Why The Most Terrifying Enemy In WWII Wasn't Human

hey 42 here on the 11th of April 1880 legendary U.S army General William T Sherman stood in front of 10 000 graduates from the Michigan Military Academy and dotted three short words war is Hell rarely before all sins has such a complex subject being summarized so succinctly the death and destruction the flying bullets and exploding shells the screams of the dying and the Silence of the Dead hell is the only way to describe it in his 14th century epic poem The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri imagined the underworld as a vast pit made up of nine concentric Rings the dpu traveled into this spiral of damnation the worst things would get if war is indeed hell and we take Dante's Doom spiral as our model of it then the Battle of ramri's Island belongs in the Underworld ninth and most nightmarish Circle sometimes called the ramri massacre for reasons that will soon become clear the Battle of ramri Island was a relatively small engagement that took place towards the tail end of the Burma campaign in the final year of World War II in total under 1 000 soldiers lost their lives Small Potatoes by the horrifying standards of the second world war but it wasn't the volume of death that made this particular battle so terrifying it was the cause because the soldiers on ramri island weren't killed by bullets bombs and bayonets they were slaughtered in their hundreds by giant man-eating reptiles this is the horrifying story of the ramri crocodile Massacre the single deadliest animal attack on humans in recorded history but stick around to the end because this one comes with a Twist before the outbreak of the second world war Burma now officially known as Myanmar was part of the British Empire but the British were driven out by the Japanese in 1942 at the start of the Burma campaign three years later the war was almost over and with Japanese forces suffering heavy losses across the entire Pacific Theater the Allies began wrestling back control of the former British colony the first step would be to retake the capital Rangoon as part of operation Dracula but to do that the Allies were going to need somewhere to base their Vital Air Support ramri Island was chosen as the perfect spot just 200 miles from Rangoon it had plenty of open lands suitable for airstrips that could be supplied by the deep water ports on the Island's Northern tip right from the very start the Battle of ramri Island was a one-sided Affair the Japanese Defenders were outnumbered six to one and with the Allies able to call on devastating Naval and air support at will they were outgunned by an even wider margin the initial assaults dubbed operation Matador kicked off on the 14th of January 1945 with an amphibious landing on ramri's pristine Northern beaches Royal Navy reconnaissance plant had spotted Japanese soldiers installing artillery in caves along the shore in preparation for the imminent invasion so the British Navy sensed the dreadnought-class battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth supported by dozens of smaller ships and the variety of air supports to rain down fiery death and prepare the way for landing by the time the sun had settled the Allies were able to stroll onto the island entirely unopposed it was almost like a summer holiday except everything was on fire by the following day the port had been captured and the Allies began to work their way South resistance was significantly Fierce or further Inland where a thousand Japanese troops fought like tigers over every inch of ground given both as the Allies solely spread out across the island it became clear resistance was futile ramri was lost at this point the Japanese General kinichi nagazara had a decision to make most military leaders would simply have waved the White Flag but by this point in the war the Japanese had made it abundantly clear they would rather die than suffer the shame of surrender in this case however there was a third option Escape if nagazawa and his men Were Somehow able to make it to the mainland they'd be able to join up with the bulk of the Japanese Army's remaining forces there is just one small problem with this plan between nagazara and the safety of the Mainland was a vast Mangrove swamp a near impenetrable Maze of trees which was either covered in thick oozing mud or waste high water depending on the tide this hellish Labyrinth was infested with tropical disease carrying mosquitoes poisonous scorpions and spiders and most ominously of all massive salt water crocodiles all in all it didn't sound great but on the plus side The Mangrove swamp was so thick that the Japanese troops would be all but invisible both from the ground and air and it was so dangerous that the Allies surely wouldn't dare to follow them inside in early February the Japanese abandons their fortified positions on the island and ventured into the swamp most would never make his house alive saltwater crocodiles are Ambush Hunters they wait motionless for hours on end and despite their bulk they can make themselves practically invisible in just a few feet of water if something tasty looking gets too close they explode into action clamping down on their prey with a biting force of 3 700 pounds per square inch that's about four times more powerful than a lion once they've latched on salt water crocodiles execute their Mortal Kombat finishing move the death roll tearing whatever is in their mouth to bloody shreds the Japanese soldiers on ramri entered the mangrove swamp in a pretty bad condition they'd been fighting non-stop for several weeks and many were ill or injured in hindsight they never stood at chalice against what was waiting for them the crocodiles mostly hunt at night and as the soldiers ventured Through the Jungle they were picked off one by one it's hard to imagine just how terrifying that must have been one moment you're carefully picking your way through the swamp By Moonlight and the next something huge shifts in the darkness and you're being dragged beneath a chilling Waves by a creature big enough to quite literally swallow you whole some of those who were there to witness this horror first hand have written accounts of what they saw amongst them was accomplished naturalist Bruce Wright a lieutenant commander in the Royal Canadian Navy he recorded his description of the crocodile massacre in his 1962 book Wildlife sketches near and far it made for an incredibly chilling greed that night was the most horrible at any member of the motor launch Cruise ever experienced the scattered rifle shots in the Pitch Black Swamp punctured by the screams of wounded men crushed at the jaws of huge reptiles and the Blurred worrying sound of spinning Croc tiles made a cacophony of hell that has rarely been duplicated on Earth at dawn the vultures arrived to clean up what the crocodiles had left of about 1 000 Japanese soldiers that entered the swamps of ramri only about 20 were found alive rights account is an accurate summary of how the story has been told ever since you can find it in countless reference books documentaries YouTube videos and podcasts for several decades the Battle of ramri Island was even featured in the Guinness book of records as the animal attack with the most human fatalities in history but in recent years both historians and herpetologists that's people who specialize in reptiles not STDs I've started to question whether this remarkably gruesome tale can really be true after all it does sound more like something you'd see in a movie theater rather than the theater of war so what really happened on memory Island 80 years ago let's start by looking at the villains of the piece the crocodiles saltwater crocs are the largest reptiles on Earth that's pretty common knowledge but most people have no idea just how absurdly enormous these beasts can get if left to their own devices far from Human interference they can reach a staggering seven meters in length and weighs on 2 000 kilograms in other words this is an animal that's significantly longer than a giraffe is tall and about the weight of four large grizzly bears combined thanks to their incredible size combined with their natural aggression and a surprising level of intelligence these literal cold-blooded killers are the Undisputed apex predators of any ecosystem they find themselves in they are quite simply one of the most dangerous animals on the planet you may have seen footage of people swimming with sharks but nobody gets into the water with a fully grown saltwater crocodile if they have any plans of getting back out again despite the fact most large saltwater crocodiles live far from Human habitation they're still responsible for multiple fatalities every year so yes given the opportunity the crocodiles on ramri island would absolutely have killed any soldiers who got too close but here's the thing according to the most commonly told version of the story around 900 men were killed by crocodiles in just a few days trouble is that kind of crocodilian Carnage could only have been possible if the swamp was teeming with thousands of extremely large saltwater crocs and yet there's neither the food nor the space to support such a high density of mature adults in the ramri mangrove swamp put simply the legendary tale of the ramri crocodile Massacre is an ecological impossibility a military myth born out of a decades-long game of Chinese Whispers combined with a straightforward misunderstanding many people have written about the massacre over the years but Bruce Wright's account is the primary source that most people have drawn on that makes sense right wasn't just a soldier serving in the area at the time he was a respected naturalist who knew what he was talking about when it came to crocodiles or at least people thought but in 2001 her pathologist and ramri Massacre skeptic Stephen Platt notice something interesting about Wright's account almost every Wildlife anecdote in the entire book in which it appears is written from Wright's own perspective but the chilling tale of the crocodile Massacre is written in the third person and it turns out there's a very good reason for that right wasn't actually there when the alleged Massacre took place his version of events comes from conversations he had with those who were and it seems a few of the details may have been embellished along the way there's something else interesting about Wright's account he never actually explicitly stated that all the soldiers were killed by crocodiles only that one thousand soldiers entered the swamp and just 20 came out alive as we've already seen there were plenty of other dangers waiting for the Japanese amongst the mangroves including tropical diseases and a variety of poisonous creepy crawlies probably even more deadly were the conditions themselves the sucking mud that would have sapped the already weak soldier's strength the lack of food and the brackish water that wasn't safe to drink not to mention the Allied soldiers patrolling the swamps scattered open waterways in boats who would likely have shot anyone they came across [Music] put all this together and it seems ridiculous to assume that all 900 soldiers were murdered by Massive misanthropic crocodiles more importantly it turns out the numbers themselves were rung in the first place we can debate what may or may not have killed 900 men in a swamp 80 years ago till the cows come home but according to official military records a solid 500 of them didn't actually die at all they made his house alive to join up with their other comrades on the mainland total casualties attributed to the entire six-week battle are estimated to be only 500. it's extremely likely that crocodiles were responsible for some of those deaths but it's an absolute certainty that the true number is orders of magnitude smaller than most people have been led to believe these days the general consensus amongst historians is that most of the 500 poor souls who died lost their lives either to drowning or The Guns of the allies with crocodiles mostly just Scavenging the corpses when they got the chance truth is we'll never know the real numbers like Bruce Wright who started all this trouble in the first place we weren't there most of those who were are no longer with us and even if they were exactly what happened on the cover of those mangrove trees is inherently unknowable those on the outside couldn't see in and those who perished took their secrets to their watery Graves thanks for watching

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 645,395

Keywords:

Id: 0AaOV5Dv6OI

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 26 2023