We can't fight back without endangering the English prisoners on board, but I have a plan that might work - hang on because we're going down -- way down! 
Military Comics #5 is an issue of the series Military Comics (Volume 1) with a cover date of December, 1941.
Synopsis for Blackhawk: "Scavengers Of Doom"
The Scavengers, a cabal of rat-like lowlifes who murder and loot in the wake of the Nazis, are captured by the Germans and pressed into service to kill Blackhawk. In Oslo, Gestapo agents capture Blackhawk and Chop Chop, and torture Chop Chop on a rack until Blackhawk tells them the location of Blackhawk Island. They then send the Scavengers to the island, with a fake message from Blackhawk, to lure the team into a trap: separating the pilots amid the narrow crooked streets of Oslo. They nearly trap the pilots, but Olaf's great strength allows him to plow through the Scavengers, and rescue Blackhawk and Chop Chop. Amidst all this, treacherous Gestapo secret agent Red Laura falls in love with Blackhawk, changes sides, and helps the team to escape, but is herself almost killed by her Gestapo colleagues. The Blackhawk Squadron circles back, dives in, and shoot enough Gestapo men that the rest run away. Blackhawk tells Laura that they are even, and she is left swooning as the Squadron returns to their island.
Appearing in Blackhawk: "Scavengers Of Doom"
Featured Characters:
Antagonists:
- The Scavengers
- Garle
- at least a dozen others
- Red Laura
- Nazi soldiers
Locations:
Vehicles:
- 2-engine, 1-tailed, ground-attack fighters, not yet Grumman XF5Fs.
Synopsis for The Sniper: "Enter the Sniper"
In a café in Austria in 1940, General Krieg is pawing a waitress when a rifle shot shatters his beer stein. Krieg flips out and orders everybody in the café to be lined up outside and shot, but this execution is interrupted by Krieg's superior officer, Herr Schrecht of the Gestapo, who orders Krieg and his men to leave. Schrecht then singles out the waitress, Paula Stone, accuses her of being a spy, and pulls his side-arm to execute her. A thrown knife ruins his shot, then The Sniper comes tarzan-swinging into the square, on a fine silk sash, and bowls over several soldiers. With a snap of the wrist he recovers the sash, and quickly wraps it around Schrecht, and sets him spinning in place. The Sniper and the waitress escape, leaving behind two enraged, rival, Nazi commanders, each of whom has a plan to kill a large number of villagers that night.
That evening while Herr Schrecht is choosing which villagers to shoot as examples, General Kruk (*) marches into the village square with at least a platoon of infantry. Their argument is interrupted by two rifle shots, one which empties Schrecht's gun hand, and one which penetrates the row of medals on Kruk's tunic. The villagers mostly panic and flee, with the soldiers shooting at them. The Sniper engages and disables some of the soldiers, but there are a lot of them and pretty soon it looks like he's cornered, but the Sniper yanks a long plank off a nearby porch and uses it to pole-vault onto a nearby house, from which he jumps onto a passing hay wagon, driven by Paula Stone. The Nazis set fire to the hay, plus are chasing them in an open staff car, so Sniper and Paula jump off the burning wagon and onto the pair of horses pulling it, then with some flashing blade-work, the Sniper has cut them loose from the wagon, which now rolls back toward the Nazis, hits their car, and causes an explosion.
Appearing in The Sniper: "Enter the Sniper"
Featured Characters:
- The Sniper (First appearance)
Antagonists:
- Nazis
- General Krieg
- General Kruk
- Herr Schrecht
Other Characters:
- Paula Stone
Locations:
Vehicles:
- horse-drawn hay wagon
- open-top staff car
Synopsis for Shot & Shell: "Cutting Out of the Concentration Camp"
Colonel Sam Shot and Slim Shell escape from a concentration camp, by snipping the barbed wire with ordinary scissors. Almost immediately they start arguing over which way to go, and are soon caught by a small number of seemingly unarmed German infantrymen. Shot and Shell easily outfight the soldiers, and flee. They soon find an unguarded rowboat and some pails of tar, and thus equipped they put to sea. At least two U-boats approach their little boat, but both times Shot and Shell are able to slap some tar onto the periscope lenses. Soon the German Navy surrounds the rowboat with a flotilla of surface warships, and capture Shot and Shell. While being interviewed by the Chief of the Intelligence, Shell punches him out, then knocks out all the guards in the room. Shot and Shell disguise themselves in some stolen uniforms, steal a staff car, and drive away, into a nearby neutral country.
Appearing in Shot & Shell: "Cutting Out of the Concentration Camp"
Featured Characters:
Antagonists:
- Nazi soldiers and sailors
- Josef Goebbels
Locations:
- concentration camp
- open seas
- neutral country
Vehicles:
- rowboat
- two U-boats
- staff car
Synopsis for Miss America: "The Hungry House"
Tim Healy, FBI agent, and Joan Dale, FBI assistant, arrive by motor launch at a jagged seaside cliff, topped by a haunted house, and there they encounter an unidentified submarine, sitting quietly at the bottom of the harbor. Ignoring it, they tie up at the nearby pier, and start hiking up the road to the top of the cliff. At the house, Joan persuades Tim to let her go in first, alone. The front door opens itself in front of her then slams itself shut behind her. Joan picks out a nice chair and takes a seat, waiting to see if anything happens.
After over an hour of nothing happening, she starts to doze off, but is startled awake by the sight of a floating glowing unsmiling human face. This turns out to be a bald shirtless thug, with luminous face paint, murderously swinging a big club. Miss America gestures, and her businesslike FBI dress changes into Miss America's skimpy outfit, then she gestures again and the thug's big club becomes a bottle of cologne. With a third gesture, the thug belly-whops onto a sled which slides itself across the floor to crash into the wall. The wall is mounted on a central swivel, and it pivots open to reveal a hidden elevator. While she's checking that out, somebody gets up behind her and pushes her into the elevator, then sends it down to the bottom level. There she encounters some men, refueling a submarine. Eric, their leader, yanks out a gun but Miss America gestures again and he's unarmed, plus his clothes have been transformed into baby clothes. She gestures open some nearby oil drums and the floor quickly gets too slippery for the bad guys to walk on. Despite all that, one of them gets behind her with a blackjack and head-konks Miss America unconscious.
She wakes up aboard a submarine, not even tied up, some distance out to sea. The captain is just now drawing a bead on an American ocean liner, and firing a torpedo. She gestures, causing the captain's medals to all heat up, taking him out of the fight, but it's too late: the torpedo is already on its way. Very rapidly, Miss America opens another torpedo tube, loads herself into it, fires it, overtakes the first torpedo, and wrestles it onto a new course, back the way it came. This blows up the sub, but Miss America gestures up a rescue for the fifth-columnists, and brings them aboard the ocean liner alive. Then she scoots back to the haunted house and changes clothes again, and waits around until Tim Healy finally comes in to check on her.
Appearing in Miss America: "The Hungry House"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- Tim Healy
Antagonists:
- Nazi agents
- Eric
- fueling station crew
- submarine crew
- Eric
Locations:
- A haunted house atop a jagged cliff on the Atlantic Coast
Vehicles:
- U-boat
Synopsis for Death Patrol: "The Prisoners Who Didn't Want To Be Rescued"
The Death Patrol takes off on an unauthorized mission to rescue a captured battalion; infuriating their commanding officer Colonel Rider, who emphatically does NOT want those men rescued. (They're spies, sent there to destroy a Nazi ammunition depot.) The Death Patrol arrives in Europe and fights their way into the prison camp/castle/compound, soon swinging open the cell door and confronting the prisoners, who surprisingly refuse to be rescued. Meanwhile downstairs, in the still-raging fight, Zazzy has half-accidentally found an underground munitions factory. The Death Patrol teams up with the reluctant escapees to rig up a time-delay explosive device, then it's time to go! But wait, there are workers still in the factory; they'll all be killed! Zazzy goes back into the factory and frees the workforce, but gets tampled amid their escape, and is still splapped out on the floor when the explosives go off and the factory falls down.
Back in England, at the debriefing session, Colonel Rider has a fit, believing that the Death Patrol have screwed up the munitions-destruction mission, until the formerly-captured commandos show up in some captured Nazi warplanes, and corroborate Del's account of the events, much to the blushing Colonel's chagrin.
Appearing in Death Patrol: "The Prisoners Who Didn't Want To Be Rescued"
Featured Characters:
- The Death Patrol
- Del Van Dyne
- Gramps
- Chief Chuckalug
- Zazzy (Dies)
- Hank
- King Hotintot (First appearance)
Supporting Characters:
- Colonel Rider
Antagonists:
Other Characters:
- battalion of British saboteurs
Locations:
- an aerodrome near London
Vehicles:
- Six home-built fighter planes
Synopsis for Yankee Eagle: "The Mary Lee II"
Two days out at sea, Herman Himnet, commanding the innocent-looking trawler "Mary Lee II", meets up with a German U-boat, commanded by Himnet's friend Lieutenant Gottschalk, and receives a shipment of naval mines (nonmagnetic, old-fashioned), along with orders to plant the mines along the U.S. East Coast. That night, a coastal passenger steamer en route to Maine, with Jerry Noble aboard, hits one of these mines, and sinks. Jerry Noble grabs a life ring, leaps to safety, meets a goat in the water, and persuades it to join him on the floating ring. All but 13 of the ship's passengers are rescued.
Next morning, Jerry Noble and his goat are at sea aboard a Coast Guard cutter, searching for the culprit sub. (Jerry's dad is a U.S. Senator.) Jerry finds a floating piece of commercial fishing net, in unusually good condition, and forms a suspicion based on this.
Jerry returns to Boston, with his new goat Billy, and retrieves his pet eagle Sam from his old friend Bert, then heads to the waterfront to seek employment with a fishing boat crew. He spends several days applying for these jobs, but never accepts any of the jobs that are offered. Then one day the Mary Lee II sails into port. Jerry figures out that this is the boat he's looking for, and after creating a distraction on the piers, he and Billy stow away aboard the Mary Lee II, with Sam the eagle keeping pace overhead. Eventually the trawler again meets up with its contact U-boat, and ties up alongside it, and while that goes on, Jerry calls down Sam to carry a note to any nearby U.S. warship. Sam finds a destroyer, and delivers the note to the C.O.
Meanwhile the transferring of the mines from U-boat to trawler is almost complete, and Jerry doesn't know whether help is on the way or not, so he and Billy start fighting the trawler's crew. Fortunately help is on the way, and as the U.S. destroyer arrives on the scene, Jerry uses the trawler's deck cannon to fire a shot across its bow, which draws a whole lot of return fire. Then he grabs the trawler's cargo crane controls, and uses them to drop one deadly mine onto the U-boat, destroying it. Himnet's trawler crew are captured alive.
Appearing in Yankee Eagle: "The Mary Lee II"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- Senator Walter Q. Noble (Behind the scenes)
- Bert
- Sam the Eagle
- Bill the Goat
Antagonists:
- German Navy
- Herman Himnet
- his trawler crew
- Lieutenant Gottschalk (Apparent Death)
- his U-boat crew (Dies)
- Herman Himnet
Other Characters:
- Captain of the USCG cutter
- Captain of the USN destroyer
Locations:
- North Atlantic Ocean
Vehicles:
- fishing trawler Mary Lee II
- German U-boat (Destroyed)
- American passenger steamship
- American Coast Guard cutter
- American Navy destroyer
- American troopship
Synopsis for Blue Tracer: "The Ghost Ship"
Piloted by Bill Dunn and Boomerang Jones, the Blue Tracer flies to the aid of a torpedoed British merchantman, the S.S. Titania. They arrive too late to save the sinking ship, but they land on the surface and rescue one survivor, American correspondent Lola Thomas, who tells them that this ship was sunk by a Nazi U-boat working in concert with a battleship, and that the whole crew had been shanghaied onto the battleship. Bill takes the Tracer aloft, hunting for the sub, and after one false alarm, finds it by flying to a high altitude and scanning the ocean with his water-piercing telescope. Then he folds the Blue Tracer's wings and dives it right smack into the submerged U-17, smashing it like an eggshell. The undamaged Blue Tracer then takes to the skies again. Several miles later it overtakes the battleship Von Spitts, which immediately opens fire. Because of the English prisoners aboard the Nazi ship, the Tracer can't shoot back, so Bill tries a very crazy trick. Pretending to be shot down, he again dives the Blue Tracer into the ocean, then searches around until he finds the wreckage of an earlier ship-sinking, the S.S. Athenia. Using the Blue Tracer's tractor treads and submarine propeller, he crawls his machine into the stern of this wreck, like sticking a hand into a sock-puppet, then heaves it up from the ocean floor, all the way to the surface, then straight at the Von Spitts!
Heavy naval gunnery inflicts heavy damage on this "ghost ship," to no avail, as it rapidly closes the distance between them, then slides up alongside the battleship. Disengaging from the Athenia's hull, Dunn allows it to sink, and machinegun-point negotiations ensue, with the Nazis quickly agreeing to release their prisoners, and turn control of the Von Spitts over to Dunn and Jones. Lola boards the battleship, and departs, promising to make a wonderful write-up of this incident for her paper.
Appearing in Blue Tracer: "The Ghost Ship"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
Locations:
Items:
- Dunn's water-piercing telescope
Vehicles:
- Blue Tracer
- S.S. Titania (sunk)
- Nazi submarine U-17 (destroyed)
- Nazi battleship "Von Spitts"
- S.S. Athenia (wreckage)
Synopsis for Loops & Banks: "The Seven Dragons Cafe"
After a month of war games, when their ship pulls into Shanghai, U.S.M.C. officers McCann and Barrows, in their dress blue uniforms, head over to the Seven Dragons Cafe for some R&R. They meet up with their shipmate Lt. Williams, and one short conversation later the whole cafe has erupted into a bar-fight: U.S. Marines versus U.S. Sailors. When the Shanghai cops and U.S. Shore Patrol both show up, Loops and Banks rely on Sum Toy's knowledge of the best back way out of the bar. This proves to be a mistake, as she leads them into a trap; they get head-konked unconscious and imprisoned in an old dungeon in an old fortress. Soon two Japanese guards enter their cell, to take them to their captain, but McCann and Barrows rush them and knock them down, then flee. McCann gets shot in the leg, but Barrows makes it out through a window, a very high window, overlooking a murky river, into which he dives, and escapes. The Japanese soldiers drag Loops back to the dungeon and torture him with a medieval "boot" device.
Barrow swims all the way back to his ship, a destroyer, temporarily commanded by Lt. Williams (while the captain is ashore), and tells him what's going on. The old fortress is in a good defensive spot, planes can't land near it and the water approach is too shallow for ships, plus, wait, Lt. Williams can't order an attack against some place with which the U.S. isn't at war. Fortunately the Mayor of Shanghai is on board and he gives official permission for an attack. The DD-175 pulls up to the shore, across the bay from the old fort, and deploys (at least 3) amphibious tanks, which cross the lagoon and attack the fort. They punch right through the outer walls, and each one contains a squad of Marines, who quickly take control of the fort, and rescue McCann.
A few days later, Barrows, McCann, and Williams are given medals; at the award ceremony McCann still walks with a cane.
Appearing in Loops & Banks: "The Seven Dragons Cafe"
Featured Characters:
Antagonists:
- Sum Toy's boss
- Sum Toy, cafe hostess
- many Japanese soldiers
Other Characters:
- Lieutenant Williams
- Mayor of Shanghai
Locations:
- Shanghai
- Seven Dragons Cafe
- old fort
Vehicles:
- DD-175, a U.S. destroyer
- amphibious tanks
Synopsis for Secret War News: "Floating Death"
(nonfiction account of a German attempt to convert hospital buoys into torpedo boat fueling stations, in August, 1940.)
Appearing in Secret War News: "Floating Death"
Characters:
- Royal Navy
- Forsythe, British spy
Antagonists:
- German Navy
- Van Gor, German spy (Dies)
Other Characters:
- Royal Army Nurse
Locations:
- Scapa Flow, Orkney Islands, Scotland
- British G.H.Q.
Vehicles:
- British battleships and destroyers (some detroyed)
- German torpedo boats
- British Hawker Hurricanes
- Forsythe's stolen German fighter (Destroyed)
- German "hospital buoys" (Destroyed)
Notes
- Published monthly by Comic Magazines, Inc.
- Blackhawk
- "Scavengers Of Doom" is reprinted in The Blackhawk Archives, Volume One.
- Blackhawk Island is in the North Atlantic Ocean.
- Blackhawk Island's secret location is learned by the Gestapo, in this story.
- Chop Chop gets tortured, on a rack.
- Blue Tracer
- Another submarine crew is killed.
- Death Patrol
- Unlike several other dead Death Patrol members, Zazzy will not be coming back.
- Loops and Banks both get head-konked unconscious, Banks gets tortured with a medieval instrument, and Loops gets shot in the leg.
- Miss America
- Miss America gets head-konked unconscious, for the first and last time.
- In 1940s comic books, rarely is a Nazi or Pirate submarine taken out of action without killing the crew; this story is one rare exception.
- Secret War News
- "This is an actual story based upon inside facts gathered from British Information Bureaus"
- Hospital buoys, and barges, were placed in the waters around Britain, by both the RAF and Luftwaffe, for the recovery of downed fliers. Records are sketchy regarding any conversions of one side's buoys by the other, but it would certainly be a legitimate concern for the Scapa Flow base's commanders.
- Page 3, panel 7: "One of our agents in Germany, Forsythe by name, sends in a report of Nazi bases surrounding England."
- This issue's "Hero Stamp" commemorates Pilot Officer Herbert Lempiere Hallowes.
- Shot & Shell
- This episode begins in an unnamed concentration camp, in an unnamed German-occupied nation, and ends in an unnamed neutral nation. Prior Shot & Shell adventures had been taking place in identified countries, including Portugal and Greece.
- Sniper
- Between p.1 and p.4, General Krieg has either become, or been replaced by, General Kruk.
- Yankee Eagle
- We never do learn why the goat was aboard the passenger ship, or to whom it belonged.
- Another submarine crew is killed.
- Also appearing in this issue of Military Comics were:
- Diary of a Draftee: "Abercrombie McZombie" by Tex Blaisdell
See Also
Recommended Reading
- World War II Recommended Reading
- Adventures in the Rifle Brigade (Volume 1)
- Adventures in the Rifle Brigade (Volume 2)
- All-American Men of War (Volume 1)
- All-Out War (Volume 1)
- Blackhawk (Volume 1)
- Blitzkrieg (Volume 1)
- Capt. Storm (Volume 1)
- Four-Star Battle Tales (Volume 1)
- G.I. Combat (Volume 1)
- Men of War (Volume 1)
- Military Comics (Volume 1)
- Our Army at War (Volume 1)
- Our Fighting Forces (Volume 1)
- Sgt. Rock (Volume 1)
- Sgt. Rock (Volume 2)
- Star-Spangled War Stories (Volume 1)
- Unknown Soldier (Volume 1)
- Weird War Tales (Volume 1)