Bent Corner

During World War Two, Nazi Germany transported six U-boat submarines 2,000 miles overland from Germany to attack Russian shipping in the Black Sea. The subs operated out of Romania for over two years, hunting and sinking dozens of Russian ships.

When Romania switched sides and declared war against Germany, it left the remaining three subs - three had already been lost in combat - with nowhere to go. They were scuttled by their crew as the war neared its end.

The location of the three U-boats has been a mystery. Until now.

Selçuk Kolay, a Turkish marine engineer, has located one of the subs two miles off the coast of Turkey sitting 8o feet under the surface. He believes he knows the location of the remaining two.

I’ve always wanted to dive a U-boat. There are about seven that can be reached by SCUBA here on the east cost of the United States. I got to dive ship wreaks while I was in the Air Force and stationed on Guam. There is one Japanese tanker from Word War Two sitting atop a German cruiser from World War One. I once dove deep enough so that I could put one hand on the German ship while placing my other hand on the Japanese tanker. It turned out to be highly anticlimactic.

Guam had a lot of cool dive sites. It didn’t have any U-boats.

Link (Telegraph.co.uk)

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I was reading The Consumerist when I noticed a post about Wal-Mart still selling t-shirts in their Men’s department with a Nazi SS Totnekopf or “Death’s Head” image on it.

Whoops.

I’ve lost track how many different times Wal-Mart claimed it was taking prompt action to removed these shirts. The U.S. Congress even got involved.

I was the one to discover this little bit of Wal-Mart goodness. It was back in November 2006 that I noticed it at my local Wal-Mart store here in Hagerstown. I took a picture of it with my cell phone and then compared it to reference images online. It was an exact match. I decided to blog about it and it kind of took off from there. I was interviewed on the telephone by someone from the AP which resulted in the story appearing in just about every newspaper in the country. I was interviewed on my local NBC TV news about the story. That interview then was carried on CNN and MSNBC.

I learned a lot about the whole news business. The reporter from the AP was extremely professional. When the article first ran on the AP newswire, it incorrectly said that I was a veteran of the U.S. Navy. I am a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. To me it wasn’t a big deal. The reporter must have realized his mistake, contacted me, confirmed that I was in the Air Force, and resubmitted a corrected article. The incorrect article stayed online only for about an hour. I was impressed.

I wasn’t impressed with my local hack newspaper, The Herald-Mail. Even though I only live a few miles from the newspaper, they didn’t even bother to ask me any questions before writing an article about me finding the shirt. Sometimes I forget they don’t bother to research their articles. My guess is they are too busy writing fake Mail Call comments. I think they just took information from my blog post and then added details from the AP story.

Speaking of hacks, Christina Hoag from the Miami-Herald wrote that I was a “World War Two buff”. If she had bothered to speak to before writing her article, I could have told her that I was not a World War Two buff and that I had no interest in becoming one. I even sent her a tongue-in-cheek email telling her that I wasn’t a buff of any sort and that I wanted her paper to publish a retraction. I was afraid that the World War Two buff community would become angry that I claiming to be one of them. I didn’t want to get on their bad side. She actually replied as though I was serious. She even attempted to argue the point that I was a World War Two buff.

I think I would know if I was a buff.

The funniest part about these t-shirts still being sold at Wal-Mart is the specific Wal-Mart where they were found. They were found in a Wal-Mart in Palmdale, California. Though I now live in Maryland, I am originally from the Palmdale area. It is the Land of My People. It’s where I grew up and lived until I was 19. I find it to be so ironic that these shirts are still hanging on the rack in Palmdale, or as I like to call it, Palmtucky. In Palmdale, the mullet isn’t just a hairstyle, it’s a way of life.

Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
Art: CHRIS WESTON
Colored By: CHRIS CHUCKRY
Lettered By: COMICRAFT
32 PAGES, $2.99

Golden Age heroes fighting for America during World War Two are captured in Germany by Nazis and put into Nazi deep freeze. The Nazis then get their ass kicked by the Russians. Nobody knows about these American heroes that have been placed into Nazi deep freeze. They remain in their state of Nazi deep freeze until 2008 when they are found by construction workers.

Evidently if there was one thing Nazis knew in 1945 was how to put superheroes into deep freeze. When they are frozen, they stay frozen.

This is when it gets a little kooky. For some reason, the U.S. Army is somehow able to take possession of the superheroes. Why exactly is beyond me. A general who had just recently watched the movie “The Untouchables” gets an idea. He quotes the “Sean Connery character” who says, “If you want to avoid getting a bad apple, don’t take it from the barrel. You take it from the tree.” He believes that these still Nazi deep frozen superheroes are the tree. They come from a time when the United States is beyond question the good guy and because of this will do anything the government tells them to do.

Maybe Kooky is too strong a word.

The heroes are then taken back to the United States where they are led to believe it’s still 1945. The belief is that the shock of finding out that it’s 2008 would just be too much for these superheroes to bare. Then again, if the idea is to get superheroes who are patriotic and believe everything their government tells them, maybe it’s not a good idea to start out lying to them.