From a secret encryption machine to a secret room in a British girls’ boarding school,
here are nine amazing discoveries from World War II!
9.
AIR RAID SHELTER
For years, Edinburgh resident Mia Gray and other tenants in her apartment building dismissed
an old cupboard in the basement, filled with old paint cans and garbage, as storage space.
Nobody gave it a second thought until a new neighbor, Liz Mowbray, moved in recently and
expressed her curiosity.
Gray and Mowbray teamed up to clean the space and discovered that it was far larger than
anyone had noticed at first glance, and that it was filled with wash basins, a heater,
and rotting wooden bunk beds dating back to the World War II era.
The room served as an air raid shelter for the building’s residents in the event of
an attack before being forgotten about and rediscovered some 75 years later.
“There is a bench that runs all the way round the walls, ‘No Smoking’ signs, an
emergency exit, an old stove and two triple bunks,” Gray told Edinburgh Live, adding
that she believes there were more bunk beds, but that they were too damaged to identify,
and that the ceiling is reinforced with metal sheets.
Gray believes that a previous tenant used the space for storage after the war, and that
the amount of junk they left there deterred anyone else from exploring or repurposing
it.
Reporting for Edinburgh Live, Sian Traynor wrote that the city was not a major target
during World War II, but that it still experienced its fair share of bombings, giving local residents
ample reason to prepare for possible attacks.
8.
ENIGMA MACHINE
While searching for discarded fishing nets in the Baltic Sea near the Danish border last
year, a team of German divers discovered a rare Enigma cipher machine that the Nazi military
used during World War II to send and receive secret messages.
At first, the divers thought they had found a typewriter, but underwater archaeologist
Florian Huber quickly identified it as historically significant.
“I’ve made many exciting and strange discoveries in the past 20 years,” Huber told Reuters,
“but I never dreamt that we would one day find one of the legendary Enigma machines.”
Crews from 50 submarines, or U-Boats, received an order to scuttle their vessels and destroy
encryption devices in Gelting Bay shortly before Germany surrendered in May 1945.
Huber’s team suspects that the Enigma was one of the devices that went overboard in
an effort to avoid having the machines land in Allied hands.
Over 200 German submarines were sunk in the North and Baltic Seas at the war’s end.
Several hundred thousand Enigma machines were produced, but only hundreds are known to exist,
and they fetch tens of thousands of euros each at auction.
The recently discovered device was given to the archaeology museum in Schleswig, Germany.
During the war, one of the major turning points was when a team of British cryptographers
led by Alan Turing cracked the Enigma code, suddenly allowing them to read all the German
communication.
7.
WRECKED SUBMARINE
The American Navy submarine USS Grenadier sank in the straits of Malacca in 1943 when
it was attacked by a Japanese aircraft.
A torpedo struck as the vessel closed in on two Japanese cargo ships between the Malay
Peninsula and Sumatra, and after failing to repair the sub, the crew deliberately scuttled
it.
The Japanese ships took the Grenadier’s 76 crew members as prisoners of war, and the
sunken submarine’s location was subsequently lost.
Divers located the wreck last year 280 feet (85 meters) below the water’s surface and
subsequently identified it as the Grenadier by cross-referencing military records and
diving to the bottom of the ocean.
Because of the vessel’s depth, the team had to use a special mix of oxygen, nitrogen,
and helium to breathe, and they could only stay at the site for a few minutes at a time,
according to Live Science.
It took five dives for the divers to be able to say with a fair amount of certainty that
the submarine matches the measurements and description of the Grenadier.
The next step is for the U.S. Navy to officially confirm the find.
Four of the crew members who were taken captive by the Japanese died in enemy custody, but
the rest survived in Japanese prison camps until the end of the war.
The team that found the Grenadier hopes to continue searching for two British World War
II submarines that are believed to be in the general area, the HMS Stonehenge and the HMS
Porpoise.
6.
SECRET MILITARY BASE
In 1942, the year after Hitler invaded Russia, the Nazis built a top-secret military base
high in the Arctic on Alexandra Land, an island located roughly 650 miles (1,000 km) north
of the Russian coast in the Barents Sea.
Dubbed “Schatzgraber,” or “Treasure Hunter,” the base served as one of a network
of tactical weather-watching stations for the Germans.
A team of scientists from the Russian Arctic National Park announced the discovery of the
base in 2016.
They were the first to thoroughly investigate the site and collected over 600 items for
further study, including canisters of food and other supplies that were airdropped from
German planes, weapons and ammunition, batteries, emergency flares, and other military equipment
that was left behind when the base closed in 1944.
The site is in ruins today, but also contains remnants of tents, bunkers, fuel drums, and
an airstrip.
Although it functioned as a weather base, Schatzgrabber was heavily fortified in case
of an attack.
The base was abandoned when staff members became poisoned from eating contaminated polar
bear meat and were evacuated from the site by the German military.
5.
MURDERED CATHOLIC NUNS
When the Nazis withdrew from Poland toward the end of World War II in 1944, the Red Army
invaded the country and attempted to seize control by looting and destroying churches
and subduing militias.
Historical records show that the following year, Soviet soldiers murdered seven Catholic
nuns from the order of St. Catherine of Alexandria who worked as nurses at a hospital!
Archaeologists found and identified the slain nuns’ skeletons in 2020 as part of an ongoing
project by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance.
They also unearthed crucifixes, rosaries, medallions, and religious clothing around
the remains, according to Live Science.
To reach the three most recently discovered bodies, archaeologists relied on local archival
records to locate them within a municipal cemetery and first exhumed newer burials that
were on top of them.
Records show that one nun, Sister Generosa, was ‘locked in the hospital’s attic’
before her death, while another, Sister Krzysztofora, was stabbed with a bayonet 16 times after
a long fight with a Soviet soldier, having her eyes and tongue gouged out in the process.
The Red Army reportedly beat patients and attacked nuns who tried to intervene, causing
horrific injuries and deaths.
4.
THE LAST MISSING GERMAN WARSHIP
In April 1940, German forces invaded Norway through the port city of Kristiansand, destroying
its maritime defenses in a matter of hours and forcing the country’s king and government
to flee to Britain.
To aid in their conquest, the Nazis used a repurposed ship that was built in the 1920s
called the Karlsruhe.
Shortly after starting its return voyage, the 571-foot-long (174 meters) Swastika-bearing
vessel was hit by a British submarine torpedo.
Its crew evacuated and the Germans deliberately sunk the ship 15 miles (24 km) off the Norwegian
coast, where it came to rest 1,607 feet (490 meters) below the water’s surface.
The Karlsruhe is recorded in historical accounts, but for around 80 years, nobody knew exactly
where it went down, Norwegian Maritime Museum archaeologist and researcher Frode Kvaloe
told Reuters.
Until last year, that is, when the Norwegian power grid operator Statnett identified the
wreck in images and sonar scans dating back to 2017 with the help of a maritime archaeologist.
The sunken vessel sits just 50 feet (15 meters) from a subsea power cable that Statnett has
been operating since 1977, and was discovered during a routine inspection.
In a detailed report of the discovery, The Indian Express reported that the Karlsruhe
was the last missing big German World War II-era warship.
It may contain thousands of liters of oil and other materials, which experts reportedly
say could lead to an ecological disaster in the event of an attempted salvage.
And, while records show that most of the Karlsruhe’s crew were evacuated, it’s unknown whether
the site will be classified as an underwater war grave.
3.
B-24 LIBERATOR WRECK
On the night of August 17, 1943, a U.S. Air Force B-24 Liberator heavy bomber piloted
by First Lieutenant John T. Parran took off from Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New
Guinea, on a mission against Wewak, the Japanese-occupied capital of the country’s East Sepik province.
During the return flight, the plane climbed to an altitude 14,000 feet (426.7 meters)
to fly over bad weather and traveled southward.
After emerging from the clouds, it changed direction several times while the crew attempted
to locate Port Moresby.
Around nine in the morning, Parran ordered the crew to drop extra equipment to lighten
the aircraft as it ran low on fuel and instructed his 10 fellow airmen -- five in the nose,
and five in the rear fuselage -- to brace for a ditching.
The plane skidded into the water of the Torres Straits off Guinea’s southern coast near
Saibai Island, losing its tail in the process and coming to a halt in the mud.
One crewman was expelled from the plane during the emergency landing, and two others were
badly injured.
Two men were killed as a result of failing to jettison two .50 caliber waist guns, which
came loose as the B-24 ditched, and three crew members were listed as Missing In Action
(MIA) and were never found.
Everyone else sustained minor injuries and paddled ashore using two life rafts before
being rescued by the U.S. Navy.
Parran remained in the military and went on to serve in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
He retired as a Lieutenant Colonel and passed away in 2005, according to PacificWrecks.org.
While operating a dredge for the Australian government near Saibai Island in 1990, a worker
named Brian Hall visited the site.
He contacted American authorities, who confirmed the plane’s identity and MIA status, and
also got in touch with Parran, whom he mailed the aircraft’s left control column to.
The following year, Hall recovered a .50 caliber machine gun and propeller blade from the B-24.
The wreck is still visible to this day during low tide, sitting in the mud as a sobering
reminder of the ultimate price that many soldiers paid during World War II, and that their lives
were not always lost in the middle of combat.
Have you ever found any World War II memorabilia or treasures?
Perhaps from a grandfather who served in the military?
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2.
MISSING AIRMAN’S REMAINS
When 23-year-old U.S. Army Air Corps Force pilot Alfred Turgeon’s plane was shot down
during the Operation Tidal Wave bombing mission of Romania’s oil fields and refineries in
1943, only the captain survived.
The unidentified remains of the crew and other soldiers lost in the attack were buried as
unknown soldiers in a section of a Romanian cemetery dedicated to the fallen military
members.
Because around 100 soldiers were taken captive during the mission, Turgeon’s family held
out hope that he was still alive, perhaps as a prisoner of war or suffering from amnesia,
according to the man’s nephew, David Bass, who spoke with the Anchorage Daily News.
But they never found him.
In 2017, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) set out to identify the remains of
soldiers exhumed from the cemetery who were believed to have died in Operation Tidal Wave.
Using dental and anthropological analysis and advanced familial DNA testing, scientists
identified one of the individuals as Turgeon, who was one of five Alaskans whose remains
were not recovered after the war.
The process of recovering and returning Turgeon’s remains gave his descendants an opportunity
to learn about the relative they had never met, who died serving their country, and gave
his one surviving sister the chance to pay proper respects to the sibling she lost nearly
80 years earlier.
Turgeon was buried with full military honors in Washington State, where he was laid to
rest next to his older sister.
Tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers who went missing during World War II remained unaccounted
for after the conflict ended, and to this day, the American government remains determined
to recover as many of these fallen fighters as possible.
The identification of Turgeon’s remains is just one example of how advancing technology
is finally giving surviving relatives long-sought closure and filling in the gaps in family
histories for younger generations.
1.
HIDDEN HATCH
A secret room in a building in Kent, England led to uncovering secrets from the past.
Though it’s now part of an independent girls’ boarding school called the Benenden School,
during World War II, the site served as a military hospital.
But it’s easy to forget the history of your surroundings until you stumble upon something
from a seemingly long-forgotten past.
During a study session in their recently-remodeled boarding house earlier this month, four 10th-grade
students spotted a hidden hatch on the wall, concealed by a wardrobe.
The curious pupils moved the wardrobe out of the way and opened the mysterious door,
which led to a small section of the building’s eaves.
They crawled into the space to further explore and found a collection of artifacts dating
back to the 1940s, including candy wrappers and letters.
In addition, the girls collected a Lux soap packet, a cigarette wrapper, and matches.
Fragments of two letters discovered in the hatch, which were likely written by staff
members stationed at the hospital, are the most telling among the items.
One, dating back to 1941, was written by a woman named Betty to her “sweetheart”
Bobby.
It includes details on how his family members were doing and updates about her life, including
a recent theater visit.
Speaking with Kent Online, Hailey McNalley said, “It’s really cool because we are
living in the modern day but you hear stories of what happened in the war and this has really
brought it to life.”
Not everyone will be lucky enough to stumble upon a hidden time capsule from 80 years ago!
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