hopeposting

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/

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.

You know the thing about "and everyone clapped" meme is silly because those things actually do exist.

It's just unlikely.

Like winning the lottery. You can read up on hundreds of lottery winners, but winning one yourself is kinda unlikely.

I literally had a "and everyone clapped" thing, where a bus full of people literally everyone clapped and cheered for me. I was pretty drunk and just a few years out of the army and the driver was having some issue with a drunken older woman (like not 60 but close enough, still pretty spry but super drunk), so I ran to the front of the bus, demanded for the to exit the vehicle in a booming voice (I have a very strong voice and I was and NCO) and when she wouldn't, I just dragged her out. The bus driver closed the door and drove off slightly, I thought he was taking off but he was just driving a bit further so I'd run there. I did, got back on the bus and literally everyone clapped.

Felt pretty great I have to say.

Only post in the thread that seems to understand. Wow!

Just a small correction. Not bombs...shells. The Czechs were sabotaging anti-aircraft shells so they didn't explode.

Ideas can be powerful.

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/

This is the same kind of logic that would say 9/11 is fake because one of the terrorists' ID cards was found unscathed in a New York street.

I'm not saying it happened, but your skepticism is way out of proportion.

• The filling issue is an obvious problem, which is why any Czech trying to sabotage it would have spent the first couple years of their enslavement trying to to come up with a method that works. Maybe the factory made its explosives in-house and the explosives guy was in on it too, instead making inert chemicals with the same raw materials. Maybe the explosives where rendered inert through a chemical process. Maybe the explosives were smuggled out of the factory to empower resistance movements and exchanged with dirt.
• When locked in a factory and ordered to make a certain amount of explosives, not making those explosives but making duds instead leaves you with a lot of spare time. If you're already supposed to be a line worker making thousands of the same thing, why not make thousands of similar letters expressing your hope of rescue?
• The shells would have been more solid than explosive shells, being filled with inert shock-absorbing dirt. Many of them would have exited the craft, but some would naturally have gotten stuck because the point of cluster munitions is to be birdshot.
• It's good military-scientific practice to study the weapons of the enemy, especially if they don't do what you expect. British military intelligence was very thorough, down to using novel statistical techniques such as the German Tank Problem. Explosive munitions not exploding is a definite curiosity worth investigating.
• No, the Nazis did not have good quality control. A lot of the popular conception of Nazis as technological geniuses comes directly from Nazi propaganda, repeated by American propaganda for the sake of demonizing the USSR and trying to justify Operation Paperclip scientists like Von Braun being given a warm welcome and getting rebranded as a hero.

Was there no quality control in the factories at all?

Is this the first you're hearing of Nazi weapons factories? Because yeah, QA/QC was nearly non-existent

Nothing you didn't see has ever happened. Its the vibe I'm getting.

Edit: Dropped a Y

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.

This is why you Always report images of text with no transcription or citations.

Mods, please delete this misinformation

It gets really bad when you realize that people treat this kind of bullshit with the same relative importance to their lives AND skepticism as they treat their democratic political decisions and stances that actually impact us all.