Environmental Graffiti

The Soviet Suicide Dogs of WWII

While bullets rang out and shrapnel flew on the battlefields of World War II, a new and ethically suspect tactic was deployed by the Russian Army as it attempted to hold the advancing Germans in check. Dogs strapped with explosives were sent out to disable and destroy enemy tanks – and later themselves in the process. The German Panzers were dynamic vehicles of war – quick and powerful – but how did they fare against these canine kamikazes?

Continue reading...

The Kamikaze Strikes of WWII in Pictures

As morning bled across the Philippine Sea on 11 May 1945, the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill was crippled by two kamikaze strikes. A Mitsubishi A6M Zero "Zeke" fighter appeared, like an apparition, from low cloud and quickly dove, dropping a 550-lb bomb that smashed out the ship's side before itself crashing onto the flight deck and skidding over the side. A huge blaze erupted as some 30 parked planes full of fuel were destroyed. But there was to be no respite.

Continue reading...

How We Duped the Nazi Postal Service into Sending Stamps Bearing Hitler’s Skull

In the skies over the Reich, planes dropped their bombs on a mail train bound for Linz, before a second wave of more insidiously incendiary cargo was released. Mailbags filled with around 3800 propaganda letters – some containing sinister stamps of Hitler wearing a grinning skull – were dropped into the wreckage, ready to be recovered and delivered to the Germans by the postal service. It was the first mission of Operation Cornflakes.

Continue reading...

Mount Vesuvius Erupting in 1944

It was 1944 and the Second World War was raging. In Italy, American airmen were stationed at Pompeii Airfield when the debris started falling, but this was no ordinary wartime air raid. The cinder and rock dropping from the sky were being sent forth by the volcano dominating the horizon: Mount Vesuvius. Overhead, bombers wheeled in the air, their pilots’ minds turning from the threat of flack to an altogether more pervasive menace.

Continue reading...