Images of war

[Bubby]

A member of the Iraqi Federal Police opens fire against ISIS militants in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq July 7, 2017.

[Bubby]

A member of the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service walks through the broken wall of a building during an advance in the Old City of Mosul on June 29, 2017.

[landieman]

thanks Buddy,looks like Mosul was a great city before it was ripped a new one

[EssBee]

Thanks Bubby!!!! Amazing pics!

[Bubby]

German military camera crew filming in Dunkirk, France shortly after the conquest, Jun 1940.

[Bubby]

USS Arizona's forward magazines exploding during the Pearl Harbor attack, US Territory of Hawaii, shortly after 0800 hours, 7 Dec 1941.

[Bubby]

Horst Grund at a war cemetery in Krym (Crimea), Russia, circa Jan 1942.

[Bubby]

German soldiers celebrating joyful eating roast chicken in Stalingrad, summer 1942.

[Bubby]

German soldiers at Stalingrad ruins.

[Bubby]

German soldier recovering a mired KS600 motorcycle, date unknown.

[Bubby]

Panzer IV Ausf.E (single side door on turret) upgunned with a KWK 40 long barrel. The Werkstat is preparing to install a different Maybach HL 120 TRM engine.

[Pistonpete]

Have to put this here....

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

[Bubby]

German panzers in the Russian steppe.

[Bubby]

German panzers in Russian road.

[Bubby]

Kittyhawk fighters of the American Volunteer Group flying near the Salween River Gorge on the Chinese-Burmese border, 28 May 1942.

[Bubby]

Destroyed coastal guns at Fort Maxim Gorky I, Sevastopol, Russia (now Ukraine), circa Jun 1942.

[Bubby]

Barbette of Turret No. 3 of the wreck of USS Arizona, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, United States, 30 Nov 2014.

[Bubby]

Frigate Bird nuclear explosion of Operation Dominic seen through the periscope of USS Carbonero, off Johnson Atoll, 6 May 1962.

[Bubby]

Air Rhodesia Flight 825

Air Rhodesia Flight 825 was a scheduled passenger flight that was shot down by the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) on 3 September 1978, during the Rhodesian Bush War. The aircraft involved, a Vickers Viscount named the Hunyani, was flying the last leg of Air Rhodesia's regular scheduled service from Victoria Falls to the capital Salisbury, via the resort town of Kariba.

Soon after Flight 825 took off, a group of ZIPRA guerrillas scored a direct hit on its starboard wing with a Soviet-made Strela-2 surface-to-air infrared homing missile, critically damaging the aircraft and forcing an emergency landing. An attempted belly landing in a cotton field just west of Karoi was foiled by a ditch, which caused the plane to cartwheel and break up. Of the 52 passengers and four crew, 38 died in the crash; the insurgents then approached the wreckage, rounded up the 10 survivors they could see and massacred them with automatic gunfire. Three passengers survived by hiding in the surrounding bush, while a further five lived because they had gone to look for water before the guerrillas arrived.

ZIPRA leader Joshua Nkomo publicly claimed responsibility for shooting down the Hunyani in an interview with the BBC's Today programme the next day, saying the aircraft had been used for military purposes, but denied that his men had killed survivors on the ground. The majority of Rhodesians, both black and white, saw the attack as an act of terrorism. A fierce white Rhodesian backlash followed against perceived enemies, with many whites becoming violently resentful and suspicious of blacks in general, even though few black Rhodesians supported attacks of this kind. Reports viewing the attack negatively appeared in international journals such as Time magazine, but there was almost no acknowledgement of it by overseas governments, much to the Rhodesian government's indignation.

Talks between Nkomo and Prime Minister Ian Smith, which had been progressing promisingly, were immediately suspended by the Rhodesians, with Smith calling Nkomo a "monster". On 10 September, Smith announced the extension of martial law over selected areas. The Rhodesian Security Forces launched several retaliatory strikes into Zambia and Mozambique over the following months, attacking both ZIPRA and its rival, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA). The attack on ZIPRA in particular brought great controversy as many of those killed were refugees camping in and around guerrilla positions. In February 1979, ZIPRA shot down Air Rhodesia Flight 827, another civilian flight, in an almost identical incident.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Rhodesia_Flight_825

http://footage.framepool.com/mov/511-627-530.mp4

[Bubby]

THE HUNYANI DISASTER

A compilation of newspaper reports.....
http://www.rhodesia.nl/viscount.htm
http://www.rhodesian.com.au/memoriam%20viscounts.php

On the evening of 3 September 1978 Rhodesians were shocked by the news that terrorists of Joshua Nkomo’s ZIPRA had shot down a Rhodesian Viscount airliner, the "Hunyani", using a Soviet-made Sam-7 missile. The airliner, carrying 52 passengers and 4 crew members vanished from radar screens five minutes after its 5.05 p.m. takeoff from Kariba airport. Almost immediately a distress signal was received to the effect that the engines had failed. The aircraft crashed near the northern border with Zambia in the Urungwe Tribal Trust Land, 40 km south-east of Kariba Dam. Eighteen people survived the crash.

The crash itself was shocking news, but the fate that awaited some of the survivors was to cause a wave of revulsion throughout Rhodesia. The following are newspaper reports of the event and aftermath.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SHOT AT POINT BLANK RANGE
5 September 1978, Herald Reporters

Ten "shocked and numbed" survivors of the Air Rhodesia Viscount disaster were ordered to their feet by terrorists in the vicinity of the crash and shot dead at point blank range, Combined Operations Headquarters said in a statement last night.

Eyewitness reports proved that 18 of the 52 passengers had survived the crash and were alive and well at 5.45 p.m. on Sunday, the report said.
 
Of these, five left through thick bush to seek help from local tribespeople and 13 remained close to the aircraft. Terrorists later approached the scene and ordered the shocked and numbed survivors to their feet.

The terrorists then opened fire with Communist-made Kalashnikov assault rifles and 10 of the passengers - as yet unnamed, but six known to be women - died in a hail of fire.

The three who survived the massacre were named as Mr. and Mrs. H. Hansen and Mr. A. Hill. They are in Kariba hospital suffering from nothing more serious than numbed feet, following the impact (of the plane as it hit the ground).

Combined Operations Headquarters were unable last night to name the terror victims.

The five who made their way to nearby kraals were named as Mr. and Mrs. Hargreaves, Mrs. Sharon Coles, four-year-old Tracey Coles and Dr. C. MacLaren. They were at the Andrew Fleming Hospital in Salisbury by nightfall yesterday. Dr. MacLaren was discharged soon after arrival. A spokesman for the hospital said it remained to be seen whether the others would spend the night at the hospital.

The Combined Operations statement went on: "Security force members on arriving at the scene of the crash this (yesterday) morning said a starboard engine appeared to have exploded and the starboard external side of the plane was heavily scorched. The terrorists looted the plane."

The wreckage of what appeared to be the missing plane was spotted by the pilot of an Air Force Dakota, who said there was no sign of survivors.
 
At Kariba airport 26-year-old Mr. Andrew Mace anxiously awaited news of the fate of his sister Alison (28), her husband Mr. Ronald Vermeulen, Mr. Vermeulen’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. P.K. Vermeulen of Gatooma, and the elder Mrs. Vermeulen’s sister and husband who were visiting Rhodesia from Scotland.

After a short discussion with military personnel who had come off one of the Dakotas in search of the wreck Mr. Mace indicated to a reporter he had been told there was little likelihood of any survivors. His relatives were not among the survivors.

Also keeping vigil at the airport was Mr. Howard Coles, manager of a Kariba hotel, whose wife Sharon and four-year-old daughter Tracey were on the flight. Tracey was discharged from the Andrew Fleming Hospital in Salisbury last night while her mother was detained there. Her condition was said to be satisfactory.

At 12.10 Air Rhodesia announced officially that the wreck had been found and that a helicopter had been sent for a closer look after the plane had been spotted from a fixed-wing aircraft...

The Viscount had been missing since it took off from Kariba for Salisbury at about 5 p.m. on Sunday, carrying 52 passengers and four crew. First eyewitness accounts of the wreck were that it appeared to be completely burnt out. Paratroops and para-medics were dropped on the crash site, which is in an area heavily infested with terrorists.

An Air Force pilot who flew over the wreck said that the only identifiable part of the plane was its tail. His impression was that the pilot had tried to land in a 400 m. patch of comparatively open bush and that, while attempting to put the plane down, hit a gulley. The Viscount apparently broke up on impact.

The man in charge of operations was Karoi Police Superintendent Paul Bedingham, working from an airfield about 12 km. south of Karoi. Before noon six small Police Reserve planes, two Air Force planes and four helicopters operated from this base.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THREE DESCRIBE A NIGHT OF TERROR
Herald Reporter, Gavin Lindsell-Stewart, Kariba

Survivors of the Air Rhodesia Viscount crash told journalists in Kariba yesterday of their night of terror in the remote Urungwe Tribal Trust Land. Mr. Anthony Hill (39), Mr. H. Hansen (35) and his wife, Diana (31), three of the survivors who are recovering from lacerations and bruises in Kariba hospital, described their escape from the aircraft wreckage and how they and 15 others who survived were faced by about nine terrorists.

Mr. Hill said the first signs of anything wrong was a big explosion in the plane. "The whole plane shook" he said. Flames from the starboard engine were pouring past the windows immediately the aircraft started a deep dive.
Last Words
He said passengers were instructed to fasten their seat belts and put their heads between their knees.

The last words from Captain Hood were to tell the passengers to brace themselves for impact.

"Then we hit the deck. The plane broke up." The survivors said that only the tail section of the aircraft remained relatively intact but that the front section "virtually disintegrated."

Mr. Hill said he saw a bit of daylight through a hole in the tail section in which he and a few other passengers were trapped.

"I enlarged the hole. This is where I got most of my cuts We started getting everyone out. We moved everyone about 100 metres away. The section we were in was alight."

Later three of them went back to the plane to collect clothing and blankets for the more seriously injured.

Then they heard the voices of Africans talking. They turned round to find themselves face to face with a group of terrorists.

The terrorists told the survivors that they would bring them help and water. They then instructed the survivors to assemble at a point a few metres away from the wreckage.

The terrorists were told that some of the injured were unable to walk whereupon the terrorists told the able-bodied men to carry those who could not move.

A few moments later one of the terrorists said: "You have taken our land." They then opened fire from about 15 metres. The terrorists were speaking to the survivors and among themselves in English.

"We ran," said Mr. Hill. "They kept firing at us until we ducked behind a ridge." The survivors stayed in hiding for about two hours. Then the terrorists came back. They raided the aircraft wreckage, looting suitcases that were strewn around while the survivors, hidden in the nearby bush, watched in horror as the terrorists made off "with their hands full", said Mrs. Hansen.

Mr. Hansen is sure he heard a terrorist’s bayonet as he drove it several times into the body of a seriously injured survivor who was killed in the first sustained burst of automatic gunfire two hours previously.

Mrs. Hansen said: "They were terribly brutal. They took everything." She added that the survivors had spent an extremely cold night in the bush.

Among the survivors was Dr. C. MacLaren who led a group of survivors in the direction of a nearby village to get water. Most of them were not seriously injured.

A security force spokesman who was a member of an aircraft crew first on the scene said that it seemed that the group of survivors that were shot were in an area of about 10 metres square.

He said that one of the survivors had torn off her dress to make bandages for the more seriously injured. Among the survivors shot dead were two young girls aged 11 and 4. The shooting took place at 5.45 p.m. The spokesman described the terrorist action as "completely nonsensical."

Neither the Department of Civil Aviation nor the Air Force have ruled out the possibility that the airliner was hit by a heat-seeking missile. The bush fire started by the crash travelled for about 9 kilometres before burning itself out.

Survivors estimate it was about five minutes between the explosion and impact with the ground. "It felt as if the plane would break up before we hit. It was going at a hell of a speed." Mr. Hill said.