Hey Uwe! (Hijacked by LBO Kommandantur: "Dread the Thread of the Unspoken One!")

[Lightyear]

I hope you at least bought it dinner first.   

  Try the veal, it's lovely!  Please tip your waitresses and bartenders......

[Pilgrim]

  Try the veal, it's lovely!  Please tip your waitresses and bartenders......

I shot a Heinkel 111 in my pajamas once.....

(all together, now...)

What it was doing in my pajamas, I'll never know!

And you over there - keep your hands off my Heinkel.

[Highlander]

British Airways flight crew humour from the 70's...

The German air controllers at  Frankfurt Airport are known to be a short-tempered lot.  They not only expect one to know one's gate parking location but how to get there without any assistance from them.  So it was with some amusement that we (a Pan Am 747) listened to the following exchange between Frankfurt ground control and a British Airways 747 (call sign "Speedbird 206") after landing:

Speedbird 206: "Top of the morning Frankfurt, Speedbird 206 clear of the active runway."
Ground: "Guten morgen!  You will taxi to your gate!"
The British Airways 747 pulled onto the main taxiway and slowed to a stop.
Ground: "Speedbird 206, do you not know where you are going?"
Speedbird 206: "Stand by a moment ground, I'm looking up our gate location now."
Ground (with some arrogant  impatience): "Speedbird 206, you have never flown to Frankfurt before?!?"
Speedbird 206 (coolly): "Yes, I have, in 1944, but it was dark and I didn't stop."

[Pilgrim]

Ground (with some arrogant  impatience): "Speedbird 206, you have never flown to Frankfurt before?!?"
Speedbird 206 (coolly): "Yes, I have, in 1944, but it was dark and I didn't stop."

That definitely deserves a: 

[uwe]

Ooops, there went Frankfurt's medieval inner city (including the house were Goethe had been born and lived) ... November 44 three days of RAF and USAAF sorties. Frankfut had hardly seen any bombing raids before. The city wasn't so much dark as well-llt by the fire of the mainly wooden houses. Eisenhower supposedly complained about the attack (a British idea and plan) as at that point Frankfurt had already been chosen as the capital of the US occupation zone. Never a Nazi stronghold (and generally avoided by Nazi brass before and in the war), it surrendered to US forces a few months later, refusing to put up a last stand and ousting Nazi party greats who wanted the city to go down fighting.

[westen44]

Ooops, there went Frankfurt's medieval inner city (including the house were Goethe had been born and lived) ... November 44 three days of RAF and USAAF sorties. Frankfut had hardly seen any bombing raids before. The city wasn't so much dark as well-llt by the fire of the mainly wooden houses. Eisenhower supposedly complained about the attack (a British idea and plan) as at that point Frankfurt had already been chosen as the capital of the US occupation zone. Never a Nazi stronghold (and generally avoided by Nazi brass before and in the war), it surrendered to US forces a few months later, refusing to put up a last stand and ousting Nazi party greats who wanted the city to go down fighting.

I can remember visiting the house long ago.  The tour guide was explaining everything.  I thought it was so cool to be seeing Goethe's house.  I was thinking along the lines that during the war they must have received instructions to spare certain things like this when they were bombing.  But then the tour guide told us that the house was actually a restoration because the place had been bombed to smithereens.  It took away from some of the magic I had been feeling, thinking (erroneously) that I had been in Goethe's original house. 

[uwe]

Yup, it was rubble, but then the Luftwaffe didn't spare historic sights in Warsaw, Rotterdam, London or Stalingrad either.

[TBird1958]

I recall parts of Karlsruhe still in ruin when there in 1970, and being out for country drives in my
uncle's BMW seeing remnants of concrete tank traps near the French boarder.

[uwe]

I recall parts of Karlsruhe still in ruin when there in 1970, and being out for country drives in my
uncle's BMW seeing remnants of concrete tank traps near the French border.

Yup, we're gonna keep those, might come handy again!



Seriously, if the EU had done nothing other in its existence than pacify German-Franco relations, it would still be a worthwhile investment.


Regarding rebuilding, you could see WW II ruins in Western German cities as late as the late seventies (add another ten to twenty years for the East), Frankfurt's Alte Oper looked like this still in 1979, it had no roof, trees growing in the middle of it:

 

Then it was rebuilt to full splendor:




This as a source of comfort for what you guys will have to do after Sandy ...

[Big_Stu]

out for country drives in my
uncle's BMW seeing remnants of concrete tank traps near the French boarder.

There's a hefty line of those for a few hundred yards along from North Berwick near Edinburgh. In my younger days I used to jump from one to the other - which was a tad hairy with the seaweed on them. Local folklore has it that it was used as a D-day practise but I was also told that it was one of the nearest ideal beaches if a German invasion had come from Norway.

[TBird1958]

If you had made the Germans eat english food, they'd never threatened invasion in the first place 

[Highlander]

... but then the Luftwaffe didn't spare historic sights in Warsaw, Rotterdam, London or Stalingrad either.

Aye, lad; your boys even scored a direct hit on our main London God portal, straight through Sir Christopher's dome, and God decreed it to be a dud... Surely a sign from above... God did gave them Coventry in exchange though... 

[uwe]

Bad idea that was. Should have stuck with bombing those RAF airfields.

[gweimer]

Bad idea that was. Should have stuck with bombing those RAF airfields.

Am I correct in recalling that the RAF spread out away from the airfields, and that the pilots were sleeping under the wings of their plane, to make it possible to be airborn within minutes?

[westen44]

Yup, it was rubble, but then the Luftwaffe didn't spare historic sights in Warsaw, Rotterdam, London or Stalingrad either.

That's true, but I haven't been sight seeing in any of those cities yet, although it's likely I'll see Rotterdam sooner or later on one of my trips to the Netherlands.