The war...

So, as I promised, I got around to asking some Japanese people about what the Japanese view, personal or national, on the war was. Long story short, it doesn't seem like they're overly proud and yet, they make no attempt to hide or deny their involvement. The war happened and they've moved on. This is unlike the German view on their involvement, which essentially dissociates themself from the Nazi party.

I also asked a student how World War II sections in history books were worded and, similarly, it sounds like the books take a rather objective approach to it.

I even talked to someone who's father volunteered to be a human torpedo for the IJN- an underwater kamikaze if you will (which, I found out, was not the original Japanese term for those suicide pilots). The war ended while his father was in training but one only needs to consider that had his father done what he resolved to do, this man (my friend), wouldn't be here today.

Besides that though, lots of desk time means I can do lots of research on WWII which, I readily admit, is the topic I have the least command over of the 3 that I teach.

Of course, I also readily admit that I'm really only 4 years old and, as such, all the things that interest me about the war are the battles, betrayals, guns, planes, bombs, tanks, and ships.

Going from that, I stumbled upon this, the Schwerer Gustav.

If you look closely, you can see the men walking towards it and it truly was that massive. They only ever built two and was designed, as might be visually obvious, to pulverize heavily fortified targets. While the first gun was free (wtf?!), a second one was built at the cost of 7mil Reichsmarks which was $1.7mil USD in 1941 (!!). It saw usage in Germany's invasion of Russia but was ultimately destroyed to avoid its capture.

It weighed 1350 metric tonnes, had a barrel 32m long, had a firing rate of 1 shell every 30-45 minutes, and could fire its 7 ton, 80cm shell as far as 37km.

It also had to be transported in pieces by a train nearly a mile long and needed to be set up on its own PAIR of railway tracks, the assembly itself taking between 3 to 6 weeks. All this considering that the entire detachment assigned to the gun consisted of 1420 men.

Crazier than this was the Landkreuzer P 1500 Monster, a tank designed around this gun so that it didn't require railway tracks to be moved. It was proposed to have a weight of 1500 metric tonnes, would've been 42m long, and needed a crew of over 100 men. But it was cancelled. Not like a tank like that would've ever been able to realistically go anywhere considering it would just destroy roads and break bridges in half. Or get bombed by planes as it ran away at its top speed of 15 km/h.

But I appreciate the sheer audacity of plans like these. Or the more audacious fact that some of those plans were actually built.

But the most audacious of them all was the Langer Gustav, a planned rocket projectile version of the gun with a range of 150+km (!!!!). That would've let them hit London. Imagine that....