guitarmaster
Corporal
And at this range, I'm a real Frederick Zoller
Posts: 954
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Post by guitarmaster on Apr 20, 2009 20:50:47 GMT -5
So during WWII, here in MT at Malmstrom AFB alot of planes that were given to Russia flew out of here and there was a lot of Russians that stayed here during that. My question is was it like that in Russia as well? Having American troops behind the lines on there turf?
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Post by Fusilier on May 14, 2009 15:36:56 GMT -5
Sure,bombers have crash landed and what not,and guess what,the commies put the crews in Gulags and it took the US Govt. some deal making to get them back.The Soviets kept the planes though!
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gryphon
Master sergeant
shchi e kasha, pisha nasha.
Posts: 250
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Post by gryphon on May 29, 2009 7:56:30 GMT -5
The Russian military has a long, long tradition of xenophobia, and Stalin's Soviet Union was an exceptionally paranoid police state even by historical Russian standards. Remember, the US had sided with the Whites during the Russian Civil War and committed the ANREF Polar Bear Expedition which fought against the Red Army near Archangel in 1918 and 1919. We also sent an AEF Siberia force into the Vladivostok area to help the Czechs get out. In the Bolshevik view, this was seen as a US military invasion of Russia.
The Soviets had no shortages of basic manpower and did not welcome ANY foreign troops on their soil including allies, but they were always requesting more materiel. The Americans, meanwhile, weren't exactly eager to commit any of their manpower to the Ostfront anyway. I don't believe that in most cases US or British merchant ship crews were even allowed off their boats during Lend-Lease deliveries, and almost certainly never allowed off the docks. US and Soviet troops did encounter each other in Germany during the final phase of the war, of course.
The only commitment of US troops within the Soviet Union I have heard of came with the delivery of Lend-Lease fighter aircraft which were piloted into the Soviet Union by an all-black unit of Army Air Corps test-pilots. I think the planes were Aircobras, but I don't actually know much else about this episode. Be worth researching, though. Please post your findings if you do any research.
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guitarmaster
Corporal
And at this range, I'm a real Frederick Zoller
Posts: 954
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Post by guitarmaster on Jun 11, 2009 21:33:16 GMT -5
Alot of the planes that came over to Russian from the US took off from Malmstrom AFB here in MT.
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Post by 326thvgd on Jun 12, 2009 7:56:56 GMT -5
My understanding is that any aircrews that landed in Russia by mistake, like one of the Doolittle raiders, and I believe wayward crews from the USAAF that was bombing Italy and the Balkans (15th if memory serves correctly) were "interned" by Russia. Not sure exactly what that entailed, but I believe they were essentially political prisoners, not really sent to the Gulags, but not free to return home until after hostilities were over. I believe they were treated "OK", but I do not have really any concrete information beyond that. I know of 2 other Russian/US or Allied collaborations: 1) There was an arrangement set up to land, refuel and rearm American bombers and fighters, I believe from the USAAF 8th Airforce out of England, for a long range mission. The planes were to land on Russian airfields, be serviced, and then hit the targets again on their way back to England. All went well, initially, and as the planes landed, they were to be readied for the return leg. I believe things were delayed, and for whatever reason, the Luftwaffe got wind of things, and a fairly successful raid was launched, catching much of the force on the ground. Many B-17's and P-51's were destroyed, and no such operation was ever (to my knowledge) tried like this again due to the disasterous results. (I am in the midst of a move right now, so all of my books and reference works are currently packed, so I am going off of just memory right now.) 2) From this site, copied and pasted: www.o5m6.de/index.htmlWhen the Iran was occupied in August 1941 by British and Soviet forces in order to open a save "back-door" for Lend-Lease deliveries to Russia, it happened not to the least in regard of the Iranian State Railway. The »ISR«, as called briefly, had been built in the late 1930s primarily to connect the Persian Gulf port of Bander-Shahpur with Tehran and the Caspian Sea port Bander-Shah. There also existed a section leading northwest to the Iranian-Russian border, but this part was not yet fully completed. After the successful occupation, the British and Soviet forces immediately took over the control of the Railway and launched a regular transport of all sorts of supply goods. Towards the end of 1941, as the large amount of steam locomotives became obvious, the British Government ordered 200 standard-gauge 2-8-2s from the United States, under Lend-Lease arrangements. These locomotives were built by ALCo, Baldwin and Lima to British specifications, but were of typical American design. In total, 91 oil-burning engine reached the Iran from October 1942 on, replacing the existing British LMS Stanier 8F, but after the arrival of the ALCo 1000hp RSD-1 diesels, during the early part of 1943, the 2-8-2s were normally restricted to the less mountainous section between Arak and Teheran. However, they soon found out that the existing British steam locomotives of type Stanier 8F 2-8-0 and others were unable too tow sufficient amounts over the rough Iranian mountains and through the unventilated tunnels. At this point, in late 1942, it was decided that the U.S. Military Railway Service (»MRS«) as part of the USA Transportation Corps (»USATC«) take over the Iranian Railway by 1943 in order to increase the flow of supplies so urgently needed by the Russian allies. To overcome the existing problems, 57 of the 150 new ALCo RSD-1 Diesel Road Switchers were imported and erected until May of 1943. 70 others were directly sent to Russia as part of Lend-Lease, of which 58 actually arrived and 12 were lost en route. Often deployed as pairs in order to provide maximum power, the Iranian Alcos soon became famous as the locos of the 1000-ton »Aid-to-Russia« trains. On July 28, 1944, the delivery of the one-and-a-half millionth ton to the Russians called for a celebration. A 48-car train, loaded with M4A2 Sherman tanks and headed by an Alco Diesel, stopped for flourishes at all the main stations along the northbound route and was the center of culminating ceremonies at Tehran on that date. Fanfare, speeches, and a souvenir pamphlet took their due places in history and, as the American soldier railroaders handed over the trainload of tanks and war materiel to their Soviet opposites, one of them gave a cigarette to the burly Russian girl who was fireman on the northbound engine. Cameras clicked, and there were cheers. Those are the only collaborative issues I am aware of between the USA and USSR on the Eastern Front that I am aware of, other then the aforementioned Lend-Lease shipments.
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Post by mastermike95 on Jun 30, 2010 23:51:00 GMT -5
I read a book on a elite paratrooper commando in the 101st that jumped into normandy before before before d-day and than jumped on d-day and was captured than saved by the russians and fought with the russians in a tank the rest of the war.
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guitarmaster
Corporal
And at this range, I'm a real Frederick Zoller
Posts: 954
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Post by guitarmaster on Jul 1, 2010 0:31:32 GMT -5
translate?
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Post by gunner on Jul 1, 2010 1:04:47 GMT -5
I think he meant some dude jumped out of a plane then jumped again and was captured by someone then was rescued by the russians and became a tanker. sounds like a mack bolan book to me. you drinking vodka there master? LOL
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Adler69
Master sergeant
Legio Patria Nostra
Posts: 2,859
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Post by Adler69 on Jul 1, 2010 4:19:09 GMT -5
This is a news article from 6 years ago .
MOSCOW - As Russians dust off their Soviet-era medals and crowd Red Square today for a parade marking the 59th anniversary of Hitler's defeat, one veteran among them will proudly display U.S. military insignia.
For 80-year-old Joseph Beyrle of Muskegon, Mich., Russia's Victory Day is no less his holiday: After escaping from a German prisoner-of-war camp, Beyrle joined a Soviet tank division advancing on Berlin.
"At first I was a curiosity. Then I became part of them," Beyrle said in an interview at the apartment of his son, John, who is deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy.
As a 20-year-old Army sergeant, Beyrle parachuted into Normandy during the D-Day invasion but was pinned down by fire. On his third night on the ground, he climbed over a hedgerow - and right into a German machine-gun position.
Beyrle repeatedly tried to escape from several POW camps, but at 6-foot-2 inches and 180 pounds, he was often too big to squeeze through small spaces.
Eventually, in late 1944, he and two other Americans bribed their guards with 60 packs of cigarettes and jumped on an eastbound freight train, hoping to meet Soviet troops whose approaching gunfire they had heard from the camp. But the train looped back west and deposited them in Berlin.
Railway yard workers led them to Gestapo headquarters, where "they beat the living hell out of us," Beyrle said.
They were returned to Stalag III-C, the camp they'd fled. In January, they sneaked out hidden in barrels, but these fell off the truck just outside the gate. Beyrle's two buddies were shot and killed, but he outran the dogs and German guards and hid in a hayloft.
A Soviet division arrived some nights later, riding on Sherman tanks supplied by the United States, Beyrle said.
"I knew two words: 'Amerikansky tovarishch' " - American comrade, Beyrle said. "I put my hands up and told them I wanted to go with them to Berlin to defeat Hitler."
The commander, a woman, argued with the political commissar about whether to allow an American to join the column of 80-90 tanks. Eventually, the Soviets took him aboard, and Beyrle repaid them when he rigged explosives to blow away trees the Germans had felled across a road.
"From that time, they accepted me," he said.
Beyrle spent about a month with the Soviet soldiers, sharing their rations of buckwheat porridge larded with Hormel fat - another U.S. contribution.
They could barely communicate, Beyrle said, but "we drank toasts to Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill and the Studebaker truck. I taught them to sing the Notre Dame victory song."
The Soviet troops rolled westward, liberating POW camps, including the one where Beyrle had been held, and killing suspected collaborators, whom they "piled up like cordwood," he said.
Beyrle wasn't destined to see Berlin fall.
German dive bombers attacked, "and I was blown off the tank and had shrapnel in the groin and I ended up in a Soviet hospital," he said.
There he was visited by Georgi Zhukov, the legendary Soviet marshal, who arranged papers to get him to Moscow. Beyrle lived for three days at the U.S. Embassy but was moved to a hotel because diplomats feared he could be an impostor: A check with the War Department had revealed Joseph Beyrle's death in action.
Months before, U.S. authorities had notified Beyrle's parents first of his capture, then of his death, and had even paid them a $861 death benefit. Beyrle found out later that a German soldier had been buried in Normandy with his dog tags.
Beyrle persuaded the embassy to fingerprint him, and once his identity was established, he headed home.
Beyrle, who had been trained as a butcher, worked selling insurance after the war. He has visited Moscow six times, often attending the Victory Day parade with his son, and has made frequent trips back to Normandy to explore battlefields.
Within a few years of Beyrle's homecoming, the U.S.-Soviet alliance of World War II gave way to the Cold War. But Beyrle said it never entered his mind to be afraid of his new comrades.
"They were our savior," Beyrle said. "We were their savior. They were my savior."
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gadge
Corporal
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Post by gadge on Jul 1, 2010 7:35:03 GMT -5
The only other place you see Allied (well British) troops and Russian troops is in the desert theatre around what is now Iraq.
There are quite a few photos of supply columns meeting up.
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Post by mastermike95 on Jul 1, 2010 12:53:17 GMT -5
His name was Joe Beyrle. This is a true story! This is the riveting story of Joe Beyrle's amazing World War II odyssey. An unassuming kid from Muskegon, MI, who joined the famed 506th regiment of the 101st Airborne Division (called the Screaming Eagles), Joe proved to be a tough paratrooper who made two secret drops into France months before D-day. But like many of his comrades, he was left alone and disoriented in the French countryside after his D-day drop. He was captured, escaped, was recaptured, and underwent a vicious interrogation that led to a cracked skull. He was then thrown into a boxcar full of American POWs and shipped east. Thus began a hellish journey that eventually led to his escaping the German stalags and joining a Soviet tank battalion on the eastern front making him the only soldier to have fought in both the U.S. and Soviet armies. Incredibly, this is the first time Beyrle's story has been made public, and Taylor tells it with true "Airborne" pride. Taylor himself is a highly decorated Screaming Eagle of the Vietnam era whose father was Gen. Maxwell Taylor, the legendary leader of the 101st during the European campaign. Taylor skillfully intermixes Joe's ordeal with the 101st's battles against the Germans, from D-day to Bastogne. He has carefully corroborated the details of Joe's adventures with other POWs and available documents. Fortunately, Beyrle is still alive to enjoy the recognition his unbounded courage deserves. This book belongs in all World War II collections. Jim Doyle, Sara Hightower Regional Lib., Rome, GA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Read this book! www.amazon.com/Simple-Sounds-Freedom-Soldier-America/dp/0375507868
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Post by mastermike95 on Jul 1, 2010 12:57:47 GMT -5
no i wasnt drinking vodka lol adler69 also knows about it lol 69
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Post by mastermike95 on Jul 1, 2010 12:59:05 GMT -5
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Adler69
Master sergeant
Legio Patria Nostra
Posts: 2,859
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Post by Adler69 on Jul 1, 2010 13:08:31 GMT -5
no i wasnt drinking vodka lol adler69 also knows about it lol 69 Year i was born .
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Post by mastermike95 on Jul 1, 2010 15:43:12 GMT -5
lol i know but 69 sorry ima imature 15 year old
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Post by mattroxsu on Jul 2, 2010 21:42:31 GMT -5
haha mike
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