misc

Phoenix Project
The Phoenix Project started right after the Philadelphia Experiment close to the end of World War II in 1943. The Phoenix Project is even more outrageous and unbelievable than the Philadelphia Experiment. This project was started with the intention of trying to receive people thoughts with a computer. It is said that Von Neumann achieved this overtime by esoteric crystal radio receivers, which could receive human thoughts and then transfer the information to a computer in terms of bits. It is also said that techniques were developed that could allow a psychic to think a thought and be transmitted out a computer and potentially affect another human being's mind. The Phoenix project is supposed to have achieved a superior understanding of how the mind functions and potentially had the ability of mind control. Even though this project stared in the 40's during World War II major results were not achieved until decades later.

The Gestapo
During World War II the Germans came out with a group of volunteers who were called the Gestapo. The political force of the Reich was the Gestapo. Membership to this group of people was voluntary and it had about 40,000 to 50,000 people from the years 1943 to 1945. The Gestapo, with the concentration camp backing them had the power to eliminate all enemies of the NAZI regime. The Gestapo contained five subsections during the year 1943. The five subsections duties were as follows: deal with opponents, sabotage, protective services, political churches, sects and Jews, Jewish affairs, matters of evacuation, means of suppressing enemies of the people and state, dispossession of the rights of German Citizenship, deal with card files, protective custody, matters of press and party, deal with regions under greater German influence, deal with security, passport matters, and alien police. The Gestapo was the main persecutor of the Jews. The Deputy Chief of the Gestapo was Himmler. The power of the Gestapo was called "Schutzhaft" which means in English the power to imprison people without judicial proceedings.

Nuremberg Warcrime Trials
After World War II certain people were charged with war crimes. These cases started on November 20, 1945 and lasted until October 1, 1946. The trials were held in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice in room # 600. The Nuremberg war crime trials were held in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice for several reasons which are it had 22,000 square meters of space, about 530 offices and 80 courtrooms, war damage to it was minimal, and a large undestroyed prison was part of the complex. The Soviet Union wanted the trials to take place in Berlin so the Allies reached a compromise on August 8, 1945 that stated that Berlin would be the permanent seat of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) and that the first trial would take place in Nuremberg. The four leading powers after the war (USA, USSR, Great Britain, and France) were allowed to provide one judge and one alternate and the prosecutors too. The first court session was lead by a Soviet judge who name was Iola T. Nikitschenko. The prosecution entered twenty-four indictments against major war crime criminals and against six criminal organizations. The six criminal organizations were as follows: Hitler's Cabinet, the leadership corps of the NAZI party, the SS and the SD, the Gestapo, and the SA and the General Staff and High Command of the army. The twenty-four people placed on trial were

Bormann, Martin
Dönitz, Karl
Frank, Hans
Frick, Wilhelm
Fritzsche, Hans
Funk, Walter
Göring, Hermann
Heß, Rudolf
Jodl, Alfred
Kaltenbrunner, Ernst

Keitel, Wilhelm
Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, Gustav
Ley, Robert
Neurath, Konstantin von
Papen, Franz von
Raeder, Erich
Ribbentrop, Joachim von
Rosenberg, Alfred
Sauckel, Fritz

From November 20, 1945 to August 31, 1946, all of the sessions were held in Nuremberg under the presidency of Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence. After 218 days of testimony 360 witnesses was introduced some of which were verbal and some written. About 236 of the 360 were actually in the court itself some of them were judges. There was about 200,000 affidavits evaluated as evidence and more than 1,000 people (some taking testimony text translators, simultaneous translators, secretaries, etc.,) were involved. The verdicts of the trial were announced on September 30 and on October 1, 1946; three acquittals, 12 sentences to death by hanging, 7 sentences to life imprisonment or to lesser terms. Those people who were sentenced to death died in the early morning of October 16, 1946, in the old gymnasium of the Nuremberg prison. The last of the prisoners (Rudolf Hess) committed suicide in August of 1987.

The Atomic Bomb
The designing of the atomic bomb was not a direct cause of Japan it was Germany that lead the United States into building the bomb because of fear that they might create it first. The bombs had over 129,000 people employed secretly to have it built before the Germans did. The project was coded named The Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project used two different types of bombs each one had a different triggering mechanism and both used different types of radioactive elements. The two different types of elements were Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239. The names of the two types of bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were Fat Man and Little Boy. Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, was a bit more complex than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. Fat Man used Plutonium 239, which was arrayed around high explosives. The high explosives were designed to create a precise symmetrical explosion to compress the plutonium creating critical density and causing a chain reaction. To better your understanding of these bombs you need to know how they work. Nuclear bombs under go a process known as fission. Fission is the splitting of a nucleus by a neutron. When a neutron is shot at the element's nucleus it causes it to split into two smaller pieces. If critical mass is obtained more neutrons will be released causing a chain reaction totally destroying the entire piece of element. Robert Oppenheimer was the head of Los Alamos laboratory in Mexico and he was one of the scientists who helped in the development of the two bombs dropped in World War II on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The atomic bombs dropped on Japan in my opinion saved countless thousands of lives because if we had not dropped that bomb a mainland invasion would have been in order and deaths of this were estimated to be way over a million lives. Fat Man and Little Boy killed about three hundred thousand people, a lot less than one million.

F4U Corsair
One of the most famous and distinctive planes from World War II is the F4U Corsair. The first Corsair prototype was flown on May 29, 1940. The Corsair was the first single engine fighter plane ever to achieve speed in access of four hundred miles per hour. The Corsair pulled more that its own weight during World War II since it had an eleven to one ratio against the Japanese. The Japanese became very aware of this plane during the war because of its effectiveness and the noise it made from the leading edge oil coolers. They even gave the plane the nickname "Whistling Death". The Corsair turned out to be a very versatile plane since it excelled in ground attacks and dogfights and in the attack role. The Corsair against the Zero now days would be like a 5000 pound Daytona car that could go 200 miles per hour against a 1500 Nissan that could only go about 130 miles per hour. The Corsair had a two thousand eight hundred cubic inch engine with eighteen cylinders and twenty-one hundred-horse powers. The armament of the plane was six .50 caliber machine guns. The wingspan was 41 feet and the length was 33 feet, 8 inches and the height was 14 feet, 9 inches. The propeller of the Corsair had a diameter of about 13 feet, 6 inches. The maximum take off weight of this plane was 16,160 pounds. The top speed of the corsair was around 466 miles per hour. The Corsair had a range of 1,005 miles (with external tanks) and an operating ceiling of 41,500 feet. This plane was very distinctive during World War II because of the bent wings that it had to increase the storage space on aircraft carriers and for bases on land. Even the famous ace Gregory Boeington flew a Corsair during World War II. He achieved the rank of ace his first time out in a dogfight during the war.

Mitsubishi A6M Zero
During World War II, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero was the most famous of all the Japanese aircrafts. During the first six months of the war, the Zero controlled the aerial was in the Pacific. The Zero's allied code name was "Zeke". It is considered remarkable to some people who say it was the first carrier fighter to outperform its land-based equivalents. During 1937 the Zero was going to need to meet several specifications, which included a speed of 500 km/h and an armament of two cannon and machine guns. The result of this was a very light and extremely nimble plane. The Zero had an unprecedented range for a small aircraft and during the first months of the war its superior armor and maneuverability crushed all opponents until the Zero started to encounter the F6F Hellcat and the F4U Corsair. The weaknesses of the Zero begin to show at this moment. The Zero's lack of self-fueling fuel tanks and armor, and the extreme lightness of its construction made it vulnerable to combat damage. After noticing how outclassed they were the Japanese desperately tried to design more effective version, which resulted in boosted a Zero. 1,560 horsepower gave considerable trouble to the F4F and FM wildcats but still was no match for the F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair. The Zero was a single-seat ship borne fighter and fighter-bomber. The dimensions of the plane was about 39'4 wingspan, length 29'9, and the height was between 9'8 and 9'9. The weight of this plane empty was around 4000 pounds and loaded it was around 6000 pounds. It had either an A6M3 or A6M5 engine, which had around 1030 hp. The Zero was armed with 2 x 20 mm type 99 cannon in outer wings, 2 x 7.7 mm or 13.2 mm machine-guns above forward fuselage or in wings, and wing racks for 2 x 66 pound (or some aircraft 132 pound) bombs. The maximum speed of the aircraft was around 350 miles per hour in level flight. The first prototype of the Zero was launched in April of 1939. The Japanese never added more armament because they didn't want the plane to be any heavier, although they did make improvements on the cannon from shooting 490 rpm to 750 rounds per minute. The total production of the A6M was 10,449 (3,879 by Mitsubishi and 6,570 by Nakajima).

General
During World War II Germany had some of the most heavily armored tanks. After the first World War Germany's armor production was restricted due to them losing in World War I. The Germans developed a strategy called Vernichtungsgedanke, which in English means annihilation concept. This concept of theirs was to fall on the flanks of an enemy, surround, and then destroy it. The main person who led to the development of the panzer tanks was Heinz Guderian. Captain Heinz Guderian was a communications specialist during World War II until he was promoted to serving in the Transport Troops Inspectorate. He read articles on armored warfare and after reading many of these articles he began to form his own opinions and started to write articles like the one he had read himself. This caused him to rise up in the promotion ladder. Many people wondered if the tanks of the present could live up to what Guderian was talking about. In 1931 Heinz Guderian was appointed Chief of Staff to the Inspectorate of Motorized Troops. Many Germans did not agree with Guderian's ideas but Hitler did so it did not much matter what other people thought. Latter on Guderian was appointed Chief of Mobile Troops in 1938, November 20th. His background in communications gave him ideas about putting radios in the armored vehicles so that they could communicate with ground troops and planes in the air. Guderian laid down the foundation for panzer tactics. The United States light tanks during World War II had to be less than 5 tons and the medium tanks had to be less than 15 tons so that they would be able to transport the equipment on trucks or by rail. On July 10, 1940 the war department decided to form the armored forces this was due in large part because of the fact that they were impressed by the quick German victories in Poland and France.