World War II Facts!

Here are some facts that I found. I copied out the ones i thought were interesting but there was a whole website devoted only to these facts. The link is at the bottom of the page.

The youngest US serviceman was 12 year old Calvin Graham, USN. He was wounded in combat and given a Dishonorable Discharge for lying about his age. (His benefits were later restored by act of Congress).

Germany's power grid was much more vulnerable than realized. One estimate is that if just 1% of the bombs dropped on German industry had instead been dropped on power plants, German industry would have collapsed.

Generally speaking, there was no such thing as an average fighter pilot. You were either an ace or a target. For instance, Japanese ace Hiroyoshi Nishizawa shot down over 80 planes. He died while a passenger on a cargo plane.

German Me-264 bombers were capable of bombing New York City but it wasn't worth the effort.

A number of air crewmen died of farts. (ascending to 20,000 ft. in an un-pressurized aircraft causes intestinal gas to expand 300%!)

Germany lost 40-45% of their aircraft during World War 2 to accidents

The only nation that Germany declared war on was the USA.

One of the facts I found pretty interseting was that the youngest American soldier was only 12 years old. I looked up more about this kid at the time and found out that he was wounded while he was aboard the USS South Dakota which was fighting in the naval battle of Guadalcanal. He was awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. His mother told what his real age was and his medals were taken from him but all were eventually reinstated after many years of fighting for financial benefits. There was even a movie made about his service in WWII called Too Young the Hero, where he was played by Rick Schroder.