked around myself: yes, I'm the same, only I looked closer - I also stand, as it were, half a centimeter above the ground, that is, not like everyone else. I felt such loneliness... I have never been so lonely. Well, it turned out that I died, it turns out. Since the living do not notice. What should you do when you die? Is this taught? Yes, I was a member of the Komsomol, we were taught to live, not to die. Here again ours are coming, already in the hundreds, I also yelled at them a little, but then I despaired, these also do not see, do not hear. It became bitter, bitter to me. I remembered all my relatives: my sister Masha, my father, my mother ... And as soon as I thought about my mother, I looked, and she was standing there, everyone was walking, and she was standing, looking at me. Not old and somehow, I don’t know ... all bright, as if overjoyed. Is she following me? I tell her:
Mom, uh... where are you from?
Look at you, Vanya.
I died, right?
No, you have to get married.
We buried you, how are you... alive?
But she didn’t say anything, she just looked at me like that, they say, you yourself see that she’s alive. Then she turned and went after the formation of ours, I followed her, and she was no longer there, as if she had disappeared into these overcoats of ours. I wandered across the field. I look - our company is sitting, talking, smoking. There is Kolka, my sidekick. Silent, silent and says:
And where is Vanya, alive or not?
And one says to Kolka:
So he was killed, there he lies near the hillock.
Wars are always accompanied by ghost stories. With all the tragedies that occur during military conflicts, it is not uncommon for people to encounter some restless spirits. World War II was especially brutal, and with all those soldiers, prisoners, and bystanders who lost their lives, who can blame a few ghosts for their presence? These creepy stories of World War II will definitely scare you in earnest.
Missing Children
This story was told by a man whose grandfather was a member british army and was in a remote village in the Swiss Alps in the winter of 1943. The village was quickly covered with snow, and all telephone lines were cut off. The roads were blocked, and the whole battalion was simply stuck in the Swiss Alps for the whole winter.
Most of the villagers only spoke German, and most of the soldiers only spoke English. One night, when the soldiers were at a local bar, a man started yelling at them, "Where... did you take... the children?" - which confused them very much. They found an interpreter and took him to military base where he informed them that several small items had been missing since their arrival: a tarpaulin, some firewood, an ax-like weapon called a halberd. And then the kids started disappearing. If it was only one child, people would probably take it as a strange and tragic event. After all, the village was in the mountains, surrounded by snow and wild animals. But three kids? It was suspicious.
The commander told the villagers that he would look into the matter and send his men out to patrol the streets every night looking for whoever was responsible for all the strange thefts and kidnappings. Later that evening, Private Reginald disappeared from the barracks.
Disappearing children is one thing, but an adult? It seemed unlikely that the animal would have been able to kill a healthy adult human on its own. Naturally, rumors began to appear that some kind of monster lives in the mountains, which descended at night to feast on the villagers.
So they continued to conduct night patrols. One night, the grandfather and several other soldiers saw a man standing outside the windows of a gloomy house and peering into it. They shouted at him to stay where he was and not move. Instead, he took off. They gave chase. Eventually, he jumped into a hidden cave and started shooting at them. They returned fire, and when the shooting stopped they ran towards him, where they found Reginald dead in a cave, surrounded by seven malnourished children.
Japanese cannibals
Near the end of the war, Japanese soldiers in Singapore and New Guinea began to eat prisoners of war. And not because they were hungry - they did it simply because they could.
Sometimes the captives were dead when the Japanese started to cut them to pieces, but sometimes they were still alive.
The man in the attic
In the summer of 1991, in the French city of Colmar, a young woman experienced something strange. Her family had just moved into a new house where she found a hole in the attic wall. Through the hole, she could see another room where she thought there was no door. She felt something strange coming from the hole, but didn't look into it. Later she returned with a flashlight and saw something.
She said: “A young man was sitting on the floor, kneeling on his chest. His arms were crossed on his knees, as if he were hugging himself. He turned his head towards us and smiled. We jumped out of the room and ran to the pantry. suffocated.At first I thought it was real person but it was colorless. It looked more like a shadow in 3D. Besides, we never heard footsteps. My friend refused to admit that we saw a ghost and we never talked about it…"
Ghost planes
After the end of World War II, many saw "ghost planes". "Fighters either appeared in the sky or disappeared without a trace. One scary tale occurred a year after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States Army picked up the approaching aircraft on radar. They sent out some pilots to scout, and when they returned, the pilots said they saw a US military P-40 that looked like it had gone through hell. It was covered in bullet holes, the landing gear was missing, and the pilot was covered in blood.
Then the plane just crashed. Fell straight out of the sky. When they went to the crash site, they found the plane - but the pilot was not in it. It was a real mysticism, there is no other way to explain this.
Mystery of the airship L-8
In 1942, the airship departed from Treasure Island in the Bay Area on a mission to search for submarines with a crew of two. A few hours later, he returned to the ground and crashed into a house in Daly City. Everything on board was in its place; emergency equipment was not used. But the team? The crew has disappeared. They were never found.
"Alkimos"
Strange and inexplicable incidents happened to the Alkimos, which was built as an American ship for use in World War II: in 1963 it crashed into a reef off the coast of Australia. She was towed to Fremantle for repairs, but while she was there, the Alkimos caught fire and was towed to Hong Kong for further repairs. He had barely left Fremantle when the towing line broke and the ship ran aground. The evacuation team couldn't get him, so they left the caretaker on board until they figured out what to do. The caretaker experienced many strange things while on board, including feelings of anger, hearing knocking, footsteps, and voices.
Over the years, several companies tried to save the ship, but every time someone made an attempt, something happened to their crew. It was eventually abandoned and began to slowly sink into the water, where it remains to this day.
Diplomat Hotel
The Diplomat Hotel in Baguio City, Philippines was a monastery in the early 1900s. During World War II, Japanese soldiers invaded the monastery and beheaded all the clergy and nuns. They turned the building into a military sanatorium, and after the war - into a hotel. Guests often reported seeing black figures and the ghost of a woman in white within the walls of the hotel. They also heard screaming and banging in the middle of the night. The hotel is now abandoned and is a great place for ghost hunters.
Saipan airport
During World War II, the United States wrested control of Saipan, an island off Japan, from the Japanese army. The Japanese army built an airport there, and there were bomb shelters inside the airport. One woman saw the ghosts of Japanese soldiers inside one of the shelters while visiting the island.
She writes: “As I stood in the doorway and quietly looked around, the light in the bomb shelter suddenly became very dim, and I heard a rushing sound in my ears. Then a shadow rushed past me and sat down on a bench that was located on rusty metal sticking out of the wall.A few more shadows swept past me and sat on other benches.
"One shadow darted into the room on the left, and the other into the one on the right. The shadows were moving about every second, and if they were going in the same direction, they would collide. It was like a quick drill in a bomb shelter. I could see shadows. They looked like they were made of gray cigarette smoke. I saw their heads and bodies, but without arms and legs. I saw that they were thin Japanese soldiers."
Ghosts of the Sandakan Death March
In 1945, Allied forces drove the Japanese army out of Borneo. Instead of handing over their prisoners, the Japanese army forced thousands of Allied soldiers to march over 160 miles in a month. Only three prisoners survived. In 2010, Major John Tulloch restored part of their route by driving along the trail that the soldiers were on. He took dozens of photographs, including a very unusual one, eerily reminiscent of hunched over soldiers marching down the road.
Headless woman
During World War II, the US Army established a base in the Galapagos Islands. According to legend, a soldier and his wife lived at the base. The soldier found out that his wife was cheating on him and killed her by pushing her off a cliff. But, despite how terrible it sounds, it only gets worse: when she fell, her head got stuck between the stones and her wife was beheaded. The soldier covered up the crime, but the woman's soul still roams the island, appearing at night as a vengeful spirit for lonely men.
All historical events associated with legends about predictions and mysterious incidents. And during wars, their number increases dramatically: after all, people who are constantly close to death need faith in a miracle no less than bread or cartridges. Eyewitness stories about the mysterious, incredible incidents associated with the Great Patriotic War have been preserved in people's memory and are still being passed from mouth to mouth. At first glance, they do not fit into the framework of common sense - but how can we talk about common sense in relation to the most terrible war?
Pre-War Signs and Prophecies
It is generally accepted that the war for the Soviet people began suddenly. But just a few days before it began, many observed unusual events or had strange premonitions.
The famous singer Alla Bayanova said that shortly before the start of the war she saw an omen. In the middle of the night, a creature about two meters tall, covered with hair, with burning red eyes, appeared in her apartment. The creature lashed out and disappeared. A few days later, Germany attacked the Soviet Union.
It is known that shortly before the start of the Great Patriotic War in the sky over the territory of the USSR, three comets could be observed at once: on January 17, February 25 and June 12. But according to folk omens, the appearance of a comet brings disaster.
1941, spring - a strange thing happened in the Leningrad region a natural phenomenon: a mass death of swifts was recorded. Dead birds lay in the fields and meadows. The newspaper "Leningradskaya Pravda" explained the death of birds by a lack of food due to the small number of insects. But these explanations did not convince the population, many believed that the death of birds would lead to big trouble.
In August-September 1945, a folklore expedition of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences worked in the Bryansk region. The materials she collected are stored in the archives of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, they reflect the stories that existed in the Bryansk region about unusual signs of an impending war.
So, in the Pogarsky district they talked about an oblique cross that appeared in the sky on the night before the start of the war. In the city of Seltso, a week before the start of the war, people saw a gate of stars in the sky. Throughout the territory of the Bryansk region, there was a story about how in the spring hunters met an old man in the forest who said: "Do not be afraid, they will not kill you in the war, you will return home."
1941, May - residents of the Oktyabrsky district Chelyabinsk region observed in the sky two boundary pillars, and between them - a soldier's boot. No one had any doubts - this is a bad sign and the war will begin soon.
In the Yaruzhsky district of the Kursk region, folklorists recorded a legend: in the premises of the former church where grain was stored, at the end of May 1941, fires suddenly began to burn at night. People went there and saw an old man who led them to the altar and showed them three coffins - as a symbol of an impending great disaster.
Do not disturb the ancient tomb
On June 21, in Samarkand, under the guidance of professors Kary-Niyazov, Zaripov and Semenov, the great conqueror of the Middle Ages (Timur) passed. Scientists were not stopped by the old legend about the curse that the disturbed ashes of the conqueror would bring great grief and innumerable troubles.
This night, an eerie blood-red moon rose over Samarkand. Near the tomb, according to the members of the archaeological expedition, three elders appeared and asked to stop excavations, because they could lead to war. Frightened archaeologists immediately reported this to the members of the government commission, but they were ridiculed.
1943 - Marshal Zhukov learned about this event - and told Stalin about it. The Supreme Commander decided to urgently rebury the relics of Tamerlane. After a short time, Soviet troops won a victory at Stalingrad. And after the Tamerlane burial ground was completely restored, the victory at the Kursk Bulge followed.
The ability to foresee the future
The researchers are sure that extreme situations people's intuition sharply sharpens and the ability to foresee the future appears.
Thousands of soldiers in their memoirs noted that at some moments they felt a possible death - and miraculously managed to avoid it.
Political instructor of the 328th Infantry Regiment Alexander Tyushev recalled that on November 21, 1941, some unknown force forced him to leave the regiment's command post. A few minutes later, a landmine hit there, as a result of the explosion, everyone who was there died.
Senior Sergeant Vasily Krasnov from the Gorky region, after being wounded, was heading to his division on a ride. Suddenly, Vasily had a strange anxiety. He jumped out of the lorry and went on foot. Literally immediately after that, the truck ran over a mine.
Many front-line stories are devoted to the so-called - when before the battle one of the soldiers predicts the death of one of his comrades. The soldiers tried not to communicate with such "harbingers", and sometimes after the battle they themselves could be found shot in the back.
In various places of hostilities, stories were popular that a tall woman in long dark clothes appeared on the battlefield at night - and mourned the dead Russian soldiers. This was regarded as the appearance of the Virgin and a sign that victory would be for Soviet troops.
Shifts in time
Many of the soldiers after the battle noticed that their watches were behind. The nurse of the Volga military flotilla, Elena Zaitseva, who was taking the wounded out of Stalingrad, said that when the ambulance ship came under fire, the clocks of all the doctors stopped.
Several documented cases of time shift also seem inexplicable.
1942, January - under besieged Leningrad Soviet soldiers met a group of French soldiers of Napoleonic times, and in 1944, on the territory of present-day Belarus, local residents were frightened by a small detachment of German knights. In order to stop incomprehensible rumors, all eyewitnesses of these events were interviewed and sent to camps or penal battalions, and their testimonies were placed in archives marked "Top Secret".
April 1945 - Soviet troops entered the fortress city of Koenigsberg, now Kaliningrad. The city was liberated in just four days, while the Germans offered no resistance.
Immediately after the capture of Koenigsberg, a group of NKVD officers arrived there, investigating the activities of a fascist organization called "" ("Heritage of the Ancestors"), whose main task was to study everything unidentified and inexplicable. In particular, the Germans were engaged in researching methods for - and, according to historians, they built an installation for such research in the catacombs under the city.
A month after the end of the war, a strange story happened in Koenigsberg, which could be somehow connected with the activities of this organization. It is not known from where the column of German soldiers that arose passed through the city, shooting everyone who got in their way. It was not a mass hallucination - after all, the bullets were real. When the Soviet soldiers surrounded the Germans, they disappeared as mysteriously as they appeared.
Ghosts in Red Army uniform
Anomalous phenomena marked the places of bloody battles and mass graves during the Great Patriotic War. Something mysterious happens here regularly.
One of such places is the forest valley Myasnoy Bor, 30 km from Veliky Novgorod. During the Luban operation of 1942, about 400,000 Soviet and German soldiers died there as a result of the fighting, tens of thousands of them still remain unburied. As the search engines say, birds do not settle in this forest, but sometimes distinct male voices are heard, the smell of shag is clearly felt, you can hear the crackling of branches under boots and automatic bursts. Some diggers met mysterious silhouettes in the twilight in the Red Army uniform.
In the Bryansk region, in the area of the Zhizdra River, where the Bryansk Front passed from the winter of 1942 to the end of the summer of 1943, a group of search engines found a German dugout with the remains of bodies. At night, the diggers, who set up camp 200 meters from the find, heard German speech and the noise of engines. And in the morning, fresh tracks of tank tracks were found in front of the dugout.
On the river Khopra Voronezh region near the city of Novokhopersk there is a famous one - Zheltoyar. In those days, the front line passed here. And now the ghosts of the Great Patriotic War appear in these places - soldiers and military equipment. Members of the expedition of the Voronezh Committee for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena, led by the famous researcher Genrikh Silanov, managed to film people in military uniform near the tents. According to Silanov, such phenomena are due to the ability of the area to remember events that took place here decades ago, and the anomaly of this zone is associated with a unique magnetic field created by underground ore deposits.
In the already mentioned Kaliningrad, near the Royal Castle, a ghost sometimes appears, which was identified as the Nazi art doctor Alfred Rode, the custodian of the Amber Room, taken out of Tsarskoye Selo. Maybe she herself is hidden somewhere here, near Kaliningrad, and she is guarded by wartime phantoms?
Similar oral stories, inexplicable with scientific point view, many. Individually, you can believe or not believe them - but together they say that any event of that war was not accidental and had its own magical meaning.
During the Great Patriotic War, there were cases of Russian mental attack. Here is how eyewitnesses tell about it: “The regiment rose to its full height. An accordion player walked from one flank, playing either the Vologda busts “Under the fight”, or the Tver “Buza”. Another harmonist walked from the other flank, playing the Ural “Mom”. young beautiful nurses walked to the center, waving handkerchiefs, and the whole regiment emitted the traditional lowing or croaking, which dancers usually emit when things are moving towards a fight, to intimidate the enemy.After such a psychic attack, the Germans could be taken in the trenches with their bare hands, they were on the verge of mental insanity.
History 1.
My grandfather fought from the first days of the war, finished it near Keninsberg.
The story that happened to my grandfather happened after another injury. Having received another bullet in the leg during the battle, the grandfather ended up in the hospital. Despite the level of medicine of that time, but thanks to the professionalism of military doctors (which the Russian army has always been famous for), the wound healed successfully, and my grandfather was going back to the front. And then one evening, after lights out, he felt a severe pain in the lower abdomen. I got out of bed and went to the doctor. And the doctor was an old Russian grandfather who healed, I suppose, back in the First World War. Grandfather complained to him of pain and asked for some pill. The doctor felt his stomach, climbed into his closet and took out a large bottle of alcohol. I took two glasses and filled them to the brim. "Drink," said the doctor. Grandpa drank. Another glass the doctor waved himself! "Lie down," the doctor commanded. Grandfather lay down on the table. From such an amount of alcohol drunk on an empty stomach (war!), the grandfather immediately passed out ... I woke up in the ward. No appendix. But with a headache .. These are the people who defeated fascism!
History 2.
My grandfather had a friend Misha, a terrible gouging, but at the same time an artillery lieutenant.
This friend commanded a volley fire machine (as it is now called) called "Katyusha". It’s good, whether he commanded badly, but the machine ran, dutifully scuffed at the Germans.
It was the summer of 1942. A Katyusha division was relocated near Stalingrad, one of the cars on the road simply died out (the car industry is the car industry - both in 1942 and in 2010). They dug, repaired, as best they could, with improvised means. Rolled, of course for a successful repair. Well, they drove to catch up with their own. According to the Russian authenticity of the maps, of course, they got lost ...
The steppe, the road is not clear where, and then suddenly they see a column of dust in the steppe. They slow down. Binoculars to the eyes - a German tank column. Rushing - like at home - brazenly, as in a parade, over the tower hatches, the sleek muzzles of the Fritz.
Uncle Misha, either out of fright, or out of arrogance after alcohol, turns the car with the front wheels into a ditch ("Katyusha" is a terrible weapon, but the aiming is almost zero, and it only hits with a canopy in squares) and almost direct fire gives a volley. They set fire to the first rows - the Germans are in a panic. Such a hit -8 tanks in a junk moment ..
Well, "Katyusha" on the sly - "my legs are my legs" ... They gave Uncle Misha the Hero (the crew - Glory), but they just took him away immediately for being late from vacation to the train for 20 minutes (immediately after the award, well, they didn’t write down in the penalty box ). The special officer turned out to be a bastard, the echelon stood in Moscow for another day. It looks like a fairy tale, but General Paulus stopped the offensive for a day. These days, German intelligence frantically searched for the positions of our troops. Well, they could not believe in one - the only "Katyusha", which shot back from a drunken fright ...
History 3.
Once, one Soviet unit on the march went too far ahead, and the field kitchen was left somewhere behind. The commander of the unit sends two Kyrgyz soldiers to find her - they don’t speak Russian, there’s little use in battle, in short, bring it, give it. They left, and no news from them for two days. Finally, they arrive with backpacks stuffed with German sweets, schnapps, and the like. One of them has a note. Written (in Russian): "Comrade Stalin! For us they are not languages, but for you they are not soldiers. Send them home."
History 4.
In August 1941, in the Daugavpils region, Ivan Sereda was preparing dinner for the Red Army. At this time he saw german tank moving towards the field kitchen. Armed only with a carbine and an ax, Ivan Sereda hid behind her, and the tank, having driven up to the kitchen, stopped and the crew began to get out of it. At that moment, Ivan Sereda jumped out from behind the kitchen and rushed to the tank. The crew immediately took cover in the tank, and Ivan Sereda jumped onto the armor. When the tankers opened fire from a machine gun, Ivan Sereda bent the machine gun barrel with ax blows, and then closed the viewing slots of the tank with a piece of tarpaulin. Then he began to knock on the armor with the butt of an ax, while giving orders to the Red Army soldiers, who were not around, to throw grenades at the tank. The crew of the tank surrendered, and Ivan Sereda forced them to tie each other's hands at gunpoint. When the Red Army arrived in time, they saw a tank and a bound crew.
History 5.
My grandfather served in aviation. There was a toilet at the field airfield in the distance ... Sitting there, so my grandfather, doing his own thing ... It was getting dark. Knots were knocked out in the wall of the toilet in the boards. So my grandfather noticed three German intelligence officers coming out of the forest. Well, when they approached, he filled them up with a pistol. Received the Order of the Red Star.
The dudes obviously did not expect that they would open fire on them from the toilet ...
History 6.
Memoirs of one of the veterans
At the beginning of December of the same year, 1942, we were on the defensive in the area of the Round Grove. Soon I again had a chance to meet with the foreman. It was so. He comes up to me and says:
- At the direction of the platoon commander, they singled out three soldiers for me. We need to bring a hot lunch and vodka from the field kitchen. It is two kilometers from our front line, in the forest.
I carried out the order. The foreman with three fighters took empty canisters and went to the company kitchen. To reach it, they had to go through the forest, then go through a small clearing in which there was not a single tree, and then go back into the forest, where the kitchen was.
The unexpected happened (although can you call it unexpected in a war?). When leaving the forest, one of the fighters was killed. Fortunately for the survivors, this happened when leaving the forest for a clearing.
The fact is that tanks had previously passed through this clearing, which had made a deep rut. One fighter lay down in it, and the foreman and the other fighter quickly returned to the forest and disguised themselves.
Lying in a rut was in relative safety. He tried to move slowly, crawling across the clearing, but heard the whistle of bullets next to him. However, the soldier was not taken aback.
He quietly took a stick, took off his helmet, put it on a stick and raised it above him. Continuing to move in this position, I heard that the shooting was coming at the helmet. It lasted over an hour. Finally the shooting ended. From fatigue and stress, the fighter dozed off right in the rut ...
The foreman and the fighter, who were in the forest, realized that the German “cuckoo” sniper, who was firing and hiding in a tree, had run out of ammunition. They began to slowly approach this very tree. Approaching the pine tree, they saw the "cuckoo".
The foreman shouted: “Hyundai hoh!” - and began to aim at the German from the machine gun. A rustle was heard. From above flew a rifle with an optical sight. Then the shooter himself went down.
The foreman and the fighter searched him, took away his weapon, lighter and smoking pipe. The German was sorry to part with the pipe. Mumbling incomprehensible words, he began to cry. The tube was really great. It depicted a dog's head with glassy eyes. When the smoker drew in the smoke, the dog's eyes began to glow.
After making sure that the former sniper was disarmed, the foreman pointed his finger at him - they say, go where you shot, there Russian Ivan lies in a tank track, bring him to us.
The German understood and approached the sleeping soldier.
“Rus Ivan, com,” said the fascist. The fighter woke up and saw a German in front of him. The foreman with the second fighter, having observed what was happening, laughed. Those two were not laughing. The foreman patted the shoulder of the man lying in the tank rut and said:
- Instead of a hundred grams, you get half a liter and a can of American stew. Thus ended this tragic and at the same time funny story.
Unfortunately, due to the age of the surname actors forgotten by me. Not a single meeting of brother-soldiers of the 80th Guards Luban Order of Kutuzov Rifle Division took place without memories of this curious incident.
Mysterious mysteries of World War II
Sometimes during the war, events so strange and contradictory occur that it is hard to believe in them. Especially when you consider that the archives are still classified, and there is no access to them. What kind of secrets does the history of those years keep, from the point of view of the allies of the USSR?
Let's try to figure it out.
The mystery of Netaji's death
Subhas Chandra Bose, also known as Netaji, is a Bengali by birth and one of the leaders of the Indian Independence Movement. Today Bose is revered in India along with Nehru and Gandhi. To fight the British colonialists, he went to cooperate with the Germans, and then with the Japanese. He headed the collaborationist pro-Japanese administration "Azad Hind" ("Free India"), which he proclaimed the "Government of India". From the point of view of the allies, Netaji was a very dangerous traitor. He communicated with both German and Japanese leaders, but at the same time he was on friendly terms with Stalin.
During his life, Bos had to run a lot from various foreign intelligence services, he hid from British surveillance, was able to change his identity and begin building his Empire of revenge. Much in the life of Bose remains a mystery, but historians still cannot find an answer to the question - did he die or quietly live somewhere in Bengal. According to the officially accepted version, the plane on which Bose tried to escape to Japan in 1945 suffered a plane crash. It seems that his body was cremated, and the urn with the ashes was transported to Tokyo to the Buddhist temple of Renkoji. And before and now there are many people who do not believe in this story. And so much so that they even analyzed the ashes and reported that the ashes belonged to a certain Ichiro Okura, a Japanese official.
It is believed that Bos lived out his life somewhere in strict secrecy. The Indian government admits that they have about forty classified files on Bose in their possession, all sealed and they refuse to release the contents. It is argued that disclosure would be detrimental to international relations India. In 1999, one file surfaced: it concerned the location of Netaji and the subsequent investigation, which took place in 1963. However, the government declined to comment on this information.
Many still hope that one day they will be able to find out what really happened to Netaji, but it certainly won't happen anytime soon. The National Democratic Union in 2014 denied a request for disclosure classified materials Bos. The government is still afraid to publish even those documents that have been removed from the "secret" stamp. According to official information, this is due to the fact that the information contained in the documents can still harm India's relations with other countries.
Battle of Los Angeles: Air defense against UFOs
Just don't laugh. Hoax or mass psychosis? Call it what you will, but on the night of February 25, 1942, all the air defense forces of Los Angeles courageously - and absolutely unsuccessfully - fought against UFOs.
“It happened in the early morning hours of February 25, 1942; just three months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The United States has just entered the Second world war and the military was on high alert when the attack took place over California skies. Witnesses reported seeing a large, round object glowing a pale orange in the skies of Culver City and Santa Monica, all along the Pacific coast."
Sirens wailed and searchlights began to scan the sky over Los Angeles, and more than 1,400 anti-aircraft shells pelted mysterious object, but he, calmly moving across the night sky, disappeared from view. Not a single aircraft was shot down, and in fact, no satisfactory explanation has ever been found. The official statement of the army was this: "unidentified aircraft" allegedly invaded air space Southern California. But later the secretary Navy US Frank Nose canceled these reports, and called the incident a "false alarm."
Die Glocke - Nazi bell
Work on Die Glocke (translated from German - "bell") began in 1940, they were managed from the "SS think tank" at the Skoda factory in Pilsen by designer Hans Kammler. Kammler's name is closely associated with one of the Nazi organizations involved in the development different types"miracle weapons" - the occult institute "Ahnenerbe". At first, the “miracle weapon” was tested in the vicinity of Breslau, but in December 1944 a group of scientists was transported to an underground laboratory (with a total area of as much as 10 km²!) Inside the Wenceslas mine.
Die Glocke is described in documents as "an enormous bell made of solid metal, about 3m wide and about 4.5m high". This device contained two counter-rotating lead cylinders filled with an unknown substance codenamed Xerum 525. When turned on, the Die Glocke illuminated the shaft with a pale violet light.
In the agony of the Reich, the Nazis jumped at every chance, hoping for a technological miracle that could change the course of the war. At that time, vague allusions to some unusual engineering developments began to be found in the documents. Polish journalist Igor Witkowski conducted his own investigation and wrote the book "The Truth about the Wunderwaffe", from which the world learned about the top-secret project "Die Glocke". Later, a book by the British journalist Nick Cook appeared, “The Hunt for Point Zero”, which explored similar matters.
Witkowski was absolutely sure that Die Glocke was intended to be a breakthrough in space technology, and was intended to generate fuel for hundreds of thousands of flying saucers. More precisely, disk-shaped aircraft with a crew of one or two people. They say that at the end of April 1945, the Nazis planned to use these devices to carry out the operation "Spear of Satan" - to strike at Moscow, London and New York. About 1000 ready-made "UFOs" were allegedly subsequently captured by the Americans - in underground factories in the Czech Republic and Austria. Is it true? Maybe. After all, the US National Archives declassified the documents of 1956, which confirms that the development of the "flying saucer" by the Nazis was carried out. Norwegian historian Gudrun Stensen believes that at least four of Kammler's flying discs were "captured" Soviet army from a factory in Breslau, however, Stalin did not pay due attention to the "plates", since he was more interested in a nuclear bomb.
There are even more exotic theories about the purpose of Die Glocke: according to US writer Henry Stevens, author of the book “Hitler’s Weapons Are Still Secret!”, the bell was not a spacecraft, it worked on red mercury, and was intended for time travel .
The Polish secret services do not confirm or deny Witkowski's research: the protocols of interrogation of SS Gruppenführer Sporrenberg are still classified. Witkowski insisted on this version: Hans Kammler brought the Bell to America, and no one knows where he is now.
Nazi golden train
Documents of the Second World War prove that in 1945, during the retreat, the Nazis took out of the German Breslau (now - Polish Wroclaw) an armored train loaded with valuables and tons of gold confiscated from the governments of occupied countries and confiscated from people who ended their lives in concentration camps. The train was 150 meters long and there could be up to 300 tons of gold!
Allied forces at the end of the war found some of the Nazi gold, but most of it, apparently loaded on the train, has sunk into oblivion. The train was carrying a precious cargo from Wroclaw to Walbrzych, however, it disappeared on the way, under circumstances that have not yet been clarified - as it fell into the ground. And since 1945, no one else saw the train, and all attempts to find it were unsuccessful.
In the vicinity of Walbrzych there is an old system of tunnels built by the Nazis, in one of which, according to local legends, the disappeared train stands for itself. Locals believe that the train may be in an abandoned tunnel that existed on railway between Walbrzych and Swiebodzice. The entrance to the tunnel is most likely somewhere under an embankment near the Walbrzych station. From time to time, this same Walbrzych begins to feverish from the next message about the discovery of treasures from the time of the Third Reich.
Specialists of the Mining and Metallurgical Academy. Stanislaw Staszic in 2015 seemed to have completed the operation to search for the ghostly “golden train”. Apparently, the search engines failed to make any grandiose discoveries. Although during the work they used modern technology, such as a cesium magnetometer, which measures the level magnetic field earth.
According to the laws of Poland, in case of discovery of a treasure, it must be transferred to the state.
Although what kind of treasure is this ... clearly part of the trophy property! The chief curator of the monuments of antiquity in Poland, Piotr Zhukhovsky, recommended to refrain from independent searches for treasures, since the missing train could be mined. So far, the Russian, Polish and Israeli media are closely following the search for the Nazi armored train. Theoretically, each of these countries can claim part of the find.
Planes are ghosts
The phantoms of crashed planes are a sad and beautiful legend. Specialists in anomalous phenomena there are many cases of the appearance of aircraft in the sky, which date back to the time of the last war. They are seen in the sky over the British Sheffield, and over the infamous Peak District in the north of Derbyshire (more than five dozen planes crashed there), and in other places.
One of the first to report such a story was Richard and Helen Jason, who spotted a World War II bomber in the skies of Derbyshire. They remembered that he was flying very low, but surprisingly quiet, silent, without making a single sound. And the ghost just disappeared at some point. Richard, being an Air Force veteran, believes it was an American 4-engine Bi-24 Liberator bomber.
They say that such phenomena are observed in Russia. As if in clear weather, in the sky above the village of Yadrovo, Volokolamsk district, you can hear the characteristic sounds of a low-flying aircraft, after which you can see a slightly blurred silhouette of a burning Messerschmitt trying to land.
The story of the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg
The life story, and especially death, of Raoul Gustav Wallenberg is one of those that are interpreted by Western and domestic sources in completely different ways. They agree on one thing - he was a hero who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust. Tens of thousands. He gave them the so-called protective passports of Swedish citizens awaiting repatriation to their homeland, and thereby saved them from concentration camps.
By the time Budapest was liberated, these people were already safe, thanks to papers from Wallenberg and his associates. Raul also succeeded in persuading several German generals to disobey Hitler's orders to transport Jews to the death camps, and he prevented the destruction of the Budapest ghetto in the last days before the Red Army's advance. If this version is correct, then Wallenberg managed to save at least 100,000 Hungarian Jews! But what happened to Raoul himself after 1945 is obvious to Western historians (he was rotten by a bloody gebney in the dungeons of the Lubyanka), but not so clear to ours.
According to the most common version, after the capture of Budapest by Soviet troops on January 13, 1945, Wallenberg, along with his driver, was detained by a Soviet patrol in the building of the International Red Cross (according to another version, he himself came to the location of the 151st Infantry Division and asked to meet with the Soviet command; according to the third version, he was arrested by the NKVD in his apartment). After that, he was sent to the commander of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, Malinovsky. But on the way, he was again detained and arrested by SMERSH military counterintelligence officers. According to another version, after being arrested at Wallenberg's apartment, he was sent to the headquarters of the Soviet troops. On March 8, 1945, the Budapest Radio Kossuth, which was under Soviet control, reported that Raoul Wallenberg had died during street fighting in Budapest.
The Western media consider it proven that Raoul Wallenberg was arrested and transported to Moscow, where he was kept in the internal prison of the MGB on the Lubyanka. The Swedes have tried unsuccessfully for many years to find out the fate of the arrested person. In August 1947, Vyshinsky officially announced that Wallenberg was not in the USSR and Soviet authorities nothing is known about him. But in February 1957, Moscow no less officially informed the Swedish government that Wallenberg died on July 17, 1947 in a cell in the Lubyanka prison from a myocardial infarction. An autopsy was not performed, and the story of a heart attack did not convince either Raul's relatives or the world community.
Moscow and Stockholm agreed to investigate the case within the framework of a bilateral commission, but in 2001 the commission concluded that the search had reached a dead end and ceased to exist. There is unconfirmed information that refers to Wallenberg as “Prisoner No. 7”, who was interrogated in July 1947, a week (!) After he allegedly died of a heart attack.
Several documentaries and feature films have been made about the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, but none of them reveals the mystery of his death.
The missing Fuhrer's globe
The Fuhrer's Globe is one of the giant models of the Columbus Globe, issued to leaders of states and enterprises in two limited batches in Berlin in the mid-1930s (the world map was already corrected in the second batch). The same Hitler globe was commissioned for the headquarters in the Reich Chancellery by the architect Albert Speer. The globe was huge and can be seen in the newsreel of the opening of the new Reich Chancellery building in 1939. Where exactly that globe went from the headquarters is unknown. At auctions here and there, from time to time another "Hitler's globe" is sold, and thousands for 100 euros.
American World War II veteran John Barsamian found the globe a few days after the surrender Nazi Germany, in the bombed-out Alpine residence of the Fuhrer "Eagle's Nest" in the mountains above the Bavarian Berchtesgaden. The American veteran also sold at auction a package of military documents from those years that allowed him to take the globe to the United States. The permit states the following: “One globe, language - German, origin - residence "Eagle's Nest".
Experts note that in different collections there are several globes that allegedly belonged to Hitler. However, the globe found by Barsamyan is most likely to be considered real: the authenticity is confirmed by a photograph depicting Lieutenant Barsamyan with a globe in his hands - in the "Eagle's Nest".
Once Charlie Chaplin in his film "The Great Dictator" showed Hitler's globe as his main and favorite accessory. But Hitler himself hardly appreciated the globe, because not a single photograph of Hitler against its background has survived (which, in general, is sheer assumptions and assumptions).
Prior to the discovery of Barsamyan, the Western media categorically stated that Lavrenty Beria personally dragged the globe, apparently believing that he captured not only Berlin, but the entire globe. Well, we cannot deny that it is likely that the Fuhrer's personal globe still stands in one of the offices on Lubyanka to this day.
Treasures of General Rommel
Nicknamed the "Desert Fox", Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was undoubtedly the preeminent commander of the Third Reich; he confidently won the First World War, the Italians and the British were inspired by his name with horror and fear. On World War II, he was less fortunate: the Reich sent him to lead military operations in North Africa. SS-Sturmbannführer Schmidt led a special "divizen-schutzkommando" in the Middle East: following in the footsteps of Rommel's army, this team robbed museums, banks, private collections, libraries and jewelry stores in cities North Africa. Basically, they took gold, currency, antiques and art treasures. Looting continued until Rommel's corps began to suffer defeat and the Germans began to retreat, suffering losses under the continuous bombing of the British.
In April 1943, the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition landed in Casablanca, Oran and Algiers, and pressed the Germans to Cape Bon Peninsula, along with all the looted belongings (this, by the way, is not "Rommel's gold", rather it is the African treasures of the SS) . Schmidt found an opportunity to load valuables into 6 containers and went to sea on ships towards Corsica. Beyond that, opinions differ. They say that the SS reached Corsica, but American aircraft flew in there and destroyed them. There is also the most beautiful version that Sturmbannführer Schmidt managed to hide or flood treasures near the Corsican coast, which was replete with hiding places, grottoes and underwater caves.
"Rommel's treasures" have been searched for all these years and are still being sought. At the end of 2007, the Briton Terry Hodgkinson said that he knew exactly where to dig - at the bottom of the sea at a distance of a little less than a nautical mile from the Corsican city of Bestia. However, so far nothing happened and no treasure was found.
Foo fighters are UFOs
The term Foo Fighters comes from Allied pilot slang for unidentified flying objects and strange atmospheric phenomena seen in the skies over Europe and the Pacific.
Coined by the 415th Tactical Fighter Squadron, the term Fu Fighters was later officially adopted by the US military in November 1944. Pilots flying at night over German territory began to report seeing fast-moving luminous objects following their aircraft. They have been variously described, usually as balls of red, orange, or white color, which made complex maneuvers, after which they suddenly disappeared.
According to the pilots, the objects pursued the planes and generally behaved as if they were controlled by someone, but did not show hostility; it was not possible to break away from them or bring them down. Reports about them appeared so often that such objects received given name- foo fighters, or, more rarely, kraut fireballs. The military took sightings of these objects seriously, as they suspected they were a secret German weapon. But later it turned out that German and Japanese pilots observed similar objects.
On January 15, 1945, Time magazine published an article titled "Foo Fighter" which reported that USAF fighters had been chasing "fireballs" for over a month. After the war, a group was created to study such phenomena, which offered several possible explanations: it could be electrostatic phenomena similar to the fires of St. Elmo, or optical illusions. In general, there is an opinion that if the term "flying saucers" had already been coined then, in 1943-1945, foo fighters would have fallen into this category.
Where did the Blood Flag go?
Blutfahne or "Blood Flag" is the first Nazi shrine that appeared after beer coup 1923 in Munich (unsuccessful attempt to capture state power undertaken by the National Socialist Workers' Party led by Hitler and General Ludendorff; they and about 600 supporters were defeated in the Munich beer pub "Bürgerbräukeller", in which the Prime Minister of Bavaria was giving a speech).
Approximately 16 Nazis died, many were injured, and Hitler was arrested and convicted of treason. By the way, he spent his term in Landsberg prison on very mild conditions, and it was there that most of his main book was written.
The Nazis who died during the Beer putsch were later declared martyrs, and the events themselves - national revolution. The flag under which they walked (and on which, according to the official version, drops of blood of the “martyrs” fell) was later used to “consecrate” party banners: at party congresses in Nuremberg, Adolf Hitler applied new flags to the “sacred” banner. It was believed that his touch with other flags endowed them with divine power, and SS officers swore exclusively to this banner. The Blood Flag even had a keeper - Jacob Grimminger.
The flag was in last time seen in October 1944, during one of Himmler's ceremonies. Initially, it was believed that the Allies destroyed the flag during the bombing of Munich. No one knows what happened to him next: was he saved and taken out of the country, or was he thrown against the walls of the mausoleum in Moscow in 1945. The fate of Jacob Grimminger, unlike the "Bloody Flag", is known to historians. Not only did he survive the war, but he also took the minor post of representative of the city administration in Munich.
Ghost of Pearl Harbor - R-40
One of the most intriguing ghost planes of World War II was the P-40 fighter that crashed near Pearl Harbor. Doesn't sound too mysterious, does it? Only this plane was later seen in the sky - a year after the Japanese attack.
On December 8, 1942, an American radar spotted a board heading straight for Pearl Harbor from Japan. Two fighter jets were tasked with checking and quickly intercepting the mysterious aircraft. It was a P-40 fighter that had been involved in the defense of Pearl Harbor the year before. What was even stranger was that the plane was engulfed in flames and the pilot had apparently been killed. The P-40 dived to the ground and crashed.
Rescue teams were sent immediately, but they failed to find the pilot - the cockpit was empty. There were no traces of the pilot! But they did find a flight diary that said the plane in question was on the island of Mindanao, 1,300 miles away. pacific ocean. But if it was a wounded defender of Pearl Harbor, how did he survive on the island for a year, how did he take the wrecked plane into the sky? And where did he go? What happened to his body? It remains one of the most mysterious mysteries.
Who were the 17 British from Auschwitz
In 2009, historians carried out excavations on the territory of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. They found a strange list that contained the names of 17 British soldiers. Opposite the names were some kind of signs - ticks. No one knows why this list was created. Also on paper were written several German words, but these words did not help in solving the mystery (“since then”, “never”, and “now”).
There are several suggestions about the purpose of this list and who these soldiers were. The first suggestion is British prisoners of war who were used as skilled laborers. Many were stationed at Auschwitz in camp E715, where they were sent to lay cables and pipes. Another theory is that the names of the British soldiers on the list are the names of traitors who worked for the CC unit during the war - they may have been part of the secret British brigade Schutzstaffel (SS) that fought for the Nazis against the Allies. None of these theories have been proven to date.
Who betrayed Anne Frank?
The diary of a 15-year-old Jewish girl, Anne Frank, made her name famous all over the world. In July 1942, with the beginning of the deportation of Jews from the Netherlands, the Frank family (father, mother, older sister Margot and Anna) took refuge in the secret room of the father's business office in Amsterdam, at Prinsengracht 263, along with four other Dutch Jews. They hid in this shelter until 1944. Friends and colleagues delivered food and clothes to the Franks at great risk to their lives.
Anna kept a diary from June 12, 1942 to August 1, 1944. At first she wrote for herself, but in the spring of 1944, the girl heard on the radio a speech by the Minister of Education of the Netherlands: all evidence of the occupation period should become public property. Impressed by his words, Anna decided after the war to publish a book based on her diary. And from that moment she began to write not only for herself, but thinking about future readers.
In 1944, the authorities received a denunciation of a group of hiding Jews, and the Dutch police with the Gestapo came to the house where the Frank family was hiding. Behind a bookcase, they found the door where the Frank family had been hiding for 25 months. All were immediately arrested.
An informer who made an anonymous phone call that brought the Gestapo, but has not yet been identified - the name of the informer was not in the police reports. History offers us the names of three alleged informers - these are Tonny Ahlers, Willem van Maaren and Lena van Bladeren-Hartoch, all were familiar with the Franks, and each of them could fear arrest for failure to inform. But historians do not have an exact answer as to who betrayed Anne Frank and her family.
Anna and her sister were sent for forced labor in concentration camp Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany. Both sisters died of a typhus epidemic in the camp in March 1945, just a few weeks before the camp was liberated. Their mother died in Auschwitz in early January 1945.
Otto, Anna's father, was the only one in the family who survived the war. He was in Auschwitz until it was liberated by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945.
After the war, Otto received from a friend of the family, Miep Hees, who helped them hide, Anna's notes she had collected and kept. The first edition of these notes Otto Frank carried out in 1947 in the original language under the title "In the back wing" (abridged version of the diary, with cuts of a personal and censored nature). The book was published in Germany in 1950. First Russian edition titled "The Diary of Anne Frank" in a magnificent translation by Rita Wright-Kovaleva was published in 1960.
the Amber Room
Mysteriously disappeared treasures are doubly attractive. The Amber Room - "the eighth wonder of the world" - has always been the object of desire for rulers and kings. They say that Peter I literally begged her from Frederick during a meeting in November 1716, when an alliance was concluded between Russia and Prussia. Peter I immediately boasted of the gift in a letter to Catherine: "... gave me ... the Amber office, which they had long wished for." The Amber Cabinet was packed and transported from Prussia to St. Petersburg in 1717 with great care. Mosaic amber panels were installed in the lower hall of the Human Chambers in the Summer Garden.
In 1743, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna instructed the master Martelli, under the supervision of the chief architect Rastrelli, to expand the office. Prussian panels were clearly not enough for Big hall, and Rastrelli introduced gilded wood carvings, mirrors and mosaic paintings of agate and jasper into the decoration. And by 1770, under the supervision of Rastrelli, the office was transformed into the famous Amber Room of the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, adding in size and luxury.
The Amber Room was rightfully considered the pearl of the summer residence. Russian emperors in Tsarskoye Selo. And this famous masterpiece disappeared without a trace during World War II. Well, not entirely without a trace.
The Germans purposefully went to Tsarskoye Selo for the Amber Room, it seems that even before the start of the war, Alfred Rode promised Hitler to return the treasure to their historical homeland. They did not have time to dismantle and evacuate the room, and the invaders took it to Königsberg. After 1945, when the Nazis from Königsberg were driven out by Soviet troops, traces of the Amber Room are lost.
Some of its fragments from time to time emerge around the world - for example, one of the four Florentine mosaics was found. It was believed that the room burned down in the ruins of the Königsberg castle. It is believed that the room was discovered special units american army, engaged in the search for art stolen by the Nazis, and secretly exported to the United States, after which it fell into the hands of private collectors. It was also assumed that the Amber Room was sunk along with the Wilhelm Gustloff steamship, or it could have been on the Prinz Eugen cruiser transferred to the United States as reparations.
Searched for the Amber Room in times Soviet Union carefully, and the search was supervised by the State Security Committee. But they didn't find it. And three decades later, in the 1970s, it was decided to start the restoration of the Amber Room from scratch. Mainly Kaliningrad amber was used. And today, an accurately recreated copy of the lost treasure can be seen in Tsarskoye Selo, in the Catherine Palace. She might even be prettier than before.
Link number 19
This is perhaps the most replicated of the mystical stories of the Second World War. Flight 19 (Flight 19) of five Avenger torpedo bombers, which made a training flight on December 5, 1945, which ended in the loss of all five aircraft under unclear circumstances, as well as the PBM-5 Martin Mariner rescue seaplane sent to search for them ". This miracle is considered one of the strangest and most unusual not only in the history of US Navy aviation, but also in the history of all world aviation.
This happened a few months after the end of the war. On December 5, 1945, as part of Departure No. 19, a flight of 4 Avenger torpedo bombers under the control of corps pilots marines US and Fleet Air Arms who were undergoing a retraining program for this type of aircraft, piloted by a fifth torpedo bomber piloted by Marine Corps instructor Lt. Charles Carroll Taylor, were to perform a routine exercise from the refresher course. "Navigation Exercise No. 1" was typical - it involved flying over the ocean along a route with two turns and bombing practice. The route was standard, and this and similar routes around the Bahamas were systematically used for training flights by naval pilots throughout World War II. The crew was experienced, the leading flight Lieutenant Taylor flew about 2500 hours on this type of torpedo bombers, and his cadets were also not beginners - they had a total flight time of 350 to 400 hours, of which at least 55 hours on Avengers of this type.
The aircraft took off from the naval base in Fort Lauderdale, successfully completed training task, but then some nonsense begins. The link goes off course, Taylor turns on the emergency beacon and turns out to be direction-finding - within a radius of 100 miles from the point with coordinates 29 ° 15 ′ N. sh. 79°00′ W e. Then they change course several times, but cannot understand where they are: Lieutenant Taylor decided that the planes of the link were over the Gulf of Mexico (it seems that this mistake was the result of his confidence that the islands they flew over were the Florida archipelago - Keys, and flying to the northeast should take them to the Florida peninsula). Fuel runs out, Taylor gives the command to splash down, and...there was never more news from them. The rescue seaplane PBM-5 Martin "Mariner" that took off did not find anyone or anything, and he also disappeared.
Later, a large-scale operation was carried out to search for the missing aircraft, it involved three hundred army and navy aircraft and twenty-one ships. Parts of the national guard and volunteers combed the coast of Florida, the Florida Keys and the Bahamas in search of debris. The operation was abandoned without result after a few weeks, and all the crews who disappeared were officially declared missing.
The Navy investigation initially placed the blame on Lt. Taylor; however, they later changed the official report, and the missing link was said to have occurred "for unknown reasons." Neither the bodies of the pilots, nor one aircraft were never found. This story seriously added mystery to the legend of the Bermuda Triangle.
These 15 facts are considered mystical and mysterious by the media of those countries that during the Second World War called themselves allies of the USSR. Whether to share their views on that war and their ability to list a lot of facts, but never mention the USSR as the winner of Nazism is a personal matter for everyone. What is indisputable is that any war gives rise to myths and legends that will survive for many more generations.
