WWW.WORLDOFTANKS.COM All images, content, and text © 2014 Wargaming.net LLP. All rights reserved. WORLD OF TANKS , WORLD OF TANKS BLITZ, WORLD OF TANKS XBOX 360 EDITION, WARGAMING.NET and the WORLD OF TANKS, WORLD OF TANKS BLITZ, WORLD OF TANKS XBOX 360 EDITION, WARGAMING.NET logos are registered trademarks of Wargaming.net LLP in the United States. All other marks are trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.*World of Tanks: Xbox 360 Edition requires Xbox Live Gold membership (sold separately). Additional in-game content available and sold separately. Apple, the Apple logo, iPad, and iPhone are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.
WORLD
WAR II
Januar y/Febr ua r y 2015
FEATURES C O V E R S T ORY
Blowout at Poltava
Veterans of Future Wars
An American air armada flew to Ukraine— and into a fiery German counterpunch
A peacetime college spoof went from puckishness to prophecy
RICHARD R. MULLER
RONALD H. BAILEY
36
58
P O R T F OLIO
WEA PONS MA NUA L
Picture Imperfect
Germany’s Tiger I Tank
The truth behind some familiar faces from the Battle of the Bulge
Sixty tons of Teutonic muscle
44
64
Battered Beyond Belief
Storm over the Rhine
As suicide pilots raged off Okinawa, one American destroyer outlived all expectations
One GI remembers the explosive night he crossed into the Fatherland
DAVID SEARS
ROBERT WEISS
50
66
2WORLDWARII.COM 2 World War II magazine
JIM LAURIER
Infantrymen load up for a Seventh Army attack across Germany’s Rhine River.
@WWIImag THESE PAGES AND COVER: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Endorsed by The National World War II Museum, Inc.
DEPARTMENTS From the Footlocker Curators at The National World War II Museum solve readers’ artifact mysteries
Reviews Patton paranoia, the Bulge rebattled, FDR fights, Japan’s ground war heyday
8
25
73
World War II Today German hero trips on history; misburied GI comes home; David Ayer’s Reading List
Fire for Effect Unchaining Chamberlain
Battle Films Come and See: indifference as a cinematic asset
Weider Reader
6 Mail
13 Conversation Hushed-up devastation at Pearl Harbor and the invasion it could have thwarted
ROBERT M. CITINO
29 Time Travel Bridging eras at Remagen
MARK GRIMSLEY
83
GAVIN MORTIMER
Challenge An Enigma’s mystery
31
87
GENE SANTORO
Pinup
22
88
Contributors
presents
RACHEL THOMPSON’S Compelling Story of an American Hero BAILEY
M U LL E R
M O R TIM E R
SEARS
Ronald H. Bailey (“Serious Fun”) loves
“...an impressive piece of work by a dedicated Marshall scholar.” —John Ortho Marsh Jr., Secretary of the Army 1981–1989 U.S. House of Representatives 1963–1971
MEET THE AUTHOR Schedule a Book Talk and Signing 703-777-1301 www.georgecmarshall.org
ALSO
AVAILABLE Special edition reprint of “Together” by Katherine Tupper Marshall 4
WORLD WAR II
to read and write history at his old farmhouse on a dirt road in upstate New York. A former correspondent and senior editor for the weekly Life magazine, he has contributed articles to World War II on subjects ranging from U-boat warfare to German prisoners of war in the U.S. He is the author of 17 books, including four on World War II, and the co-author of a bicentennial history of West Point. Gavin Mortimer (“Time Travel”) has
authored more than a dozen books on different aspects of military warfare including a history of Merrill’s Marauders and the definitive account of the British Special Air Service in World War II. The British writer’s most recent work, published in August by Zenith Press, is The First Eagles: The Fearless American Aces who Flew with the RAF in World War I. He lives in Paris. Richard R. Muller (“Blowout at Poltava”)
is a military history professor at the USAF School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. A native of New Jersey, he has spent the last 23 years educating air force officers at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. He is the author of The German Air War in Russia and co-author of The Luftwaffe over
WE IS S
Germany: Defense of the Reich. His interest in the German air force on the Eastern Front and the U.S. Army Air Forces’ 452nd Bomb Group, the subject of his current book project, resulted in this article. David Sears (“Battered Beyond Belief”) is
a New Jersey-based author and historian. His World War II narrative history books include Pacific Air, At War with the Wind, and The Last Epic Naval Battle. He writes frequently for Weider History publications, including World War II, Military History Quarterly, and Aviation History. He also writes for Smithsonian.com, Air & Space/ Smithsonian, and VFW Magazine. David is a U.S. Navy and Vietnam War veteran. Robert Weiss (“Storm over the Rhine”)
served in World War II as a forward observer with the 230th Field Artillery Battalion, 30th Infantry Division, and participated in four campaigns including the Battle of Mortain and the Battle of the Bulge, as well as the Rhine River crossing. He is a retired lawyer living in Portland, Oregon, and is the author of Fire Mission! The Siege at Mortain, Normandy, August 1944 and Mardi Gras at the Monastery and Other Stories, both available from Burd Street Press.
Winston S. Churchill and D-Day by Lewis E. Lehrman
W EIDER H ISTORY EDITOR IN CHIEF
Roger L. Vance
Vol. 29, No. 5 EDITOR
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
Karen Jensen Cynthia Currie Michael Dolan Guy Aceto Bridgett Henwood Jon Guttman Paul Wiseman David Zabecki
Art Director Senior Editor Photo Editor Associate Editor Research Director News Editor Senior Historian
ADVISORY BOARD Ed Drea, David Glantz, Jeffery Grey, John McManus, Williamson Murray, Dennis Showalter, Keith Huxen
DIGITAL
Brian King Gerald Swick Barbara Justice
PRESIDENT & CEO Eric Weider Bruce Forman
President Abraham Lincoln, a student of Shakespeare's tragedies and histories, surely could have understood, in the overtures of Henry V, what transpired 80 years later in the invasion of Normandy. King Harry's CrispinCrispian Day speech before the Battle of Agincourt evoked the momentous drama unfolding on the Normandy beaches, D-Day 1944. John Colville, an aide to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, well understood the Shakespearean undertones of the assault on France. Colville was an RAF pilot who pressed Churchill for leave to take part in D-Day operations. Churchill lived vicariously at times through Colville, who aspired to rejoin his RAF unit at
Prime Minister Winston Churchill reviews American troops before D-Day.
the very inception of Operation Overlord – the cross-channel Allied attack on the Nazis. "It was unthinkable not to take part in what was certain to be the largest military operation ever planned," wrote Colville. "Happily the Prime Minister, part of whose charm...
Director Editor Senior Graphic Designer
TO READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE, VISIT: Chief Operating Officer
www.lincolnandchurchill.org/Churchill-D-Day
Karen G. Johnson Business Director
ADVERTISING
Rob Wilkins
Military Ambassador and Partnership Marketing Director
George Clark
Single Copy Sales Director
Karen M. Bailey Production Manager/Advertising Services
[email protected] Richard E. Vincent National Sales Manager
[email protected] Kim Goddard National Sales Manager
[email protected] Rick Gower Georgia
[email protected] Terry Jenkins Tenn., Ky., Miss., Ala., Fla., Mass.
[email protected] Kurt Gardner Creative Services Director DIRECT RESPONSE Russell Johns Associates ADVERTISING 800-649-9800 •
[email protected] Stephen L. Petranek Editor-at-Large Subscription Information 800-435-0715 or WorldWarII.com Yearly subscriptions in U.S.: $39.95 ©2015 Weider History Group List Rental Inquiries: Belkys Reyes, Lake Group Media, Inc. 914-925-2406;
[email protected] World War II (ISSN 0898-4204) is published bimonthly by Weider History Group, Inc. 19300 Promenade Drive Leesburg, VA 20176-6500 703-771-9400 Periodical postage paid at Leesburg, VA and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER, send address changes to World War II P.O. Box 422224 Palm Coast, FL 32142-2224 Canada Publications Mail Agreement No. 41342519 Canadian GST No. 821371408RT0001 The contents of this magazine may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written consent of Weider History Group.
The War Years They were different men with different backgrounds & very different leadership styles Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill lived through remarkably comparable challenges in cataclysmic wars separated by a mere eight decades. Brilliant writers and communicators, Churchill and Lincoln unified and rallied their nations in order to defeat well-armed challengers whose social ideologies held little respect for human liberty and dignity. A Project of The Lehrman Institute
A Free Website Resource For History Enthusiasts Visit www.LincolnandChurchill.org Today!
PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
5
WE I D E R R E A DE R A sampling of decisive moments, remarkable adventures, memorable characters, surprising encounters, and great ideas from our sister publications
MHQ: THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF MILITARY HISTORY
AMERICAN HISTORY
MILITARY HISTORY
Hard Traveling
Nightmare Fever
Philippines Fight
Winston Churchill called the Arctic convoy route to the Soviet Union “the worst journey in the world.” For thousands of American and British sailors, the voyage was something more visceral.
The 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic was arguably the early republic’s most devastating health crisis.
In 1901 an American general masterminded a “desperate undertaking” to quash a Filipino insurrection.
The Murmansk Run was vital to supplying the Soviets. During 1941–1945 some 40 convoys totaling more than 800 merchant ships, including 350 under the American flag, started the 1,500-mile journey between Loch Ewe in northern Scotland or Reykjavík, Iceland, and Murmansk, or the White Sea ports of Molotovsk or Archangel. On the 10- to 12-day northbound voyage, transports carrying heavy equipment, fuel, arms, munitions, clothing, and food steamed with escorts through the Norwegian and Barents Seas. They were boxed in east and south by German-held coastlines, west and north by ice. In spring and summer, near continuous daylight enabled German warplanes to attack any time. The convoys also ran a U-boat gauntlet and could encounter Norway-based enemy capital ships and destroyers. Obsolete Allied ships and lethal cargoes deepened the peril. Many vessels lacked armor and watertight bulkheads; most carried explosives. And the weather was severe: spray that froze topside, sleet and snow, and violent storms.
Philadelphia was the seat of government, and, with more than 50,000 inhabitants, the young nation’s largest city and premier port. Yellow fever began its relentless march in late July or early August. By the time the epidemic ended in November, almost 10 percent of the city’s population had died and nearly 20,000 had fled, including many government officials. Life ground to a standstill. President George Washington encouraged government workers to leave the city for Germantown, six miles away, where there was no fever. In September many offices and most banks shut down, and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson was left with only one clerk, hobbling his effectiveness. “An infection and mortal fever is broke out in this place,” Jefferson reported. “The deaths under it, the week before last, were about forty; the last week fifty. This week they will probably be about two hundred, and it is increasing. Every one is getting out of the city who can. The President…set out for Mount Vernon…I shall go in a few days to Virginia. When we shall reassemble again may, perhaps, depend on the course of this malady.”
In spring 1901 Frederick Funston, a young brigadier general, approached U.S. Army Brigadier General Arthur MacArthur Jr., military governor of the Philippines, with an audacious plan. Funston, 35, proposed a covert expedition against Emilio Aguinaldo, leader of Filipino resistance to the American acquisition of the islands following the Spanish-American War. Funston wanted to disguise 81 loyal Macabebe scouts on Luzon as insurgents and escort American officers—Funston included—posing as their prisoners. The ruse would allow the group to capture Aguinaldo, he said. Funston was not new to conflict or the Philippine Insurrection. He had received a Medal of Honor two years earlier while leading the 20th Kansas Volunteer Infantry Regiment as a colonel on Luzon. MacArthur considered the scheme “a desperate undertaking” and told the younger officer on parting, “I fear that I shall never see you again,” but approved what Funston called his “stratagem.” On March 6, 1901, the gunboat USS Vicksburg sailed out of Manila Bay with Funston and his guerrillas aboard.
From “Murmansk or Die,” by David Sears, in the Winter 2015 issue
From “Philadelphia Fever,” by Jeanne Abrams, in the February 2015 issue
From “Funston of the Philippines,” by Chuck Lyons, in the January 2015 issue
To subscribe to any Weider History magazine, call 1 (800) 435-0715 or go to HistoryNet.com
6
WORLD WAR II
Mail
Stuart light tanks roll through Berwick, Pennsylvania’s munitions factory in 1941.
Reflections in Armor I loved your article “Profiles in Cold Steel” (September/October 2014). I recognize the significance of Chrysler and Ford’s production in the Midwest, but would be remiss not to point out the contributions to the war effort of the small town of Berwick, Pennsylvania, and the American Car & Foundry Company. At its peak, ACF-Berwick employed 9,135 workers from 177 northeastern Pennsylvania municipalities, and produced 40 Stuart light tanks a day, along with millions of artillery shells, hundreds of rail cars, and other items. Every armored vehicle produced in the United States for World War II utilized at least some Berwick armor plate. One in every eight American-made armored vehicles was built at ACF-Berwick. Hitler even selected the ACF as one of 19 targets for his “Amerika Bomber” program. George G. Conyngham Jr. Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Greatly enjoyed the article. After reading I could not help rethinking the huge disparity in cost of American to German 8
WORLD WAR II
tanks. But could we take this cost analysis and place it today on the F-35? Amuse us for a moment. So what if it may be the best fighter? If 1,000 F-16-type aircraft,
relatively cheap to make in comparison, face 300 F-35 fighters, will not the F-35 just run out of weapons and be overwhelmed? What about the Israeli Iron Dome system? Isn’t its cost many times more than that of the system it is publicly seen as defeating? Does not the cost of a system at some point overwhelm the country making it? Does the country with cheaper systems ultimately win? Scott Macdonald Baltimore, Md.
Mickey, Front and Center The article “Showtime on the Front Line” rang a bell loud and clear. Mickey Rooney came to visit us while the 30th Division was in reserve—I think near Warden, Germany. The impressive thing about his visit is that he did his own setup, carrying the large P.A. system from his jeep to the clearing in the field. I believe one man accompanied him to operate the sound equipment and one man drove his jeep. A few years ago, I wrote to Mickey to tell him how much we GIs enjoyed his time and effort. Hank Stairs Basking Ridge, N.J.
Schooled by a Sansei
Mickey Rooney cheered GI groups of all sizes while touring Europe’s front lines.
I am a Japanese American (and proud of it) and my family was interned during World War II at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, located near Cody, Wyoming. Heart Mountain had 10,000 people and was the third largest community in Wyoming. I really enjoyed reading “The Curious Case of the Turncoat Navigator” (September/October 2014), although some TOP, © SEUDDEUTSCHER ZEITUNG PHOTO/ALAMY; BOTTOM, GETTY IMAGES
History buffs on your holiday list? Gift subscriptions are the perfect solution!
2 Gift Subscriptions
2 For 1 Savings Offer
are just $29.95
*
Choose any of our 11 magazines! American History America’s Civil War captivates with stories of the soldiers, battles, technology and strategies that continue to fascinate Civil War enthusiasts to this day.
presents the rich fabric of American society during the past 250 years. All the drama and events that have shaped America.
British Heritage
Call our operators toll free: 1-800-435-0715 Mon-Fri 7am to 12am & Sat-Sun 9am to 6pm
World War II introduces the great heroes, despised villains and little-known participants in history’s greatest struggle. Full coverage of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines through first-person accounts and articles by leading historians.
takes you on an insightful journey to visit the people, culture, customs and traditions of the British Isles.
Civil War Times takes you behind the scenes and onto the battlefields to share the triumphs and tragedies of the men and women caught up in America’s most dramatic struggle.
Military History brings you the true stories of the leaders, forces and strategies that changed the world. Inside these pages, readers will find a wealth of in-depth articles on warfare from ancient times to the 20th century.
Aviation History
Vietnam is the only magazine exclusively devoted to the Vietnam conflict from early French involvement to the fall of Saigon. Clear perspectives and analysis of the war combine with firsthand accounts of combat action and tactics.
puts you in the cockpit, with in-depth coverage of the history of world aviation. Rare archival photographs and brilliant artwork complement incisive writing from top researchers and historians.
Wild West brings the legends and lore of the American frontier to life. Page after page of poignant stories—each one riveting. Ride along with the cowboys, outlaws, lawmen, gamblers, soldiers and gold seekers.
Armchair General takes you on the great military campaigns that have shaped world history from ancient to modern times. Innovative, interactive (you are in command!) issues lead you to the battlefields to witness history’s most important conflicts.
MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History* takes you on an exciting journey to the world’s greatest battles and campaigns over the last 5,000 years, from ancient warfare through modern battles. Each issue is an exquisitely illustrated, quality edition.
CHOOSE ANY TWO MAGAZINES TO GIVE AS GIFTS THIS HOLIDAY SEASON…
Call Toll Free Today! 1-800-435-0715 Order by December 10 and receive gift announcement cards in time for the holidays. Mention code 74HADX when ordering. *For each MHQ subscription, add $15.
Mail
things need to be made clearer. Nisei is the first generation born in the United States. They are the children of Issei who came to the United States from Japan. The Issei until 1952 could not become an American citizen or own property in California. To get around the law, Issei bought property under the name of the Nisei. Kebei was born in America, and went to Japan for their education. During World War II many Kebeis were attached to American forces in the Pacific to make use of their knowledge of Japanese. I am a Sansei, which is the third generation. I am 77 now, and was 5 when we were interned. James Sakauye Sacramento, Calif.
A Haunting Dispatch The war diary entry written by Lieutenant Commander Johann Mohr aboard U-124 (“Translator Brings U-Boat War Diaries to Life,” WWII Today, September/October 2014), was the same date U-124 sank my dad’s ship, the SS Naeco, in a March 1942 night attack off the North Carolina coast. The ship exploded, killing my father, Captain Emil H. Engelbrecht, and two thirds of his officers and crew. My three brothers and I also served in the U.S. Merchant Marine during World War II. I might mention my older brother, Captain Joseph Engelbrecht, was the youngest captain in the U.S. Merchant Marine during World War II. George E. Engelbrecht Northfield, N.J.
The Better to See You With In “The High Price of Valor” (September/October 2014) there are photos of a submarine deck gun crew and others firing on a Japanese sampan. If I’m not mistaken, all those men are wearing their helmets backward. Was there a reason for this? H.G. “WOODIE” SPROUSE DELAND, FLA. Research Director Jon Guttman explains: The answer to your question is rather prosaic. The front lip on the versatile American “steel pot” offered protection from the sun and overhead
shrapnel, but for naval gun crews—when a clear view of the action from sea level to the air, from which an enemy plane could appear, was paramount— that was not necessarily an asset. Naval gunnery personnel on larger vessels had specialized
Bomb Leftovers A small clarification might be in order for your September/October 2014 Ask WWII column. The answer stated that “it would have taken too much time” to produce another bomb after Nagasaki. In fact, a second “Fat Man”—the implosion type plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki—was going to be available by August 24, 1945. On August 10, General Leslie Groves, commanding general of the Manhattan Project, sent General George C. Marshall a memo informing him about the August 24 bomb. General Marshall replied that same day with the order that the second Fat Man was not to be released “without express authority from the President.” James Kunetka Austin, Tex.
Dachau Gas Chambers?
Captain Emil H. Engelbrecht aboard the SS Naeco before it was sunk in 1942.
10
WORLD WAR II
I read the article “Finding Humor in Hell” (Conversation, September/October 2014). Peter Jorgensen said there was a gas chamber at Dachau. I was born in Munich in 1939 and as school kids we
helmets, but for those on smaller vessels—PT boats and “pigboats” among others—given standard issue, it was common to turn the helmet backward to expand the vista, and, as the photo implies, better accommodate binoculars.
traveled to Dachau on a field trip and were shown the gas chamber. Now, a sign at the camp says it’s been proven that there was no gas chamber and that no one was gassed at the camp. I hope you correct this error. Henry von Seyfried Hollywood, Calif. Editor’s note: Dachau did have a gas chamber, although according to Megan Lewis, a reference librarian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, it was not used for mass killing. Statements made immediately postwar by U.S. Army investigators indicated that medical doctors were experimenting with test gassing inside the building, which was attached to working crematoria.
Please send letters to:
World War II
19300 Promenade Drive Leesburg, VA 20176 or e-mail:
[email protected] Please include your name, address, and daytime telephone number.
TOP, NATIONAL ARCHIVES; BOTTOM, COURTESY OF GEORGE ENGELBRECHT
ADVERTISEMENT
How to Tell Time Like a Man Our digital-analog hybrid has two sides... tough and tougher. Get it now for an unbelievable $59!
Y
our watch shouldn’t cost more than your car. It should look and feel like a power tool and not a piece of bling. Wearing it shouldn’t make you think twice about swinging a hammer or changing a tire. A real man’s timepiece needs to be ready for anything. But that’s just my opinion. If you agree, maybe you’re ready for the Stauer Centurion Hybrid. Use your Exclusive Insider Promotional Code below and I’ll send it to you today for ONLY $59. This watch doesn’t do dainty. And neither do I. Call me old-fashioned, but I want my boots to be leather, my tires to be deeptread monsters, and my steak thick and rare. Inspiration for a man’s watch should come from things like fast cars, firefighters and power tools. And if you want to talk beauty, then let’s discuss a 428 cubic inch V8. Did I mention the $59 price tag? This is a LOT of machine for not a lot of money. The Stauer Centurion Hybrid sports a heavy-duty alloy body, chromed and detailed with a rotating bezel that allows you to track direction. The luminous hour and minute hands mean you can keep working into the night. And the dual digital displays give this watch a hybrid ability. The LCD windows displays the time, day and date, includes a stopwatch function, and features a bright green electro-luminescent backlight. We previously offered the Centurion for $199, but with the exclusive promotional code it’s yours for ONLY $59!
No matter what, this watch can keep up. Thanks to the Stauer 30-day Money Back Guarantee, you’ve got time to prove it. If you’re not totally satisfied, return it for a full refund of the purchase price. You also get a 2-year replacement guarantee on both movements. But I have a feeling the only problem you’ll have is deciding whether to keep the Stauer Centurion on your dresser or tucked inside your toolbox.
TAKE 70% OFF INSTANTLY! When you use your Promotional Code Stauer Centurion Hybrid Watch— $199 Promotional Code Price Only $59 50 or two payments of + S&P
$29
Order now to take advantage of this fantastic low price.
1-800-333-2057 Your Insider Promotional Code: CNW316-03
Please use this code when you order to receive your discount.
“I work in the surveying and construction industry... This is my work horse watch and I am proud to wear it.” — C.S. from Fort Worth, TX
Stauer
®
Rating of A+
14101 Southcross Drive W., Dept. CNW316-03 Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 www.stauer.com
Smart Luxuries—Surprising Prices™
Digital-Analog Hybrid • Dual digital displays • Heavy-duty chromed body • 3 ATM Water Resistant LCD windows for time, date and day • Luminous hands • Contrast Stitch Band fits a 7 1/4"–9 1/4" wrist
WORLD
WAR II
W W I I T ODA Y
Honored in 1966 as a hero for bucking Hitler, General Hans Graf von Sponeck (left) turned out to have blood on his hands.
Not So Good, After All
G
eneral Hans Graf von Sponeck was supposed to be one of the good Germans. Defying Adolf Hitler’s order that he stand fast in December 1941 as the Soviets were counterattacking, Sponeck withdrew, perhaps saving 10,000 soldiers from death or capture. Court-martialed—Hermann
Göring presided—and condemned to death for disobedience in 1942, Sponeck had his sentence commuted to seven years in prison. Fellow prisoners at Germersheim Fortress included Norwegian resistance fighter Odd Solem, who befriended Sponeck. On July 23, 1944, amid reprisals after an attempt on Hitler’s
life, Sponeck died by firing squad. Postwar Germany celebrated him as a resister, erecting monuments and naming streets and buildings for him. In 1966, the Luftwaffe named a base in Germersheim for him. However, Sponeck’s record was darker than his legend. In Ukraine, he had his men help SS death squads round up Jews and civilians suspected of sabotage for
execution. This history came to light through research by Wesleyan University historian Erik Grimmer-Solem, Odd Solem’s grandson. “My grandfather spoke very highly of Sponeck,” Grimmer-Solem says. “We had no reason to suspect that he was anything other than the highly-competent, affable, charming, and cultivated general that my grandfather remembered.” Grimmer-Solem developed doubts upon learning Sponeck led a division of the Eleventh Army on the Eastern Front. In German records, he found “incontrovertible evidence” that the general and his men engaged in wartime atrocities. His December 2013 article in a German military journal set off heated debate. Among other results, the Luftwaffe is renaming its Germersheim base. “I have decidedly mixed feelings,” Grimmer-Solem says. “Sponeck was an outstanding general and a person with real moral courage.” But the general and his men have “the blood of many thousands of innocent civilian victims on their hands. He is very much a Janus-like figure.”
DISPATCHES
-
In a first since September 1939, cantors and rabbis were ordained in Wroclaw, Poland. On September 2 four clerics and three singers were ordained at the only surviving prewar synagogue in the city, which once was
Reported and written by
Paul Wiseman
TOP, WEIDER ARCHIVES; INSET, BPK/ART RESOURCE; BOTTOM, AP
Breslau, Germany. After the war most Jews left Sovietdominated, anti-Semitic Poland, but in recent years Jewish culture has become more visible. The ceremony marked the 75th anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Poland and the 160th anniversary of the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau, which Nazis destroyed in 1938.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
13
Two Exclusive Tours presented by The National WWII Museum presented by The National WWII Museum
MAY 5 – 12, 2015
Led by Author & Historian
Donald L. Miller Learn the story of America’s bomber boys who fought the Air War against Nazi Germany and celebrate the 70th anniversary of V-E Day.
BAND OF BROTHERS
JUNE 5 – 15, 2015
7 Countries in 13 Days Join top-rated battlefield guides as you follow Easy Company across Europe.
CALL 877-813-3329 x 257 OR VISIT WW2MUSEUMTOURS.ORG TO LEARN MORE.
ODAYY WWWWI II ITTODA Home From the Hill
A memorial in Berlin honors the thousands of disabled slain by Nazi order.
A
German Euthanasia Victims Remembered
D
eemed “life unworthy of life” by Nazi overlords, thousands of disabled and mentally ill Germans and others died in a test run of death engines that would claim Europe’s Jews. No one prosecuted the bureaucrats and physicians who in 1940 and 1941 ran the euthana-
sia program from a villa in Berlin at Tiergartenstrasse 4. A plaque marked that address, which lent the program its name: “Operation T4,” but now euthanasia victims have a memorial at T4. A wall of blue-tinted glass stands at the location of the program that oversaw the
gassing of 70,000 individuals whose cause of death was falsified. Starvation and lethal injections contributed to a toll exceeding 200,000. The T4 monument is the fourth in Berlin to remember the Nazis’ victims. Others have memorialized Jews, Roma, and gay people.
Prisoner of Love
T
he guy in the Uncle Sam costume during Yankee Doodle Days in Grand Ledge, Michigan, doesn’t have the all-American background you might expect. He is a former Wehrmacht infantryman and POW. Ernst Floeter (right) describes his journey in a memoir, I’ll See You Again, Lady Liberty, that drew hundreds to an August book signing. In Germany, Floeter participated in a division of the Hitler Youth movement called Deutsches Jungvolk (German Youth). “We had to sing all kinds of bullshit,” he told Michigan publication MLive. “Dying for the fatherland and such stuff.” Floeter proved a terrible soldier, but incompetence saved his life. Savvier
friends went to officer’s school; none survived the war. Soon after D-Day, as GIs surrounded his unit in a Norman orchard, his commander ordered an attack that would have been suicidal. A more pragmatic German waved the white flag. “I thought, ‘Thank God, no more rifle drills,’” said Floeter, who enjoyed being a POW. He “slept like an angel” at Camp Custer, Michigan, he says, and at another camp in Rockford, Illinois, was served candy every day. (See “Coming to a Town Near You,” September/October 2012.) Repatriated after the war, Floeter immigrated to the United States with his family and eventually opened a photo studio in Grand Ledge.
TOP, SOEREN STACHE/PICTURE ALLIANCE/DPA/AP; RIGHT, GORDON FAMILY/JED HENRY; BOTTOM, FLOETER STUDIO.
fter decades buried among the enemy, a GI made it stateside. Private First Class Lawrence Gordon died on August 13, 1944, in Normandy when a German shell hit the armored car carrying him and other infantrymen from his reconnaissance company. By accident, Gordon was interred at Normandy as “Unknown X-356” in a crypt holding the remains of 12,000 Germans. His family, Americans living in Saskatchewan, Canada, received only his bloodstained wallet. In recent years, American filmmaker Jed Henry, researching a documentary about his grandfather, who was in Gordon’s company, learned of the GI’s disappearance. Working with Gordon’s nephew, Henry studSeventy years after ied military his family received records that his wallet, Private persuaded Gordon came home. him German “Unknown X-356” at Huisnes-sur-Mer—an ossuary on high ground overlooking Mont Sainte Michel—was Lawrence Gordon. DNA tests confirmed the remains as Gordon’s. He was buried in Canada on the 70th anniversary of his death.
W W I I T ODA Y
Remarkably intact, the Stuka gives the impression of having taxied into place on the seabed.
Stuka Spotted
D
ivers found a Ju 87 dive-bomber in surprisingly good condition 90 feet beneath the Adriatic Sea off Croatia. The two-man aircraft, believed to have had an Italian crew, may have been shot down by a Yugoslavian warship in April 1941. “The plane is lying on its wheels as if it smoothly landed on the seabed,” Igor Miholjek of Croatia’s national conservation institute told the news agency AFP. Salvage plans are uncertain. Only two of 6,500 Ju 87s built remain intact.
Wartime Italian Ju 87s fly over the Adriatic (left), which for 73 years hid the wreckage.
16
WORLD WAR II
B&W, WEIDER ARCHIVES; COLOR, AFP PHOTO/HO/CROATIAN CONSERVATION INSTITUTE
ADVERTISEMENT
Actual Size 30.61 mm 90% Pure Silver
Before they were carved in stone, they were struck in SILVER. JUST RELEASED: One of America’s FIRST Civil War Silver Half Dollars.
A
s we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, collectors are scrambling to add Civil War artifacts to their collections. No collection can be complete without one of the FIRST-EVER Civil War commemorative coins struck by the U.S. Mint: The 1925 Stone Mountain Silver Half Dollar. Both the coin and the Stone Mountain Memorial near Atlanta, Georgia feature Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on horseback. The Stone Mountain Memorial was designed by famed sculptor Gutzon Borglum, whose next masterpiece would be the magnificent Mount Rushmore. Etched in History, Carved in Stone, Struck in Silver! These 90% silver half dollars were minted in 1925 to raise money for the memorial. Over the years since they were minted, many were spent during the Great Depression, or melted to obtain their precious silver. Today, they can be difficult to find. Thanks to a remarkable recent discovery, GovMint.com has obtained a limited supply of these desirable Stone Mountain Silver Half Dollars. The detail and relief on these stunning coins make each coin a work of art. It’s no wonder they’re in such high demand! GovMint.com • 14101 Southcross Dr. W. Dept. SMS275-02 • Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 Prices and availability subject to change without notice. Past performance is not a predictor of future performance. NOTE: GovMint.com® is a private distributor of worldwide government coin and currency issues and privately issued licensed collectibles and is not affiliated with the United States government. Facts and figures deemed accurate as of July 2014. ©2014 GovMint.com.
Historic Public Release We are now releasing our entire supply of these historic and valuable coins to the public. Each is in lightly circulated condition and comes with an informative story card and a certificate of authenticity. Order Now Risk Free! Genuine Civil War items like this don’t appear every day. We expect our small supply of these historic silver coins to disappear quickly. We urge you to call immediately to avoid disappointment. 1925 Stone Mountain Silver Half Dollar: $69.95 (plus s/h) You must be 100% satisfied with your genuine 1925 Stone Mountain Silver Half Dollar or return it within 30 days of receipt for a prompt refund (less all s/h).
For fastest service call today toll-free
1-800-517-6468 Offer Code SMS275-02 Please mention this code when you call.
BATTLE OF THE BULGE PLAYSET This was the last major German offensive of WWII and the single largest battle fought by Americans during WWII. You can now recreate this battle with our 240 piece “BATTLE OF THE BULGE” playset. Included in the set is our exclusive hand painted Street Front. The German army is led by 6 tanks consisting of Tigers, Panthers and Panzer IV tanks plus two hanomags and one 88mm cannon supported by over 85 German troops. The American army fights to hold their position with a force of 75 men supported by 4 Sherman tanks, 2 half tracks and 3- 105mm cannons. To round out the set you will receive a bridge and guard tower, stone walls, concertina wire, and much more. The set also comes in a beautiful custom printed box with artwork done by renowned WWII artist James Dietz.
Order today your 240 piece set for $374.95 plus $35.00 S&H.
BATTLEGROUND PLAYSET This 160 plus piece playset is the perfect set to get any toy soldier collector started into the European Theater of WWII. Included in the set are over 45 Germans and 50 Allied troops including GI’s, French and British. You also get 3 German tanks, 1 German 88mm cannon, 2 Sherman tanks, 1 British Churchill tank, 1 US halftrack, and 1 US 105mm cannon. Additional accessories include barbed wire, heavy weapons, stone walls, trees, mortar pit, matching gun nest, and much more. This set is a tremendous value for the price.
CTS 160 piece “BATTLEGROUND PLAYSET” can be yours for $174.95 plus $25.00 S&H. You save over $150.00.
BATTLE OF KURSK PLAYSET In the spring of 1943 the Germans gambled all their reserves on a massive attack in Russia. If their plan succeeded, they would destroy more than 5 Russian armies. The ensuing Battle of Kursk became the largest tank battle in history and one of the decisive turning points of WWII. You can now recreate this massive engagement with our 180 piece “BATTLE OF KURSK” playset. The set includes 60 Axis troops with 3 Panzer tanks and 88mm cannon to battle over 75 Russian troops accompanied by 4 T-34 tanks and a 105mm cannon. Included is a large railroad embankment turned into a fortified position, plus stone walls, barbed wire, and lots more.
Order today your 180 piece set for $274.95 plus $30.00 S&H.
CTS has over 50 additional playsets with prices starting at $79.95 and over 2,500 different items for sale. To see these and all the other products we have for sale, send $6.00 for our catalog and color brochure or visit our website at:
www.classictoysoldiers.com Hours are 9:00 am to 7:00 pm Central Standard Time
Classic Toy Soldiers, Inc. 15148 Mohawk Circle • Leawood, Kansas 66224 DAVID PAYNE, Call: 913-451-9458 • Fax: 913-451-2946 • www.classictoysoldiers.com Contents and colors may vary from pictured but piece count will remain the same • Personal Checks will be held for 21 days to clear.
W W I I T ODA Y THE READING LIST
David Ayer
‘I
Gump of the war in Europe. They were everywhere—from the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia to the bocage to Falaise to the Siegfried Line and Aachen. After they closed the Ruhr pocket and fought at the Veser River, the last German offensive of the war, they and the rest of the 2nd Armored started a 70-mile drive on Berlin. That’s where Fury begins.”
’m one of those guys who believes you’re not a director until you’ve directed a war
film,” says filmmaker David Ayer. “It’s one of the last great dictatorial jobs.” For his new film Fury, about a Sherman crew in April 1945, Ayer researched relentlessly. His library, which includes the volumes below, helped him distill GI tankers’ experience at war’s end in Germany. “Even if it was a war between good and evil, and it was, the kid in the trench or
BONUS CONTENT IN OUR IPAD EDITION
the tank was still having his heart torn apart,” Ayer says. “What was happening as the war in
Another River, Another Town
Europe was winding down was what has been
A Teenage Tank Gunner Comes of Age in Combat—1945 John P. Irwin (2003)
going on in Afghanistan and Iraq. I wanted to explore that as realistically as I could.”
“This is a fantastic memoir of being a kid going into war thinking he’d be a hero but instead having to come face to face with killing.”
Breakout at Normandy The 2nd Armored Division in the Land of the Dead Mark Bando (1999)
Death Traps
“This book, about Operation Cobra and the breakout from the Normandy beachhead after D-Day, includes first-person accounts about the 2nd Armored’s original encounters with the SS, such as Das Reich. This was where the enmity that the film touches on began.”
The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II Belton Y. Cooper (2003)
“Tankers had their individual battlefield experiences, but this book looks at armored warfare from the staff perspective. Cooper was one of the people who dealt with the aftermath and cleanup of what happened in battle.”
Crack! and Thump With a Combat Infantry Officer in World War II Charles Scheffel with Barry Basden (2007)
“This memoir by an American infantry officer detailed to the British Army during the war provides a great account of what it means to become battle-wise, and is also a study in the intricacies of leadership.”
Writer/director David Ayer, who served in the U.S. Navy as a submarine sonar operator, has extensive Hollywood credits, includ-
Iron Knights
ing 2001’s Training Day, which earned Denzel
The U.S. 66th Armored Regiment in WWII Gordon A. Blaker (2008)
Washington an Academy Award for Best Actor.
“The 66th Armored was the Forrest
End of Watch (2012), and Harsh Times (2005).
He also wrote and directed Sabotage (2014),
DISPATCHES
-
The Coast Guard Academy football team dedicated its 2014 season to Jimmy Crotty, an academy graduate captured at Corregidor who died in a Japanese prison in 1942. Crotty captained the school’s 1933 team and graduated in 1934, 80 years ago.
ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE CAPLANIS; BOTTOM, U.S. COAST GUARD ACADEMY (BOTH)
The 1934 yearbook shows Crotty as a senior and with teammates. Eight years later he would die as a prisoner of war.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
19
Purple Heart Foundation ®
Helping Our Combat Wounded Warriors & Their Families since 1957
WANT TO DONATE BUT DON’T HAVE A CAR? Text “PURPLE” to 20222 to donate $10 to the Purple Heart® Service Foundation! Messages & data rates may apply.
Or call us to donate: 1-866-851-8188 Or go online: www.purpleheartcars.org
W W I I T ODA Y At Long Last, Hirohito’s Side
J
apan is finally telling Emperor Hirohito’s version of how his country went to war. He sounds like a reluctant warrior in excerpts released in September from a 12,000-page official biography of the man who served as emperor from 1926 until his death in 1989. The snippets show Hirohito warning five months before Pearl Harbor that war with the United States would prove “self-destructive.” Two years earlier, he voiced dismay at Japan’s
WORD FOR WORD
alliance with Germany. Japan’s Imperial Household Agency began work on the $2 million biography in 1990, to be published over the next five years, beginning in March 2015. The material treats its subject sympathetically, noting that Hirohito was “deeply satisfied” in 1937 when his troops occupied Nanking, China, but does not mention their slaughter and rape of Chinese civilians by the thousands.
In his teahouse at the Berghof, Hitler snoozes as Eva watches.
“Poor, poor Adolf, deserted by everyone, betrayed by all. Better that ten thousand others die than that he should be lost to Germany.” A 61-volume biography paints Hirohito as reluctant to fight.
DISPATCHES
-
Publishers Gallimard in France and Carl Hanser Verlag in Germany are refusing to put out editions of The Zone of Interest, Martin Amis’s new novel about the Holocaust. Gallimard cited “literary reasons”; Amis said Verlag claimed to find plot inconsistencies. Amis’s 1991 novel, Time’s Arrow, had a kindred theme. Both books trade in gallows humor, which Judaica dealer Daniel Levine told New York’s Jewish Week could encourage anti-Semitism.
—Eva Braun, April 29, 1945
ASK WWII
Q. Why didn’t U.S. Army and Marine infantrymen connect their helmet chinstraps when under fire? Newsreels and even Hollywood movies show chinstraps dangling on the sides of heads or connected around the rear of the helmet. Many scenes show infantry advancing with one hand holding helmets down and the other holding their weapons. You would believe they would need both hands on their weapons for immediate use. —Dominick Battaglia, Hicksville, N.Y.
debuted in 1941, saw use by the U.S. military until 1985. By September 1945, manufacturers had produced more than 22 million M1s and liners. Men had two reasons—one valid, one specious—to leave helmet straps loose or clip them behind. A man strapped into his steel bucket risked an attacker coming from
behind grabbing his helmet visor to throw him off balance. Men also believed— wrongly—that if a shell or bomb went off nearby, a tightly fastened helmet would snap its wearer’s neck. In response, the armed services issued the T-1 pressurerelease replacement buckle, which in a blast automatically released the external strap, relying on the liner’s nape strap to keep the helmet in place. —Michael Dolan Q Send queries to: Ask World War II, 19300 Promenade Drive, Leesburg, VA 20176, or e-mail: worldwar2@
A. The M1 helmet, which
TOP, NATIONAL ARCHIVES; CENTER, AP/KYODO NEWS; BOTTOM, RENAUD PHILIPPE/ALAMY
weiderhistorygroup.com.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
21
Conversation with Gene Eric Salecker
Blasted into the Shadows By Gene Santoro
P
EARL HARBOR, mid-May 1944: American forces are preparing to invade
Saipan, an assault scheduled for June 15. Rehearsals, at Maui, are rocky. The LST (Landing Ship, Tank) fleet returns to Pearl, about to sail west. But catastrophe strikes and the navy suppresses the news. What happened? Why? Author Gene Eric Salecker reveals the answers in The Second Pearl Harbor. “I saw it mentioned in a Samuel Eliot Morison book and thought, ‘What is this?’” Salecker explains. “After some research, I contacted the LST Association. Soon I had a dozen phone calls and three dozen emails from veterans who couldn’t wait to tell their story.”
Who participated in the rehearsals for Saipan?
The 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions were to be the invasion force. The 4th Division was green; the 2nd had invaded Tarawa, but had plenty of green replacements. Some of the XXIV Army Corps Artillery was supporting them. There were 47 LSTs and 10 APDs—highspeed destroyer transports. In all, 71,000 men. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and Rear Admiral Harry W. Hill especially wanted to rehearse the 4th Marines and the LST captains, many of whom were fairly young and fairly new. The practice landings didn’t go well.
They sure didn’t. Bad weather the night before meant high seas, which swept three LCTs—Landing Craft, Tank, smaller troop-carrying vessels placed atop LSTs by cranes and chained down to be piggybacked to Saipan—overboard. A 22
WORLD WAR II
couple dozen Marines and sailors who had been sleeping on or underneath those LCTs drowned. Two LCTs had been converted into gunboats and were carrying boxes of mortars. You had LSTs bumping into each other, amtracs rolling out, bowdoor chains snapping. On May 19, the vessels returned to Pearl Harbor’s West Loch.
That’s the very shallow part of Pearl, perfect for flat-bottomed vessels; battleships and such were in East Loch, where the Japanese attacked. There was—and is— an ammunition depot at West Loch. The
ships arriving from Maui were to get cleaned up, repaired, refitted, and refueled. Half the crews and most of the Marines got shore leave while the LSTs were reloaded with amtracs and DUKWs (“ducks”) for Saipan, as well as munitions. Most of the navy’s fuel vessels were in Europe for the Normandy invasion, so the Saipan LSTs doubled as ammo and fuel vessels—a dangerous mix. Each LST had between 80 and 100 barrels of aviation fuel intended for Higgins boat and duck engines, which ran more smoothly on that higheroctane blend. Many of those fuel drums had been dented or punctured or had spigots on them or were half-full. There’s the danger: it’s not the gasoline that explodes, it’s the fumes. The LSTs were tied up in rows at tares—piers constructed of telephone poles— right next to each other, with just a rope bumper between. LST decks that weren’t carrying an LCT were loaded with jeeps, trailers, and trucks with canvas tops, with Marine shelter halves strung between them. What set disaster in motion?
Admiral Hill decided gunboat LCTs were a dumb idea, and ordered the mortars removed from the final one, LCT963, atop LST-353, at Tare 8. Black munitions handlers from the 29th Chemical Decontamination Company offloaded the mortar ammo to a truck on the LST elevator, lowered that truck, then brought on the next truck. The entire time, these guys were dropping shells JAMES FOSTER
and smoking, cases were breaking, but there was no problem. It was a tranquil Sunday afternoon. Until 3:08 p.m. on May 21.
There was a huge explosion at the bow of LST-353. Everyone on the other LSTs saw debris and body parts landing on their decks. A stiff wind spread debris that set fires on decks all over the bay.
‘Men were told not to talk about the disaster. Some were still afraid to talk decades later.’
How did men react?
LST crews started ringing fire bells and fighting flames; they put out most of the original fires. But there was a second, even larger explosion—so big it knocked people over. Men started abandoning the ships near LST-353, hopping from ship to ship to reach land or dropping off the fantail into the water. As vessels tried to get out, guys in the water were sucked into the screws and ground to pieces. Now explosions were almost constant; aviation fuel drums were starting to pop. LST-39, next to LST-353, caught fire, came unmoored, and drifted toward the ammo depot, where men had been unloading a munitions ship and two barges holding thousands of rounds. Three PT boats arrived, ready to torpedo LST-39.
The fleet was about to leave for Saipan, 3,800 miles west. Yet the navy still set sail in only 24 hours. How?
Other LSTs waiting to be worked on were refitted quickly. LSTs intended for Guam got transferred to the Saipan fleet. Eleven LSTs replaced the eight lost ships. Of more than 700 amtracs and amphibious tanks aboard the LSTs, the navy lost only 17. Every Marine in the landing force got brand new stuff, including rifles—which meant men had no way of sighting their M1s on the rolling seas before Saipan. There was a shovel shortage; Marines had to share with their buddies. The fleet set sail 24 hours late, but made up the time en route and managed to invade Saipan on schedule. By the next day the navy had set up a court of inquiry.
were lighting the area. Guys had to swim through the fire or underneath it. LST-69, which was exploding at Tare 9, hit LST480, which caught fire and exploded.
Of course, the close eyewitnesses were all dead. But after 16 days of investigation, the court reached the conclusion that the incident started when one of the men with the 29th dropped a mortar shell. However, people who saw the initial explosion say no. The navy report mentioned careless smoking around aviation fuel; that’s what I—and most of the men I interviewed—believe did it.
How long did the fires and explosions go on?
For decades, the navy suppressed reports of the disaster. Why?
All night. They set up generators and lights for men fighting fires aboard beached vessels. Fire-fighting boats put out the gas burning on the water. There were about a dozen fire tugs, a submarine tender, and many rescue vessels. Finally, about 5 a.m., the big dangers were past.
Initially, the aim was to maintain the secrecy of the invasion, which makes sense. Men were told not to talk or write home about the disaster. Guys who were there couldn’t talk about it to buddies who weren’t. But then the navy didn’t release any information until 1960, and the incident was forgotten. Some guys were still afraid to talk when I approached them. I had to dig and dig to get information about the court of inquiry. Remember, that part of Pearl Harbor is off-limits to civilians because it’s still a navy ammunition depot; there’s a plaque beside the depot, but unlike the USS Arizona memorial, nobody can see it. The episode just fell through the cracks of history. 2
Fire aboard LST-39 threatens a chain reaction at Pearl Harbor’s West Loch.
Did they launch torpedoes?
Luckily, no: think of the explosions! Fireboats arrived and the PT boats backed off to rescue people. Meanwhile, three burning abandoned LSTs broke away from Tare 8 and drifted toward other vessels. Then came the third explosion.
That was LST-353. Any ships that had been hesitating took that blast as the signal to get out. Most headed through a narrow channel that got jammed. Some ships turned around into an area west of the depot until they ran aground. Those crews sat and watched the whole thing— including three burning LSTs, each a football field long, drifting toward the depot. It was getting dark, and the sky was filled with black smoke from gasoline burning on the water—but the flames NATIONAL ARCHIVES
How bad was the damage?
Six LSTs were lost; two were too badly damaged to go to Saipan. Eight 155mm howitzers were lost, as was all the Marine equipment—rifles, knapsacks, shelter tents. Officially, there were 163 dead or missing, with 396 injured, but every guy I interviewed said that it was more like 1,000 to 2,000 casualties.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
23
My favorite thing to impress my friends with…
MY TURNBULL POCKET KNIFE
For more information, please email Ralph Turnbull today! Email:
[email protected] | Website: www.turnbullknives.com
WORLD
WAR II
From the Footlocker
Curators at The National World War II Museum solve readers’ artifact mysteries
1
My grandfather, Andrew Jesse Smith—known as “Bobby”—served in the war, and this pair of wings was his. I know these are aerial gunner wings but that’s about it. Can you tell me something about their history? Thanks in advance. —Erica Smith, Madawaska, Maine
For an answer, we turned to Richard R. Muller, military history professor at the USAF School of Advanced Air and Space studies (and author of “Blowout at Poltava,” page 36). Muller says: Those are indeed aerial gunner wings. Since military aviation’s early days, pilots and observers have worn distinctive insignia, usually a winged badge over the breast pocket. The advent of B-25 and B-26 medium bombers and B-17 and B-24 heavy bombers early in the war required additional crewmen with specialized skills. These included machine gunners to man the turrets and other gun positions of the heavily armed aircraft—a dangerous job that required rigorous training. The gunner badge,
authorized in April 1943 and featuring a winged bullet, could be worn by any aircrew member who, in his commander’s judgment, exhibited proficiency in aerial gunnery. Most often, airmen received gunner badges after completing six-week courses in weapons, turret operation, and ballistics. Located in wide-open space near locales like Las Vegas, Nevada—in 1942, a remote desert town—Kingman, Arizona, and Laredo, Texas, these Flexible Gunnery Schools turned out an incredible 300,000 trained gunners during World War II. Your grandfather’s badge represents a part of that vast effort.
2
My father, Lyle Holcomb, was a Tech 5 in the medical corps in Europe. He delivered whole blood to frontline aid stations
and to Dachau a day or so after its liberation. While in Germany in the spring
1
of 1945 he obtained this 16-inch-long
Aerial gunners such as Medal of Honor recipient Maynard “Snuffy” Smith (right) defended bombers fighting through enemy opposition. The aerial gunner badge was authorized for wear in 1943.
silver braid with edelweiss. How would this have been awarded, and when did German soldiers wear it? —Gary Holcomb, Yuba City, Calif.
troops’ 2 German marksmanship lanyards were worn by fixing one end under the right shoulderboard, the other inside a tunic flap, as this mountain trooper has done.
PHOTO, NATIONAL ARCHIVES; COLOR POSTCARD, WEIDER ARCHIVES
This is a marksmanship lanyard. The edelweiss pin is actually a cap badge worn by mountain troops, an elite division of the German army. Someone may have added it to the lanyard later to keep it from being lost. The German army—the Heer—issued the lanyards in four grades beginning in 1936. In 1938 that expanded to 12 grades, with an updated pattern. This Grade Five lanyard would have gone to a moderately skilled rifleman. The Heer awarded similar decorations from 1938 on to a variety of soldiers, from tankers to artillerymen, as did the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. The lanyards, worn on all styles of uniforms, were issued only to enlisted men or non-commissioned officers. Nearly half a million were awarded. —Brandon Stephens, Curator JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
25
From the Footlocker German sailor 3 Amans a 2cm coastal flak gun at Dieppe in August 1942; his Kriegsmarine trade badge is just visible near his left elbow.
Japanese short sword is 4 This dressed in plainclothes attire for storage; for combat or ceremony it would have appeared in more ornate trappings.
3
I obtained this patch many
scabbard and grip appear to be made of
years ago from a seventh
bamboo. Beneath the grip, the hilt has
grade classmate who knew
writing on both sides. It seems obvious
of my interest in World War
this is not a samurai sword; could you
II. I assume it is German since it came
identify its type and function? —Tom
with a couple of patches bearing the
Pyrcz, Enfield, Conn.
German eagle clutching a swastika, but I have had no luck researching it. Any help would be great. —Steven Burkhardt, Caledonia, Mich.
This is a Kriegsmarine specialty trade sleeve badge. Sailors in the German navy wore a dizzying array of uniform patches. In addition to branch insignia, they wore a badge to represent the department they belonged to—medical, signals, gunnery, and so on. They also wore a rate badge, indicating their pay grade. Sailors with a specialty in their department wore a red trade badge identifying that skill. This badge is that of a light antiaircraft artillery gun chief. —Eric Rivet, Curator
4
My uncle fought in the Pacific and brought home this Japanese sword. It is 30 and one-half inches long
including the scabbard, which has been patched together with tape;
This appears to be a wakizashi blade mounted into a shirasaya—a plain wooden hilt and scabbard used to store the blade when not in use. A wakizashi is a short sword carried as an auxiliary weapon with the longer, more famous katana. For ceremonial or combat use, the wakizashi would come off the shirasaya and be fitted to a koshirae—the ornate hilt, guard, and scabbard that most people envision when they think of Japanese swords. The markings on the tang generally indicate the blade’s maker and when it was forged. —Eric Rivet
Have a World War II artifact you can’t identify? Write to
[email protected] with the following: • Your connection to the object and what you know about it • The object’s dimensions, in inches • Several high-resolution digital photos taken close up and from varying angles. Pictures should be in color, and at least 300 dpi. Unfortunately we can’t respond to every query, nor can we appraise value.
the blade is 20 inches tip-to-hilt. The
26
WORLD WAR II
BUNDESARCHIV BILD 101I-291-1213-O8A PHOTO MÜLLER, KARL
Meet the Beauty in the Beast
ADVERTISEMENT
Discover this spectacular 6½-carat green treasure from Mount St. Helens!
F
or almost a hundred years it lay dormant. Silently building strength. At 10,000 feet high, it was truly a sleeping giant. Until May 18, 1980, when the beast awoke with violent force and revealed its greatest secret. Mount St. Helens erupted, sending up a 80,000-foot column of ash and smoke. From that chaos, something beautiful emerged… our spectacular Helenite Necklace.
EXCLUSIVE
FREE
Helenite Earrings -a $129 valuewith purchase of Helenite Necklace
Helenite is produced from the heated volcanic rock of Mount St. Helens and the brilliant green creation has captured the eye of jewelry designers worldwide. Today you can wear this massive 6½-carat stunner for only $149! Make your emeralds jealous. Our Helenite Necklace puts the green stone center stage, with a faceted pear-cut set in .925 sterling silver finished in luxurious gold. The explosive origins of the stone are echoed in the flashes of light that radiate as the piece swings gracefully from its 18" luxurious gold-finished sterling silver chain. Today the volcano sits quiet, but this unique piece of American natural history continues to erupt with gorgeous green fire.
Necklace enlarged to show luxurious color.
Your satisfaction is guaranteed. Bring home the Helenite Necklace and see for yourself. If you are not completely blown away by the rare beauty of this exceptional stone, simply return the necklace within 30 days for a full refund of your purchase price. JEWELRY SPECS: - 6 ½ ctw Helenite in gold-finished sterling silver setting - 18" gold-finished sterling silver chain
Limited to the first 2200 orders from this ad only Helenite Necklace (6 ½ ctw).................Only $149 +S&P Helenite Stud Earrings (1 ctw) .....................$129 +S&P
Helenite Set $278 ....Call-in price only $149
+S&P
(Set includes necklace and earrings)
Call now to take advantage of this extremely limited offer.
1-800-859-1979 Promotional Code HEL646-04
Please mention this code when you call.
Stauer
®
Rating of A+
14101 Southcross Drive W., Dept. HEL646-04, Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 www.stauer.com
Smart Luxuries—Surprising Prices™
“My wife received more compliments on this stone on the first day she wore it than any other piece of jewelry I’ve ever given her.” - J. from Orlando, FL Stauer Client
Fire for Effect
Sympathy for the Neville By Robert M. Citino
I
N MOST ACCOUNTS of the 1930s, he’s the patsy, the slightly daft gent carrying his signature umbrella, a weakling willing to do anything to appease Adolf Hitler and prevent the Third Reich from launching World War II. Less than a year before the outbreak of human history’s most horrific conflict, he stood on the tarmac at London’s Heathrow airport, waving a piece of paper and boasting to fellow Britons that the document he and Mr. Hitler had just signed meant nothing less than “peace in our time.” The Führer thought otherwise, and ever since, Neville Chamberlain has stood before the bar of history accused, indicted, and convicted of Terminal Stupidity and Toadying to Evil. Indeed, what else is there to say about someone who actually seemed to trust Adolf Hitler? History is rarely so cut and dried, however, and there is another story to tell about Chamberlain. As a central figure in British politics during a tumultuous decade—first as Chancellor of the Exchequer 1931–1937, then as Prime Minister—Chamberlain had to address a complex of problems that reached well beyond a revived Germany and a ranting dictator. Britain faced threats across the globe: Germany in Europe, Italy in the Mediterranean, and, perhaps most troubling of all, Japan in Asia and the Pacific. A war with any one of those three surely would lead the other two to horn in on British territories or possessions. Notions that Chamberlain did not comprehend the threat Germany posed or that appeasement constituted moral cowardice on his part or that Winston Churchill was the only figure on Britain’s political ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY CAMPBELL
scene calling for rearmament and a hard line against Hitler—all standard to the anti-Chamberlain dossier—oversimplify history to the point of falsity. In the late 1930s just about every important figure in British government, or at least in the Conservative Party, knew it was time to spend on national defense. In November 1933, 10 months after Hitler seized power, the British cabinet created a committee on defense requirements to study the cost of military modernization and how long the process would take. That planning culminated in early 1935 in a “White Paper.” The findings? Even if rearmament began immediately, Britain would not be ready to fight Germany until 1939. The analysis described weapons not yet in production, some of them only prototypes or sketches. The “ThirtyNiners,” as rearmament advocates were called, realized wishes took time to become reality, and that until then the thing to do was negotiate, buy time, and avoid a new war. And so, from 1935 on, Britain was in a
juggling act: trying to appease Hitler, but also feverishly girding for an inevitable war. In that context, Chamberlain’s much-maligned policy, distasteful as it appears, made some sense. Engaging Hitler in talks and turning a cheek to his invective gained Britain time to man up. Chamberlain probably did feel his actions might make war unnecessary, and even if he failed he could say—as he did on September 1, 1939—that he acted “with a clear conscience.” By then Britain was ready to fight—or at least far readier than a year before. “Last September we might have lost a short war,” Lieutenant General Henry Pownall, the army’s chief planner, wrote at the time. “Now we shouldn’t, nor a long one either.” Even the inspirer-in-chief, speaking at the White House in 1954, tacitly endorsed Chamberlain’s prewar posture. “It is always better to jaw-jaw than to warwar,” Churchill said. But no one will ever completely rehabilitate Neville Chamberlain. In a dark hour, he failed to inspire the British, and always will suffer by comparison to his successor. Once hostilities began, Chamberlain had no more business leading the Empire than I would have, and his famous utterance that Hitler had “missed the bus,” hours before Germany invaded Scandinavia in April 1940, confirmed his hopelessness in the strategic and operational arena. Even so, Chamberlain oversaw the British rearmament that delivered Hurricanes and Spitfires, four-engine heavy bombers, radar, and more—and for those achievements alone, his own country, the United States, and the whole world owe him a huge debt of gratitude. 2 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
29
Shop These Great Vintage Styles and Support America’s WWII Museum!
VINTAGE EXPEDITION BACKPACK Item#18090 . . . . . . . . . $49.99
B-17 FLIGHT DECK TEE Sizes: SM, MD, LG, XL, 2XL
Item#16314 . . . . . . . . . $25.00
LEATHER 100 MISSION A-2 JACKET Item#14548 . . . . . . . . . $540.00
NAA MUSTANG CAP Item#16254 . . . . . . . . . $25.99
WWII VETERAN CAP Item#5606 . . . . . . . . . $14.95
PARATROOPER MESSENGER BAG Item#18089 . . . . . . . . . $25.99
Enter promo *code VINTAGE15 on the shopping cart screen to receive a 15% discount on your entire purchase. Visit SHOPWWII.org or call 504-528-1944 x 244. *Offer valid thru December 31, 2014. Offer not valid on Memberships, Gift Cards, Donations, or items already discounted.
Open Seven Days, 9:00 am-5:00 pm 945 Magazine Street s New Orleans, LA 70130 s 504.528.1944 www.nationalww2museum.org SHOPWWII.org
Time Travel
A Bridge in Time Story and photos by Gavin Mortimer
Remnants of Remagen, Germany’s Ludendorff Bridge hint at the mass of the ill-fated structure that once spanned the Rhine River.
T
HE WORD “RHINE” comes from the Celtic renos, for “raging flow,” and the river lives up to the name. From its source in the Swiss Alps the Rhine flows and sometimes rages 765 miles north through six countries, debouching into the North Sea. Poets and lyricists have immortalized the river, and for centuries industry has cherished the waterway as a vital artery of transport. But the Rhine’s main significance has been military. The Romans saw the great river—it averages 600 yards across—as the border between the Germanic tribes to the east and the Gauls in the west. Napoleon Bonaparte, trying to extend France’s influence in the early 19th century, had to contend with the Rhine as a barrier to his aims. Then came Adolf Hitler, who in 1940 poured troops across the Rhine en route to conquering France
Remagen’s quiet streets lead to the river that in 1945 was the most significant natural barrier to the Allied advance.
and the Low Countries. Nearly five years later, German forces were homeward bound, retreating east after their failed December 1944 surge in the Ardennes. Once troops in field gray crossed back, Wehrmacht engineers demolished the bridges spanning the Rhine. Most of them, anyway. One bridge, at Remagen—a rail span heavy enough to accommodate tanks, big guns, and fully loaded trucks—remained in place long enough for Allied troops and machines to cross, tipping the balance even further in a fight gone far wrong for the Germans. From the top deck of the train between Bonn and Remagen I could watch the Rhine 300 yards east, parallel to the railbed. It exuded power and importance to 21st century industry; a succession of long, low-slung barges laden with giant JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
31
Time Travel
containers churned through the water. I marveled that the Germans failed to destroy the bridge at Remagen before it could contribute to their downfall. They knew the Americans were headed their way. On March 6, 1945, the U.S. 9th Armored Division had smashed a hole nine miles deep through the German Fifteenth Army line in the Bonn-Remagen sector. The next day, March 7, U.S. Army Lieutenant Karl H. Timmermann was leading A Company of the 27th Armored Infantry Battalion, the reconnaissance patrol for the 14th Tank Battalion’s advance on Remagen. The unit had encountered desultory resistance early that morning but by 11 a.m. the scouts were driving through the dark pine forest sloping down from the western plateau that overlooks the Rhine. Ahead, where the pines petered out, the track curved right. Reaching the forest’s edge the Americans braked and stared: below stood the church of St. Apollinaris—in German, Apollinariskirche—and beyond that Remagen and, spanning the Rhine, a bridge. The bridge was intact. Today, Remagen is a charming small town. Though only 15 miles south of Bonn—the capital of the former West Germany—Remagen feels many miles from urban hustle and bustle. Stepping off the train I curbed the impulse to head straight to the river and walked north, away from town and up the hill to the Apollinariskirche. You should, too. Let the Rhine and the fine church, consecrated in 1857, wait a bit while you find the parish garden, from which, in the context of March 1945, the perspective is of far greater interest. Even from St. Apollinaris I could understand what a breathtaking sight must have greeted Lieutenant Timmermann and his men. I could see the bridge’s characteristic dark stone towers in pairs on either bank, their half-moon gun ports overlooking the river where the tracks crossed until March 17, 1945. Only the twisted steel bones of a small section remain; in 1976 workers removed what was left of the main structure. As I finally 32
WORLD WAR II
GIs record sounds of work on the bridge (above) during the 10 days it remained intact. Modern vessels (below) navigate the Rhine at Remagen; at far left is one of the surviving towers.
made my way on foot from church to bridge I reread my notes on the expanse that linked the towers long enough for the Allies to hurdle the Rhine for 10 days. Work began on the Ludendorff Railway Bridge in 1916 at the behest of Field Marshal Count Alfred von Schlieffen, who wanted to be able to transport German soldiers east or west as rapidly as possible to meet threats from France or Russia. By 1918 the bridge was com-
VIEW MORE IMAGES IN OUR IPAD EDITION
pleted, a magnificent structure 1,066 feet in length with a central arch of 513 feet, and named for General Erich Ludendorff, another of its advocates. At midstream two stone piers anchored the span. Each incorporated a chamber where explosives could be packed for use in dire straits. On the eastern shore the two railway lines entered a 1,300-foot tunnel bored through the 600-foot cliff known to locals as the Erpeler Ley, a term echoed in the TOP, NATIONAL ARCHIVES
P - 40 FLYING TIGERS CUCKOO CLOCK Exclusive limited edition — only available from The Bradford Exchange
B
razen, brave and very effective, the “Flying Tigers” flew their way into history thanks to their WWII exploits. Flying the P-40 Warhawk, the tenacious men of the “Flying Tigers” turned this rugged yet often outclassed plane into a fearsome harbinger of American firepower. Along the way they added the shark-tooth design on the plane’s nose—turning the P-40 into an icon forever associated with the men of the 23rd Fighter Group.
Plane taxies out of the hangar on the hour to the “ROAR” of the Allison engine
Hangar features United States Army Air Corps motifs, flags and a clock face modeled on a warhawk propeller
Intricately sculpted and painted by hand, in authentic detail
Clock case shown smaller than actual size of appr. 17½ inches tall x 7½ inches wide x 6½ inches deep
Brass-toned metal pendulum decorated with prop and
wings insignia Requires 3 “AA” batteries, not included.
This exclusive “P-40 Flying Tiger” Cuckoo Clock salutes the heroic efforts of the legendary American Volunteer Group better known at the “Flying Tigers.” Strong demand is expected, so act now to acquire yours in four interestfree monthly installments of only $44.99, for a total issue price of just $179.95*, backed by our 365day money-back guarantee. Reply today, but send no money now. Just complete and return your Reservation Application. It’s that easy!
RESERVATION APPLICATION
SEND NO MONEY NOW
9345 Milwaukee Avenue · Niles, IL 60714-1393
YES! Please reserve the “P-40 Flying Tiger” Cuckoo Clock for me as described in this announcement. Limit: one per order.
Please Respond Promptly
Mrs. Mr. Ms. Name (Please Print Clearly)
Address City State
Zip
E-mail (optional)
www.bradfordexchange.com/p40 ©2014 The Bradford Exchange
01-15583-001-EIR
01-15583-001-E57391 *Plus $18.99 shipping and service. Limited-edition presentation restricted to 295 crafting days. Please allow 4-8 weeks after initial payment for shipment. Sales subject to product availability and order acceptance.
BLOW
OUT AT POLTAVA A PLAN TO encircle Berlin sent
AMERICAN
bombers into A LUFTWAFFE ambush in Ukraine BY RICHARD R. MULLER 36
WORLD WAR II
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
When an American airfleet veered from Berlin to Ukraine, the unusual maneuver came to the attention of Luftwaffe pilots flying Heinkel He 111 bombers like these, shown over the Eastern Front.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
37
T
HE AFTERNOON LIGHT WAS BRIGHT over eastern Ukraine as the sky filled with giant silver planes. Back in friendly airspace after the black clouds of German flak fields, 74 B-17 Flying Fortresses with U.S. Eighth Air Force markings arrayed in crisp formation above the airfield at Poltava before maneuvering to land and, one by one, taxiing into place on Marsden matting laid over grass. By the time the crewmen of the final Fort to set down on that cramped expanse of Soviet soil had cut their plane’s engines, 45 minutes had passed. The Forts, their oversize “Tokyo” fuel tanks nearly dry, were not wearing the customary coat of olive drab. To wow the Russians, the Eighth had sent its newest G-model aircraft, their aluminum skin bare, as it had been since early 1944, to reduce weight and drag. From the big deadly birds streamed nearly 800 tired Americans clad in bulky flying gear—but carrying the natty Class A uniforms they would soon don. In their pockets the airmen had maps of the U.S.S.R. and flash cards translating English sentences into Russian and vice versa. As the fliers approached a committee waiting on the field to greet them they replayed in their heads superiors’ warnings not to do anything that might make the United States “look cheap, shabby, or uncouth.” To mark the occasion, base commander Major General Alexander R. Perminov and his people had arranged a ceremony. By coincidence the date, June 21, 1944, was the eve of an anniversary Russians held in infamy: on June 22, 1941, their and the Americans’ now-shared enemy, Germany, had unleashed Operation Barbarossa—a back-stabbing surprise invasion of the Soviet Union that Hitler planned even as Germany was reaping the benefits of a mutual nonaggression pact with the Soviets. The festivities began amid fumbles. The Americans, now in their Class A getups—dark olive drab wool blouse, tan trousers, brass collar insignia—had trouble interpreting Soviet insignia. Translation problems arose. Asked to make remarks, American commander Colonel Archie J. Old Jr. stood at the microphone. As he began speaking, a female Red Army soldier came forward and pressed a bouquet on him. Flustered, the no-nonsense colonel proceeded to “smell the flowers and talk into the microphone, then smell the microphone and talk into the flowers,” the 3rd Bombardment Division signals officer recalled. Once the talking was done, Soviet minders whisked their famished guests to a mess hall. As he awaited his meal, First
Lieutenant Stanley Bonda chuckled to hear a Ukrainian woman serving dinner say, “Damn C rations again.” But the young pilot also could see awe on his new comrades’ faces as Russians realized they were in the company of men who had laid waste to the Hitlerite capital. “The more times you bombed Berlin, the greater hero you were in their eyes,” another pilot said. Afterward the Americans retired to tents, with slit trenches nearby; Ukraine was a war zone, after all. On that cool June evening similar scenes played out at two other Ukrainian airfields for the rest of the American contingent. The sun set just before 9 p.m., ending a long journey that, all in all, had gone well—except that, unknown to the Americans and Russians, the Germans knew precisely where it had ended.
E
ARLY THAT MORNING AN ENOR MOUS American force had flown from England to drop nearly 2,500 tons of high explosives and incendiaries in what at first appeared to German defenders to be a standard daylight terror raid. Instead of flying back to England, however, a fraction of the American bomber crews had borne on eastward, with P-51 Mustangs providing cover, to land at three Soviet air bases in Ukraine: Poltava, Mirgorod—50 miles northwest—and Piryatin, another 50 miles beyond Mirgorod. One of many western attempts—including the recent invasion at Normandy—meant to encourage the U.S.S.R. to fight on, the effort was known as Operation Frantic. And save for sharp German eyes, a wayward Mustang, and what remained of the Luftwaffe bomber fleet in the East, Frantic might have succeeded. In late 1943, the Allies’ lack of a fighter able to fly to and from Berlin protecting heavy bombers had left their daylight bombing offensive in jeopardy. American air planners sought to open a second air front from the east; heavy bombers flying out of Soviet bases would threaten the Reich from an unexpected quarter. But the Soviets, mistrustful of their allies and skeptical of the value of long-range bombardment, dragged their feet. The Americans persisted; not only were there diplomatic benefits to be had, but the Soviets maintained air bases in their far east. Access to those facilities and landing fields would permit American bombers to pummel Japan from mainland Asia rather than from the Pacific alone. In February 1944 Premier Joseph Stalin finally agreed to welcome American crews and planes to Poltava, Mirgorod, and Piryatin. The U.S. Army Air Forces began planning missions that would fly out of England and Italy, hit Axis targets, and
Save for what was left of the
LUFTWAFFE
in the East, Operation Frantic
might have worked.
38
WORLD WAR II
American and Soviet personnel add a personal touch to bombs to be carried by B-17s flying out of Poltava, the Ukraine air base hosting an Allied shuttle fleet.
continue to Soviet territory to land and refuel before bombing more objectives on the turnaround. Hundreds of American personnel deployed to the Soviet bases to work with Soviet comrades on the “shuttle” project, which eventually would include American planes based on Soviet soil. The first shuttle of Eighth Air Force planes would take place as part of a regular daylight raid. Cleared for June 21, 1944, that mission would send more than 1,200 B-17s and B-24s from England to Germany, with nearly 1,300 P-51 Mustangs, P-38 Lightnings, and P-47 Thunderbolts riding shotgun to cover the huge bomber formation in relays. After the 775-mile flight from England to the targets, the six shuttle groups—some 140 B-17s guarded by Mustangs with wing tanks—would fly on to Ukraine, a 12-hour, 1,670-mile journey. Air force planners had structured the Berlin-area strikes to draw German defenders away from the shuttle bombers, which hailed from the 3rd Bombardment Division’s 45th and 13th combat wings. Once those crews attacked a synthetic oil plant at Ruhland, 75 miles NATIONAL ARCHIVES; MAP BY JANET NORQUIST/CREATIVE FREELANCERS
Shuttle Run to Poltava Baltic Sea
0
LATVIA
LITHUANIA
U. S. S. R.
GERMANY
Berlin
Miles 200
ESTONIA
POLAND
Poltava CZECH.
Kiev Ukraine
Piryatin
Area of detail
0 Miles 40
ROMANIA
Mirgorod Poltava BULGARIA
Black Sea
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
39
Litovsk, was poised to strike—but a winter of Soviet advances and German withdrawals had left key northern bases unusable, placing some targets beyond the Heinkel’s 600-mile operating radius. The Eastern Front, however, had no shortage of objectives—notably Soviet rail lines that had gotten noticeably busier in northern Ukraine. Soviet night air defenses were weak, and Fliegerkorps IV flew dozens of barely opposed night raids against trains, yards, and rails between March and June 1944, working from reconnaissance photos taken by Junkers Ju 188 crews. Although poorly trained and unskilled replacement personnel had most other Luftwaffe units doing hackwork, these Heinkel crews were getting better.
A
S INTENDED, THE BERLIN RAID HAD indeed kept Luftwaffe Command busy. Nonetheless, when the shuttle group continued east after hitting Ruhland, someone noticed. German planes tailed the Americans; Colonel Old saw one dive into a cloud to escape his Mustangs. As the Allied aircraft departed German-held territory, the spotters turned back. The Americans obviously were bound for Russia, but where— and why? When a shot-up Mustang crash-landed in Poland the Luftwaffe got its answers. Aboard the nearly intact P-51 searchers found papers that not only revealed the shuttle flight plan but also named the shuttle bases. Luftwaffe Command relayed the information to Meister with orders to swap that night’s railroad strikes for a rare opportunity. Meister sent two Ju 188s to photograph the fields at Poltava, Mirgorod, and Piryatin. The high-flying recce planes circled the shuttle bases, easily dodging ineffectual Soviet flak. Pictures showed B-17s at Poltava parked in neat rows—“a peacetime lineup,” as an astonished Meister put it. Planes were arranged wing to wing at Poltava for the simplest reason: lack of space. The base had only so much Marsden matting—and no blast revetments. At Mirgorod and Piryatin, as enemy reconnaissance crews were photographing other Forts and their P-51 escorts, American personnel spotted the Junkers. Mustang pilots asked permission to pursue. The Soviets said they would handle it. By the time Russian pilots scrambled, however, the Ju 188s were gone. At Mirgorod, the 13th Combat Wing crews refueled in record time and took off for the protection of bases at Kharkov and elsewhere. The 74 bombers at Poltava stayed put—the crews were tired, the Russians seemed unconcerned by the enemy recce planes, and Poltava seemed a safe distance from any German bases. Meister and cohort applied themselves to the evening’s duties. Three bomber wings, each with three groups of 20 Heinkels, fueled and loaded ordnance. Two wings—some 120 bombers—would attack Poltava, preceded by one group of 20 pathfinders. Other pathfinders would mark Mirgorod for the third wing. Piryatin was not a target; no bombers had landed there, but the shuttle force’s Mustangs, a formidable fighter NATIONAL ARCHIVES (ALL)
Photos taken soon after the raid show the destruction German bombers visited on Eighth Air Force B-17s at Poltava.
VIEW MORE IMAGES IN OUR IPAD EDITION
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
41
complement, had. The German pathfinders were based near enough to their objectives to operate from home base; many of the bomber groups had to stage to airfields closer to the front line. At the last minute, one wing of Heinkels, finding itself short of time to refuel and arm, dropped out of the attack, reducing the Poltava strike force by half. Carrying high explosives fuzed to explode on impact, along with incendiary, fragmentation, and SD-2 antipersonnel bombs—the last nicknamed “butterflies” because when open their casings resembled an insect’s wings—Heinkels took off from fields around Minsk in fading light. They arrayed in a “bomber stream,” a tactic borrowed from the RAF in which loose groups of six to eight planes flew in close succession so pilots could swamp enemy defenses at minimal risk of collision. Ahead flew the pathfinders, steering by electronic navigation to the Soviet bases, where they dropped marker flares. The Mirgorod pathfinders, however, fell behind after three and a quarter hours in the air, and unknowingly overflew their target. Spotting markers that other pathfinders had dropped at Poltava, the latecomers assumed they were over Mirgorod and dropped flares as well. The leader of the German bomber wing detailed to attack Mirgorod recognized the error and seized the moment. The entire German bombing assault fell on Poltava. An alert there had jerked the base’s several thousand Americans and Soviets out of their cots, but not until the flares began falling and the antiaircraft guns opened up did urgency sweep the field. Men pelted to the slit trenches, some tripping over tent ropes. American crews watched transfixed as a single marker flare, without a parachute, dropped onto the center of the main runway. A line of parachute flares stretched east to west, making the silver B-17s gleam. “I can still see the brilliant white flares parachuted by the German bombers, swinging back and forth, lighting up the night like it was high noon,” Technical Sergeant John Chopelas, a radio operator with the 452nd, recalled. The Germans continued dropping flares until light from burning bombers made them unnecessary.
all, some 6,500 individual projectiles fell on the field. One German group commander noted that the most experienced crews led the attack, carefully lining up on targets and making several approaches before releasing payloads. Crews were supposed to spend only 20 minutes over the target, but pickings were so rich many lingered twice that long. “They seemed to be flying in a regular traffic pattern,” an American said. “They would make their run, get back into the traffic pattern again, all very casually.” Below, all was chaos. John Chopelas, who had flown many a bombing run, never forgot the helpless sensation of being on the receiving end of what he had been dishing out. Soviet personnel rushed to the blazing aircraft, trying courageously but futilely to fight fires with shovels and buckets of sand, heedless of the frag bombs carpeting the scene. Poltava’s 450,000-gallon aviation fuel dump caught fire, and one of the bomb dumps produced, in an American’s words, “very pretty fireworks.” To the Americans, Soviet defenses seemed totally ineffective. Searchlights would “cone” a German bomber, pinioning the plane with beams—but gunners, lacking radar or coordination with light crews, let pilot after pilot escape. The American combat wing’s lead navigator recalled how a German flier was able to “cross the field and methodically drop his bombs with AA fire bursting consistently 50 yards behind its tail.” Poltava base commander Perminov summoned Soviet night fighters but none appeared; those pilots did not report to him. After the He 111s had spent about 90 minutes raking the airfield, the German pathfinder commander gave the signal “Closing time!” With nary a loss, the raiders departed, leaving in their wake a conflagration that a reconnaissance crew documented, dropping flash bombs to get the image on film. “The whole aerodrome was ringed with burning and exploding aircraft,” said Wing Commander Hughes, an RAF liaison officer assigned to the base. Only two Americans died, but that night dozens of Russians lost their lives trying to douse flaming B-17s. Others were wounded, and thousands of antipersonnel bombs littered the area, so the defenders decided to leave the desolation until daylight. The next morning American anger at the poor Soviet showing abated as Russian personnel worked heroically to clear the field, an effort that took days and cost additional Soviet dead and injured. Radioman John Chopelas recalled Russians methodically picking up ordnance along a path to the ruined and damaged aircraft, grinning while holding up unexploded butterfly bombs for the Americans to “admire.”
He 111crews let loose
15 tons of high
EXPLOSIVES, including five blockbusters that
opened huge craters.
A
TTACKING IN SEVERAL WAVES, Heinkel crews loosed some 15 tons of high explosives, including five 2,200-pound blockbusters that opened huge craters among the densely packed aircraft. Another 78 tons of fragmentation bombs shredded the B-17s’ aluminum skin, and 17 tons of incendiaries reduced the big bombers to flaming wrecks. In 42
WORLD WAR II
Despite the attack, shuttle missions went on, with crews getting briefed in a building that had lost its roof and windows.
Of 74 B-17s at Poltava, 47 were total losses; so were two C-47 transports and an F-5 reconnaissance plane. Many B-17s burned to cinders except for the tail. Another 26 were damaged. Counting losses from the June 21 raid on Germany, this was the Eighth Air Force’s costliest single operation of the war.
T
HE SOVIETS LOST SEVERAL PLANES, including Perminov’s. The attack had been uncannily precise; 98 percent of German ordnance hit the target area. Four days later, the 13th Combat Wing and the remnants of the 45th left Ukraine to strike a Hungarian railyard en route to Italy and the UK. Most 45th crews, planes in ruins, stayed a week at Poltava before riding American transports to England via the Middle East. The U.S. Army Air Forces at first slammed the lid—“As if the Germans didn’t know what happened!” Chopelas said— but censorship yielded to writing off the attack as an expensive lesson. By July reporters were being briefed. An official periodical ran a spread of the mess, declaring that the Luftwaffe “CAN STILL TOSS A WICKED PUNCH.” The 3rd Bombardment Division took comfort in industrial production. Poltava was “a Russian graveyard,” yes, but
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
the losses were only two days of B-17 plant output, a report stated. More than a year later, a report on the P-51’s lost papers warned airmen not to carry sensitive documents into combat. The Poltava affair came to be seen as a stew of inefficiency, confusion, American hubris, and German skill. The Soviets took the raid in stride; the Luftwaffe always merited respect— how odd that the Americans had been caught so flat-footed. For the Luftwaffe pilots, Poltava briefly harkened to Barbarossa’s early days. The night of June 22, the invasion anniversary, Fliegerkorps IV returned to Mirgorod and Piryatin. They missed Piryatin and hit Mirgorod hard, but the American bombers were still elsewhere. That day, the great Soviet offensive, Operation Bagration, began. Meister’s unit returned to providing ground support, but within weeks its Heinkels were out of gas. By September Fliegerkorps IV no longer existed. Disaster did not end the shuttle experiment, but the handwriting was on the wall. Missions continued into September 1944, the last one a September 18 attempt to support the Polish underground’s doomed uprising in Warsaw. The next day the B-17s left Poltava for good. As fall cooled into winter, only a skeleton crew of Americans remained in Ukraine, closing up shop at the Operation Frantic bases. 2 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
43
[ portfolio ]
HAVE YOU SEEN ME? Of course you have. Among the war’s most reproduced pictures, this image shows an SS Panzergrenadier whose identity has become a staple of Internet debate.
44
WORLD WAR II
[ b a7 t0 tt lhe aonfn ti vheer bs au rl yg e ]
PICTURE Imperfect Minutes of staged camera work made a few men the German faces of the Bulge
READY FOR MY CLOSEUP, MISTER GOEBBELS! Entrenching tool and Sturmgeschütz handy, an SS man, recognizable by his dappled coat, is confidently calm—and who would not be, since he is making believe?— as he pretends to wave men forward in a frame from the day’s propaganda footage.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
45
[
BIG BREAK GIs of the 14th Cavalry in armored vehicles and jeeps were towing 76mm guns in eastern Belgium when firing erupted. Withdrawing on foot, the Americans left behind an impromptu back lot where SS propagandists were able to record mock actions (above). After the U.S. 3rd Armored Division seized the footage and stills, which bore no location notes, the images, assumed to show actual combat, entered the public domain.
O
PORTFOLIO
]
n Monday, December 18, 1944,
sures and dragooned their ad hoc extras into
between Recht and Poteau, Bel-
and out of frame every which way so the cov-
gium, troops of an SS Kampfgruppe
erage would satisfy the pickiest Propaganda
named for its commander, Colonel Max
Ministry editor. Holding regular-issue weapons
Hansen, were storming west. Just as an SS
plus salvaged American guns, the men amia-
propaganda unit came by, the soldiers
bly complied. The camera really loved one
encountered a column of vehicles abandoned
bandolier-draped Landser. In a touch of real-
by retreating GIs. The Kriegsberichter, or war
ism, a self-propelled gun growled past.
correspondents, were mad for visuals, and
But the images weren’t all stellar. The pic-
here was a bonanza: wrecked enemy tanks,
ture-makers spoiled one another’s shots, the
armored cars, and field pieces, burning half-
cameraman had to bark at soldiers not to gape
tracks and jeeps—and German troops to pose
at his lens, and one Panzergrenadier got
with them. Any director would have killed for
snagged squeezing under a fence. Other men
the overcast softening the winter light. The
charged gamely—straight at a nonchalant
resulting images came to personify the final
Kamerad. When a cache of Camels turned up,
German counteroffensive of the war and
everyone had a smoke. Then the troops went
make a few visages anonymously iconic.
back to work, leaving the camera crew to
The Kriegsberichter adjusted their expo46
WORLD WAR II
smell the burning rubber. —Michael Dolan NATIONAL ARCHIVES (ALL)
EVERY WHICH WAY In a 1984 book, Battle of the Bulge: Then and Now, Jean Paul Pallud terms the images mostly staged. These show the same men “attacking” in different directions. “The photographs give a good idea of the Wehrmacht at the end of 1944,” he wrote. “Highly motivated troops, well-equipped and backed by armor, bolstered by a motley collection of low grade soldiers typified by the frightened look in the eyes of the young soldier in an oversize old greatcoat and a helmet too big for him.”
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
47
[ portfolio ]
BOGUS B-ROLL This picture often runs cropped to show a trio feigning a charge across a road but cutting out the fellow at far left casually strolling into the amateur actors’ mock-belligerent path.
WE GOT ‘EM; WE’LL SMOKE ‘EM Framed by an American M8 armored car’s fender and tire, Panzergrenadiers enjoy a most soldierly tradition—lighting up—with looted Zigaretten. Other pictures from the photo session show Germans rummaging for and finding GI rations.
VIEW THE VIDEO IN OUR IPAD EDITION
48
WORLD WAR II
HUNG UP
D’OH!
BROUGHT UP SHORT
In one of several goofs, an infantryman snags himself on a barbed-wire fence.
As the cameraman was filming, his Leica-equipped colleague blundered into the frame.
Filmmakers loathe gawkers; a blink later, the man behind the lens seems to tell his subject to look elsewhere.
CLOSER TO REAL Comparing the pictured locations of vehicles and trees, fences, poles, and other landmarks 40 years later, Pallud decided this image, showing troops advancing south, could show actual combat.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
49
At Okinawa, the USS Laffey absorbed an epic amount of suicidal punishment
Battered Beyond Belief 50
WORLD WAR II
Off Okinawa on April 16, 1945, the destroyer USS Laffey rode out attacks like these by more than a score of enemy pilots enraptured with the legend of the “Divine Wind.” The morbid sorties killed 32 Americans.
By David Sears JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
51
O
N FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 1945, the USS Laffey sailed 20 miles west from Okinawa to Kerama Retto, a mountainous island cluster that was home to Wiseman’s Cove, a repair anchorage. Sailors aboard the battered ships there called it the “Bone Yard.” Among the anchored vessels, the Laffey’s unscarred metal, trim lines, and clear decks set the 2,200-ton Sumner-class destroyer apart, as did its size and firepower. In addition to six five-inch cannons, the 376-foot ship, which had come to prepare for a perilous assignment, boasted nearly two dozen 40mm and 20mm antiaircraft guns. The navy had commissioned the Laffey in February 1944 to replace a namesake lost off Guadalcanal in November 1942. Skipper Commander F. Julian Becton, 36, and a core group of veteran officers and petty officers had overseen the commissioning, then trained a 336-man crew, mostly raw recruits. From the bridge of another ship, Becton had seen the first Laffey go down. When he learned he would be commanding the new Laffey, he resolved to avoid its predecessor’s fate. After shakedown, the Laffey crossed the Atlantic to participate in the Normandy invasion. Off Utah Beach on June 6, 1944, the destroyer escorted amphibious craft to the beach, then screened larger ships bombarding the shore. The crew first saw fighting action on June 8, 1944, but the Laffey’s real baptism by fire occurred on June 25 off Cherbourg. When German coastal batteries threatened Allied minesweepers, destroyers Barton, O’Brien, and Laffey rushed in to lay smoke. The Barton and the O’Brien took direct hits. Another German shell landed off the Laffey’s port bow with a huge splash; afterward, damage control personnel discovered an unexploded round on the deck of the boatswain’s locker, a cramped bow space just above the waterline. They hoisted the yard-long, 400-pound projectile through hatches to the main deck and rolled it overboard. Fortunately, the Channel was calm—no swells to flood the bow or trigger a blast. A month later the Laffey recrossed the Atlantic to have repair, maintenance, and modifications done at the Boston Navy Yard. The destroyer seemed a lucky ship—but the true test of that reputation waited on the far side of the world.
The Allies attributed the initial sporadic suicide flights to crazy individual pilots. But in December 1944, as the Allies began a series of Philippine island invasions, suicide attacks increased in frequency and ferocity. During the December 7 assault on Ormoc, a city on the Leyte coast, Becton and crew watched a pilot deliberately dive to sink a transport. A destroyer intentionally struck by another enemy pilot had to be scuttled, and similar attacks damaged two more destroyers. On December 10, when Japanese pilots slammed into five vessels, the Laffey stood by the destroyer Hughes to assist with damage control and tend to wounded men, many of them grievously burned. The harrowing pattern reached a crescendo on January 6, 1945, off Luzon. Suicide pilots there mauled 11 ships, but the Laffey again escaped unscathed. By February, after maintenance at Ulithi, the Laffey had joined a fast carrier task force supporting the invasion of Iwo Jima. To provide early warnings of enemy aircraft, the navy had developed new tactics: a mobile picket line of destroyers deployed 50 miles ahead of the fleet. Some pickets carried fighter-director teams—radar and tactical communications specialists—that controlled Combat Air Patrol fighter aircraft. The Iwo Jima campaign proved uneventful for the Laffey, as horrid weather staved off any airborne threat. Next up for the destroyer, however, was duty in the Combined Joint Expeditionary Force invading Okinawa, an island well within the range of planes based on Japan’s home islands. To shield the Okinawa landings, a necklace of 15 fixed radar picket (RP) stations encircled the island. RP 1, the station
Skipper F. Julian Becton guided the USS Laffey through its gravest hour.
A
FTER UNDERGOING MODIFICATIONS, the Laffey steamed for the Pacific, reaching the front in late October. The Battle of Leyte Gulf, Japan’s doomed effort to defeat the first Allied landings in the Philippines, had just ended, a swan song for the Imperial Navy and a prelude to a desperate mode of warfare. Taking inspiration from a legendary “Divine Wind” said to have protected ancient Japan from an attacking Mongol fleet, Japan’s warlords fashioned a modern intervention: aerial suicide crashes aimed at sinking enemy ships—especially aircraft carriers. Multiplied many times, these tactics might prevent Japan’s utter defeat.
52
WORLD WAR II
COURTESY OF PATRIOTS POINT NAVAL AND MARITIME MUSEUM; PREVIOUS PAGES, NATIONAL ARCHIVES (ALL)
Kamikaze Siege Assault on the destroyer USS Laffey, April 16, 1945
X Suicide hit X Grazed ship Bomb hit Splashed L Downed by Laffey C Downed by Combat Air Patrol CL Downed by Combat Air Patrol and/or Laffey LL Downed by Landing Craft, Support and/or Laffey
nearest Japan, lay 50 miles due north of “Point Bolo,” the westernmost spot along Okinawa’s central coast. The other pickets, numbered clockwise, also took bearings from Point Bolo. Each picket ship was to patrol its station for several days—unless damaged or sunk. The RP necklace was not the only cordon; a 39-station interior “ping line” of smaller screening vessels guarded the invasion fleet against submarines and lesser ILUSTRATION BY JOEL KIMMEL
surface craft. But it was RP 1 and adjacent posts that would encounter the main aerial threat. The landings began on April 1, 1945. From then through April 12, as the Laffey’s crew was enjoying comparative safety screening offshore bombardment ships, nearly 50 American vessels, including 30 picket or ping-line destroyers, took aerial hits. Twenty-four, including 15 destroyers, were sunk JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
53
or scuttled. Casualties reached nearly 1,000 killed and 1,500 wounded, for a time dwarfing the toll ashore. Japan’s aerial strategy, called Operation Ten-Go, combined massed attacks by conventional bombers and suicide aircraft called “floating chrysanthemums.” On April 6 and 7, for example, 700 planes, roughly half on suicide missions, swarmed American ships, sinking five and damaging 15. As blasted vessels reached Wiseman’s Cove, the Bone Yard became an even ghastlier sight.
T
HE LAFFEY’S APRIL 13 STAY in Wiseman’s Cove was brief. After refueling, rearming, loading the first mail received in seven weeks, and boarding a five-man fighterdirector team, the ship set sail for RP 1. Reaching station the next day, the Laffey was joined by two Landing Craft, Support, LCS-51 and LCS-116. LCSs were adaptations of Landing Craft, Infantry, heavily armed with .50-caliber, 20mm, and 40mm guns. Slow—top speed 16 knots—shallow-bottomed, and squat—160 feet long, with a 23-foot beam—the ungainly LCS’s chief merit was versatility. Two high-capacity pumps enabled the gunboat to double as a fireboat. Young LCS skippers like the 51’s Lieutenant Howell D. Chickering and the 116’s Lieutenant A. J. Wierzbicki had few illusions about their purpose. After suicide attacks they would be dousing fires, moving casualties, and recovering survivors. Turning over RP 1 to the Laffey on April 14, the departing destroyer’s skipper reported few enemy “snoopers” aloft, and no raids. Conditions remained quiet until Sunday night, when
all at once snoopers seemed to fill the sky. Combat Air Patrol fliers squelched the threat, but unease remained. When general quarters ended at 3 a.m., bridge quartermaster Aristides “Ari” Phoutrides, 19, crawled exhausted into his rack. Phoutrides, son of a Greek Orthodox pastor in Seattle, felt sure that the Laffey was about to catch hell. Monday dawned quiet. The Laffey’s breakfast chow line stretched to the main deck when radar operators picked up a single enemy aerial contact or “bogey”—an Aichi D3A “Val” dive-bomber, recognizable by its fixed landing gear—off the port bow. The crew raced to general quarters and the fiveinch gunners in forward mounts 51 and 52 opened fire. The Val retreated, but crewmen stayed at battle stations; within 45 minutes, radar detected many more bogies. Combat Information Center officer Lloyd Hull, 22, sensed a nightmare unfolding. Soon lookouts topside spotted Vals, “Judys”—Yokosuka D4Y dive-bombers—“Kates”—Nakajima B5N torpedo bombers—and “Oscars”—Nakajima Ki-43 fighters—poised to attack the Laffey. Four Vals peeled off—two of the pilots aiming for the starboard bow, two for the stern. “Here they come!” shouted Seaman Ramon Pressburger, 21, a loader on a starboard 40mm. “Here they come!” Commander Becton, shouting orders from the flying bridge by voice tube to quartermaster Jack Doran in the pilothouse below, ordered hard left rudder; he meant to stay broadside to the attackers so as many guns as possible could engage. In the gunfire director, or “basket,” atop the flying bridge, gun boss
After the maelstrom the Laffey wears scars stem to stern—such as an aft five-inch cannon barrel skewed aloft by a suicide pilot. Another took with him six members of fantail gun crews. VIEW MORE IMAGES IN OUR IPAD EDITION
54
WORLD WAR II
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Unbroken After World War II, the USS Laffey served in the Korean War and the Cold War. Since 1986 the old vessel has been a National Historic Landmark and museum, berthed at the mouth of the Cooper River on Charleston Harbor at Charleston, South Carolina. The ship is part of a complex that includes the Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Yorktown and Balaoclass submarine USS Clamagore, as well as vintage warplanes, a display on Medal of Honor recipients, and other attractions. The Laffey is open for tours daily except on Christmas. Admission ranges from free for children six and under to $20 for adults, with discounts for seniors and active-duty military personnel. Camping facilities are available. Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum, 40 Patriots Point Road, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina; 866-831-1720; patriotspoint.org.
Paul Smith had permission to fire when ready. Under director control, mounts 51 and 52 downed the two Vals off the bow. Flying low, one Val bound for the stern caught a wheel on a wave and nosed in. Cannon blasts from mount 53, abetted by the ship’s 20mms and 40mms and those aboard the LCS-51, brought down the other attacking Val. Next came two Judys. The first, angling for the starboard beam, came in low, a bull’s-eye for the Laffey’s 20mms and 40mms. With the other Judy aiming for the port beam, Becton ordered helmsman Doran to swing 30 degrees to starboard. The port 20mm and 40mm gunners splashed that Judy, but not before its pilot dropped a bomb that exploded directly alongside. Shrapnel peppered portside 20mm gunner Bob Robertson, 19, who would lose an eye but survive because gun captain Fred Burgess shoved Robertson to the deck as the blast nearly severed one of Burgess’s legs below the knee. As crewmates replaced incapacitated gunners, the morning’s seventh and eighth attackers moved in: a Val to port and a Judy to starboard. Laffey gunners hammered the Val, but its pilot maintained a shallow dive toward mount 53, where mount captain Lawrence “Ski” Delewski, 20, had just had a cannon misfire. The Pennsylvanian deftly stepped down from the topside hatch and into the armored gun house, where he hammered the gun’s breech with a rawhide-covered maul. As COURTESY OF PATRIOTS POINT NAVAL AND MARITIME MUSEUM
the balky gun barked, the oncoming Val grazed the spot where Delewski had just been standing and skidded into the water. The starboard Judy never got close; 20mm and 40mm fire left its death-wish pilot without a plane to fly. It was 8:42 a.m. On the bridge, Ari Phoutrides had recorded eight planes and eight kills in the log. Everyone aboard, especially the gunners, had held his own in the siege, now in its 12th minute. Seconds after Becton returned to the pilothouse from the flying bridge, the first plane that would hit the Laffey squarely, a Val, aimed for the port beam.
A
S THE DIVEBOMBER’S lacerated wing tanks dripped fuel, its pilot banked between the destroyer’s stacks. The Val’s landing gear obliterated the starboard side 20mm mounts and two sets of 40mms; it lost a wing, then toppled over the side. Three gunners died outright; a fourth, soaked in fuel and afire, leaped overboard. Fires topside plumed black smoke. Exploding 40mm clips perforated the deck, allowing flaming gas to stream into a magazine. In the engineering spaces, smoke forced men to close ventilators. Blistering temperatures soared higher. Communications circuits began to falter, prompting Lieutenant Al Henke, the Laffey’s engineering officer, to improvise. He told throttlemen that if communications failed—as they soon would—they should keep pace with the rate of the ship’s gunfire. In the darkened Combat Information Center below the pilothouse, Hull’s radar team could not see but keenly felt the violence. Luminous dots—most now too near to distinguish, track, or report—pocked their screens. The communications officers were on the horn with the amphibious command ship Eldorado. Combat Air Patrols were changing shifts, delaying fighters. “They’ll come, Captain,” executive officer Lieutenant Challen McCune, a 26-year-old Iowan, assured Becton. “We’ll have to hold the bastards off for awhile ourselves.” Hoping to contain the flames, Becton slowed the Laffey. “This marked us as a cripple,” he recalled. “The Japs really went to work on us.” Three new attackers approached astern. “Ski” Delewski, now captaining mount 53 from a side hatch, spotted the first, a Val, to starboard. Only the three fantail 20mms had a clear shot. The gunners zeroed in, but momentum carried the Val into the fantail, scraping away the 20mm mounts, killing six men and bulldozing Delewski’s mount. The plane’s bomb exploded, disintegrating the aircraft, shearing away gun house armor plate, tearing holes in the main deck, and igniting fires that threatened the after magazine. The blast threw Delewski 15 feet onto the portside main deck, remarkably unharmed. Becton ordered the after magazine flooded. No sooner was this done than a Val or a Judy—no one was sure which— crashed into the ruins of Delewski’s mount. Both plane and bomb blew, killing six of Delewski’s crew and skewing a gun barrel skyward like a dislocated finger. The impact and exploJANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
55
sion stove in the starboard quarter, exposing interior spaces. With the Laffey defenseless astern, a Val pilot planted a bomb on the fantail. The blast severed the rudder cables and hydraulics. “Captain, rudder jammed at 26 degrees left,” Doran shouted through the tube to the beleaguered Becton.
T
HROUGHOUT, LCS-51’s Howell Chickering had managed to stay close to the Laffey. When attacks got heaviest, several 51 sailors panicked and jumped overboard. “If you stop to get them,” a chief petty officer warned his skipper, “I’m jumping off, too!” Chickering kept going. Aboard LCS-116, now well off to the east and out of range of the Laffey and the 51, men had their hands just as full. Ray Davis, a forward 40mm gunner, had locked onto a Japanese aircraft when a Corsair swooped in to shoot it down. Cheers went up—perhaps the worst was over. But just then a bomb-carrying suicide plane struck the 116’s after 40mm gun, killing three crewmen and wounding others. As tumbling ammunition clips exploded above Davis and his crew, a second enemy flier zoomed in. Davis’s 40mm couldn’t swing far enough to reach the plane, but an alert .50-caliber gunner stitched rounds right into the cockpit. The pilot slumped and his plane’s nose jerked up. The aircraft cleared the 116, barrel-rolled into the water, and exploded. Even as inbound Combat Air Patrol pilots reached the LCS116, two more suicide planes struck the Laffey, each slamming into the after deckhouse, where four sailors died. A litany of reports documented the destroyer’s woes: fires amidships and astern; steering control lost; a pair of red-hot aircraft engines embedded in bulkheads; two main cannons and most 40s and 20s destroyed; an incendiary shell cooking off in a head near an unexploded bomb; decks cluttered with airplane wreckage; and flaming aviation fuel pouring into compartments below decks. Communications to the bridge were disrupted, so Becton sent Ari Phoutrides aft for a firsthand assessment. “My God,” Phoutrides thought as he returned to the bridge. “Will this ever end?” On the main deck, signalman Bill Kelly, 20, was at hand as the badly wounded gun captain, Fred Burgess, was being carried to an aid station. Burgess asked for a battle ensign; Kelly gave the dying man a flag. A 15th attacker—a bomb-toting Oscar—approached, with company: one of the dozen-plus Marine Corsairs and navy Hellcats finally reaching RP 1. Prey and pursuer zipped over gun boss Paul Smith’s basket, the Oscar shearing off the mast’s port yardarm—and with it the ship’s American flag—before hitting the water. The Corsair clipped Laffey’s air search radar, toppling the “bedspring” antenna but gaining enough altitude for the pilot to bail out. Crashing to Laffey’s signal deck, the big antenna just missed Kelly. Pumped with adrenaline, the New Jersey native, who had been a high school football star, briefly tried to haul the two-ton antenna clear while another signalman, Thomas
56
WORLD WAR II
McCarthy, climbed the mast stump to replace its battle ensign. The friendly fighters were a godsend, but they did not end the Laffey’s troubles. With a Corsair in chase, a Judy angled for the port beam. Before the ship’s gunners could lock on, the Judy crashed close by. Its bomb exploded, hurling metal through the thin side hatch of mount 52. The shrapnel knocked out an electrical panel and seriously wounded three gunners, including mount captain Warren G. Walker. As other starboard 20s and 40s brought down a 17th attacker, Walker spotted an incoming plane low and far off the starboard beam. Men had to swivel the mount by hand. When the guns fired, Smith saw rounds splashing short. He coaxed mount 52 pointer Seaman Kenneth Pitta, the 19-year-old son of Portuguese immigrants, to increase the range 50 yards—then watched a round strike home. The plane “poised in space a few feet above the water” before disintegrating into “nothingness,” Becton recalled. Below and forward of mount 52, mount 51—also without power—slowly slewed toward a Val diving for the starboard bow. The pointer, gunner’s mate Welles Meier, 25, stomped his foot-pedal trigger, unleashing a salvo that also connected. “We got him! We got him!” cried an exultant Andy Stash, 52’s trainer. “Good work, Welles!” In the lull after these two remarkable gunnery feats, assistant communications officer Lieutenant Frank Manson asked Becton about abandoning ship. No, the skipper insisted, not as long as one gun still fired. Some, including Ari Phoutrides, were wondering if the ship would run out of gunners first.
The ship awaits visitors in Seattle, bearing signs like these on the aft 40mm mounts, hung to drive home the price paid.
COURTESY OF PATRIOTS POINT NAVAL AND MARITIME MUSEUM
In 1936 a parodic club, Veterans of Future Wars, became a nationwide sensation. Founded by Princeton students and led by Lewis Gorin (seated second from right, opposite), the club demanded a prepaid war bonus. A period illustration (right) plays off their salute: “palm up and expectant.”
58
WORLD WAR II
PHOTO CREDIT
Serious
Fun With war clouds forming, sophomoric humor struck a chord across America By Ronald H. Bailey
THE SCHEME SPROUTED ONE AFTERNOON in March 1936 at a tearoom on Nassau Street in Princeton, New Jersey. Seven members of the Terrace Club, one of the university’s fraternity-like eating societies, were sitting around talking about a new law. Congress had voted to pay a bonus to veterans of World War I immediately instead of waiting until 1946, as originally scheduled. The students, most of whom came from well-off families and considered themselves fiscal conservatives, didn’t like the premature payout. They thought it was an unwarranted raid on the U.S. Treasury. One of them, Lewis Jefferson Gorin Jr., a senior majoring in politics, pointed out that he and his colleagues would have to fight the next war and might not survive it. A Louisville, Kentucky, native known for his genial southern wit, Gorin, 22, jokingly suggested members of his generation ought to receive their bonuses right away, while they were young and healthy enough to enjoy them. Back in 1925, over the veto of President Calvin Coolidge, Congress had awarded World War I veterans a bonus payment of $1 per day for stateside service and $1.25 for overseas service to compensate for their suffering and income loss. It was to be payable 20 years later. But the coming of the Great Depression brought demands for immediate payment. In 1932 thousands of veterans and their families marched on Washington and set up camp to pressure Congress and President Herbert Hoover. Eventually Hoover ordered the U.S. Army to disperse the campsites of the so-called “bonus march.” JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
59
on campuses, Gorin and colleagues created a formal entity. Troops commanded by General Douglas MacArthur, with his They incorporated and, with the help of an unsolicited donaaide, Major Dwight Eisenhower, and a column of six tanks led tion of $100, rented a second floor office in a building across by Major George Patton, charged into the encampments and from the entrance to Princeton and hired an efficient female scattered the marchers. secretary whom they called—with good-natured condescenVeterans’ concerns returned to the nation’s capital in 1936 sion—“Honey.” in the form of vigorous lobbying by the Veterans of Foreign The body’s organizational structure was modeled after the Wars and the American Legion. The administration of Presvenerable VFW. Gorin was named national commander. ident Franklin D. Roosevelt provided a warmer welcome, Other officers were appointed along though FDR vetoed Congressional with a commander for each of nine action to grant the nearly $2 billion geographical regions. Members in bonuses right away to nearly 4 of each “post” were to pay annual million veterans. As with Coolidge, dues of 25 cents, one half of which Congress overrode that veto. was to go to the national organizaGorin’s idea for bonus prepaytion. Membership was open to men ment might have remained on the between 18 and 36, with a junior table with the empty teacups if not division for boys under 18 and an for the presence of Robert Barnes, a honorary division for older men. junior who was the campus correThis tongue-in-cheek VFW even spondent for the New York Times. had its own salute inspired by MusBarnes bet Gorin five dollars he solini’s fascist gesture of greeting— could get the Times to run a story if hand outstretched but with “palm up they could come up with an actual Gorin formed the VFW as a joke, and was named “national commander” when the and expectant” to receive a bonus. plan and a name for it. movement gained momentum. Gorin speculated about staging A few days later, a manifesto a national convention parodying appeared in the Daily Princetonian. the bizarre behavior frequently seen at the Veterans of ForThe authors called for a $1,000 bonus for every male citizen eign Wars and American Legion conclaves. As one of his between the ages of 18 and 36. Barnes wrote a brief article pubcolleagues, junior Penn Kimball, later recalled: “Young Amerlished on page 24 of the March 17, 1936, Times. The Associicans regarded Legionnaires as foolish old men parading in ated Press picked it up, and the story spread quickly across the ill-fitting uniforms carrying on at uproarious conventions U.S. Thus was born the Veterans of Future Wars—what the where they traded endless anecdotes about the Battle of Fort Wall Street Journal 30 years later would call “one of the most Dix.” Gorin promised that his group’s own convention “must memorable spoofs in American political history.” be absolutely the largest, the best, and the craziest of any veterans convention that was ever held before, else it will not appeal TO THE AMUSED ASTONISHMENT OF GORIN to the chamber of commerce.” and friends, their jest struck a nerve. For a nation still in the Up the Hudson River at Vassar College, where several of the grip of the Depression and discouraged by years of bad news, Princeton co-conspirators had girlfriends, a macabre womhere was a bit of fun to buoy the spirits, especially on college en’s auxiliary took root. This became the Gold Star Mothers of campuses. Letters, telegrams, and postcards flooded into Future Wars, a take-off on the World War I practice of mothPrinceton with requests from students across the country ers placing a gold star in the window to mark a son’s death. wanting to establish their own chapters. After that war, Gold Star Mothers successfully lobbied ConNot everyone got the joke, least of all the mainstream vetgress to finance trips to France to visit their sons’ graves or erans organizations that had lobbied so fiercely for that early the battlefields where they fell. The Vassar women demanded payout. In fact, the only major group of former soldiers to supgovernment grants to send them to Europe so they could tour port the upstart VFW was the American Veterans Association, the cemeteries that might hold their future sons. formed as a protest against unwanted benefits. The nation’s first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, saw the dark James E. Van Zandt, the national commander of the 37-yearhumor in this. “I think it’s just as funny as can be,” she said. old Veterans of Foreign Wars—whose initials the Princeton “And taken lightly, as it should be, a grand pricking of a lot of boys had stolen—denounced the interlopers as “insolent pupbubbles.” She sensed, however, that the name was probably a pies,” and declared: “They’ll never be veterans of a future war mistake because “if carried to extremes and taken seriously it for they are too yellow to go to war.” might hurt some feelings.” To neutralize such criticism and control the groundswell Not the least of those offended were members of Congress. 60
WORLD WAR II
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY; PREVIOUS PAGES: PHOTO, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY; ILLUSTRATION BY ALBERT M. BARBIERI, FROM PATRIOTISM PREPAID
Inspired by World War I veterans’ demand for immediate payment of a promised war bonus (below), Columbia and Barnard students (right) lay claim to a future bonus—now.
SEE THE NEWSREEL IN OUR IPAD EDITION
Representative Claude A. Fuller of Arkansas took to the House floor to denounce “an assault on sacred motherhood.” He drew applause by blaming the Princeton boys for the Vassar stab at humor. “My honest opinion,” he said, “is that these young TOP, © CORBIS; BOTTOM, AP PHOTO
women have been misled and unduly influenced” by the Princeton boys whom he labeled “communistic and un-American” examples of “so-called manhood.” Vassar president Henry Noble MacCracken considered the appropriation of the name Gold Star Mothers unseemly. The Princeton students responded by changing the name of the Vassar group and several other similarly dubbed campus chapters to the Home Fire Division. The spoof caught the antiwar mood prevalent in much of the nation as the parody VFW unfolded against the menace of actual war. Hitler was building up Germany’s military with apparent designs on the Rhineland. Mussolini’s Italy was conquering Ethiopia. Japan had already fought with China. But in the United States, especially on campuses, widespread disillusionment with war prevailed. After all, hadn’t the last JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
61
The future vets among Columbia University’s students proclaimed, “no cashee, no fightee.” Satiric spinoffs of the VFW sprouted. Cornell University had the Future Munitions Makers; similarly, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Future Profiteers demanded advances on anticipated war contract payments. The women of Virginia’s Sweet Briar College formed the Future Golddiggers “to sit on the laps of future profiteers while they drink champagne during the next war.” The possibilities seemed endless. At the University of Texas, students opted for Future Cannon Fodder. Women at the College of St. Rose in upstate New York proposed they become the Ambulance Drivers of Future Wars; Stephens College BACK AT PRINCETON, THE FOUNDERS DID in Missouri formed the Sock-Knitters of Future Wars. not share in this disillusion with war and the military. Several Men at the University of Wisconsin wanted to be Future Conserved in the campus Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC). scientious Objectors. Gorin, a descendant of Revolutionary War general Artemus Rutgers University students banded together in the AssoWard, considered himself a consummate patriot who would ciation of Future War Propagandists. At City College of New willingly answer his nation’s call in time of war. York, the Correspondents of Future Wars wanted the federal His greatest concern, he said later, was “a solvent governgovernment to finance courses “in the writing of atrocity stoment.” The premature payment of the veterans bonus threatries and garbled war dispatches for patriotic purposes.” ened that stability, he believed. Future Chaplains groups bloomed at divinity schools. “These Princeton’s Veterans of Future Wars and many in their will have as their chief future function the duty of convincing us cohort nationwide did not object to bonuses for those who had that it is entirely Christian to kill our fellow men,” Gorin wrote. been in combat. They complained that most of the bonus recipOne of the most popular variations was Unknown Soldiers ients had never even gone of Future Wars. The post overseas but remained in at Macalester College in the U.S. where the only Minnesota claimed to be battles they fought were Chapter Number 1. Varin training camps. ious Future Unknowns Motivation for joining sought the money to the VFW may have varied tour the world to visit widely, from antiwar sentheir future tombs. The timent to conservative VFW at the University of bias against the bonus. Washington highlighted But for most “future vetthe national peace strike erans,” the impetus was on campus with a mock fun. After all, Gorin said funeral procession. later, it was the “spring The post at DePauw of the year. One of the University in Greencasprofessors said that this tle, Indiana, staged an wouldn’t have happened elaborate version of this any month except March, stunt—and authorities The short-lived phenomenon kept its Princeton headquarters hopping, with more than 534 posts and 60,000 members. and he may have been disrupted it. Because the perfectly correct.” ceremony was planned Undergraduate imaginations ran riot at campuses across for the county courthouse lawn, the post commander carethe country. At the University of California at Los Angeles, a fully cleared the event ahead of time with the mayor and the VFW chapter, with more than 200 members, dubbed itself the city attorney. The procession consisted of a student-borne Emily Post, after the etiquette maven. Inventive slogans were banner identifying the post and a bugler and drummer leading all the rage. The University of Chicago post, mocking Presisix men bearing the future unknown soldier on a stretcher. dent Woodrow Wilson’s 1917 vow to “make the world safe for At the courthouse, three uniformed policemen and other democracy,” promised to “make the world safe for hypocrisy.” hastily deputized men rushed in to break up the ceremony war been billed as “the war to end all wars?” Their cynicism was compounded by a two-year Congressional investigation that concluded that not national interest but bankers seeking protection for their European investments and a profit-minded munitions industry had drawn the United States into war in 1917. Antiwar students seized upon the Veterans of Future Wars prank to rally for peace and against the military. Many posts took part in a national one-hour strike for peace on April 22, 1936, an event that involved some 350,000 students—more than one third of the American college population.
62
WORLD WAR II
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
and scatter the participants. That and other commitments faded even as the VFW The press spread word of the movement so rapidly the peaked in June 1936—three months into its existence—with Princeton headquarters could barely keep up. The wire sermore than 534 posts and an estimated 60,000 members. By the vices and magazines such as Time, Newsweek, the Nation time Gorin’s book reached bookstores, however, the fad was and the Christian Century covered the mushrooming events. getting to be old news. The proceeds, which Gorin turned over A March of Time newsreel reenacting the group’s tearoom to the Veterans of Future Wars, amounted to little. founding screened in movie theaters and, in an audio verSeveral of the Princeton founders went off to graduate sion, on radio. Warner Brothers reportedly was interested in school—Gorin to Harvard Law School—and national attena screenplay. tion shifted to the presidential campaign Seeking a book, Philadelphia publisher between Franklin Roosevelt and Alf J. B. Lippincott approached Gorin, whose Landon. The VFW sent questionnaires to eating-club colleague was a member the candidates to learn their positions on of the Lippincott family. Gorin had a future bonus, conscriptions, and other intended to write his senior thesis on issues, but most activity ceased. In April Niccolò Machiavelli, but persuaded the 1937, the Princeton post folded shop, paid faculty to approve his VFW book projoff “Miss Honey,” and closed the books ect in lieu of the usual requirement. At “a few dollars in the black,” one of the the end of March, during spring break, founders said. he dashed off Patriotism Prepaid. “The The officers composed what they plan of compensation as outlined by termed an “obituary” for the organization, Veterans of Future Wars is just,” Gorin declaring they had achieved their goals wrote, “because it gives the Veteran who by awakening the country to “the absurwill die a right to enjoy his honors and dity of war” and to the “equal absurdity emoluments while yet alive. It gives to of the Treasury exploitation in which the the future soldier who will be maimed the various veterans organizations had been Gorin capped his college years right to make full use of the financial aid allowed to indulge.” with this thesis-turned-book, sold in bookstores nationwide. of the country while he is still physically The joke had gone stale. As future able to enjoy and profit by it.” events made clear, what had seemed a “Somewhat smart-alecky in spots, but never without point,” laughing matter was really a prophecy. Except for one man the Christian Science Monitor observed. “It is on the whole an disabled in a car crash before graduation, all of the Princeton entertaining bit of writing.” founders answered the call to arms during World War II. Also during spring break, Gorin’s fellow founder Thomas Archibald R. Lewis, who earned his doctorate in history Riggs Jr. went to Washington to lobby for the future bonus. at Princeton before a distinguished career as a professor and Riggs, whose father had been governor of the Territory of author of 14 books, served five years in the field artillery, retirAlaska, had contacts in the capital. He brought legislation the ing as a lieutenant colonel. His heroics from the D-Day landPrinceton boys had drafted in hopes that someone in Coning on Omaha Beach to the final push into Czechoslovakia gress would sponsor it. “A Bill for an Act to Grant Adjusted brought Lewis five battle stars, a Bronze Star, and the French Compensation to Veterans of Future Wars” estimated the cost Croix de Guerre. at $13 billion: $1 billion for cemeteries abroad, $2 billion to Former national commander Lewis Gorin did notable send Home Fire Division members—the former Future Gold duty as a captain in the artillery in Italy, France, Germany, Star Mothers—to the cemeteries of their future dead sons, and and Austria. He chronicled the service of his 6th Field Artil$10 billion in bonuses for future veterans. lery Group in The Cannon’s Mouth: The Role of U.S. Artillery Some senators and representatives offered encouragement during World War II. After Gorin’s death in 1999, the New but didn’t want to be linked publicly with the controversial York Times recounted his “long, respectable and thoroughly young VFW. A notable exception was Representative Maury obscure career as a business executive, gentleman farmer, and Maverick of San Antonio, an iconoclastic Democrat and amateur military historian.” member of the old Texas family that lent its name to the term “He was 84,” noted the obituary, “and all but forgotten as for an unbranded cow that strayed from the herd. Decorated the man who had tickled a dispirited nation’s funny bone with the Silver Star during World War I, Maverick belonged to in 1936 with a tongue-in-cheek tour de force that created a the real VFW and was a severe critic of the American Legion. brushfire national student movement and made Mr. Gorin In a speech to 1,100 undergrads at Princeton in April, he the most famous collegian in America who did not actually promised to introduce their legislation in the House. play football.” 2 WEIDER ARCHIVES
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
63
WEAPONS MANUAL by Jim Laurier
Big, Bad Cat Germany’s Tiger I heavy tank Armorer Henschel & Son delivered the prototype Panzerkampfwagen VI Sd.Kfz 181, Tiger Ausf. E on April 20, 1942—Adolf Hitler’s 53rd birthday. The production version first fought that September near Leningrad. Conceived to counter the Soviet medium and heavy vehicles that from the start of Operation Barbarossa defied SS and Wehrmacht tankers, the Tiger was designed to slash through enemy lines, smash artillery, and crush armor. The beast weighed 60 tons, twice what the next-largest German tank
Air to Ground The 88mm gun was based on the antiaircraft artillery piece. A Tiger I hauled 92 rounds, plus a pair of 7.92mm MG34 machine guns.
Heaviest Duty The mantlet, where the 88 barrel emerged, wore 8 inches of nickel steel plate armor; at the turret front, 4.7 inches. The glacis—a tank’s front plane—carried 3.9 inches of armor.
The Supreme Commander passes a defunct and treadless Tiger at Chambois, France, in August 1944. (General Dwight D. Eisenhower stood 5 feet 10 inches.)
64
WORLD WAR II
did. That put many bridges off limits; hence a snorkel system enabling the brute to travel underwater. On mushy ground Tigers risked wallowing; winter mud could jam their drive wheels. Building one took 300,000 man-hours, so only 1,347 saw duty. However, aces like SS Captain Michael Wittmann, whose mount is depicted here and who once visited the Henschel factory in Kassel to exhort workers and accept a scale-model Tiger, wielded the earth-shaking bruisers with murderous efficiency. Division of Labor Henschel, until the Nazi era a truck and locomotive producer, built the chassis, having boxed out Porsche with a cheaper design. Krupp made the main gun and 12-ton turret.
Tread on You Crews hung spare track sections for extra protection against projectiles.
The Competition
Michael Wittmann, at Normandy in May 1944—five weeks before he destroyed 14 Allied tanks, 15 halftracks, and two antitank guns in 15 minutes at Villers-Bocage.
Russian KV-1
Russian IS-2
• Crew: 5 • Top speed: 22 mph • Weight: 49 tons • Range: 208 miles • Armament: 76.2mm main gun, 3 or 4 7.62mm machine guns • Production: 5,219 • The KV-1, named for defense commissar Kliment Voroshilov, inspired the German R&D program that brought about the Tiger tank.
• Crew: 4 • Top speed: 23 mph • Weight: 51 tons • Range: 150 miles • Armament: 122mm main gun, 1 12.7mm and 3 7.62mm machine guns • Production: 3,854 • Named for Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, the IS-2 spearheaded the Soviet portion of the Allied assault on Berlin that brought victory.
Go-Away Goop To beat magnetic mines, a Tiger wore 441 pounds of “Zimmerit.” Baked on, the mix of barium sulfate, glue, pigments, zinc sulfide, and sawdust made armor non-magnetic.
Mach Kinda Schnell The 12-cylinder Maybach gas engine could drive a Tiger to 28 mph, with a range of 120 miles.
Zone of Comfort The five crewmen had a spacious cabin. The loader’s space in particular was great for catnaps.
Turn That Tiger The turning radius was less than 12 feet. By running the tracks in opposite directions, a driver could virtually spin his Tiger in place.
PHOTOS: OPPOSITE, NATIONAL ARCHIVES; ABOVE, BUNDESARCHIV BILD 101I-299-1802-08 PHOTO SCHECK
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
65
Storm over the Rhine An American artilleryman recalls his thunderous crossing By Robert Weiss
66
WORLD WAR II
An hour of relentless shelling (here by British soldiers) immediately preceeded the Allied crossing of Germany’s Rhine River on March 24, 1945. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
67
The Allied armies fighting in northern Europe had many rivers to cross, but none more significant than the Rhine, a defensive trench of sorts protecting Germany’s industrial powerhouse, the Ruhr Valley. I first saw that famous and formidable river on a March night in 1945. The leaves of a few trees on its near bank, barely visible as shadows, cautioned where land met river. The violent booming and reverberations of massed artillery fire drowned the sound of water moving. Between the natural screen of night and smoke from shell bursts that intentionally obscured the west bank from the enemy on the opposite shore, I could see little. I was a first lieutenant. In 10 days I would be 22 years old—if I survived crossing that river. I had outlived several campaigns in northern Europe as a field artillery forward observer with the 30th Infantry Division, which had been in the fight since shortly after D-Day. (See “View from the Hill,” July/August 2013.) My job was to march, live, and fight with the infantry, protect them from the enemy, and aid them in securing their objectives. A forward observer didn’t do this with a rifle or a machine gun, but with artillery. I have been asked what weapon I carried. Well, I had a Colt .45 pistol and a battalion of 12—sometimes more—105mm howitzers, each of which typically shot 33-pound high-explosive shells. Because forward observers needed to be at the leading edge of the fighting, our casualty rate was very high; I had already been wounded twice in 1944. The Ruhr Valley, a bulwark of the Reich’s military might,
stretched some 60 miles southeast of Wesel, a small city near the border with the Netherlands. The Ruhr had produced more than half Germany’s coal and steel before the war and was home to many industries, including the Krupp conglomerate, which manufactured steel, tanks, munitions, and armaments—among them, the deadly “88” artillery piece. The Allies knew well what the Ruhr Valley industries meant to the German war effort. But the Ruhr would not fall to bombing alone. Allied armies had to cross the Rhine, seize the Ruhr, and sever the valley from Nazi control. Since before D-Day, considerable planning had gone into this task. Americans first crossed the Rhine some 100 miles south of the Ruhr, at Remagen, on March 7, 1945. (See “A Bridge in Time,” page 31.) Aided by a battlefield conspiracy of luck and German ineptitude, they dashed across the Ludendorff Bridge and established a modest beachhead on the far side before stiffened enemy resistance slowed the advance. With their hands full, forces at the Remagen bridgehead could not be diverted to make a wide swing to the north to encircle the Ruhr. Under these circumstances, any armchair strategist with a good map could see that the way to cut off the Ruhr was an allout drive focused on Wesel. This suited Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery, commander of the 21st Army Group and an advocate of the “set piece” approch to battle that concentrated overwhelming force on a small sector. Montgomery assembled an assault force of almost a million and a quarter men, thousands of artillery pieces, huge stores of bridging equipment,
Material for river crossings lines a road in Belgium in February 1945. Preparations for the long-anticipated Rhine crossing rivaled that for D-Day.
68
WORLD WAR II
NATIONAL ARCHIVES; OPPOSITE, COURTESY OF ROBERT WEISS PREVIOUS PAGES, POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES
Between the natural screen of night and smoke from shell bursts that obscured us from the enemy on the opposite shore, I could see little. I was a first lieutenant. In 10 days I would be 22 years old—if I survived crossing that river. and boats and supplies of every nature, a preparation bearing a similarity in scope to the advance work for D-Day. His 21st Army Group consisted of the British Second Army and the First Canadian Army, but for the Rhine crossing it would also include the U.S. Ninth Army and the U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps, although only after some wrangling and considerable posturing over who would be commanding U.S forces. The battle plan called for British and Canadian troops to cross the Rhine north of Wesel. American forces would cross and invade a sector south of Wesel. Airborne troops would drop north and east of Wesel, essentially attacking the enemy in the rear. The Ninth Army assault was called Operation Flashpoint. South of Wesel, the Lippe River and the Lippe-Seiten Canal intersected the Rhine and formed the northern boundary of the Ninth Army’s sector. At this juncture the Rhine’s riverbed, uncoiling from an east–west path, takes a south–north course for about three miles. On either side, broad, gently sloping sandy beaches channel the river, about 1,100 feet wide at that point: ideal for a cross-river attack and an easy landing. Preparations for Operation Flashpoint began in early March. The engineers readied immense quantities of bridging material. The U.S. Navy—yes, the navy, which had the boats and men trained to operate them—unloaded an assortment of vessels: LCVPs (Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel; better known as Higgins boats), LCMs (Landing Craft, Mechanized), 14-man assault boats—even small tug boats and seven-man storm boats. The Ninth Army’s thousands of tons of supplies included 2,070 artillery pieces. Of those, 13 battalions—roughly 200 guns—came under the direction of the 30th Infantry Division, more than double the number of artillery pieces we had been assigned since Normandy. As Ninth Army troops honed their river-crossing skills, all insignia came off. Men disfigured or covered over unit designations on vehicles. Troop movements and locations were concealed as much as possible. Other soldiers in other locations assumed our identities. Since the Ninth Army staked success on an attack along a narrow front, the Germans had to be kept in the dark about the crossing site. While the preparations for the attack could not be entirely concealed, the assault point could be. Engineers constructing roads to the vicinity built roads elsewhere, too. If a reconnaissance
patrol went out near the site, additional patrols went out along the length of the Ninth Army’s river frontage.
A major component of the attack was the artillery fire plan. Normally, limited artillery bombardment preceded infantry attacks to soften up the enemy. The fire plan for Operation Flashpoint meant to obliterate the enemy. As a forward observer I got a glimpse of the plan at 30th Infantry Division Artillery Headquarters. Never before had I seen such premeditated carnage. Sketched in detail on a representation of terrain east of the river, the timetable specified a full hour of relentless shelling to precede the infantry’s crossriver attack, set for 2 a.m., March 24. The drawing listed each artillery unit and, minutely, its zone of fire and the number of rounds to direct at an initial target area. After gunners had fired the initial rounds, the plan minimally increased the range, indicated the number of rounds to fire at the new range, and so on, for one hour—a rolling barrage meant to chew up extensive enemy terrain. By the time Allied infantry stood ready to cross, the artillery would have shifted to deeper targets. Around 1 a.m. on March 24, the 13 battalions directed by the 30th Division began firing the first of some 20,000 high-explosive shells at our target area. That’s roughly one round every half a minute for each artillery piece, an incredible rate of sustained fire. Even on that cool night, gun crews were hot and sweaty, delirious with exhaustion by the time the hour ended and they could slow their rate of fire. With thousands of shells screaming overhead, what was it like crossing a damp open plain under a mist-shrouded moon? I later learned that General Dwight D. Eisenhower had watched our progress from a church tower, along with Ninth Army commander Lieutenant General William Hood Simpson. But their perspective would have been very different. Likewise with Winston Churchill, whom General Simpson had to coax off a railroad bridge at the Rhine when enemy artillery rounds threatened. The British prime minister “wanted to go messing about on the Rhine crossings and we had some difficulty in keeping him back,” Field Marshal Alan Brooke, who accompanied Churchill, noted in his diary. “The look on Winston’s face was just like that of a small boy being called away from his sand castles on the beach by his nurse!” No sweaty delirium enveloped the infantry and its few JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
69
attached artillery forward observers—myself included—as we proceeded solemnly toward the beach, only a clammy sense of apprehension. Two thousand guns firing: the drumbeat of an apocalypse. The roar and boom came from all directions, violent, hugely threatening, as if a gigantic eruption was ripping the earth open. Twenty thousand shells tearing the planet apart. The British and Canadian forces had assembled more than 3,400 artillery and related guns, and those weapons, farther from us than our own artillery, were banging away, too. A fearsome sound battered us on the empty plain we marched across—a sound such as we had never heard before and wished never to hear again. I sensed my bladder trying to empty, but kept control: there wasn’t time for that, nor was this the place. The thunder of volley upon volley drove us to an uncertain future. For half a mile, we marched in darkness to the beach.
The planners had timed all aspects of the attack with precision: the stockpiling of supplies, the artillery barrage, the airborne drops, even our trudge to the river. Before wetting our feet in the Rhine, four 2nd Battalion riflemen, my radio operator, and I came to where the navy had stacked storm boats in a pile like cordwood. The six of us shouldered one. I thought it looked like a narrow dinghy, something like a racing shell, with none of the attributes of a seaworthy vessel.
Unlike most other attacks across the Rhine that day, the 30th Division committed all three of its infantry regiments in a simultaneous surge, leaving no troops in reserve. The 119th Regiment was on the left flank near where the river begins its three-mile south–north course. Upstream the 117th was at the center. The 120th, the regiment my artillery battalion supported, was to cover the right flank. There, I walked in file with the procession of riflemen down to the sodden beach as the night closed about us with concussive force. We were the first wave of the 120th. The 2nd Battalion was to hit the beach across the river, where it resumed its east–west path. The mighty Rhine was calm. No wind raised waves on its surface. I could not see the far bank. We dumped our craft into the water, bow pointing toward the opposite shore. Distrustful of our slender craft’s stability, we stepped aboard and carefully seated ourselves. An olive drab-garbed seaman took charge of the outboard motor. He grabbed the lanyard and pulled. Nothing. I was clinging to the gunwale on the port side and so had a view upstream, through the murky night. The explosions from our artillery blanketed almost all other sounds, and I could hear nothing close by. Not many yards upstream, by the river’s edge, a thin column of black water rose: an enemy shell. The Germans were no dummies; they knew an attack was coming. When Allied shelling began moving inland, it signaled that we were about to leave our side of the river. So the Germans fired back, zeroing in on our beach.
Infantrymen, these of the Third Army, prepare assault boats for a Rhine crossing. The 30th Infantry Division used fast, slender storm boats for its first wave of crossings.
70
WORLD WAR II
NATIONAL ARCHIVES; OPPOSITE, COURTESY OF ROBERT WEISS
The author, left, with his driver, takes a break in his preferred observation vehicle: the jeep. Men of their unit looked forward to the war’s end, he writes, “and to being alive for it.”
The sailor yanked the lanyard again. Again nothing. More spouts at river’s edge. By this time the current had angled our skiff’s bow downstream. A few more moments and we would be stranded on the beach. I took a deep breath and waited. For a third time the seaman pulled the lanyard. The engine coughed into life and, in a wide swinging arc, we headed into the river. Minutes later we landed on the opposite bank, safer there than on the shore the Germans were targeting. Somewhere back on the other side, someone was readying my jeep, which my radioman and I used when we weren’t walking with the infantry, for the same voyage.
The rest of the night’s work is history. The artillery had substantially curtailed any fight the Germans might have made. The troops to which I was attached moved swiftly in the dark. Resistance was slight: only the occasional rifleman. By morning we were a considerable distance from shore, stopped at a farmhouse serving as an infantry company command post. The men were taking a breather. Until the unit was ready to resume the attack, one of the riflemen and I decided to take a look around. A short walk brought us into a copse near the house, small trees, brush, not much to see. As we strolled along, we came upon a German soldier. He was kneeling behind a wooden post nibbling on a cookie as if he had been waiting for us. The rifleman leveled his rifle. The German willingly surrendered, handing over his gun—but not the cookie—and returned with us to the command post. Soon, a battalion of brand new, fresh-from-the-box light
tanks rolled up. The battalion’s organizational chart included one tank specifically designated for an artillery observer. I would do. One of the men took me on a quick tour of the tank. It was like all the others, a rolling hulk of steel. I’ve often been a skeptic, particularly of planners who have not actually surveyed the territory or come into close contact with the circumstance for which they are planning. So I climbed into the tank and gave its insides a once-over. A tight cramped little box it was, with no easy way to get a broad view of events going on around it: not really a place for an artillery observer. Besides, it took little imagination to visualize the tank as an incinerator—with me and my radio operator inside. I declined the offer, instead finding my driver and jeep; visibility from a jeep was fair and bailing out was easy. The battalion commander showed me his military objective, just as his commanding officer had shown it to him. It was very simple: a small-scale map of Germany with a big arrow slashed across it in black marker. The butt of the arrow denoted where we were, the business end aimed at the heart of Berlin. I nodded. The battalion commander gave a signal, and the battalion started its engines. Off we went, a tank destroyer or two in the lead, next a couple of unblemished tanks, then my crew and I in our jeep, followed by the rest of the tank battalion. Before long the battalion took a wrong turn and got lost, and then stuck, on the only narrow street through the middle of a small village. The planners had not counted on that. Nor had the battalion had much practice at turning around an entire column of tanks on a street one tank wide. After much backing and turning, shouting, fuming, and cursing, the tanks headed in the right direction. Within hours I, too, changed direction when I received a more promising, but also more dangerous, assignment—back with the infantry on the attack. The tanks and I parted company. I never learned how far that battalion got in its mission. But the Rhine crossing was an unqualified success. The 30th Division and the other troops had done their job well. In a gush of enthusiasm the next day, March 25, Churchill told Eisenhower, “My dear General, the German is whipped. We’ve got him. He’s all through.” The prime minister spoke the truth, but six more weeks would pass before the war in Europe ended. Six more weeks until the Germans surrendered, until they finally quit. Some fought on to the nihilistic end. My division never reached Berlin—the target of the arrow on the map I had seen. Eisenhower stopped us before then, and on April 18 the 30th shut down its attack, at Magdeburg on the Elbe River. After the Rhine we had fought on with vigor and perhaps enthusiasm—not enthusiasm for the war, but for its ending. We looked forward to that moment and to being alive for it. No one wanted the ironic distinction of being the last soldier killed before the curtain came down on those many tragic years of destruction, devastation, and death. 2 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
71
America Remembers® Presents
T HE D-DAY T RIBUTE P ISTOL
Operation Overlord. The Longest Day. The Normandy Invasion. It was a day unlike any the world had ever known – or will know again. Time has not dimmed the memories of June 6, 1944. The triumph of “The Longest Day” and the deeds of those brave men are deeply etched in history. On that day, our nation led the way in one of the most significant events in the history of warfare – the D-Day invasion. This was the greatest airborne-amphibious operation ever staged. Its scale hailed as “majestic” by Winston Churchill - 5,000 ships, together with 11,000 other craft, supported by over 11,000 aircraft hurled almost a quarter of a million men against Hitler’s vaunted “Fortress Europe”. By the end of the day on June 6, 1944, the combined forces of Americans, British, Canadian, and other Allies had established a foothold on the European mainland, bringing about the beginning of the end of Nazism’s tyrannical hold. Now, we remember the valor of those brave Americans of World War II through this issuance of a Colt .45 pistol, the immortal sidearm of America’s Armed Forces for 75 years. To honor all those brave Americans who fought in the world’s greatest battle, America Remembers proudly presents the D-Day Tribute Pistol, a classically decorated Colt® Government Model® Pistol in caliber .45 ACP. Craftsmen commissioned specifically by America Remembers decorate both sides of the blued steel slide in elegant 24-karat gold and nickel artwork.
The Classic Colt .45 Pistol - The Trusted WWII Sidearm Perhaps no other weapon has more instant recognition than “Old Slabsides”, the .45. Throughout WWII, it served at the side of America’s fighting men. The Colt .45 pistol personifies the generations of Americans who served with it: fearless, dependable, and effective. It is an American-made firearm legend that defended our liberty through major world wars and history-making conflicts. This pistol is still considered by generations of American Veterans to be one of the best and most
powerful military sidearms ever issued. That is why we chose the classic Colt .45 Pistol for the D-Day Tribute. The Tribute features artwork of troops landing on D-Day on the Normandy Beaches, paratroopers, and other familiar D-Day scenes. Also featured is artwork with a rifle in the ground and a helmet on top with words beneath reading, “LEST WE FORGET”. As a final touch, the faux ivory grips on both sides feature a soldier landing on Normandy Beach with a “D-Day” banner above him, framed by code names for the five beach landing sites. ©AHL, Inc.
Reserve Now – Only 500 Available Only 500 Tributes will be produced in this edition. We will arrange delivery of your working pistol through a licensed firearms dealer of your choice. If for any reason you are less than satisfied with the Tribute, you may return it in original, unfired condition within 30 days for a full refund. Perhaps you, a friend or family member were one of those brave men. Or perhaps you are a proud American who recognizes our debt to the World War II generation of Americans who so proudly served our country. By honoring
D-Day, World War II, and the generation which fought it, you keep America’s faith and spirit alive for the generations to come. When American forces landed on the beaches of Normandy so many years ago, they defined a moment for an entire generation. It is with great and solemn pride that we issue the D-Day Tribute Pistol to honor these brave men. Each is a lasting tribute to “The Greatest Generation” of freedomloving Americans who fought and sacrificed to ensure freedom
would reign.
QOn the right side of the pistol, a banner that reads, “ACCEPT NOTHING LESS THAN FULL VICTORY”, famous words from Dwight Eisenhower. Also featured is a scene depicting the difficult cliffs at Pointe du Hoc which were scaled by the 2nd Ranger Battalion. The right side features Landing Ship Tanks (LSTs), a U.S. Army half-track carrying troops, and an LCVP coming onto Omaha Beach on D-Day. CALIBER: .45 ACP • MODEL: COLT ® GOVERNMENT MODEL ®
Display Case Available:
An optional custom-built, wooden display case is available for purchase.
I wish to reserve ___ of the “D-Day Tribute Pistol” a working Colt Name __________________________________________________ .45 pistol, at the introductory price of $2,195.* My deposit of $195 per Tribute is enclosed. I wish to pay the balance at the rate of $100 per month, no interest or carrying charges. Certificate of Authenticity included. Address ________________________________________________ are subject to acceptance and credit verification prior to Thirty-day return privilege. *All orders shipment. Shipping and handling will be added to each order. Virginia residents please add sales tax.
TCheck enclosed for $___________ . TCharge payment of $ ___________ to: T VISA T MasterCard T AMEX T Discover No. __________________________________________ Exp. ___________
Display Case
City/State/Zip ___________________________________________
Daytime Telephone No. ( ________ ) ________________________________
TI wish to reserve the optional, luxuriously lined, custom-made display case with locking glass lid. My payment of $149* is enclosed or add to credit card. National Archives
America Remembers®
10226 Timber Ridge Drive • Ashland, Virginia 23005 www.americaremembers.com To place your reservation toll-free call 1-800-682-2291
REVIEWS [
BOOKS
]
Paranoia About Patton The authors strain to see a conspiracy, but Patton’s death in this 1938 Cadillac remains a quotidian crash.
KILLING PATTON The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General By Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. 352 pp. Henry Holt, 2014. $30.
W
here to start? If you can imagine a book that rekindles every rumor, reports every piece of second- and thirdhand gossip as truth, and regurgitates every discredited cliché about World War II, then you may be game for the latest in the Bill O’Reilly Killing series—first Kennedy, then Lincoln and Jesus, and now General George S. Patton Jr. O’Reilly claims that Patton’s famous car crash was much more than that. By U.S. ARMY
his and co-author Martin Dugard’s lights, nefarious actors in the OSS and CIA, perhaps paid and directed by William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan himself, actually did the deed. They first tried to lay Patton low by running into his car with a truck, and then by shooting the general in the neck with a “projectile” as he lay suffering. Finally, when the tough old man refused to die, Soviet agents loyal to Stalin broke into Patton’s hospital room and finished the job using poison. Or something. The authors at one point feel compelled to state that they “are not conspiracy
theorists,” but that is exactly what they are. Like all conspiracy theories, this one presents no real evidence and, true to type, the scheme runs deep and the sources have vanished “without a trace.” The evidence the authors do bring forth is obscure. You don’t believe that Patton was murdered in an OSS/ Soviet plot? Well, meet U.S. counterintelligence officer Stephen Skubik, who claims that Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera told him that Stalin wanted Patton dead. If you’re following along, we are now in the realm of third-degree hearsay. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
73
ADVERTISEMENT
Direct from Locked Vaults to U.S. Citizens!
Original U.S. Gov’t Morgan Silver Dollars National Collector’s Mint announces a special limited release of 2,541 Morgan Silver Dollars 93-136 years old at $39 each. Several prominent national dealers charge $36 MORE for a comparable Morgan Silver Dollar. These Morgans are among the last surviving originals still in existence, and each coin is guaranteed to be in mostly Brilliant Uncirculated to Fine condition. Due to volatile fluctuations in the precious metals market, price can be guaranteed @ $39 each for one week only! MARKET CONDITIONS The last time silver hit $50 an ounce, China was a poor, underdeveloped nation. Now, the Chinese are rich and using over three times as much silver! Will this drive the price of silver back to $50 or even higher? One thing is certain – dramatic increases in silver investment have seen silver prices rise over 368% in the last ten years, and as much as 40% in one month alone!
Silver Dollar more valuable. But acquiring your own private cache of Morgan Silver Dollars is a long term investment in so much more... in history... in American heritage... in the splendid rendering of Miss Liberty’s profile by designer George T. Morgan, whose “M” mark on every Morgan Silver Dollar identifies his masterwork. And, of course, Morgan Silver Dollars have not been minted for 93 years and are no longer in circulation. Phone orders will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis and a limit of 100 coins per customer will be strictly adhered to. Timely mail orders will be accepted if directed to: National Collector’s Mint, Dept. 7448, 8 Slater St., Port Chester, NY 10573. THIS OFFER MAY BE WITHDRAWN AT ANY TIME WITHOUT NOTICE AT THE SOLE DISCRETION OF NCM. You may order 1 Morgan Silver Dollar for $39, 3 for $117, 5 for $195, 10 for $378, 20 for $741, 50 for $1813, 100 for $3510. If you’re not 100% delighted with your purchase simply send us your postage paid return within 60 days for a refund of your purchase price.
INVESTMENT Increasing prices of precious metals make every Morgan 60-Day Money Back Guarantee!
CALL TOLL-FREE, ASK FOR EXT. 7448
Free Shipping! A message from the
37TH TREASURER OF THE UNITED STATES Hello, I’m Angela Marie Buchanan. You might know me as Bay Buchanan. I was appointed by Ronald Reagan to be the 37th Treasurer of the United States… maybe you’ve seen my signature on some of the bills in your wallet. So, you can understand why our nation’s coins are vitally important to me. That’s why I’m so pleased to be able to announce this release of Morgan Silver Dollars by National Collector’s Mint. Of all the coins ever struck by the U.S. Gov’t, none have so captured our imaginations the way Morgans have. I invite you to sample some of these magnificent Morgan Silver Dollars. Enjoy them. Protect them. Celebrate them. What better way to hold your history, our history, America’s history in the palm of your hand! Sincerely,
Angela Marie (Bay) Buchanan 37th Treasurer of the United States of America Co-Director, NCM Board of Advisors
1-800-799-MINT (1-800-799-6468)
National Collector’s Mint, Inc. is an independent, private corporation not affiliated with, endorsed, or licensed by the U.S. Government or the U.S. Mint. Offer not valid in CT or MN. © 2014 NCM, Inc. R1-RA7
REVIEWS
Still unconvinced? Then ponder former Jedburgh soldier Douglas Bazata, who claims that Donovan himself—the master spy, someone presumably well versed in the art of plausible deniability—gave him a positive order to kill Patton. “Shall I kill him, sir?” Bazata asks. “Yes, Douglas.” Wild Bill answers. “You do exactly what you must.” No evidence backs up Bazata’s claim. Perhaps it vanished without a trace.
Even without the conspiracy silliness, Killing Patton should trouble anyone who has even a passing familiarity with World War II. The authors make bloated claims for Patton, a fine army commander, but one at his best in an open pursuit (the Normandy breakout, for example), and at his worst in a gritty, set-piece battle (like Lorraine). In other words, Patton was a man, perhaps a great man, but one with strengths and weaknesses.
[
BOOKS
O’Reilly’s Patton, however, is a military superman who could have won the war singled-handedly if only Eisenhower had reined in his other generals and armies and allowed Patton to drive on Berlin all by himself. That claim, too, is absurd, along with so much of this book. —Robert M. Citino is a visiting professor at the U.S. Army War College and a frequent contributor to World War II.
]
SNOW AND STEEL The Battle of the Bulge, 1944–45 By Peter Caddick-Adams. 872 pp. Oxford University Press, 2014. $34.95.
T
he World War II battle pantheon mostly reads like the index to an atlas: Anzio, Iwo Jima, Stalingrad, Tobruk, etc. One exception in the name game traces to a flinty European forest, which we speak of today, thanks to an imaginative newshawk, by employing the subtitle to Peter Caddick-Adams’s masterful new book. In this tank-size volume, the gifted Briton, a major in the British Territorial Army who lectures at the U.K. Defence Academy and who most recently wrote with élan of another conflict (Monte Cassino: Ten Armies in Hell), illuminates the Battle of the Bulge until he has run out of facets. He layers context and connections with an inclusive style. Both the reader who knows nothing or little of this battle and the maven steeped in Bulgeiana will come away from Snow and Steel educated and sated. Engagement by engagement, unit by unit, atrocity upon atrocity, heroics atop heroics, and humiliation upon humiliation, Caddick-Adams explicates with dynamic clarity the complicated final gasp in the West of Hitler’s ground forces—one that American media and memory too often distill to GI paratroopers’ deservedly famous stand at Bastogne. He shows why, when Brigadier General
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
On December 17, 1944, early in the Battle of the Bulge, German troops ride a Tiger II.
Anthony McAuliffe barked defiantly at German demands for surrender—“Nuts!” was all he said—McAuliffe and his besiegers, whose edge on him and his troops was thin and fragile, all knew very well that they were in a face-off far more complex than a reductionist narrative allows. The Ardennes campaign tangled onto itself, and Caddick-Adams unknots its intricacies without dumbing down the nuances. He understands and analyzes battle as a universe of colliding details.
Two weeks into the fray, for example, United Press reporter Larry Newman interviewed Lieutenant General George S. Patton. A long-time source, Patton explained that circumstances in the Ardennes recalled a situation at Ypres, Belgium, in 1914–1918 that embodied what soldiers call a “salient.” A wire service story needed a “more American” word, Newman thought. So he coined the phrase “Battle of the Bulge.” In explaining the battle’s origins CadJANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
75
Advertisement
Reclaim Your Independence With The ®
Portable Oxygen Concentrator
“
My favorite thing about Inogen is mobility, it is so easy to travel. I can be with my family when I please. I just get my Inogen One and go!
”
Puett W., World War II & Korean War Veteran
Join the thousands of oxygen users wh who ho ha have already switched to Inogen’s serv service and reclaimed their freedom and an nd inde independence with the Inogen One. For more morre testimonials testimon go to www.inogenone.com
Call C all Inogen Inogen today at 1-800-715-1179 to request your FREE Inform Information Kit
R E VI EWS MODERN WAR STUDIES
Holocaust versus Wehrmacht dick-Adams observes that Hitler based his understanding of the United States not on serious study but on German writer Karl May’s highly imaginative adventure novels, set in the American West and known in Germany as “cowboys-und-Indianer Geschichte.” That May was writing folderol did not matter to Hitler. He had decided he knew America and needed to know no more. Dissecting the psychology of the Ardennes attack, often understood in thumbnail simply as a reprise of the surprise 1940 German advance that undid the French and British, Caddick-Adams paints Europe’s deep woods almost as a boreal alter ago for the dictator. He observes that Hitler clearly loved to wallow in Richard Wagner’s death-besotted operas, which his fellow anti-Semite often located in forests. In addition, the Austrian spuriously draped himself in the cloak of Arminius, a Germanic chieftain who in AD 9 led rebel forces that slaughtered three Roman legions in the Teutoburger Wald—“mountain forest of the Teutons”—near what is now Osnabrück. In that gory triumph’s aftermath, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote of “…fragments of weapons and limbs of horses, and also human heads, prominently nailed to trunks of trees. In the adjacent groves were the barbarous altars, on which they had immolated tribunes and first-rank centurions.” Nearly two millennia later, the ever-self-aggrandizing Nazis recast Arminius as the ur-Aryan—ostensibly first in a line of German rulers leading to Hitler. “This was, of course, rubbish,” Caddick-Adams declares. Rubbish and real, this and the myriad other nuggets he has sieved and brilliantly strung together make Snow and Steel a treasure. —Michael Dolan is the senior editor of World War II.
How Hitler’s “Final Solution” Undermined the German War Effort Yaron Pasher “Pasher’s carefully conceived study covers the critical issues in depth and within their broader wartime context and does so in a clear and convincing fashion. This is a book that should attract considerable favorable attention.” —Gerhard L. Weinberg, author of A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II 392 pages, 35 photographs, 8 maps, Cloth $34.95, Ebook $34.95
Stopping the Panzers The Untold Story of D-Day Marc Milner “An extraordinarily detailed account of the vital Canadian contributions to the Allied landings in Normandy, Milner’s work completely revises our understanding of the role of Canadian forces in taking and holding a crucial segment of the landing area against repeated counterattacks by German panzer divisions…A masterpiece of historical scholarship from one of the most authoritative voices in Canadian military history.”—Peter Mansoor, author of The GI Offensive in Europe: The Triumph of American Infantry Divisions, 1941-1945 392 pages, 56 photographs, 9 maps, Cloth $34.95, Ebook $34.95
Sacrificing Childhood Children and the Soviet State in the Great Patriotic War Julie K. deGraffenried “An engaging and heartrending account of Soviet children at war that reminds us of the conflict’s horror and brutality. DeGraffenried brings to life the small people whose heroism and endurance simply beggars belief.”—Olga Kucherenko, author of Little Soldiers: How Soviet Children Went to War, 1941–1945 264 pages, 26 photographs, Cloth $34.95, Ebook $34.95
University Press of Kansas Phone 785-864-4155sFax 785-864-4586swww.kansaspress.ku.edu
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
77
REVIEWS
[
BOOKS
]
FDR, here aboard the USS Houston in San Francisco Bay in 1938, was a prescient strategist, according to biographer Nigel Hamilton.
THE MANTLE OF COMMAND FDR at War, 1941–1942 By Nigel Hamilton. 514 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. $30.
T
he final volume of Nigel Hamilton’s exhaustive triptych on British Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery debuted in 1986. Now, Hamilton makes a welcome return to telling tales of war with The Mantle of Command. His thesis is that FDR—acknowledged today as a political genius and inspired leader of a nation at war—was also the greatest military strategist of his time. If the argument isn’t as daring or original as Hamilton insists—a guy’s got to sell a book—it is true that historians have spilled far more ink on the strategic contributions of Churchill and American warriors from George C. Marshall to Chester W. Nimitz than on their commander in chief. The reason, Hamilton
78
WORLD WAR II
says, is simple: they survived the war to testify to their own greatness; Roosevelt didn’t. “The story of how America’s commander in chief conducted World War II,” Hamilton writes, “is almost the polar opposite of what we have been led, for the most part, to believe.” Hamilton makes his case by recounting episodes from the war’s first 18 months, beginning with the Atlantic Charter and ending with the Allies’ successful invasion of North Africa in November 1942. He uses each to illuminate Roosevelt’s shrewdness, far-sightedness, and manipulative skills. Every detail tells. For example: Roosevelt arranged that the navy encipher his outgoing war messages and the army decipher his incoming messages— guaranteeing that only he had access to the full flow of information.
FDR cemented his status as a strategist when he launched the North African invasion, overriding advisors’ unanimous preference for one in Europe. Hamilton argues persuasively that a premature European invasion would have been calamitous, while Roosevelt’s approach let the Allies season troops, cement their alliance, and replenish their arsenal. The day after the landings FDR appeared at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, Virginia. “The forces of liberation,” he said, “are advancing.” That advance, with Roosevelt unquestionably in the lead, is the subject of another Hamilton volume already in the works. Readers will put down Mantle eager for the next. —Andrew Ferguson is author of Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe’s America. GETTY IMAGES
REVIEWS
[ THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE ARMY The Invincible Years, 1941–42 By Bill Yenne. 350 pp. Osprey, 2014. $29.95.
I
n this highly readable account, Bill Yenne compresses Japan’s six-month rampage through southeast Asia into one manageable book by presenting an overall picture rather than detailing the campaigns in Malaya/Singapore, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, and Burma. Carefully selecting events, with scrutiny on the command level, he weaves major personalities’ strategies and experiences into a historical and geographic context that gives depth to his work. Yenne compiled his story entirely from English-language sources, including books on the Imperial Japanese Army and Allied operations and personalities. The subtitle is a misnomer; it should read “The Invincible Months.” Yenne claims the IJA was unbeatable until “the start of 1943,” but the “invincible” period ended in May 1942 with victories in the Philippines and Burma. Yenne contradicts his own assertion by stating that the IJA was “stopped in its tracks” for the first time during the Kokoda battles in Papua, which began in November 1942. In reality, though, the IJA’s first defeat came more than two months earlier—in late August 1942, at the Battle of the Tenaru on Guadalcanal. These are relatively minor substantive points, however. More disappointing is the absence of a notes section providing information about sources. In addition, the index fails to cite most of the individuals mentioned in the text—even figures who played major roles in the battles the author describes. These reservations aside, Yenne has
BOOKS
]
produced a volume that serves as a popular introduction to the IJA’s heyday. Readers seeking a more detailed account of the events of this period will want to refer to the extensive literature devoted
to individual campaigns. —William H. Bartsch, a Pacific War historian and former United Nations economist, recently completed his fourth book, Victory Fever on Guadalcanal.
our best selling dress shirt white pinpoint oxford
SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE $19.95 reg. $69.50-$74.50
• white 100% cotton • 6 collar styles • button or french cuffs • regular, big & tall or trim • 141À2” x 32” to 20” x 37”
• FREE (reg. $10.95) monogramming • Add this silk tie for $19.95 (reg. $62.50) Blue, Black, Red, Yellow, Green or Orange.
paulfredrick.com/special 800-309-6000 FREE EXCHANGES. New customer offer. Limit 4 shirts per customer. Shipping extra. Cannot be combined with other offers. Expires 1/31/15.
Specify promotional code C4HSWW
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
79
REVIEWS
[
B OOK B R I E F S
]
MY BATTLE AGAINST HITLER Faith, Truth, and Defiance in the Shadow of the Third Reich
[
GAMES
World War II Rating
★★ ★ ★ ★
By Dietrich von Hildebrand with John Henry Crosby and John F. Crosby. 341 pp. Image, 2014. $28. Hildebrand irked Nazis before there were Nazis by opposing collectivism, anti-Semitism, nationalism, and militarism. In 1933, he decamped to Austria, France, and then America. The drolly-titled My Battle shows un homme engagée brilliantly engaged.
LENINGRAD: SIEGE AND SYMPHONY The Story of the Great City Terrorized by Stalin, Starved by Hitler, Immortalized by Shostakovich By Brian Moynahan. 542 pp. Atlantic Monthly, 2014. $30. Leningrad could not catch a break—first Stalin’s purges, then a German siege. The city celebrated itself in 1942 with a symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich, as Brian Moynahan recounts, weaving Leningraders’ lives into a tapestry of indomitability.
By Ian Michael Wood. 298 pp. Stackpole, 2013. $32.95. Wood blends history, diaries, and photos into an oddly moving portrait of SS tankers from their callow days to the war-weary end of what one calls “The Long Retreat.”
RAILROAD OF DEATH By John Coast. 380 pp. Myrmidon, 2014. $19.95. Anyone who has whistled “Colonel Bogey March” after watching The Bridge Over the River Kwai knows the tale Coast told in his 1946 memoir of POWs building a railroad, now with a new introduction and detailed appendices—and the same immortal story. —Michael Dolan
80
WORLD WAR II
Caen delivers the digital goods with old-school nuance and up-to-date graphics.
CLOSE COMBAT Gateway to Caen
and how well you react. At the opera-
For PC, 2014. $39.99 for download, $49.99 for boxed.
campaign, planning battalions’ big moves
tional level you can play out the entire through Normandy. Players can choose to be a squad leader or brigade com-
W
orld War II gamers have awaited Close Combat: Gateway to Caen
mander on the German or British side. The game is made for head-to-head
since the established series’ last release
play, whether “hot-seating” it in person
in 2012. Created to reproduce Avalon
or battling online. If you’re alone, the
Hill’s venerable Advanced Squad Leader
computer opponent is capable, if often
board game, Close Combat debuted in
predictable, in its tactics—but then, so
1996. The series now has 17 titles, with
are professional military units.
more in the works, taking players from the Bulge to Berlin and beyond.
TIGERS OF THE DEATH’S HEAD SS Totenkopf Division’s Tiger Company
]
Gateway to Caen, the series’ first
The game’s modeling of human factors is its greatest variable. Soldiers enduring artillery barrages or seeing
release through the online game distrib-
comrades killed have lower morale and
utor Steam, puts users at Caen, France,
drift toward flight or surrender without
and related locales in late June 1944.
warning. Units repeatedly pushed to
Tailored to the tactician and strategist,
maximum capability become exhausted
Gateway lets players lead battalions at
and demoralized. Conversely, success
the operational level, while recreating
breeds success. In rare instances, a well
thrilling squad-level combat without the
cared-for unit or soldier will perform an
tedium of consulting the numerous
unexpected feat of heroism.
charts and tables board games require.
Gateway to Caen is enjoyable, play-
The game’s graphics and sound
able, and realistically recreates 1944
exceed expectations, especially since
Normandy combat at the squad level,
Gateway isn’t a first-person shooter.
with its quick calls and immediate conse-
Vehicle paint schemes are easily identifi-
quences. Operationally, each decision
able and the frantic cries of squad lead-
exerts long-term impact. Veteran gamers
ers in combat ring out clearly. At the
will appreciate the improved graphics
squad level, troops follow your orders
and fire support options, and beginners
under air and artillery support you coor-
will value the ease of play. —Chris
dinate, and fight, flee, or surrender
Ketcherside, a former Marine, is working
depending on how well you’ve planned
on a PhD in military history.
SLITHERINE GROUP
O
R
IN TO DE ST H R AL AV B LE E Y Y D O M BY UR A NE BR Y XT IC 2 FA K 5 LL .
it’s not just a brick.
it’s their story.
WITH A BRICK AT THE NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM, you can create a lasting tribute to loved ones who served their country. To learn how you can honor your hero, visit ww2brick4.org.
WWII Magazine
LIMITED TIME ONLY
BRICK TEXT
Ask us about our exclusive Campaigns of Courage commemorative brick. Only 1,000 available—reserve yours today. Find out more at ww2brick4.org. (Please Print Clearly) 18 characters per line including spaces
Mrs. Mr. Ms. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ Address _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ City _______________________________________________________________ State ________________ Zip ________________ Telephone (Day) _________________________ (Evening) _________________________ PLEASE RESERVE MY PERSONALIZED BRICK(S) Number of Victory Bricks _______ at $200 each. Number of Campaigns Bricks _______ at $500 each. Add a Tribute Book at $50 each ____________ Total $____________
Campaigns of Courage: European and Pacific Theaters, Opening December 2014
Please make check or money order payable to: The National WWII Museum. Card # _________________________________ Exp. ___________ Signature _________________________________________ Check/Money Order
MasterCard
VISA
Discover
AMEX
Forms must be received on or before 05/25/15. Fax orders to 504-527-6088 or mail to: The National WWII Museum, Road to Victory Brick Program, 945 Magazine Street, New Orleans, LA 70130.
877-813-3329 x 500
[email protected]
The National WWII Museum reserves the right to refuse to engrave any message or material that it determines to be inappropriate, such as telephone numbers, political messages and suggestive wording.
ADVERTISEMENT
“To you, it’s the perfect lift chair. To me, it’s the best sleep chair I’ve ever had.” — J. Fitzgerald, VA
Remote Controls for Heat, Massage, Recline and Lift
Separate Heat and Massage Controls!
Our Perfect Sleep Chair® is just the chair to do it all. It’s a chair, true – the finest of lift chairs – but this chair is so much more! It’s designed to provide total comfort and relaxation not found in other chairs. It can’t be beat for comfortable, longterm sitting, TV viewing, relaxed reclining and – yes! – peaceful sleep. Our chair’s recline technology allows you to pause the chair in an infinite number of positions, including the Trendelenburg position and the zero gravity position where your body experiences a minimum of internal and external stresses. You’ll love This lift chair the other benefits, too: It helps with puts you safely on your feet!
correct spinal alignment, promotes back pressure relief, and encourages better posture to prevent back and muscle pain. And there’s more! The overstuffed, oversized biscuit style back and unique seat design will cradle you in comfort. Generously filled, wide armrests provide enhanced arm support when sitting or reclining. The high and low heat settings along with the dozens of massage settings, can provide a soothing relaxation you might get at a spa – just imagine getting all that in a lift chair! Weight capacity 375 lbs. Shipping charge includes white glove delivery. Professionals will deliver the chair to the exact spot in your home where you want it, unpack it, inspect it, test it, position it, and even carry the packaging away! Includes one year service warranty. Your choice of fabrics and colors – Call now!
The Perfect Sleep Chair® Call now for our lowest price. Please mention code 48595 when ordering.
1-888-848-7221 Long Lasting DuraLux Leather
DuraLux II Microfiber
Tan
Burgundy Cashmere
Chocolate Burgundy
Fern
Chocolate Indigo
© 2014 by firstSTREET for Boomers and Beyond, Inc.
46366
We’ve all had nights when we just can’t lie down in bed and sleep, whether it’s from heartburn, cardiac problems, hip or back aches – it could be a variety of reasons. Those are the nights we’d give anything for a comfortable chair to sleep in, one that reclines to exactly the right degree, raises feet and legs to precisely the desired level, supports the head and shoulders properly, operates easily even in the dead of night, and sends a hopeful sleeper right off to dreamland.
Sit up, lie down — and anywhere in between!
WORLD
WAR II
Battle Films
Come and See’s Unblinking Eye By Mark Grimsley
I
N HIS CLASSIC 1959 book, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle, philosopher and World War II veteran J. Glenn Gray observed that war is visually fascinating. Director François Truffaut expanded on this thought, arguing that it is impossible to make an effective antiwar movie because war by its nature is exciting, especially to the eye. Come and See, a 1985 drama set during the Great Patriotic War and directed by Elem Klimov in the Soviet Union, defies Truffaut’s dictum. The film takes its title from the New Testament’s Book of Revelation: “…And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” Klimov asks, in effect, that we come and see an apocalyptic vision play out in a backwater of Nazi-occupied Belorussia, now Belarus. There, forests, fields, and hamlets constitute a hell as vivid as the one Dante Alighieri portrayed in his Inferno. Klimov succeeds, paradoxically, because he assumes no moral position but rather observes, with eyes wide open, his characters and the nightmare world in which he has placed them. As the film begins an old man is calling to figures out of frame revealed to be SOVEXPORTFILM
The eerie Soviet film succeeds not with ardor but by embracing its opposite.
two boys of 14 or so. The youths are digging in loose soil to retrieve weapons; they are intent on signing up with a band of partisans. The old man tries to discourage them, but the boys ignore him, and a few days later enlist. From this point the film follows Florya (Aleksei Kravchenko), who has joined the resistance to take action but instead is mostly acted upon. As the partisans depart on a mission, a man with tattered footwear appropriates Florya’s boots. The fighters order the boy to remain in camp, together with Glafira (Olga Mironova), a girl not much older than he. The two, who spend much of the film together, as companions rather than friends, leave camp to wander a largely empty landscape, trying to avoid dangers both elusive and omnipresent. Florya suggests they make their way to where his mother and siblings live. No one is at the hovel, but a warm meal is in the oven. Flies are buzzing. The boy and girl begin to eat, nearly oblivious to the insects.
Deciding his family is hiding, Florya races from the hut. Glafira follows. Over her shoulder the teenager sees the source of the flies: piled against the dwelling are dozens of naked corpses, surely including Florya’s family. Glafira keeps this information to herself as she and Florya wade through a waist-deep bog to an island where the boy imagines his family to be. Finally, drenched in mud and reeking water, the girl cannot contain herself. “No, they aren’t here!” she screams. “They’re dead!” Furious, Florya tries to strangle Glafira. A partisan comes for the pair. He leads them to a group of refugees and resistance fighters in whose midst, lying on his back, is the man who tried to get Florya and his friend to stop digging. Third degree burns cover the dying man’s body; the Nazi patrol that slaughtered the civilians at the hut set him on fire as a lark. “Florya,” the old man says. “Didn’t I warn you? Didn’t I tell you not to dig?” In that moment Florya finally accepts the deaths of his mother and siblings. The scene’s horror is oddly intensified by the partisans’ blatant lack of concern. One fighter has mounted a skull atop a scarecrow-like torso and laughingly applies clay to it, sculpting a facsimile of Adolf Hitler’s head. Indifference is central to Come and See. Klimov wanted his film to have devastating impact, and he succeeded; Come and See is widely admired as a masterpiece. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
83
Challenge
ANSWERS
Hollywood Howlers
Hollywood Howlers Instead of two different Japanese aircraft carriers, the filmmakers used reversed shots of the Essexclass USS Lexington
In a pivotal sequence in the 2000 thriller U-571, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Hirsh, played by Jake Weber, is part of an American boarding
party whose members become the first Allied force to capture an operational Enigma code machine. What’s wrong with that scenario?
What the...?!? What role did this oddball rig play?
BUNDESARCHIV BKD 101I-690-0201-16 PHOTO KRIPGANS
Name That Patch The Marine Fighter Attack Squadron VMF-312 Congratulations to the winners: Todd Johnson, Chrystal Hall, and Kenneth P. Beaton
Please send your answers
Name That Patch
to all three questions, and your mailing address, to: January/February Challenge, World War II 19300 Promenade Drive, Leesburg, VA 20176 or e-mail:
[email protected] Three winners, chosen at random from all correct entries submitted by February 15, will receive a copy of the The Mantle of Command, by Nigel Hamilton. Answers will appear in the May/June 2015 issue.
WEIDER ARCHIVES
TOP, BUNDESARCHIV BILD 183-E12007 PHOTO EISENHARDT; MIDDLE, UNIVERSAL PICTURES; BOTTOM, WEIDER ARCHIVES
What the…?!? Germans used this Ringtrichterrichtungshoerer, or ring-horn acoustic direction detector, to listen for incoming bombers
UNIVERSAL PICTURES
to the September/ October Challenge
Which unit’s insignia is this?
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
87
Exclusively for America’s Defenders —
Rewarding those who serve and have served The PenFed Defender American Express® Card
%
1.5
Available to the courageous men and women of the United States military — Retired, Active, Guard, Reserve and Veterans.2
Cash Back
On every purchase, every time, everywhere.1
Apply Today
Credit Union
PenFed.org/DefenderWH115 • 800-732-8268
All rates and offers current as of January 1, 2015 and are subject to change. ¹Cash advances, credit card checks, or balance transfers are excluded from earning cash rewards. ²You must be in an active military service status, a member of the Reserves or National Guard, an honorably discharged U.S. military veteran or retired from such service to qualify for this product. This Credit Card program is issued and administered by PenFed. American Express® is a federally registered service mark of American Express and is used by PenFed pursuant to a license. Federally Insured by NCUA.
