Military History March 2021

A Scottish Hero?

The Somers Mutiny Ted Williams at War Israel’s Close Call Riding a Torpedo Cedar Creek, 1864 HISTORYNET.com

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T A O B U ROGUE SUB N A M R E G , A S R E DEFYING ORDE U.S. COAST IN 1945 PROWLED TH

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MARCH 2021

Letters 6 News 8

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Features

China’s War on Drugs The Qing dynasty twice warred with the British empire over opium, leaving a bitter legacy.

By Mark Simner

22

Last Shot at Glory Recalled home in May 1945, U-853 instead tempted fate in combat off Rhode Island.

By Dave Kindy

Departments

14

Interview Moritz Föllmer Culture of Destruction

16

Valor Torpedo Rider

2 MILITARY HISTORY MARCH 2021

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Reviews 70 War Games 78 Captured! 80

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62

In 1842 the captain of the brig USS Somers hanged three sailors for having plotted mutiny—but had they?

By Paul X. Rutz

Red Sox legend Ted Williams served in World War II­­and, to his surprise, in Korea.

By John Miles

‘The Thumper’ Goes to War

Justice From the Yardarms

40

For Covenant and King In 17th century Scotland James Graham found true glory defending the Crown.

By Matthew Beazley

56

Yom Kippur War An Arab attack on its holiest day was only the first shock to befall Israel in 1973.

By Jon Guttman

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What We Learned From...

Cedar Creek, 1864

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Hardware Siluro a Lenta Corsa

On the cover: The bridge and deck-gun crews of a German U-boat look on as their latest victim‚ likely a tanker, begins its journey to the deep. (Attack at Dawn, Tom W. Freeman, SM&S Naval Prints, Inc.)

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Hallowed Ground Mont-Ormel, France

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Join the discussion at militaryhistory.com MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DAVID STEINHAFEL PUBLISHER ALEX NEILL EDITOR IN CHIEF

MARCH 2021 VOL. 37, NO. 6

The Yank Coastwatcher Young American cattle rancher Franklin Nash risked life and limb in the Pacific as a member of Australia’s covert Coastwatchers

By Ron Soodalter IN THE ARCHIV E S :

Red, White and Blue Over China Amid the Second Opium War in 1856 a U.S. Navy commander violated his nation’s neutrality to defend Old Glory

By Mark Simner

Interview In his new book British author Ben Macintyre delves into the hidden life of Soviet communist spy Ursula Kuczynski Tools Entering combat in late 1942, the

U.S. Sherman tank proved its mettle against German armor in World War II and later in Korea

STEPHEN HARDING EDITOR DAVID LAUTERBORN MANAGING EDITOR ZITA BALLINGER FLETCHER SENIOR EDITOR JON GUTTMAN RESEARCH DIRECTOR DAVID T. ZABECKI CHIEF MILITARY HISTORIAN STEPHEN KAMIFUJI CREATIVE DIRECTOR BRIAN WALKER GROUP ART DIRECTOR JON C. BOCK ART DIRECTOR MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY ALEX GRIFFITH PHOTO EDITOR C O R P O R AT E ROB WILKINS Director of Partnership Marketing TOM GRIFFITHS Corporate Development GRAYDON SHEINBERG Corporate Development SHAWN BYERS VP Audience Development JAMIE ELLIOTT Production Director ADVERTISING MORTON GREENBERG SVP Advertising Sales mgreenberg@mco.com RICK GOWER Regional Sales Manager rick@rickgower.com TERRY JENKINS Regional Sales Manager tjenkins@historynet.com DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING MEDIA PEOPLE / NANCY FORMAN 212.779.7172 ext. 224 nforman@mediapeople.com © 2021 HISTORYNET, LLC

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Letters

Wrong Sherman

The Wages of War Dana Benner’s article “The Wages of War” [about the Rhodesian Bush War, published in the July 2019 issue and on MilitaryHistory.com] fails to mention the two Air Rhodesia airliners shot down

by ZIPRA [the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army]. These incidents went largely unreported in the Western media.

Air Rhodesia Viscount airliner VP-WAS took off from Kariba airport, in the north of the country, on the last leg of the scheduled Victoria Falls to Salisbury service.

As the flight climbed away on Sept. 3, 1978, ZIPRA insurgents fired a Soviet-supplied, shoulder-launched Strela-2 missile. It locked on to the Viscount’s starboard wing, and when it exploded, it destroyed the inboard engine. The captain aimed for an open field, which unfortunately had a ditch running across it. The aircraft broke

up and burned. Eighteen passengers crawled out of the wreckage. Five immediately went for help, not knowing their assailants were making their way to the crash site. As the Strela team arrived, three survivors hid. The insurgents shot and bayoneted the other 10 (three men, four women, two young girls and a 3-week-old baby).

The leader of their political party [the Zimbabwe African People’s Union] appeared on BBC and laughed about their “success.”

The airline adopted antimissile practices, such as spiral takeoffs and steep combat landings. Unfortunately, the Feb. 12, 1979, flight from Kariba to Salisbury was late, and the pilot did not first climb over Lake Kariba to gain altitude. Insurgents fired a Strela, shooting down the plane and killing all 59 passengers and crew.

I found the January 2021 Military History instructive and enjoyable. However, I have a quibble with the Hardware segment that features the M4A3E8 Sherman. Specifically, the illustration accompanying the narrative is not the Sherman variant being emphasized. Among the tip-offs is that the depiction has a cast hull, whereas the M4A3E8 hull was welded. Moreover, the suspension bogie assembly shown is not the horizontal volume spring suspension (HVSS) that was a standard attribute of the tank under discussion. The Sherman shown is a M4A1(76)W. It was a prior version that like the M4A3E8 was mounted with a 76 mm gun but retained characteristics, such as the cast hull and suspension bogie assembly, common to earlier Shermans.

William Preston San Luis Obispo, Calif.

Editor responds: Good eye.

While the hull and turret of the Sherman variants are similar, the suspension assembly of the depicted M4A1(76)W is distinctive. We regret the error and have corrected the article on MilitaryHistory.com.

Do Not Appease In regards to the article “‘The Few’ Four Score On,”

by Barrett Tillman [September 2020]: The author stated historians believe Britain bought 11 months by selling out Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler in signing the Munich Agreement, ceding to Germany the Sudeten German territory of Czechoslovakia and thus granting Britain time to ramp up its defenses. This frequently used statement is based on historians projecting onto Hitler their own likely behavior had they been in the same situation —i.e. that his intentions were honorable, and that he would only take that which these other countries had no right to give.

But had Britain and France not been signatories to the Munich Agreement and instead sent a clear message to Hitler that they would defend Czechoslovakia and attack Germany, World War II may have been avoided or at least shortened by containing Hitler long enough for Germans to remove him from office as a failure.

History has proved appeasement never works. I wish Americans would remember that.

Terrence R. Wall Middleton, Wis. Send letters via e-mail to militaryhistory@historynet.com or to Editor, Military History HISTORYNET 901 N. Glebe Road, 5th Floor Arlington, VA 22203 Please include name, address and phone number

OSSEWA, CC BY-S.A. 4.0

Air Rhodesia then fitted its airliners with exhaust shrouds and replaced its blue-and-white livery with a low-infrared-signature matte light gray. There were no further Viscount shootdowns in Rhodesia.

Guy Ellis Ruscombe, England

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News

By Dave Kindy

CHUCK YEAGER, 97— LEGEND, MYTH, MAN in Britain through neutral Spain. Despite a regulation that forbade escaped pilots from flying missions over enemy territory, Yeager climbed back into the cockpit of two more North American P-51 Mustangs and did just that.

Following his exploits as a record-breaking test pilot, Yeager commanded the 417th Fighter-Bomber Squadron, 50th Fighter-Bomber Wing, which flew North American F-86H Sabres, and the 1st Fighter Day Squadron, outfitted with F-100D Super Sabres. In 1962 Yeager became the first commandant of the U.S. Air Force’s Aerospace Research Pilot School. During the Vietnam War he flew 127 missions as commander of the 405th Tactical Fighter Wing. In 1975 Yeager retired from the Air Force. His status as a legend was cemented in 1983 when he was portrayed by Sam Shepard in the film The Right Stuff, based on the novel by Tom Wolfe.

Yeager himself appeared on-screen in a bit role.

‘You don’t concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results’ —Chuck Yeager

U.S. AIR FORCE

The pilot who broke the sound barrier and became a pop icon in the process has slipped the surly bonds one last time. Former U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager, who was also a World War II double ace, died on Dec. 7, 2020, in Los Angeles.

Born to a West Virginia farm family on Feb. 13, 1923, Yeager soared into the history books on Oct. 14, 1947, when he became the first pilot to exceed Mach 1 (767 mph) in level flight, in the Bell X-1 experimental rocket plane.

By then his reputation had already reached mythic proportions. During World War II Yeager was credited with 11.5 kills, including five enemy planes in one day for the rare “ace in a day” label. He was also one of few Allied pilots to have downed a jet-powered Messerschmitt Me 262 fighter.

Shot down over France on March 5, 1944, Yeager connected with the Resistance and managed to return to his airfield

8 MILITARY HISTORY MARCH 2021

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FROM TOP: MADISON WELLS MEDIA INTERACTIVE; AIRMAN 1ST CLASS DALTON WILLIAMS, U.S. AIR FORCE; NATIONAL PURPLE HEART HALL OF HONOR, NEW WINDSOR, NY

A combat veteran of World War II and the Vietnam War, Yeager achieved icon status as the first pilot to break the sound barrier.

First Bases for Space Force In support of the nascent U.S. Space Force, the sixth branch of the U.S. armed forces, Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and adjacent Patrick Air Force Base have been renamed Cape Canaveral Space Force Sta-

EXPERIENCE THE HELL OF WWI TRENCH WARFARE

WAR RECORD Feb. 16, 1953

Future Baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams (P. 62), a captain and pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, nurses his F-9F Panther back to base after a raid against North Korea.

FROM TOP: MADISON WELLS MEDIA INTERACTIVE; AIRMAN 1ST CLASS DALTON WILLIAMS, U.S. AIR FORCE; NATIONAL PURPLE HEART HALL OF HONOR, NEW WINDSOR, NY

U.S. AIR FORCE

Feb. 23, 1945

tion and Patrick Space Force Base. General John Raymond, first chief of space operations, said the renaming aligns the installations “with their critical missions.” Pending legislation may require Congress to approve their redesignation.

Beginning in May visitors to the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Mo., can witness the earth-shattering power of an artillery bombardment and tap into other realistic sensations in the immersive virtual-reality experience “War Remains.” Created by MWM Interactive and hosted by Hardcore History podcaster Dan Carlin, the presentation enables viewers to see and hear combat from the perspective of a soldier on the Western Front. Its creators have gifted the award-winning program to the museum for future generations to learn about the horrors of trench warfare. Due to its graphic nature, viewers must be at least 14 years old.

HONORING THOSE WHO HAVE BLED AND DIED

March 1650

Royalist commander James Graham, Marquess of Montrose (P. 40), lands on Orkney preparatory to an invasion of Scotland.

At the April 27 Battle of Carbisdale Covenanters defeat Montrose, who is taken to Edinburgh, tried, hanged, beheaded and quartered.

March 10, 1842

Pearl Survivor Gets New Home The last fully restored Curtiss P-40B Warhawk —which was grounded for repairs at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941— has a new home. The Collings Foundation has placed the historic fighter plane on display at its American Heritage Museum in Hudson, Mass. Of the eight U.S. Army Air Corps pilots who got airborne during the Japanese attack on Oahu, two were flying P-40Bs, and both scored victories.

The submarine U-853 leaves Germany on its final mission of World War II. Ten weeks later American warships sink the U-boat off Rhode Island amid the Battle of Point Judith (P. 22), one of the last actions of the 1939–45 Battle of the Atlantic.

Freedom has a cost, as attested by the nearly 2 million Purple Hearts awarded to American military personnel over the past nine decades.

On Veterans Day 2020 the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor rededicated itself to such men and women following a $17 million expansion. Its galleries feature interactive displays, artifacts, images, film and recorded interviews with Purple Heart recipients. The museum is in New Windsor, N.Y., a few miles west of Washington’s Headquarters State Historic Site in Newburgh, where in 1782 Gen. George Washington established the Badge of Military Merit, forerunner of the Purple Heart.

The War Department created the modern-era award in 1932 in recognition of Washington’s ideals. It is awarded to U.S. military personnel who have been wounded or killed in action against an enemy.

The British garrison at Ningpo, China, repels local forces during the first of the two Opium Wars (P. 30). The war ends that August with the signing of the Treaty of Nanking, which opens Canton and four new ports to trade.

March 20, 1950

In its first cross-border reprisal raid the Israeli Defense Forces strike Arab forces in the Gaza Strip. Directing the raid is Maj. Gen. Moshe Dayan, who later serves as defense minister during the 1973 Yom Kippur War (P. 56), in which Israel defeats a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria.

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News See Gettysburg Unfold on App

WREATHS ACROSS AMERICA HONORS VETS DESPITE COVID Neither snow, nor rain, nor COVID-19 could stay Wreaths Across America volunteers from their appointed rounds to honor deceased veterans. On Dec. 19, 2020—National Wreaths Across America Day—they placed live balsam garlands on more than 1.7 million graves in 2,557 cemeteries in every U.S. state. The nonprofit worked diligently with officials to ensure it adhered to state and local health guidelines. Regardless, the massive wreath-laying effort at Arlington National Cemetery proceeded only after Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy reversed the cemetery’s last-minute cancellation. Due to the pandemic, this year’s ceremonies were not open to the public, though private graveside visits were permitted.

For centuries evergreen laurels have served as a symbol of honor and as a tribute to those who have sacrificed for others. Wreaths Across America maintains the tradition as a living memorial to veterans’ service and sacrifices. The nonprofit relies on thousands of volunteers to carry out its annual mission. Each wreath layer places garlands donated by private citizens or organizations on veterans’ graves, speaking each veteran’s name aloud in remembrance.

“The determination of the American people and their commitment to the mission to ‘Remember, Honor, Teach’ made it possible for us to move forward this year, safely,” said Karen Worcester, the nonprofit’s executive director. “We are humbled and forever grateful for the outpouring of support from all across the country.”

‘From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion’ —Abraham Lincoln

Carrier Pigeon Message Found A couple recently out for a stroll in Ingersheim, France, discovered an aluminum capsule containing a German mili-

tary missive dating from 1910. Detailing military exercises, the note was sent via carrier pigeon by a Prussian infantry officer to his superior when the area was under German control.

The couple presented the relic to the Musée Mémorial du Linge in nearby Orbey, the scene of heavy fighting during World War I.

FROM LEFT: PAUL HENNESSY/SOPA IMAGES, SEBASTIEN BOZON (GETTY IMAGES, 2)

In 1992 Maine-based Worcester Wreath Co. started the annual wreath-laying effort to honor veterans.

What must it have been like during that pivotal American Civil War clash on July 1–3, 1863?

Find out with the Gettysburg AR Experience [battlefields.org/visit/ mobile-apps/gettysburg-ar-experience].

The free smartphone app from the American Battlefield Trust depicts specific actions during the Battle of Gettysburg as well as historic figures, such as President Abraham Lincoln delivering his memorial address. Using augmented reality, the app virtually places users amid historic events, either from their living rooms or at specific battlefield sites.

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News Spy and Novelist John le Carré, 89

FALKLAND ISLANDS FREE OF LAND MINES

John le Carré, the author who defined the Cold War espionage novel, slipped away on Dec. 12, 2020, in Truro, England. Born David John Moore

Davidian Fortress

Princess Diana would be proud. After a decade of painstaking effort the Falkland Islands have been declared land mine free. Argentine forces left some 30,000 mines on the British overseas territory after its 1982 invasion and subsequent defeat in the Falklands War. The princess took up the cause of banning anti-personnel mines worldwide after becoming aware of the dangers in the Falklands and other war zones.

Residents were barred from many areas of the islands until veteran demining teams defused and removed the unexploded ordnance, doing so without a single fatality or serious injury.

Recently discovered ruins in the Golan Heights dating from the time of King David of biblical fame appear to be a fortified settlement, perhaps part of the ancient kingdom of Geshur. Pottery shards date the site to between the 11th and 9th centuries bc. Composed of basalt boulders, its walls are 5 feet thick and enclose a quarter-acre compound.

Wehrmacht Weapons

Russian metal detectorists in rural Leningrad recently unearthed a cache of weapons and equipment in a German trench dating from World War II. Among the discoveries were a bipod for an MG-42 machine gun, ammunition boxes, and a porcelain mug from Holland.

Cossack Cannon

LITHUANIAN LAKE YIELDS MEDIEVAL SWORDSMAN

WWII Historian Carlo D’Este, 84 Carlo D’Este, historian, biographer and author of several popular books on World War II, died Nov. 22, 2020, in Cape Cod, Mass. A decorated U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and Vietnam War veteran, he was the 2011 recipient of the prestigious Pritzker Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.

Archaeologists on land and at sea continue to record finds of historic relevance.

Witness the following:

Was he killed in battle, or did he tumble from a bridge and drown?

Researchers may never know, but they are actively studying the skeletal remains of a medieval soldier recovered from a Lithuanian lake. The bones and associated artifacts turned up during a recent inspection of the bridge over Lake Asevja at Dubingiai. Though the remains lay well preserved beneath sand and silt, researchers at Klaipeda University are convinced this was not a burial. Water currents likely deposited the sediments over the five centuries the bones have been underwater. Divers also recovered a pair of leather boots with spurs, a leather belt with buckle, an iron sword and two wooden-handled knives. Researchers at the National Museum of Lithuania are working to conserve and interpret the finds.

Russian maritime researchers have recovered a wellpreserved Cossack cannon carriage from the Dnieper River. Dating from the 16th to 18th centuries, the artillery mount weighs some 3 tons, was once painted red and is believed to have held a large siege gun.

Ocean City Sub

Salvors using side-scan radar off the coast of Ocean City, Md., have found the wreck of the World War I–era coastal defense submarine USS R-8. Laid down in 1918, it was sunk in 1936 as a target during aerial bombing tests. Divers hope to visually confirm its identity this year.

FROM TOP: SUPERSTOCK (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); DAVID FARRELL (GETTY IMAGES); A. MATIUKAS

Cornwell, the former British spy was forbidden by MI6 to publish in his own name.

Recognition of his nom de plume is eclipsed only by that of George Smiley, the spymaster who appears in nine le Carré novels and was immortalized by Sir Alec Guinness in the BBC series Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People.

WAR RELICS

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Shi Se

Interview Culture of Destruction

By Zita Ballinger Fletcher

The Third Reich took elaborate steps to create a “Nazi culture,” mixing ideological fantasies with reality through grand propaganda spectacles, mass media and seemingly innocent elements of everyday culture like classical music performances and lighthearted films.

The Nazi regime exploited both traditional views and modern trends to make its insidious ideals acceptable to people in Germany and advertise itself abroad.

With his 2020 book Culture in the Third Reich historian Moritz Föllmer, associate professor of modern history at the University of Amsterdam, has produced a detailed and vivid analysis of what “culture” meant for a wide range of people affected by Nazi groupthink, including party members, their victims, resisters and bystanders, demonstrating how Adolf Hitler’s regime manipulated society and attracted willing followers.

What was the state of German culture before the rise of Nazism?

German culture before the Nazis was rich and open—censorship was reduced, funding remained fairly generous, and much room existed for innovation. But post–World War I Germany was a starkly divided culture, as modernists and traditionalists, leftwingers and conservatives were at loggerheads. High expectations of unity made it difficult for Germans to accept a pluralistic view of culture, according to which it is acceptable for different groups and individuals to have different tastes. The Nazis skillfully exploited that mindset.

What roles did Hitler and Joseph Goebbels play in shaping culture during the Third Reich?

Hitler was deeply invested in reshaping culture and liked to tie his political mission to his supposed artistic genius. He exercised veto power over what counted as acceptable or desirable, ruling out any openness to artistic modernism. Hitler influenced the German art market through his conservative tastes, while seeking a more distinctive cultural profile by commissioning bombastic public buildings.

Goebbels was mainly interested in using modern mass media for outright propaganda and, even more important, seemingly unpolitical entertainment. Such pragmatic adjustment to popular preferences distinguished him from the ideological hard-liners who wanted to create a genuinely Nazi culture by harking back to mythical Germanic tribes.

To what extent did the Nazis reimagine German culture?

The Nazis only partly reimagined German culture. Most Germans remained committed to a conservative version centered around classical composers,

Was there any domestic pushback to their cultural agenda?

Among Germans there was considerable cultural overlap between preexisting beliefs and Nazi ambitions.

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ULLSTEIN BILD (GETTY IMAGES)

Moritz Föllmer

writers and painters. What was new about the Nazis’ approach was the ferociousness with which they eliminated left-wingers and everyone they considered Jewish from museums, orchestras and movie casts. Moreover, they were unscrupulous in marshaling culture for the justification of total war and Adolf Hitler’s European empire. The Nazi leaders tapped into a widespread belief culture could secure German unity and greatness—and took that idea to its most extreme conclusion.

RANDY GLASS STUDIO

What motivated you to write this book?

I was commissioned to write the original German edition, which was something of a surprise, as I had previously done little work on the culture of the period. What appealed to me was the topic’s fundamental significance for understanding the Nazis’ world and that of their followers, opponents and victims. I relished the opportunity to think through different aspects of culture inside and outside Germany, to watch some movies and read a fair number of diaries, correspondence and literary works. And I was excited by the challenge of synthesizing the rich scholarship in a way that would be accessible to nonacademic audiences.

Hitler, Goebbels and other senior Nazis look on as a float carrying the stylized head of a Greek goddess passes the viewing stand during the 1939 “Day of German Art” festival.

ULLSTEIN BILD (GETTY IMAGES)

RANDY GLASS STUDIO

Given this fairly broad consensus and the extent of repression, any domestic pushback proved impossible. Left-wing writers languished in concentration camps, and censorship could always hit theatres, museums and publishers. The only opposition was from exile in Paris, Amsterdam or Zurich, with precious little influence in the host countries and next to none in Germany itself. It was years later, as part of the United States’ cultural mobilization against Hitler’s empire, that some émigrés could wield political clout.

How did the Nazis’ cultural superiority campaign continue during the war?

In 1940–41 the Third Reich was at the height of its power, emboldened by its claim to cultural superiority.

Many European artists and writers resigned themselves to such predominance or even sympathized more with

German culture than with its main competitor, French culture. But soon they were frustrated by the exploitative character of occupation, which entailed the Nazis’ unashamed looting of art collections. Also, the German claim to cultural superiority clashed with the mediocrity of much wartime production and the entertainment fare offered to soldiers.

What do you mean by Hitler’s embrace of a “culture of destruction”?

The culture of destruction was partly imposed on Germany, as Allied bombings destroyed landmark buildings and rendered theater performances and symphonic concerts all but impossible. But it was also embraced by a leadership that saw it as its mission to eliminate all Jewish influences from Europe’s culture and to oppose a spirit of sacrifice to the superior American and Soviet forces. In the end Hitler

‘Nazi leaders tapped into a widespread belief culture could secure German unity’ set out to stage Germany’s downfall as a grim aesthetic spectacle.

What aspects of Nazi culture survived the collapse of the Reich?

After the Third Reich’s defeat continuities in both established culture and popular entertainment predominated in West Germany into the 1950s and in some respects beyond. The more quintessentially Nazi features, especially in architecture and the visual arts, exerted a certain fringe appeal—a fascination that persists to this day, not only in Germany but also internationally. MH

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Valor Torpedo Rider

Three manned torpedoes, each ridden by two frogmen, slid off the deck of the submerged Italian submarine Scirè a mile offshore from Alexandria, Egypt. Approaching the harbor entrance, the trio slipped in past the antisubmarine net as three British destroyers returned to port. It was 1 a.m. on Dec. 19, 1941. One of the torpedoes, commanded by Lt. Luigi Durand de la Penne, headed for the British battleship HMS Valiant. Prime Minister Winston Churchill described what happened next as “an extraordinary example of courage and geniality.” It would earn de la Penne his nation’s highest award, the Gold Medal of Military Valor, an honor bestowed on him by the hand of his enemy.

As they reached Valiant’s anti-torpedo net, in some 55 feet of water, de la Penne, secured to the torpedo by a safety line, dove to see whether they could slip beneath it. Soon after they crossed the net, however, the torpedo ceased working and sank to the seafloor, possibly because his safety line had fouled the prop.

De la Penne and Emilio Bianchi pushed the torpedo and its 660-pound detachable warhead (see P. 20) toward Valiant until Bianchi’s breathing gear malfunctioned, forcing him to surface. Working alone, de la Penne managed to move the torpedo beneath the battleship. After arming the warhead, he went in search of Bianchi. As he surfaced, a sentry caught the frogman in a spotlight and fired a warning burst of machine-gun fire into the water. The British captured the pair and took them aboard Valiant, then commanded by Capt. Charles Morgan.

Under interrogation, Morgan recalled, de la Penne “refused to say whether he had attached anything to the ship.” Hoping to exert psychological pressure on the Italian, Morgan had both frogmen confined “down below, close to that part of the ship’s side where I thought the explosive charge might have been fixed.” Had the captain known the torpedo was resting on the bottom,

Luigi Durand de la Penne Italian Navy Gold Medal of Military Valor Alexandria, Egypt Dec. 19, 1941

he could have simply moved Valiant to safety.

But de la Penne didn’t break. Knowing the mine was set to explode in three hours, he waited in the darkness of a forward hold.

After two hours and 50 minutes of anxious clock-watching, de la Penne told Morgan only that the charge was about to explode, giving the captain scant minutes to evacuate the ship’s lower decks. At 6:04 a.m. the charge detonated, blowing a hole through the hull 21 feet below the waterline. Thanks to de la Penne’s warning, though, the British suffered no casualties. That morning charges from the other two manned torpedoes severely damaged the dreadnought battleship Queen Elizabeth and the tanker Sagona. Both battleships sank to the bottom, their decks above water, and remained immobile for months. De la Penne and Bianchi’s four fellow frogmen escaped but were later captured in Egypt.

For a time the Italians had wrested naval control of the eastern Mediterranean from the British.

Morgan, impressed by de la Penne’s chivalry in having spared enemy sailors’ lives, tried to secure a British decoration for the Italian lieutenant but was rebuffed. After Italy was knocked out of the war in 1945, Crown Prince Umberto II came to Taranto naval base to award de la Penne the Gold Medal for Military Valor. Morgan, then a rear admiral on an inspection tour at Taranto, pinned the medal on the frogman.

“I had the pleasure and honor of decorating de la Penne with the highest award granted by the Italian navy for the very courageous and gallant attack he made on my ship three years and three months ago,” Morgan wrote.

De la Penne rose to be a vice admiral in the Italian navy. He died at age 77 in 1992. A present-day class of Italian destroyers is named after him. MH

LEFT: NUMISBIDS; RIGHT: MONDADORI PORTFOLIO (GETTY IMAGES)

By Chuck Lyons

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GARY GALLAGHER ON GETTYSBURG’S CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS H

An Army Wiped Out Bicycles at War Testing the A-Bomb Soviet Female Ace Battle in Paradise Invasion Stripes

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PHILIPPINES, DECEMBER 8, 1941

Thomas Taylor of the 8th Louisiana was seriously wounded in the Cornfield fight.

SEPTEMBER 17, 1862

ANTIETAM NEW LOOK AT THE DEADLY CORNFIELD MCCLELLAN AT THE FRONT UNTOLD STORY OF A BATTLEFIELD GRAVE

WHY DID MACARTHUR WAIT FOR THE ENEMY TO STRIKE FIRST?

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DOUBLE TROUBLE

—page 28

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DEBA H PEARL HARBOR OWED ONE BAD CALL SHAD LIFE A YOUNG OFFICER FOR ED TRAD WHO H THE MAN ORM UNIF HT RMAC HIS WEH UES FATIG Y ARM U.S. FOR

ARMY AND GERMANY’S CO MPETED WAFFEN-SSR’S FAVOR FOR HITLE

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A UNION CAPTAIN’S HORRIBLE DAY

JULY 2020

DECEMBER 2020

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THE AMERICAN FRONTIER

JEFFERSON v. ADAMS, 1800 SCARE TACTICS / RELIGIOUS SMEARS / FOREIGN MEDDLING

Fighting Dirty

BILLY THE KID

thunder from above

the untold story of hispanO fighters who rode with him

republic’s p-47 ‘jug’ hit the germans hard in the air and on the ground

H oklahoma SOONERS H L.A.’s DEADLIEST RIOT H THE FIRST WESTERN

sabre ace race: u.s. fighter pilots in korea took on migs and each other ltv a-7e corsair II: vietnam-era jet recalled for duty in the gulf war NOVEMBER 2020

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Death Valley

THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF MILITARY HISTORY

Hitler’s Obsession With the Occult Grenades: The Good, the Bad...

7th Cav’s brutal fight to save a trapped patrol ‘We’re now in a war—where you can get killed’ The 1962 battle that shocked U.S. helicopter pilots

Mystery Death in Saigon Diamond smuggling, gunrunning, and the CIA

9 Crucial Decisions

Chaos at Shiloh What Grant, Johnston did right...and wrong The Union’s critical Plus! Russian connection

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What We Learned From...

Cedar Creek, 1864

By William John Shepherd

I

n the wake of several losses to Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan’s Army of the Shenandoah in early fall 1864, Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal Early retreated south up the Shenandoah Valley. Believing the enemy beaten, Sheridan planned to return Maj. Gen. Horatio Wright’s VI Corps to assist Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac in taking Petersburg, Va., key to accessing the Confederate capital of Richmond. General Robert E. Lee, aware of the valley’s importance as the breadbasket of his beleaguered army, sent reinforcements to Early. The augmented army advanced north of Strasburg by October 13. Sheridan responded by recalling VI Corps to his camp along Cedar Creek. Despite his concerns, Sheridan attended a war conference in Washington, D.C., leaving Wright in command. On his way back Sheridan spent the night of October 18 in Winchester, some 15 miles north of Cedar Creek.

With Sheridan away, Confederates atop Massanutten Mountain surveyed the Union positions. Noting vulnerability on the left flank, they devised a daring plan.

At Cedar Creek Union Brig. Gen. George Crook’s Army of West Virginia was on the left near the river, Brig. Gen. William Emory’s XIX Corps was in the center and Wright’s VI Corps was on the right. Farther right was Maj. Gen. Alfred Torbert’s Cavalry Corps, with divisions led by Brig. Gens. Wesley Merritt and George Custer. On the night of October 18–19 Confederate Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon marched along the base of Massanutten with three columns, crossing the river on Crook’s left before dawn. Early moved down the Valley Pike with the divisions of Maj. Gen. Joseph Kershaw and Brig. Gen. Gabriel Wharton. Kershaw opened fire about 5 a.m. and advanced on Crook while Gordon attacked Col. Rutherford B. Hayes’ division on Crook’s left. The Confederates routed Crook’s force.

Gordon mistakenly believed Sheridan was at nearby Belle Grove Plantation and hoped to capture him. Meanwhile, Wright and Emory formed a defensive

Lessons: Never underestimate your opponent. It’s a lesson commanders never seem to learn or take to heart.

Never surrender. Circumstances can change and situations improve.

Leadership matters. Especially from the front.

Finish off your opponent. Early didn’t, and the Confederates lost. MH

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

After a 15-mile ride from Winchester, Va., Union Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan rallies his men to victory at Cedar Creek.

line along the Valley Pike. Wharton attacked across Cedar Creek, driving Union forces beyond Belle Grove. With Crook and Emory beaten, Wright’s VI Corps resisted Confederate attacks along the creek, which covered the high ground north of Belle Grove. This allowed time for a retreat northward, enabling the infantry to regroup. After skirmishing with Maj. Gen. Thomas Rosser’s Confederate horse, Torbert’s cavalry moved left of the Union line above Middletown, forcing Early to redeploy. Believing victory was at hand, Early failed to press his advantage.

Alerted to the attack, Sheridan rode hard. Arriving on the battlefield around 10:30 a.m., He placed VI Corps on his left and XIX Corps on his right, leaving Crook’s shattered army in reserve.

Sheridan also shifted Custer’s cavalry to his right flank. Placing himself in front, Sheridan rallied his men before preparing a counterattack. Around 3:30 p.m.

Custer and XIX Corps advanced against the Confederate left and broke the enemy line. Shortly after, Sheridan ordered an advance. With his army disintegrating, Early escaped south.

Sheridan’s leadership had reversed a potential Confederate victory, eliminating Early’s army as an effective fighting force. It also permanently restored the Valley of Virginia to the Union.

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Hardware Siluro a Lenta Corsa

By Jon Guttman Illustration by Jim Laurier

2

1

13 12 11 1. Instrument and control panel 2. Tanks containing up to six hours of oxygen 3. Rudder operating wire 4. Rudder 5. Hydroplanes 6. Coaxial propellers

7. Propeller guard 8. Hydroplane operating wire 9. Surge tank 10. Electric motor 11. Battery container 12. Bow ballast tank 13. Detachable warhead

10

T

he manned torpedo—in essence an underwater minelayer—first saw action with Italy’s Regia Marina on Oct. 31, 1918, when Maj. Raffaele Rosetti and Lt. Raffaele Paolucci rode into the Adriatic port of Pola atop what they called a Mignatta (“leech”) to sink the Austro-Hungarian battleship Viribus Unitis and freighter Wien with detachable limpet mines the next morning.

Lacking breathing gear, the raiders carried out their mission with their heads just above water.

In 1935 Captains Teseo Tesei and Elios Toschi, Italian naval engineers, proposed a manned submersible based on the standard torpedo and by year’s end had successfully tested two prototypes at the San Bartolomeo torpedo workshops in La Spezia. Named the Siluro a Lenta Corsa (“slowrunning torpedo”), the submersible was better known to crews as the Maiale (“pig”), due to its poor

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Specifications Engine: 1.6 hp electric motor with

self-contained batteries Length: 22 feet (24 feet with warhead) Diameter: 21 inches Combat weight: 1.5 tons Armament: Two detachable mines

totaling 660 pounds of high explosive Range/Speed: 15 nautical miles at 2.3 knots; 4 nautical miles at 4.5 knots Crew: Two

The Italians’ successes inspired other navies to adopt similar weapons, such as this British Chariot Mark I. The Japanese later conceived the one-man Kaiten suicide version.

3

4

8 9 5 7

maneuverability. Between 1939 and ’43 the Italian navy manufactured more than 50 SLCs. Serving in World War II with the 10th MAS Flotilla of armed torpedo boats, the SLCs earned renown on Dec. 19, 1941, when three launched from the submarine Sciré slipped into port at Alexandria, Egypt, and sank the British battleships Valiant and Queen Elizabeth and severely damaged the tanker Sagona and destroyer Jervis (see P. 16).

SLCs also operated secretly from the oil tanker Olterra, ART BY JIM LAURIER; ABOVE: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS

MIHP-210300-HARDWARE-BW.indd 21

6

interned in a neutral Spanish port 2 miles from Gibraltar harbor. Sallying from a hidden underwater hatch, they sank or damaged nine Allied cargo vessels totaling 42,000 tons. Only after Italy capitulated in September 1943 did the Allies discover Olterra’s role.

SLCs sank or damaged a wartime total of three warships and 111,527 tons of merchant shipping. Italy developed an improved version, the SSB (Siluro San Bartolomeo) but fielded only three of them before signing an armistice. MH

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LAST SHOT AT GLORY

Hours after being called home in May 1945, the German submarine U-853 tempted fate in combat off Rhode Island

By Dave Kindy

The April 1945 arrival off the U.S. East Coast of the Type IXC/40 submarine U-853 led to the last engagement in the Battle of the Atlantic—and to the deaths of the German vessel’s entire crew.

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While U-boat commanders typically wore white-peaked service caps like this at sea, Oberleutnant zur See Helmut Frömsdorf favored the blackpeaked version, as recovered at the site of U-853’s sinking.

I

‘Do not be frivolous with the crew,’ Sommer urged. ‘Make sure you bring them home’ began in January 1942, within weeks of the U.S. entry into the war. German submariners dubbed it the “Second Happy Time” (the “First Happy Time” having come in 1940–41 in the North Atlantic and North Sea). In the first eight months of 1942 the U-boats sank more than 600 ships totaling 3.1 million tons.

Then the tide turned. Improved anti-submarine tactics, new weapons and technologically advanced underwater

detection systems gave the U.S. Navy the advantage. Soon the hunters became the hunted. Allied shipping losses fell dramatically, while U-boat sinkings climbed month by month. By war’s end Germany would lose 783 subs and some 30,000 men in the Atlantic. Suffering 75 percent losses, the Kriegsmarine U-boat service had a higher death rate than any branch in the armed forces of all of the conflict’s combatant nations.

The captain of U-853 was certainly aware of the state of affairs when he took to sea on Feb. 23, 1945, for his last patrol. Though just 24, Oberleutnant zur See Helmut Frömsdorf was already a veteran of submarine warfare.

He had served on U-853 since its first combat patrol in 1944, quickly learning of the inherent dangers from his first commander, Kapitänleutnant Helmut Sommer.

U-853, a Type IXC/40 long-range submarine carrying 22 torpedoes, had been tasked with collecting weather data, which German intelligence believed would help predict the timing of the anticipated Allied invasion of Europe. On May 25, 1944, Sommer spotted one of the greatest potential prizes of all—RMS Queen Mary. Pressed into service as a troopship, the elegant British ocean liner

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TOP: BUNDESARCHIV; RIGHT: UBOAT.NET

From the outbreak of war in 1939 through early 1943 Germany held the upper hand in the wide-ranging Battle of the Atlantic. Its submarines sank cargo vessels, troop transports, oilers and warships at an alarming rate. U-boats decimated Allied shipping along the East Coast during Unternehmen Paukenschlag (Operation Drumbeat), which

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t was a fine spring day on May 5, 1945, as Boatswain’s Mate Joe Burbine scanned the horizon from Coast Guard Station Point Judith in Rhode Island. From this vantage at the entrance to Narragansett Bay the enlisted lookout had a clear view of the comings and goings of ships.

The mood at the station was upbeat. World War II in Europe was essentially over. Adolf Hitler was dead, and the Nazi regime was collapsing under the weight of a relentless Allied assault. Surrender was expected at any moment.

In that relaxed milieu Burbine watched unconcerned as the collier SS Black Point chugged north. Laden with some 7,600 tons of coal and crewed by 46 men, the ship passed about 2 miles off the point, headed to Boston at roughly 8 knots in fair seas.

Around 5:40 p.m., as evening approached, Burbine bent down to record the sighting in the station logbook.

Startled by a muffled explosion, he raised his binoculars and looked to sea, watching in horror as a plume of water shot skyward alongside Black Point. A torpedo had struck the collier, blowing off its stern.

Seventy-six years ago the prospect of an end to the long war was shattered within sight of the American coast.

A German U-boat had slipped into the shallow waters off New England and launched an attack that sent a chill of fear through American sailors and merchant mariners. The German submarine captain, either ignorant of a stand-down order from his superiors or ignoring the command, remained on the hunt for prey.

World War II was not yet over. The Battle of Point Judith—the final naval engagement in the Atlantic campaign—had only just begun.

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On May 5, 1945, Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz, at right, the Reichspräsident and German navy commander, ordered all U-boats to end offensive operations and return to base—an order Frömsdorf likely ignored.

was carrying U.S. troops and supplies to Britain in the run-up to D-Day. Sommer submerged his U-boat and went in pursuit but was unable to catch the much faster ship.

During that same patrol U-853 earned its nickname, Seiltänzer (“tightrope walker”), after narrowly evading an American anti-submarine hunter-killer group. For three weeks Sommer and crew played a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with the escort carrier USS Croatan and a half dozen destroyers, which had intercepted the U-boat’s weather transmissions.

On June 17 Croatan launched a pair of Eastern Aircraft FM-1 Wildcat fighters, which caught U-853 on the surface and strafed it, killing two German sailors and wounding a dozen. Sommer himself sustained 28 wounds from shrapnel and bullets, yet survived. The captain refused to leave the conning tower until the injured were moved below-decks. Taking the helm, Frömsdorf managed to elude the hunter-killer group. After returning to France for repairs, U-853 logged a second patrol off Britain with another captain. After that unsuccessful mission Frömsdorf was given command.

U-853’s new skipper was an atypical U-boat captain.

Standing 6 feet 10 inches, Frömsdorf was likely the tallest man in the German submarine service. We can only guess at how many times he banged his head or stooped beneath a bulkhead in the cramped confines of U-853.

Before leaving Germany, Frömsdorf visited his former captain in the hospital. Sommer cautioned the junior officer about the mission and told him the war was at an end. “Do not be frivolous with the crew,” the wounded commander urged. “They are all good boys.

Make sure you bring them home.”

Sommer’s plea apparently fell on deaf ears. Though not a Nazi Party member, Frömsdorf was Frömsdorf an idealogue. He firmly believed Nazi propaganda and strove to serve the Fatherland, no matter how the war was going. He may also have been a Halsschmerzen (“sore throat”)—a term the German military used to describe a glory-seeking commander who would risk his men in his obsession to earn a Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross—Nazi Germany’s highest award. The Kriegsmarine referred to such reckless U-boat commanders as Draufgängeren (“daredevils”).

Capt. Bill Palmer, author of The Last Battle of the Atlantic: The Sinking of the U-853, is convinced that was the case with Frömsdorf. An avid scuba diver and owner of a charter boat operation out of Mystic, Conn., Palmer has dived on the wreck many times.

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Top: Members of U-853 ’s crew, including Frömsdorf (wearing tie), enjoy downtime together between patrols. Above: The explosion of a depth charge dropped by the Tacoma-class frigate USS Moberly raises a geyser of water in its wake. It and the destroyer escort USS Atherton joined forces on the kill.

“I spoke to a number of U-boat officers and sailors and was told Frömsdorf had a ‘sore throat,’” Palmer said.

“He was looking to distinguish himself before the war ended. But you don’t do that when 50 men are depending on you for survival.”

That same day Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz—who in the wake of Hitler’s April 30 suicide had succeeded the Führer as Reichspräsident—had a radio message beamed to all U-boat captains, ordering them to cease offensive operations and return to base.

Did U-853 receive the message? It’s possible the U-boat was submerged without its antennae deployed and never heard the transmission. Of course, it’s also possible Frömsdorf received message and simply ignored it so he could sink more enemy shipping. What exactly transpired that day will never be known, as the logbook was not recovered.

“Did he get the message and ignore it?” posited Robert Cembrola, director of the Naval War College Museum in

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TOP: U.S. COAST GUARD (NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND); RIGHT: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS

By May 5 U-853 had moved into position off Point Judith.

TOP: U.S. COAST GUARD (NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND); BELOW: RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY

On Feb. 23, 1945, U-853 slipped into the Atlantic, bound for the East Coast. The vessel made slow progress, as it traveled underwater most of the way to avoid detection by Allied aircraft. Before sailing, the submarine had been outfitted with a newly refined snorkel, a telescoping air-intake apparatus that enabled a submerged U-boat to use its diesel engines.

Once underway Frömsdorf received orders to proceed to the Gulf of Maine. On the afternoon of April 23, as U-853 patrolled Casco Bay, off Portland, its sonar operators detected the engine noise of a nearby ship, USS Eagle 56.

Assigned to Naval Air Station Brunswick, the World War I–era patrol boat was towing a target so U.S. aircraft could practice dropping bombs on seaborne objects.

At 12:14 p.m. Frömsdorf launched a single G7e torpedo toward the unsuspecting vessel. The weapon’s 660pound warhead exploded amidships, breaking Eagle 56 in two. The 200-foot patrol boat sank in minutes, taking 49 men with it to the bottom of Casco Bay. A half hour later a destroyer arrived to pluck 13 survivors from the cold sea.

Within weeks a U.S. Navy board of inquiry determined Eagle 56 had succumbed to a boiler explosion, despite the fact survivors reported having seen a U-boat conning tower with distinctive red-and-yellow markings.

(Painted by its crew, U-853’s emblem was a red horse on a yellow shield.) The board’s finding stood until 2001, when naval historian Paul Lawton presented conclusive evidence a torpedo had sunk the ship. The Navy subsequently issued Purple Hearts to the survivors and next of kin of those killed.

Ironically, Eagle 56—the last American warship sunk in the Atlantic—had on Feb. 28, 1942, rescued survivors of the torpedoed destroyer USS Jacob Jones—the first American warship sunk in the Atlantic after Germany declared war on the United States.

Following the Casco Bay attack, U-853 took evasive action and escaped detection by U.S. sub hunters. Frömsdorf then headed the U-boat south in search of other targets.

TOP: U.S. COAST GUARD (NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND); RIGHT: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS

TOP: U.S. COAST GUARD (NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND); BELOW: RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Newport, R.I., which showcases a range of U-853 artifacts. “Did he see that big freighter going by and say, ‘I’m going to get one more kill before I head back to Germany’? That’s a big question.”

If Frömsdorf did disregard Dönitz’s order to cease hostilities, it wouldn’t be the only time. While hunting for additional targets, he violated another of the admiral’s directives: U-boats were required to be in at least 200 feet of water when attacking, so they could submerge deep enough afterward to avoid detection by the enemy.

Frömsdorf would have known from his charts that the bottom where he lay in wait off Point Judith was only 100 feet, thus leaving no place to run and hide if and when sub hunters came looking for him.

Three days before U-853 arrived off Point Judith the heavily loaded collier SS Black Point had steamed out of Newport News, Va., bound north for Boston. Capt.

Charles E. Prior wasn’t too concerned about enemy action. The war in Europe was nearly over, and the chances of an attack seemed remote. Twenty minutes till 6 on the evening of May 5, as the collier approached Point Judith Light, Prior stepped from the wheelhouse to smoke a cigarette. Suddenly, the whole ship rocked violently.

“That’s when it hit the fan,” Prior told author Palmer when interviewed for The Last Battle of the Atlantic.

“The clock was blown off the wall, and the barometer off the bulkhead. The wheelhouse door was blown open, and I don’t remember if I lit the cigarette or swallowed it.

I could smell gunpowder in the air, and the stern of my ship was completely blown off.”

Black Point had been struck by one or more G7e torpedoes fired by U-853. The collier shook with the brutal force of the blast. The severed stern sank within minutes, taking all but one of the men in that section of the ship

Members of Moberly’s crew look on as mortar-like, forward-throwing hedgehog charges detonate just off the frigate’s starboard bow.

to the bottom. The only survivor from the fantail was Stephen Svetz, a member of the civilian vessel’s U.S. Navy Armed Guard gun crew. Thrown into the air by the explosion, he landed on the forward section of the ship.

What was left of Black Point drifted for a quarter mile or so before finally coming to a stop and sinking. As he moved through the wreckage looking for injured men, Prior gave the order to abandon ship. Thirty-four survivors made it to the life rafts and were rescued by nearby vessels or crash boats from shore. Twelve crew members either died in the blast or drowned when the collier sank. Black Point was the last vessel First awarded to World War I submariners who sunk in U.S. waters by a German U-boat. completed three patrols, From his post at the Coast Guard station the U-boat War Badge Boatswain’s Mate Burbine notified superi- was reinstituted in 1939 ors, who contacted the First Naval District for all crewmen, while a headquarters in Boston, which relayed the gold-plated version with message to the Navy’s Eastern Sea Frontier diamonds was awarded to officer holders of the command in New York City. Its radio opera- Knight’s Cross of the Iron tors in turn put out a call to Task Group Cross with Oak Leaves.

60.7, then returning to the Massachusetts port from escort duty for repairs and resupply. Three of its four ships—the destroyer escorts USS Amick and Atherton and frigate USS Moberly—were less than 30 miles from the scene of the attack.

The trio of warships arrived around 7:30 p.m. and began a sonar sweep. Within the hour they detected an object on the seafloor at a depth of 108 feet. Atherton immediately dropped magnetic depth charges, one of

U-boat Badge

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PROVIDENCE

RHODE ISLAND NARRAGANSETT BAY MILES

BLOCK ISLAND

Battle of the Atlantic

which exploded, indicating it had struck metal.

The crew then fired two rounds of hedgehogs, a mortar-like, forward-throwing anti-submarine weapon whose warheads also only detonated on contact.

ALLIED SAILORS Soon joining the hunt was the destroyer KILLED USS Ericsson, the fourth member of TG 60.7.

PLUS 36,000 MERCHANT SEAMEN The American warships initiated another sonar sweep but were unable to pinpoint the WARSHIPS LOST U-boat. Uncertain whether the initial target PLUS 3,500 MERCHANT VESSELS had been an existing shipwreck or the enemy AND 741 RAF AIRCRAFT sub, the Navy commanders widened their search grid.

Around 11:20 p.m. Atherton and Moberly, U-BOAT SAILORS working together, detected what they believed KILLED was the U-boat, in 100 feet of water some PLUS 500 OTHER SEAMEN 4,000 yards east of the original attack zone.

Closing in, the American warships fired several U-BOATS LOST rounds of hedgehogs. When crew members PLUS 47 WARSHIPS AND brought searchlights to bear 30 minutes after 17 OTHER SUBMARINES midnight on May 6, their beams picked up bubbles, oil and debris on the surface.

Atherton circled the area for some 20 minutes, maintaining sonar contact with the target on the seafloor. No movement or sounds were detected. Just in case, the ship dropped two more series of depth charges on shallow settings. One exploded too soon and damaged Atherton’s

36,200 175

30,000 783

The divers found a severely damaged U-boat and the bodies of 55 officers and men own sonar gear, so Moberly moved in to attack. Incredibly, sonar showed U-853 was still “alive” and creeping along the bottom at about 5 knots.

During its depth-charge run Moberly experienced the same problems as Atherton had, the resulting shallow explosions also damaging its sonar. The crew made repairs. But the U-boat managed to slip away after being detected moving at 2 to 3 knots in 75 feet of water.

SS BLACK POINT U-853

0

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AT L A N T I C OCEAN

As dawn broke, it became clear the depth charge and hedgehog barrages had hit the mark. Lookouts spotted three oil slicks about 30 feet apart, along with considerable debris. After re-establishing sonar contact, the warships resumed their attack at 5:30 a.m., making multiple runs with depth charges and hedgehogs. A pair of Navy blimps from Lakehurst, N.J., soon joined in, marking the target and firing rockets at the oil slicks.

In a coup de grâce, Atherton and Moberly made a last run at the U-boat with depth charges. The former went first, followed by the latter. After Moberly passed over the target, an eruption of air and oil broke the surface, followed by all manner of equipment, papers and clothing, including Frömsdorf’s black-peaked cap. The sub hunters broke off their attack at 10:45 a.m.

That same morning the submarine rescue ship USS Penguin departed New London, Conn., bound for the battleground. Most of the vessel’s crew members were bleary-eyed and deeply hungover after a late night of partying. They’d been celebrating what they thought was the end of the war in Europe. On May 7—the day Nazi German emissaries initially surrendered to the Allies—divers from Penguin descended on U-853. Their mission was to identify the sub and rescue survivors.

No one believed there would be any.

The divers found what they expected—a severely damaged U-boat and the bodies of 55 officers and men in and around the wreck. Breaching the hull were two holes—one forward of the conning tower, the other near the engine room. The divers tried entering the U-boat through the narrow main hatch but found it blocked by several corpses. They extracted one body and brought it to the surface. It was later identified as that of 22-year-old seaman Herbert Hoffmann, whom a pathologist determined had succumbed to injuries rather than drowning.

Hoffmann was later buried at sea with full military honors.

In 1960 divers recovered a complete set of bones. The unidentified remains were interred at Island Cemetery Annex in Newport in a ceremony attended by West German and U.S. Navy officials and representatives.

“We have German officers at the Naval War College every year,” museum director Cembrola said. “On the anniversary of the sinking they have a ceremony here

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U.S. COAST GUARD (NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND)

BLOCK ISLAND SOUND

U.S. NAVY (NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

U-853’s attack on the collier Black Point set in motion the chain of events that ended with the loss of the submarine and all hands.

U.S. COAST GUARD (NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND)

U.S. NAVY (NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

Jubilant over the sinking of U-853, Moberly’s Coast Guard Reserve crew gathers to watch a crewmate paint a victory symbol on the frigate’s funnel.

at the cemetery to remember the German sailor who was buried there.”

At one point there was talk of raising the wreck of the U-boat and turning it into a tourist attraction. But when officials in both Rhode Island and West Germany raised objections, the plans were dropped.

In 1953 salvors raised U-853’s twin screws, which for years sat neglected in a field near Newport’s Castle Hill Light. Today the preserved propellers are on permanent display at the U.S. Naval War College Museum.

U-853 rests in 130 feet of water some 7 nautical miles east of Block Island. As it holds the remains of 53 sailors, it is considered a war grave under international maritime law. That doesn’t stop recreational divers from visiting the wreck, one of the most popular dive sites in New England, though due to the U-boat’s deteriorating condition, confined spaces and unexploded ordnance, entering can be dangerous. Two divers have died on the wreck.

The Battle of the Atlantic was costly for both sides.

American losses alone totaled 1,600 ships carrying some 14 million tons of materiel, with 9,521 merchant mariners lost to U-boat attacks.

While the sinking of U-853 was a relatively minor event in that long battle for control of the ocean separating the Old World from the New, the loss of the sub remains “a tragic story,” Palmer says. “Capt. Sommer

told Frömsdorf the war is nearly over. ‘These are all good boys. Make sure you bring them home.’ And there they sit off Block Island, waiting to go home. It was a tragedy that didn’t have to happen.”

Palmer also interviewed former U-boat commander Herbert A. Werner, not long before the latter’s death in 2013. Werner spoke of the many brave men who served in the Unterseeboote and of the pointless final mission of U-853.

“We were not Nazis, as foreigners depict us, although there were a few,” he said.

“We were German sailors, and damned good ones. We did our job until the very last day, and for that I am proud.” MH

Tactical Takeaways Rogue Rarely Works.

Combat is almost always a collaborative effort, thus disobeying orders to engage the enemy alone and unsupported is usually a recipe for disaster.

Shallow Subs Die. “Run silent, run deep” has always been the survival mantra for submariners—shallow water provides few hiding places when surface predators are on the hunt.

Glory Seeking Kills.

Frömsdorf’s “sore throat”—his desire to distinguish himself—led to the pointless loss of U-853.

Massachusetts freelancer Dave Kindy is a frequent contributor to Military History and other Historynet magazines, as well as other outlets. For further reading he recommends The Last Battle of the Atlantic: The Sinking of the U-853, by Capt. Bill Palmer; World War II Rhode Island, by Christian McBurney, Brian L. Wallin, Patrick T. Conley, John W. Kennedy and Maureen A. Taylor; and “Kill and Be Killed? The U-853 Mystery,”

by Adam Lynch, in the June 2008 issue of Naval History.

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CHINA’S WAR ON DRUGS The Qing dynasty twice warred with the British empire over the latter’s lucrative opium trade, leaving a bitter legacy

By Mark Simner

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British troops advance against Chinese-held forts on Chuenpi and Taikoktow islands on Jan. 7, 1841, during the First Opium War.

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In 1839 Chinese viceroy Lin Zexu confiscated opium from European trading warehouses along the Pearl River in Canton (present-day Guangzhou), prompting the First Opium War.

The Qing government’s rebuff of opium imports did not stop the HEIC’s quest for profit. To sidestep the ban, the company auctioned opium to third-party “country traders.” These merchants loaded the opium in India and sailed for China, where they illegally sold the drug to Chinese merchants. The HEIC reasoned that since the opium legally ceased to be their property following the auction, they could wash their hands of the matter should Chinese authorities intercept a trader’s ship. It was all a sham, as the country traders operated under HEIC licenses.

The system worked because Chinese merchants and corrupt officials profited handsomely from the trade and simply ignored the ban. Imperial edicts were toothless, as authorities seldom enforced them, prompting ever more merchants to ignore them. Even the British treasury profited, collecting taxes from the opium auctions. In the early 1700s the number of opium chests (each containing 120–140 pounds of raw opium) exported to China each year numbered some 200. By the late 1760s it had risen to 1,000; in 1838 the total hit a staggering 40,000 chests.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST; WELLCOME LIBRARY; IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; PALACE MUSEUM, BEIJING

T

he 17th and 18th centuries saw an increased demand in Britain for Chinese commodities—particularly silk, porcelain and tea. China, by contrast, had little interest in British goods, rejecting the comparatively rough woolen and cotton textiles London sought in vain to export. The resulting trade imbalance left the British with little choice but to pay for their tea using silver, specifically Spanish silver, the only form of payment the Chinese truly trusted. Thus fortunes in silver flowed out of Britain. When the Spanish sided with the Americans in their Revolutionary War, however, that important currency dried up.

The Honourable East India Company (HEIC), a semi-private enterprise ruling much of the Indian subcontinent on the British government’s behalf, sensed an opportunity to alleviate the imbalance.

The solution lay in an ever-increasing demand in China for opium. The HEIC controlled opium grown in India, and it began exporting the narcotic to China. But the imperial court at Peking, concerned about the resulting outflow of silver, not to mention the negative impact opium was having on Chinese society, ultimately banned its import, save for small quantities for medicinal purposes.

That refusal sparked a series of military conflicts that would subject Qing dynasty China to the overwhelming and devastating firepower of the British army and Royal Navy, kill and injure tens of thousands of Chinese, and doom hundreds of thousands of others to lives of wretched addiction.

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Dating from the early 19th century, this elaborately decorated ivory pipe likely belonged to a wealthy opium user.

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For centuries the Chinese had used opium in small quantities, mostly for medicinal purposes, though also as a reputed aphrodisiac. Sometime after New World traders had introduced tobacco to China, smokers realized they could enhance their pleasure by adding opium syrup to their pipes. Over time they transitioned from tobacco to pure opium. Many people became hopelessly addicted.

The British, too, demanded the drug. Europeans of the era used opium as a painkiller and to treat bowel problems, usually taking it with alcohol as a tincture. Workers in northern England took an opium-based drug called “elevation” to boost energy, while babies were given Godfrey’s Cordial, also containing opium, to calm them. Recreational use of opium was also common. Among other prominent users was famed abolitionist William Wilberforce, who suffered unspecified gastrointestinal illnesses.

That said, some Britons strongly opposed the opium trade on moral grounds. The Rev. Algernon Thelwall, an evangelical clergyman, published a book on the subject in which he derided it as an “iniquitous trade” that “brought the greatest dishonour upon the British flag.”

Yet the general population remained largely unaware of the controversial commodity, which proved increasingly lucrative. In 1835–36 alone the opium trade with China reaped an impressive $428 million in present-day dollars.

Despite recurring political clashes between Britain and China, the opium trade continued unabated well into the 19th century. In 1839, however, the Daoguang emperor— the seventh of the Qing dynasty—resolved to act. Rejecting calls for opium to be legalized and taxed, he dispatched Lin Zexu, a morally scrupulous Chinese viceroy, to Canton. All foreign trade with China had been restricted to that port city, where Western countries operated offices and warehouses known as “factories.”

Lin launched his war on opium by ordering the arrests of more than 1,700 Chinese involved in the trade, confiscating tens of thousands of opium pipes and appealing to Queen Victoria to abolish the trade. When all efforts proved fruitless, Lin resorted to force, directing Chinese troops to confiscate and destroy more than 20,000 chests of opium stored in British and other foreign warehouses and aboard British merchant ships. London responded with gunboat diplomacy, ordering a military expedition to China and unabashedly preparing to go to war over the right to sell a narcotic.

That September British and Chinese vessels skirmished off Kowloon, but the initial major action of the First Opium War came two months later. Seeking to defuse tension over Lin’s actions, Sir Charles Elliot, the British plenipotentiary and chief superintendent of trade in China, ordered a blockade of all British shipping on the Pearl River. But on November 3 the merchant ship Royal Saxon signed a bond with Chinese authorities not to sell opium, ignored the blockade and approached Canton

Lin first appealed to Queen Victoria to abolish the opium trade. Getting no response, he set out to eliminate use of the narcotic (below) in China.

Daoguang Emperor

Prince Gong

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with a cargo of cotton. HMS Volage and HMS Hyacinth responded by firing warning shots.

Watching events from harbor was Chinese Adm. Guan Tianpei, who immediately sailed to Royal Saxon’s aid with a fleet of war junks. In the ensuing First Battle of Chuenpi the junks proved no match for the Royal Navy warships, which sank four of Guan’s vessels.

In January 1840 the Daoguang emperor ratcheted up tensions with a demand that other foreign merchants trading in China cease any cooperative efforts with the British. On receiving the news in London, hawkish Foreign Secretary Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, sent instructions to George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland and governor-general of India, to prepare naval and military forces for a punitive expedition to China.

The plan was to continue the Pearl River blockade and

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William Hall

capture Chusan Island for use as a forward operating base. The Royal Navy would then blockade the Yangtze River and send warships to the Bohai Sea, inland of the Yellow Sea. By doing so, Lord Palmerston hoped to force the emperor to accept a list of demands, the most important being to open additional ports to British trade.

The British expedition—its naval element under Commodore Sir James Bremer and land forces under Maj. Gen. Hugh Gough—arrived in Chinese waters in June and sailed for Chusan. The local Chinese commander refused Elliot’s demand to surrender, so on July 5 the British took the island by force, occupying the capital of Tinghai the next morning. “The gate was found strongly barricaded within by large sacks of grain,” Brig. Gen. George Burrell recalled. “A company of the 49th [Regiment of Foot]… took possession of the principal gate of the city of Tinghaeheen [sic], upon which the British flag was hoisted.” Its initial objective achieved, the expeditionary force split, one fleet heading up the Pearl, the other to the Yellow Sea. Forcing his way upriver toward Canton, Commodore Bremer found the forts in the strait of Humen (aka Bogue) heavily garrisoned and bristling with guns. On Jan. 7, 1841, his warships opened the Second Battle of Chuenpi, sinking seven junks while landing parties seized the forts.

At that point the Chinese sought to negotiate, sending Lin Zexu’s successor, Qishan, to speak with Elliot. Within days the resulting Convention of Chuenpi reopened trade at Canton, ceded Hong Kong to Britain and compensated British merchants for their opium losses. In return the British agreed to evacuate Chusan. Not everyone was satisfied, however. Palmerston refused to ratify the treaty and dismissed Elliot for not having demanded enough from the Chinese, while the Daoguang emperor had Qishan arrested and very nearly executed for having ceded too much.

The unresolved tension led to the February 26 Battle of the Bogue, an amphibious assault on Chinese forts in the Humen, followed the next day by the Battle of the First Bar—both ending in British victory. Continuing up the Pearl, the British destroyed several forts and captured Whampoa on March 2. Between March 13 and 15 a naval force sent up the Broadway River destroyed many junks and captured several forts. Prominent among the British warships was Capt. William Hall’s HEIC-owned 46-gun iron steamship Nemesis, able to navigate shallow waters and wreak havoc on the Chinese shore defenses. On March 18 the British attacked Canton, liberating their factory before taking the high ground overlooking the city.

Trade at Canton resumed until the Chinese recaptured the factory on May 21. Four days later the British counterattacked, bombarding the city and forcing Chinese defenders to flee. Fighting ended with the capture of Canton

TOP: ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST; BELOW: NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH

The titular head of British forces, Queen Victoria (depicted at left reviewing troops in an 1859 painting by George Housman Thomas) had no command authority during the Opium Wars.

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TOP: ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST; BELOW: NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH

The HEIC-owned Nemesis (at far right), under the command of Capt. William Hall and accompanied by several smaller British vessels, attacks Chinese junks in Anson’s Bay on Jan. 7, 1841. When resisting British boarding parties, the Chinese often relied on the 62-inch dadao (“great sword”), below.

on May 30. Elliot and Yishan (Qishan’s successor as viceroy) agreed to a new cease-fire, followed by the signing of another peace treaty and the withdrawal of British forces beyond the Bogue. The emperor remained dissatisfied and refused peace.

Meanwhile, Palmerston, replaced Elliot’ as plenipotentiary and trade superintendent with Sir Henry Pottinger, who arrived in Hong Kong on August 10. Another newcomer was British naval commander Adm. Sir William Parker, who with Gough resolved to continue operations against China, setting sail for Amoy on August 21. A number of actions in central China followed, including the Battle of Amoy on August 26, the recapture of Chusan on October 1, the Battle of Ningpo on March 10, 1842, and the Battle of Chapu on May 18. The British prevailed.

When the emperor still refused to relent, Gough struck up the Yangtze in hopes of advancing into interior China.

British and Chinese forces clashed at the Battle of Woosung on June 16, leading to the British capture of Shanghai.

On July 21, in the last major action of the war, the British stormed the city of Chinkiang. Amid bitter street fighting, on realizing defeat was imminent, many Chinese committed suicide. “Finding dead bodies of [Chinese] in every house we entered,” Gough recalled, “principally women and children, thrown into wells or otherwise murdered by their own people, I was glad to withdraw the troops

from this frightful scene of destruction.” The battle had also disrupted China’s Caoyun system, a vital grain transportation waterway, forcing the emperor to sue for peace.

The First Opium War ended on August 29 when Pottinger and imperial representatives met aboard HMS Cornwallis to sign the Treaty of Nanking. Effectively ending

The British attacked Canton, liberating their factory before taking the high ground the restrictive Canton system, its terms opened the ports of Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai to foreign trade.

It also ceded Hong Kong to Britain and awarded reparations to Britain for lost opium and war-related expenses.

The agreement marked the first in a series of one-sided accords China later dubbed the “unequal treaties.”

Despite the gains Britain achieved through the Treaty of Nanking, London soon demanded further concessions, including extraterritorial rights for British subjects in China (exempting them from Chinese law) and most-favored-nation status (extending to Britain any

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First Opium War On Sept. 4, 1839, British and Chinese vessels skirmished off Kowloon over a local trade ban. That was followed by the November 3 First Battle of Chuenpi, when a British merchant ship sought to defy a British-imposed blockade of Canton, sparking a naval clash. When the Daoguang emperor demanded other foreign merchants cease relations with the British, the war was on. Continuing its blockade of Canton, Britain also bottled up the Yangtze River, sailed to the Bohai Sea and sent warships inland to threaten Peking. After further clashes along the Pearl and Yangtze rivers and the capture of Shanghai and Chinkiang, the emperor was forced to sue for peace.

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Second Opium War The 1842 Treaty of Nanking opened the ports of Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai to foreign trade, ceded Hong Kong to Britain and awarded reparations to the British for lost opium and war costs. A dissatisfied China dubbed it and subsequent accords the “unequal treaties.”

Peking, however, dragged its feet over implementation of the treaty provisions and refused to legalize the opium trade, the original casus belli. An incident over the Union Jack aboard a British ship provided an excuse to renew hostilities. After repeated clashes at the Taku forts and Tientsin, the British took Peking and razed the emperor’s Summer Palace. The treaty ending the war finally legalized opium.

Opium as Currency

Opium had been in use in China, for medicinal and recreational purposes, for centuries before the onset of the 1839–42 First Opium War. The causes of that conflict and the subsequent 1856–60 Second Opium War center on international maritime trade relations between Qing dynasty China and the West. With the establishment of the Canton System in 1757 China limited trade with “foreign barbarians” to the southern port of Canton, where foreign merchants set up “factories” (trading warehouses and associated offices) along the Pearl River. The demand for Chinese goods and that government’s insistence on silver as the preferred currency led to steep trade deficits among the European nations.

The resulting imbalance prompted those nations, particularly Britain, to boost the trade in opium, for which their merchants accepted silver in payment.

In 1810, concerned about the outflow of silver and increasing levels of opium addiction among its people, the imperial court at Peking banned import of the drug. Regardless, the profitable trade continued on the sly. In 1839 Chinese viceroy Lin Zexu, on orders from the Daoguang emperor, cracked down, arresting Chinese dealers, confiscating opium pipes and appealing to Queen Victoria to end the trade. Receiving no answer, Lin directed Chinese troops to confiscate and destroy chests of opium stored in the foreign warehouses and aboard merchant ships. Britain responded militarily. MH

MAPS BY STEVE WALKOWIAK / SWMAPS.COM

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future rights granted to other foreign powers).

Under pressure the Chinese agreed, signing the supplementary Treaty of the Bogue in October 1843.

As years passed the British pushed for furFRANCO-BRITISH ther concessions from China. Neither treaty TROOPS had legalized the opium trade, a step the Chinese resisted, thus the original casus belli was unresolved. London also felt Peking was disKILLED respecting British diplomats and dragging its 134 BRITISH, 25 FRENCH, 11 feet over implementation of the treaty proviAMERICANS; 811 TOTAL WOUNDED sions. Lord Palmerston, appointed prime minister in 1855, arrogantly proclaimed the CHINESE TROOPS Chinese needed “a dressing [down] every eight to 10 years to keep them in order.” To declare war, however, he needed a pretext.

An opportunity presented itself in OctoCASUALTIES ber 1856, when Chinese officials boarded the 2,100 CAPTURED cargo ship Arrow at Canton and arrested its crew. Though Arrow had been registered as a British ship and helmed by a British captain, authorities believed members of its Chinese crew had been pirates. Furthermore, Arrow’s registration had expired, thus it was not under British legal protection. The Chinese boarding party duly lowered Arrow’s Union Jack. Sir Harry Parkes, British consul at Canton, demanded local viceroy Ye

20,127 170

200,000 2,800

Mingchen release the crew and apologize for having lowered the flag. Ye released the crew, but when he refused to apologize over the flag incident, Parkes ordered British warships to bombard Canton. The Chinese retaliated by burning down the factories. “The English barbarians have attacked the provincial city and wounded and injured our soldiers and people,” a furious Ye proclaimed to the Cantonese. “I herewith distinctly command you to join together to exterminate them.”

Two key events delayed the British response. First, opposition in the House of Commons to a renewal of hostilities led to a parliamentary vote, forcing a general election in April 1857. British voters returned an even greater majority for Palmerston’s government. A month later the unrest in India that would flare into the Sepoy Mutiny grew worse, forcing London to divert Chinabound troops to quell the rebellion. Meanwhile, Britain gained an unlikely ally. Concerned the British were dominating trade with China, France looked to join the war.

Paris’ casus belli was the murder of French missionary Auguste Chapdelaine in Guangxi province for having dared to minister to a region closed to foreigners.

The British captured Canton on New Year’s Day 1858 and arrested Ye, exiling him to Calcutta. In May an Allied force under British Rear Adm. Michael Seymour took the strategically important Taku forts on the Peiho River. The

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Second Opium War

WELLCOME LIBRARY

Chinese corpses litter the ground after the British-French capture of the north Taku fort on Aug. 21, 1860, amid the Second Opium War.

TOP: PICTURES FROM HISTORY (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES); BELOW: KAROLINA WEBB (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

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subsequent capture of Tientsin led to the signing of yet another treaty, in June 1858. That accord provided for foreign diplomatic legations at Peking, the opening of 10 more ports and the free movement of foreigners across interior China. Although a break in the fighting followed, neither London nor Peking would ratify the treaty, leading to a resumption of hostilities.

As the Treaty of Tientsin had returned the Peiho River forts to the Chinese, the forts would have to be retaken.

Unfortunately for the Allies, in late June 1859 they lost the Second Battle of the Taku Forts to Chinese forces under Mongol commander Sengge Rinchen. The loss proved humiliating back home in Britain and France. On September 12 a horrified Times of London thundered, “We shall teach such a lesson to those perfidious hordes that the name ‘European’ will hereafter be a passport of fear!”

On Aug. 21, 1860, an Allied force under British Lt. Gen. Sir James Hope Grant and French Lt. Gen. Charles Cousin-Montauban launched the Third Battle of the Taku Forts. This time the attackers were victorious. “The garrison was driven back step by step and hurled pellmell through the embrasures on the opposite side,” Grant recalled of the moment French troops entered one of the forts. “The ground outside the fort was literally strewn with the enemy’s dead and wounded: Three of the Chinese were impaled on [their own] stakes.”

Avenged for their humiliation, the Allies fought their Top: Lin’s 1839 destruction of foreign-owned opium in Canton marked the way to Peking, reoccupying Tiensin on August 25. They start of China’s war on drugs. Depicting the ongoing fight against addiction, defeated Rinchen at Chang-chia-wan on September 18 clenched fists break a massive pipe in a memorial in Humen, Guangdong. and again at Palikao three days later. With Peking under threat the Xianfeng emperor, the eighth of the Qing “unequal treaty” ceded Kowloon to the British, estabdynasty, fled the capital, leaving his brother, Prince Gong, lished freedom of religion in China, stipulated a punishto face the enemy. Opening negotiations, the Allies de- ing indemnity and legalized the opium trade. manded the release of diplomatic prisoners taken earlier Trade in that narcotic continued with China until in the campaign, including Consul Parkes. When the World War I. Growing opposition in Britain finally talks stalled, the Allies threatened to smash their way into ended it, though by that point the Chinese had begun Peking. On October 13, as British artillery prepared to producing their own opium, and unimaginable numbers bombard the city, Gong flung open the gates. “Our troops of people became addicted. In the 1930s Japanese occutook immediate possession, the French marching in after pation authorities sought to encourage opium use among us,” Lt. Col. Garnet Wolseley recalled. “A few minutes the Chinese, believing a population on drugs would afterward the Union Jack was floating from the walls of be easier to manage. Not until the 1950s did the rePeking, the far-famed celestial capital, the pride of China.” spective Chinese governments on the mainland and Talks resumed, but James Bruce, the 8th Earl of Elgin Taiwan get a handle on opium use. Among the darkand then plenipotentiary, became increasingly frustrated est chapters in British imperial history, the Opium Wars with Chinese efforts to delay the negotiations and thwart created a lingering legacy of mistrust among the Chinese Allied demands. On October 18, keen to make a lasting toward the West. MH impression on China, he ordered troops to raze the emperor’s Summer Palace, just outside Peking. “To this place British military historian Mark Simner is a regular conhe brought our hapless countrymen,” Elgin wrote in tributor to Military History and several international justification, “in order that they might undergo their history magazines. For further reading he recommends severest tortures within its precincts.” Condemned by his own The Lion and the Dragon: Britain’s Opium later historians as cultural vandalism, the burning of the Wars With China, 1839–1860; The Opium War: Drugs, palace did force Prince Gong to accept the Allied terms. Dreams and the Making of Modern China, by Julia The Second Opium War formally ended on October 24 Lovell; and Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the with the signing of the Convention of Peking. The latest End of China’s Last Golden Age, by Stephen R. Platt.

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FOR COVENANT AND KING Amid the ever-shifting political alliances of 17th century Scotland, fighting marquess James Graham morphed from Covenanter champion into defender of the Crown

By Matthew Beazley

A poet as well as an able commander, James Graham, Marquess of Montrose, was among the most romantic—and tragic—figures of the Reformation era.

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J

ames Graham arrived a prisoner at the Canongate district on the outskirts of Edinburgh on May 18, 1650, and was promptly bound to the seat of a rude little horse-drawn cart for transport to the Tollbooth prison.

Though the route through Canongate to the prison was less than a mile, the humiliating procession took three hours. Yet there was an absence of the shouting or ridicule usually aimed at the condemned.

Instead, Scots lining the streets wept, many exclaiming admiration and blessings for the doomed man.

On May 20 the Scottish Parliament formally handed down its sentence. Although a nobleman, Graham was sentenced to hang like a common criminal. On his walk to the gallows at Grassmarket the next morning he appeared unmoved, or at very least determined not to give satisfaction to his enemies— especially Archibald Campbell, Marquess of Argyll, the most powerful man in Scotland and Graham’s principal foe.

On reaching the gallows, Graham maintained a dignified calm. Standing before the crowd, he delivered a farewell speech. “I have no more to say but that I desire your charity and prayers,” he concluded. “And I shall pray for you all. I leave my soul to God, my service to my prince, my goodwill to my friends, my love and charity to you all.”

Closing his eyes, Graham lifted his hands in prayer. Then, with arms bound, he ascended the steps to the gallows, where a weeping hangman fitted the noose around his neck. Moments later Graham dropped through the trapdoor to his death. Authorities had his severed head placed on a pike atop the Tollbooth and his limbs sent to Aberdeen, Glasgow, Perth and Sterling. As he had died excommunicated, his torso was unceremoniously tossed into a crude wooden box and buried in unconsecrated ground. His skull remained atop the Tollbooth for 11 years.

Born in 1612, James Graham, Marquess of Montrose, is a ries to the defense of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland complicated figure in Scottish history. Clan rivalry played a significant role in how contemporaries regarded him.

While Argyll’s allies despised him, scores of Scots clearly adored him. After all, Graham was charismatic, dashing and chivalrous, and he proved an adept commander who inspired loyalty among his men.

In 1637 Charles I, king of England, Ireland and Scotland, sought to compel usage of a virtual copy of the

Bristling at the very thought of bowing to Argyll’s authority, Graham led the opposition Anglican Book of Common Prayer throughout Presbyterian Scotland. Though the Scots believed Charles ruled by divine mandate, they resented his encroachment into their faith and responded with widespread riots. The unrest culminated in February 1638 with the creation of the National Covenant, an agreement that bound its signato-

and rejection of any further “reforms.” Soon thereafter tens of thousands of “Covenanters” mustered to defend Scotland against an anticipated English invasion. Tensions arising from the ensuing Bishops’ Wars (1639–40) in turn prompted the 1642–46 English Civil War. The latter conflict forced the Scots to consider whether Charles (who was at least of Scottish descent) or the English Parliament should dominate the other. Graham, an early signer and promoter of the Covenant, was among many conflicted Scotsmen essentially forced to choose between loyalty to his king or to the Presbyterian faith.

As the conflict with Charles dragged on, more moderate Covenanter leaders were supplanted by committed anti-Royalists led by Argyll, who became the de facto ruler of Scotland. The Grahams and Campbells were longtime adversaries. Bristling at the very thought of bowing to Argyll’s authority, the popular Graham led the opposition to his rule. A period of political infighting and violent intimidation ensued, ending when Graham fled Scotland for the safety of Charles’ court in Oxford. For months he tried in vain to convince the king that Argyll’s Covenanters and English Parliamentarians had formed

PREVIOUS SPREAD: SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY; THIS PAGE: ROYAL ARMOURIES, LEEDS; OPPOSITE, FROM TOP: SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY; KEAN COLLECTION (GETTY IMAGES)

Though characteristically English, the “lobster pot” helmet was also used by Scottish Covenanter troops.

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Archibald Campbell, Marquess of Argyle, engineered the trial that sent Montrose to the gallows in Edinburgh in 1650 (below).

an alliance. Then, in 1644, on learning of the Solemn League and Covenant between Scotland and the rebellious Parliament, Charles awarded Graham his marquessate, appointed him lord lieutenant of Scotland and commissioned him a captain general. His metamorphosis from Graham the Covenanter champion to Montrose, loyal defender of the Crown, was complete.

Although commissioned by Charles to re-establish Royalist control in Scotland, Montrose was not given an army or funds with which to accomplish his task. But as the Campbell clan had many enemies in Scotland, Montrose believed he could raise an army of rival clansmen bent on revenge for long-standing feuds. He received a promise of 2,000 Irish from Randal MacDonnell, Lord Antrim—who was eager to take the fight to the despised Campbells—though Montrose remained dubious such a force would materialize. Meanwhile, that spring the marquess managed to cobble together some 2,000 English troops, cross the border into Scotland and seize the town of Dumfries. However, with the approach of a far larger Covenanter army, and his Englishmen on the verge of mutiny, Montrose was compelled to retreat to Carlisle.

Soon laying claim to the dregs of his army was Prince Rupert of the Rhine, then seeking to reconstitute his own Royalist army after a crushing defeat by a combined Parliamentarian and Covenanter army at the July 2 Battle of Marston Moor in Yorkshire.

Loath to watch from the sidelines, Montrose snuck back into Scotland in disguise with two companions, intending to recruit as many of his countrymen as possible to the royal standard. Though he didn’t know it, his fortunes were about to change, as the MacDonnells had landed in Scotland as promised and at that very moment were looking for him. Montrose caught up to them and a body of local clansmen at Blair Atholl. Towering above the motley crew was Alasdair MacColla, legendary head of the Irish MacDonnells. Most of MacColla’s men were professional soldiers with experience fighting alongside the Spanish in Flanders. They would prove the toughest soldiers in Montrose’s little army.

The compact force numbered barely 2,100 men, and while the MacDonnells were veterans, most other clansmen were inexperienced and armed only with dirks and swords. Regardless, Montrose knew he had to act quickly before the Highlanders lost interest and returned home, as they were wont to do. He resolved to attack Perth, a few miles south of Blair Atholl. On September 1 his army drew up outside Tippermuir, just west of Perth, and battled the defending garrison of some 2,500 men, mostly untried levies. After an exchange of musket fire, the veteran MacDonnells charged screaming through the smoke and routed the Covenanters in a matter of minutes. The Highlanders promptly plundered Perth.

Flush with his first victory, Montrose marched north toward Aberdeen, defended by two regiments of regular

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AULDEARN

NORTH SE A ALFORD

INVERLOCHY

Charles I

ABERDEEN

SCOTL AND TIPPERMUIR KILSYTH PHILIPHAUGH

ISLE OF MAN

ENGL AND NASEBY

Charles II LONDON

MILES

Montrose on the Battlefield

soldiers. Combining with local militia, the Covenanters mustered 3,000 troops against Montrose’s army, which had dropped to some 1,500 men, as scores of Highlanders had deserted as expected. Montrose found the Covenanter army arrayed along the crest of ridge on the city outskirts. After fending off BATTLE OF a few half-hearted attacks, MacColla and his TIPPERMUIR MacDonnells employed their tried-and-true BATTLE OF method of firing a volley and then charging ABERDEEN with drawn swords. Smashing the Covenanter line, they slaughtered hundreds of their retreating foes.

BATTLE OF Despite back-to-back routs and the loss INVERLOCHY of two of Scotland’s largest cities, the CoveBATTLE OF AULDEARN nanters still had significant manpower on BATTLE OF ALFORD which to draw. Even as Montrose’s victorious BATTLE OF KILSYTH men sacked Aberdeen, Argyll drew within two days march at the head of a 4,900-strong BATTLE OF army of experienced troops. Montrose withPHILIPHAUGH drew his army northwest into the Highlands, certain his men could easily outmaneuver any number of Lowlanders led by Argyll. Through the forest of Rothiemurchus and over the rocky uplands of Badenoch the Covenanters pursued the Royalists. But Montrose’s men traveled light, keeping a day or two ahead of their pursuers. After little more than a month the Royalists had ventured a few hundred miles into the Highlands, confident Argyll would break off his chase at the outset of winter.

1644 1645

When Argyll and the Covenanters did settle into winter quarters, Montrose planned a campaign into the very

heart of Campbell territory. Encouraged by the MacDonnells’ hatred of the latter, the Royalist army marched into the Campbells’ inhospitable corner of the Highlands, intent on ravaging the region.

Caught by surprise that December, the Campbells tasted defeat at Loch Awe and again at Inverary. Of the campaign one of the MacDonnells recalled they “left neither house nor hold unburned, nor corn nor cattle that belonged to the whole name of Campbell.” In response the Covenanters dispatched General William Baillie from Edinburgh with a small army, while Argyll recalled regiments from Ireland. Pursued by two armies, Montrose fled north into the Lochaber wilderness. As it was the middle of winter, and the Royalists had retreated into a desolate area devoid of provisions, Argyll reasoned Montrose would be forced to emerge through either of two mountain passes, both of which his Covenanters held.

But with the help of local shepherds Montrose led his little army over a third snow-covered pass unknown to Argyll.

On February 1, the second day of his march over the mountains, Montrose approached Inverlochy and the camp of Argyll’s army. That night he arrayed his Royalists on a steep slope overlooking the slumbering Covenanters. At dawn on the 2nd the entire Royalist force, with MacColla conspicuously out front, charged downhill at the Campbells. Horrified at the magnitude and ferocity of the assault, the Covenanters broke and ran. Argyll, who earlier that morning had retired offshore to his waiting galley, promptly sailed off, leaving his men to their fate. Grim it was. The MacDonnells took particular delight in cutting down the fleeing Campbells, slaying some 1,500 men amid the rout. Inverlochy was a smashing vic-

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JOHN NOOTT GALLERIES, BROADWAY, WORCESTERSHIRE (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES)

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JOHN NOOTT GALLERIES, BROADWAY, WORCESTERSHIRE (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES)

FROM LEFT: MAP BY BRIAN WALKER; SOTHEBY’S; CLEVELAND ART MUSEUM

Following his 1645 loss to Parliamentarians at Naseby, depicted here, Charles I suffered further defeats and ultimately turned himself over to the questionable mercy of Scottish Protestants.

tory for Montrose, while for generations of Campbells to come Feb. 2, 1645, remained a dark date in clan history.

Unable to defeat Montrose on the battlefield, the exasperated Covenanter government in Edinburgh branded him a traitor and had him excommunicated. Regardless, his victories brought large numbers of Scots to the Royalist banner, swelling the size of his army. Running short of supplies in the Grampian Mountains that April, Montrose set out with a raiding party for Dundee and took the surprised town easily. Leaving proved trickier, as a Covenanter army under Baillie suddenly appeared, forcing the raiders to flee. An all-night pursuit ensued, as Baillie resolved this time to capture Montrose and his little band. Again the marquess evaded capture.

A small force of Covenanters did manage to force battle at Auldearn on May 9, charging into the Royalists at dawn over mist-shrouded ground. The fight raged for hours, until Montrose and his cavalry charged into the enemy’s right flank. Taken by surprise, the Covenanters buckled and fled, leaving a third of their number dead on the field.

At Alford on July 2 Montrose caught Baillie’s army on low boggy ground with its back against the River Don. Fielding around 600 horse, the Covenanters had a decided cavalry advantage over the Royalists’ 300 mounted men.

But Montrose’s Highlanders had developed a brutally efficient means of dispatching cavalry by hamstringing enemy horses with their swords and dirks. Employed at Alford, the tactic effectively neutralized Covenanter cavalry charges on both flanks. With the defeat of his horsemen, Baillie lost his nerve and ordered a retreat.

The time had come for Montrose to invade the Lowlands. Swelled with significant reinforcements from new

Tactical Takeaways

and longtime allies, he passed to the northwest of Stirling to avoid its strong garrison and crossed the Forth of Firth at an unguarded ford. A 4,500-man army under the joint com- Fear Is a Weapon. mand of Baillie and Argyll rushed to con- Montrose’s Highland clan allies won the day front him. Crossing the rolling ground of in several battles by the Campsie Fells under a hot summer sun, launching screaming the Covenanter force met Montrose and his charges against poorly 3,500-strong army on a high meadow above trained troops, who broke and ran. the town of Kilsyth on August 15.

Achieve Surprise.

Montrose had taken up a strong defensible By moving his troops position behind the low stone walls of a farm into position at night with a deep hollow between him and the Cov- and attacking at dawn, enanters. The ever-cautious Baillie had no Montrose routed Ardesire to attack, but Argyll was of a different gyll and the unready Covenanters at the mindset. He not only overruled his general Battle of Inverlochy. but sent the latter’s soldiers on a long flanking Beware Treachery. march in full view of Montrose. Uncontrol- Though he had evaded lable as ever, MacColla and his MacDonnells, capture many times, though greatly outnumbered, charged pell- Montrose was finally caught after his hiding mell into the flank-marching Covenanters. place was betrayed.

For once, however, Montrose had a stout force of cavalry, which he sent against the flanking Covenanters from the north. The force of their impact routed the enemy cavalry, driving them back into their own infantry. At that moment Montrose ordered a general attack. Confused and disordered, the Covenanters—with Argyll in the lead— panicked and fled at the sight of the rampaging Highlanders. The resulting victory spelled an end to Covenanter resistance in Scotland. Argyll and posse slipped east across the border to Berwick, while others sailed back to Ireland.

Seeing the handwriting, the Covenanter strongholds

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Unfortunately for Montrose, his reclamation of Scotland was all too short-lived.

In early September news reached him that Lt. Gen. David Leslie was marching north from the main Covenanter army in England with some 6,000 men. Despite his victories, Montrose had difficulty raising sufficient troops, as the Highlanders had Following Montrose’s again abandoned the army for home or to execution friends and resume interclan warfare. Going into camp followers pooled their at Philiphaugh, southwest of Selkirk, the resources to fund the Royalist force numbered scarcely 1,600 production of a medal to his memory. The men. Worse yet, Leslie was coming on Old English inscription much faster than Montrose had anticipated. on its reverse reads, On the morning of September 13 MonTreu Pellican who shlit trose and his men awoke to find themselves his blood to Save his King do’s C ountry good. nearly surrounded by Leslie’s troops, most of them mounted. After initially resolving to stand and fight, Montrose thought it best to break out with what troops he could salvage. He managed to get away with a few hundred cavalrymen and most of his officers, leaving his infantrymen no choice but to surrender. Despite a promise of quarter, few of the captured officers and men escaped execution. The vengeful Covenanters also killed dozens of camp followers in cold blood.

The disaster at Philiphaugh was not the end for Montrose. He rebuilt an army of willing recruits from the

In Memoriam

Highlands and by March 1646 had raised 5,000 men.

Among other setbacks over the ensuing months, Covenanters destroyed Montrose’s home, Kincardine Castle.

Yet he held out hope he could reverse his fortunes in the coming campaign season. Charles himself dashed any such hope. Following his rout at Naseby the prior summer the sovereign had suffered a string of defeats, and that May he fled the Parliamentarian siege of Oxford disguised as a servant. Charles ultimately turned himself over to the mercy of Scottish Protestants, who after a year of negotiation with Parliamentarians, surrendered the neutered king to the English—for a price. Meanwhile, all effective Royalist support in Scotland vanished.

Montrose sought exile in Germany. By then his military exploits had been published in Latin, making him something of a celebrity in aristocratic Europe. He was held in such regard that both France and the Holy Roman empire appointed him a general officer. Still, he remained committed to Charles’ restoration. To that end he kept in contact with Royalist holdouts in Scotland, though he lacked funds to raise an army. With few options, he remained in exile through the 1648 Second English Civil War. After Parliamentarians had Charles I executed in 1649, his teenage son assumed the Scottish throne as Charles II, albeit from exile in the Netherlands. Montrose swore allegiance to Charles and was rewarded with title as lieutenant governor and captain general of Scotland. The Parliament in Edinburgh denied the young king permission to return from exile unless he pledged to impose Presbyterianism throughout his Britain and Ireland.

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opened their gates and sent offers of submission to Montrose.

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On Jan. 30, 1649, Charles I—having been tried and condemned by Parliament—was walked from London’s St. James’ Palace to Whitehall, where he was beheaded.

TOP: NATIONAL GALLERIES SCOTLAND; RIGHT: ANDY THOMPSON (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

TOP: BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; LEFT: BRITISH MUSEUM

Seeking to force more amenable terms, Charles sent Montrose to Scotland, hoping for a repeat of the latter’s stellar 1644 campaign. However, the Stuarts were to remain unworthy of Montrose’s fealty. Even as the loyal marquess sailed for Scotland, Charles compromised with the Covenanters to secure his birthright. Soon after landing in April 1650, Montrose learned the king had revoked his military commission, and the Scottish government had placed a bounty on his head. Fielding scarcely 1,500 foot soldiers—mostly green troops from Orkney—and again short on cavalry, Montrose was surprised by a superior Covenanter cavalry force at Carbisdale on April 27. While the MacDonnells may have been able to stop the charging warhorses cold, the Orcadians had never encountered cavalry and fled in a terror. Montrose sought refuge at nearby Ardvreck Castle, only to be betrayed to the Covenanters by a mercenary chieftain of the MacLeods.

Within weeks Montrose was taken to Edinburgh to hang. But no one could erase his martial legacy. Eager to prove his mettle in battle for his king, he had led a remarkably short and brilliant campaign of maneuver, and, albeit briefly, wrested Scotland from the Covenanters. In doing so, he’d also managed to tie down thousands of troops that might otherwise have been employed fighting Charles I in England. Though the manner of his death was ignoble, Montrose faced his execution in sublimely noble fashion.

His redemption was posthumous. In 1661, following the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in England, Scotland and Ireland, Charles II had Montrose’s torso exhumed and placed in a proper coffin with his severed head and

Weeping Scots line the streets of Edinburgh as a horse-drawn cart carries Montrose to his death. The Scottish town that bears his name honored him with a statue (below), erected on the High Street in 2000.

limbs. The remorseful king then had the marquess ceremonially entombed at great expense in Edinburgh’s St. Giles’ Cathedral. Montrose remains a sympathetic romantic figure in Scottish history and lore. MH Matthew Beazley is a Georgia-based archaeologist and lifelong student of military history. For further reading he recommends Montrose, by C.V. Wedgewood, and Crown, Covenant and Cromwell: The Civil Wars in Scotland, 1639–1651, by Stuart Reid.

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JUSTICE FROM THE YARDARMS In 1842 the captain of the brig USS Somers hanged three of his sailors for having plotted a mutiny—but had they?

By Paul X. Rutz

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Philip Spencer

John Canfield Spencer

Alexander Slidell Mackenzie

100 feet long and displaced 259 tons. The compact ship was packed with men and supplies when it sailed from the Brooklyn Navy Yard that September 13 on its maiden transatlantic voyage. Somers was tasked with a twofold mission. First, it would deliver dispatches to USS Vandalia, an 18-gun sloop of war expected to be on station off the West African coast. Somers would also act as an experimental school ship. Most of its 120 crewmen were apprentices, both enlisted and officer recruits, who would learn on the job—a new twist on the old practice of training recruits aboard active warships. (Officer

as they berthed and/or worked amidships.) Navy brass thought grouping such students aboard one warship would prove more efficient than distributing them throughout the fleet.

Somers arrived off Monrovia, Liberia, on November 10 only to learn Vandalia had already departed for the United States. After delivering the dispatches to a local American agent, the brig sailed the next day, shaping a westward course for St. Thomas, in the Danish West Indies (present-day U.S. Virgin Islands), where Mackenzie intended to resupply before returning to New York.

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Launched in April 1842, the 10-gun Somers measured cadets were called “midshipmen,” a term still in use,

PREVIOUS SPREAD: THOMAS NORTHCUT (GETTY IMAGES); LEFT AND RIGHT: DENISK0 (ISTOCKPHOTO, 2); CENTER: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

W

hen astronauts experience technical difficulties in the vastness of outer space, they radio mission control for help. Witness Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell’s oft-misquoted 1970 plea, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” By contrast, men in the Age of Sail who crossed vast oceans in wooden ships lived in utter isolation. While at sea they had no communication with the outside world aside from chance encounters with friendly ships. When trust broke down among such men, the threat of catastrophe loomed. Consider the 1842 Somers affair.

By all accounts U.S. Navy Midshipman Philip Spencer was a daydreaming, hard-drinking nuisance from a distinguished family. His father, John Canfield Spencer, was New York’s secretary of state in the spring of 1841 when teenage Philip bolted from Schenectady’s Union College to sign on to a Nantucket whaler. His father caught him before the ship set sail and instead arranged a naval officer’s commission for the boy. If Philip was determined to go to sea, his father reasoned, he would do so as a gentleman.

In the ensuing months the elder Spencer was appointed President John Tyler’s secretary of war, while his wayward son drank and brawled his way to dismissal from three successive shipboard assignments. Philip avoided courts-martial due to his father’s standing, and he was fortunate to obtain a post aboard the brig USS Somers.

Or perhaps not so fortunate, as that assignment put Spencer on a collision course with Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, the ship’s captain, who on Dec. 1, 1842, executed the young man as the ringleader of a plot to commit mutiny. A naval historian and best-selling author, Mackenzie enjoyed a reputation in his native New York as a genial military celebrity. When commanding a ship, however, he used harsh methods to enforce strict discipline.

His decision to hang Spencer and two others without trial sparked the biggest American military controversy in the decades before the Civil War and helped prompt the 1845 founding of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. The Navy saw the outcome as fair punishment for three bad apples who tried to spoil others. Members of the public, however, decried it as tyrannical act by a paranoid captain and a lesson in the pitfalls of rushed judgment.

NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY (GETTY IMAGES)

PREVIOUS SPREAD: THOMAS NORTHCUT (GETTY IMAGES); LEFT AND RIGHT: DENISK0 (ISTOCKPHOTO, 2); CENTER: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

While ashore in his native New York Commander Mackenzie was known as a genial military celebrity, but aboard Somers (depicted here under sail) he used harsh discipline to enforce his authority.

Trouble erupted during the return passage across the mid-Atlantic. It had been brewing since before Somers left Brooklyn. In his official report of the voyage Mackenzie recalled having met Spencer around August 20 as the crew prepared to get the ship underway. The midshipman had just been dismissed from a stint with the U.S. Navy’s Brazil Squadron for drunkenness and disgraceful conduct. Mackenzie wanted none of that aboard his ship, particularly since he’d been personally entrusted with the welfare of four embarking sailors, two related to him.

That Spencer had a politically connected father only made Mackenzie more eager to be rid of him. “I have no respect for the base son of an honored father,” he wrote. “On the contrary, I consider that he who by misconduct sullies the luster of an honorable name is more culpable than the unfriended individual whose disgrace falls only on himself.” The commander wanted Spencer transferred but was denied permission. So he cautioned his officers and midshipmen to avoid Spencer, who in turn broke Navy regulations by seeking friends

among the enlisted men, bribing them with tobacco, money and other gifts.

Tasked with leading a green crew of seasick, homesick boys, Mackenzie often ordered whippings, afterward making grandiose speeches about honor and self-control.

Trouble erupted during Somers’ return passage across the midAtlantic to the West Indies Regardless, in retrospect many crewmen were of the opinion the brig suffered a relative lack of discipline. For example, though several men openly cursed the captain and threatened to throw him overboard, officers within hearing failed to report such transgressions to Mackenzie.

On November 26 1st Lt. Guert Gansevoort, Mackenzie’s second-in-command, did report a problem to the captain,

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A cadet whispering about mutiny at sea was like yelling ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater any enlisted men unwilling to join them—and plunder the Caribbean as pirates. While they spoke, Spencer beckoned over Seaman Elisha Small, who spoke briefly with the mutinous midshipman in Spanish, which Wales didn’t understand. Before leaving, Small said in English he was pleased Wales had joined them. Why the steward had waited till daylight to report the incipient uprising is unclear.

Mackenzie ordered Gansevoort to shadow Spencer that day and report any suspicious behaviors. According to the first lieutenant, Spencer scanned a chart of the West Indies in the wardroom and asked the ship’s doctor about the Isle of Pines, a notorious pirate haunt. He also climbed into

the rigging to get a tattoo from a seaman apprentice, another violation of the Navy’s line between officers and the enlisted. Word had it Spencer was trying to ascertain the rate of the ship’s chronometer, had once scribbled a picture of a brig with a black flag and had met secretly with Seaman Small and Boatswain’s Mate Samuel Cromwell, both experienced mariners. Was Spencer merely seeking to learn celestial navigation from those with the know-how, as some later suggested, or was he plotting insurrection?

At evening quarters Mackenzie questioned Spencer about the conversation he’d had with Wales the previous night. The midshipman admitted to having spoken mutiny, but in jest. “This, sir, is joking on a forbidden subject,” Mackenzie fired back. “This joke may cost you your life.” At that he had Spencer’s sword confiscated and clapped him in double irons. Even if Spencer had been joking, Mackenzie was justified in his response: Government officials are not permitted to joke about certain topics. An officer cadet whispering about mutiny at sea was like someone yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

The statement itself could cause harm, whether intentional or not. When a cryptic document with apparent plans for mutiny was discovered in Spencer’s personal sea chest, Mackenzie and his officers were compelled to act.

Known as the “Greek paper,” the document found in Spencer’s possession comprised a list of names written in

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PHOTO 12 (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); U.S. NAVY

sharing a disturbing tale from Purser’s Steward James W. Wales. According to the latter, the previous night Spencer had asked Wales to climb up to the booms, a collection of spare spars suspended above the deck amidships, where they could whisper without being overheard. After swearing Wales to secrecy, Spencer said he and some 20 others planned to seize the ship, kill all the officers—as well as

TOP: FOTOSEARCH (GETTY IMAGES); BELOW: HERITAGE AUCTIONS

Somers arrived off Monrovia, Liberia, only to learn USS Vandalia had already left for the United States. Mackenzie and his officers relied on pistols and their Model 1841 swords (below) for personal defense.

PHOTO 12 (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); U.S. NAVY

TOP: FOTOSEARCH (GETTY IMAGES); BELOW: HERITAGE AUCTIONS

Spencer’s apparent interest in the West Indian Isle of Pines, a notorious pirate haunt, seemed to validate Mackenzie’s mistrust of the midshipman.

Greek characters, which Midshipman Henry Rodgers was able to translate. The top four names were marked “certain” and included P. Spencer, E. Andrews, D. McKinley and Wales. Ten more were listed as “doubtful,” with a further 18 grouped under “nolens volens” (to be kept, willing or unwilling). The paper also noted apparent postmutiny postings: McKee at the wheel, McKinley at the arms chest and so on. While the document made no mention of mutiny, murder or other crimes, it did read in part, “The remainder of the doubtful will probably join when the thing is done; if not, they must be forced.

If any not marked down wish to join after the thing is done, we will pick out the best and dispose of the rest.”

As evidence of a conspiracy, however, the document had several problems. For starters, nobody named “E. Andrews” was aboard Somers. Cromwell, a leading suspect, was not listed, while Wales—the man who had brought the story to his superiors’ attention—was listed as a “certain” conspirator. Yet the situation had to be taken seriously. Mutiny was a contagion that if left unchecked could infect the whole crew. At the time Somers was arguably the fastest vessel in the Navy, a potent quick-strike weapon that could become a fearsome pirate ship in the wrong hands. That night the officers on watch armed themselves with cutlasses and pistols and performed extra inspections to ensure crewmen were in their hammocks.

The next morning, at Sunday services, Mackenzie scrutinized his men’s faces for any sign of guilt. Winds lightened that afternoon, and the captain ordered crewmen aloft to set the topmost sails. Just after the main skysail luffed into place, the main topgallant mast—sails, rigging and all—came crashing down on the deck. Used only in light winds, this topmost rigging was inherently weak and

susceptible to collapse in changeable winds, a relatively common occurrence. Yet Mackenzie blamed its collapse on the deliberate “sudden jerk” of a brace line by Small and another sailor. He explained his thinking in his report. “I knew it was an occasion of this sort—the loss of a boy overboard or an accident to a spar, creating confusion and interrupting the regularity of duty— which was likely to be taken advantage of by the conspirators,” he wrote. In his state First used as insignia of heightened alert every incident was tied by Charles Howard, 2nd Baron of Effingham and to the mutiny. lord admiral of England, The crew, including Cromwell, rushed to the foul anchor was help. They coiled the rigging, bent the sails later adopted by the U.S. to the yards, pulled out the spare topgallant Navy as the collar demast and prepared to fit it in place. Amid the vice for midshipmen and, activity, however, Mackenzie was alarmed with the overlaid letters USN, as the insignia of to see virtually every suspected conspirator chief petty officers. clustered together about the main topmast, though several should have been on duty elsewhere.

Where the captain again perceived conspiracy, however, his critics saw good seamanship. As acting boatswain’s mate and one of the strongest men aboard, Cromwell had a duty to jump into the rigging and help fix the mess, especially on a cruise with a crew of boys who had probably never seen a mast section replaced in an emergency. For his part, Small went up into the rigging as captain of the maintop, among his duties.

Night had fallen by the time repairs were complete.

Worried about what might happen under cover of darkness, Mackenzie questioned Cromwell about conversations he’d had with Spencer. Cromwell denied any

Foul Anchor

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Judgment Matters.

Military leaders who make poor decisions based on inaccurate or partial information risk far more than their own lives and careers.

Mutiny Is a Threat.

Despite Mackenzie’s apparent misreading of the gravity of the situation aboard his ship, mutiny did pose a real threat among 19th century navies.

Authority Is Fragile.

Commanders who lose the trust, respect and loyalty of subordinates risk the loss of unit cohesion—and possibly much more.

wrongdoing but implicated Small, so the captain had both men put in irons and further interrogated. While arresting Cromwell, Gansevoort accidentally discharged his pistol— the only shot fired during the six-day affair.

Ordering all his officers to arm themselves, Mackenzie preached vigilance. When the captain confiscated Spencer’s daily ration of tobacco and the latter reacted sullenly, Mackenzie took it as a further sign of guilt, rather than simple addiction.

Mackenzie had Wardroom Steward Henry Waltham flogged on November 28 and 29

for having stolen a bottle of brandy and conspired to steal three bottles of wine. Mackenzie concluded Waltham had wanted the alcohol to fuel insurrection, “his object being, no doubt, to furnish the means of excitement to the conspirators, to induce them to rise…and get possession of the vessel.” A cooler head might have imagined other, more mundane uses for wine.

Truth was becoming entangled in a web of rumor and self-centered motivations. As a purser’s steward, Wales handled such petty duties as weighing tobacco for distribution. Suddenly finding himself one of the captain’s

trusted men, he strutted about the deck, imperiously cocking a pistol in shipmates’ faces over real or imaginary transgressions. After initially informing the captain someone had moved to stab him with a marlinespike, he later testified at a subsequent court-martial the sailor in question had merely been retrieving the spike from storage.

“What his intentions were, I don’t know,” Wales stated, adding he was 40 feet from the man, thus not in any danger. Unfortunately, Mackenzie would use Wales’ original assertion as justification for the forthcoming executions.

Mutiny, even in the planning stage, was a capital offense at sea and gave a captain wide latitude to do as he saw fit.

With three crewmen on deck in irons, Mackenzie determined he could not safely make port in St. Thomas. He lacked space to safely segregate the prisoners from those they might infect with mutinous intent, and he had only one U.S. Marine aboard to help put down any uprising.

Wales further informed the captain he’d seen the prisoners communicating with hand signals. Morale was in free fall. Mackenzie felt compelled to convene a council of officers to debate the prisoners’ guilt.

On November 29 the captain had his officers gather in the wardroom for their council. That same day Mackenzie had four more suspects clapped in irons. Whatever his intention, the arrests drove home the notion of a spreading conspiracy even as his officers met to decide whether there was such a conspiracy. While the sleepless captain

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U.S. NAVY (NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND)

Tactical Takeaways

YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY

Following the executions the bodies of Spencer, Cromwell and Small remained aloft as crewmen ate their evening meal.

U.S. NAVY (NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND)

YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY

stood watch on the quarterdeck, his officers met belowdecks that day and the next, quietly calling witnesses.

Novelist James Fenimore Cooper, himself a former midshipman, wrote a 102-page takedown of Mackenzie after the Somers affair came to light. Like other critics, he floated the idea that the Greek paper may have been a madcap joke, but that Wales saw it spiraling out of control and got himself on the other side to avoid consequences.

Cooper deemed Mackenzie a tyrant for having refused to allow the accused to cross-examine witnesses—a breach of basic jurisprudence. Cooper also suggested the council had selected witnesses and altered testimony to fit a preordained outcome. Whether or not that was true, by day’s end on November 30 the council delivered its unanimous opinion: Spencer, Cromwell and Small were “guilty of a full and determined intention to commit a mutiny.”

Mackenzie still had options. At that point Somers was within 250 miles of the Caribbean, experiencing beautiful weather with the trade winds at its back. The brig could make that distance in a day and a half. Cooper argued that rather than executing the accused, Mackenzie could have confined the men belowdecks, making his own cabin into a holding cell, for example. The novelist also noted that in past mutinous circumstances ship captains had safeguarded their command by running a line across the ship, port to starboard, forward of the helm and declaring that no unauthorized crew were permitted aft. Swiveling a couple of deck guns forward would drive home the point.

Mackenzie instead determined to mete out justice.

Emerging on deck in uniform on Thursday morning, December 1, he ordered three whips sent over the main yardarms. The boatswain’s pipe pierced the air, followed by orders for the crew to assemble and witness punishment.

The captain then informed Spencer, Cromwell and Small of their fate, each in turn. It was the first time they’d even learned a council had been convened. Given an opportunity to speak, Spencer sought forgiveness for his role. “As these are the last words I have to say,” he cried out, “I trust they will be believed: Cromwell is innocent!” Shaken with doubt, Mackenzie stopped the execution to poll Somers’ petty officers—men with no knowledge of the council’s proceedings. They affirmed Cromwell’s guilt, regardless.

For maximum disciplinary effect, Mackenzie chose those who had worked closest with the condemned to be their executioners. The afterguard and idlers were entrusted with Spencer’s whip, while Cromwell’s hangmen came from the forecastle and foretop, and Small’s from the maintop. The petty officers—each still armed with a cutlass, pistol and box of cartridges—patrolled the spar deck with instructions to see that every man hauled down on his assigned whip with both hands. They covered the faces of the condemned, while others readied a signal gun. Spencer asked permission to order the execution himself. Minutes passed before word reached Mackenzie the teenager couldn’t go through with it. The

USS Somers

captain then calmly passed the order, the gun boomed, and up went the co-conspirators.

Afterward Mackenzie gave a speech about APRIL 16, 1842 LAUNCHED “truth, honor and fidelity” and ordered his men to give “three hearty cheers” for the Stars DEC. 8, 1846 and Stripes. The crew members then went SANK below to eat their evening meal with the three 10 32-POUNDER corpses still swinging over the water.

CARRONADES As darkness fell, sailors dressed Spencer ARMAMENT in full uniform, minus his sword, and placed the midshipman’s body in a coffin cobbled 259 LONG TONS DISPLACEMENT together from two mess chests. Per tradition, they laid out the bodies of Cromwell and 100 FEET Small in their hammocks and sewed them LENGTH shut. Next, they lit every lantern on the ship 25 FEET and gathered, many atop the yards and in the BEAM rigging, for a solemn burial service. Finally, they committed the bodies to the deep.

14 FEET Four crewmen remained in irons. On SomDRAFT ers’ arrival in New York on December 15 Mackenzie had an additional eight arrested as conspirators.

On hearing the news of the execution, Spencer’s father tried to get the case brought before a civilian court, but even a member of the president’s cabinet was unable to keep the Navy brass from closing ranks around one of their own. They granted Mackenzie both a naval court of inquiry and a court-martial. His defense leaned heavily on the prior testimony by Wales, and the captain of Somers was cleared of any wrongdoing. MH A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Paul X. Rutz is an artist and freelance writer. For further reading he recommends The Cruise of the Somers: Illustrative of the Despotism of the Quarterdeck and of the Unmanly Conduct of Commander Mackenzie, by James Fenimore Cooper, and Rocks and Shoals: Naval Discipline in the Age of Fighting Sail, by James E. Valle.

Somers itself did not long outlive the hanged mutineers.

On Dec. 8, 1846, the brig capsized and sank in a squall while chasing a blockade runner off Veracruz, Mexico.

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YOM KIPPUR WAR An Arab attack on their holiest day was only the first surprise to befall the Israelis in 1973

By Jon Guttman

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D

uring the Six-Day War of June 1967 Israel routed the combined military forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, seized the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and part of the Golan Heights and humiliated Arab forces. Over the following six years, however, Egypt and Syria re-equipped with updated Soviet weaponry and trained their soldiers intensely to hone their fighting skills and restore their self-confidence and unit cohesion.

On Oct. 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched offensives into Israel on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, when most Israeli military personnel would be away from their posts. Within two hours some 32,000 Egyptian soldiers fought their way across the Suez Canal and overran the defensive Bar Lev Line. Within two days 90,000 Egyptians had crossed. When the Israelis struck back, relying primarily on their armored corps, they suffered serious casualties to well-coordinated combined-arms tactics incorporating tanks, artillery, anti-aircraft defenses and new infantry-

operated anti-tank guided missiles. To the north Syrian troops seized Mount Hermon and surged up the Golan Heights, to be met by a hail of fire from the Israeli 7th and 188th “Barak” armored brigades. In those initial hours it seemed as if the Israel Defense Forces would be caught in their worst nightmare—a static war of attrition they seemed sure to lose.

However, within days the Syrian onslaught on the Golan broke down, and the Israelis counterattacked toward Damascus. The Egyptians, compelled to advance to Syria’s aid, lost their coordination and were bloodied by revised Israeli tactics. Then the Israelis made their own breakthrough across the Suez Canal and despite strong resistance shoved aside the Egyptian Second Army and encircled its Third Army. Faced with the prospect of Soviet or American intervention, the combatants agreed to a cease-fire on October 25. The Israelis had prevailed again, albeit at heavy cost, while the Egyptian and Syrian forces had regained a fair measure of self-respect. Six years later Israel and Egypt signed peace accords. MH

Israeli soldiers secure Mount Hermon on Oct. 30, 1973. Syrian troops overran the mountain on October 6 and repulsed counterattacking Israelis on the 8th.

Another Israeli assault on October 21 led to savage, often hand-to-hand fighting in the Third Battle of Mount Hermon, which ended with the mount back in Israeli hands.

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YOM KIPPUR WAR A Visiting Egyptian troops along the Suez Canal, President Anwar Sadat observes Israeli fortifications on the opposite bank.

B Egyptian soldiers enthusiastically celebrate their successful crossing of the Suez Canal and victory over Israel’s vaunted Bar Lev Line. C An Egyptian soldier alights from a disabled Israeli Centurion tank near the Suez Canal. D An Israeli soldier displays a captured Soviet-built 9M14 Malyutka (“Little One,” NATO reporting name AT-3 Sagger) anti-tank guided missile, which gave Egyptian infantry a formidable counter to Israeli armor throughout the war. E After narrowly succeeding in stopping the Syrian onslaught on the Golan Heights, an Israeli Centurion crew advances on Damascus on October 17.

GOLAN HEIGHTS MEDITERRANEAN SEA

A

WEST BANK

ISRAEL GAZA STRIP

SUEZ CANAL

EGYPT SINAI PENINSULA

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B

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: MICHEL LAURENT (GETTY IMAGES); MAP BY BRIAN WALKER; A: WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); B: SHAWQI MUSTAFA; C: JACK GAROFALO (GETTY IMAGES); D: ZUMA PRESS, INC. (ALAMY); E: FRED IHRT (GETTY)

C

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D Within two hours some 32,000 Egyptians crossed the Suez Canal

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XXXXXXXXXX

F H

G Yom Kippur War

375,000

ISRAELI TROOPS

2,687 KILLED

7,251 WOUNDED, 314 CAPTURED

650,000

EGYPTIAN TROOPS

12,000 KILLED

35,000 WOUNDED, 8,372 CAPTURED

150,000

SYRIAN TROOPS

3,500

I

F: MICHEL LAURENT (GETTY IMAGES); G: MCCOOL (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); H: SHLOMO ARAD (GETTY); I: DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE (ALAMY); J: DAVID RUBINGER (GETTY); K: BYVALET (ALAMY)

KILLED

21,000 WOUNDED, 392 CAPTURED

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F: MICHEL LAURENT (GETTY IMAGES); G: MCCOOL (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); H: SHLOMO ARAD (GETTY); I: DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE (ALAMY); J: DAVID RUBINGER (GETTY); K: BYVALET (ALAMY)

J F An Israeli poses by a Soviet-made S-75 Dvina (NATO reporting name SA-2 Guideline) surface-to-air missile captured from the Egyptians during the Israeli counteroffensive across the Sinai. G Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan pays a visit to a wounded Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon on the Sinai front, with an M113 Nagmash armored personnel carrier in the background.

H A Douglas A-4H Ahit (“Eagle”) flies over a column of Israeli half-tracks rushing reinforcements to the embattled Golan Heights on October 8. I Egyptian soldiers surrender in the Sinai desert. J Israeli and Egyptian representatives meet 101 kilometers from Cairo to sign the cease-fire that brings the war to an end on October 25. K A monument to the Egyptian soldiers of 1973, in the form of an AK-47 muzzle and bayonet, commands the eastern bank of the Suez Canal.

The Israelis had prevailed again, albeit at a heavy cost

K

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‘THE THUMPER’ GOES TO WAR Red Sox legend Ted Williams proudly served as a Marine Corps aviator during World War II— it was his service in Korea that came as a surprise

By John Miles

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Reactivated Marine Corps Reserve aviator Ted Williams smiles from the cockpit of an F9F Panther fighter in 1953, soon after having survived an emergency landing.

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Signed to the Pacific Coast League’s San Diego Padres while still in high school, Williams joined the major league Red Sox in 1939. In this 1940 publicity shot Williams (far right) poses with the other members of the team’s “Big Three,” Dom DiMaggio (left) and Jimmie Foxx.

I

eye of Boston Red Sox general manager Eddie Collins during a doubleheader that August. In 1937, having graduated high school in the winter, the young slugger returned to the Padres. The team won the Pacific Coast League title that season, Williams knocking out 23 home runs and getting a hit nearly one of every three times at bat. Collins had kept in touch with his Padres counterpart, Frank Shellenback, regarding Williams’ future, and the two struck a deal that December. The agreement sent the future Hall of Famer to the Red Sox in exchange for two major leaguers and two minor leaguers. The kid was wanted.

Williams made his major league debut with the Red Sox in 1939. By season’s end he’d managed a hit one of

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TOP: U.S. MARINE CORPS HISTORY DIVISON; RIGHT: BETTMANN (GETTY IMAGES)

The man who would become one of America’s most celebrated athletes was born Theodore Samuel Williams in San Diego on Aug. 30, 1918. He was named after former president Theodore Roosevelt and his own father, Samuel Stuart Williams, a soldier, sheriff and photographer from New York who admired Roosevelt. Like his famous namesake, Williams loathed the nickname “Teddy.” Just the same, fans fondly referred to him as “Teddy Ballgame.”

A left-handed batter, Williams got his start in professional baseball while still a high school senior, playing for the Pacific Coast League’s San Diego Padres. In 1936 the 18-year-old posted an impressive .271 batting average on 107 at bats in 42 games for the Padres. He also caught the

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t was Feb. 16, 1953, and famed Boston Red Sox left-fielder Ted Williams was sliding into home like he’d never slid before. For one, he wasn’t on a baseball field, and the action was definitely not part of any game.

A Marine Corps Reserve aviator and World War II veteran, Williams had been recalled to active duty just over a year earlier and was now using all his considerable flying skill to nurse his badly damaged F9F Panther toward an emergency landing. Shrapnel had knocked out the fighter’s hydraulics, meaning Williams could not lower the Panther’s landing gear or flaps. Burning fuel streamed from the jet’s punctured tanks, threatening to turn the aircraft into a ball of fire at any moment.

With the alternate field in view Williams made a straight-in approach, holding the crippled Panther just off the runway to bleed off airspeed. When he judged the jet was about to stall, he set it down as gingerly as possible. Yet as soon as the fighter’s belly touched the unforgiving concrete, a sheet of fire erupted from the damaged tanks. Flames billowed out behind the plane as it slid down the runway, finally coming to a grinding halt some 2,000 feet from its touchdown point. Ejecting the canopy from the cockpit, Williams tumbled to the ground and ran to safety. It was by far the most dramatic home run the ballplayer turned combat aviator ever made.

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While Williams eventually ended up flying the F4U Corsair, he and several other well-known ballplayers turned prospective pilots (below right) first took to the air in Piper Cubs during academic training at Amherst College.

every three times at bat, with 31 home runs and 145 runs batted in, making him the first rookie to lead the American League in RBIs. He also led the league in walks, another rookie record. (Pitchers justly feared throwing “The Thumper” hittable pitches, so they walked him instead.) Though no Rookie of the Year award existed in 1939, baseball legend Babe Ruth proclaimed Williams the unofficial holder of the title. “That was good enough for me,” Williams recalled in his autobiography. Also noteworthy were Williams’ 1940 and ’41 seasons, the latter often considered the all-time best offensive season for a ballplayer—though the Most Valuable Player award that year went to fellow baseball icon Joe DiMaggio.

Williams’ .406 average earned him the first of six batting championships and remains the highest single-season average in Red Sox history. He also led the major leagues with 135 runs scored and 37 home runs.

During the winter break between the 1941 and ’42 seasons the Japanese attacked the Pacific Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, drawing the United States into World War II. The ’42 season kicked off as usual that spring, but the entire country had shifted into wartime readiness. Williams had been classified 1-A, the most eligible draft category, and in January he received notice to report for duty. He instead informed his draft board

that he was his mother’s sole financial support, as younger brother Danny had a troubled past and had even pawned appliances Ted had purchased for mother May. Were he killed in service, Williams argued, his divorced mother would be left destitute. The draft board agreed and changed his classification to 3-A, deferring his call-up.

When news of Williams’ successful appeal to the draft board leaked to newspapers, however, the public didn’t

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Commissioned in 1942 with the F4U Corsair, VMF-311 saw extensive combat in the Pacific.

In 1949 the Corsairs gave way to F9F Panthers, and the unit entered combat in Korea the following year.

VMF-311 was redesignated VMA-311 in 1957.

take it well. To deflect the negative press, he publicly stated his intention to enlist as soon as he’d built up his mother’s trust fund. Yet the media continued to ride him, leading to the withdrawal of an endorsement contract with Quaker Oats. The Red Sox front office and Williams ultimately agreed it would be better if he joined up sooner rather than later, and on May 22, 1942, the young ballplayer enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserve.

As a headline-grabbing major leaguer,

Williams could have safely spent the war playing ball on various U.S. Navy base teams. While that is exactly what the more cynical sportswriters and fans assumed he would do, Williams envisioned serving the country in a more meaningful capacity. An action-oriented athlete with tremendous reflexes and hand-eye coordination, he wanted to be an aviator—specifically, a naval aviator.

While individuals seeking to become fixed-wing fliers in the present-day U.S. service branches are required to hold a bachelor’s degree, that was not a hard-and-fast rule during World War II. Though Williams had only a high school diploma, the Navy was happy to accommodate him. After finishing the 1942 season, the young ballplayer entered the Navy’s preliminary ground school at Amherst

College in Massachusetts for six months of academic instruction in such relevant subjects as mathematics and navigation. He excelled in almost every course, turning in better grades than many of his classmates with college degrees. The students also received rudimentary flight training, and Williams took to it like a natural. Capping off a busy year, he won the 1942 Major League Baseball Triple Crown for having led the American League in batting average, home runs and RBIs. After completing his academic courses at Amherst, Williams undertook basic flight training at Naval Air Station Bunker Hill, Ind., and advanced training at NAS Pensacola, Fla. It soon became apparent the superb coordination and reflexes that made him an outstanding baseball player would also serve him well as a pilot.

He received his gold naval aviator wings and a commission as a Marine Corps second lieutenant on May 2, 1944. Williams then went to NAS Jacksonville, Fla., for a 10-week course in aerial gunnery, a combat pilot’s graduate-level test. There he broke all records in reflexes, coordination and visual-reaction time, his instructors noting that his mastery of those qualities made him almost an integral part of the aircraft.

Williams qualified to fly the Vought F4U Corsair. His command of the gull-winged fighter was such that NAS Pensacola retained him to teach other young Navy and Marine Corps pilots to fly the Corsair. After a year as an instructor Williams was sent to Pearl Harbor to await combat assignment to the western Pacific, but the war

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Tomcats

Williams rejoined the Red Sox at the start of the 1946 season, the first year he was named team MVP.

TOP: BETTMANN, FPG (GETTY IMAGES, 2); LEFT: U.S. MARINE CORPS

World War II ended before Williams made it to the Pacific, and on Jan. 12, 1946, he signed his discharge papers in San Diego.

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ended before he could deploy. He was released from active duty on Jan. 12, 1946.

Williams made it back to Boston for the start of the 1946 season, and the next several years were the most productive of his career. The Baseball Writers’ Association of America named him the American League’s Most Valuable Player in both 1946 and ’49. He earned his second Triple Crown in 1947—only the second major league ballplayer to have done so (Rogers Hornsby was the first, in 1922 and ’25). Williams was also named the Red Sox’s MVP in 1946 and ’49. During the 1949 season he also set a record by reaching base in 84 consecutive games.

Probably the farthest thought on Williams’ mind in those immediate postwar years was the possibility of renewed military service. After his 1946 discharge from active duty he’d retained his commission in the inactive component of the Marine Corps Reserve. As an inactive reservist he was exempt from attending either weekend drills or active-duty training in summer. His was but one name on a very long list. The odds seemed just as long his service affiliation would ever again interfere with his baseball career.

Then, on June 25, 1950, the Korean peninsula erupted in war.

In the aftermath of World War II all U.S. military branches underwent massive drawdowns. A vastly curtailed aviation budget prompted the Marine Corps to release large numbers of aviators to the inactive reserve, which meant the Corps was desperately short of pilots when war broke out in Korea. The obvious answer was to recall inactive aviators to service. To his surprise Ted Williams was among those summoned.

The pride of the Red Sox was preparing to enter spring training for the 1952 season when the call came on January 9, catching him completely off guard. Williams believed that at the conclusion of World War II he and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Alexander Vandegrift had reached a mutual agreement—the ballplayer would let the Corps use his name for public relations and recruiting purposes in exchange for Williams never having to serve another day on active duty. That understanding was voided, however, by a simple error.

As Marine Corps administrators reviewed the names of inactive reservists who hadn’t been called up, they pulled the index card of one Theodore S. Williams in Boston. The clerk who read the name didn’t connect it with the popular ballplayer and set the wheels in motion for his activation. Once news of the recall broke, it would have smacked of favoritism to refuse. So, on May 2, having played in only six major league games, newly promoted Capt. Williams reported for active duty—first attending a refresher course at NAS Joint Reserve Base Willow Grove, Pa., followed by operational training at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, N.C.

Though surprised to be recalled to active duty in 1952, Williams made light of the event for the press (top). After a refresher course (above) and jet training, Williams was assigned to Marine Aircraft Group 33 in South Korea.

After qualifying in the new Grumman F9F Panther, Williams was assigned to Marine Aircraft Group 33 (MAG-33), comprising two fighter squadrons based at K-3 in Pohang, South Korea. He joined squadron VMF311 in early February 1953, around the same time as Maj. John Glenn, the future astronaut and U.S. senator.

Williams even served for a time as Glenn’s wingman. The North Korean air force at the time was negligible, so most of the squadron’s sorties involved flying close air support missions for Marines and soldiers on the ground.

The Panther was ideally suited to such a task. One of the first successful jet-powered carrier aircraft, the singleengine, straight wing F9F-5 flown by VMF-311 was armed with four 20 mm cannons, while its eight underwing

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Once again a civilian and back stateside, Williams practiced with the Red Sox for 10 days before playing in his first postwar game, on Aug. 6, 1953. While his appearance

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TOP: REUTERS (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); RIGHT: HERITAGE AUCTIONS

ordnance racks could accommodate up to 3,465 pounds of bombs and rockets. Even though MAG-33’s airfield was nearly 200 miles from the front lines, Panthers often led the attack in advance of propeller-driven F4U Corsairs.

The Panther’s flight characteristics were superior not only in sheer speed, but also in offering a stable platform that enabled more accurate gunnery, bombing and rocket fire.

On February 16 Williams participated in his first combat mission, a major strike against a heavily defended tank and infantry training complex south of Pyongyang, North Korea. The Panthers’ main ordnance consisted of 250pound bombs. On the attack run Williams’ F9F-5 was hit—whether by ground fire or shrapnel from his own bombs was never determined. The damage was extensive, and Williams elected to divert to airfield K-13, in western South Korea, rather than attempt a return to K-3. He emerged unscathed from the spectacular belly landing, but his Panther was a write-off. Back in the air the next day, Williams completed 39 combat missions in Korea before the armistice was signed on July 27.

TOP: PF-(AIRCRAFT) (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); BOTTOM: U.S. MARINE CORPS HISTORY DIVISION

A VMF-311 pilot folds his Panther’s wings after returning from a strike against North Korean positions. Williams joined the squadron in February 1953, about the same time as John Glenn (below), future astronaut and U.S. senator.

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TOP: PF-(AIRCRAFT) (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); BOTTOM: U.S. MARINE CORPS HISTORY DIVISION

Williams completed 39 combat missions in Korea before the July 1953 armistice. Returning to the Red Sox that August, he retired as a player in 1960 and moved on to a second career as a baseball manager. On his death in 2002 he was honored at Boston’s Fenway Park.

on the field as a pinch hitter in the ninth garnered an enthusiastic ovation from the crowd, he popped out, and the Red Sox lost to the St. Louis Browns (the soon-to-be Baltimore Orioles), 8–7. He’d soon find his groove. In the 1953 season Williams went to bat 110 times in 37 games and ended up hitting .407 with 13 home runs and 34 RBIs. In 1957 Williams led the major leagues in batting average, and in ’58, at age 40, he led the American League in batting average. Fittingly, Williams ended his playing career with a home run in his last at-bat on Sept. 28, 1960. He is one of only 29 players in baseball history to have appeared in major league games over four decades.

In retirement Williams started his own baseball camp, for boys aged 7 to 17, in Lakeville, Mass. He was also a regular visitor to the Red Sox’s spring training camps in Florida, where he worked as a batting instructor through 1966. That year, on his election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., he was named a team vice president. In 1969 Williams signed on as manager of the D.C.–based Washington Senators, and he remained with the team through 1972, a year after it had moved south to Arlington, Texas, as the renamed Rangers. Williams’ best season as a manager was 1969, when he led the expansion Senators to its only winning season and

was chosen American League Manager of the Year. He resumed his role as spring training instructor for the Red Sox in 1978.

In his downtime Williams was an avid fly and deep-sea fisherman, who in 1999 was inducted into the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame. He was also a committed supporter of the Boston-based Jimmy Fund for children’s cancer research and treatment, having lost brother Danny to leukemia at age 39 in 1960. In later life the famed former ballplayer developed heart disease. Following a series of strokes and congestive heart failure, Ted Williams —baseball legend and veteran of two wars—died on July 5, 2002, at age 83 in Inverness, Fla. MH

Card Fame The first Ted Williams baseball card appeared soon after he joined the Red Sox in 1939. That was followed by more than 150 other cards styles, including this 1954 Topps No. 250. A mint condition example is worth an estimated $18,500 to collectors.

Retired U.S. Marine Col. John Miles writes and delivers lectures on a range of historical topics. For further reading he suggests Ted Williams: A Baseball Life, by Michael Seidel; My Turn at Bat: The Story of My Life, by Ted Williams with John Underwood; and Ted Williams at War, by Bill Nowlin.

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Reviews

While hydrogen-filled airships such as Hindenburg were technological marvels, the inherent danger rendered them a dead end in the evolution of lighter-than-air aviation.

Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes and Two Men’s Epic Duel to Rule the World,

by Alexander Rose, Random House, New York, 2020, $32

Empires of the Sky is a chronicle of how manned flight became a big business early in the 20th century, as well as a biography of three (not two) noteworthy men. German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838–1917) became enthralled with airships after riding in a hot-air balloon in St. Paul, Minn., in 1863. In 1874 he conceived his own version of what was then called a dirigible but later became popularly known as a zeppelin. After decades of further experimentation (with hydrogen, motors and other paraphernalia) and politicking, the count in 1900 finally took his namesake airship aloft. Soon after the 1914 outset of World War I the German military launched zeppelin raids against Britain. It wasn’t a successful strategy. The British devised defensive measures—tactics employing anti-aircraft guns and airplanes—that decimated the airships.

Zeppelin founded the Zeppelin Co. to build his airships. His successor, Hugo Eckener (1868–1954), had grand and peaceful

ambitions for his post–World War I aircraft.

Under Eckener’s auspices, zeppelins flew across the Atlantic and around the world, ferrying passengers in luxurious trappings.

However, his major goal—to establish a permanent zeppelin route between Germany and New York—became entangled in 1930s realpolitik: namely, the ascendancy of Nazism in Germany. Eckener, the most flawed, fascinating person in the book, hated the Nazis, but he was so obsessed with keeping his beloved zeppelins flying that he cooperated with the Third Reich regardless. Readers will decide whether his final betrayal of the Reich atoned for his collaboration.

While Zeppelin and Eckener were tough, driven men, American aviation entrepreneur Juan Trippe (1899–1981) could have taught both something about federal bureaucratic conflict and how to trounce opponents.

Trippe’s domain was the airplane, not the airship. He was determined to dominate air travel through his airline, Pan American—

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History Aloft

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and he did. He established passenger and mail-delivery routes to South America and the Pacific, catalyzed by bribes and duplicity. Like Eckener, he coveted a U.S.–Europe route. Unlike Eckener, he succeeded—and helped destroy the appeal of the commercial airship.

Empires of the Sky is both absorbing and thought-provoking. Author Alexander Rose’s descriptions of the evolution of zeppelin technology are lucid, and he writes discerningly about disasters that befell certain airships (particularly Hindenburg, which catastrophically exploded in 1937). The book is most intriguing, however, when it probes business machinations and the kaleidoscopic personalities of three passionate, formidable men.

—Howard Schneider

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First Platoon: A Story of Modern War in the Age of Information Dominance,

by Annie Jacobsen, Dutton, New York, 2021, $27.99.

Annie Jacobsen’s First Platoon is a thought-provoking tale of a U.S. Army unit’s tragic 2012 deployment to Afghanistan that also serves as a warning about the potential for misidentification of individuals when relying on biometric data and surveillance—practices gaining ground in law enforcement both at home and abroad.

The Pentagon had long sought to collect bioscan data —an amalgam of physical traits such as fingerprints, facial scans and iris scans— and combine it with images gathered from aerial sensor platforms in order to track the enemy. In Afghanistan,

such data would be used to positively identify and kill members of the Taliban and, in a 2008 strategy shift, also teach the Afghanis how to prosecute captured terrorists in the Western way—according to the rule of law rather than tribal custom.

This was what the 1st Platoon, C Troop, of the 73rd C a v a l r y R e g i m e n t ’s 4 t h Squadron found itself trying to accomplish in Afghanistan’s dangerous Zhari Dis-

trict: patrolling, meeting with villagers and collecting biometrics to add to the digital ID memory bank. The fieldaccessible database yielded a major coup in June 2012: the ID and arrest of a senior Taliban operative who’d been previously scanned.

The following month, on his fourth day as the platoon’s replacement leader, an overzealous 1st Lt. Clint Lorance ordered those troops to kill several villagers who had not been identified. He was subsequently court-martialed and given a 19-year sentence.

Two attorneys who took up his cause argued that the two Afghans who died were Taliban fighters and that Lorance had been wrongly punished.

Jacobsen makes a convincing case that one of the attor-

neys, using data files in his personal possession, linked similar but incorrect names of the victims and other data to known bomb makers. The men who died were grape farmers. It’s a bombshell finding, particularly since the package the defense put together convinced President Donald Trump to pardon Lorance in November 2019.

One defense attorney’s reported excuse: “Biometrics is not an exact science.”

More accurate, portable and rapid-result DNA testing became available in 2014— just as the U.S. began pulling out of Afghanistan. U.S. law enforcement has eagerly adopted that capability and more. Despite privacy concerns and the continued potential for bad data analysis, more than 1,000 U.S. counties now employ algorithms that rely on overhead or street surveillance and facial recognition software to track known criminals and even predict where crimes might take place. The practice is called “predictive policing.”

“How much further will it go?” Jacobsen asks. Readers who’ve seen the 2002 movie Minority Report might come away from First Platoon thinking the film’s PreCrime units, while Hollywood-enhanced, might not be just the stuff of science fiction.

—William H. McMichael Seven Days in Hell: Canada’s Battle for Normandy and the Rise of the Black Watch Snipers, by David O’Keefe, Harper Perennial, Toronto, 2019, $29.99 During World War II Canada’s 1st Battalion, Black Watch (Royal Highland Regi-

Recommended

Bernard Montgomery’s Art of War

By Zita Steele Arranged in the style of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, this is a concise guide to the military philosophy of the British field marshal. It contains Montgomery’s beliefs and teachings on morale, leadership and fighting techniques.

Included is a detailed introduction to his career, highlighting his World War I experiences, achievements and command style. It also features a list of military-themed books recommended by Montgomery.

Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself

By Florian Huber This volume details the wave of suicides by Nazi leaders and ordinary Germans at the end of World War II. Some were out of fear of advancing Soviet troops or by guilt, but what of the others? What drove families who had already withstood much hardship do this? Huber sees the Third Reich as a sequence of overwhelming emotions for many Germans. For many its end was impossible to absorb.

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Reviews Recommended

Bohemond of Taranto

By Georgios Theotokis Few substantial accounts exist of the life of Bohemond I, prince of Taranto and Antioch and unofficial leader of the First Crusade.

Theotokis focuses on Bohemond as soldier and commander, and on his military achievements.

He examines campaign plans, how he adapted tactics when facing different opponents, and considers whether his approach to waging war was typical of Norman commanders of his time.

Weapons of the Samurai

By Stephen Turnbull This richly illustrated book describes weapons and equipment associated with the samurai, tracing the introduction of edged weapons and missile weapons over 500 years. The book also explains how their use spread more among low-class troops, pirates and rebels and shows how martial arts schools changed weapons and their uses during the peaceful Edo period.

ment), seemed cursed.

The unit’s first battle was the disastrous 1942 Dieppe raid. On “Black Friday” (Oct. 13, 1944), during the Scheldt campaign, the battalion launched an attack that saw all four company commanders killed and one company of 90 men reduced to four. However, the unit’s worst day was July 25, 1944. Seven Days in Hell tells that story.

David O’Keefe relates a fascinating perspective, centering on the dozen sniper-scouts of the battalion’s support company.

It is a story the author is more than qualified to tell, having served in the regiment some 30 years ago.

He knows its men, and they know him and have shared their remembrances with him. In his introduction the author acknowledges, “Memory, of course, is a fickle beast,” noting that personal recollections provide “tone and atmosphere” but must be “cross-referenced with the archival record to verify historical accuracy.”

Following his own military service, O’Keefe spent a dozen years working for the Canadian Department of National Defence’s Directorate of History and Heritage. More recently, he has conducted battlefield tours and collaborated on 15 documentaries for producers from the UKTV network to the History channel, hosting War Junk on the latter. He preceded Seven Days in Hell with the award-winning

docudrama Black Watch Snipers (2015).

His new book relates the Battle of Verrières Ridge with meticulous accuracy, driven by an emotional and evocative narrative, in which “themes of heroism, courage, determination, resilience and friendship walk hand in hand with

cowardice, frailty, chaos and horror.” Spoiler alert: 325 highlanders set off up Verrières Ridge that July morning, and only 15 survived. Seven Days in Hell is a tragic tale told well.

—Bob Gordon The York Patrol: The Real Story of Alvin York and the Unsung Heroes Who Made Him America’s Most Famous Soldier,

by James Carl Nelson, William Morrow, New York, N.Y., 2021, $28.99 James Carl Nelson’s profile of one of World War I’s most iconic soldiers sets up an interesting dichotomy— how a book can be intriguing enough to read through to the end and yet not be completely satisfying. On its face The York Patrol is

yet another retelling of the life and experiences of Alvin C. York, a sergeant who led a squad of American soldiers in the capture of more than 130 German troops in France’s Argonne Forest in 1918. Through the course of the book the reader will become intimately familiar with York and his numerous ups and downs, notably his struggles with the fame brought about by his combat actions and the recriminations he received from fellow soldiers bitter about the lack of public recognition for their own efforts.

York’s World War I exploits were indeed courageous, and through a good bit of luck and timely journalism he became a national icon for a people weary of war and hungry for heroes. While the details of York’s actions in France are exciting, the most compelling aspect of the narrative is Nelson’s revelation of the troubles that plagued York in the years following his return stateside. Wanting to raise funds for schools and roads in his rural Tennessee yet loath to monetize his acts as a soldier, York struggled through these contradictions to sign book deals (and eventually a movie deal) that brought in great sums of money for his altruistic programs. Unfortunately, he mismanaged those funds and wound up bankrupt, relying on the grace of others via donations and trusts to bail out the war hero. These chap-

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thor conveys the true depth and complexity of the man.

While falling short of the mark on his intended thesis and slipping into occasional verbosity and the use of unneeded pejoratives, The York Patrol remains a worthwhile read for anyone interested in learning about an unlikely hero from one of the world’s most devastating conflicts.

—Chris Booth ters are truly fascinating and stand as powerful tributes to how giving people can be, sometimes to their own detriment and financial harm.

Conversely, while Nelson succeeds in providing the reader an outstanding account of York’s life and actions, he falls short of doing the same for the other members of York’s squad, despite having made that a stated goal of the book. Indeed, the first 100 pages focus almost exclusively on York. Nelson eventually includes information on the other members of the patrol, but his emphasis is on the lead character. It must also be noted that the author, in an attempt to hammer home York’s rural Tennessee upbringing, overuses a number of deprecating terms to describe the man, dropping such descriptors as “country bumpkin” and “hillbilly” with unnecessary frequency.

In the end The York Patrol is an interesting yet imperfect account of a famous American soldier and the trials and tribulations that befell him over the years. By relating York’s struggles as well as his successes, the au-

Wellington’s Favourite Engineer: John Fox Burgoyne: Operations, Engineering and the Making of a Field Marshal, by Mark S. Thompson, Helion & Co., 2020, $44.95 To the extent John Fox Burgoyne is remembered at all, it is as the illegitimate son of the general who surrendered a British army at Saratoga, or as chief engineer of the British army ignominiously defeated at New Orleans— in short, as a man fit for backwater campaigns or armies content to rely for experienced leadership on officers past their prime.

Wellington’s Favourite Engineer reveals the reality behind the appearance. Even

those well read in the history of the Peninsular War may be only casually familiar with the details Mark Thompson provides in this study, in which Burgoyne emerges as an important architect of Britain’s victory over Napoléonic France.

If such a claim seems bold, blame the lopsided focus of much of military history, particularly of the Napoléonic wars. Combat attracts the lion’s share of attention, the heat of action having a dramatic quality absent from the methodical construction of siege works.

As a leading engineer under the Iron Duke, Burgoyne played a prominent role in this somewhat neglected aspect of the Peninsular War. After doing much of the engineering legwork at the sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, Burgoyne was put in charge at Burgos. He was also one of Wellington’s top battlefield advisers (on building and taking field fortifications), created many of the obstructions that slowed the French advance on the Lines of Torres Vedras, and contributed to such crucial if unglamorous aspects of military operations as transportation infrastructure.

Happily for the reader, Burgoyne also recorded more dramatic moments, such as his command of a storming party at Badajoz.

Now largely forgotten, Burgoyne’s contributions were fully recognized in his day, capped off toward the end of his distinguished career when he became the first officer of the Royal En-

gineers to reach the rank of field marshal.

—James Baresel The Napoléonic Wars: A Global History, by Alexander Mikaberidze, Oxford University Press, New York, 2020, $39.95 The wars involving Napoléon Bonaparte, as either a participant or the central figure, raged from 1792 until the French emperor’s final fall in 1815. As that is more than twice as long as the world wars combined, one can appreciate the ambi-

tious scale of the subject author Alexander Mikaberidze has chosen to tackle.

The Napoléonic Wars is not merely a chronicle of campaigns and battles, but an in-depth study of the military, political, social and cultural changes the conflict wrought on the entire world.

As the author demonstrates, the Napoléonic wars had lasting effects in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas.

The wars established Britain as the premier world superpower for the next century.

Peripherally, the Louisiana

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Reviews Recommended

Freiheit! The White Rose Graphic Novel

By Andrea Grosso Ciponte The story of Germany’s White Rose resistance group is told in this graphic novel by Italian artist Ciponte. Related through dramatic images, the narrative follows young activists’ efforts to distribute leaflets to expose Nazi atrocities and inspire resistance, and their eventual arrest and execution. The book features Hans and Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf.

Roman Conquests: Mesopotamia & Arabia

By Lee Fratantuono This is an exploration of Roman military operations in two farflung regions of the ancient known world, where the empire achieved its greatest points of expansion. Chapters examine opposing Roman and local military forces, and analyze successes and failures. This compelling account describes how Rome won and lost its Far East.

Purchase doubled the size of the United States. In a succession of sideshow wars against France, the Barbary pirates and Britain the young republic confirmed its status as an independent nation. Also during that period Haiti became the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere, and the Latin American movement toward independence from Spain and Portugal began.

As the author shows, the effects were felt as far away as China and Japan.

Given the subject matter encompassed between its covers, the wonder is not that this fascinating book is 960 pages long, but that it is only 960 pages long.

—Robert Guttman Case White: The Invasion of Poland, 1939, by Robert Forczyk, Osprey Publishing, New York, 2019, $30 The first chapter of this book contains an apt quote

by Winston Churchill: “The heroic characteristics of the Polish race must not blind us to their errors, which over centuries have led them through measureless suffering.”

Author Robert Forczyk analyzes the political, economic and military status of both Poland and Germany at the outbreak of a conflict that brought victory for the as-yet-untested Wehrmacht and torturous defeat for a nation that had already endured war and upheaval in the short 21 years of its existence.

The conventional narrative of the actions during Case White (German: Fall Weiss) is that the Wehrmacht conducted a devastating, coordinated and innovative campaign, easily defeating a poorly equipped Polish military. Forczyk provides a fresh, well-researched and well-presented account disputing that notion. While many of the German actions reflected a military that would soon become the most feared in the world, he points out instances of poor planning, and execution, as well as outright failure. On the Polish side, its army and air force were in many instances able to stand up to the Wehrmacht and give as good as they got. Forczyk makes it clear the defeat of Poland was not the walkover the Germans expected and which is often portrayed.

The author is dispassionate in explaining how Poland’s allies dithered and evaded action on their treaties, thus emboldening Adolf Hitler. The French provided large sums of aid for military materiel but required Poland to purchase everything from them. Britain, while trading openly and sharing technology and finance with Germany, was never willing to do so with Poland. In his chapter on the Soviet invasion of Poland after the German attack, Forczyk describes how Soviet forces decapitated Polish society.

Case White narrates the invasion in broad chapters,

each covering the action in a specific region of Poland, such as along the Bzura and Vistula rivers and on the southern border, or the invasion from East Prussia and action around Warsaw. Forczyk presents specifics regarding units of both armies, including their commanders and actions. In Chapter 8 the author concludes, “While the Germans had the initiative, the Poles proved capable of striking back whenever favorable opportunities arose.” A listing of participating units in the German, Polish and Soviet armies is included.

The book concludes with an analysis of the effect the campaign had on German military preparedness and doctrine, and how that affected the course of World War II and postwar events in Poland. The author notes Poland was sold out by its Western allies before the war, during the campaign and at the conclusion of hostilities in order to placate first the Nazis and then the Soviets, leading to almost 50 years of communist oppression in Poland.

—Dennis D. Chappell

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U.N. in Croatia Siege of Antioch French vs. Vietminh Nova Scotia Fight Battle of the Boyne Operation Varsity HISTORYNET.com

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WHEN THE ‘DIVINE WIND’ ENGULFED THE U.S. NAVY

USS Bunker Hill burns after two kamikaze hits on May 11, 1945

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Hallowed Ground Mont-Ormel, France

T

wo months after the June 6, 1944, Allied invasion of Normandy the 15 or so surviving divisions of German Army Group B in France faced potential annihilation from a double envelopment. By August 17 the Canadian First Army, the northern arm of the pincer, had closed in on Falaise, while the U.S. Third Army, the southern arm, was closing in on Argentan. But for the 13-mile gap between those towns, the encirclement was complete. Continually pounded

by Allied aircraft and artillery, German units desperately tried to flee through the bottleneck via the only two roads still open to them. The Mont-Ormel ridge was the key piece of high ground in the gap.

The Polish 1st Armored Division, commanded by Maj. Gen. Stanislaw Maczek, operated under the II Canadian Corps. The division largely comprised Polish soldiers who’d managed to escape from their homeland after it was PARIS jointly crushed by Germany and MONTthe Soviet Union in the fall of 1939.

ORMEL MEMORIAL Others were volunteer Poles who FRANCE had previously immigrated to Europe and North America. The division was equipped with mostly British kit, but also some American equipment, notably Sherman tanks. The troops wore British uniforms and rank insignia with distinctive Polish formation badges. They also retained their original unit designations.

Just after noon on August 19 the division’s Battlegroup Zgorzelski captured Hill 262, the northern end of the Mont-Ormel ridge. In the process the Poles collided with and destroyed a long column of German tanks and other vehicles. Although the Falaise Pocket was technically closed, the Allies were not astride the German escape routes in sufficient strength to seal them off. Late that afternoon the division’s Battlegroup Koszutski also closed on Hill 262, yet at day’s end the bulk of the Polish 1AD found itself surrounded on Mont-Ormel, cut off from the rest of II Canadian Corps. Fortunately, they did have a Canadian Royal Artillery forward observer with them, who remained in radio contact with II Corps’ guns. Throughout the night of August 19–20 the Poles defended their high ground perimeter with a force of some 1,500 infantry, 80 tanks and 20 anti-tank guns.

When the mist lifted on the morning of the 20th, the Poles had clear fields of fire and observation across the surrounding plain. As thousands of German vehicles crawled northeastward out of the pocket, the Polish and Canadian artillery pounded away at them. Exasperated by the casualties his troops were taking, German Seventh Army commander Oberstgruppenführer Paul Hausser ordered the elimination of the Polish position. At 3 p.m. the 1AD perimeter came under heavy attack from the 2nd SS Panzer Division. The Poles took continuous artillery and mortar fire from almost every direction as German paratroop infantry and Panzergrenadiers closed in on their perimeter.

Under relentless attack the Polish perimeter compressed but did not break. Meanwhile, the fierce pressure on the Poles allowed the Germans limited freedom to dribble out of the trap. By the night of August 20–21 some 300 Polish soldiers lay wounded without adequate medical care, while 800 German prisoners grew restless within the Polish perimeter.

Ammunition was almost completely gone. With only about 110 able-bodied men left, five shells per gun and 50 bullets per man, the Poles were no longer capable of serious interference with the German withdrawal. Regardless, they persisted.

Pressure on the Mont-Ormel perimeter continued through the afternoon of August 21. Around 11 a.m. the Germans launched a near-suicidal failed attack straight into the Polish machine guns. Finally, at 1 p.m. the lead elements of the Canadian Grenadier Guards reached Mont-Ormel, having fought their way forward for more than five hours.

By that evening the Allies declared the Falaise Pocket closed, as tanks of the Canadian 4th Armored Division linked up with the Polish forces.

Polish losses for the operation totaled 466 killed in action, 1,002 wounded and 114 missing—some 20 percent of the division’s combat strength. In the aftermath Royal Canadian Engineers erected a sign on the summit of Hill 262 reading simply, A Polish Battlefield. The sad irony for the soldiers of the Polish 1AD is that while they were fighting so gallantly at Mont-Ormel in August 1944, the Germans were systematically grinding their occupied nation’s capital to rubble in response to the Warsaw Uprising.

Today Mont-Ormel hosts a memorial to Polish forces as well as an excellent visitor center and museum with displays in four languages. Hill 262 offers a panoramic view of the valley of the Dives River and the Falaise Gap. An animated map helps visitors retrace the various stages of the battle. MH

ABOVE: AGENCE ROGER VIOLLETT (GRANGER); BELOW: LES. LADBURY (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

By David T. Zabecki

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ABOVE: AGENCE ROGER VIOLLETT (GRANGER); BELOW: LES. LADBURY (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Above: Civilians walk through the wartime ruins of Falaise, the city that was the focus of German attempts to escape encirclement. The MontOrmel Memorial honors Allied troops involved in the capture, defense and relief of Hill 262.

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War Games Pat Tillman

1

2

3

Sportsmen at War Can you match each of the following notable sports figures with the military branch in which he served?

6

1. Jack Lummus (football)

7

2. Max Schmeling (boxing)

8

3. William Angus (soccer) 4. Tom Landry (football) 5. Hank Greenberg (baseball) 6. Pat Tillman (football) 7. Maurice Boyau (rugby) 8. Joe Pinder (baseball) 9. Fritz Walter (soccer) 10. Bob Feller (baseball)

____ A. U.S. Eighth Air Force ____ B. British army ____ C. Wehrmacht ____ D. U.S. Marine Corps

9

10

Civil War Leaders Of the English variety, that is. Do you recognize any of these fellows? ____ A. George Goring, 1st Earl of Norwich

____ F. George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle

____ B. Thomas, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron

____ G. King Charles II

____ G. Fallschirmjäger ____ H. U.S. Army Rangers

____ C. King Charles I

____ H. David Leslie, 1st Lord Newark

____ I. U.S. Navy

____ D. Oliver Cromwell

____ I. Sir William Waller

____ J. U.S. Army Air Forces

____ E. Ralph, 1st Baron Hopton

____ J. Prince Rupert of the Rhine

____ F. U.S. Army

Answers: A4, B6, C1, D2, E5, F8, G3, H10, I7, J9

____ E. Aéronautique militaire

Answers: A4, B3, C9, D1, E7, F8, G2, H6, I10, J5

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CHRONICLE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

5

LEFT: GENE LOWER (GETTY IMAGES); 1, 3: ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST (2); 2, 4, 5, 7, 8: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON (5); 6: SOTHEBY’S; 9: NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON; 10: BRITISH MUSEUM

4

In Deep Water During both world wars the submarines of combatant nations recorded some unlikely outcomes.

1. What did two Austro-Hungarian Lohner L flying boats do after bombing the French submarine Foucault on Sept. 15, 1916?

A. Strafed the submarine B. Strafed the crew C. Returned to base D. Rescued the crew 2. What happened when four British warships attacked the surfaced Italian submarine Torricelli on June 23, 1940?

A. Torricelli surrendered B. Torricelli escaped C. Torricelli was lost, as was

The Black Panthers, the Youth International Party, the Irish Republican Army, or the Weather Underground?

For more, visit WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ MAGAZINES/QUIZ

HISTORYNET.com ANSWER: THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND. OFTEN CALLED THE WEATHERMEN, IN 1969 THE GROUP DECIDED TO “ENGAGE IN GUERILLA WARFARE AGAINST THE U.S. GOVERNMENT” AND STARTED A BOMBING CAMPAIGN. BY 1976 THE ORGANIZATION HAD ALL BUT DISSOLVED.

destroyer HMS Khartoum

D. The Italians scuttled their vessel

3. What was the outcome when the destroyer USS Borie and U-405 fought a surface duel on Nov. 1, 1943?

A. U-405 blown up B. U-405 sunk, Borie scuttled

next day

CHRONICLE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

C. Borie rammed and sunk D. Borie exploded and sunk

4. What anachronistic order was issued after the destroyer escort USS Buckley rammed U-66 on May 6, 1944?

A. “Don’t give up the ship” B. “I have not yet begun to fight” C. “Sighted sub—sank same” D. “Stand by to repel boarders”

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Answers: D, C, B, D

LEFT: GENE LOWER (GETTY IMAGES); 1, 3: ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST (2); 2, 4, 5, 7, 8: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON (5); 6: SOTHEBY’S; 9: NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON; 10: BRITISH MUSEUM

Foucault

WHICH GROUP DETONATED A BOMB IN THE U.S. CAPITOL BUILDING ON MARCH 1, 1971?

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Captured!

Apart From the Herd

BETTMANN (GETTY IMAGES)

A member of Company A, 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, mugs for the camera while sporting unique helmet camouflage. The soldier found the antlers—likely from one of the muntjac deer species native to Southeast Asia—while his unit was participating in Operation Wheeler near Chu Lai, South Vietnam, in October 1967.

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Gina Elise’s

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