Best products from r/wwiipics

The magnet's are pretty small for how strong they are, you need to look for Neodymium magnets instead of ferrous ones. This is the one we use, it's plenty of power and quite cheap if you ask me. Don't get you hand caught in between it and metal, they can crush bones easily.

As for good spots we have had most success under bridges next to roads, but fishing piers or really wherever people go to fish are great to find lures, hooks and all kinds of fishing tools that can often be resold.

Hope that helps, it sure is a lot of fun for so little money.

Anyone interested in the desert war should read Derek Robinson's A Good Clean Fight. It's a sequel to his more well known story Piece of Cake. Excellent story even though it's historical fiction - highly recommended.

I strongly recommend the book Farthest Field - An Indian Story of the Second World War. It's written by a guy who - just like you - found out about men in his family who had fought for the British during WW2, leading him to thoroughly investigate and find out what he can about those men and their service.

It's a brilliant book IMO, mixing personal and historical prose, and it really opened my eyes to the theaters in which the BIA fought.

I also strongly recommend this BBC documentary about the BIA as a whole and what happened to the veterans afterwards.

I've read "With the Old Breed" and I agree it is a fantastic book. I'm mostly read on pilot memoirs though but I've read a few infantry accounts. No problem about telling you some good reads:

• Red Star Against the Swastika was probably the most interesting memoir I've ever read. Having the perspective of an IL-2 pilot that survived the war is a unique one and the only book I know of that's out there. His experiences were heart wrenching. It has criticism of being not well written. That is not the case. It was translated from Russian so that is why it reads as it does.
  
  
• Gabby Gabreski's book was a very well written book. Very detailed accounts of his sorties and points that you don't see very often in a pilot memoir. This is mostly because he kept a detailed diary throughout his life. Going from A P-47 pilot over Europe to flying an F-86 over Korea (and scoring an Ace against 5 MiGs) was as well, a unique pilot perspective. Great man and great leader.
  
  
• Forgotten Soldier was a very sobering book. Not much to say really. You just have to read it to really understand. It does have some criticisms of glossing over war crimes committed by his unit and fabricating stories but it was still a great read regardless.
  
  
• Samurai! by Saburo Sakai was an awesome account and one of my favorites. Very interesting that he taught himself and other pilots to make unconventional side-slipping attacks on TBFs and SBDs. His aircraft would slide sideways during his attacks to throw off the rear gunners. He swore by it because out of all the attacks he made, he was rarely hit.
  
  
• Baa Baa Black Sheep follows Pappy Boyington and his unit through the Pacific. The guy was hilariously courageous or stupid depending on your opinion. He would lead combat sorties half drunk from the night before. Telling officers over him he didn't like that they were assholes. He had no issues being insubordinate but he was so good at what he did, the officers over him couldn't do much about it. His unit was producing destroyed Japanese aircraft at a rate that surrounding units weren't even coming close to.
  
  Just a few of my favorites. I'm personally akin to reading about "guys who were there". But that's just my preference.

Wikipedia covers the basics pretty well.

This memoir covers it from the perspective of a GI on the ground

This is a quick, interesting watch

I really enjoyed that book, but I was kind of bummed to find out there's a lot of controversy surrounding the author (a lot of people think he's full of shit and never did any of the things he claimed to do).

Another great read in a similar vein is D-Day Through German Eyes - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VX372UE/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

Pretty graphic eyewitness accounts regarding D-Day, very interesting/enlightening.

Yeah, the Skua is also responsible for the first British POWs of WWII.

The first kill thing? A Fairey Battle shot down a Bf-109 six days earlier, as confirmed by French records.

> Overall it had an excellent service record - it just grew old and obsolete.

In 1941, yes. It was out of front-line service by then, and mostly used as target tugs and trainers. The Skua can be said to be many things, but claiming it had an "excellent service record" might be stretching things a little bit. Hell, even the book of record for the Skua isn't that generous to the plane.

By the way, I do recommend that book. It's actually quite fascinating to look at the history of any aircraft in that amount of detail... particularly when it's as much of a dog as the Skua.

The books can be found here and it's pretty good: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SI0B92M/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I’ve always wanted to read them. I’ve never read a war book from “the other side”
I’m currently reading “The Last Panther”
My first WW2 book from the other side. Fascinating.

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Panther-Slaughter-Reich-Kessel-ebook/dp/B00Y1R4X92/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?keywords=the+last+panther&qid=1572923286&sr=8-2

Black Edelweiss: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience by a Soldier of the Waffen-SS https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ECGP2Z6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_GJJSCbJCTS4KC

That was a good one as well. Its a view from the other side, interesting read.

The Thousand Mile War is one of the best sources

The B-25s in these photos are field conversions to "Commerce Destroyer" (as General Kenney called them) gunships with 4 .50 machine guns in the nose, and an additional 4 .50s in package guns on either side of the fuselage (2 per side). They used low-level masthead/skip-bombing tactics to attack these ships. The basic idea was to suppress gunners with the .50s on approach to the ship, then drop bombs which skip across the water like skipping a rock, which impact the side of the ship. They also used these types of tactics against airfields and other ground targets, strafing and dropping (among other things) 23 lb parafrag bombs.

You can read more about this in books like this (free) or these (not free). I also highly recommend this memoir as one of the best POV books covering this theater.

There's a fantastic book that features this image.

Amazon

Für Volk and Führer: The Memoir of a Veteran of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler is a good account of life in the Leibstandarte.

What if, oh I don't know, "James Bond" was the codename for a particularly daring mission by a team of highly skilled agents?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Op-JB-Christopher-Creighton/dp/0671855654

I just finished the book "Combat Crew" which is about a crew in the 381st. It was an excellent read if you are into those sorts of books.

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https://www.amazon.com/Combat-Crew-Missions-Europe-Journal-ebook/dp/B006UHBLGY