Western front-interesting bits of information

Might add that they are easier to hide from Allied airpower,too.

 

German Army facts:

Of the seventeen field marshals in the German Army, ten were relieved of their commands by the Fuehrer in the course of the war, three were killed after the July Plot, two were killed in action, one was taken prisoner and only one remained throughout the war without being subject to discipline.

Of thirty-six generals, twenty-six were removed from their post, of whom three were executed and two were dishonorably discharged; seven were killed in action and only three remained in service throughout the war without disciplinary action.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWgermanA.htm

 

That's sad that such great tacticians and leading men were killed or accused of killing someone who dies soon after.

 

Douglas Bader:

Often, coming back across the Channel after a mission, Bader would flip back the canopy of his Spitfire, unclip his oxygen mask and, while holding the stick between his good knee and his tin knee, light up his pipe. Pilots flying alongside Spitfire DB would sheer off, half in jest and half in earnest, in case Bader's plane blew up. For his brilliant and inspiring leadership of the Tangmere Wing - which he christened "The Bee Line Bus Service. The prompt and regular service. Return tickets only" - Bader was awarded a bar to his DSO.


http://www.donny.co.uk/Doncaster/news/index.php3?ID=466

 

Just how fragile the situation in the western camp was during invasion:

The issuance of invasion currency to Allied troops: Like many other French civil affairs questions this had been discussed by French and Allied representatives since 1943, and had bogged down. on the issue of the sovereignty of the French Committee. In an effort to avoid depreciating French currency by issuing yellow-seal dollars and British Military Authority notes to the troops, as in Italy, the British and U.S. authorities arranged in December 1943 to print special invasion money in Washington for the use of the armies. Before this could be done, the British Ambassador "unexpectedly" notified the State Department that his government preferred a French national currency issued by the French Committee of National Liberation. The immediate effect was to delay any decision on the issue for a number of weeks. To bring the matter to a head, the British Secretary of State for War, Sir James Grigg, appealed to General Eisenhower at the end of January 1944, reminding him that currency was "a vital if uninteresting necessity to successful operations."2 If General Eisenhower had ever doubted the necessity of settling such problems promptly, he had sufficient reason to change his mind when they continued to reappear in the spring and summer of 1944.

In early May, General Eisenhower forwarded to Washington proposals based on preliminary discussions with the French Military Mission in London regarding the whole financial situation in France. After a period of three weeks, having received no direction on the problem, he proposed as "a solution of desperation" to issue a proclamation declaring the supplemental francs legal tender. The Supreme Commander and his chief of staff doubted their legal right to issue such a proclamation and feared it would be considered a flagrant violation of French sovereignty, but they felt they would have to take such action unless they received other instructions by 28 May.

No agreement had been reached with the French by the time General de Gaulle reached London shortly before D Day. He was dissatisfied when he found that limited quantities of supplemental francs in small denominations had actually been given to British and U.S. soldiers in the assault units, and that larger quantities were ready when needed to supplement the five and one-half billion metropolitan francs put at the disposal of Allied forces by the War Office. His anger at this assumption of what he considered to be a prerogative of the French Committee of National Liberation apparently influenced him to forbid the 180 French liaison officers trained for civil affairs duties to sail with the assault units on D Day. He finally relented sufficiently to permit twenty liaison officers to accompany Allied troops. ( ON Collins-Lapierre "Is Paris burning?" the total number was 500 liaison officers with 20 to sail on D-day...)

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Supreme/USA-E-Supreme-13.html

 

ALLKETT

The most important tank factory in Berlin.

Most of the workshops were destroyed in an Allied air raid on Nov 26,1943.

Disturbed by this attack Hitler issued a direct order to fire departments as far away as Potsdam and Brandenburg to move to Allkett and save as much as possible of the key factory.


Encyclopedia of the Third Reich

 

443 Lancasters and 7 Mosquitoes flew to Berlin that night.

Ironically, the success of the raid was due to a Pathfinder mishap. The Blind Markers dropped their their red TIs as planned in a straight line leading to the City centre. But then the solitary H2S aircraft of 83 Squadron dropped its entire load of yellow markers 7 miles north of the city limits. the PFF backers-up, faced with two different marked targets, dropped their green flares halfway between the two and the Main Force dropped on these.

Unknown to all of them, this was an important industrial area ; Rheinmetall-Borsig and DWM were bombed heavily as well as the vital Alkett tank factory.

Kai is quite right ; Hitler personally intervened when told of the Alkett fire and ordered every possible fire appliance to the scene. As a result, many fire engines became jammed in nearby streets and were unable to deploy to many other blazing areas.

 

intersting claims on this night of 26/27 November 1943...........

7 Lancs, 1 Hali for NJG 1
4 Lancs for NJG 3
3 Hali's to Hptm. Willi Herget of I./NJG 4
16 Lancs to NJG 5, 2 of these to friend Günther Wolf
3 Hali's and 1 Lanc to I./NJG 6 pilots on a diversionary ? raid.
1 Lancaster to Bf 109G-6 pilot Feldwebel Haase of III./JG 300

~ E

 

And those claims exactly match the number of aircraft lost that night - 34.

 

Really !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Martin that does surprise me, although you mentioned no Hali's this night on the Berlin raid. Peter spoden speaks often to me of the terrible problems he and his Nachtjagd crews had in the identification of the RAF bombers in the dark and attacking from the rear/underneath. Not surprisingly in the Frieburg claims listing there is a simple notation of.......... claim 1 4-engine bomber/Viermot.........

 

157 Halifaxes and 21 Lancasters flew to Stuttgart on a diversionary raid.....

 

Wilhelm Mayer



On 18 February 1944, 7./JG 26 was ordered to scramble from Grevillers to intercept a British formation of 15 Mosquito twin-engined bombers escorted by eight Typhoon fighters implementing Operation Jericho, the attack on the Amiens prison to aid the escape of Resistance members held there. The formation was intercepted as it came off its bombing run. Mayer shot down the Mosquito flown by the officer commanding the mission, Group Captain Charles Pickard for his 13th victory.

http://www.luftwaffe.cz/mayerw.html

 

Dieppe 1944 captured 1st Sept 1944

Canadian troops enter Dieppe and On 3 September 1944, the Second Division marched triumphantly through the streets of Dieppe following services at a cemetery where 800 Second Division men lay at rest.




Memorial service at Dieppe; Lieutenant General Crerar (GOC First Canadian Army), Major General Foulkes (GOC Second Canadian Division) and Lieutenant General Simonds (GOC II Canadian Corps).

More pics and info

http://www.canadiansoldiers.com/dieppe44.htm

 

Hermann Balck and Heinz Guderian

During operation Yellow Balck was a 44 year old Lt. Colonel in charge of the 1st Rifle Regiment of the 1st Panzer Division under Heinz Guderian.
On 13th May 1940 Balck’s troops crossed the Meuse River and the next day French resistance collapsed.As Guderian arrived Balck greeted him joyfully with "Joyriding in canoes on the Meuse is forbidden."



http://www.warfarehq.com/articles/cs_articles/brave_balck.shtml

 

The beginning´s the hardest part..(?!)

Operation Ambassador

During World War II, Operation Ambassador (14/15 July, 1940) was the second raid by British Commandos comprising 40 men of H Troop, No.3 Commando under Maj. John Durnford-Slater, and 100 men of No.11 Commando/Independent Company under Maj. Ronnie Tod.
The objective was offensive reconnaissance, prisoner capture and aircraft destruction on the Channel Island of Guernsey. Three landing points were designated but only No.3 Commando landed successfully. One party of No.11 were taken to the wrong island (Sark) and the other encountered a series of boat problems. No.3 Commando failed to find any of the 469-man German garrison and discovered they had to extract themselves by swimming @ 100 metres out to their boats as the tide had risen too high for their motor craft to beach among the rocks.

At this stage it was discovered three Commandos could not swim so were left on the beach with additional French currency. They later surrendered. A dingy was used to ferry weapons to the boats and on the fifth excursion it was dashed against a rock and one of the three men escorting it drowned.

http://www.campusprogram.com/reference/en/wikipedia/o/op/operation_ambassador.html

 

Ocean Bridge: The History of RAF Ferry Command by Carl A. Christie

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/bookrev/chris.html

Between 1940 and 1945 over 11,000 aircraft were delivered across the ocean, most departing from airfields at Gander, Newfoundland, and Goose Bay, Labrador. The cost, however, was not cheap; approximately 150 aircraft and 560 personnel were lost in ferry operations.

 

http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/documents/237ACY.htm

Going for Berlin...??

Task Force Hollingsworth: CCB, 2d Armored Division. 11 April 1945. A column of tanks struck out from Magdeburg after darkness to capture a bridge across the Elbe at Schoenebeck. The tanks came within a few feet of the bridge but were unable to take it in the face of determined German fire. By the time a new attack with infantry could be mounted, the Germans had demolished the structure. Source: Charles B. MacDonald, The Last Offensive, (unpublished manuscript) Chapter XVII, pp. 22-23; Cornelius Ryan, The Last Battle, pp. 305-10

If the bridge had been captured, and according to the book the first attack only was late for minutes to do so. A German tank column had appeared in front of them and started shooting at them and stopped their movement to capture the bridge.

Hollingsworth himself was sure that after taking the bridge it would have been only 11 hrs (!!)to Berlin ( and then the battles in Berlin would start or would the Berliners surrender to the US troops?).

 

According to Cornelius Ryan´s book "The last battle" the Volkssturm men had approx 5 bullets for their rifles to use when they received their weapons...

 

NORGE and EIDSVOLD (April 9, 1940)

Two coastal defence ships of the Norwegian Navy, both of 4,166 tons, were lying at the port of Narvik when a force of eleven German destroyers appeared out of the fog. A demand for immediate surrender was rejected whereupon one of the destroyers fired a torpedo which hit the Eidsvold in her forward magazine blowing the ship to pieces and killing 185 of her crew of 193. Six more torpedoes were fired from the German destroyers and two hit the Norge amidships which sank within a few minutes taking with her 110 members of her crew. There were 89 survivors. In this action, on the first day of the German invasion of Norway, two of the most powerful ships in her small navy, were destroyed and 276 officers and men killed. In all, there were 105 survivors. Within the next five days the eleven German destroyers were sunk by ships of the Royal Navy during the main Battle of Narvik.

And more maritime disasters in WW2:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/maritime-2.html

 

Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer (Germany's top night fighter ace )was known as the "Spook of St. Trond" by the British.

http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/schnafer.html


Best kill average per sorti flown (day fighters) -Lt. Guenther Scheel, 70 missions/71 victories


http://members.aol.com/dheitm8612/tops.htm