Which common kitchen item contains a piece of of war winning technology?
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The microwave oven? 
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What was ‘Gardening’?
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Or more specifically, the cavity magnetron. Allowed the allies to produce centimetric wavelength radar sets which could do things like spot a U boat periscope or map out the terrain underneath a bomber.
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Damn it, I’ve heard that somewhere. Was it something to do with mine sweeping?
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Yeah… nah. <very warm>
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I’m trying to resist the temptation to google it. Didn’t the RAF put some kind of magnetic ring thing underneath a Wellington bomber to detect mines if it flew over them? Is that it?
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They did, but no, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. It’s the RAF code for undertaking mine laying operations.
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Which two Axis military units in the European theatre fought on after the German surrender?
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I notice that you say Axis not German. Is this an Eastern European country taking on the Soviets?
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Western Europe. But there’s a link with the USSR… 
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You aren’t referencing Werewolf, are you?
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I’ll give you a hint; they fought each other.
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Spain and Portugal? Both sent troops to fight on the Eastern front and neither were particularly pally with each other.
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The Georgian Uprising of Texel. The 163rd Marine-Schützenregiment fought the the 882nd Infantry Battalion “Königin Tamara”, but only after the later (which was recruited from Soviet POWs), had mutinied, and killed all it’s German officers and NCOs. Also, members of the Dutch Underground, as well as numerous Dutch civilians got caught up in the fighting.
The mayhem was only stopped by the arrival of some Canadian troops on the 20th of May 1945.
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Dammit! I was just writing a post about that!
Alright then, what’s this?
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If it looks like a T-44… Smells like a T-44… Then it must be… T-44…
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I would have also accepted T-34/85 turret stuck on a T-54 hull, because it’s pretty much the same thing.
There’s a really interesting progression in Soviet tank design that arguably goes from the BT-2 right up to the T-62.
It started with the BT-2, which is basically a copy of Christie’s tank design.
This was improved through to the BT-7, which was still a common design in 1941.
A feature shared by all of these tanks was the ability to pull the tracks off and run on just the rubber road wheels. This was faster and saved a fair bit of fuel but placed limits on the weight of the tank and the width of the track that could be run. The B-20 design did away with this feature and was able to run much wider tracks.
More armor and a bigger gun gives us the first T-34.
The Soviets were aware of a number of shortcomings in this design and the T-43 was supposed to address a number of these.
Among other features it had a three man turret, more armor and, because of continued weight growth, ditched the Christie suspension for a torsion bar design instead. Due to the needs of war production, this design never entered production although an improved and upgunned version of its turret was fitted to the T-34 to make the T-34/85.
The same turret on a much reworked hull gave the T-44, which although several thousand were produced before the end of the war, did not see service.
A bigger gun was added to give rise to theT-54, the first versions of which had a turret similar to that on the T-44.
An upgrade to the NBC protection gave the T-55…
…which was further developed into the T-62.
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Absolute beast of a tank the T-54 was that the M60 Patton was specifically designed to counter the T-54!
A bit of trivia outside the scope of WW2 but hey, everybody loves tanks.
Except the Panzer corps of the Wehrmacht during Battle of Kursk, maybe.
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The gigantic tank battle at Kursk is a bit of a myth actually. In most cases, it was tanks vs dug in infantry and antitank guns, not tanks vs tanks.
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