World War II: Miscellaneous

General

The five European countries that remained neutral and unoccupied were:

Ireland

Portugal

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

D–Day

Beaches attacked by British forces		Gold		Sword
Beach attacked by British and Canadian forces				Juno
Beaches attacked by US forces		Omaha		Utah

The best defended of the five beaches, resulting in more Allied casualties than on all of the other four combined

Omaha

Nickname given to the German strikes on Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York and Canterbury, April–June 1942, in retaliation to the bombing of Lübeck in March 1942 (after the travel guides that the German strategists reputedly said they would use to pick their targets)		Baedeker Blitz
The longest campaign of WWII – 1939–45 – although the name was only coined (by Winston Churchill) in 1941		Battle of the Atlantic
7 January to 9 April 1942: the culmination of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines; ended in defeat for American and Filipino forces under General MacArthur, and the largest American surrender since the Civil War; resulted in a forced march of prisoners of war, later judged to be a war crime; named after a peninsula of the Philippine island of Luzon		Battle of Bataan
Naval engagement in which HMS Hood was sunk by a single salvo from the German battleship Bismarck (24 May 1941)		Battle of the Denmark Strait
Classical composition whose opening motif was used by the BBC to introduce news bulletins during WWII, because it echoed the Morse code for the letter V, signifying Victory		Beethoven's 5th symphony
Young men chosen by ballot to serve in coal mines rather than the armed forces		Bevin boys
Members of Hitler's SS had tattooed on insides of their upper left arms		Blood group
3–day naval battle fought off Greece in March 1941		Cape Matapan
Codename of Elyesa Bazna, the Kosovo Albanian who spied for Germany while serving as valet to Britain's ambassador to Turkey		Cicero
Symbol of the Free French forces		Cross of Lorraine
The initial D in 'D–Day' stands for		Nothing!
Name used in the Republic of Ireland to refer to the period of World War II		The Emergency
Post to which Winston Churchill was reappointed by Neville Chamberlain in September 1939 (having previously held it from 1911 to 1915)		First Lord of the Admiralty
The Swastika was originally meant (in both old and new worlds) to signify		Good luck
WWII is known was the Soviet Union as the		Great Patriotic War
Social organisation formed for patients of Sir Archibald McIndoe who had undergone reconstructive plastic surgery (and the medics who treated them)		Guinea Pig Club
UK Government slogan, to discourage careless talk: "Be like Dad ... "		Keep Mum
Post held by Sir John Anderson, after whom the air–raid shelters were named		Lord Privy Seal
Defensive line built by France along its borders with Germany and Italy, in the build–up to the war		Maginot Line
Password for the D–Day landings		Mickey Mouse
Battle of the Bulge: US General Anthony McAuliffe's one–word response to a German invitation to surrender, when surrounded in Bastogne		Nuts
Name given to the strategic bridge over the Caen Canal, captured by British troops in the early hours of D–Day		Pegasus Bridge
George Bush (senior)'s role in WWII		Pilot
Name given by the Allies to the German defences opposite the Maginot Line, which the Germans called the Westwall (name originally referred to a section of the Hindenburg Line in WWI)		Siegfried Line
Expelled from the League of Nations, December 1939, for invading Finland; declared war on Japan on 8 August 1945 – three months after the German surrender, two days after the Hiroshima bomb and the day before Nagasaki (as agreed at Yalta in Feb 1945)		Soviet Union
Prison camp in what is now Poland (100 miles from Berlin), from which the "Great Escape" was made on 24 March 1944 – of 76 escapers, 3 reached allied territory, 50 were executed by the Gestapo, 23 returned to this or other prison camps		Stalag Luft III
Nicknamed 'Wildflower' by its WWII allies		United Kingdom
Fascist, ultra–nationalist and terrorist organisation, active in Croatia 1929–45		Ustaše

The Dam Busters

Date of the Dam Busters raid			16 May 1943
The Dam Busters' squadron (formed two months earlier, specifically for this purpose)			617
Target dams:	Successfully breached		Mohne
			Eder
	Not breached		Sorpe
Wing Commander who led the Dam Busters raid – awarded the VC for this and other actions; killed in September 1944, aged 26			Guy Gibson
Guy Gibson's dog – name used as codeword for successful mission			Nigger
Type of aircraft used in the Dam Busters raid			Avro Lancaster
Code name for the bouncing bomb			Upkeep

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

		Hiroshima		Nagasaki
Dates		6 August 1945		9 August 1945
Names of the planes		Enola Gay		Bockscar
Names of the bombs		Little Boy		Fat Man

Type of planes used		Boeing B–29 Superfortress
Pilot of the Enola Gay		Col. Paul Warfield Tibbets

Support plane that flew on both missions – also a B–29 (originally meant to drop the second bomb)		The Great Artiste
British observer on the A–bomb flight		Leonard Cheshire
Source of radioactivity in the bombs (element)		Plutonium

© Haydn Thompson 2017–24