This comments section is wild. It’s really a pretty simple post even if it’s not spelled out as clearly as it could be; it’s just saying in WW2 an allied bomber (American) was attacked with explosives by Nazi defenses (Germans during WW2) and was thwarted by Czech made blank anti-aircraft shells because they only pretended to work for the Nazis. Given current context, I assume the analogy is that now that Americans are the Nazis, you can still resist the regime by doing what the Czechs did.
That said, I don’t really believe the story since it reads as “and everyone clapped” levels of evidence, but the overall message is fine. This is hope posting, anyway.
Edit: fixed a term
I was pretty suspicious as well, but I was able to trace it back to this story from Military Times which is a pretty respected outlet. Of course, the vet could just be lying, but also WW2 was an insane time and stuff like this really did happen. I have also read about how slave laborers in Nazi Germany would do other things to sabotage, like cutting wires in the planes they were building.
https://greglewisinfo.com/2020/04/18/the-b-17-saved-by-a-miracle/
The ultimate source appears to be a guy’s memoirs:
I came across this story in Elmer Bendiner’s marvellous 1980 memoir, The Fall of the Fortresses, while researching the lives of USAAF crews flying out of England during WW2.
I’m still very sceptical. This guy is not even the primary source actually:
Bohn said the shells had been sent to the armorers to be defused but had then been rushed away by an intelligence officer.
Bohn had tracked down the officer and had hounded him until eventually he had told Bohn the full story – before swearing him to secrecy.
Now, sabotage like this undoubtedly happened, although the scale is impossible to verify. However I think this specific story has just way too flimsy a chain of evidence to put any faith in. Good story though.
No ones going to mention this is obviously horse shit?
Like there’s so much wrong with this story I’m sure where to begin, like they will have produced ammunition in the 100s of thousands, did they write a note in like 1 in 20, or did they just get extremely lucky?
Where did they fund the shells? They either would have gone in one side and out the other, or they would have just disintegrated, especially if they were hollow.
The explosive filled in these shells is fairly significant amount of their mass. Did the Nazis running the factories not notice when the cases of ammunition are 20% lighter than they should be and the workers have several tonnes of explosive filler left over? Was there no quality control in the factories at all?
Why would they just start cutting open shells they presume are high explosive?
This 1,000% didn’t happen.
The explosive filled in these shells is fairly significant amount of their mass.
Not really - the explosive charge is less than half an ounce when the whole shell (the projectile part, not including the cartridge casing and the propellant) is about 3.5 ounces. So the explosive charge is about 10% of the weight of the shell.
when the cases of ammunition are 20% lighter than they should be
The entire cartridge weighs about 11 ounces, so a cartridge with an empty charge cavity would be only about 2-3% lighter than normal. A case would also include the belt(s) and the weight of the box, so a case of sabotaged cartridges would be almost imperceptibly lighter than normal, with a difference probably less than 1%.
I agree that story is likely bullshit, but not for that particular reason. I don’t see why workers would risk calling added attention to their sabotage by putting little notes into each shell - not to mention the writer’s cramp this would produce.
I’m not saying it happened, but it is a “known” story. Example: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2023/12/28/all-we-can-do-for-you-now-how-czech-sabotage-saved-a-b-17-crew/
It’s an apocryphal story.
It looks like the source is a memoir written by a soldier. So I guess you’d have to take that one guy’s word for it, assuming interviews etc. with other people who would have seen the same event don’t exist.
