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At least we know who invented the mile high club: Walter Brookins. It was a solo act.
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May 17, 2024 16:02
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There's been some research into Finnish gay culture and how it kinda thrived during WW2. I mean you have hundreds of thousands of men on the front for years so it's bound to happen. There's been interviews of gay veterans who told how fear drove men to find comfort in each other's arms and so on. And after the war during reconstruction society came down hard against homosexuality, probably because it had become uncomfortably visible for more conservative aspects of society. It makes sense that Tom of Finland was of that generation. He's said how nazi ideology revolted him but he couldn't deny that they had the sexiest uniforms. I wonder how many encounters he had with German soldiers in the parks of Helsinki during his time as artillery observer in Helsinki AA-regiment....
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May 17, 2024 16:16
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D-Pad posted:Excellent post and your concerns are the same I had and why I asked the question. The story seemed just a little too "neat" to be true. That being said as I've dived into more WW2 history I have been a bit surprised at how much debauchery everybody was getting up too compared to the typical view we have of the sexuality of that generation. The thing to keep in mind is that this debauchery was going on in general, and if anything was only magnified by the fact that you're concentrating a bunch of young men together in one place and one time, and in a situation where they aren't dependent on what money they have to provide necessities (Army gives you meals and a roof over your head) and are also in an extremely traumatic/stressful environment where you might very well be dead in the near future. People were doing all sorts of poo poo in whatever era you care to name. This doesn't mean that cultural attitudes towards sex and sexual relations haven't changed - in my lifetime alone homosexuality has become far more culturally accepted in the United States, and I'm only middle aged - but frankly most of the major changes have taken place in how open we are about talking about them. The stuff you can put on broadcast TV - much less HBO - today wouldn't have flown at all even in the supposedly liberated late 1960s, but that doesn't mean that people in the 50s, 40s, or earlier weren't having affairs and doing drugs and engaging in non-missionary sex. Here's a famous example, straight from Victorian England. This is King Edward VII. He was king from 1901-1910.  His mother was Queen Victoria, and due to her long life he spent most of his as the Prince of Wales. Ever heard of Edwardian, as in with houses etc? Yeah, that's crap that was built during the period he was alive, much as we describe stuff from the 1840s-1900 as "Victorian." Anyways, Victorian England was pretty famously prudish. Don't get me wrong, there's been a lot of work highlighting how that's more a stereotype and a reality, but it was still a period when public morals trended towards the buttoned-down, and to this day "Victorian" is a byword for repressed. Anyways, here's the future King Edward VII's gently caress chair:  Dude had an apparently well earned reputation as a playboy, and caused enough scandals by loving around that it lead his mom, the Queen, to distance herself from him. His father, Prince Albert, described him as 'debauched.' That chair is pretty much what it looks like. Yes, those are stirrups. Yes, those are handles for someone standing at the foot of the chair to hold onto while getting their screw on. Those metal spots at the bottom are foot treads (note the cup for your heel) so you can get some better purchase and don't slip while thrusting. There's no dainty euphemism to hang over this, no potential alternate use for this furniture. It is a custom made, bespoke, royal gently caress chair. And this wasn't a "marital aid." This isn't a monogamous guy and his wife engaging in some matrimonial happy fun time experimentation. This particular chair was commissioned and installed in his favorite brothel in Paris. So, yeah, stuff is always a bit more racy than you would thing if you're just going off of the buttoned down way that they were described in public school histories etc.
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May 17, 2024 16:18
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Glah posted:It makes sense that Tom of Finland was of that generation. He's said how nazi ideology revolted him but he couldn't deny that they had the sexiest uniforms. ...
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May 17, 2024 16:28
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Tom of Finland was a gay semi-porn artist who basically innovated the weird cop-nazi authoritarian art thing on gay art. why is there a cop in the music video for the song YMCA despite the cops oppressing gay peeps? Tom of Finland, basically
bob dobbs is dead fucked around with this message at 16:33 on May 17, 2024 |
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May 17, 2024 16:29
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D-Pad posted:Excellent post and your concerns are the same I had and why I asked the question. The story seemed just a little too "neat" to be true. That being said as I've dived into more WW2 history I have been a bit surprised at how much debauchery everybody was getting up too compared to the typical view we have of the sexuality of that generation. quote:According to Terry Gould's The Lifestyle: A look at the erotic rites of swingers, swinging began among American Air Force pilots and their wives during World War II before pilots left for overseas duty. The mortality rate of pilots was so high, as Gould reports, that a close bond arose between pilot families that implied that pilot husbands would care for all the wives as their own – emotionally and sexually – if the husbands were lost. The realities of the demographics and basing of US Army Air Force (USAAF) pilots and crew suggest that this arrangement did not evolve during WWII, instead evolving later. US military personnel in WWII were not accompanied by their families (and many, especially in the USAAF, were single) – the giant military bases where families live while accompanying a deployed soldier, sailor, aviator, or Marine are mostly Cold War creations. Though the origins of swinging are contested, it is assumed American swinging was practiced in some American military communities in the 1950s. By the time the Korean War ended, swinging had spread from the military to the suburbs. The media dubbed the phenomenon wife-swapping. quote:I do not have a print copy of The Lifestyle: A Look at the Erotic Rites of Swingers, and only a Slate article, it seems, does not use some slight variation on Wikipedia's phrasing [he quoted an older less skeptical version of the Wikipedia article] yet also cites Gould. quote:A common myth claims that a "key party" is a form of swinger party, in which male partners place their car or house keys into a common bowl or bag on arriving, and at the end of the evening the female partners randomly select a set of keys from the bowl and are obligated to leave and have sex with its owner. However, numerous researchers have tried unsuccessfully to confirm a first-hand account of such a party, suggesting that they are nothing more than an urban legend. DTurtle fucked around with this message at 16:56 on May 17, 2024 |
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May 17, 2024 16:48
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The second half of the initial claim seems actually verifiable; whether pilots had any special deals with their compatriots' wives to take care of them after they died. Although it's not the more interesting part, it's something that could actually be checked on (assuming they kept to the deals and weren't just lying to get some sex). Although a veteran looking after his dead comrades' wives is also the kind of thing that outsiders could just make up that they were all sleeping together as well. As all relationships must be implicity sexual.
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May 17, 2024 16:48
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SlothfulCobra posted:The second half of the initial claim seems actually verifiable; whether pilots had any special deals with their compatriots' wives to take care of them after they died. Although it's not the more interesting part, it's something that could actually be checked on (assuming they kept to the deals and weren't just lying to get some sex). quote:When I mentioned this at a recent presentation in San Diego, a former fighter pilot in the audience raised his hand and said, "Same thing; different war." He explained that among his colleagues flying air missions in Vietnam, mate-swapping was the norm. Another woman in the audience, who had dated military pilots confirmed that in her experience, non-monogamy was understood to be standard in that community.
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May 17, 2024 17:00
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Cessna posted:if you've ever spent time on a military base you know weird sex / relationship stuff goes down. Not exactly milhist but now I need to share my anecdote about this because it was one of the weirdest things that ever happened to me and it cracks me up whenever I remember it. I was an operations NCO at the BN level and one time we had a compliance inspection coming from the brigade level, I had several additional duties so it was very busy for me. For the training inspection, they sent some gruff, no-nonsense NCO with zero sense of humor and a stick up his rear end. I had a feeling he was going to ding me for absolutely everything he could so I did my best to shmooze him. When he went to type up his report, our internet went down at BN, so I invited him back to my place for lunch, he could use my internet to finish his slides. He said that's a great idea so we left. I gave myself a pat on the back, thinking this was turning out well. As soon as we got there, I gave him my desk and asked if he would like a coffee. He started typing away, so I brewed the coffee and brought it into the room. Immediately I noticed two things, 1 he is on my PC and not his NIPR laptop, 2 he is on adult friend finder and there is a live stream of a woman masturbating on my monitor. I said "well that's a pretty lady" and he started going on and on about how him and his wife were into swinging. He spent the next 45 minutes telling me about swinging clubs and giving me a VERY DETAILED overview about the swinging culture on the base. He never did his slides and he wouldn't shut up about it until we got back to BN. After that, he immediately turned back into a gruff a-hole and barely spoke to me ever again. But he did give us a good review to the Colonel, so I guess my plan worked out.
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May 17, 2024 17:27
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I just started reading Longitude, because I’d heard good things. In the first 10 pages the author uncritically repeats the myth about a sailor on one of the RN ships sunk in the Scilly grounding being summarily executed for having the temerity to question the ship’s navigation, and the one about the admiral being murdered as he lay washed up on the beach by a local woman who stole his emerald ring. So I am not optimistic about the remainder.
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May 17, 2024 20:04
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Phanatic posted:I just started reading Longitude, because I’d heard good things. The annoying thing about that myth is that apart from being entirely absent from contemporary accounts, it had been comprehensively debunked by the end of the 19th century, with one telling of the Scilly Naval Disaster written in the 1880s calling it "a silly tale [which bears] upon it's face it's own refutation." It lay pretty much buried (the more enduring one was the tale about Sir Cloudesley being washed up on St. Mary's still alive and murdered by Scillonians for his valuable cygnet ring stayed in circulation due to the vigorous dedication of the Isles of Scilly tourist guides) until Longitude stirred it all up again. The rest of the book is compelling but, unfortunately, veers too far in search of a good narrative and having the 'good character' of John Harrison, the lone genius done dirty by the establishment represented by an assortment of 'bad characters'. Like a lot of the popular dramatised history books, it's good jumping off point for better things. "Longitude: How Ships, Clocks and Stars helped solve the Longitude Problem" by Richard Dunn and Rebekah Higgitt, is much better. It was the accompanying book to the National Maritime Museum's Longitude expedition about ten years ago, which grew out of the project to digitise the Longitude Board archive and both cash in on and correct the impact of Longitude.
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May 17, 2024 20:34
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Did the german (or any) gliders in ww2 require pilots as such? I was discussing with a friend S-- L--- and he said what if they launched a few decoys far north of potential landings so that the british would have to dedicate troops to chasing phantom units and if that was possible. And I said... I have no idea, but I know some people who might. And obviously if they all land right on their nose and catch fire without someone to fly them, the jig would be up pretty quick probably. But if they landed gently, the absence of corpses might suggest they survived to a man and were in the area, doubtless up to no good. If not, were the pilots part of the unit?
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May 18, 2024 03:31
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Milo and POTUS posted:Did the german (or any) gliders in ww2 require pilots as such? I was discussing with a friend S-- L--- and he said what if they launched a few decoys far north of potential landings so that the british would have to dedicate troops to chasing phantom units and if that was possible. And I said... I have no idea, but I know some people who might. And obviously if they all land right on their nose and catch fire without someone to fly them, the jig would be up pretty quick probably. But if they landed gently, the absence of corpses might suggest they survived to a man and were in the area, doubtless up to no good. If not, were the pilots part of the unit? You 100% need pilots. There are multiple books on glider pilots, especially for the allies. Like how Operation Varsity ran out of glider pilots and they had to get volunteers from the air transport group and elsewhere to fill in spots, with varying success. *Edit: To elaborate, it requires a lot of work to maintain level flight as all gliders had rudimentary controls, at best. There was no way you could possibly leave gliders, especially in large quantities, to fly without someone at the controls. Any disturbance or turbulence on a pilotless glider would potentially disrupt the craft so much as to become a danger to itself, other gliders being towed by the parent aircraft, or the parent aircraft itself.
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May 18, 2024 03:48
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Also fun fact, in the case of Operation Varsity and the allies - glider pilots were not treated the same as regular pilots, nor were they treated the same as paratroopers, nor were they treated the same as ground infantry. Thus you have poo poo like glider pilots kinda just... loving around after they landed, or being forced to find their own way back to friendly lines or their home base. This, coupled with the nature of being young in a foreign country you potentially have no care for, or just a lack of morals, could see glider pilots be "missing" for days or weeks, "liberating" liquors of various kinds or seeking other pleasures.
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May 18, 2024 03:53
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Glider-borne infantry also had to fight for increased "hazard pay" because they ostensibly performed the same duties and lived through the same dangers as paratroopers but were not paid the paratrooper rate. I believe they fought for, and received, the increased $$$ due to Varsity.
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May 18, 2024 03:57
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One last post because the loving internet doesn't have this poem/song and I'm annoyed by thisThe Gliderman's Lament posted:Oh! Once I was happy, but now I'm Airborne, 
Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 04:18 on May 18, 2024 |
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May 18, 2024 04:06
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Just got off the phone with my very boomer parents (and I love both of them deeply) reminding them that they need to write down their milhist-adjacent memories (my mom's father worked for a rocket company and my dad was an airedale in the late cold war) because historians like myself actually want to know the bullshit they witnessed. Despite them knowing I'm a historian and my boring them with shop talk over decades of family dinners they still can't seem to put the pedal to metal and actually write their own memories down. Please tell any relative who will still answer your calls to write down their own memories of things. Historians go to their graves wishing they could read this kind of mundane poo poo for their period of study.
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May 18, 2024 05:54
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Just got off the phone with my very boomer parents (and I love both of them deeply) reminding them that they need to write down their milhist-adjacent memories (my mom's father worked for a rocket company and my dad was an airedale in the late cold war) because historians like myself actually want to know the bullshit they witnessed. Despite them knowing I'm a historian and my boring them with shop talk over decades of family dinners they still can't seem to put the pedal to metal and actually write their own memories down. Honestly your best bet is to whip out your phone and just film an interview otherwise they'll probably never get around to it.
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May 18, 2024 06:21
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If you really want to get them fired up, start telling them things about their own former work and make sure to get obvious details wrong. Then record the correcting rants.
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May 18, 2024 07:55
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Here's a book/reading request: does anyone have a recommendation for a history or analysis of Kagame's 1994 campaign?
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May 18, 2024 13:12
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Milo and POTUS posted:Did the german (or any) gliders in ww2 require pilots as such? I was discussing with a friend S-- L--- and he said what if they launched a few decoys far north of potential landings so that the british would have to dedicate troops to chasing phantom units and if that was possible. And I said... I have no idea, but I know some people who might. And obviously if they all land right on their nose and catch fire without someone to fly them, the jig would be up pretty quick probably. But if they landed gently, the absence of corpses might suggest they survived to a man and were in the area, doubtless up to no good. If not, were the pilots part of the unit? My paternal grandfather was a USAAF glider pilot. Glider pilots went through an abbreviated flying course, starting with the full primary training course shared with the rest of the pilot training pipelines, advancing to an abbreviated basic pilot training course, and skipping the advanced trainers in favor of going straight from the BT-13 to the CG-4A. He finished flight school with something like 60 hours overall in powered aircraft (in his case, PT-19s and BT-13s,) and picked up another twenty or thirty in CG-4As before the war ended. He never flew in combat. In a combat glider drop, the pilots were expected to tag along with their passengers until such point that they could be returned back through friendly lines to the rear. Due to the nature of airborne operations in WWII this could be several days or weeks, so glider pilots also got an abbreviated infantry course before being sent to operational units. If you want more, strong recommend for Silent Wings by Gerard M. Devlin.
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May 18, 2024 16:36
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MrYenko posted:In a combat glider drop, the pilots were expected to tag along with their passengers until such point that they could be returned back through friendly lines to the rear. Due to the nature of airborne operations in WWII this could be several days or weeks, so glider pilots also got an abbreviated infantry course before being sent to operational units. Only in the latter stages of the war. Earlier on, it was assumed that the victories would be quick enough that the Glider Pilots wouldn't be required for combat.
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May 18, 2024 16:44
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MrYenko posted:My paternal grandfather was a USAAF glider pilot. Glider pilots went through an abbreviated flying course You might call this... a crash course 
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May 18, 2024 17:13
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Nenonen posted:You might call this... a crash course The CG-4A has a loaded glide ratio that is similar to a Cessna 172 with the engine off and the prop windmilling. That is to say, not very loving good. …And that’s at the weights listed in the manual, which is something that was probably gleefully ignored during the planning and loading of actual combat missions. There’s an excerpt in the book I mentioned above about an officer’s aide having steel armor plate welded to the floor of his boss’ assigned glider the night before either D day or Market Garden (it’s been fifteen years since I’ve read it) without the permission or knowledge of the flight crew. They found out at rotation, nursed it across the channel, and made a very rough (but mostly safe) landing with something like a 4:1 glide ratio.
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May 18, 2024 17:26
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MrYenko posted:The CG-4A has a loaded glide ratio that is similar to a Cessna 172 with the engine off and the prop windmilling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1xtiuqWFCc
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May 18, 2024 19:02
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Only in the latter stages of the war. Earlier on, it was assumed that the victories would be quick enough that the Glider Pilots wouldn't be required for combat. Probably told him to go sit down and stay out of the way
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May 18, 2024 20:49
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 Saw this and thought of y'all.
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May 18, 2024 23:10
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Something that just randomly hit me out of nowhere: FDR died before the other main figures of World War II, like Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, etc. How did they react to his death? And, was there a delay in the Allies warming up to Truman?
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May 19, 2024 01:19
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It is important to note that Truman was VP not least because everybody knew FDR was dying. It was accepted as a given that the VP elected in 1944 would become President, and Henry Wallace's anti-segregationist and (allegedly) pro-Soviet views spooked a lot of people in Washington so he got shoved aside in favor of Truman. The other Allies were no less aware that FDR's days were numbered, and thus weren't particularly surprised when it happened.
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May 19, 2024 02:28
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Stalin apparently was pretty sure FDR was poisoned though and suggested the US do an autopsy.
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May 19, 2024 02:43
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Raenir Salazar posted:Stalin apparently was pretty sure FDR was poisoned though and suggested the US do an autopsy. Freudian slip
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May 19, 2024 02:44
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some things I remember from the WW2 channel video on it: Molotov met with the US ambassador in Moscow and seemed genuinely sad and upset about it the japanese PM (suzuki iirc) sent an official letter of condolences Hitler gloated and said it was the miracle of Brandenburg just as he had always predicted 
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May 19, 2024 03:33
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Quackles posted:
personally I saw it and thought of jack churchill
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May 19, 2024 04:49
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Yaoi Gagarin posted:some things I remember from the WW2 channel video on it: That late in the war the entirety of the US military could have vanished and they'd still have been finished
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May 19, 2024 05:16
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Clarence "Bud" Anderson, the last surviving American triple ace, just passed away at 102.
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May 19, 2024 05:26
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Gnoman posted:It is important to note that Truman was VP not least because everybody knew FDR was dying. It was accepted as a given that the VP elected in 1944 would become President, and Henry Wallace's anti-segregationist and (allegedly) pro-Soviet views spooked a lot of people in Washington so he got shoved aside in favor of Truman. Interestingly though, despite everybody knowing FDR was going to die and probably soon, they did a really bad job of preparing Truman and making sure he was up to date on all the stuff FDR was juggling. The first few months for Truman was a lot of getting up to speed in ways that shouldn't have been necessary considering everybody knew it was a strong possibility and should have been preparing for it while FDR was still alive.Especially considering there was a war on and one that was going to be done sooner rather than later with huge century defining post-war jockeying and decisions to be made when it ended. D-Pad fucked around with this message at 05:52 on May 19, 2024 |
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May 19, 2024 05:50
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Oops double post Edit: I'll take advantage of it to say today we had a memorial for my dad and I got to talk to some family members I hadn't seen in years. I started talking with an older cousin about WW2 and I found out a great uncle who I adored as a kid but died when I was young was in the 36th division for the entirety of the war and fought in Africa, Italy, and all the way through to Germany with them. His brother was a belly gunner in the 8th air force. I had no idea about either of their service previously other than knowing they were both in the war and I was a bit shocked that they both made it through all of that without a scratch. Both of those were very high casualty units. He said he has their military records and is going to send them to me and I'm very excited. D-Pad fucked around with this message at 06:36 on May 19, 2024 |
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May 19, 2024 05:51
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Yaoi Gagarin posted:some things I remember from the WW2 channel video on it:
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May 19, 2024 07:36
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Is "The Demon of Unrest" by Erik Larson a good book on the leadup to the civil war? Audible recommended it for me.
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May 19, 2024 14:50
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Yaoi Gagarin posted:some things I remember from the WW2 channel video on it: Was Hitler... An rear end in a top hat?
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May 19, 2024 21:02
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