re: Need obscure WW II trivia

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Baton Rouge refineries were making 90% of all aviation fuel during the war.

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The 100 octane gasoline that gave the British an edge in the Battle of Britain was developed in Baton Rouge by a man named Alex Voorhies. My Dad later worked for him after the war. Also, most pilots flying the mighty P-47 Thunderbolt got their training at Harding Field, now Baton Rouge Metro Airport. My grandparents lived within walking distance of the Standard Oil Refinery, thus not too far from the airfield. My grandmother told me planes would fly so low over their house they would blow laundry off the clothesline. Young pilots, mostly 19-21 years old had a propensity to fly their planes underneath the Mississippi River Bridge. How cool would that be!

Also, their were POW camps in Port Allen and surrounding areas and German POWs were used to harvest sugar cane. There was also a camp east of Hammond (in an area known as Lorraine) that had German prisoners who were used to harvest timber.

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Source Mark T. Carlton’s Louisiana history class at LSU.

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MTC was the best professor I had at LSU, bar none.

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Was a drug addicted vegetarian with Parkinson’s who probably had an affair with his Jewish cousin and gave cyanide to his dog.

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The affair was with his niece.



She was a teenager during the affair and ended up committing suicide.

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Who shot down the first German aircraft to fall on British soil since WW1, and later romanced a princess?

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That's easy. Peter Townsend. His book "Duel of Eagles" about the Battle of Britain is a good read.

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Harding Field, now Baton Rouge Metro Airport

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An old family friend told me that when he was a kid during the war, he would ride his bike down to the airport to watch the planes fly. Once he saw a mid-air collision.

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Hedy Lamarr

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2/3rds of Red Army wheeled vehicles were US-made

The elite Red Guards Armored Division that led the attack on Berlin did so driving Sherman tanks. They were more reliable and more survivable than the much-over-hyped T-34.

The concept of dedicated ground low level sea/ground attack aircraft with heavy gun armament and bombs that either skipped to their target (shipping) or used parachutes, both to delay detonation so the attacking aircraft could clear the area, was conceived of an put into practice by P. I. "Pappy" Gunn, who cobbled together the first gunships using B-25's and B-26's in the Pacific. The tactics were credited with being the deciding factor in stopping the Japanese advance on Port Moresby. Today's A-10's and AC-130's are the direct descendents of his methods. His wife and children were Japanese internees in Manila. The Japanese had been led to believe he was KIA in one of their early bombing raids in the first days of the war.

A single Chrysler tank plant in Detroit made more tanks from 1942-45 than every axis-controlled tank plant in Europe COMBINED did from 1940-45.

The sole survivor of Torpedo 6 at Midway was Ensign George Gay, an American Indian. One of the men who raised the flag for the famous photo in Iwo Jima was also a native American. The US military considered all Hispanic people to be "white", thus there is no record of Hispanic-specific accomplishments.

I could keep adding to this all day....

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America's War Horse Marine - Sergeant Reckless

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The fat electrician is awesome!

This is bizarre story from World War II! In 1942, Lucille Ball, actress and future star of I Love Lucy, had several lead fillings put in at the dentist. Afterwards, she was driving home late one night from MGM Studios and started hearing music coming from her mouth. A co-worker told her that she was picking up a nearby radio station and that he knew someone else who had fillings and experienced the same thing.


A few days later, she was driving home a different way from work and began hearing short beeps that sounded like Morse code. She reported it to the FBI who searched the area and found a Japanese underground radio transmitter. It was hidden in a tool shed that was used by a Japanese gardener, who turned out to be part of a spy ring operating on the West Coast!

According to Arabs the Holocaust never happened.

As a internet kid (grew up through all the 2010's) alot of people my age are into this stuff. I mean we aren't popular but with the internet people do alot of research about things like this. At 13 I went down the MLK assassination rabbit hole and that led to Ted K and I havent been the same since.