Western front-interesting bits of information

Wesel claims to have been the most intensively bombed town, for its size, in Germany. 97 per cent of the buildings in the main town area were destroyed. The population, which had numbered nearly 25,000 on the outbreak of war, was only 1,900 in May 1945.

http://www.raf.mod.uk/bombercommand/mar45.html

 

Michael Schadewitz: FIRST THE MEUSE, THEN ANTWERP

According to the book as Skorzeny started looking for suitable men for his Panzerbrigade 150, the so-called "talkers", "someone" sent an open request to all units

(all around the Reich at the time) for English-speaking German soldiers to report for duty at a special place....According to the author the request was acknowledged about 8 days later in the allied side ( the latest I suppose!).

Skorzeny himself was furious, but it seems no bells rang for the allied agencies...??

 

From Schadewitz´s "The Meuse First and then Antwerp"


On 4th September 1944 the Japanese Ambassador Baron Oshima attended a meeting with Hitler. Hitler told that he was about to start a large-scale offensive in the west after the beginning of November.

A few days later Oshima reported to Tokyo, which was intercepted and decrypted by "MAGIC". The information was passed on to the intelligence officers in Pentagon.



Here might be more interesting messages sent by Oshima and decrypted by the US intelligence:

http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/boyhit.html

 

In 1940 the Norwegian merchant navy, the fourth largest in the world, escaped to Britain and was of enormous value to the allied war effort.

Philip Warner: Battle of France

[ 06. January 2005, 05:30 AM: Message edited by: Kai-Petri ]

 

From Schadewitz´s "The Meuse First and then Antwerp"

November 1944

Ultra experts break the codes of the Reichsbahn using the "Turing engine". They were able to identify almost 400 transport trains leading towards the Western front. This was roughly half of the entire transprot used....

 

The last troops to leave Dunkirk officially on 4th June 1940 were 383 French soldiers who were mebarked on the British destroyer Shikari.

Philip Warner "The battle of France"

 

September 12,
1944 Allies Capture Roetgen, first German town to fall.

http://bss.sfsu.edu/tygiel/Hist427/texts/WWIIEurope.htm

 

From Death Traps by Belton Y Cooper

On Shermans

One of the most needed maintenance parts was spark plugs. Most of the M4 tanks had R975 Wright nine-cylinder air-cooled radial engines. When the engine was started the tank usually backfired with considerable noise which gave away the unit´s position.Most tank crews would idle the engines as slowly as possible when trying to maintain a defiladed position in the hedgegrows. Designed for high constant speeds in an aircraft the engine had excessive clearance between the cylinder walls and the pistons. In a tank, where the engine was run slowly, the excess clearance allowed then engine to pump oil which fouled the spark plugs.Each engine had nine cylinders and each cylinder had two spark plugs. This meant that eighteen spark plugs had to be changed every time the engine fouled.

 

Makes you wonder why Cooper titled his book 'Death Traps', heck of a time to foul your plugs after you've been spotted by an '88.

 

Major General Maurice Rose
4th - 3d Armored Division Commander
August 1944 - March 1945
Killed in Action 31 March 1945

On 31 March 1945, MG Rose was leading the 3d Armored Division in attacking a German tank training center outside Paderborn, Germany. MG Rose was at the head of the column in his jeep. Turning a corner, his driver ran into the rear of a German Tiger Tank. The German tank commander, about 18 years old, opened his turret hatch and leveled his sub machinegun at MG Rose, yelling to him apparently to surrender. (2) Rose, his driver, and his aide got out of the jeep and put their hands in the air. For some reason, the tank commander became extremely agitated, and kept pointing to MG Rose and hollering at him while gesturing toward Rose's pistol. Rose lowered his right hand to release his web belt and thus drop his holster to the ground. Apparently, the German tank commander thought he was drawing his pistol. In a screaming rage, the German fired his weapon. MG Rose was hit in the head and was killed instantly.

http://www.3ad.net/mg_rose.htm



http://www.3ad.org/wwii_heroes/rose_maurice/rose_maurice_home.htm

 

This is true only of the M4A1 that represents about 30 - 40% of the vehicles in Europe in early 44. By late 44 it is down to around 20%. Most US Shermans in the ETO were M4A3's with the Ford GAA engine (half a RR Merlin acutally). Lend lease vehicles were variously diesel (GM or Caterpillar) and Chrysler powered.
One advantage the Sherman (all models) had in this respect was that idling the engine when stationary and not planning to move immediately was not necessary as a small donkey engine was provided to power the radios and keep the battery charged (it also kept the crew warm in the winter to some extent as it was mounted in the bottom right rear of the crew compartment).

 

From my file ;Schwere Panzer Abteilung # 507, Gen. Rose was killed trying to escape capture when his column was ambushed. The link I have does'nt want to work,but here it is: 3ad.com/history/ww11/memoirs.pages/marsh.pages/507.paner.bn.htm If you Goggle 'Schwere.....',it's there.Maybe someone has a better link.

 

Anzio Annie:

Unlike other guns where the rifling is in the barrel on these weapons the rifling was on the shell and the bore was smooth.

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-weapons/anzio_annie.htm

 

Neil Short Hitler´s Siegfried Line

On 24 August 1944 ( the day before the fall of Paris )Hitler issued his orders for the construction of a new West Wall. Besides members of the local population, workers from the Greater Reich and forced labour from conquered territories were also employed, supplemented by youngsters from the Hitler Youth and the Labour Service. It was hoped that this levée en masse would yield one million workers for the construction of the new defences. However, by the middle of September only 235,000 workers were employed and even with this it would take at least six weeks to make any significant improvement.

 

Field Marshal von Rundstedt's chief of staff, General Westphal upon inspecting the West Wall. "The damned bunkers have been taken over by the peasants...they store their winter potatoes and beets in the places.Totally useless as defensive positions. Our only hope is to dig new communication trenches and put the men in them,not the bunkers."
An attempt was made to call up 1 million civilians to excavate new earthworks but only 360,000 turned up.Even the civilians seemed to sense that it was useless.

From The West Wall:Battle for Hitler's Siegfried Line by C Whiting

 

Neil Short Hitler´s Siegfried Line

September 1944

Question from the book:
Did the Germans have sufficient men and equipment to man the defences and take advantage of the terrain?

Answered a bit later:
...even in s sector of the line that could boast fewer fortifications than any other portion of the line south of Aachen, they could man no more than a fifth of the positions.

 

Dönitz´s nickname for Göring:

"Grave digger of the Reich" or "The fat one".

http://www.wehrmacht-awards.com/war_badges/luftwaffe/pilot_observer_diamonds.htm

 

From Robin Cross The Battle of Bulge 1944

By February 1945 the number of rail wagons available to Reichsbahn ( German railway system ) had fallen from 136,000 to 28,000 about 10,000 fewer than were needed to sustaim 25% of industrial production.

During the first ten months of 1944 the Army Ordnance Directorate had accepted 45,917 trucks though truck losses in the same period were 117,719.

 

Radio Controlled Bomber Drone. Project Aphrodite. The idea was to pack an aged bomber with 10 tons of explosives and fly it into the impregnable submarine pens on the French coast. A pilot was required to get the bomber airborne and trimmed so that a controlling plane could fly it to the target. The first plane exploded over England before the pilot had bailed out. The pilot was Navy Lt Joseph Kennedy, eldest son of that family, who was being groomed for the presidency, a post later held by the second son, John F. Kennedy.
Sep 3, 1944 --A pilot took off in a torpex-laden drone Liberator from an airfield in England, set radio control and parachuted to the ground. The PV controlling the Liberator's flight, sought to hit submarine pens on Helgoland Island; however, he lost view of the plane in a rain shower during the final alignment and relying only upon the drone's television picture of the terrain hit the barracks and industrial area of an airfield on nearby Dune Island.

http://www.ww2pacific.com/ideas.html

 

There are some tiny chunks of engine from Joseph Kennedy's aircraft at the Framlingham Tower museum in Suffolk. You look at them and wonder at the force which tore them apart.