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Category Archives: WWII

CARPIQUET AIRFIELD II

A s ol di e r of the Hi tl e rj uge nd c arryi ng an MG 4 2 m ac hi ne gun ne ar Cae n.

Two Fort Garry Horse squadrons were riding right on the heels of the North Shores and Chauds. One Sherman rolled up and spun in a full turn that buried Sturmmann Karl-Heinz Wambach to the chest in the sandy soil of his slit trench. He was trying to free himself when a voice yelled, “SS bastard, hands up!” Two North Shores dragged him free and tied his hands. One then punched him in the face. He was taken to the rear, urged along by rifle butt blows, and tied to a fence post for some hours in an area subjected to frequent shelling by German 88-millimetre guns.

Wambach’s complaints about his treatment led the North Shore ’s historian to comment that “given the way Canadians felt about the 12th SS, he got off lucky.” During its advance across the field, the North Shores took thirty-five prisoners and killed an equal number.

At 0625 hours, almost ninety minutes after the attack began, the North Shores reached the shelter of a stone wall in front of Carpiquet and reported being on their first objective. The Chauds signalled brigade a few minutes later that they had men on the village edge and among the nearby hangars.

Carpiquet was still being heavily shelled, forcing a twenty-minute pause. More casualties resulted when shells burst in the tree canopy next to the Canadian positions. When the artillery ceased firing, both battalions plunged into the village. Most of the small garrison actually deployed within either surrendered, were already dead, or quickly fled. The North Shores sent back twenty more prisoners. In the Chaudière sector, a handful of hard-core 12th SS in the hangar complex were burned out of http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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concrete pillboxes by Crocodiles. At 1056, the Chauds reported their grip on the hangars secure.

Surprisingly, there were French civilians still living in the badly damaged village. Some, who emerged from bomb shelters and basements, had been wounded, and most seemed to be “in a state of severe shock,” Lieutenant MacRae wrote. “One old couple passed me going to the rear with their few possessions in a wheelbarrow. They looked too dazed to know what was going on.” While most of the civilians immediately fled towards the Canadian lines, a few were driven back into hiding when the Germans slammed Carpiquet with heavy and continuous mortar and artillery fire.

Private Feldman manned his wireless in a concrete bunker the Chauds were using as a battalion headquarters. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Mathieu, Major Lapointe, the battalion padre, and Feldman felt pretty secure there until “we heard this big noise and knew it was coming close. I was facing one way and the shell … hit the HQ in another place. I was in the ‘dead zone’ or I’d have been killed by the concussion … I was knocked flat into the bunker and the officers looked at me and thought I’d died …

I had landed on my set and that really prevented me from getting hurt, but the set was damaged. We got it going again and it was a miracle.”

To the south, as Fulton’s ‘D’ Company had closed on the first of the three hangars, it began taking heavy small-arms fire in addition to being shelled and mortared. All three platoons were shredded.

Fulton was the only officer still standing. “We made a final rush and got into the hangar, taking over the extensive network of deep weapon pits and trenches developed by the Germans to guard the hangars. It was then that the heaviest bombardment I experienced throughout the whole war was brought down upon us. If it hadn’t been for the excellent German trench system, I believe none of us would of survived.”

Fulton radioed Lieutenant Colonel John Meldram. His company held the hangar but was too weak to go any farther, Fulton reported. However, he believed it could repel the likely counterattack. ‘A’ Company had been forced to ground a hundred yards short of the hangars. Meldram decided to feed ‘B’ Company through to the hangar held by Fulton. He also requested that 8th Brigade release some of ‘B’ Squadron’s tanks to accompany it.

Blackader reluctantly agreed to release one troop along with four Crocodiles. ‘B’ Squadron was Blackader’s only armoured reserve, and he intended to have it support the follow-on assault by the Queen’s Own Rifles to clear the control and administration buildings in the northeast corner of the airfield. Because the Winnipegs had failed to clear the hangars and remove the German threat to the Queen’s Own from that flank, Blackader had delayed this phase. He also ordered the Queen’s Own to form up inside Carpiquet for the launch of their attack.

‘B’ Company met the same murderous hail of German shells the two leading companies had endured.

Only about half the men reached the hangar Fulton held. Captain Jack Hale had been wounded. Fulton combined the survivors with his own. But the Winnipegs were still unable to clear the Germans out of http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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the concrete pillboxes and trench systems defending the other hangars. The Crocodiles, the Winnipeg war diarist wrote, “proved useless.” As for the Fort Garry troop, its four Shermans met deadly fire from hidden anti-tank guns. Lieutenant Arthur Edwin Rogers and Sergeant Alastair James Innes-Ker were both mortally wounded when their tanks burst into flames. The demise of those two tanks prompted the remaining two to flee.

Wireless contact between battalion headquarters and the forward companies was so erratic that Meldram ordered Fulton to come back for a briefing. “I had no desire to make my way back across the airfield again, a target for the German guns; mine not to reason why, however.” As Fulton ran back, he spotted Rifleman Leonard Miller calmly lying in a slit trench and reading a pocket-sized New Testament. Meldram ordered the lead companies pulled back to a small, sparse wood a few hundred yards ahead of the original start line. Artillery would then plaster the hangars, and a new attack would go in with ‘B’ Squadron alongside. As Fulton passed Miller’s s lit trench on his return run, he saw the man had been killed by a mortar round.

At 1600 hours, the new attack went in behind another bombardment. Rifleman Edward Patey, a Bren gunner in ‘C’ Company, had just started forward when mortar and machine-gun fire tore into his platoon. Three men went down. He recognized one as a man in his mid-thirties everyone had nicknamed “Pops.” The man lay “writhing on the ground, his whole stomach ripped with bullets.”

Patey “was hit by a mortar piece in the eye and upper chest and … left deaf for a couple of days.”

‘B’ Company’s Sergeant Major Charles Belton suffered a chest wound. “I can remember when we were kids, we watched an Indian-cowboy movie and someone got shot and hit the ground and was dead.

When I looked down and saw this blood spurting out of my chest, I thought I’d better lie down, so I did. I was fortunate. The shrapnel came through a book I had in my upper right breast pocket.

Otherwise I would probably have had that shot go right through me. But the book stopped the shrapnel, although it took two pieces of cardboard and that book into the wound and that infected it and made it worse.”

As Belton started crawling to the rear, a German sniper in a nearby tree shot him in the leg. One of his men gunned the sniper down. Belton was evacuated to a field hospital. “There were so many of us in that tent that stretchers were only about [six] inches apart, just enough room for the nurses to walk in between … just row, and row, and row of us on these stretchers. I lay so long on this stretcher that my back pain was far worse than the wounds. I finally got back to England on a barge.”

While the infantry had gone straight for the hangars, the Shermans had executed a “sweeping attack” to get around the left flank of the Germans inside. Within minutes the tankers found their planned charge slowed to a crawl by thick bands of barbed wire and other obstacles, as well as anti-tank fire coming from in and around the hangars. Major Christian also reported the squadron was taking heavy fire from Panthers on the high ground behind the village of Verson to his right. The British were to have taken this ground but were stalled inside Verson. http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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‘B’ Squadron was completely out of contact with the infantry, which, having regained the first hangar, were again stuck there. Christian manoeuvred the squadron towards the hangars but found his tanks caught in a vise between a force of Mark IV and Panther tanks near Verson and other tanks at the hangars. A fierce shootout ensued. Soon burning tanks littered the airfield. ‘B’ Squadron had gone into the attack fifteen strong. When the tank battle broke off, nine remained operational.

The battle clearly stalemated, Meldram told Blackader at 1725 hours that “it would be impossible to hold on without increased [support]. Blackader had nothing more to send. When a mixed force of tanks and infantry approached the airfield from the east, artillery managed to scatter it. But the Germans only “dispersed and rallied” the moment the guns ceased firing. Blackader ordered the Winnipegs back to Marcelet. As the infantry withdrew, the surviving tanks joined them. At Marcelet the Winnipegs dug in. Blackader ordered his battalions to reorganize where they were.

“What had we accomplished?” Fulton wondered. “Possibly the Germans recognized our intention to take Carpiquet and that we would be back. But at what a cost!”

Blackader ordered the Queen’s Own to join his other battalions holding Carpiquet. To reach the village meant running the gauntlet of artillery and mortar fire through the wheat field. En route, ‘B’ Company’s Rifleman Alex Gordon was wounded and left behind. Rifleman J.P. Moore rolled up in his Bren carrier just as the men in Gordon’s platoon realized he was missing. They warned Moore that “the fire was so heavy that anyone in the wheat field would be killed.” Moore gave the carrier full throttle, drove like mad into the wheat field, grabbed up Gordon and threw him in the carrier, and brought him to safety.

As the battalion closed on Carpiquet, one carrier platoon section, operating as foot infantry, sought shelter beside a concrete bunker. Suddenly, a German inside it opened up with a Schmeisser, and Rifleman Art Reid was shot dead. The entire battalion went to ground and called for tanks and Crocodiles to destroy the position.

When the armour arrived, the Crocodiles blasted “with flame the walls about the entrances, which were set in a wide trench on the south side. This treatment merely blackened the [heavy] concrete walls and appeared to have no effect upon the enemy within. Nor were the tanks able to damage the structure,” Major Steve Lett, the battalion’s second-in-command, wrote.

Corporal Tom McKenzie noticed six ventilation shafts poking out of the bunker’s roof and dropped a Mills grenade down one of the pipes. When nothing happened, he realized the pipe was virtually the same diameter as the grenade and this prevented the firing pin from releasing. Flipping the pins free and then dropping the grenades down the pipe worked, but the explosions still failed to convince the Germans inside to surrender.

Because the Germans had killed Reid, McKenzie was getting “madder than hell.” So he stole a carrier’s four-gallon jerry can, emptied the gas down the pipe, and dropped a phosphorous grenade down after. A lot of smoke boiled out of the ventilation duct and there were some satisfying http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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secondary explosions, but still no Germans appeared.

While McKenzie had been taking on the bunker, the battalion’s pioneers had unsuccessfully tried to blow the roof open with a 25-pound demolition charge. “Others tried to blow the steel doors set within the entrances, but here the approach was covered by fire from a sliding panel in the wall through which weapons could be pointed. Several men were killed in this attempt.”

McKenzie took the problem to an engineering officer, Lieutenant John L. Yeats from 16th Field Company, RCE, which was supporting 8th Brigade. When he explained the problem, Yeats showed him a shaped explosive 10-pound charge he had slung on his back. When detonated, this type of charge focused on a wall rather than dissipating the blast in all directions. With McKenzie providing covering fire, Yeats wriggled up to the bunker door, set the charge, lit its fuse, and then both men scrambled for cover. This time the explosion had the desired effect.

A German soldier “emerged from the outer door, announcing himself as spokesman for the remainder, who were afraid to come out, and asking permission to surrender.” Eleven 12th SS troops warily emerged. Several said they had been “told that Canadians take no PW. Consequently they [were] reluctant to surrender, preferring to fight to the last.” The youths admitted “a great hatred for our arty, which is far superior to their own, and never gives them rest.”

Inside the bunker, Lett found the corpses of an officer and sixteen other men, who had been killed by the grenades, burning gasoline, and detonation of the shaped charge. Having cleared the bunker, the Queen’s Own continued into Carpiquet. “Jutting into enemy territory at the tip of the newly-won salient, the village was open to hostile fire from three sides and the three battalions, huddled with their tank squadrons and other supporting arms under the shelter of battered walls, were now being severely shelled and mortared.”

Winning Carpiquet had exacted a dreadful toll. The North Shores lost more men than on any other day of the war—132, of which 46 were killed. The Chauds had 57 casualties, 16 killed. The Queen’s Own suffered 4 killed and 22 wounded. In its failed assault on the southern hangars, the Winnipegs lost more men than during the D-Day landings or when they were overrun at Putot-en-Bessin on June 7–8.

Forty of its 132 casualties proved fatal. The Fort Garry Horse lost 8 men killed and 20 wounded—most from ‘B’ Squadron—while 16th Field Company, RCE, had 10 casualties, of which 3 were fatal.

North Shore’s medical officer, John Patterson, and Padre Hickey opened an RAP in a German dugout within the village because “there wasn’t a building left standing, even the trees were smashed to splinters.” Wounded poured in, and the medical teams worked frantically to stabilize people before evacuating them rearward to casualty clearing stations and field hospitals. When Major Blake Oulton was carried in on a stretcher with a bullet in his leg, Hickey said he was a “lucky dog” to have received such a “lovely wound” that would take him out of this hellhole. As dusk fell, Hickey and Major G.E. Lockwood led a burying party during a short lull in the German shelling. You “could fancy how the http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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wheat field had been just like any of our wheat fields back home,” Hickey wrote. But “now the wheat was just trampled into the earth; the ground was torn with shell holes and everywhere you could see the pale upturned faces of the dead. That night alone we buried forty—Carpiquet was the graveyard of the regiment.”

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Posted in Land Battle, WWI I |

Italian-Occupied Corsica WWII

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Italian-occupied Corsica refers to the military (and administrative) occupation by the Kingdom of Italy of the island of Corsica during World War II. It lasted from November 1942 to September 1943.

After an initial period of increasing control over Corsica, Italian forces started losing territorial control to the local Resistance, and in the aftermath of the Italian capitulation to the Allies various units took different sides in the battle between newly landed German troops, on one hand, and resistance fighters and Free French Forces, on the other hand.

O c c upati on On 8 November 1942, the Allies landed in North Africa. In response, Nazi Germany formulated Operation Anton, as part of which Italy occupied the island of Corsica on November 11 (Italian operation codename: “Operazione C2″), and some parts of France up to the Rhone river.

The Italian occupation of Corsica had been strongly promoted by the Italian irredentist movement during Italy’s Fascist period. The occupation force initially included 30,000 Italian troops and gradually reached the size of nearly 85,000 soldiers (reinforced in June 1943 by 12,000 German troops). This was a huge occupation force relative to the size of the local population of 220,000.

The VII Army Corps of the Regio Esercito was able to occupy Corsica, which was still under the formal sovereignty of Vichy France, without a fight. Because of the initial lack of perceived partisan resistance and to avoid problems with Marshal Philippe Pétain, no Corsican units were formed under Italian control (except for a labour battalion formed in March 1943). Corsican population initially showed some support for the Italians, even as a consequence of the irredentist propaganda.

The Italian troops grew to encompass two Army Divisions (the “Friuli” and the “Cremona”), two coastal Divisions (the Italian 225 Coastal Division and the Italian 226 Coastal Division), eight battalions of Fascist Militia, and some units of Military Police and Carabinieri. In July 1943, after Benito Mussolini’s fall, 12,000 German troops were sent to Corsica.

These Italian troops were commanded by General Mondino since the occupation until the end of December 1942, then by General Carboni until March 1943 and later by General Magli until September 1943.

Some Corsican military officers collaborated with Italy, including the retired Major Pantalacci (and his son Antonio), colonel Mondielli and colonel Simon Petru Cristofini (and his wife, the first Corsican female journalist Marta Renucci). Cristofini, who even met Benito Mussolini in Rome, was a strong supporter of the union of Corsica to Italy and defended irredentist ideals. Indeed Cristofini actively collaborated with the Italian forces in Corsica during the first months of 1943 and (as head of the Ajaccio troops) helped the Italian Army to repress the Resistance in Corsica before the Italian Armistice in September 1943. He closely worked with the famous Corsican writer Petru Giovacchini, who was named as the potential “Governor of Corsica” if the Kingdom of Italy should have annexed http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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the island.

Ri s e of the Re s i s tanc e The French Resistance was initially limited, but it started taking shape immediately in the aftermath of the Italian invasion. This initially led to the development of two movements: A network operating under the codename mission secrète Pearl Harbour (mission Pearl Harbor), which arrived from Algiers on 14 December 1942 aboard the Free French submarine Casabianca, the elusive Phantom Submarine. Under chief of mission Roger de Saule, they coordinated various groups that merged in the Front national. Communists were most influential in this movement.

The R2 Corse network was originally formed in connection with the London-based forces immediately under General de Gaulle in January 1943. Its leader Fred Scamaroni failed to unite the movements and was subsequently captured and tortured, committing suicide on 19 March 1943.

In April 1943 Paulin Colonna d’Istria was sent by Charles de Gaulle from Algeria and united the movements.

By early 1943, the Resistance was organized enough that it requested arms deliveries. The Resistance leadership was reinforced and the movement’s morale was boosted by six visits by the submarine Casabianca carrying personnel and arms, and it was later further armed by Allied airdrops. This allowed the Resistance to increase its activities and establish greater territorial control, especially over the countryside in summer 1943. In June and July 1943 the OVRA (Italian fascist police) and the fascist Black Shirts paramilitary groups started a large-scale repression. According to General Fernand Gambiez, 860 Corsicans were jailed and deported to Italy. On 30 August, Jean Nicoli and two French partisans of the Front national were shot in Bastia by order of an Italian Fascist War Tribunal.

Li be rati on of Cors i c a Following the imprisonment of Benito Mussolini in July 1943, 12,000 German troops came to Corsica.

They formally took over the occupation on 9 September 1943, the day after the armistice between Italy and the Allies. While their leaders were ambivalent, most of the Italian troops remained loyal the Italian King Victor Emmanuel II and some fought (mainly at Teghime, Bastia and Casamozza) alongside the French Resistance against the Nazi troops until the liberation of Corsica on 4 October 1943. Meanwhile, the French resistance aimed to establish control of the mountains in the island’s center, with the goal of preventing the occupying forces from moving from one coast to the other and thus facilitating an Allied invasion.

The liberation of Corsica began with an uprising ordered by the local Resistance on 9 September 1943.

The Allies did not initially want such a movement, preferring to focus their forces on the invasion of Italy. However, in light of the insurrection, the Allies acquiesced to the landing of elements of the http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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reconstituted French I Corps on Corsica in September 1943, starting with one division of elite French troops being landed – again – via submarine Casabianca at Arone near the village of Piana in the North West of Corsica. This prompted the German troops to attack Italian troops as well as French resistants in Corsica. The Corsican and French Partisans and the Italian 44 Infantry Division Cremona, 20 Infantry Division Friuli engaged in heavy combat with the German Sturmbrigade Reichsführer SS and 90th Panzergrenadier Division, supported by the Italian 12th Parachute Battalion of the 184th Parachute Regiment), which came from Sardinia and retreated through Corsica from Bonifacio towards the Northern harbor of Bastia. On 13 September elements of the Free French “4th Moroccan Mountain Division” were landed in Ajaccio to support the efforts to stop the 30,000 retreating German troops.

During the night of 3 to 4 October the last German units evacuated Bastia and left for northern Italy, leaving behind 700 dead and 350 POWs. LINK LINK

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Directive 41

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On April 5, 1942, Hitler issued Directive 41, outlining the operational plan for the summer of 1942.

Its focus would be in the south: a major drive toward the Caucasus to destroy Soviet forces in the region and seize the oil fields vital to both Soviet and German war-making. A secondary objective was Stalingrad—not for its own sake, but to cut the Volga River, isolate the Russians south of the industrial city, and cover the main assault’s flank.

Compared to Barbarossa, the offensive’s scale was reduced but its aims were no less ambitious. It would be launched on a 500-mile front. If it gained the set objectives it would create a salient of more than 1,300 miles—something like the distance from New York City to the middle of Kansas. Road and rail networks would grow thinner as the Germans advanced. Scheduling the main attack for the end of June left at best four or five months before rain and snow put an end to major mobile operations. Even if the offensive succeeded there was no guarantee that the Soviet Union would collapse or cease fighting de facto. It had other domestic sources of oil. It also had the support of the US and Britain, who were committed to keeping Russia in the war at all costs.

In grand-strategic terms the operation nevertheless made more sense to Hitler—and to his senior commanders—than any other option. It offered the opportunity to consolidate the Reich’s military and economic position against the establishment of a second front in Europe—something Hitler considered possible in 1943. It projected extending the land war into Asia Minor and beyond, where the immediate pickings and possibilities seemed somewhat easier. And it offered a second chance for the reinvigorated German army to do what it so far had done best: win a mobile campaign in a limited time. That meant using the panzers. Again they would be at the apex of an inverted pyramid— this time one with direct global implications.

Operation Blue, in sharp contrast to Barbarossa, was designed as not a single entity, but a series of interlocking, mutually supporting attacks succeeding each other in a tightly structured timetable. In part that reflected the need to shift limited air assets from one sector to another as a force multiplier.

It reflected as well the changing dynamics of the ground forces’ order of battle. The winter campaign indicated that however much the infantry might recover from its December nadir, it could not expect to secure even shut-down fronts with its own resources. No fewer than ten panzer divisions were assigned to Army Groups North and Center. That left only nine panzer divisions available for Operation Blue. The order of battle also included a half dozen motorized divisions, but behind them the picture grew darker. Two-thirds of the infantry divisions projected for the offensive were either newly reconstructed or still in the process. They had time neither to rest the old hands nor to integrate their replacements, thousands of whom would be fresh from basic training. Their projected effectiveness was substantially less than their forebears of 1941.

The slack must be taken up by the panzers. In December 1941, a newly organized two-battalion Panzer Regiment 201, had been sent to the Leningrad sector. Its hundred-odd Panzer IIIs and IVs achieved the kind of disproportionate successes that reminded the generals why massed armor was a good idea. In February, each panzer division assigned to Blue was ordered to be reinforced with a http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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third tank battalion. By May, however, it was clear the only way that was possible was by transferring them from other divisions. The same was true for the motorized divisions’ tank battalions. When the shuffling and redesig nating was finished, seven of the ten divisions in the “inactive” sectors had only a single tank battalion. In other words they were battle groups in all but name. Even more than Barbarossa, Blue was all or nothing—especially for the panzers.

One report submitted in May gave the offensive six months to seize the oil fields, otherwise, not only must offensive operations cease; the Eastern Front itself could not be sustained. Such prognostications left little room at command levels for public questioning. A good many two-o’-clockin-the-morning doubts were nevertheless resolved when, on May 12, the Soviet Southwestern Front launched a spoiling offensive around Kharkov. Intended to disrupt German plans and regain the initiative, the attack’s 650,000 men and 1,200 tanks were stopped within a week. By May 28 a counterattack built around 1st Panzer Army accounted for 240,000 prisoners, more than 1,200 tanks, and 2,000 guns. To Hitler and the High Command it seemed just like old times. Ivan was still Ivan.

Closer to the front, perspectives were different. Eberhard von Mackensen had impeccable military bloodlines. His father was August von Mackensen, one of the more successful German field commanders of World War I. He had commanded III Panzer Corps since the invasion, and had made a reputation as the best horse in 1st Panzer Army’s stable: quick-thinking and hard-driving. The Russians, he reported, had grown “more fanatical, more ruthless, and more solid.” Victory had been won only by an all-out effort—plus a fair bit of luck. A corps commander’s observations changed no one’s mind.

On June 28, Army Group South tore the front wide open. Its CO was Fedor von Bock, getting a second chance by accident. Reichenau had replaced Rundstedt in Deceember 1941 and died from a heart attack six weeks later. Command in Russia involved unprecedented levels of physical, intellectual, and emotional strain. Bock suffered from stomach trouble—hardly surprising under the circumstances —but a few weeks’ down time restored him sufficiently to take over an appointment for which no other clearly more suitable candidate was available. Six months later he had 68 divisions, 750 tanks, and more than 1,200 aircraft including, predictably, VIII Air Corps, with its obsolescent but devastating Stukas and the ME 109s that covered them. But Bock’s expectations rested with the onetwo punch of Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army and the widely traveled 4th Panzer Army, which had moved from Leningrad to Moscow and now to the south under Hoth, transferred from his anomalous infantry command.

Bock’s order of battle included around two dozen divisions from the Reich’s allies and clients. These were the fruit of a winter’s diplomatic arm-twisting. Mostly Romanian and Italian, these formations were nowhere nearly as well equipped, trained, commanded, or motivated as their German counterparts. Hopes for significant material support from the Reich had proved futile. Their projected roles in Blue were correspondingly limited: flank guards, screening, and occupying low-risk sectors of the line. Their numerical role in the operation nevertheless highlighted the weakness of the German assault force relative to its mission—and implied trouble should things not work as programmed. http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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If Hitler’s directive was ambitious, the High Command’s plan was audacious to the point of recklessness. Reduced to its essentials—arguably oversimplified—Blue would begin in the north, with 4th Panzer Army leading a thrust toward the Don River and the rail hub and industrial center of Voronezh, then turning south to trap and finish off the Rotarmisten driven east by 1st Panzer Army and its accompanying infantry. Meanwhile, the 6th Army would advance to the Volga and Stalingrad while the 1st Panzer Army struck down the Volga to Baku and the Caucasus.

As early as July it was clear that a single headquarters could not manage the force, time, and space factors. Army Group South became Army Group B on July 7, taking over 4th Panzer Army. A newly created Army Group A assumed responsibility for Kleist’s panzers. In its initial stages, Operation Blue nevertheless bade fair to replicate the summer of 1941. German mechanized spearheads rolled across the steppes under an air umbrella the Red Air Force, still repairing its loss of trained pilots, could not penetrate. By July 4, Hoth’s vanguards were across the Don and at the outskirts of Voronezh.

The LX Panzer Corps, pulling the rest of 6th Army behind it, linked up from the left with 4th Panzer Army on July 2, trapping one more Soviet army in a pocket.

The Red Army was still a heavy, blunt instrument, but not the bludgeon of 1941. The tank brigades formed from the detritus of 1941 were being combined into corps with the approximate armored strength of a panzer division. Beginning in October, they would be joined by newly created mechanized corps: panzer grenadiers without the half-tracks. Stalin and the High Command responded to Blue by launching a series of offensives against Army Groups North and Center, and by committing a high proportion of their increasing reserve forces to successive offensives around Voronezh.

These were not mere counterattacks, but parts of a systematic effort to regain the strategic initiative secured in December. Bock urged taking the fight to the Russians where they stood. Hitler and the High Command instead ordered Hoth south. Führer Directive 45 dispatched it toward Rostov, to cooperate with Kleist in encircling Soviet forces in the region and opening the way to the Caucasus.

The infantry divisions and Allied formations left to Army Group B were ordered to capture Stalingrad and secure Army Group A’s flank and rear. Bock was summarily dismissed, this time permanently.

Directive 45 reflected the consensus of Hitler and the High Command that keeping to time justified overriding the judgment of the commander on the ground. Robert M. Citino correctly interprets this decision as a long step away from a Prussian/German tradition of validating subordinates’ initiatives.

On the other hand, a case could be made—and was widely debated between the wars—that the Battle of the Marne in 1914 had been lost because of the German High Command’s unwillingness or inability to control the movements of the army’s right wing. Then, communications and maneuverability were alike severely limited. Now, radios and aircraft enabled constant contact among headquarters. And on the ground, the panzers could implement any sequence of decisions—even when, like this one, the result was a military snipe hunt.

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With losses rapidly mounting, especially in the best divisions, the Soviet High Command, the Stavka, insisted space must temporarily be exchanged for time. Stalin finally authorized retreat on July 6, and the Soviets in front of Army Group A gave ground. Rostov fell on July 24 in a virtuoso cape-and-sword tactical performance by Mackensen and III Panzer Corps, executed at an overall cost of fewer than 1,500 casualties. There was no pocket, no gigantic new bag of prisoners and weapons. The new string of defeats and the abandonment of more of the industrial facilities created at such high human cost nevertheless generated a crisis in public morale serious enough for Stalin to issue Order 227 on July 28. It called for an end to retreat and demanded that every foot of Soviet soil be defended. Penalties ranged from service in a penal battalion to summary execution: a quarter-million Red Army soldiers were sentenced to death for failure to obey On July 19, Stalin put Stalingrad on a war footing; on July 21, Stavka established a Stalingrad Front. Its three armies were a mixture of green troops and formations already hard hammered. But Order 227 was a reminder that there was nowhere to go. Stalingrad’s citizens responded not only by digging trenches and filling sandbags, but by reporting to work and finishing their shifts.

The German High Command responded by reassigning Hoth’s army to Army Group B and ordering it to attack Stalingrad from the south. The back-and-forth odyssey of Panzer Army 4 resembled the Kiev maneuver of 1941 in wearing down men and tanks. It was also a sign that Stalingrad was beginning to loom larger in German thinking than originally intended. No less significant was the fact that Directive 45 gave the Caucasus operation a separate code name. Calling it Edelweiss meant that Army Groups A and B were in effect now pursuing two objectives simultaneously rather than sequentially, as in Blue’s original conception. This was no simple manifestation of Hitler’s unfocused, dilettantish interference in command decisions. The High Command as well as the Führer were in the process of convincing themselves that for the Caucasus to fall, Stalingrad must be captured, not merely blockaded and screened. Hitler’s concept was based on pursuit; Halder was thinking in terms of a battle. The underlying gulf between the presumptions was bridged by the assumption that the panzers would make prioritizing—creating a Schwerpunkt—unnecessary.

Success in that unspoken mission would in good part depend on the kind of command initiative that had just cost Bock his job. Army Group A was under Field Marshal Wilhelm List. Not a tanker by experience or ascription, he had worked with the panzers in France, commanded an armor- heavy army in the Balkan campaign, and was a reasonable choice to oversee the drive for the Caucasus.

Kleist was expected to do the heavy work with three panzer and two motorized divisions plus, for what it might prove worth, the “Fast Division” of the Slovak army: about the same numbers he took into Greece against far less formidable opposition. The Germans were reckoning heavily on being received as liberators by the Caucasian people, and reckoning even more heavily on intelligence estimates that described Soviet forces in the region as on the edge of collapse. Instead, during August, resistance stiffened all along the line of advance. The 1st Panzer Army took Maikop on August 9, but the progress was slowed by the Red Army, by temperatures regularly exceeding 100 degrees, and by roadless, trackless, mountainous terrain unlike anything the panzers had experienced. http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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“Jungle-like thicket with no visibility,” reported Hitler’s aide Army Major Gerhard Engel. Kitchens could not be moved forward; wounded could not be moved back. Even the mountain troops, the German army’s other elite force, made slow progress. Hitler fired List on September 9 and began directing Army Group A himself—his greatest departure from procedure to date. By the end of September, Soviet resistance—in particular air attacks enabled by the increasing withdrawal of German fighters to Stalingrad—combined with dust, broken terrain, fuel shortages, and unreplaced losses in men and tanks, brought 1st Panzer Army to a halt well away from the oil fields of Grozny and Baku, the original objective of Operation Blue. In the rear, Maikop’s refining facilities had been well demolished, and the bureaucratic inefficiency endemic in the Third Reich handicapped their reconstruction. Specifically the technical experts declared that the equipment designated for the Caucasus would be better employed in Romania—or even the Vienna region.

One possibility remained. In the nineteenth century the Russian government had constructed the Georgian and Ossetian military roads through the Caucasus: still solid highways and ideal axes of blitzkrieg. It took a month for Kleist to concentrate and redistribute what remained of his striking power—by now half-strength and less in men and tanks. On October 25 the 2nd Romanian Guard Division broke open the Soviet front. The next night, 13th and 23rd Panzer Divisions, Mackensen’s III Panzer Corps, broke out and started south. Outrunning Soviets who had never experienced a real German lightning attack, 23rd Panzer closed the Ossetian Road on November 1. To the south, 13th Panzer Division was 10 miles away from the Georgian Road. The next day it cut that distance to five miles; by November 3 to a mile and a half. Soviet resistance centered on the city of Ordzhonikidze.

The 13th Panzer Division’s infantrymen attacked on foot, into the teeth of a network of trenches, bunkers, and pillboxes matching anything in Stalingrad itself. A temporarily attached assault-gun battery supporting the riflemen accounted for twenty T-34s. On October 20 the division had 130 tanks. A month later it was down to 27. Division and corps had nothing left to stop the Soviet attack on December 6 that tore into the 13th Division’s flanks while a blizzard kept the Luftwaffe grounded.

On December 9, what remained of 13th Panzer broke the encirclement and fought its way home. They took their wounded with them—in the first trucks out. They were not a broken gaggle of stragglers.

They were the 13th Panzer Division, and Ivan knew it.

Robert M. Citino’s image of “a hard-driving panzer corps stopped, but still churning its legs” cannot be bettered. This was as far as the Germans got in Russia, and no less than Rommel’s contemporary position in North Africa. Does the question arise as to what Kleist and Mackensen might have done with another two or three divisions? The question is even more apt because Mackensen’s 16th Motorized Division had been detached to screen the widening gap between Army Groups A and B. In an exercise in irrelevance spectacular even by German standards for the time and place, it drove eastward onto the Kalmuck Steppe at right angles to the rest of 1st Panzer Army, getting to within 20 miles of the Caspian Sea before reality in the form of the Soviet counteroffensive intervened.

One more worn-down division was unlikely to have carried III Panzer Corps through the Russians to the far side of the Caucasus and the Turkish frontier. Had 4th Panzer Army been deployed alongside http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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Kleist instead of fed into the Stalingrad blowtorch, the panzers would probably have run out of fuel 300 miles earlier. Had the Caucasus offensive been given logistical priority, the chances for a massively decisive Soviet counterattack against the correspondingly weakened German positions around Stalingrad would have suddenly improved. But had the 16th Motorized been in its doctrinal place, directly supporting the 13th and 23rd Panzer Divisions . . . who knows?

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Uniforms Of The Italian Campaign WWII

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The Italian Campaign gave the Allies useful victories in the interval between the reconquest of the Mediterranean and the reconquest of northwest Europe. In a theater of increasingly secondary http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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importance, Kesselring’s position was merely a defensive one, and the best the Allies could claim was that they kept 22 enemy divisions from fighting in another theater. Allied casualties came to 188,746 for Fifth Army and 123,254 for Eighth Army, whereas German casualties were about 434,646 men. The Italian Campaign did, however, afford the Allies experience in amphibious operations and the stresses of coalition warfare, all of which proved invaluable during the invasion of France.

The Allied 15th Army Group was an army group of British and American field armies that included corps, divisions and brigades from numerous Allied forces (Canada, India, Poland, South Africa, Greece, Brazil and New Zealand) in World War II Africa and Europe.

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The POWER Of The Tiger!

Sc hwe re SS- Panz e r- A bte i l ung 1 0 1 (Sc hwe re SS- Panz e r- A bte i l ung 5 0 1 ) 2 7 A ugus t 1 9 4 4 : Thre e Ti ge rs i n ac ti on wi th Kam pfgruppe (O be rs t) Sc hrade r of the 4 9 .

Infante ri e - D i v i s i on al ong the road Ti l l y- Ve rnone t. Ti ge r 2 2 1 , i n the l e ad, i s knoc ke d out from be hi nd a be nd i n the road at c l os e di s tanc e by a s i x- pounde r anti tank gun wi th the ne w s ub- c al i be r arm or- pi e rc i ng rounds . It c atc he s fi re , whi c h re s ul ts i n a total l os s . A http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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s hort ti m e l ate r, the s e c ond Ti ge r fol l ows up, de s troys the anti tank gun and wi pe s out D Com pany of the 1 s t W orc e s te rs hi re s . The re m ai ni ng B ri ti s h e s c ape , pani c - s tri c ke n.

B e c aus e the G e rm an i nfantry doe s not fol l ow up, the Ti ge r wi thdraws and i s l ate r abandone d. Total tanks : 6 .

A l l foot s ol di e rs fe ar tanks and, i n the A l l i e d arm y, e v e ryone fe are d Ti ge r tanks m os t of al l . In c ons e que nc e , e v e ry e ne m y tank be c am e a Ti ge r. The y had ac hi e v e d a pos i ti on of awe i n the m i nds of the troops . The Ti ge r was v i rtual l y i nv i nc i bl e . Its thi c k arm our and l arge 8 8 m m gun m ade i t c apabl e of wi ths tandi ng the fi re of any A l l i e d tank and al l anti tank guns (bar the 1 7 - pounde r) e xc e pt at s ui c i dal l y s hort range s . A l l l arge G e rm an tanks – Panthe rs , Mark IVs and e v e n s om e s e l f- prope l l e d guns – we re ofte n m i s take nl y l abe l l e d as be i ng Ti ge rs by the B ri ti s h i nfantry.

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B attl e G roup Sc hrade r’ s c l as h wi th the 1 s t W orc e s te rs hi re s – Sunday 2 7 A ugus t 1 9 4 4 .

Battle Group Schrader had managed to infiltrate both flanks and was engaging ‘D’ Company with http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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machine-guns. The fire was coming at the Worcestershires from out of the thick undergrowth, making it difficult to pinpoint; it was both heavy and accurate. The carrier section was pinned down on the right, losing its commander, who was killed. All around, the enemy continued to press forward, the intensity of its machine-gun fire increasing. The Germans soon overtook the leading platoon of the Worcestershires and began enfilading their positions from both sides. Casualties quickly began to mount. The second platoon was likewise engaged by more unlocated enemy to the left of the road. It countered this fire with the help of an armoured car whose heavy machine-gun fired continually into the trees, sweeping the area, searching for the unseen enemy. Then a message from the leading platoon reported that a second Tiger tank was moving down the road. ‘D’ Company was in real danger of being over-run.

Although the enemy soldiers on either side could not be seen, their approximate locations were known. Word was passed back to the mortars and artillery and soon trees and undergrowth on both sides of the road began erupting into flames, as high-explosive shells crashed down. Any likely gathering places were given as targets, with the hope of keeping the enemy on the move. The whole of the left flank was on a lower level, overlooked by everyone on the road right back to battalion HQ. It was a simple matter for all available guns to keep pouring an incredible amount of fire down into the valley. To Colonel Osborne-Smith, this side was not seen as the main danger; he could confidently stop any enemy movement along the densely wooded valley. His most immediate problem was the high ground on the right and the commanding hilltop in particular. He already had ‘C’ Company up there on the slopes, but this hill still seemed to be wide open to any enemy flanking movement.

Major Grubb had also spotted the danger. He had no doubt that the narrow road was not the place to be; he felt that down there you could not stop anything and in any case there were far too many bodies already milling around. Grubb decided to take his company up onto the hill.

Algy Grubb was a company commander who believed in a certain amount of theatre to keep his men going. He tried to give a ‘larger than life’ impression in the way he approached things. Experience had taught him that the private soldier would always stand firm if his officers were there with him when things became serious, especially if the officer was outwardly showing little concern at events. Grubb had two personal bodyguards: Joe Cook, his sixth batman since arriving in France (who, incidentally, made it through the rest of the war with him) and George Bromwich, a dustman from Leamington Spa. Bromwich was unique; he had never done a day’s training in his life. He was the company bootmaker and turned out to be one of the finest soldiers Grubb had ever come across. The major never went anywhere without the two of them. ‘When you saw us going along with a trailer, with all the guns you could think of – not that we could use many of them – it looked just like Al Capone.’

Grubb’s task was to stop any of the enemy who tried to come through the woods on the hilltop, and he had already decided just how he would do it: I intended to collect all my company’s Bren guns together and string them up so that anyone who http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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came over the hill could bloody well have it. We had thirteen Bren guns and four 2in mortars in the company. An exercise we had performed at the Infantry Training School was to demonstrate the firepower of a battalion. We would line up the whole battalion along a ridge in front of some water and then get everyone to fire their weapons at the same time. It was an impressive sight to see the water erupt into millions of fountains. Somehow I could see all that in my mind and so I decided that if I grouped all my firepower together, then the enemy would have a bit of a job to get through.

In effect, Grubb split his company into two groups, as opposed to the normal structure of three platoons. He decided to lead the first group to the top of the hill, whilst his second-in-command, Captain Noel Watkins, came up behind with the riflemen and took up a position just short of the crest.

I took the company HQ’s Bren gun myself, whilst my two ‘bodyguards’ carried my ammunition. The hill was very steep, thick with trees at the bottom near the road, then a grassy slope and finally another sprinkling of trees at the top. At the bottom of the hill, the battalion’s 3in mortars were lined up under the control of Jock Bannister. They were in the layby near the monument. The mortars were pumping the stuff over the top of the hill. They had been firing continuously and they had all overheated. What was happening was that as soon as a mortar bomb was put into the barrel, its primary charge was igniting and the bombs were falling only twenty yards away. This in itself was safe enough, for there has to be a projection of ‘X’ yards before the bomb is fused and could explode, but the mortars somehow had to be cooled down. Jock Bannister lined up his men and got them to pee on the barrels by numbers! As we set off up the slope, I shouted to Jock to keep the bloody things going!

Halfway up the hill Grubb was surprised to see a company dug in. This was the third company, ‘C’ Company. The company commander was as surprised to see Grubb as Grubb was to see him. They didn’t say anything, but it did occur to Grubb that it was rather a silly place to be and he thought that it was something and nothing in such a position. At, or about, that moment and close by the mortars, Grubb met Major Tony Benn, the battalion’s second-in-command. He was a regular soldier of the East Yorkshire Regiment, who had joined the battalion a fortnight earlier. Grubb had got to know him well and greatly admired him. Benn remarked that the whole action had developed into chaos, as was usual, and asked Grubb what he was going to do about it. Grubb replied that he was taking his company up on top of the hill. ‘I reckon that that’s about right, mate,’ Benn replied and set off down towards the road. It was the last time Grubb was to see his friend.

Down on the main road, the leading company was being pressed by a second Tiger, moving slowly forward into their positions. The tank’s machine-gun was firing at the British infantry dispersed along the verges and amongst the trees. This time it was the Tiger that had the upper hand. The anti-tank gun covering the road, the same one that had been so successful just a short while earlier, was being harassed by yet another enemy machine-gun. Accurate fire was forcing the gun crew to keep their heads down. Manoeuvring cautiously round the previously knocked-out German tank, the second Tiger turned on the exposed 6-pounder before the small gun could get off a shot. The shell from the http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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tank’s massive 88mm barrel smashed into the Worcestershires’ gun, reducing it to a pile of twisted metal, killing all the crew. Next, the German heavy locked its sights on the 6-pounder’s carrier; that too disintegrated into a pall of smoke and flame. A few moments later another blinding flash and a heavy armoured car from the reconnaissance regiment met the same fate.

To match an armoured car against the heaviest of German tanks was no match at all. Just this one shell from the Tiger blasted the car off the road. Amazingly, Sergeant Barraclough and the crew all scrambled out safely with no more damage to their persons than superficial injuries and a severe shaking. The great tank continued to lumber on down the road unchecked, seemingly invincible.

The German tank was carving its way into the heart of ‘D’ Company. The leading platoon had already suffered thirty per cent casualties, including their commander. There was no room for the British infantry to deploy off the road, for the company had been forced to halt at an awkward spot not of their own choosing. With the arrival of this second tank, their position had become untenable. Permission was requested for a withdrawal; it was immediately granted. The company was ordered to pull back through ‘A’ Company to a new position where it could establish a much firmer base.

Back at battalion HQ there was better news. A troop of Sherman tanks from the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards had arrived from the ferry site. One of the tanks was a Sherman Firefly, sporting the mighty 17-pounder gun. Given the right opportunity and a bit of luck, it could be a match for the Tiger. In one of the other tanks was ‘A’ Squadron’s commander, Major Jackie Goldsmid. After getting the latest news from the battalion commander, Goldsmid sent the Firefly up the road with a view to engaging the German tank, should it get too close to the battalion HQ. Meanwhile, the Tiger had halted on the road to wait for its protecting infantry to keep abreast of it (they were trying to push through on the Worcestershires’ right flank, on the slopes of the hill). Every vehicle in sight on that short stretch of highway was destroyed. The stationary Tiger had become the complete master of the battlefield.

Even though the tank had halted, the hull machine-gun kept up a non-stop stream of bullets sweeping along the road and its verges. With great difficulty, word was passed forward for ‘D’ Company to begin its withdrawal to a more secure part of the road. At this point, the battalion was most vulnerable.

In ones and twos, hugging closely to any cover that was available, the infantry from ‘D’ Company tried to slip back down the road. During training, a withdrawal is conducted under very strict drill; the whole exercise is accomplished bit by bit, everyone covering each other. In reality, a battle progresses in perfect chaos. Seldom, in action, does anything ever go right; so it was on this occasion. ‘D’ Company had to pass through ‘A’ Company’, which was dug in to the rear on either side of the road. The men started to fall back through the trees that lined the steep verges. Once clear of the enemy, they moved a little more openly, a little faster. Behind them was the rattle of the Tiger’s machine-gun and the roar of its engine. The men of ‘A’ Company were suddenly confronted by their own troops http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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hurriedly withdrawing through their lines and heading for the rear. It was too much for some of them; they jumped up and joined in what, on the face of it, appeared to be a general retreat.

For a few moments, control was lost. Some of the infantry were running back down the road, others were moving quite openly through the trees on the right-hand side. Major Tony Benn, the battalion’s second-in-command, tried to regain order. He stood up in the open, urging the men off the exposed road and back into cover. At that same moment, the Tiger started to move forward and rounded the bend, turning its machine-gun fire on those men in the road. Caught in the open, they were mown down like skittles. Regardless of the danger around him, Major Benn cursed and bullied the fleeing troops to a halt, forcing them to stand firm and cover the road. It was one of those selfless acts of heroism that was sometimes needed to steady an awkward situation. The officer set a brave example.

Brave but tragic, for, just as order had been restored, Benn was hit. He died instantly.

Watching the whole episode from near his tank was Major Goldsmid, who remembers Benn as ‘a very brave and courageous man’. He saw the effect that Benn had on the panic-stricken Worcestershires and was deeply impressed by the way he restored order. He was also saddened by the sudden death of the officer just as he had taken control of the rout.

The Tiger once again came to a halt in the middle of the road and waited. The Worcestershires immediately opened up with small arms fire, peppering the tank’s thick armour with bullets. They could do no harm to the four inches of hardened steel that protected the German crew, but their attention served to illustrate how vulnerable the tank now was, being so far ahead of its protecting infantry. The Tiger quickly reversed back round the corner and stopped. Everything on the main road now seemed to pause whilst both sides took stock of the situation.

The two advancing columns had met each other head on and it did not seem likely that either side was going any further along the road that day. However, up on the hilltop on the Worcestershires’ right flank, Battle Group Schrader was still pressing forward.

Near the top of the hill, just below the crest, Major Grubb laid out his Bren guns behind a small bank.

He positioned himself in the centre and his four 2in mortars six paces behind. There was no sign of life, no firing, nothing. There was clearly nobody there. He hadn’t been there long before Captain Noel Watkins sidled up and lay down beside him. Grubb asked where the riflemen were and Watkins replied that they were still at the bottom of the hill. Grubb’s orders had been misunderstood; Watkins had come up alone to find out what was happening and join in the fun.

Grubb then put his head up and looked around and sank down; there was still nothing to be seen. He then broke one of his own golden rules; he looked up over the bank in exactly the same place again.

One of the basic lessons of infantry fieldcraft, one that was religiously taught everywhere, was this: get down, crawl away from where you were, observe the enemy, then fire. Down, crawl, observe, fire.

This was because if you were under enemy observation, went down, then lifted your head in the same http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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place again, the enemy could be waiting for you. As Major Grubb had stressed over and over to thousands of trainees at infantry training school, where he was once an instructor, NEVER look up in the same place twice. However, on top of the hill that day he forgot his own maxim; he did look up twice in the same place and the consequences were exactly as he had warned others. A burst of machine-gun fire raked the top of the bank. For the first time since landing in France, Grubb was hit, but Algy Grubb was a man who was born lucky and his gift did not desert him that day.

I could never get on with a steel helmet, I don’t think anyone really could, because they cut into your head so. Now, the regimental hatter of the Worcestershire Regiment was Thomas & Stone in Jermyn Street. They made nice hats. They also made what looked like a polo helmet, although not as big, which was in fact a skull cap made of cork. Yo u were measured for it and it fitted exactly. It had pieces of rubber tubing sewn on around the base to cushion the steel helmet which rested on top.

With this cork skull cap you could wear the steel helmet all day long, just like a cloth cap.

The first bullet hit Grubb right in the middle of the front of the helmet and went straight through. It then hit the cork skull cap and was deflected upwards, furrowing along the cork until it finally went out through the top of the helmet. The second bullet passed through his coat collar and set fire to his tunic. The force of the bullet’s impact bowled him over and knocked him out. The enemy machinegun was only fifteen paces away, shielded behind a mound.

Major Grubb came to a few seconds later to find himself staring at a German stick grenade just a short distance away from him. Then some more came over, all landing quite close by. It was too late to do anything but press himself flat into the dirt. ‘If you laid flat as possible you were usually safe, the blast normally went upwards. We used to demonstrate this during training. We would put balloons down and let off grenades near them. Rarely would a balloon burst. As long as you kept your head and laid flat, you were usually OK.’ One grenade exploded, then another and another. Grubb by this time felt that the whole thing was somehow becoming a personal little battle, with him on the receiving end. He called for all the grenades and started throwing them, but he couldn’t get the range. (It was difficult to throw a grenade lying down, unlike the German stick grenades, which had a long handle; they could be thrown a good distance from a prone position.)

On the spur of the moment he ordered Captain Watkins to take command of the Bren guns and then crawled back to his 2in mortars. He took over one himself, directing the crews of the others to pass him the ammunition. The range was only about twenty yards and this necessitated the barrel of the weapon being almost perpendicular (a very hazardous thing to do with a mortar). The first ‘ranging’ shot he fired fell almost on top of him, landing just behind the mortar! After firing numerous other bombs a little more accurately, he crawled back to the Brens. Without knowing it, he had hit the target, an MG 42 machine-gun and its crew. It later transpired that this gun was being operated by the German company commander and so a situation had developed whereby the two opposing company http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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commanders had engaged each other in a grenade-throwing match.

It is interesting to note, as Watkins reported later to Grubb, that the Bren gunners thought that their major was deserting them when he moved back to the mortars. They were singularly restive and Watkins had some difficulty in composing them.

The visibility on top of the hill was around forty yards (36m), sometimes as low as twenty yards (18m), owing to the thick undergrowth and trees. It was perfect country for the enemy to infiltrate small parties armed with light machine-guns. They now began to gather in strength ready to push forward over the top of the hill. Fire came at ‘B’ Company from all parts of the summit. Still unseen, the German battle group edged its way closer.

Major Grubb’s plan had gone a little awry; his riflemen were at the bottom of the hill just when he needed them most. However, he did still have the firepower of his Bren guns available, to produce the ‘wall of fire’ he had envisaged earlier. Watkins was told to keep up a non-stop barrage of fire into the woods on the hilltop, whilst Grubb took himself and his two bodyguards (Bromwich and Cook) on their own flanking movement round the enemy-held summit. As soon as the Brens opened up, the intrepid three-man attack crawled off into the undergrowth.

The noise rose to a crescendo. The Bren guns fired and fired and fired continually, sweeping the whole top of the hill. The Worcestershires did not need to see the enemy; they put up such a curtain of fire that not even the bravest German would dare enter. On and on they fired, not letting up for a moment. It was enough; the attack over the top of the hill was stopped. The enemy had to pull back.

Grubb’s little party had less success. They soon reached a point where they were about to show themselves and move in, but could not do so because of all the firing. Some tanks down on the main road were also sweeping the hillside with their fire. To have stood up would have been suicidal. The trio remained stranded until nightfall, when a search party from another company was sent to find them on the orders of the CO. LINK

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Posted in British Army, German, German Equipment, Operations, WWI I |

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Training For D-Day

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1st Assault Brigade Royal Engineers, the heart of what eventually became 79th Armoured Division, had been raised in December 1942 following the Anglo-Canadian debacle of the Dieppe raid. From the failure, it was apparent that assaulting a heavily defended enemy coast would require specially designed armour to lead the way ashore. Major General Percy Hobart, an early enthusiast of the tank, had been forced to resign some years earlier and had, in a peculiarly British way, become a Lance Corporal in Churchill’s Home Guard. Taking off his NCO’s tapes and replacing his general’s crossed sword and baton, he returned to service. Taking command of 79th Armoured Division, in April 1944, Hobart, With Combined Operations assistance, studied the experience gained in the Mediterranean and at Dieppe, which he combined with an analysis of German defences on the coast of Europe. The result was a series of vehicles or ‘funnies’ that were manned by armoured regiments and Royal Engineers, each designed to address a specific beach assault problem.

Winston Churchill’s enthusiasm for ‘gadgets’ and technology had given impetus to the development of new weapons. He wrote in a Cabinet memo: ‘This war is not however a war of masses of men hurling masses of shells at each other. It is by devising new weapons and above all by scientific leadership that we shall best cope with the enemy’s superior strength.’

Major General Hobart took over development and refined designs into practical battlefield weapon systems, and, in parallel, developed tactical doctrine for effective use of his ‘zoo of funnies’. He set about forging a creative atmosphere: ‘Suggestions from all ranks for improvements in equipment are to be encouraged … all ranks are to have direct access to their CO for putting forward their ideas.’

One of Hobart’s first decisions was the development of the amphibious tanks. The idea of ‘swimming tanks’ was not new. However, in July 1943 Hobart’s demonstration of launching the Duplex Drive tank from a tank-landing craft persuaded the Chief of Imperial General Staff to authorise the conversion of five hundred valuable Shermans. The key features of this ‘funny’ were a tall canvas screen and a pair of small propellers that could be engaged to the engine instead of the tracks. Viewing an exercise in Studland Bay, Montgomery took up the idea that the DD tanks should lead the invasion. However, with only a low freeboard, DD tanks were limited to operations in calm seas with wind strength of less than Force 4.

Most numerous of the funnies were the Armoured Vehicles Royal Engineers (AVRE). A conversion of the heavily armoured Churchill tank, the AVREs’ main weapon was a Petard demolition gun that fired a 40-pound projectile, known as a ‘flying dustbin’, out to a range of two hundred yards. The shaped charge warhead, most accurate at a range of eighty yards, was designed to take on steel and concrete defences on the coast of France. On the back of the AVRE, a variety of obstacle-crossing devices could be carried, although most commonly carried was a fascine of logs for dropping in anti-tank ditches. http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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Completing the line-up of main equipment, were the Crab and the Crocodile. With Resistance organizations reporting that the Germans were laying more and more mines along the coast, and appreciating how slow and ponderous conventional mine clearance was, a quicker, less vulnerable, method had to be developed. Again not a new idea, the unreliable Matilda Scorpion had been used at El Alamein but Hobart produced a successful operational vehicle: the Crab or Sherman Flail, mounting a revolving drum with heavy chains to beat the ground, thus setting off mines and ripping up wire, as it advanced at H mph. The Crocodile was a flame thrower conversion of a standard Churchill tank.

Towing a four-hundred-gallon armoured trailer, the Crocodile could squirt a lance of flame, a hundred yards long, at a rate of four gallons of fire a second. The result was a fearsome weapon system, but as it was delivered only just before the invasion, few of the assault divisions knew much about the Crocodile and little use was made of flame on D-Day, despite numerous suitable targets.

At Montgomery’s insistence, 50th Northumbrian Division replaced 49th West Riding Division in the assault role for the coming invasion. 50th Division’s brigade groups, along with elements of 79th Armoured Division, were sent north to Scotland to the Combined Training Centre at Inveraray. Here they learnt the OVERLORD assault techniques. However, with the late change of tasking, 231 Brigade, as experienced amphibious assault troops, had a shortened training package. It was at this time, with a mixture of bravado and foreboding that the Brigade realized that they were, for the third time, not only to take part in an invasion but that they were also to spearhead it.

Lieutenant Colonel ‘Cosmo’ Nevill, Commanding Officer of 2 Devon, recalled the Brigade’s arrival at Inveraray: ‘There were some who wondered why all this training should be necessary as the battalion had already plenty of experience in this particular type of warfare. After a very short time, however, we realized there was still much to learn; new weapons, new types of landing craft, new techniques had been developed and perfected since the Italy days. We found Gunners supporting assault landings by shooting their 25-pounders out of LCTs from far out to sea, with FOOs well forward in special support landing craft. This procedure appeared, to the mere infantry soldier, to be highly dangerous, but no untoward incident occurred. We heard of the amphibious DD tanks, highly secret and only spoken of with bated breath.

‘Throughout the course, emphasis was laid on the importance of close co-operation between all Services and especially with the Royal Navy. In this, we were particularly fortunate. HMS Glenroy, newly converted as an assault ship, and under command of Captain Stephen Barry RN, had just arrived in Loch Fyne. It was whispered that the Glenroy would probably carry the battalion on D-Day. … We were the first troops to go on board and an entente was started between all ranks which grew closer and closer.’

By the end of March, 231 Brigade was based to the west of Southampton. Lieutenant Colonel Nevill recorded that low level http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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‘… training was a difficult problem. We were told that there would be at least six weeks available in which to get fighting fit and ready for the great day. The training areas were however few and very small, rifle ranges became progressively more difficult to obtain as more troops poured into the area.

Many of us learnt for the first time that the New Forest meant literally forest, excellent for camouflage purposes, but useless for training troops m the finer points of assault landings.’

However, during this period, exercise followed exercise. Each was on a larger scale and increasingly relevant to the Brigade’s D-Day tanks. The series of SMASH Exercises took the West Countrymen to their home territory. In April, many of 1 Dorset had the strange experience of conducting live firing assaults on the country surrounding their hometowns and villages along Studland Bay, while the Hampshires, during the 50th Division/Task Force G’s rehearsal, Exercise FABIUS in early May, attacked the Hampshire coast at Hayling Island. In this period the Brigade, ‘… saw a good deal of our affiliated armour, the Sherwood Rangers (Notts Yeomanry), an experienced armoured regiment, who had seen service m the desert and in Italy. The gunners of 90th Field Regiment were unfortunately too busy most of the time – what with trying to get the SP guns into LCTs and, having succeeded in doing that, trying to fire them from the moving craft.’

Also not properly practised was co-operation with some of the elements of 79th Armoured Division, who were concentrating on overcoming their own technical problems and developing last minute solutions to new problems. One such problem was the discovery of two peat outcrops on JIG Sector of GOLD Beach that would almost certainly bog vehicles. Lieutenant Colonel ‘Cosmo’ Nevill remembered: ‘Would the tanks and carriers be able to get across what appeared to be a somewhat muddy beach? … experts were put ashore about three weeks before D-Day to test the beaches. They were found to be muddy. Experiments were immediately started on the Norfolk coast near Brancaster, where a similar type of beach exists. A gadget, known as a bobbin, was invented, which, attached to the front of a tank, would automatically unwind a coconut matting. This coconut matting was sufficiently strong to prevent the tanks and other vehicles from sticking in the soft sand and mud.’

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Sinking Of The Bismarck http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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While encouraged by the deeds of the U-boat arm in carrying out its war on trade, there were still too many convoys getting through to their intended destinations for Erich Raeder to be entirely satisfied that Dönitz’s vessels held the only key to unlocking this particular puzzle. In his opinion, it was high time the German surface fleet grasped some of the spoils of war by launching a series of raids on the convoys that were plying the Atlantic route. This was the background to Fall Rheinübung (Case Rhine Exercise) which had been subject to several postponements but finally got underway when the 50,900-ton battleship Bismarck, with the German Fleet Commander Admiral Günther Lütjens aboard, finally left the Baltic port of Gotenhafen (Gdynia) along with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, on the night of 18-19 May. The Bismarck, at 42,000 tons, was the fastest, newest, most powerful battleship in the Navy of Germany and the pride of the German fleet. As with the rest of the German surface fleet early in the war, the role of the Bismarck was seen mainly as that of a commerce raider, its mission to attack British convoys. No less a figure than Winston Churchill put the highest priority on the sinking of the Bismarck, not just to protect the vital convoys, but to destroy a mighty symbol of the Nazi war-making machine.

On May 20, 1941, an intelligence officer in ostensibly neutral Sweden informed the Stockholm- based British naval attaché of a conversation he had had at a cocktail party with a Norwegian official. He had http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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learned that two very large German warships had been sighted steaming toward the Denmark Strait.

Royal Navy command immediately assumed these were the Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. Acting on the tip, HMS Norfolk, a cruiser on patrol in the Denmark Strait, sighted the ships on May 24. They were immediately engaged by the Polish destroyer Piorun. The light battleship (or battle cruiser) HMS Hood and the battleship HMS Prince of Wales soon joined the battle. Tactically, the British vessels were at a disadvantage, because the angle at which they had intercepted the German vessels prevented them from bringing all guns to bear. Worse, the Hood and Prince of Wales divided their fire between the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. The Bismarck, under the highly skilled command of Admiral Günther Lütjens (1889- 1941) and Captain Ernst Lindemann (1894-1941), directed all of its fire against the Hood. A 42,000- ton battleship laid down during World War I and completed in 1920, the Hood was a fleet flagship. Less than 10 minutes after the battle had begun, her inadequate armor having been penetrated by a shell that detonated an ammunition magazine, the Hood exploded and, within two minutes, sank. All but three of its crew of more than 1,400 men, including Group Commander Admiral Lancelot Holland (1887-1941), died. The Prince of Wales, which had sailed before final fitting had been completed (there were civilian contractors on board), was not fully operational and was now also damaged. Its captain broke off the engagement, and, fortunately for his ship, the Bismarck had also been damaged, a torpedo hit from an airplane launched from the aircraft carrier Victorious having opened up a fuel leak. The Bismarck, therefore, did not give chase to the Prince of Wales, but headed for repair facilities at Brest. The Prinz Eugen sailed to the west.

Shocked and enraged by the loss of HMS Hood, the British admiralty, again at the personal urging of Churchill, deployed all available forces to the area in search of the Bismarck. Fortunately for the hunters, the Bismarck briefly broke radio silence, which allowed the British ships to get a fix on it. In a spectacular blunder, however, the pursuers misplotted the Bismarck’s bearings and sent the British Home Fleet, under the command of Admiral Lord John Cronyn Tovey (1885-1971), in exactly the opposite direction from the Bismarck’s flight. Nevertheless, at 10:30 on the morning of May 26, a Catalina flying boat of the Coastal Command sighted the ship. The carrier HMS Ark Royal launched torpedo bombers, which made an attack that disabled the Bismarck’s steering gear. Then finally on the morning of 27 May two battleships (King George V and Rodney) and two heavy cruisers (Devonshire and Norfolk) pumped 2,878 rounds into an already disabled Bismarck and still didn’t manage to sink her. It finally took three more torpedoes from a third heavy cruiser (Dorsetshire) and the efforts of her own scuttling party to finish her off. Only 115 men who survived (out of a crew of 2,222) and both Captain Lindemann and Admiral Lutjens, perished in the attack.

Admiral Tovey was not even present to see the dénouement. Worried about his shortage of fuel and certain that his adversary could not survive, the C-in-C had ordered a ceasefire fifteen minutes before the end and had turned for home with the other warships in his force. His decision to depart the scene without finishing the job brought a strange and controversial ending to what had been an extraordinary operation. What should have been his finest hour instead became something of an anticlimax for him and his men. It was also to wound him in the eyes of Churchill and Pound, both of whom were obsessed with sinking the Bismarck and didn’t appreciate his unwillingness to be on hand http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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when she finally went down.

Evidence recovered in a 1989 salvage dive suggests scuttling was indeed the case. The German surface navy never recovered from the loss of the Bismarck, and it prompted Adolf Hitler personally to direct that capital surface ships be confined to home waters to avoid another loss of such demoralizing magnitude.

Furthe r re adi ng: Ballard, Robert D., and Rick Archbold. The Discovery of the Bismarck: Germany’s Greatest Battleship Surrenders Her Secrets. New York: Warner Books, 1990; Burkard, Freiherr Von Mullenheim-Rechberg. Battleship Bismarck: A Survivor’s Story. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1990; Forester, Cecil Scott. Last Nine Days of the Bismarck. Boston: Little, Brown, 1959; Herzog, Ulrich E. The Battleship Bismarck. Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer, 1990; Kennedy, Ludovic. Pursuit: The Chase and Sinking of the Battleship Bismarck. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2000).

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German Wehrmacht At Cassino

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A l be rt Ke s s e l ri ng, m uc h- de c orate d and s upre m e l y abl e , was appoi nte d O be rbe fe l s habe r Südwe s t by Hi tl e r on 2 1 Nov e m be r 1 9 4 3 . D e s pi te the fi fty- e i ght- ye ar ol d fi e l d m ars hal ’ s ni c knam e of `Sm i l i ng A l be rt’ (for hi s `s unny’ c ounte nanc e ), he was a dange rous adv e rs ary. A fte r the A l l i e s attac ke d hi s v i l l a i n Fras c ati on 8 Se pte m be r, he m ov e d hi s HQ to an unde rground c om pl e x 2 0 m i l e s north of Rom e .

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The e ffi c i e nt Fri dol i n v on Se nge r und Ette rl i n c om m ande d X IV Panz e r Corps throughout the c am pai gn. A prac ti s i ng Chri s ti an and l ay m e m be r of the B e ne di c ti ne O rde r (whos e s pi ri tual hom e was Monte Cas s i no), he s om e how m anage d to re c onc i l e hi s own be l i e fs wi th s e rv i c e to hi s c ountry as a s ol di e r.

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The quality of the German defences rested less on fixed lines and weapons and more on the men manning them and their leaders. German soldiers were a mix, as in any army, of the formidable, the passive and the inept. Their morale varied hugely. Growing disillusionment with Hitler and Berlin meant that many found they were `fighting for the comrade on our right . . . or perhaps for our http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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immediate commander, whom we respected or perhaps because we believed we were fighting for our honour, doing our duty as soldiers up until the last day’, wrote one Wehrmacht colonel.

The most formidable formation was the Luftwaffe’s 1st Fallschirmjäger Division. Following the battle for Crete in May 1941, Hitler refused to authorise any further large-scale airborne operations due to the high casualty rate. His paratroopers subsequently became élite infantry, serving in Russia, North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. From the start, they were a volunteer-only force, with a high drop-out rate in training. Leutnant Hermann Volk, who fought at Cassino, recalled how on the first day of training in Pomerania recruits had to stand to attention and fall forward towards a comrade standing opposite, but without stumbling: `That was a true test of trust, for the many who put out their hands or legs to prevent injury were immediately rejected as unsuitable.’

Designed to land and fight in small groups, with limited prospects of resupply or reinforcement, Fallschirmjäger were trained to be highly resilient, resourceful, act without orders and to expect to tackle overwhelming odds. Though light in artillery, paratroops were reliant on large numbers of automatic weapons and grenades, and usually encountered as small, kampfgruppen (all-arms battle groups) organised from any available troops. They liked the nickname of `Grüne Teufel’ (Green Devils) awarded to them by their Allied opponents in Tunisia and Sicily, on account of their distinctive threequarter-length camouflaged parachute smocks. An excessive esprit de corps was encouraged, and a disproportionate number of them gained high decorations, or fell in battle.

Apart from paratroops and specialised mountain soldiers (Gebirgsjagers), the German divisions in Italy comprised some mobile formations of PanzerGrenadiers, the equivalent of armoured infantry, designed to keep pace with tanks in armoured half-track vehicles and trucks, racing to trouble spots to plug holes torn in the defences. They proved their worth many times over, when for example at Salerno, 15th and 29th PanzerGrenadier Divisions fought in small, cobbled-together battlegroups, alongside tough Fallschirmjäger detachments, and nearly pushed the Allied attackers back into the sea. Other divisions were more static, such as Friedrich Franek’s 44th Hoch und Deutschmeister Division, named after the senior regiment in the old Imperial Austrian army. Absorbed into the Wehrmacht in 1938, it was destroyed at Stalingrad. Because of its history, Hitler (himself an Austrian) decreed that it would be reformed immediately from the 2,000 men who were on leave or in hospital at the time of its annihilation, and it arrived in Italy in July 1943. To the Allies’ disadvantage, other units destroyed at Stalingrad were also reformed and sent to Italy, and most senior battalion, regimental and divisional commanders had much Eastern Front experience behind them, giving them a hard edge that few Allied commanders could match.

By far and away the most dangerous and efficient individual adversary faced by the Allies in Italy was fifty-eight-year-old Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring. Known to his enemies as `Smiling’ Albert for his `sunny’ countenance (though you only crossed him once), Kesselring was by 1943 one of the Third Reich’s most popular and accomplished generals. When he first arrived in Italy, he inherited as his headquarters the splendid Villa Falconieri overlooking Frascati, ten miles south-east of Rome. http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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Belonging to the Italian Air Ministry in 1941, the fine sixteenthcentury building had been owned by a pope and, later, Kaiser Wilhelm II. As his responsibilities grew, Kesselring’s staff spilled over into the nearby – and equally grand – villas Aldobrandini and Grazioli, shared with Field Marshal Wolfram von Richthofen.

Kesselring was more decisive than most Wehrmacht colleagues – and many Allied ones – and managed well the difficult task of commanding at the highest levels of war, where grand strategy and politics meet. Though he wore the uniform of the Luftwaffe, he proved unusually adept at handling the many army formations under his command. As a theatre commander, he was answerable directly to Berlin, and, unusually for the Germans, who tended to run separate and competing land, air and maritime operations, Kesselring commanded all German forces in Italy. After the Sicilian campaign, he managed a remarkable evacuation from Messina under the noses of the Allies, amounting to 40,000 German and 62,000 Italian troops, 9,500 vehicles, 94 guns, 47 tanks, 17,000 tons of ammunition, fuel and stores. The Allies should have taken more note of this feat, which underlined Kesselring’s operational brilliance in the way he achieved superb tri-service and multinational coordination. German losses were minimal and in every way, from their ingenuity to the over confidence of their Allied opponents, this episode resembled a miniature version of the 1940 Dunkirk rescue, and an achievement that did not bode well for the Allies in the months ahead.

Kesselring’s headquarters was run by his brilliant chief of staff, General Siegfried Westphal. One of Hitler’s youngest generals, he was forty-one when promoted Generalmajor in March 1943. In November of the same year, when Kesselring was appointed Commander-in-Chief South-west, Westphal joined him as his principal staff officer, serving until June 1944. Of him, Kesselring wrote: `I could not have wished for a better chief of staff than Westphal, which whom I worked harmoniously in Italy. He knew my idiosyncrasies as I knew his.’ Various accounts make it quite clear that Westphal was the architect of many of the victories attributed to Kesselring, and a reliable hand at turning commanders’ whims into action. Westphal observed of Kesselring that `he wore the uniform of the Luftwaffe, and was therefore in Hitler’s eyes not so “prejudiced” as the Army leaders, and this made his task easier, although Göring missed no opportunity of blackening his name’.

Italy’s departure from the Axis alliance had been preceded by an attempt by the Allies to kill `Smiling Albert’ and destroy his headquarters. At midday on 8 September 1943, using Ultra intelligence, Frascati was heavily bombed by 130 USAAF Flying Fortresses; much of the old town was destroyed and 700 people lost their lives, but Kesselring’s three villas just outside the town survived intact. The Italian air force sent up some thirty fighters to intercept the raid in what proved to be their final sortie before the armistice. Kesselring recounted in his memoirs how a map found in a crashed B-17 accurately pinpointed his HQ. Within days, Kesselring (who assumed the raid was caused by an Italian traitor, not signals intelligence) had moved his entire staff to the safer ten-mile network of concrete passages and chambers excavated by the Italian Army on Monte Soratte, overlooking Sant’Oreste, twenty miles north of Rome. This functioned as Army Group C’s command centre until May 1944.

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Serving under Kesselring, but with equal rank as a fellow field marshal was Baron Wolfram von Richthofen, in charge of Luftflotte 2 – comprising all German aircraft in Italy. It was his colourful cousins, Manfred (the Red Baron) and Lothar, who had acquired fame as air aces during the First World War; Wolfram in fact had served with them, claiming a modest eight victories, in the squadron commanded by Hermann Göring. Kesselring and Richthofen knew each other well, from staff jobs in the early days of the Luftwaffe, when Wolfram was chief of staff to the Condor Legion, operating alongside Italian officers of the Regia Aeronautica and developing close air support doctrine during the Spanish Civil War. He served in Russia, commanding Luftflotte 4 assisting Army Group South, and was promoted to five-star rank in February 1943 before moving to Italy in June the same year.

Promoted in January 1944 to General der Panzertuppen, Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin would be the principal German corps commander on the Cassino front throughout the four battles, commanding a variety of divisions initially from `a decrepit old Palazzo at Roccasecca’, and later from Castell Massimo. With his receding forehead, hooded eyes, thin, angular face, bushy eyebrows and pointed chin, Senger had an unmilitary, professorial air. Born in 1891, Senger became a Rhodes Scholar, reading History and PPE at St John’s College at Oxford in 1912, spoke fluent English, French and Italian, and had many interests outside the military. A lay member of the Benedictine Order (whose spiritual home was Monte Cassino monastery), with a deeply religious mother and family tradition of senior ministerial, legal and military service in the southern German states that preceded the Wilhelmine and Nazi eras, Senger was a practising Christian, who was known never to have subscribed to Nazism, yet managed to reconcile his own beliefs with service to his country as a talented leader and soldier.

Senger thought the carnage and destruction wrought by all sides at Cassino mirrored the intensity of the Great War: `Wandering along the path across this battlefield to reach a battalion command post reminded me of the Somme in 1916; the same surface all covered by clods or ploughed by shelling, no wall, no tree unhurt, no human being to be seen, but hell ablaze with the crack of explosions and that particular smell in the air of hot iron and newly turned soil’, he mused in his diary: `I wonder what will be the verdict of history concerning those of us who are discerning, unbiased, and strong enough to realise that defeat is inevitable and who nevertheless continue to fight and to contribute to the bloodshed.’

Hampered by a lack of real-time intelligence about their opponents that would astound military commanders today, German success in Italy relied greatly on the Wehrmacht’s leadership training.

Oberst Gerhardt Muhm, an officer in 29th Panzer Grenadier Division, recalled that from his first days as a cadet he was told always to `Auftrag wiederholen’ [`repeat the mission'] assigned to him, to make sure he understood it. `And so it was through the entire Italian campaign. I was always given an Auftrag [general task], never a Befehl [specific order].’ Officers were trained to issue and receive clear and concise verbal orders, in preference to longwinded written ones. This proven doctrine, called `mission-tactics’ [Auftrags-taktik], was inherited by the Third Reich and taught to its junior leaders, and brought early triumphs in Poland, France and Russia.

By the time of the Italian campaign, leaders at every level had been trained to expect that they would http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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carry out missions assigned to them, but were left free to use their own intelligence, enterprise and cunning in fulfilling them. The Germans knew that their opponents expected commanders to do the opposite (which they called `orders-tactics’, or Befehls-taktik), where leaders had to comply with an order issued by their superiors, with no chance to fall back on their own initiative or skill. However, by 1943 the Allied armies in Italy, too, were learning slowly that the man on the spot was often best placed to achieve a task, rather than his boss. # For Operation Dickens – third Cassino – Freyberg had envisaged a brisk resumption of the offensive, to be preceded by another massive air raid, this time on the town. The 6th New Zealand Brigade (24th, 25th and 26th Battalions), who had relieved the Americans on the northern outskirts of the town on 22 February, were to withdraw half a mile while a massive bombing raid hit the town, then attack down the road from Caira as soon as the bombers had departed, with 25th Battalion leading and 19th Armoured Regiment in support. At the same time, as we have seen, 4th Indian Division would attack on their right, hoping to seize the hairpin bends of the zigzag road leading to their ultimate objective – the abbey itself.

In devising Dickens, Freyberg was doubtless swayed by personal history. Reaching back to the 1916 days of his VC on the Somme at Beaucourt, or Passchendaele in 1917, he had seen how huge artillery barrages obliterated enemy positions – the 1944 equivalent was aerial bombing. There may also have been an element of score-settling, for Freyberg would also have known, from captured German prisoners and from Ultra decrypts, that the new defenders of Cassino town were Richard Heidrich’s 1st Fallschirmjäger Division. Heidrich, his three regimental commanders – Oberst Karl-Lothar Schulz, of 1st Fallschirmjäger Regiment occupying the town; Ludwig Heilmann of the 3rd Regiment around the monastery; and Erich Walther, leading the 4th Regiment in the hills beyond – his artillery brigade commander, Oberstleutnant Bruno Schram and many other senior members of the division were veterans of the 1941 campaign on Crete, which Freyberg and his forces had so famously defended at a cost to the Kiwis alone of 300 dead and 1,800 captured. It is impossible to believe there was not an element of a `return match’ in Freyberg’s mind. Freyberg was also under personal strain for on 14 February 1944 news had come that Freyberg’s son Paul, an officer in the Grenadier Guards, had been captured at Anzio. (He would later escape with friendly partisans helping him into the neutral sanctuary of Vatican City, from where he was freed when Rome was liberated in June.)

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Posted in German, German Specforce, Land Battle, WWI I |

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JUNKERS Ju 52/3mg3e

Junke rs Ju 5 2 /3 m g5 e fl oatpl ane . Note the addi ti onal gun pos i ti on i n the top of the c oc kpi t; the gunne r s tandi ng i n be twe e n the pi l ots .

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“ I di s c ov e re d the v e ry re al Junke rs ) pos s e s s e d by the W e hrm ac ht as a whol e , and be gan http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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to appre c i ate the fac t that thi s trans port had probabl y pl aye d a gre ate r rol e i n s hapi ng the c ours e of W orl d W ar Two than any c om bat ae ropl ane .” CA PTA IN ERIC `W INKLE’ B RO W N Fairly widely recognised as the world’s most efficient national airline at the end of the 1920s (while others struggled to survive the great depression), Deutsche Lufthansa flew highly competitive services throughout Europe using a heterogeneous fleet of aircraft largely comprising designs progressively developed from Professor Hugo Junkers’ original J 1 all-metal monoplane of 1915. The great majority of these early aircraft (the J 10, F 13, A 20, F 24, W 33, W 34, Ju 46 and Ju 52) were single-engined, low-wing monoplanes, but in 1924 there appeared a three-engined airliner, the G 23, powered by a 195 hp (145 kW) Junkers L.2 and two 100 hp (75 kW) Mercedes engines. It is thought that, as a result of Versailles Treaty restrictions imposed on German aircraft manufacture, this prototype was produced at Junkers’ Fili factory near Moscow with production of about nine aircraft (as well as that of the much more numerous G 24) was subsequently undertaken in Sweden. The G 24, usually powered by three (280/310 hp) (209/231 kW) Junkers L.5 inline engines, served in numerous configurations and with a number of airlines, including Lufthansa, which retained them in service until 1933-34.

1926 was a busy year for the Junkers concern, with two new designs (the G 31 tri-motor transport and the W 33/34) being the most important to fly. The former was a beefier version of the successful G 24, and the latter an excellent single-engined transport which was built in large numbers. Almost at once, the Junkers designers embarked on a new but considerably enlarged single-engined transport, the Ju 52, which embodied the cumulative experience of earlier designs and was primarily intended for freight carrying. Like its predecessors, it was of standard Junkers all-metal construction with corrugated, load-sustaining duralumin skinning, and featured the patented Junkers full-span double wing. Five aircraft were built, of which four underwent development with various powerplants in Germany and one (CF-ARM) went to Canada.

The original Ju 52 Ju 52 started life as a single-engine aircraft, designed as a cargo transport and having a 590 cubic ft (16.7 cubic m) cabin capable of accommodating a 4,067 lbs (1845 kg) payload. The first Ju 52ba prototype (D-1974) flew on 13 October 1930 powered by an 800 hp (597 kW) Junkers L.88 engine. Extensive flight testing was carried out before the prototype was re-engined with a 755 hp (563 kW) BMW VIIau engine, in which form it was redesignated Ju 52be. The second prototype was tested with several engines, including the 755 hp (563 kW) BMW VII (Ju 52de), the 750 hp (559 kW) Armstrong Siddeley Leopard radial (Ju 52di) and finally the 750 hp (559 kW) Junkers Jumo 204 diesel (Ju 52do). Despite its single engine, the Ju 52 was able to carry 15-17 passengers when required.

Production deliveries began with the third aircraft, but only six single-engine Ju 52s were built before the company decided to evaluate a three-engine configuration. The Junkers design team, under Dipl Ing Ernst Zindel, undertook work to adapt the airframe of what would have been the seventh Ju 52. It was converted to take three 550 hp (410 kW) Pratt & Whitney Hornet 9 cylinder radial engines, http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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becoming designated Ju 52/3mce. When first flown in April 1931 it was such a success that the singleengine version was discontinued in favour of the Ju 52/3m (Dreimotoren, or three motor). The first customer was Lloyd Aereo Boliviano which received a total of seven Ju 52/3mde aircraft beginning in 1932.

Subsequent deliveries were made to Finland, Sweden and Brazil, as well as to Deutsche Lufthansa.

Ultimately, Ju 52/3ms flew with airlines in Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, China, Colombia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, France, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lebanon, Mozambique, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and Uruguay. Powerplants included Hispano-Suiza, BMW, Junkers Jumo, Bristol Pegasus, Pratt & Whitney Hornet and Wasp engines. Commercial Ju 52/3ms delivered to Bolivia were employed as milita transports towards the end of the Gran Chaco war of 1932-35.

From late in 1932, Ju 52/3ms were delivered to Lufthansa, with D-2201 ‘Boelcke’ and D-2202 ‘Richthofen’ inaugurating the airline’s Berlin-London and Berlin-Rome services before the end of that year. In due course, no fewer than 230 Ju 52/3ms were registered with Deutsche Lufthansa, continuing to fly commercial services to Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey almost to the end World War II. Like its predecessor, the Ju 52/3m could operate also on skis or floats, and orders were placed by Sweden’s AB Aerotransport and Finland’s Aero O/Y for floatplane versions. Wheel landing gear was fitted to the otherwise similar Ju 52/3mce aircraft ordered by Deutsche Lufthansa for delivery from the spring of 1932, and it was with this airline that the type began to make a name for itself.

Contemporary Lufthansa records quote the price as Reichsmarks 275,000, and with 15-17 passengers on board the Junkers had a cruising speed of 132 mph (212 km/h). Large fixed flaps running the whole length of the wing trailing edge cut the landing speed to 59 mph (95 km/h), enabling the Ju 52/3m to use small airfields, a factor particularly useful to airlines operating in South America. An oxygen supply system was monitored by the radio operator and could be switched on at passengers’ request.

Production of the Ju 52/3m built up quickly and by the end of 1935, 97 were in service with a number of airlines, including 51 with Lufthansa.

Meanwhile, the military potential of the type was being examined by the clandestine Luftwaffe, who considered ordering it as a stop-gap until Dornier Do 11 bombers were delivered. Problems with the latter could not be satisfactorily overcome, however, so orders were placed for Ju 52/3mge aircraft with three BMW 132A-1 (license built Pratt & Whitney Hornets) radial engines rated at 660 hp (492 kW) each and later for the improved Ju 52/3mg3e machines with 725 hp (541 kW) BMW 132A-3 engines and other improvements. Bomb-release mechanism was installed in three bomb bays, such an arrangement being necessary because the wing centre-section and main spars did not permit a single bay. It was also necessary to develop vertical bomb storage magazines since space between the spars did not allow horizontal stowage. A fairing containing a bomb-aiming device, fuse-setting mechanism and release lever was fitted below the fuselage, and hinged to the fairing was a http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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retractable ‘dustbin’ installation for a machine-gun, which could be winched up into the fuselage for take-off and landing. The military model also had two additional fuel tanks in the wings, plus an improved fuel-jettison system, which when experience proved that the latter was never used it was later removed.

The Ju 52/3m had its first taste of military action when 20 Luftwaffe aircraft were flown to Seville in 1936 to support the Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War. They were used in a ferrying role, bringing back 10,000 Moorish troops from Morocco to Spain. At the end of the year a special air force, the Legion Condor, was formed, comprising Luftwaffe personnel and aircraft operating in Spanish Nationalist uniforms and markings. The Ju 52s were employed as bombers until replaced a year later

by Do 17s and He 111s. Their final operation was flown in March 1939, and the Ju 52 had flown throughout the Civil War, amassing some 13,000 operational hours and dropping more than 6,000 tons of bombs. Only eight were lost, five being shot down and the others destroyed on the ground.

The type had proved its reliability in action and was blooded for the greater conflict about to begin.

Meanwhile, Ju 52/3ms were continuing in production for civil airlines, with whom the type remained in service until after the end of World War II. More than 230 were registered to Lufthansa, although some were no doubt passed on to other customers, including the Luftwaffe. In the period 1934-5, 450 were delivered to the Luftwaffe, and in 1939 that force received 593. It is of interest to note that three Ju 52/3mg4e aircraft were delivered to the Swiss air force for transport work, and two of these were still on active strength until 1981 (with the third preserved for a museum) when they were finally retired. The two aircraft continue to fly giving sight-seeing tours around Europe.

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the Luftwaffe took over 59 of Lufthansa’s fleet of Ju 52/3ms and the type was used extensively in airborne assault operations and supply missions. As German troops moved across Europe, overrunning Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and France, the Ju 52/3m was seen in ever increasing numbers in supply and paratrooping roles. At the beginning of the Norwegian operation 571 Ju 52/3m transports were available in addition to other types, being used on 9 April 1940 in the Luftwaffe’s first major airborne operation.

After Norway had been occupied, a second major airborne assault began against the Low Countries, on 10 May 1940. Once again the Ju 52/3m was in the thick of operations, with 430 aircraft, but this time much stiffer opposition was encountered and almost 40 per cent of the transports were lost. A total of 162 Ju 52/3m transports was shot down, although some of these were repaired later as German land forces moved forward and captured the battle zones.

With the greater percentage of the west coast of Europe in Axis hands the British stepped up their offensive against German shipping, many mines being laid in coastal waters at the entrance to estuaries and rivers along much of the occupied coast. In a bid to help counter this a number of minesweeping groups were formed with specially adapted Ju 52/3m(MS) aircraft. These had large dural rings fitted beneath the fuselage and braced below the engines, the hoops energized by an auxiliary http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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motor in the fuselage to deal with magnetic mines. Other Ju 52/3m aircraft each carried a container with small explosive charges to detonate other types of mines. It was the practice to fly in groups of three aircraft at about 124 mph (200 km/h), with the altitude some 130 ft (40 m) above the estimated level of the mine. While effective in this role, it was extremely hazardous to both plane and crew.

Nine subsequent military versions with progressive improvements included the Ju 52/3mg4e with internal equipment changes and a tailwheel replacing the tailskid, which was followed by the considerably improved Ju 52/3mg5e that introduced 830 hp (619 kW) BMW 132T engines, exhaust heat for de-icing, interchangeable wheel, float or ski landing gear and more advanced radio equipment. The similar J u 52/3mg6e had wheeled landing gear as standard, and simplified radio, the Ju 52/3mg7e added an autopilot and a large loading hatch plus, in the similar Ju 52/3mg8e, an additional cabin roof hatch. Late-production examples of this last aircraft introduced improved BMW 132Z engines. In early production form the Ju 52/3mg9e was almost identical, but late construction had strengthened landing gear and glider towing equipment as standard, as did the Ju 52/3mg10e which differed only by being capable of float operations. Penultimate variant was the Ju 52/3mg12e which introduced BMW 132L powerplant, some of these production aircraft being completed to airline standards and supplied to Lufthansa under the designation Ju 52/3m12. Final version was the Ju 52/3mg14e, similar to late production examples of the Ju 52/3mg9e, but with improved armour protection for the pilot and heavier defensive armament.

The virtual failure of the Italian campaign against Greece and Yugoslavia, together with the build-up of British forces on Crete, made it necessary for Germany to take action in the Balkans, and on 20 May 1941 Operation ‘Mercury’ began. It was the Luftwaffe’s greatest airborne assault and involved the landing of 22,750 men and their supplies on Crete. Of these, 10,000 were parachuted in, 750 were carried in 80 DFS 230 gliders, 5,000 were landed by Ju 52/3m, and 7,000 were seaborne. The attack took place in two waves, and 493 Ju 52/3m transports were used. Stiff resistance was encountered from Allied troops that included Australians and New Zealanders, and although the Luftwaffe had complete air superiority the German losses were heavy, with 4,500 men lost and 271 Ju 52/3m transports destroyed or seriously damaged. This was the last mission on which German paratroops were employed in large numbers in the airborne role.

The Ju 52/3m force also received severe mauling at the hands of the RAF during 1942-3 when it attempted to relieve German forces operating in North Africa, the biggest single loss occurring on 18 April 1943 when 52 Junkers from about 100 were shot down near Cape Bon. Ju 52/3m aircraft were also operating on the Eastern Front in the USSR and suffering heavy losses; in 1941 these exceeded production, with 451 being delivered and more than 500 lost. This high casualty rate demanded action, and a new production line was laid down at the Amiot factory at Colombes, with arrangements being made with a number of sub-contractors in the Paris area. The first French-assembled aircraft was accepted in June 1942 with 40 more being delivered in the next six months, and 321 in the following year.

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When German forces were surrounded at Stalingrad in 1942-3, an attempt was made to fly in supplies, but the Luftwaffe lost 490 transports, of which 266 were Ju 52/3m transports. Assembly of the Ju 52/3m was arranged with PIRT (Pestszentlörinc Ipari Telepek or Pestszentlörinc Industrial Workshops) in Budapest from German-supplied components, and the first of 26 was completed in January 1944. The Luftwaffe received four and the balance went to the Hungarian air force.

Production of the Ju 52/3m ended in Germany in mid-1944, and while figures vary it seems likely that the total number built in Germany and France from 1932 until 1944 was 4,845. Post-war, the French built more than 400 for Air France and their air force, by which the type was designated AAC.1. CASA (Construcciones Aeronáuticas S.A.) built 170 in Spain for the air force under the designation CASA 352, and it is largely these aircraft, surplus to Spanish military requirements, that have begun to appear in museums and private collections. Ten aircraft were reconditioned by Short Bros and Harland in Belfast, and entered service on 18 November 1946 with British European Airways as (G-AHOC) and (GAHOL) on the Croydon-Liverpool-Belfast service.

Called “Tante Ju” (Aunt Ju) by the Germans, but also known unofficially by the Allies as “Iron Annie” or the “Corrugated Coffin”, The Ju 52/3m was an extremely rugged and reliable aircraft. The backbone of the Luftwaffe transport units, its service life extended well beyond the end of the war. Seven aircraft are still airworthy today. (D-AQUI) of Lufthansa, three of Ju-Air in Switzerland (with one more flyable but static in a museum) and (Zs-depr) of South African Airways, (N352JU) of the Confederate Air Force and (CG-ARM) of the Western Canada Aviation Museum which also fly a single engine (CF-ARM) Ju 52/1m. One more is currently in the final stages of assembly in Portugal, after restoration in Norway.

Not a bad record for an aircraft over 70 years old.

The Cabi n When fitted with seats, the Ju 52/3m could carry up to 18 passengers, with two rows of single seats separated by a single aisle. By removing the seats, the cabin could hold a surprising amount of cargo.

Entry to the cabin was made through a door on the port side. This could be opened in flight to permit para-dropping of either supplies or troops. On the starboard side was a large cargo loading door, with upward and downward-hinging flaps. The space behind the cabin door was often used for cargo storage or provided the stand for the gunner. Behind the gunner, an inspection tunnel with reinforced floorway provided access to the control linkages under the tail. The Ju 52 was originally envisaged as a bomber/transport, carrying weapons in two internal bays. As such, it was used during the Spanish Civil War, while transport Ju 52/3ms were later used as bombers by the French in Indo-China. World War II Luftwaffe use was largely restricted to the transport role, but until 1943 the Ju 52 units retained their KGrzbV appellation, this standing for Kampfgruppe zur besondern Verwendung, or ‘bomber wing for special purposes’. The large aerial above the cockpit was a mast for the single wire aerial which ran to the tail. Behind it, a loop aerial served the direction-finding equipment.

The W i ngs and Tai l U ni t http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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A feature of Junkers designs of the period was the detached flap/aileron assembly positioned below and behind the main wing structure. The ailerons drooped at low speed to act as partial flaps which, together with the normal slotted inboard flaps, gave the type tremendous STOL capability. The entire wing could be detached from the fuselage and was attached by eight ball-and-socket joints. Both tail and tailplane were built, like the wing, on a multi-spar structure. The elevators (and ailerons) featured distinctive balancing horns to lighten control forces.

The U nde rc arri age The Ju 52/3m had a fixed undercarriage of immense strength, although its narrow track made it prone to bouncing from side to side. The 3mg5e version had provisions for wheel, ski or even float undercarriage to match the operational environment in which it found itself. Early Ju 52/3ms had a tailskid but, due to the poor nature of Germany’s military airfields, a tailwheel was introduced from the 3mg4e onwards. This greatly improved manoeuvrability on the ground. The Ju 52/3m was factoryfitted with large spats to streamline the mainwheels, but in the operational environment most of these were removed, as they rapidly clogged with sand or mud.

The Powe rpl ant The Ju 52/3mg5e was powered by a trio of closely cowled 830 hp (619 kW) BMW 132T-2 9-cylinder aircooled radial engines. The two outboard engines were ‘toed-out’, or in other words, were set at an angle to the main thrust line. This reduced the considerable yaw if one of the wing engines was lost, by pulling the aircraft away from the dead engine. The nacelles housed the engine oil tanks above the wing leading edge. Filler caps above them served the oil (forward) and fuel (rear) tanks. The fuel was held in wing tanks, positioned inboard of the engines. Exhaust gas from the engines was collected by annular ducts and ejected below and to the sides of each engine. These caused characteristic stains on the fuselage and wings, but kept the filler caps and cockpit area clean. The 3mg5e introduced exhaust de-icing.

Construction: Built initially as an airliner, then series production for the Luftwaffe; the last wartime deliveries being made in mid-1944. Also built by Amiot in France from 1941. Post-war Amiot built 415 as the AAC. 1 Toucan, and CASA in Spain built 166 CASA 352s up to the mid-1950s. Total production came to just over 5,400 units.

First Flight: October 13, 1930 as a single-engined transport, powered by an 800hp (596kW) Junkers L88 12-cylinder `vee’ piston engine. Redesigned, it first flew in its three-engined format in April 1932 – hence the /3mg (tri-motor) suffix to the designation.

Powerplant: Three 725hp (540kW) BMW 132A-3 radial piston engines.

Dimensions: Span 95ft 111/2in (29.24m) Length 62ft 0in (18.89m) Height 18ft 21/2in (5.54m) Wing area 1,189ft2 (110.45m2). http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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Weights: Empty 12,610lb (5,719kg) Max all-up 23,146lb (10,499kg).

Performance: Max speed 165mph (265km/h) at sea level. Service ceiling 19,360ft (5,900m) Typical range 620 miles (997km).

Armament: Bomber mode: One 7.9mm machine-gin in dorsal position, one 7.9mm machine-gun in semi-retractable ventral `dustbin’ turret. Up to 1,100lb (498kg) of bombs. Transport role: One 7.9mm machine-gin in dorsal position.

Crew: Four/Five. Accommodation for up to 24 paratroops.

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Wingate’s Memorandum

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Em pl oyi ng hi s abundant s trate gi c i ni ti ati v e to the ful l , he s uc c e e de d i n outwi tti ng and de s troyi ng an e v e n l arge r arm y unde r G e ne ral Ki m ura al ong the Irrawaddy be twe e n Me i kti l a and Mandal ay i n the s pri ng of 1 9 4 5 , Ki m ura hi m s e l f de s c ri bi ng Sl i m ’ s ope rati on as the ‘ m as te rs troke of al l i e d s trate gy’ .

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LINK By the end of 1944 Slim’s forces were powerfully poised on the edge of the central plain of Burma and the Japanese were retreating rapidly. Their speedy retreat posed him a new problem. The drier central plain would give added scope for his armour and motorized units and provide more open targets for the almost unchallenged air forces, but Slim needed – as he had done at Imphal – to draw the Japanese forces into battle and destroy them. He did not want to have to pursue them right through Burma and into Siam or Malaya. He therefore devised a plan which has been rightly praised as his most brilliant concept as a high-level commander. The plan centred on two important towns, Mandalay and Meiktila, and the railway, road and the River Irrawaddy that connected them. Clearly the Japanese would defend Mandalay as stoutly as possible. Slim’s strategem was to have powerful forces advancing towards Mandalay from the north, doing everything possible to convince the Japanese that this was the main assault – including a phoney Corps Headquarters sending real messages.

Simultaneously he would send equally powerful forces on a lengthy detour to the west through the Chin Hills, to emerge from the jungle and the hills in the area of Pakokku and then to strike at Meiktila. From there his forces would wheel round to the north and east to intercept and destroy the main Japanese forces before they could retreat from Mandalay. http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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This, roughly, is what happened, but there is an interesting link back to the controversial Chindit issue. In Defeat into Victory Slim wrote, `My new plan, the details of which were worked out in record time by my devoted staff…had as its intention the destruction of the main Japanese forces in the area of Mandalay.’ He then added the details, that IV Corps would move secretly up the Gangaw Valley, appear at Pakokku and strike violently at Meiktila. When questioned he later confirmed that this plan emerged in discussions with his staff.

At no stage, either in his book or in subsequent discussion, did Slim reveal that on 13 March 1944 he had received a memorandum from Wingate suggesting that the next major Chindit initiative after Broadway, assuming that IV Corps had made a substantial advance, would be to land a brigade at Pakokku, seize Meiktila and trap the Japanese forces before they could retreat from Mandalay. This lack of openness by Slim is well known to the Chindits, and is mentioned by Louis Allen in Burma The Longest War (p. 398). This raises the gravest implications. Not only has Slim claimed the whole of the Meiktila plan as his own when in fact the idea originated with Wingate, but, having had this idea presented to him in March 1944, instead of withdrawing the Chindits after their success at Broadway in order to use them in another ideal situation at Meiktila, he handed them over to Stilwell to be used as normal infantry. The Chindits were never again used as Long Range Penetration Forces; instead, a few months later – after sustaining more than 50 per cent casualties in the slaughter at Mogaung – they were disbanded. Here, clearly, is an added offshoot of the tragic death of Wingate. He would surely have succeeded in arguing his case when, after Broadway, he had Churchill’s personal backing for the Chindits to be used again in the role for which they were armed and trained.

Before Operation Capital got under way, skilful preparations were made by the Royal Engineers and other services – helped by bulldozers, elephants, boat-building operations and by the creation of airstrips – to prepare a route for IV Corps to move secretly on their 300-mile trek into the Chin Hills jungle, and then to emerge undetected near Pakokku. The 17th Indian Division, still led by Cowan, and now extensively retrained and reequipped, took the lead in this venture.

While IV Corps was setting off into the jungle in early January 1945, XXXIII Corps advanced rapidly and captured Shwebo from their old adversaries, 31st Division. From Shwebo 19th Division, under its successful and aggressive commander, Major-General Pete Rees, drove eastwards and crossed the Irrawaddy well to the north of Mandalay. The 2nd Division and 20th Indian Division also made difficult and opposed crossings of the river which in places was over two miles wide, and provided a formidable obstacle when the far bank was held by determined defenders. Sensing their ultimate defeat, the Japanese soldiers did not give up, but rather fought on until every single defender was killed. For weeks these difficult battles continued until by early March, 19th Division was approaching Mandalay. This was a difficult obstacle, and included Fort Dufferin, built by the British in the 19th century, with a deep, wide moat and walls 30 feet thick. On 9 March Rees gave the first of several broadcasts for the BBC with a running commentary on the different actions he could see from his command post within sight of Fort Dufferin. The three divisions attacking Mandalay succeeded in deceiving Kimura into thinking that they were the major attacking force, and any units farther south http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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just a feint.

The move by IV Corps via Pakokku to the fringe of Meiktila proceeded smoothly even though it involved crossing the Irrawaddy in the face of the enemy. All the divisions had hard-fought actions and several near disasters caused by ill-prepared boats, by outboard engines breaking down in the middle of a 2-mile-wide river and by tough Japanese opposition from the far bank.

On 28 February, when XXXIII Corps was already hammering at the suburbs of Mandalay, Cowan launched a well co-ordinated attack on Meiktila. He had 5th Indian Division and 255th Tank Brigade in support, together with motorized units from his division, and additional massed armour and artillery.

Cowan surrounded the town and established road-blocks on the main exits. The battle for Meiktila lasted for four days of non-stop fighting with no quarter given. The Japanese had been ordered to defend the city to the last man, and they did virtually that. When they were finally overcome, more than 2,000 corpses were counted, but it was estimated that there were as many again in the bunkers, in the cellars, in the lakes or just blown to pieces by the aerial bombardment. Having been surrounded, the garrison was almost completely wiped out, and a very large stores area – the supply base for two Japanese armies – was captured. Slim, who was present at the battle, considered that, `The capture of Meiktila was a magnificent feat of arms.’

Too late in the day the Japanese reacted to the loss of Meiktila, which was a disastrous blow to their whole position in central Burma, and they put in a series of strong counter-attacks during the following week (6-13 March). They assembled 18th Division from north Burma and a number of units from 53rd Division, 49th Division and the sorry survivors of 33rd Division which had just received another mauling at the hands of their old rivals, 17th Indian Division. With the Indian and British forces now defending Meiktila against a prolonged Japanese counter-attack, which lasted more than a week, the fighting was as close and severe as ever. For example, as units of 5th Indian Division flew into Meiktila airfield their Dakotas came under fire from Japanese automatic and small-arms fire. The battle of Meiktila was one of Cowan’s great victories, but he was under considerable stress because he had just heard that his son had been killed in the attack on Mandalay.

Because of their serious defeats and setbacks at Mandalay and Meiktila, the Japanese tried urgently to regroup their forces. General Honda was ordered to take over 18th and 49th Divisions – called 33rd Army – and to recapture Meiktila at all costs. He thought this plan was foolish, but loyally undertook the task, and on 22 March organized a two-division attack. The first attack was bloodily repulsed, with more than 200 men killed, though the Japanese gunners, skilfully sited and well camouflaged, did considerable damage and destroyed about 50 tanks. Overall, in an operation which lasted several days, while knocking out 50 tanks, they lost more than 50 guns and sustained 2,500 casualties. Honda realized that he could not continue to sustain losses at that level, and he pulled back ready to adopt delaying tactics as he moved south. At the same time, the Japanese 15th Army – made up of the devastated remnants of 31st and 33rd Divisions – were retreating rapidly towards Toungoo. As they fled they were ambushed and attacked by Gracey’s 20th Division which had driven swiftly south from http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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Mandalay. They wrought havoc on the so-called 15th Army – killing more than 3,000 men and capturing large quantities of guns and equipment. These decimated Japanese units, though partly reinforced, contained most of the survivors of the battles at Kohima, at Bishenpur, the Shenam Saddle and Mount Molvom.

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About Ronnie Olsthoorn Aviation Art The B. C. E./C. E. Dating System

RE CE N T P O S TS

A “Predator” is born April 13, 2014 Battle of Barfleur-La Hogue, May 19-24/May 29-June 4, 1692. April 13, 2014 Germany’s Last Offensives I April 13, 2014 Germany’s Last Offensives II April 13, 2014 William’s British Army April 12, 2014 EAVESDROPPERS – moonbounce and Hen House April 12, 2014 The Warsaw Pact Redux April 12, 2014 End of Lionheart April 12, 2014 Fall of Manila, 1942 April 11, 2014 Etienne Marie Antoine Champion Nansouty, comte de (1768–1815) April 11, 2014

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Alternate Endings — Ten Hypothetical Events That Would Have Changed the Outcome of World War Two April 11, 2014

By George Dvorsky Decisions during wartime are monumental things. Each move and countermove has the potential to change the course of history. Here are ten shocking ways the Second World War could have unfolded differently than it did. 1. Germany … Continue reading → Achtung Sturmtruppen! — Ten Amazing Facts About German Stormtroopers of World War One April 9, 2014 The Kaiser’s 1918 Spring Offensive on the Western Front, codenamed Operation Michael, could be fairly described as the early 20th Century equivalent of “Shock and Awe”. Shortly after 4 a.m. on March 21, more than 6,500 German heavy guns and … Continue reading → Home Made Arsenal – Nine Ingenious Weapons of the Polish Underground April 7, 2014 In August 1944, nearly 20,000 fighters from Poland's underground Armia Krajowa (AK) or “Home Army”, launched a series of coordinated assaults on that country’s Nazi occupation force. The latesummer offensive, which targeted Wehrmacht and SS units stationed in and around … Continue reading → Illustrations Of Custer’s Last Stand Show U.S. History from a Different Perspective April 4, 2014 Custer’s legendary ‘last stand’ at the Little Bighorn in Montana is one of the most iconic and controversial events of the American west. The June 25 to 26, 1876 battle between elements of the U.S. 7th Cavalry and more than … Continue reading → Into the Jaws of Death — Britain’s Operation Chariot and the Raid on Saint-Nazaire April 3, 2014

By Robert Lyman In March 1942 British Commandos and the Royal Navy launched one of the Second World War’s most spectacular raids, on the German-held French Atlantic port of Saint-Nazaire. It was one of the top five British raids on … Continue reading → http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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The Prussian/German command system stressed allowing subordinates maximum liberty within the limits of a mission. An officer who stuck too closely to textbook solutions in war games or maneuvers was likely to be informed that His Majesty the King of Prussia and German Emperor needed neither parrots nor phonographs.

MILITA RY HIS TO RY BLO G G IN G A BO UT THE BA TTLE FIE LD S IN CE 200

Book Review of Dynasty and Piety: Archduke Albert (1598-1621) and Habsburg Political Culture in an Age of Religious Wars June 28, 2013 Originally posted on International History:Luc Duerloo. Dynasty and Piety: Archduke Albert (1598-1621) and Habsburg Political Culture in an Age of Religious Wars. Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2012. ISBN 9780754669043. Notes. Figures. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvii, 592. $154.95 (Hardcover) The rule of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella over the Habsburg Netherla […]

William Young What’s the matter with the Marlborough historiography? June 24, 2013 Originally posted on Skulking in Holes and Corners:Given recent events, I decided it was time to explicitly take on the dominant Marlborough historiography. To be honest, I don’t particularly want to – at least not this particular aspect – since I’d thought we were well beyond this. But I guess I was wrong. A… William Young Book Review of Austria’s Wars of Emergence, 1683-1797: War, State, and Society in the Habsburg Monarchy June 14, 2013 Originally posted on International History:Michael Hochedlinger. Austria’s Wars of Emergence, 16831797: War, State, and Society in the Habsburg Monarchy. Modern Wars in Perspective series. London: Longman, 2003. ISBN 9780582290846. Tables. Maps. Bibliographical notes. Index. Pp. xviii, 466. There http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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are many surveys of Austria and the Habsburg monarchy coverin […]

William Young Norwich University creates online infographic on significant naval battles June 13, 2013 Check out this interesting infographic, titled “The Largest Naval Sea Battles in Military History,” which presents some facts related to some of the most important battles in naval history. It is a big image, but you can share it on the various social media as well. Norwich University is a pretty good school and offers […]

Daniel Sauerwein Book Review of Nazi Foreign Policy, 1933-1941: The Road to Global War May 31, 2013 Originally posted on International History:Christian Leitz. Nazi Foreign Policy, 1933-1941: The Road to Global War. The Third Reich Series. London: Routledge, 2004. ISBN 0-415-17423-6. Notes. Bibliography.

Index. Pp. 192. $136.00. The study of German foreign policy leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe has continued to interest and fas […]

William Young

THE HIS TO RY BLO G

Canoe thought to be 250 years is 1,000 years old April 12, 2014 New radiocarbon dating results have found that a Native American dugout canoe discovered in Lake Minnetonka southwest of Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1934 is nearly 1,000 years old, making it the oldest dugout canoe ever found in Minnesota. It was thought to date to around 1750 and even though it was in excellent condition it […] livius drusus Iron Age mint found in Leicester April 11, 2014 An archaeological survey on the site of future construction in Leicester, central England, has unearthed evidence of an Iron Age mint. More than 20 Iron Age coin molds have been discovered at the Blackfriars site since excavations began in January, so large a number that it strongly suggests the site was a mint used by […] livius drusus National Museum’s Viking Ireland video series April 10, 2014 The National Museum of Ireland has put together a wonderful video series based on their Viking Ireland exhibit. It’s a tour of Viking history in Ireland as seen through some of the artifacts on display.

Each of the eight videos is short and eminently digestible, a sort of capsule history on topics like Viking swords […] livius drusus Oldest message in a bottle found by Baltic fishermen April 9, 2014 When Konrad Fischer, skipper of the Maria I, found a brown bottle in his net while fishing in the Baltic off the city of Kiel in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, he figured it was just a common http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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beer bottle and went to throw it back into the sea. One of his crew members […] livius drusus 18th c. gilded French salon reopens in San Francisco April 8, 2014 After 233 years, eight moves including one transatlantic and one transcontinental, and a meticulous 18month conservation, the Salon Doré reopened Saturday at the Legion of Honor museum in San Francisco. The long strange journey of this gilded room began in 1781 when it was created as the formal receiving room for the Hôtel de La […] livius drusus Hasan Niyazi, a fine blogger and even finer person April 6, 2014 I first encountered Hasan Niyazi’s blog Three Pipe Problem in May of 2010 after he emailed me through the contact form. He said lovely things about my blog, a kindness that I would come to learn was entirely characteristic of this generous, open-minded, curious and warm man, and asked me for feedback on his own […] livius drusus Byzantine monks used asbestos under wall paintings April 6, 2014 Ancient sources tell us that asbestos was used in antiquity for its fireproof properties primarily in textiles and candle wicks. The 2nd century Greek geographer Pausanias in Book I, Chapter 26 of his Description of Greece describes a golden lamp in the temple of Athena that burned all year on a single wick made of […] livius drusus Forster Flag, oldest known American flag, for sale April 5, 2014 The 1775 Forster Flag, the oldest surviving American flag known, will be going under the hammer at New York City’s Doyle auction house on April 9th. It’s not the Star and Stripes we know as the American flag today, of course. It’s a red silk flag with 13 short white stripes in the canton (upper […] livius drusus New York Public Library puts 20,000 maps online April 4, 2014 The New York Public Library, in addition to having a glorious Beaux Arts main building, has a vast collection of historic images. More than 800,000 images are available for perusal in its Digital Collections, an invaluable resource on the history of New York. I would have made much use of it in this blog but […] livius drusus Anglo-Saxon ring engraved with Christian and pagan symbols April 3, 2014 The Saffron Walden Museum in Essex has acquired a rare Anglo-Saxon gold ring engraved with a combination of Christian and pagan symbols. The ring was discovered in 2011 by metal detectorist Tony Carter in Uttlesford, Essex, and was declared treasure. In order to buy the ring and four other gold and silver artifacts discovered in […] livius drusus

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THE D E A D LIE S T BLO G G E R: MILITA RY HIS TO RY P A G E

LIEGNITZ, 1241: THE MONGOL TERROR REACHES POLAND April 10, 2014 cGenghis Khan (properly pronounced, “Chinghis”) was one of history’s greatest conquerors. After uniting the nomadic tribes north of the Great Wall, he created the most mobile army the world has ever seen. To this day, no armies have traveled further … Continue reading → barrycjacobsen PHALANX vs LEGION: CLOSING THE DEBATE March 24, 2014 With the popularity of such films as Alexander, 300, and its sequel 300: Rise of Empire a broader audience is being introduced (sometimes for the first time) to the warriors of ancient Greece. These films are generally poor educational tools, … Continue reading → barrycjacobsen 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE – REVIEW March 21, 2014 2006′s blockbuster film 300 introduced theater-going audiences to Frank Miller’s artistic envisioning of the Battle of Thermopylae. It was a world that bore only a tangential similarity to the historical reality of Ancient Greece and the Persian Wars; well documented by such … Continue reading → barrycjacobsen DIADOCHI: MACEDONIAN GAME OF THRONES (PART 7) March 10, 2014 (This is the seventh in a series concerning the Wars of the Diadachi. Part 1 can be read here, and includes comprehensive biographies of the players in this drama. It is strongly advised that you start there before reading on here. Stay tuned … Continue reading → barrycjacobsen DIADOCHI: MACEDONIAN GAME OF THRONES (PART 6) February 25, 2014 (This is the sixth in a series concerning the Wars of the Diadachi. Part 1 can be read here, and includes comprehensive biographies of the players in this drama. It is strongly advised that you start there before reading on here. Stay tuned … Continue reading → barrycjacobsen DIADACHI: MACEDONIAN GAME OF THRONES (PART 5) February 15, 2014 (This is the fifth in a series concerning the Wars of the Diadachi. Part 1 can be read here, and includes comprehensive biographies of the players in this drama. It is strongly advised that you start there before reading on here. Stay tuned … Continue reading → barrycjacobsen DIADACHI: MACEDONIAN GAME OF THRONES (PART 4) February 4, 2014 (This is the fourth in a series concerning the Wars of the Diadachi. Part 1 can be read here, and includes comprehensive biographies of the players in this drama. It is strongly advised that you start there before reading on here. Stay tuned … Continue reading → barrycjacobsen DIADACHI: MACEDONIAN GAME OF THRONES (PART 3) January 29, 2014 (This is the third in a series concerning the Wars of the Diadachi. Part 1 can be read here, and includes comprehensive biographies of the players in this drama. It is strongly advised that you start there http://weaponsandwarfare.com/?cat=3&paged=2

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before reading on here. Stay tuned … Continue reading → barrycjacobsen DIADACHI: MACEDONIAN GAME OF THRONES (PART 2) January 21, 2014 (This is the second in a series concerning the Wars of the Diadachi. Part 1 can be read here, and includes comprehensive biographies of the players in this drama. It is strongly advised that you start there before reading on here. Stay … Continue reading → barrycjacobsen THE FUZZY WUZZIES BREAK INTO THE BRITISH SQUARE AT ABU KLEA January 16, 2014 ln 1881, in the Sudan, a leader emerged from out of the sands of the desert. He was a man of the desert; a mystic and a man of God. His name was Muhammad Ahmad and claimed to be the …

Continue reading → barrycjacobsen

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