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When US and German Soldiers Fought Together and Lesser-Known World War II Events

Khalid Elhassan August 25, 2020 35 min

Itter Castle - Battle of Castle Itter — The French Army's former commander in chief, Maxime Weygand, leaving Itter Castle. Agence France Presse

6. Salvation Falls From the Heavens

Still from a movie about the Anatahan castaways. Culture Trip

Things improved somewhat for the Anahatan castaways in January, 1945, when a B-29 bomber, returning from a raid on Japan, crashed on Anatahan. Scavenging the wreckage, the castaways fashioned the plane’s metal into crude instruments and useful items, such as knives, pots, and roofs for their huts.

Parachutes were turned into clothing; oxygen tanks were used for storing water; springs from machine guns were fashioned into fishing hooks; nylon cords were used as fishing lines, and some pistols were also recovered. Conditions remained difficult, but the timely crash of the bomber had saved the castaways. They had been facing slow starvation, until seemingly divine aid fell from the sky and gave them a fighting chance at survival.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.