Fritz von Opel was one of those early-20th-century rocket-besotted guys who pioneered this exotic means of propulsion. Just look at his rocket car go in the film clip above! (Narration in German, but not necessary to comprehension.)
But von Opel's innocent excitement had its darker side. I give you the 1929 newspaper article below. Specifically, the enlarged sentence.
Buried under the dirt of an explosion and almost perfectly preserved since there was no air and water, many of the soldiers were in the same positions as the time of the bombing. Some were sitting up and one was lying in bed. Some pages of a newspaper in the shelter were still readable. There were even the remains of a goat, which has been speculated was used for fresh milk.
Here's a shot of the site, being excavated for a road project.
The soldiers were part of the 6th Company, 94th Reserve Infantry Regiment and include Musketeer Martin Heidrich, 20, Private Harry Bierkamp, 22, and Lieutenant August Hutten, 37.
The Reverend Kayser sounds like a real piece of work. German propagandist, adulterer, real-estate conman, and possible saboteur. A man accumulates a lot of possible murderers with that resume.
Bonus points for being named "Kayser" during World War I.
A few weeks ago, Paul posted about a plan the U.S. military cooked up during WWII to destroy Japan by triggering volcanic explosions. The article below describes a similarly mad plan -- the Bat Bomb. The idea was to strap incendiary devices to bats, and then drop the bats on Japanese cities.
I scanned the article from the Atlantic Monthly, December 1946. I think this was one of the first public descriptions of the bat bomb.
Category: War, Comics, Teenagers, 1960's