E: 30/05 Win £25 to spend on any book from Casemate (could I have some help?)

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Win £25 to spend on any book from Casemate Publishing
They publish new questions every Monday and there are two ways to enter.

1. Email your answers to: [EMAIL="casemate-uk@casematepublishing.co.uk"]casemate-uk@casematepublishing.co.uk[/EMAIL] (No subject given)

2. You can follow them on twitter & direct message them the answers (You'll have to ask for them to follow you first as direct messaging is different to simple tweeting).

Questions:
1. How many Medals of Honor were given out in World War 2?
2. How many Americans served in Vietnam?
3. To the nearest thousand, how many of the US Soldiers in Vietnam were under 20 years of age?

Answers:

1. 465 wiki says:

During this conflict 464 United States military personnel received the Medal of Honor, 266 of them posthumously. Additionally, the only recipient for the United States Coast Guard received the Medal for his actions during this war.

so either 464 or 465.

2. Big variety of answers on the internet! approx 2.5 million, more than 3 million seem the most popular.

3. Can't find this yet!

The questions are at: http://www.casematepublishing.com/twitter.php but DON'T enter through the website, that is USA only. The competition is open to the UK but the UK site isn't up and running yet and they've asked on their Twitter account that you enter through one of the two above methods. Phew...hope that makes sense!

The_Plush_Doormat

According to the US Army Center for Military History, there were 245 Medals of Honor awarded for the Vietnam War. Soldiers received 159, Sailors 16, Marines 57, Airmen 13. Additionally, Congress authorized the award for the Unknown Soldier from the Vietnam War, for a total of 246. Of these, 155 were awarded posthumously. (From wiki answers - there seems to be a discrepancy of 100 medals !)

Looking for the other 2 answers

Question 2 from Yahoo answers:

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

During the 10 years that the Vietnam War was going on, about 2.7 million men and women of the the US Armed Forces served in Vietnam plus other nations provided men and materials to the war effort.

and from uswings (vietnam war facts): 2,709,918 Americans served in uniform in Vietnam.

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245 Medals of Honor awarded for the Vietnam War

Think this is just Vietnam, whereas the question is for WW2. I made the same mistake earlier!:o

Found this page: http://www.uswings.com/vietnamfacts.asp

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the official Vietnam era from August 5, 1964 to May 7, 1975. [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]2,709,918 Americans served in uniform in Vietnam. [/FONT]

so you could take your pick of which answer you think the question means, its a bit vauge! Still no luck on question 3 though!

toniq

I imho think q3 should how many unders 20's were KIA

those figures are readily available were the other isn't xxx

I wonder if they messed q3 up? xxxx

The_Plush_Doormat

I agree Toni Loads of sites say over 11,000 were KIA under 20 but no actual figure of how many under 20 fought or served. 9% of Americans said they served, and it turns out that they lied !!

Cover - sorry my bad I didn't read the question properly - I thought the quiz was about Vietnam. Off to have another look. I have learned a lot about Vietnam so far Next stop Mastermind

From wiki answers re world war II medals of honor:

432 Medals of Honor were awarded in WWII, but long after the end of the war, a group of 10 or so black WWII soldiers (some posthumously) were added to that number. They were given lesser awards because during the war the US Army was segregated, and as a result, no black Americans were awarded the MOH. (so could be between 432 and 445?)

One-Eye

The Department of Defense Vietnam War Service Index officially provided by The War Library originally reported with errors that 2,709,918 U.S. military personnel as having served in-country. Corrections and confirmations to this errored index resulted in the addition of 358 U.S. military personnel confirmed to have served in Vietnam but not originally listed by the Department of Defense (All names are currently on file and accessible 24/7/365).

2,710,276 US military personnel served in Vietnam

One-Eye

Q1 - 464 according to http://www.history.army.mil/html/moh/mohstats.html

(This is as close to an official site as I can find. Note that the 464 includes the coastguard who received the medal)

The_Plush_Doormat

So to recap it looks as if Question 1 is 464, Question 2 is 2.7m and Q3 doesn't have an answer yet. Although, as Toni points out the question could well be wrong.

Where's Alfie and her cups of tea and biccies ???

One-Eye

Q3 - Statistics don't seem to be available. This seems to be confirmed by the number of sites that have used just the KIA figures to work out the average age of servicemen in Vietnam - if full figures were available they surely would have used those. The problem also arises because some soldiers would have done multiple tours over several years - what age do you use for these soldiers?

A figure of 11465 under 20s were KIA out of a total of 58148. If you take this ratio and apply it to the 2,710,276 who served, then 534,383 were under 20.

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Thanks for all the lovely help! I'll send them a message on their Twitter and see if question 3 is wrong, will update if they reply.