WWII History - February 2015

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WWII History (ISSN 1539-5456) is published six times yearly in February,April, June, August, October, and December by Sovereign Media, 6731 Whit-tier Ave., Suite A-100, McLean, VA 22101. (703) 964-0361. Periodical postagepaid at McLean, VA, and additional mailing offices. WWII History, Volume14, Number 2 © 2015 by Sovereign Media Company, Inc., all rights reserved.Copyrights to stories and illustrations are the property of their creators. Thecontents of this publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part withoutconsent of the copyright owner. Subscription services, back issues, and infor-mation: (800) 219-1187 or write to WWII History Circulation, WWII Histo-ry, P.O. Box 1644, Williamsport, PA 17703. Single copies: $5.99, plus $3 forpostage. Yearly subscription in U.S.A.: $19.95; Canada and Overseas: $31.95(U.S.). Editorial Office: Send editorial mail to WWII History, 6731 WhittierAve., Suite A-100, McLean, VA 22101. WWII History welcomes editorial sub-missions but assumes no responsibility for the loss or damage of unsolicitedmaterial. Material to be returned should be accompanied by a self-addressed,stamped envelope. We suggest that you send a self-addressed, stamped enve-lope for a copy of our author’s guidelines. POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to WWII History, P.O. Box 1644, Williamsport, PA 17703.

WWII HISTORY

4 WWII HISTORY FEBRUARY 2015

Contents

Features26 Australia’s Pearl Harbor

The Japanese Imperial Navy’s air attack on the Australian city of Darwin was thegreatest military disaster ever inflicted on that country’s soil.By Arnold Blumberg

32 The Fighting NinthCommanded by General William “Texas Bill” Simpson, the U.S. Ninth Army foughtits way across Europe.By Michael D. Hull

38 Cobras Over CactusThe arrival of the 67th Fighter Squadron bolstered the American attempt toseize Guadalcanal from the Japanese.By Patrick J. Chaisson

44 In the Lair of the BeastThe initial Red Army offensive into East Prussia set the stage for the crushing advance that followed in early 1945.By Pat McTaggart

54 A Cursed Warship?The German battlecruiser Scharnhorst was plagued by hard luck throughout hercareer.By Kelly Bell

60 Incident on the YangtzeThe U.S. Navy gunboat Panay was sunk by Japanese aircraft on the great Chineseriver, pushing the two countries closer to war.By Michael D. Hull

Columns06 EditorialThe battle for Iwo Jima saved many Americanlives.

08 ProfilesEvans Carlson led America’s first SpecialOperations force.

12 InsightThe treatment of American soldiers woundedin jungle action followed a medical care echelon system initially devised for European battlefields.

16 OrdnanceThe Australian Wirraway was forced into arole for which it was not intended duringWorld War II.

22 Top SecretA plane crash claimed the life of Dr. Fritz Todt,Hitler’s minister of armaments, paving the wayfor the appointment of Albert Speer.

66 BooksThe defeat of the Japanese in the Pacificrequired a tremendous Allied effort combiningall available resources.

70 Simulation GamingWorld of Diving observes war from a differentpoint of view, while Company of Heroes 2expands its playground.

Cover: A Soviet infantryscout looks for Germanforces during a Russianadvance. See story page44. Photo: © Sovfoto.

February 2015

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Editor ialThe battle for Iwo Jima saved manyAmerican lives.

SEVENTY YEARS A GO, ON FEBR UARY 19, 1945, THOUSANDS OF AMERIC ANMarines hit the beaches at Iwo Jima in the Volcano Islands of the Pacific. Taking the small island,encompassing only about eight square miles, required the commitment of 70,000 American fight-ing men and 26,000 casualties, over 6,800 of them killed.

The island itself is situated only 650 nautical miles south of the Japanese capital of Tokyo, andthe defenders of this steaming, sulfurous piece of land shaped like a pork chop fought to thedeath. Nearly 19,000 Japanese troops were killed in action, and only 216 were taken prisoner.

This otherwise obscure piece of real estate would ordinarily attract no attention at all. How-ever, by early 1945 Iwo Jima was the focus of the costly war in the Pacific, now in its fourthbloody year. Iwo Jima’s proximity to Japan made it an ideal staging area for American forces thatwere inching closer to the home islands, anticipating a massive amphibious invasion that wouldultimately thwart the territorial ambitions of Imperial Japan.

The Japanese had also constructed three airfields on Iwo Jima, and enemy planes flying fromthese locations posed a threat to American naval units operating ever closer to Japan proper. TheU.S. Navy’s top commanders were already well aware of the hazards posed by the fanaticalkamikaze, suicide pilots bent on inflicting damage on American ships and sacrificing their ownlives in the process. Once these airfields were captured, the kamikaze menace, at least insofar asit emanated from Iwo Jima, would be eliminated.

Another prime mover in the decision to commit American blood and treasure in the capture ofIwo Jima involved U.S. air power. Long-range Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers were alreadyflying from bases in the Mariana Islands and regularly pounded military targets and cities on theJapanese home islands. To accomplish their strategic bombing missions, these massive aircraft flewthrough a gauntlet of Japanese fighter planes and antiaircraft fire. Many of them were crippledin the attacks, and a significant number were forced to ditch in the broad expanse of the PacificOcean, too damaged to complete the return flight to their bases in the Marianas.

The trained crews of the B-29s were a valuable commodity, and those B-29s that were dam-aged might be repaired and returned to service. In order to save lives, though, lives had to be lost.It fell to the brave men of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions, their attached Navy medicalpersonnel, and the sailors manning the fleet off the coast of Iwo Jima to accomplish the task ofwresting the island from the Japanese. They paid a terrible price, and in their heroic sacrificeallowed more than 2,400 B-29s, damaged, low on fuel, and carrying wounded crewmen, to landon Iwo Jima.

On March 4, 1945, even before the island was declared secure, the B-29 Dinah Might reportedthat it was critically low on fuel and requested an emergency landing. It is estimated that by theend of World War II more than 27,000 American airmen were saved from an uncertain fate whentheir planes safely landed on Iwo Jima. A decades long debate has wrestled with the question asto whether the capture of Iwo Jima was worth the cost. Some American families experienced adevastating loss, while others welcomed home their veteran servicemen.

When it was over, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, stated thaton Iwo Jima “uncommon valor was a common virtue.”

Twenty-seven American Marines and Navy personnel were awarded the Medal of Honor on IwoJima, and 14 of these were posthumous. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal captured theiconic image of the flag raising atop Mount Suribachi, and Secretary of the Navy James Forrestalnoted that the image would ensure the existence of the Marine Corps for the next 500 years.

The battle for Iwo Jima, fought 70 years ago, provided one of history’s greatest examples ofstrong, dedicated men laying down their lives for others. Such devotion to duty is forever worthyof honor and respect.

Michael E. Haskew

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MAJOR EVANS CARLSON STOOD ON A RICKETY PLATFORM BUILT FROM wooden crates, the kind their rations came in. He said nothing for a moment as he looked outover the young Marines he and his executive officer had personally selectedafter grueling interviews. These were the elite, the toughest and most adventur-ous of the already tough and daring Marines. These were the men of the newlyformed 2nd Marine Raider Battalion, America’s first special operations team,trained to strike back at the Japanese in the hit-and-run style of the British commandos.

It was 3 PM on a chilly, rainy day in the second week of February 1942. TheMarines were assembled in the middle of a muddy field surrounded by euca-lyptus trees, which made the whole camp smell like menthol cough drops. Thisdismal place was called Jacques Farm, five miles south of Camp Elliott, a rapidlyexpanding part of the Marine Training Center near San Diego, California.

In the two months since the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, U.S. forces inthe Pacific were being beaten back in one battle after another; Wake Island,Guam, and Bataan were no longer unknown names. Throughout the nationcries arose for America to strike back against the Japanese.

Carlson’s Raiders, as the media called them, would thrill Americans with thefirst victory against Japanese-held territory, tiny Makin Island, some 2,000 mileswest of Pearl Harbor. Evans Carlson and his men became instant national heroeson a huge scale, celebrities filling the headlines of every newspaper in the coun-try with two Hollywood movies glamorizing their exploits. Everyone knewabout Evans Carlson and his Marine Raiders.

I By Duane Schultz I

The Maverick MarineEvans Carlson led America’s first Special Operations force.

Carlson did not look much like a hero thatday at Jacques Farm. He was 46 years old andrail thin; although he stood tall and straight, heappeared frail. He had piercing blue eyes, a longnose, and a pronounced, chiseled jaw. Histo-rian John Wukovits described him as “an intel-lectual who loved combat; a high schooldropout who quoted Emerson; a thin, almostfragile looking man who relished 50-mile hikes;an officer in a military organization who toutedequality among officers and enlisted; a kindlyindividual with the capacity to kill.” The firstthing he did at Jacques Farm was take out hisharmonica and lead his men in singing thenational anthem.

Carlson’s executive officer did not look likea hero either. The 35-year-old captain was alsothin, prematurely balding, and seemed in poorhealth. He had vision problems and flat feet, sohe could not wear regulation combat boots. Asa child he had suffered from a heart murmurand frequent bouts of pneumonia and wasoften so weak that his father had to carry him.He was also nervous, socially anxious, and suf-fered from ulcers. Through sheer force of will,he became a good officer, respected by Carlsonand his men. His name was James Roosevelt,and both he and his father, the president, playedpivotal roles in bringing about Carlson’sRaiders.

When the last words of the national anthemrang out that day at Jacques Farm, Carlson putaway his harmonica and announced that hehad a lot to tell the men about their lives asRaiders. They would train and fight like noother outfit had ever done; he was not exag-

gerating. He talked about hisyears in China, where helearned from Mao Tse-tunghow to fight the Japanese,and about his months withthe Chinese CommunistArmy operating behindJapanese lines. He said thatthe Raiders would worktogether—officers and menas one—the way the ChineseCommunists did. Therewould be no distinction byclass or rank; every manwould eat the same rations,sleep on the ground, andhave the same rights andprivileges. No one was bet-ter than anyone else.

Then Carlson gave themtheir battle cry: “Gung Ho!”


Profiles

TOP: U.S. Marines land on MakinIsland during training in 1943.Evans Carlson (above) and the

Marine Raiders conducted an operation against the Japaneseon Makin the previous year and

were hailed as heroes.

All: National Archives

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The Chinese phrase meant “work together,”which was how the Raiders would learn to fight.

Six months later, Evans Carlson and hisRaiders had become instant celebrities. Anyonein the States who read a newspaper, listened tothe radio, or watched a Movietone newsreelknew about them. Banner headlines screamedthe story of the small group of Marines, only221, who went by submarine to attack theJapanese-held island of Makin. Now Ameri-cans had a victory to cheer and heroes to praise.

“Marines Wiped out Japanese on Makin Islein Hot Fighting,” wrote a New York Timesreporter. The press reported that the Raiderscleaned out the Japanese troops. Carlson wasquoted as saying, “We wanted to take prison-ers, but we couldn’t find any. Our casualtieswere light. We took more than ten for one. TheJaps fought with typical Japanese spirit—theyfought until they died. It was a sight to see.There were dead all over the place.”

This was just what Americans needed toboost morale on the home front, giving theenemy a taste of its own medicine. It was tooearly in the war for most people to realize thatgovernment sources sometimes distort or con-ceal the truth or deliberately issue propaganda.The press had little choice but to go along, evenwhen some reporters uncovered the truth. Itwas not the right time to mention what hadgone wrong on Makin, what was covered up,and would not be known for 50 years. In 1942America needed a victory, and it got one atMakin—or so Americans were told.

Overnight Carlson and his Raiders hadbecome a sensation. When the first submarinebringing them back from Makin reached PearlHarbor, James Roosevelt recalled, “We weresurprised to find bands playing and the pierslined with cheering people. We had not shavedor bathed or washed our clothes for two weeks,so I sent my men to clean up as best they could.It turned out to be a hero’s welcome.”

Sailors in dress uniforms, standing at atten-tion, lined the decks of every ship the Raiderspassed. Bands played the Marines’ Hymn. Asthe submarine eased up to the dock, a hugecheer rang out. A battalion of Marines in dressblues stood at the ready along with AdmiralRaymond Spruance and his boss, AdmiralChester Nimitz, commander in chief of the U.S.Pacific Fleet. Behind them waited a crowd ofreporters and cameramen.

As Nimitz led a military delegation on board,he stepped up to Carlson, returned his snappysalute, and shook his hand to offer congratula-tions on a successful mission.

“Makin has made you and your Raidersfamous,” he said.

Sergeant Howard E. “Buck” Stidham recalled50 years later, “The realization was slowly sink-ing in that we had gone from the status of acourageous and fortunate bunch of dumb-dumbs to what Kipling would probably call ‘abloody bunch of heroes.’ We had no concept ofthe hunger the American people had for somegood war news and that this operation hadattracted the attention of every citizen in thecountry.”

Three months later, Carlson and his Raiderswere back in action, this time on Guadalcanal.They were sent behind Japanese lines where, inwhat came to be called the Long Patrol, theyfought in close combat for 30 days and coveredover 120 miles in the steaming jungle. TheRaiders killed nearly 500 of the enemy, losing16 killed and 18 wounded. The press onceagain lavished praise on “Carlson’s Boys,” themost famous outfit in the Marine Corps, andfor a time they were the most glorified groupamong all of the military services.

Carlson was sent back to the States to betreated for malaria and jaundice. He did notyet know it, but he would never again beallowed to lead men in combat or to serve withhis beloved Raiders; the battalion would soonbe disbanded. Instead, Carlson was sent to Hol-lywood to make a war movie.

The script grew out of a two-part article writ-ten by one of the Raiders for the SaturdayEvening Post. In proper gung ho spirit, Carl-

son, as technical adviser, insisted that cast andcrew bunk together in a nondescript buildingrather than permitting the movie stars and pro-ducers to be housed in a luxury hotel separatefrom the crew. An article in the 2001 MarineCorps Gazette noted that less than a year afterthe Makin raid, “Hollywood enshrined Carl-son and his Raiders forever with the movieGung Ho, starring the Southern-drawling Ran-dolph Scott. Followed by Marine Raiders, in1944, which starred Robert Ryan and PatO’Brien, these cinematic efforts ensured theRaiders their fair share of glory.”

After his stint in Hollywood, an assignmentnot of his own choosing, Carlson attemptedthrough all the channels open to him to returnto combat, whether in command or not. Hewould have gone to the front as a private, buteven that was no longer an option.

Despite all the public acclaim for Carlson andhis Marine Raiders, his career was at a stand-still in the middle of a war he had trained foryears to fight. It was his very fame, or notori-ety, that was holding him back. It had generatedresentment, distrust, and jealousy within thetop ranks of the command structure, as well asfrom those of equal rank who were competingwith him for advancement. They had neverfully trusted him, and his celebrity status hadworsened the situation.

Carlson had not pursued a traditionalMarine Corps career. He had spent five years in


Colonel Evans Carlson, left, and his executive officer, Captain James Roosevelt, right, pose with a young lieu-tenant for a photograph while training for the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion’s assault on Makin Island.


the Army and then joined the Marines only toleave in 1939. He felt compelled to quit, hesaid, so he could warn the American peopleabout the coming threat from Japan and to crit-icize the American business community for con-tinuing to sell war supplies to the Japanese. TheMarine Corps brass thought that was badenough, but then there was the matter of theChinese Communists.

Word spread that Carlson was a Bolshevik,a “Commie” himself. After all, he had been inChina in the 1930s, spoke the language fluently,traveled with the Communist army, and metMao Tse-tung and Chou Enlai. He even wrotea book praising the Chinese Communists. Andthat motto of his, Gung Ho? That was defi-nitely Chinese. He taught his Raiders that offi-cers and men were equal. That was how the

Communist Army operated, so how couldCarlson be trusted?

And the Roosevelts! Father and son hadbecome friends with Carlson in the early 1930swhen he was in command of the Marine guardat the Little White House at Warm Springs,Georgia. Word leaked that when Carlson wentback to China the president asked him to sendprivate reports on what was going on there.Carlson received letters from the White Housein return, all without going through proper mil-itary channels. For a mere captain to be in pri-vate communication with the president wasunheard of and strictly against the rules. Agrowing band of detractors knew that a regu-lation, orthodox Marine Corps officer wouldnot have done that.

The high command also knew that therewould have been no Carlson’s Raiders withoutthe president’s friendship and intervention, andnot nearly so much acclaim for the Makin raidhad James Roosevelt not been involved. Both

situations offered Carlson obvious advantages,but they also served to stoke jealousy amongother officers. Carlson did not have to gothrough channels to obtain whatever suppliesand equipment he needed. He only had to tellJames, who promptly called his father andarranged everything Carlson wanted. It did notseem that Carlson had to answer to anyone; heoperated his irregular outfit according to hisown rules.

Then rumors began to circulate after theMakin operation that Carlson had tried to sur-render to the Japanese—when he was supposedto be winning and when there were few Japan-ese troops left alive! Some people claimed therewas an actual surrender note, broadcast byTokyo Rose to American troops in the PacificTheater.

That there was such a note, written on thesecond night of the operation when it appearedthat some Raiders would be trapped andunable to return to the submarines, seemsbeyond dispute, but the signature was illegible.The letter was not made public for 50 years. In1992, Captain Oscar Peatross (then a retiredmajor general) wrote about it in Leatherneck:Magazine of the Marines. He described the inci-dent in greater detail three years later in hisbook Bless ‘em All: The Raider Marines ofWorld War II.

Carlson made no mention of a surrenderattempt in his after-action report on the Makinraid. Admiral Nimitz had given orders that thematter was never to be discussed. Carlson toldat least one Raider that Nimitz had told him“that we should rewrite our reports [on the

Makin raid] deleting all references to the offerto surrender.” Another Raider reported in 1999that Carlson had told him that there was a tacitagreement among the few men directly involved“that nothing would be said between us aboutthe surrender note. What’s done is done.”

Other Raiders insisted as recently as 2008that they never heard anything about a surren-der note and that Carlson would never haveconsidered doing such a thing. “There was noway,” one said in 2007, that “Carlson wouldhave surrendered with the President’s son withus. Carlson would have died defending us.”

The origins of a surrender note are lost in amaze of contradictory testimony, claims andcounterclaims, assertions and denials, with noresolution in the more than 70 years that haveelapsed since the raid. But the rumors amongthe high command during the war further dark-ened Carlson’s reputation, even lacking suffi-cient corroboration. Those who alreadyresented him added the story to their growinglist of grievances.

And obviously there was jealousy about themedia attention the Raiders had drawn. So thisrogue outfit whose maverick commander wastoo far out of step with the high command waseffectively eliminated. It was absorbed intomore traditional units. Said one Raider when hegot the news, “Gung Ho is dead.” Carlsonwould never be given another command. Maj.Gen. Merrill B. Twining, who had known Carl-son since before the war, wrote in 1996, “EvansCarlson was worthy of a more generous treat-ment than he received.”

FEBRUARY 2015 WWII HISTORY 11

Continued on page 74

ABOVE: Returning to Pearl Harbor aboard the submarine USS Nautilus following the Makin raid, these members of the 2nd Raider Battalion await the opportunity to go ashore.

LEFT: Posing with his Marine Raiders following their “long patrol” on Guadalcanal, Colonel Evans Carlson was justifiably proud of his command’s performance.


THE U.S. MILITARY EMPLOYED AN ORGANIZED SYSTEM FOR THE TREATMENTof soldiers severely wounded while fighting in the Pacific, including their evacuation stateside ifneeded. This system was based on the concept of medical care echelons.

Echelon I comprised an aid station/unit dispensary, while Echelon II referred to collecting orclearing stations. Mobile hospitals for evacuation, emergency surgery, and convalescence madeup Echelon III. Echelon IV was composed of the general hospitals, hospital centers, and stationhospitals. Echelon V was made up of hospitals in the Zone of the Interior.

It should be emphasized that this nomenclature was devised for medical care for the woundedmostly in the European Theater of Operations (ETO); however, it was also applied for the treat-ment of wounded American soldiers, Marines, and sailors on remote jungle battlefields in Burmaand the South Pacific.

Often routes through the jungle battlefields of Burma and the South Pacific islandswere no wider than a column of troops trekking in single file. Allied soldiers requiredmules and horses to carry the heavy equipment and supplies. In addition, wild veg-etation—12-foot tall, razor sharp elephant grass, dense bamboo forests, and man-grove swamps—presented further obstacles for the troops. Wild animals and ven-omous snakes inhabited many areas crossed by troops of both sides and causednon-battle casualties. Disease-laden mosquitoes, poisonous scorpions, biting flies,and leeches infested the impenetrable forests and swamps.

I By Jon Diamond I

Wounded in CombatThe treatment of American soldiers wounded in jungle actionfollowed a medical care echelon system initially devised forEuropean battlefields.

One salient issue that emerged for theseremote, often impenetrable battlefields waswhat to do with the wounded. The Allies hadpaid a high price in military personnel and neg-ative morale after the debacles of the Britishretreat in Burma in 1942 and Operation Long-cloth in 1943, conducted by Brigadier OrdeWingate and his Chindits. Simply leaving thewounded and accompanying medical care-givers with either local villagers or to the Japan-ese resulted in executions and atrocities andwas no longer an option.

General Douglas MacArthur’s advances inNew Guinea in 1943-1944 and the Allied inva-sion of northern Burma were to be true offen-sives and as such would possess frontline andrear echelon capabilities of treating and evacu-ating wounded troops. Control of the air andthe emergence of larger fleets of air transportcraft to ferry the wounded from the front lineto the rear echelon would add greatly to thecare administered to the wounded.

A typical pattern of events occured once aninfantryman became wounded during combat.Within minutes of someone “getting hit,” acompany medic or aid man would cautiouslycrawl to the wounded soldier, assess the extentof the wound, and begin the actual treatmentprocess, which at this level would include fielddressings and tourniquets to stop the bleedingand placement of antibiotic sulfonamide pow-der onto the wound, coating it immediately tominimize the likelihood of infection.

With time, more potent antibacterial agentssuch as penicillin and streptomycin were beingused in rear-echelon areas. At this initial junc-ture of treatment in the jungle, medics learnedthat dressings had to be dyed khaki or greenbecause Japanese snipers took aim at whitebandages. At times, even casualties tore offtheir white bandages to prevent becoming easytargets.

Survival depended on a number of factors,including the type and location of the woundand the proximity to medical care. Soldiers inthe Pacific usually fared worse than their coun-terparts in Europe. An actuarial approach wasapplied to the chance of survival after beingseriously wounded. If appropriate and ade-

quate treatment were initiatedwithin an hour, there was a 90percent chance of recovery. Aftereight hours the likelihood of sur-vival fell to 25 percent. Thus,rapid movement of the woundedto advanced field hospitalsincreased the survival chances of

During the bitter fightingon Okinawa in 1945, a

U.S. Navy corpsmanattends a wounded

Marine. The availabilityof life-giving blood plasmaon the battlefield saved

many lives.


InsightAll photos: National Archives

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battlefield casualties considerably.After being initially treated by a combat

medic, if the wounded soldier was fortunate, alitter team of four men from a forward aid sta-tion would be summoned, usually by portableradio or field telephone immediately after firstaid was applied. Again, depending on theseverity of any ongoing combat, the litter teamcould often arrive within 30 minutes of thewound being inflicted. The litters would becarried back to wherever the aid men had lefttheir jeep or mules, often a distance of 25 to100 yards or more.

The litter would frequently have to be car-ried up and down ravines, making it extremelyuncomfortable for both the wounded and thelitter team. Since the combat front was literallyyards away, a four-man litter team was usuallyaccompanied by one or two infantrymen withThompson submachine guns, well suited forclose combat defense in the jungle. From there,the wounded man could be transported to abattalion aid station about a mile away fromthe front line.

An injection of morphine was accompaniedby a note advising subsequent medical personnelthat the narcotic had been given. The note wasusually tagged through the wounded soldier’suniform buttonhole. At the battalion aid station,if pain were still paramount, additional mor-phine was given, followed by a surgeon’s exam-ination of the wound and removal of any evi-dent debris such as shrapnel, rock, or wood.Fresh bandages were applied and anti-tetanusshots given. Any fractures were reduced andsplinted. If massive blood loss or shock was evi-dent, blood plasma or albumin infusions wereadministered to maintain adequate blood vol-ume and blood pressure. Again, the treatmentrendered and initial diagnosis were tagged to thewounded soldier via his uniform’s buttonhole.

After initial stabilization at the battalion aidstation, the wounded soldier was moved anhour or two later via jeep, ambulance, litter, or“piggyback” in oppressive heat or rain throughjungle to a divisional forward clearing or col-lecting station that might also house a portablesurgical hospital, usually located 1,000 yardsto the rear.

The divisional forward clearing or collectingstation was still close to the front, and portablesurgical hospitals were often housed in sand-bag-lined dugouts or bunkers with coconut logroofs and additional sandbags to withstandenemy mortar rounds and artillery fire. If thedivisional clearing or collecting station wereoperating during an advance, it might simplybe out in the open under the jungle canopy.Casualties were sorted and triaged again at

these divisional forward stations. Ideally, those needing immediate surgery

went to the portable surgical hospitals whilethose not so seriously wounded or too ill toremain near the front were sent to rear clearingor collection stations. When the 3rd PortableSurgical Hospital arrived, after flying from PortMoresby into Dobodura, New Guinea, it car-ried its 1,250 pounds of equipment in packframes and hauled it to the front near BunaMission by mules. Once there, the medical per-sonnel set up close to the divisional forwardclearing or collecting aid station, which wasonly about 300 yards from the entrenchedJapanese positions.

It was the mission of the surgeons at theseportable surgical hospitals to provide emer-gency lifesaving and stabilizing treatment. Theydid not hold any soldiers who were ill withfever or those who could safely travel to therear. Throughout the day and night, bulletsstruck the tents. During a single week, its firston the line, 3rd Portable Surgical Hospital per-sonnel performed 67 major surgical proce-dures, including amputations, bowel resections,and other operations that would challenge ametropolitan urban hospital’s capabilities.

It was at these divisional clearing or collect-ing stations that a more thorough examinationof the wound and triage would be conducted

and, if needed, an emergency operation per-formed. The surgical team consisted of the headsurgeon, his assistant surgeon, an operatingroom scrub nurse, and someone administeringthe anesthetic. Medical personnel preparedcasualties for evacuation by jeep, boat, or litterto ambulance loading points for transport torear collecting stations that stood under canvasapproximately 21/2 miles behind the initial bat-talion aid stations.

Additional emergency care, mostly plasmaand more morphine, was provided at these rearcollecting stations. If further surgery wasrequired, updates were made to the woundedsoldier’s medical tag. Then any available trans-portation took the casualties to field hospitals,usually also under canvas approximately threeto four miles to the rear.

Some portable surgical hospitals were pre-sent at the field hospital locale if emergencyoperations became necessary. Just because thesefield or portable surgical hospitals were in therear did not exclude them from harm’s way.Field and portable surgical hospitals werebombed and shelled unmercifully by the Japan-ese. The hazards faced by medical personnelwere, in some cases, similar to the medics beingshot at while carrying litters or draggingwounded to battalion aid stations or dressingwounds in the field.


A wounded soldier is removed from the tank that served as an impromptu ambulance to evacuate casualties from the battlefield on Okinawa. The fighting on the island was intense, and medical personnel

were often vulnerable to enemy fire as they tried to carry wounded to safety and treatment.


Allied surgeons working in Burma began todevelop alternative treatment methods moresuited to jungle conditions. Limb wounds wereleft open, and damaged muscle and bone wereexcised. Sulfonamide powder and a protectivelayer of lint covered with Vaseline were laid onthe raw surface before the appropriate splint orplaster cast was applied. This was done torelieve any tension in a wound that woulddevelop if immediate closure were performed inthe hot, humid climate. Even some abdominalwounds were left partially open, as infectionsoften developed if wounds were completelyclosed. As with limb wounds, the procedure wasto clean the wound and leave it open for around10 days, after which it could be sutured.

By late 1944, radical excision of wounds,improved evacuation (preferably by air), andthe introduction of newer antibiotics such aspenicillin improved survival rates. Most junglebattlefield casualties were then receiving treat-ment within hours due to the increased mobil-ity of field hospitals and the extensive use of airtransport as ambulances.

Medical personnel preferred air over seatransport, since evacuation by ship entailedmany transfers of the wounded from ambu-lances to lighters and from lighters to oceancraft. Journeys by ship were long, usually twoto three days as compared to four hours by airacross the same 600 miles of ocean. Air trans-port also played a prominent role in medicalsupply. The same aircraft that brought in sup-plies ferried out casualties. Air evacuation to abase hospital in the rear echelon of the battle-field or stateside was crucial when dealing withgreat distances.

A series of photographs taken by frontline sol-diers of the U.S. Army Signal Corps on the islandof Bougainville aptly demonstrates the processof rendering care to wounded soldiers at all med-ical echelons. Bougainville is the largest island inthe Solomons. On November 1, 1943, the 3rdMarine Division landed there to fight the Japan-ese. The terrain, both swampy and hilly, posed agreater operational obstacle to the invadingAmerican soldiers and Marines than the 20,000Japanese garrisoned on the island.

In the accompanying series of photographs,a detachment of American infantrymen of the37th Infantry Division aggressively patrols theoutside of its perimeter in single file in late1943. When the leading men enter the tangle oftrees and vines, a Japanese mortar round sud-denly explodes, blowing both mud and vegeta-tion high into the air. At the same time, Japan-ese snipers open fire on the detachment, andPrivate Homer Connell of Columbus, Georgia,one of the last men in the patrol, is hit just as

he is about to enter the jungle. He grabs hisright hip, where he is hit by an enemy sniper’sbullet and calls out for help as he edges his wayto cover and first aid.

A combat medic, Corporal William Ackleyof Cleveland, Ohio, runs to the aid of the fallenPrivate Connell, reaches for the soldier’s fielddressing pouch, and begins to assess the extentof the injury. After administering a dose ofmorphine, the combat medic pins an emptysyrette to the jacket of the wounded soldier toclearly exhibit that he has received a narcoticdose and to avoid repetitive dosages, whichcould cause accidental death from respiratorydepression. The tag on Connell’s jacket alsoindicates that he received the narcotic andother pertinent data.

Private Connell and another wounded sol-dier begin their journey to a battalion aid sta-tion just behind the front lines. Litter bearersare careful to keep the men from being bounced

too vigorously during the trip up a hilly jungletrail into the perimeter, indicated by the barbedwire. All four litter carriers have their M1 car-bines slung over their left shoulders, while thesoldier leading the party has a Thompson sub-machine gun for close-quarter jungle combat.

From the battalion aid station, the woundedPrivate Connell, while still on a litter, is takenby jeep to a divisional forward clearing or col-lecting station and carried into the undergroundportable surgical hospital, which is protectedon all sides and on top from anything but adirect hit from an enemy artillery shell or bomb.The wounded soldier is immediately madeready for surgery. The anesthetic is adminis-tered, and the surgeons go to work, saving thewounded soldier’s life. The operating team atthis portable surgical hospital was made up ofboth officers and NCOs and included the mainsurgeon, his first assistant surgeon, scrubnurses, and the anesthetist.

It was not until World War II that the enemykilled more American troops than disease did.Thirty percent of those wounded in action dur-ing World War II ultimately died; however, thevast majority survived. During most campaignsin World War II, for every single American sol-dier killed four or five were wounded. Of these,one would be seriously wounded and would nolonger see combat, while another would haveserious wounds taken care of to such a goodextent that a return to action was possible.

The U.S. Army had planned for the propercare of the wounded soldier on the battlefield. Ina division consisting of 14,000 men, a medicalbattalion of 1,000 soldiers was included. Dur-ing any major U.S. Army assault, each battalionwould have an attached medical platoon.Unarmed medics were ubiquitous in combat,even during amphibious assaults where theywould be present in the first wave of troops land-ing under fire. Beachhead casualties were par-ticularly hazardous because there were so manyin a confined area, and the gravity of the situa-tion was made worse by persistent enemy fireand successive waves of troops coming ashore.

The valor and heroism of these combatmedics, physicians, surgeons, and nurses can-not be overstated as they worked underextreme conditions to render lifesaving care anddramatically increase the chance of surviving awound on a remote jungle battlefield in Burmaand the South Pacific islands.

Jon Diamond practices medicine and resides inHershey, Pennsylvania. He has written numer-ous articles for World War II History as well asOsprey Command Series titles on ArchibaldWavell and Orde Wingate.


TOP: After being wounded during a patrol on aPacific island in 1944, Private Homer Connell

receives medical treatment. Aid stations and fieldhospitals were placed in relatively close

proximity to the fighting in the Pacific to providemedical care as rapidly as possible.

BOTTOM: After triage, Private Connell is carried to an operating room located in an

underground portable surgical hospital.


BY THE MID-1930S MANY PEOPLE IN AUSTRALIA WERE CONCERNED THAT IF WARcame to Europe that Great Britain would not be able to come to their defense against a growingand aggressive Japanese Empire.

In 1936, with the encouragement of the Australian government, several private manufacturingcompanies combined to form the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC) tobegin work on the first Australian-built warplanes. By 1937 a factory for this pur-pose was completed at Fishermens Bend in Port Melbourne.

In the meantime, Australian delegations had been sent to Great Britain, otherEuropean countries, and the United States to evaluate aircraft designs suitable forAustralian needs and that Australian companies would be able to produce. Theworld-class Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane fighters were beyond theabilities of Australian firms at that time. The design chosen was the North Ameri-can Aircraft (NAA) NA-16 model (sometimes called the NA-33), a purpose-built

I By Glenn Barnett I

From Trainer to Fighter The Australian Wirraway was forced

into a role for which it was notintended during World War II.

trainer with inline seating for pilot and instruc-tor. It was cheap and relatively easy to produce.In the United States this design would evolveinto the popular T-6 Texan trainer. It wasexported as the Harvard.

The Australian decision caused some grum-bling in Great Britain because it was expectedthat a British aircraft would be selected. TheBritish even asked the Australians to reconsidertheir decision, but to no avail. Australian Min-ister for Defense Archdale Parkhill justifiedchoosing the NA-16 “on the grounds ofurgency and the lack of a suitable Britishdesign.” It should be noted that Australia wasnot totally against British designs. During thewar they would also build under license theBritish Bristol Beaufort and later the de Havil-land Mosquito.

Two models of the NAA NA-16 were pur-chased by the CAC, and a contract to build avariant, under license, suitable for Australianneeds was signed. The Australian versionwould be called the Wirraway, from the lan-guage of the Wurundjeri Nation of Aboriginesmeaning “to challenge” or “Challenger.”

The CAC also contracted to build the Prattand Whitney R-1340 Wasp 600-horsepowerengine. This engine gave the Wirraway a max-imum speed of 220 miles per hour. CAC furthercontracted to build a Hamilton Standard con-stant speed forged aluminum propeller. CACwanted to manufacture as much of the aircraftin Australia as possible in the event that inwartime the nation was cut off from suppliersin faraway Britain and the United States. Thefirst Wirraways were made from largelyimported components from NAA until thesmall local Australian foundries and manufac-turers could tool up to make the parts at home.

Unlike the American version of the trainer, theWirraway would be outfitted for war. It was fit-ted for gun mounts forward of the windshieldfor twin .303 caliber (7.7mm) Vickers machineguns, synchronized to fire through the propeller.Each gun had a removable magazine of 600rounds. The .303 was the standard round of allBritish and Commonwealth rifles and machineguns, making resupply uncomplicated. Another

.303 flexible gun mount wasadded for the observer/instructorto serve as a tail gunner. The planewas also fitted with hard pointsfor a role as a light bomber.

Despite the mounted guns theWirraway would be no matchagainst the best Japanese fighter,the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, with

In this painting, a RoyalAustralian Air Force

Wirraway fighter flown byPilot Officer J.S. Archer

scores a rare aerial victoryover a Japanese Zero in

the skies aboveSanananda.fighter early in

the war in the Pacific.


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its 950-horsepower engine and 331 mile perhour maximum speed. In addition to two .303machine guns, the Zero also mounted twin20mm cannons. The inline two-seat Wirrawaywas also much less maneuverable than the agileZero.

The capabilities of the Zero were as yetunknown and unappreciated by the WesternAllied military establishment. Rapid advanceswere being made in fighter technology. The warsoon taught the lesson that a two-seat aircraft,while imperative for the trainer role and usefulin reconnaissance, is a heavy burden for a fighter.

Production of the Wirraway was given toppriority, and by July 1939, the first productionaircraft were delivered to the Royal AustralianAir Force (RAAF). The new plane was imme-diately tested in its new roles of pilot training,reconnaissance, antisubmarine patrol, bomb-ing, and ground support. When war began inEurope that September, production and train-ing speeded up. By December 1940, seven air-craft were being delivered every week, and bySeptember 1941 a total of 45 Wirraways werecoming off the production line each month.

The first five Wirraways off the assembly linewere assigned to No. 12 Squadron, RAAF andsent to the backwater town of Darwin on Aus-tralia’s northwest coast to defend that lonelyoutpost. They arrived in Darwin on September5, 1939, just as war in Europe was beginning.

A training accident in 1940 destroyed oneWirraway, killing its two crew members. It wassoon replaced by another plane. When warstarted in the Pacific, Darwin had only fiveWirraways. Nine more of them would be for-warded to Darwin.

Darwin’s primitive civilian airport at Parap

was home to the first Wirraway advanced train-ers of 12 Squadron. This group was known asA Flight. The nine new planes of the squadronwere based at newly built Batchelor Field, 50miles south of Darwin and known as B and CFlights. Training and patrols continued untilFebruary 19, 1942, when a powerful Japanesefleet of four aircraft carriers, all veterans ofPearl Harbor, launched 188 fighters andbombers toward Darwin.

As many as 54 Japanese Army planes flewfrom captured Dutch airfields on Ambon andKendari to be the second wave of the Japanesepunch. When the attack came, every plane in AFlight at Parap was grounded for service andrepair.

Even if the Wirraways in Darwin were ser-viceable, they could not have intercepted theJapanese bombers because there was no effi-cient early warning and control system at thetime. The radar equipment that had been sentto Darwin had not yet been assembled, andreports of incoming planes from coastwatcherswere ignored. Darwin was caught completelyby surprise.

Often referred to as Australia’s Pearl Har-bor, the attack on the 19th killed 243 peopleand wounded 320 more. Much of the townwas destroyed by bombs or exploding ord-nance on the ground. Thirty-three ships in theharbor were sunk or damaged. Several planeson the ground were bombed, including twoWirraways of A Flight that were damagedbadly enough to be written off. The Wirrawaysalso lost much of their stores, ammunition, andspare parts when a nearby hangar was bombedand burned to the ground.

Distant Batchelor Field was spared from the


A Wirraway of the Royal Australian Air Force flies during a training mission. The Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation chose the North American NA-16, known in the United States as the T-6 trainer,

to be the first Australian produced military aircraft.

National Archives


bombing. Wirraways did not engage the enemy.However B and C Flights conducted post-raidactivities, including locating and dropping sup-plies to survivors of sunken ships and steppedup patrol duties. The Wirraways continuedserving at Darwin until mid-year when theybegan to be replaced in the fighter role byAmerican-made Vultee Vengeance fighters. TheWirraways would continue in their training andpatrol functions.

Wirraways were also busy elsewhere in thePacific. In Malaya a squadron of the Royal AirForce departed to fight in the Battle of Britain.They were replaced by three squadrons of Aus-tralian planes and one from New Zealand. Twoof the Australian squadrons were equippedwith Lockheed Hudson bombers, while thethird, No. 21 Squadron, flew camouflagedWirraways painted with the squadron’s recog-nition letter “R.”

The 16 planes of 21 Squadron arrived inMalaya aboard the SS Orante in August 1940.A year later they were replaced by American-made Brewster Buffalo fighters. Ten of theWirraways were crated and returned to Aus-tralia, while six were allocated to the RAF astrainers. They did not see combat, and all werelost in the chaos of the swift Japanese victoryon the peninsula.

The Wirraway saw its lengthiest combat as afighter above Rabaul on New Britain. Theisland had been a German colony prior toWorld War I. After the war it was allocated toAustralia by the League of Nations as a trustterritory. The port of Rabaul was formed by acollapsed volcano, open on one side, which cre-ated the finest deepwater port in the westernPacific. It was an obvious target for the Japan-ese, who controlled nearby Truk Island, also asa trust territory.

Australia took steps to defend the territory.Women and children were evacuated, groundtroops were dispatched, and a wing of No. 24

Squadron was sent to Rabaul in early Decem-ber. The squadron was under the command ofWing Commander J.M. Lerew. As the Aus-tralian planes landed at Lakunai airfield, Japan-ese reconnaissance planes flew overhead at highaltitude and observed their arrival. The fullcomplement of No. 24 Squadron included eightWirraways and four Hudson bombers.

The first Japanese air raid came on January4, 1942, around 10:30 AM. Twenty-two Japan-ese bombers flying at 18,000 feet bombed theaerodromes and port facilities. Two Wirrawayswere scrambled to intercept them but could notcatch them.

Nevertheless, the Wirraway pilots were con-fident in their abilities. The squadron’s secondtest came on January 6, when the Japanesemade another attack on the town. NineKawanishi H6K Mavis flying boats zoomed inat 18,000 feet to bomb Vunakanau airstrip,which consisted of a single unpaved runwaylocated 10 miles south of Rabaul.

Several Wirraways were scrambled, but onlyone, piloted by Flight Lieutenant B. Andersoncould get close enough to fire a burst at theretreating floatplanes. Even then he was afraidof overheating his engine. Although none of theenemy planes were brought down, Andersonwas the first RAAF Wirraway pilot to engage


The Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation established an aircraft factory at

Fishermens Bend near Melbourne, Australia, in 1937 to produce the Wirraway.

Australian War Memorial


in air-to-air combat with the Japanese.On January 20, a coastwatcher on a nearby

island reported seeing a flight of 22 enemyplanes headed for Rabaul from the north.Another coastwatcher observed 33 more planesapproaching from the west. Both flights wereprobably from Truk. Another 50 bombers andfighters remained undetected and were comingin from the east. These were launched by theaircraft carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku, bothveterans of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

At the time, two Wirraways were in the airon standard patrol. The six others were scram-bled while ground control still believed therewas a single flight of 22 Japanese planesapproaching. It was assumed that most of thesewould be bombers with a few escorting fight-ers. The Australians were outnumbered bymore than 10 to one. The Australians quicklylearned what the Americans already knew. TheZero was the best fighter in the Pacific Theater.

Japanese fighters intercepted the Wirraways.Three Australian planes were shot down, andtwo others crash-landed as a result of enemy fire.One other plane landed with part of its tail shotaway. Just one emerged undamaged. No Zeroswere hit. Six members of the squadron werekilled and five wounded or injured that day, theworst but most gallant in Wirraway history.Only three of Lerew’s aircraft, one Hudson andtwo Wirraways, remained undamaged.

The next day the two remaining Wirrawaysleft for Australia by way of Lae, New Guinea.The Hudson followed on the 22nd carrying thewounded. The Australian infantrymen atRabaul were left to their fate. Few would sur-vive the war.

Not all of the Wirraways were playthings forthe almighty Zero. On December 12, 1942, PilotOfficer J.S. Archer and his observer, Sergeant J.F.Coulston, became the instruments of the

Wirraway’s finest hour. They were flying a tac-tical reconnaissance mission over the Gona-Bunabattlefield on New Guinea to observe the wreck-age of a Japanese ship sunk while trying to resup-ply the Japanese garrison at Gona.

When he returned to base at Popondettaairstrip (now Girua Airport), Archer rushed tofind his control officer and excitedly told himthat he thought he had shot down a Zero. Heelaborated, “I went in to look at the wreck offGona and I saw this thing in front of me [athousand feet below] and it had red spots on it,so I [dived on it and] gave it a burst and itappeared to fall into the sea.”

The control officer calmly replied, “Don’t besilly, Archer, Wirraways can’t shoot downZeros.” However, within minutes the officerreceived a dozen calls from observers on thebattlefield confirming Archer’s story. He hadshot down a Zero with his twin Vickers .303machine guns. For his efforts the United Statesawarded Archer the Distinguished FlyingCross. It was the only time during the war thata Wirraway was victorious against a Zero.Archer’s plane survives today and is on displayat the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

Archer’s victory was the high point of theWirraway’s service during the war, but therewere still everyday tasks to be done. By remov-ing the second man from the plane, it couldcarry as much as 500 pounds of bombs, and inthe New Guinea campaign it often carried outthis duty. On December 11, 1942, a flight ofsix Wirraways took off from Popondetta, eachcarrying two 250-pound bombs to hit targets atBuna. Only five of them returned to base.

The Wirraway had other uses as well. AtPopondetta, Archer was but one of the pilotswho flew reconnaissance missions over theGona-Buna battlefield. General Robert Eichel-berger, commander of American forces at Buna,


ABOVE: This restored CA-16 Wirraway is a favorite of visitors to the Temora Aviation Museum. The name Wirraway was derived from a native Aborigine language, meaning ‘to challenge.’

OPPOSITE: Fresh from the factory, a lineup of newly completed Wirraway aircraft receive the finishingtouches from workers before assignment to units of the Royal Australian Air Force.

Wikipedia Commons/Bidgee


considered the Wirraway’s service particularlyvaluable. After the war he would write, “TheWirraway pilots never received adequatecredit.” Eichelberger frequently hitched a ridein the tail gunner’s seat when he wanted to visitother areas of the front.

The attrition rate of the Wirraways was high,and when the last one was either shot down orlost in the jungle no American plane was forth-coming to fill the reconnaissance roll.

Several Wirraways were lost in combat. OnJanuary 1, 1943, according to the officialrecord, “The aircraft crashed on a reconnais-sance operation in the Gona area … Crew oftwo bodies discovered on 19/1/43 … by sol-diers of the 2/18th Battalion Australian Army… Though the area was held by Japanesetroops at the time of the forced landing, it isnot sure if they were captured and executed, orwere killed trying to evade capture….”

By February 6, 1943, the fighting at Gona-Buna had ended, so an air attack was unex-pected when three Wirraways were damagedor destroyed on the ground during a Japanesebombing raid on Berry airstrip at Dobadura.

During the early days of the war, severalWirraways were lost on the ground to Japan-ese strafing and bombing, but by far accidentscaused the greatest loss to the Wirraway fleet.

There were several causes of these accidents—design or manufacturing flaws, unfamiliaritywith a new plane, pilot error, and engine fail-ure all contributed to a high loss rate. Evenminor ground accidents could put a Wirrawayin the hangar for repairs.

On January 5, 1942, No. 7 Squadron had only41 serviceable Wirraways out of 126 assigned toit due to accidents and servicing. In July 1942,No. 5 Squadron had 39 of its 100 planes wait-ing for new engines or engine service.

It was clear that the Wirraway was no match

for Japan’s best fighter. By mid-1942 it beganto be replaced by American planes with biggerengines, greater speed, and massive firepower.The CAC later produced an Australian fighter,the Boomerang, which had a more powerfulengine, two 20mm cannons, and four .303Vickers guns mounted in its wings. Wirrawaypartisans, however, like to point out that theBoomerang never brought down a Zero.

The Wirraway continued in its trainer, lightbomber, sub hunting, and reconnaissance rolefor the rest of the war. The initial order for 620aircraft was filled by June 1942, but limitedproduction continued until 1946, when the755th plane was completed.

In 1947-1948, a Wirraway was employed bythe British Commonwealth Occupation Forcesin Japan. The Wirraway continued in servicewith the Royal Australian Air Force as a trainerand communications aircraft until 1959. TodayAustralians are still proud of their first indige-nously produced aircraft and the brave pilotswho flew them in combat at a time when noother fighter was available.

Glenn Barnett is a retired college instructor andaerospace engineer. He worked on the Apachehelicopter, B-1B bomber, and Space Shuttle. Heis a frequent contributor to WWII History.


National Archives


IN HIS 1969 MEMOIR, ALBER T SPEER ASSER TED THAT ADOLF Hitler would never have appointed him Third Reich minister of armaments hadnot his predecessor in that post, acclaimed engineering genius Dr. Fritz Todt, beenkilled in a still unexplained airplane crash in early 1942.

Indeed, that was the universally and historically accepted version of this eventuntil 1982, four decades later, when young German postwar historian Dr.Matthias Schmidt began questioning Speer’s motives a year after that top Nazi’sown death in London in the company of a woman who was not his wife.

Ostensibly, the night before his sudden death Dr. Todt had a furious argu-ment with Hitler at the latter’s Eastern Front military headquarters at Wolf’sLair, Rastenburg, East Prussia.

The contested topic reportedly was the engineer’s bold assertion to his Führerthat the war could no longer be won now that the Third Reich was fighting theworld’s greatest land power in the Soviet Union, its best sea force in the BritishRoyal Navy, and the globe’s mightiest heavy industrial nation in the UnitedStates.

Dr. Speer was already there, waiting in the wings, having made his first tripto Wolf’s Lair that very day, perhaps even for the purpose of succeeding Dr. Todt.

That night, Drs. Todt and Speer agreed to fly back together to Berlin the nextmorning, but Speer decided instead to sleep in and cancelled. Shortly after take-

I By Blaine Taylor I

The Mysterious Death ofDr. Todt

A plane crash claimed the life ofHitler’s minister of armaments,paving the way for the appointment of Albert Speer.

off, Todt’s Heinkel He-111 plane blew up inmid-air and crashed on the Rangsdorf airfieldnear Rastenburg on February 8, 1942. Allaboard were killed in a fiery blaze.

Immediately and ever since, dark suspicionsof an assassination plot centered on Hitler andthe main trio of Todt’s rivals for power withinthe Nazi German state, Reich Marshal Her-mann Göring, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himm-ler, and even Speer himself, then Hitler’s archi-tect and general building inspector for Berlin.

As for the latter suspect, members of the slainDr. Todt’s family alleged that Speer was capa-ble of anything.

According to Speer in his memoirs, as Göringhurried to Rastenburg allegedly to induce hisFührer to appoint him to succeed Dr. Todt,Hitler instead suddenly and surprisingly namedSpeer to all of Todt’s many offices. The portlyGöring was checkmated in another round ofNazi insider power politics.

Hitler may have been keeping Speer in reservefor just such an opportunity. Hitler was also justbeginning to realize that the arms industry wasnot producing as much as needed in the thirdyear of an ever-expanding global war.

Thus, Speer’s presence at Wolf’s Lair provedto be very propitious.

But just who was Dr. Fritz Todt, and whywas his loss so lamented by his brother Nazis,at least publicly?

The master builder of the Third Reich, Todtwas Nazism’s engineer supreme, the man whoerected the much acclaimed Autobahn prior tothe war, the East Wall facing Russia, and the

vaunted Siegfried Line in theWest, as well as the startup ofthe Atlantic Wall oppositeGreat Britain across the Eng-lish Channel. Finally, he servedas the first minister of the Ger-man armaments industry,upon which Hitler dependedto win the war.

The Nazis were fond of nam-ing important groups aftertheir top leaders, such as Orga-nization Todt and its deriva-tives. Its members wore abrown Nazi Party uniformwith a yellow armband on theleft with its name lettered inblack Germanic runes: ORG.TODT (OT).

Established in 1933 as theNazis’ construction unit, OTbecame especially active in the


Top SecretNational Archives

A German sentry stands atop oneof the massive artillery

emplacements constructed alongthe coastline of Europe by

laborers of Organization Todt. The construction force’s namesake,

Dr. Fritz Todt (above), died under mysterious circumstances.

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wartime occupied territories, used mainly forrebuilding roads, bridges, and railway linesdestroyed in the fighting.

Although commanded first by Todt and thenby Speer, OT was ultimately placed under theoverall aegis of the armed forces’ engineeringcommand in a typical Third Reich division ofauthority.

In addition to its native German members,OT ultimately included thousands of POWs,foreign civilian slave laborers, and even Jews.More than 1.4 million men built above-groundbunkers and bridges, and had Todt survivedthe war he might well have been indicted bythe Allies as a war criminal, as was his succes-sor, Speer.

A highly specialized unit independent of theNazi Party’s own bureaucracy, OT carried outthe most impressive construction program sincethe Roman Empire. By 1945, up to 80 percentof its membership was non-German.

Like Speer later, Dr. Todt worked well withother Nazi organizations such as Dr. RobertLey’s German Labor Front, the DAF, and Kon-stantin Hierl’s Reich Labor Service, the RAD.

In the Balkans, OT mined ores essential tothe war effort and built roads in Greece andYugoslavia. It constructed concrete and bomb-proof U-boat pens on the French coast, airfieldsto the far north to bomb Allied Murmansk con-voys, and the Atlantic Wall to defeat the pro-jected Allied cross-Channel invasion.

In the east, OT took part in the thinly dis-guised “anti-Partisan” combat operations thatreally meant killing Russian civilians and Jews.Fully armed as a military unit in 1944 andnewly named the OT Front, it contained con-struction worker, administration, works direc-tion, signals, medical, propaganda, and evenmusical, sections.

OT also built all of Hitler’s many headquar-ters across Nazi-occupied Europe. Like all otherNazi organizations, OT had regional head-quarters as well, at Berlin, Kiev, Belgrade, Paris,and Oslo, plus Rastenburg, Essen, Weimar,Heidelberg, Munich, Villack, and Prague.

After the war, the Allies disbanded OT, thusdashing Dr. Speer’s hope to use it to rebuild thenew West Germany from scratch.

Friedrich “Fritz” Todt was born atPforzheim, Baden, Germany, on September 14,1891, the son of a jewelry factory owner. Afterthe completion of his secondary education,young Fritz continued his studies at Munich’sCollege of Technology from 1911 to 1914, andagain during 1918-1920 at Karlsruhe.

Todt served in World War I, starting as aninfantryman with two years on the WesternFront from 1914 to 1916. Awarded the Iron

Cross for bravery in action, Lieutenant Todtthen became an aerial observer directingground artillery fire for the German Army andwas wounded in air combat.

Upon graduation from technical college in1920, Todt worked as a construction engineerfor the firm of Sager & Worner, writing his doc-toral dissertation on concrete roadway surfacesand being awarded his doctorate in 1931.Combat veteran Todt joined the Nazi Party onJanuary 5, 1922, and by 1931 was an SScolonel on Himmler’s staff.

In 1933, Hitler, upon his appointment asreich chancellor, placed Dr. Todt as head of thegovernment’s construction group that later borethe engineer’s own name. Dr. Todt’s official titlewas Inspector General of the German Road andHighway System—later known as the Führer’sRoads, the world famous Autobahn, whichHitler commissioned him to build in 1933.

Begun during the last years of the reign ofGerman Kaiser Wilhelm II, the roads were con-tinued in 1921 with the debut of the privatelyfunded AVUS experimental racing circuit. Ini-tially, Hitler opposed the building of the newroads as a means of denying any credit to thehated Weimar regime, but once in office, heswiftly claimed the entire project as his ownidea.

Dr. Todt began with 30,000 workers, andsoon this figure was more than doubled.Hitler’s stated goal was an ultra-modern net-work of 7,300 miles of four-lane highways, anda quarter of this was completed by 1938. Evennow, many older Germans still recall Hitler as

“the man who built the Autobahns.”The first gala groundbreaking occurred at

Frankfurt on September 23, 1933, the initialstretch to Darmstadt being duly opened to thepublic on May 19, 1935. The first 1,000 kilo-meters of the Autobahn were completed bySeptember 27, 1936; the second such bench-mark was achieved by December 17, 1937; andthe third and final 1,000 kilometers by Decem-ber 15, 1938.

Militarily, Dr. Todt’s motorways could trans-port 300,000 troops from the eastern borderof the Reich to its western frontier in two daysof hard driving. From 1935 to 1939, Dr. Todt’sAutobahn facilitated Hitler’s bloodless occu-pations of the Saar, the Rhineland, Austria, theSudetenland, and the Czech capital of Prague,as well as the overt invasion of Poland in 1939and of Western Europe the following year.

World War II was in its second year whenChancellor Hitler named Dr. Todt as inspectorgeneral for roads, water, and power, thusincreasing his influence. He later added theHead Office for Technology to his growing listof governmental portfolios. By the time Hitlerinvaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Dr.Todt was also responsible for road building inall the territories occupied by the Germans,stretching from the northernmost tip of Nor-way to southern France.

Todt was thus in charge of all civil and mili-tary engineering for Nazi Europe. This includedelectrical and mechanical units, port opera-tions, and naval U-boat bunker pen construc-tion on the Continent’s Atlantic coastline.

During the last four months of his life, Dr.Todt found an ever-increasing amount of histime occupied with new road building in thevast regions of the Soviet Union to the far-offUral Mountains, the expected final easternexpansion of Hitler’s new Nazi empire.

Dr. Todt had built Nazi Germany’s SiegfriedLine facing the French Maginot Line during1938-1939, and he supervised the constructionduring 1935-1942 of the lesser known EastWall. The East Wall included a trio of lines, theOder-Warthe Bend, the Pomeranian Line, andthe Oder Line, stretching along the eastern Ger-man provinces of Pomerania and Silesia.

On both projects, Dr. Todt’s OT worked withthe Army’s own elite Fortress EngineeringCorps. In November 1939, Hermann Göring,in his capacity as chief of the Nazi economicFour-Year Plan (1936-1940), named Dr. Todtto take overall responsibility for the entire con-struction sector of the Third Reich proper andits conquered Polish lands.

He faced yet another formidable task, thestartup of Hitler’s projected Fortress Europe,


With Dr. Fritz Todt standing at right, Hitler turnsthe first spade of dirt to begin construction on the

German Autobahn near Frankfurt in 1933.

Heinrich Hoffman Albums, National Archives


the outer shell of which was to be the “impreg-nable” Atlantic Wall barring a Western Alliedseaborne invasion of Nazi Europe. Beginningin 1942, a popular Nazi slogan trumpeted,“The West Wall shields the Reich, while theSecond Wall protects Europe!” On December12, 1941, Hitler gave the new Atlantic Wallthe highest construction priority. It becameequivalent to 51/2 Hoover Dams and was thelargest construction project of the entire war,with 1.5 million tons of steel, enough for 57Chrysler Buildings.

By D-Day in 1944, there were half a millionpeople from the OT working on the AtlanticWall. “I needed a job,” stated one. “Those Ger-mans were expert with concrete—I take my hatoff to them!” By June 6, 1944, more than 8,500bunkers had been both designed and built bythe OT.

The Atlantic Wall was designed by Dr. Todtduring December 1941-February 1942, butwas built mainly by his successor, Speer, during1942-1943, and then improved upon by FieldMarshal Erwin Rommel in December 1943-June 1944. Despite all this, however, the factremains that the Allies breached it in a singleday in Normandy, June 6, 1944, because it wasstrong in line, but nowhere in depth. Via Nazipropaganda, however, the 1942 “Front by theSea” morphed in the public imagination intothe mighty Atlantic Wall.

By early 1940, Hitler was dissatisfied withthe Army’s direction of German wartimeweaponry production, and so on March 21,1940, the Führer named trusty paladin Dr. Todtas the Reich’s first civilian minister for arma-ments and munitions. Despite his best effortsat reform, though, on December 3, 1941, Min-ister Todt told Hitler that 60 arms experts hadwarned him that the overall war economy wasat the breaking point.

On March 24, 1940, Dr. Todt told the headof the Army Weapons Office, General GeorgThomas, “From 1941 on, time works againstus,” in regard to the overwhelming U.S. indus-trial potential.

Another problem was that the industrial wareffort was dominated by two segments only,aircraft and ammunition, and these claimedmore than two-thirds of all German resources.Indeed, as of April 1940, there was even anammunition supply crisis, just as Nazi Ger-many was invading Norway and Denmark.

Dr. Todt began reorganizing German arma-ment production and munitions supply, plan-ning to replace the Nazi bureaucracy oversee-ing them with a permanent industrial council.In effect, this would return them to private busi-ness concerns and responsibility. His proposed

reforms included greater self-regulation byindustry, modifying the harsh system of pricecontrols, a better distribution of governmentprocurement contracts, and an overhaul of theraw materials rationing system among the fourcompeting armed services. These now alsoincluded Himmler’s new Waffen SS. A regionalammunition committee was established as well.

In the future, the Army procurement officeswould issue orders directly to these committees,with German industrialists themselves takingresponsibility. This, in effect, was the very same“self-responsibility of industry” for whichSpeer was later given full credit, resulting in the1942-1944 German armaments production“miracle.”

As for Dr. Todt’s sudden and violent deathon February 8, 1942, if not an outright, covertassassination how can the mysterious explosionbe explained? The answer may have been pro-

vided by Hitler’s personal pilot, SS Lt. Col.Hans Baur, who noted in his postwar memoirsthat eyewitnesses to the crash recalled seeing ablue jet of flame exiting from the rear of theaircraft. Like all German military airplanes dur-ing the war, the He-111 had a kilogram ofdynamite stowed beneath the pilot’s seat thatwas set off by a tiny looped pull string.

Dr. Todt’s normal place during his aerial tripswas in the cockpit next to the pilot. Baur theo-rized that in squeezing his way into the smallcabin and into his passenger’s seat, Todt mayhave accidentally caught the loop of this pullcord on a side button of his boot, activatingboth the box’s timer and detonator.

When this fatal sequence of events wasnoticed, Todt’s plane had been airborne abouttwo minutes, beginning a macabre death raceto disarm the explosive device, known as a“destroyer.” The aircraft had reached only theend of airfield tarmac when it exploded, withthe plane flipping over at a 30-meter altitudeand crashing to earth.

Dr. Todt’s charred body was duly identifiedwhen pulled from the grisly wreckage. Baurconcludes, probably correctly that there was noplot, only an aerial accident, pure and simple.

Ironically, however, the official Luftwaffeaccident report of March 8, 1943, was neverpublished. It is missing, and the enduring mys-tery continues.

Towson, Maryland, freelancer Blaine Taylor isthe author of several books on World War II,including Volkswagen Military Vehicles of theThird Reich and Apex of Glory: Mercedes andDaimler-Benz in the Third Reich.


ABOVE: In this photograph snapped during the 1930s, a section of the modern Autobahn stretches into thedistance across the German countryside. Note the service station at left. BELOW: Concrete antitank obstacles

such as these studded the German West Wall, or Siegfried Line, along with wide ditches, fortified strong-points, and mines. The Siegfried Line was one of the many major construction projects supervised by Dr. Todt.

Library of Congress

National A

rchives


THE SUN WAS JUST RISING AND THE DAY PROMISED CLEARskies overhead. Since 5 AM maintenance crews had been running theengines, making last minute adjustments, and arming the scores of air-

craft sitting on the steel flight deck of the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi. Shehad started life as an Amagi-class heavy battlecruiser but had been convertedto an aircraft carrier. On February 19, 1942, Akagi served as the flagship ofthe Imperial Japanese Navy’s First Air Fleet, commanded by Vice AdmiralChuichi Nagumo.

Directly behind Akagi, at a distance of about 8,000 yards, was her sister shipKaga, the other member of the 1st Carrier Squadron. On Akagi’s port side,8,000 yards away, sailed the carrier Soryu, flagship of Rear Admiral TamonYamaguchi. Behind and equidistant from Soryu and Kaga was the carrier

Hiryu. Like Soryu, her partner in the 2nd Car-rier Squadron, Hiryu was smaller and a bitfaster than Akagi and Kaga. As on the Akagi,the sailors of the Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu werescurrying on and below the decks readying theirwarplanes for action.

An array of Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN)vessels supported the carriers. These includedthe bristling shapes of the heavy cruisers of the8th Cruiser Squadron: Tone, Chikuma, Maya,and Takao, sporting 10 8-inch guns each, sta-tioned 10,000 yards from each carrier. Betweenthem, in front, and behind, was a screen of ninedestroyers from the 17th and 18th DestroyerDivisions, 1st Destroyer Flotilla, under the con-trol of the light cruiser Abukuma. These craftwere each armed with six 5-inch guns and eightexcellent Long Lance torpedoes.

Surveying the frenetic activity of the Akagi’s

personnel that morning was Commander Mit-suo Fuchida, the task force air leader. The 39-year-old Fuchida, who had entered the Navy in1921, was a specialist in horizontal bombingin the naval air arm. His ability as a tacticianand administrator led him to command theattack against the U.S. naval base at Pearl Har-bor on December 7, 1941. On that fateful day,he coordinated the entire Japanese aerial assaultagainst that bastion of American power in thePacific. Once again, 10 weeks after he and hiscomrades had wrought such thorough destruc-tion on the naval might of America, Fuchidawould be leading another airborne strike forceagainst the enemy.

At 7:30 AM, Fuchida signaled all the carriersthat the launching of their planes was to begin.The sea breeze freshened from the northwest,which required that the flattops turn while the

aircraft took off. When the fleet reached ninedegrees south latitude and 129 degrees east lon-gitude 220 miles northwest of the target,Nagumo ordered reversal to a reciprocal courseto bring the carriers into the wind. The otherwarships also turned, and the entire fleet com-menced to steam away from its objective and


Australia’sPearl Harbor

The Japanese Imperial Navy’s air attack on the Australian city of

Darwin was the greatest military disaster ever inflicted on that country’s soil.

BY ARNOLD BLUMBERG

W-Feb15 Darwin Attack_Layout 1 12/12/14 1:06 PM Page 26

would continue to do so, though at a reducedspeed, until the aerial strike force returned threehours later. Having completed their turns, head-ing full into the wind, the carriers increasedspeed until velocity over their flight decksreached 25 miles per hour.

After a final briefing the pilots and their

crews climbed into their cockpits. Fuchida andhis two crewmen boarded their three-seaterNakajima B5N2 Kate level bomber. When allplanes were ready, the Akagi’s skipper, CaptainTaijiro, ordered them to take off. Eighteen Mit-subishi A6M2 Zero fighters roared from theflight deck followed by 18 Aichi D3A1 Val

27FEBRUARY 2015 WWII HISTORY

In this painting by artist Keith Swain, the AustralianNavy corvette HMAS Katoomba fights off Japanesebombers at the height of the raid on Darwin harbor. The scene depicts the Katoomba in dry dockand is based on the descriptions of the action from Katoomba’s captain, Allan Cousins, and photographsand other records from the period.



dive-bombers, and 27 Kates. Astern of Akagi the warbirds of the other car-

riers hurtled into the blue. When all were air-borne at 8:45 AM, Fuchida brought the attack-ing force of 188 aircraft, comprised of 36 Zerofighters, 71 Val dive bombers, and 81 Kate high-level bombers, onto a compass bearing of 148degrees, with the Zeros, flying above and aheadof the others, acting as a protective screen againstpossible enemy fighter interception. With theprevailing northwest wind the Japanese expectedto be over their objective in a little more than anhour. That objective was the Australian port cityof Darwin, and the IJN air branch planned todeliver a destructive blow only surpassed by thatvisited upon Pearl Harbor.

The massive IJN air raid winging its way toDarwin in mid-February 1942 was a responseto a joint military command set up by the AlliedWestern governments designed to stem the Ris-ing Sun’s advance across Southeast Asia. ABDA(American, British, Dutch, and Australian, asthe command was named, became operationalin January 1942 and established its main sup-ply base at the port of Darwin in Australia’sNorthern Territory. From Darwin vital militarysupplies were funneled to the Dutch East Indies,Singapore, and the Philippines. Further, Dar-win was critical to the transfer of Allied fighteraircraft that staged from Timor to Bali, then toJava. Without these air assets Java would fall tothe Japanese, and the entire Dutch East Indies,with its vast oil and rubber resources crucial tothe Japanese war effort, with it.

The Japanese were aware of the Alliedbuildup at Darwin, whose prewar populationwas 5,800, and contemplated attacking it inlate January 1942. However, an argumentamong the high command as to whether Dar-win or Ceylon should be struck first postponedany decision to assault the city. The impassewas finally broken by Commander MinoruGenda, a brilliant naval staff officer and one ofthe chief architects of the Pearl Harbor attack.He advised Admiral Isokoru Yamamoto, com-mander in chief of the Japanese CombinedFleet: “Darwin poses a threat to current andplanned operations in the Netherlands EastIndies and recommend it should be the first tar-get.” Genda went on to observe that “there hadbeen a substantial buildup of [enemy] army andair forces in the area and do not want it to beused as an offensive base against us.”

Persuaded by Genda’s logic, on February 9Yamamoto ordered a carrier strike on Darwin“to annihilate the enemy strength in the PortDarwin area and to intercept and destroyenemy naval and transport fleets….” Theattack would also provide support for the

Japanese effort to capture the island of Timorand thus cut off Allied air reinforcements toJava. Genda was assigned to plan the opera-tion. He not only crafted the carrier attack butadded a second strike to be made by 54th ArmyAir Force twin-engine bombers based at therecently captured Dutch airfields at Ambon inthe Maluku and Kendari in the Celebes Islands.After the war Genda recalled that the Japanesehad reliable information about the state of Dar-win’s defenses and that as a result, “We did notexpect serious opposition.”

Departing Palau (in today’s Indonesia) on thenight of February 15, Nagumo’s task forcereached Kendari on the 17th and made a high-speed run across the Banda Sea the next day.During the early hours of the 19th, the Japan-ese entered the Timor Sea, where Nagumolaunched his aircraft toward Darwin.

About 9:30 AM near Bathurst Island, Lieu-tenant Thomas Moorer’s U.S. Navy PBYCatalina flying boat, Patrol Wing 22, becamethe first victim of the large Japanese force head-ing to Darwin. Pounced on by up to nine Zeros,the PBY was forced into the sea before it couldradio an alarm to Darwin. Later, its crew wasrescued by a friendly merchant ship.

Some early warnings of the enemy raid werereceived but were not acted upon. LieutenantJohn Gribble transmitted a sighting at 9:15 AM,while a few minutes later Father JohnMcGrath, a coastwatcher at the Catholic Mis-sion on Bathurst Island, at 9:37 AM radioedDarwin, “An unusually large air formationbearing down on us from the northwest.” Bothmessages were ignored at the Naval Commu-nications Center at Darwin. Meanwhile, Com-mander Fuchida’s attack force crossed the eastcoast of Australia, turned northwest, andheaded for the city. Without radar, the port was

unaware of the surprise enemy assault, whichcommenced at 9:58 AM.

On the morning of the Japanese attack theonly air assets defending Darwin were 10 Cur-tiss P-40B Tomahawk American-built fighters ofMajor Floyd “Slugger” Pell’s 33rd PursuitSquadron, Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).Returning to Darwin after aborting a flight toJava due to heavy rains, Pell ordered five of hiscommand, designated B Flight under LieutenantRobert G. Oestreicher, to stay aloft at 15,000feet and act as a combat air patrol over the Dar-win area, while Pell landed the five P-40s of AFlight at the Darwin Royal Air Force airfield forrefueling. The time was about 9:55 AM.

As B Flight, in two two-plane elements withOestreicher above them, climbed over Darwinharbor, it was attacked from 2,000 feet aboveby Zeros, which broke the P-40s’ formation.Oestreicher later recalled how Lieutenant JackR. Peres’s P-40 was hit by cannon fire from aZero chasing him and seeing Peres’s plane“slowly rolled over and down.” Moments later,Lieutenant Elton S. Perry was shot out of thesky, plunging into the bay.

Oestreicher climbed into the sun and was hitby a passing Zero but managed to get in a burstof machine-gun fire on his attacker. At 12,000feet he counted 18 enemy fighters “in a lazy cir-cle at … 20,000 feet” waiting for their turn todive at the hapless and vastly outnumbered P-40s of B Flight. As the flight leader franticallyordered his unit to head for the clouds south ofDarwin, Lieutenant William R. Walker, whohad been hit in the left shoulder, landed hisplane at Darwin RAAF airfield, which was laterstrafed, bombed and burned to the ground onthe runway.

As Walker taxied to the RAAF airdrome,Lieutenant Max R. Wiecks found himself sur-rounded by “wild and frenzied” air action. HisP-40 was soon riddled with bullets and out ofcontrol, forcing the 27-year-old pilot to bail outof his stricken machine. He hit the water 10miles from land.

Of B Flight, only Oestreicher stayed in theair until the raid ended. He shot down twoJapanese dive-bombers, the first aerial victoriesby the Allies over Australia. After he landed at11:45 AM, his plane was being repaired when itwas destroyed by the second Japanese air raidof the day. He spent the rest of the 19th hun-kered down at the bomb-ravaged RAAF base.

While B Flight fought and died in the skyover Darwin, A Flight was being destroyed onthe ground at the RAAF base by fighters fromthe Hiryu. Commander Fuchida later com-mented that as his force flew over Darwin,“There were 20-odd planes of various types on


LEFT: Commander Mitsuo Fuchida of the ImperialJapanese Navy led the attack on Darwin harbor andin some respects duplicated his success at Pearl Har-bor. RIGHT: Commander Thomas H. Moorer receivedthe Purple Heart when his U.S. Navy PBY Catalinapatrol plane was shot down during the Darwin raid.Moorer later rose to the rank of admiral and servedas Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of theJoint Chiefs of Staff.

Both: National Archives


the airfields. Several U.S. P-40s attempted totake off as we came over but were quickly shotdown and the rest were destroyed where theystood.” Spotting approaching enemy fighters,Major Pell and the rest of his element attemptedto get airborne. While rolling down the run-way, he was strafed by Zeros as his planelurched 80 feet into the air. Pell parachuted andhit the ground, injured but still alive. As hecrawled away, he was machined gunned andkilled by Zeros making another pass over theairfield.

Following Pell was Lieutenant Charles W.Hughes. He never got off the ground. He wasstrafed as he gathered speed and crashed anddied in his cockpit. Twenty-one-year-old Lieu-tenant Robert F. McMahon tried to get into theair after seeing his commander sprint to hisplane. After almost colliding with the injuredWalker’s incoming B Flight plane, McMahontook off, and the next few minutes found himdueling with a score of Zeros over the harbor.Wounded in the leg, his aircraft’s engine on fire,he had to hit the silk, landing in the harbor aliveafter being machine gunned by the Japanese ashe helplessly floated in the air.

Lieutenants Burt R. Rice and John G. Gloverwere the last of A Flight to lift into the air. Ricewas shot down and machined gunned byJapanese Zeros as he swung below his para-chute. Viewing Rice’s predicament, Gloversought to protect his helpless comrade. In doingso he downed an opposing fighter before hisown plane was critically damaged by enemyfire. Crashing into the airfield, Glover miracu-lously survived the enemy strafing that followedas he walked away from the wreckage that hadonce been his aircraft. Rice landed in a swampand was found several hours later.

Outnumbered and outfought by the moreexperienced Japanese pilots, B Flight had beenwiped out. Some Japanese World War II histo-rians claim that the destruction of the four BFlight planes was accomplished by one Zeroairman, Naval Air Pilot 1st Class YoshikazuNagahama, who is also credited with shootingdown the luckless PBY flown by LieutenantMoorer.

As Pell’s airmen fought and died in the skiesover Darwin, the air force and civilian airstripsin the region were repeatedly bombed andstrafed by the Japanese, making them unser-viceable. Besides the nine P-40s of 33rdSquadron, 11 other RAAF aircraft weredestroyed in the initial Japanese 32-minute raidon Darwin.

Trailing the Japanese fighters were the Katesand Vals. At 10 AM, the former began their runsover Darwin’s harbor at 14,000 feet. Fuchida

wrote, “The harbor was crowded with all kindsof ships which we picked off at our leisure.”There were 46 vessels, many of them mer-chantmen, in port that morning. A cyclone hadshut down the port from February 2-10, thena dock workers strike had created a logjam ofvessels waiting to unload war material. Theirstay had been prolonged even more by the factthat Darwin’s small single wharf could onlyunload two ships at a time.

A rain of Japanese bombs wrecked the wharf,water mains, oil pipes, and much of the pier.The destruction slowly moved across theadministrative district of the town, demolish-ing the hospital, post office, and police bar-racks. Dozens of civilians were killed orwounded and trapped in the rubble. After the

war Fuchida declared, “I personally gave ordersto the pilots not to attack the town.” Whetherthis is true or not, civilian eyewitnesses attestedto the fact that the Japanese methodicallystruck the city, adding that the “machine gun-ning harried the town more than the bombs.”

As the Kates completed their fiery work, theVals, attacking singly, in pairs, or in waves ofthree, concentrated on the shipping in the har-bor. The USS William B. Preston, an Americantender, and the Australian sloop Swan gotunderway and were hit and damaged, losing atotal of seven killed and 22 wounded. The USSPeary, a 1,190-ton U.S. Navy destroyer, wasburied by five bombs that gutted her engineroom and exploded a forward magazine. Pearylost 80 killed, including her captain, Lt. Cmdr.


ABOVE: A flight of Japanese Navy Mitsubishi G3M Nell bombers wings its way toward a distant target.These bombers were heavily engaged during the attack on Darwin harbor on February 19, 1942. BELOW: Smoke billows from Australian ships hit by Japanese bombers during the raid on Darwin harbor. In the foreground the troop transport SS Zealandia has been hit near the stern. In the distance, the cargomotor vessel Neptuna blazes.

National Archives



John M. Bermingham, and all her officers.Forty crew members, most of them wounded,survived. By the time the last Japanese carrierplanes left the area at 11 AM, Darwin harborhad witnessed the sinking of nine vessels with12 more badly damaged; 25 other ships in theport escaped serious damage or wereuntouched. Three Catalina flying boats weredestroyed in the harbor as well, while two U.S.Navy freighters were sunk northwest ofBathurst Island by Vals from Hiryu and Soryu.

When the Japanese bombers began to unloadtheir deadly cargo on the port and the Zerosstarted strafing the harbor, the defending anti-aircraft batteries of the 2nd AA and 14th HeavyAA Batteries, sporting 3.7-inch guns for high-altitude fire, and a small number of Lewismachine guns for low-flying intruders, openedfire from locations at Darwin Oval, Fannie Bay,and other strategic locations around the city.Joined by the 19th Light Horse Machine GunRegiment, which had mounted its weapons onoil tanks near the port, the Australian guns senta lot of lead into the air above the harbor butmanaged to damage only a few enemy planesand shot down one Val. The problem for thegunners was that their pieces were just too slowto effectively engage the attacking aircraft atshort range.

Around noon, 27 Japanese Army MitsubishiG4M1 Betty bombers from Kendari and 27Mitsubishi G3M1 Nell bombers staging fromAmbon appeared above Darwin. Flying at18,000 feet, the bombers separated into twogroups. They ignored the town and port,instead concentrating their attention on the mil-itary airfield. While one formation flew in from

the southwest, the other roared in from thenortheast, both arriving over the base anddropping their ordnance at the same time. Theythen turned and made a second pass over thefield. Two hangars, four barracks, the messhall, the hospital, and a number of storagebuildings were obliterated. The attack also tookout six Lockheed Hudson light bombers anddamaged another while two P-40 fighters, theones landed by B Flight, 33rd Squadron aftertheir aerial encounter of that morning, and aU.S. Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber wereblown to pieces. Six RAAF personnel werekilled.

After the attacking aircraft were recovered,Admiral Nagumo steered for Kendari, arrivingthere on February 21. The Darwin operationhad been a complete success, topped off by thecapture of Timor on the 20th. Both actions sev-ered vital supply lines needed by the Allies toprevent the fall of Java, which was sooninvaded from the sea and taken by the Japan-ese. After the war, Fuchida expressed somereservations about the action, appearing not towant to identify the leader of the Pearl Harborraid as the leader of the Darwin raid. He can-didly admitted that the Darwin blow ”seemedhardly worthy of us. If ever a sledgehammerwas used to crack an egg it was then.”

Unlike Pearl Harbor, where Nagumo’s air-men failed to hit fuel stocks, repair facilities,and other storage installations, these were thor-oughly destroyed in the Darwin raid by 206bombers dropping 681 bombs. As a result,Darwin was eliminated as an Allied supply andtransport base from which aid to the DutchEast Indies could be delivered.

The cost to the defenders of Darwin was 191killed and more than 400 wounded. About 68of the dead and injured were civilians. Japan-ese aircraft losses are in dispute, ranging fromtwo to seven planes, with crew losses totalingseven, of which two were killed, one taken pris-oner, and the remainder rescued by friendlyforces. Four Japanese aircraft losses, includinga Val hit over Darwin that came down in thesea at East Point, a Zero struck over the harborthat crashed on Melville Island, and two dive-bombers shot out of the sky by LieutenantRobert Oestreicher, have been verified.

The port of Darwin would later be rebuilt asa major supply depot ringed by numerous newairfields. After the February 19, 1942, raid theAllied navies largely abandoned the Darwinnaval base, dispersing their units to Brisbane,Fremantle, and other ports. Darwin would beattacked by Japanese airpower 62 more timesbetween March 1942 and November 1943, theheaviest raid coming on June 16, 1942, whenthe Japanese inflicted great damage on the har-bor oil fuel and railroad yards. However,improved radar along with strengthened anti-aircraft and fighter defenses assured thatanother Australian Pearl Harbor did not occur.

Arnold Blumberg is an attorney with the Mary-land state government and resides with his wifein Baltimore County, Maryland.


A catastrophic explosion signaled the end of thecargo motor vessel Neptuna, hit by Japanesebombers during the air raid. Neptuna was launched in1924 and served in the merchant marine fleets ofboth Germany and Australia.



W-NACMktg FP Feb15.qxp_FP 12/2/14 12:30 PM Page 1


Taking aim at the enemy inthe town of Weisweiler,Germany, in November1944, this soldier of the84th Division fires fromcover adjacent to a ruinedbuilding. The 84th Divisionof General William "TexasBill" Simpson's U.S. NinthArmy spent days in combat during the fightingin Germany in the lastmonths of World War II.

The Fighting Ninth

BY MICHAEL D. HULL

W-Feb15 Ninth Army_Layout 1 12/12/14 1:12 PM Page 32

AFTER THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE DELAYED THEIR ADVANCEby six critical weeks, the British, U.S., and Canadian armies went onthe offensive in mid-January 1945 and pushed toward the Germanfrontier.

They lined up on a broad front from north to south, with the British and Cana-dians in the north, the Americans in the center, and the Free French in the south.It was tough going as the enemy—retreating but fighting more desperately thanever—forced the Allies to pay dearly for virtually every yard gained. At the gatesof their homeland, the German forces made full use of natural defensive barriers,including such rivers as the Rhine, Main, Ruhr, Maas, Weser, Elbe, and the Roer.They destroyed bridges and caused widespread flooding.

Defending a 38-mile front along the fastflowing Roer River, from north of Mon-schau to north of Linnich, the powerful U.S. Ninth Army—a comparative new-comer to the European Theater—faced a daunting challenge early in 1945. Twodays after the U.S. First and Third Armies had linked up at Houffalize on Janu-ary 16, Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery, commander of the British 21stArmy Group, ordered the Ninth Army to cross the Roer in Operation Grenade,the southern pincer of a two-pronged attack on the Rhineland. The jump off wastentatively set for February 10. Monty had assumed operational control of theNinth Army on December 20 while supportingAmerican units in the Ardennes offensive.

Grenade was planned to coincide with theCanadian First Army’s launch of Operation Ver-itable, the northern pincer, on February 8.Detailed planning for the Roer crossing hadbeen started in early December, but everythinghinged on the First Army’s securing the Roer’sseven dams. Before this was achieved on Febru-ary 9, however, the Germans jammed open thedams’ discharge valves to cause a sustained over-flow of the river, widening it to between 400 and1,200 yards and rendering it almost impassable.

General Henry D.G. Crerar’s Canadian andBritish units attacked on schedule, but the NinthArmy had to wait impotently for the waters ofthe Roer to subside while their allies were leftto fight alone. For 11 frustrating days, 56-year-old Lt. Gen. William H. Simpson, commanderof the Ninth Army, kept a close watch on thewater level. His combat engineers calculated that the Roer would be at its lowestlevel around February 25, but Simpson wanted to take the Germans by surprise,so he planned to launch his attack just before that date. A meticulous planner likehis boss, Montgomery, Simpson decided that the river level would be low enoughon the morning of February 23 for his troops to cross and for bridging operationsto be undertaken.

His northern XIII Corps, led by Maj. Gen. Alvan C. Gillem Jr. and compris-ing the 29th, 84th, and 102nd Infantry Divisions, was to head east across theriver, swing northward to link up with the Canadians, and then turn east towardthe Rhine. Maj. Gen. Raymond S. McLain’s southern XIX Corps (8th, 78th, and104th Infantry Divisions) would move northeastward and clear the Rhineland.A third corps, the recently activated XVI led by Maj. Gen. John B. Anderson,comprised the 8th Armored Division, the British 7th Armored (the famed DesertRats), and the 35th Infantry Division.

While waiting for the Roer level to moderate, Simpson was able to build up hisarmy to more than 300,000 men, 1,000 tanks, and 2,000 field guns in three corpstotaling 11 divisions. He marshaled men and equipment under cover of darkness.


General William “Texas Bill” Simpson commanded the U.S.Ninth Army in Europe.

All: National Archives

COMMANDED BY GENERAL WILLIAM“TEXAS BILL”SIMPSON, THE

U.S. NINTH ARMYFOUGHT ITS WAY ACROSS EUROPE.


While other U.S. Army formations were bythen suffering a critical shortage of artilleryammunition, Simpson secured almost 46,000tons and the largest concentration of firepoweryet fielded by an American army on the West-ern Front. Montgomery, with his emphasis on“colossal cracks” of artillery, had ensured this.

At 2:45 on the gray, chilly morning of Fri-day, February 23, 1945, a tremendous artillerybarrage lit up the dark skies as 1,500 guns ofthe Ninth, First, and British Second Armieshammered suspected German strongpointsacross the River Roer. When the shelling dieddown after 45 minutes, Simpson started hisassault across the river on a 14-mile front. Theinfantry of six divisions dragged their 15-manassault boats across the muddy shores and intothe river.

The most northerly of the assault formations,

Maj. Gen. Alexander R. Bolling’s 84th InfantryDivision, jumped off from the center of Linnichacross a relatively narrow section of the Roer.Leading troops of the 1st Battalion of the 334thRegiment paddled across the swollen river. Theswift current swept away broadsiding boats,but the first infantry waves made it across withfew casualties. Successive assault waves werepeppered by enemy mortars and small arms fireuntil they reached the far side, but the casual-ties were still relatively light.

The orderly initial crossing was followed bychaos and delays. Boats were stuck on the farshore, some drifted downstream, and hastilylaid wooden footbridges were broken up byenemy fire. Bolling’s 3rd Battalion was not ableto start across the river until 6:45 AM. Using a

shuttle service of boats, the battalion completedits crossing at 10:35 AM.

German planes and artillery homed in andpounded the crossing site, but the gallantinfantrymen and combat engineers persevered.New treadway spans were laid, anchored totrees and assault craft, and more troops madeit across the river. The 84th Division’s 1st Bat-talion took the enemy by surprise, captured thevillage of Korrenzig, and carved out a 4,000-yard bridgehead. Bolling’s entire 334th Regi-ment was over the river by 2:50 PM.

The Americans pressed on, and by the end ofthe day 28 of Simpson’s infantry battalions hadcrossed the Roer. Because of elaborate securityprecautions, he had caught the enemy by sur-prise and unable to mount a major counterat-tack. The construction of heavy bridging acrossthe river was completed the next day, and on

February 25, the Ninth Army linked up withLt. Gen. Courtney H. Hodges’s U.S. First Armyto form a 25-mile-long bridgehead from Baal toDuren.

Infantry and armor of the XIII, XIV, and XIXCorps, meanwhile, began pushing eastwardand branching out. The Ninth Army linked upwith the Canadians at Geldern on March 3,after reaching the Rhine opposite Dusseldorfthe previous day.

Operation Grenade, which ended on March5 and cost just over 1,400 casualties, was theNinth Army’s outstanding contribution to vic-tory on the Western Front. It inflicted 16,000casualties on the Germans and captured29,000. The action placed Simpson in the frontrank of American field commanders, though he

had been fortunate in facing 30,000 Germansin four understrength divisions and only 70tanks, while Crerar’s Anglo-Canadian forcebattled 11 enemy divisions and suffered 15,634losses in Operation Veritable. As Montgomeryhad planned, Crerar drew the German strengthonto him, as General Sir Miles Dempsey haddone at Caen, leaving Simpson to breakthrough, as General Omar N. Bradley had donein Operation Cobra, the breakout from theNormandy beachhead, in July 1944.

Simpson was justifiably proud of the perfor-mance of his army at the River Roer. A classicfeat of maneuver, Operation Grenade had suc-ceeded, with relatively light losses in men andequipment, in striking the enemy at vulnerablespots on his flank and rear. General Bradley,commander of the 12th Army Group, calledthe February 23 crossing “one of the most per-fectly executed of the war.” Simpson, he said,was “steady, prepossessing, well organized,earthy, a great infantryman and leader of men,”and his army “a first-rate fighting unit.” Gen-eral Ernest N. Harmon, the tough commanderof the 2nd Armored “Hell on Wheels” Divi-sion, viewed Simpson as a “general’s general.”

Six feet, two inches tall, rawboned, and baldas a billiard ball, “Big Simp” also earned thepraise of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, theAllied supreme commander. Citing Simpson’s“brilliant service,” he said later, “If he evermade a mistake as army commander, it nevercame to my attention…. Alert, intelligent, pro-fessionally capable, he was the type of leaderthat American soldiers deserve.” Respected byhis men, his superiors, and his allies, GeneralSimpson had many admirers and no detrac-tors. Yet he remained one of the most astutebut least known senior U.S. Army comman-ders in the European Theater. His army wasthe last American field army to be continu-ously deployed in northwestern Europe andthe first to reach the Rhine and the Elbe.

The son of a Tennessee cavalry veteran of theCivil War, William Hood Simpson was born onSaturday, May 19, 1888, in the little town ofWeatherford, 40 miles west of Fort Worth,Texas. After attending the local school andplaying football there, he secured an appoint-ment to the U.S. Military Academy at the ageof 17. He attained the nickname of “Texas Bill”at West Point. He did poorly as a student andgraduated second from bottom in the class of1909, which included future generals GeorgeS. Patton, Jr., Robert L. Eichelberger, and JacobL. Devers.

Commissioned a second lieutenant, Simpsonjoined the 6th Infantry Regiment at Fort Lin-coln, North Dakota, and trooped with it to the


Crossing the rain-swollen Roer River in February 1945, soldiers of the U.S. Ninth Army head toward the frontin support of British and Canadian troops who have initiated an offensive that will push the Germans backfarther toward Berlin.


Philippines for two years. After serving at thePresidio of San Francisco from 1912 to 1914,he was ordered to his home state on a borderpatrol assignment. Returning to his regimentafter duty at the Panama Pacific Exposition in1915, Simpson took part in Brig. Gen. John J.Pershing’s punitive expedition into Mexico in1916.

After promotion to first lieutenant, Simpsonserved as an aide to Maj. Gen. George Bell, Jr.,commander of the 33rd Division at Fort Logan,Texas. Promoted to captain in May 1917,Simpson accompanied Bell on an observationtour of the British, French, and U.S. armies inFrance later that year. The up and comingyoung officer returned to France when the 33rdDivision embarked for the Western Front inApril 1918. Receiving temporary promotionsto major and lieutenant colonel, Simpsonadvanced to divisional chief of staff andattended the American Expeditionary ForceGeneral Staff School at Langres, France.

The lanky Texan saw action in the autumn of1918. After training with Australian troops, the33rd Division fought in the big American offen-sives at St.-Mihiel on September 12-16 and theMeuse-Argonne from September 26 to Novem-ber 11. The division was inspected by KingGeorge V of England, who decorated some ofits officers and men. Simpson earned the Dis-tinguished Service Medal for his staff work andthe Silver Star for gallantry. After occupationduty in Germany, Simpson returned home andbecame chief of staff of the 6th Division atCamp Grant in Rockford, Illinois, in May1919. He reverted to the rank of captain onJune 30, 1920, but was promoted to major thefollowing day.

Early in 1921, Simpson began a two-yeartour of duty at the War Department. ThatDecember, meanwhile, he took time out tomarry Ruth (Webber) Krakauer, an attractivewidow from London whom he had first met atWest Point. They were wed in El Paso, Texas.After his Washington stint, Major Simpsonentered the Infantry School at Fort Benning,Georgia, graduated in 1924, and went on tothe Command and General Staff School at FortLeavenworth, Kansas. He ended the course asa distinguished graduate in June 1925.

After spending two years commanding a bat-talion of the 12th Infantry Regiment in Mary-land, Simpson entered the Army War College inAugust 1927. He graduated the following yearand then taught military science and tactics atPomona College in Claremont, California,from 1932 to 1936. He was promoted to lieu-tenant colonel in 1934 and to colonel in 1938,and instructed at the Army War College from

1936 to 1940. He briefly led the 9th InfantryRegiment at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, rose totemporary brigadier general, and became assis-tant commander of the 2nd Infantry Divisionthere.

From April to October 1941, Simpson com-manded Camp Wolters, Texas, was promotedto temporary major general, and took the helmof the 35th Infantry Division at Camp Robin-son, Arkansas. Shortly after America enteredWorld War II, he led the division to a trainingsite in California. After further commandassignments and promotion to temporary lieu-tenant general in October 1943, Simpson tookover the Fourth Army at San Jose, California.He moved with it back to Fort Sam Houston inJanuary 1944 and braced for a role in the cen-tury’s second European war.

Simpson and his able chief of staff, Brig. Gen.James E. Moore, flew to England on May 6 toorganize a new army, the Eighth. Simpsonattended the final SHAEF (Supreme Head-quarters Allied Expeditionary Force) briefingfor the Normandy invasion at St. Paul’s Col-lege in London on May 15 and reported toEisenhower the next day. His former War Col-lege classmate told him that his Eighth Armywould become the Ninth to avoid confusionwith the British Eighth Army of Western Desertfame. Simpson set up a command post atClifton College in Bristol, Somerset, and beganreadying the new army for movement toFrance, where it would join General Bradley’s

powerful U.S. 12th Army Group.The Ninth Army’s headquarters moved to

France, became operational at Rennes on Sep-tember 5, and assumed command of Maj. Gen.Troy H. Middleton’s Eighth Corps, which hadbeen part of the Third Army and was engagedin besieging the French port of Brest. After afull-scale ground and air assault on September8, followed by 12 days of fierce action, Ger-man resistance ceased. The port had beendemolished, but it was no longer needed by theAllies. To Simpson, it was a hollow victory.

The Ninth Army moved eastward, and Simp-son established his headquarters in Maastricht,Holland, where he built up his command to sixdivisions in preparation for Operation Queen,a major 12th Army Group effort to cross theRhine and capture Cologne. Supported byartillery and a strike by 3,000 bombers, theFirst and Ninth Armies jumped off at noon onNovember 16. Moving out on a narrow 12-mile front, Simpson’s force encountered fierceresistance, heavy rains, and record flooding asthe battle devolved into a 23-day struggle ofattrition. The Ninth Army incurred 10,256casualties while covering only six to 12 miles,but by December 9 it had cleared the westernbank of the River Roer. The Ninth hadadvanced more rapidly than the First.

Although his army had been in action foronly three months, Simpson was now wellknown as the ideal field commander. Quiet spo-ken, unassuming, and always immaculate, he


Dragging flat-bottomed assault boats toward the banks of the Roer River on February 23, 1945, engineers ofthe 84th Infantry Division, Ninth Army, prepare for a contested crossing in less than ideal conditions. Days ofrain had turned the Roer into a torrent and prevented units of the Ninth Army from crossing on schedule dur-ing the opening phase of Operation Grenade.


had a warm smile, was quick witted, and pos-sessed a good sense of humor. He had a knackfor making others feel comfortable and enjoyedthe confidence of both his officers and enlistedmen. He seldom raised his voice, even whenrarely angry.

Texas Bill cared about his soldiers’ well-beingand had a rule drilled into his subordinate offi-cers: “Never send an infantryman to do a jobthat an artillery shell can do for him.” He reliedheavily on his loyal staff and, unlike many ofhis peers, was not afraid to delegate responsi-bility. He let his aides deal with their assignedtasks without checking them at every turn, and,as Field Marshal Sir Archibald P. Wavell said ofField Marshal Edmund Allenby of Palestinefame, did not “devil his staff to death.”

After relocating to the northernmost 12thArmy Group sector shortly before the Germansbroke through thin American lines in theArdennes Forest on December 16, 1944, Simp-son’s Ninth Army sat out the Battle of theBulge. It dispatched seven divisions to thethreatened area, including Maj. Gen. RobertW. Hasbrouck’s 7th Armored Division, whichvaliantly defended the town of St.-Vith.

On December 20, Field Marshal Mont-gomery took command of the northern flank ofthe Bulge in a bid to “tidy up” the battlefield,and the Ninth Army passed under the opera-tional control of the British 21st Army Groupuntil April 4, 1945, after the encirclement of

the Ruhr Valley pocket by the First and NinthArmies. It was a controversial move becausethe eccentric, egotistical Monty had rankledmany, from British Prime Minister WinstonChurchill to Eisenhower and Bradley.

But Simpson, a good subordinate who kepthimself above politics and personalities, wasunfazed. He had told Ike, “You can depend onme to respond cheerfully, promptly, and as effi-ciently as I possibly can to every instruction hegives.”

Monty was initially politely aloof and skep-tical of Simpson’s ability as an Army comman-der, but the big Texan won him over. He andMoore soon enjoyed a cordial relationship withthe wiry, birdlike British officer, whom Simpsonadmired for his calmness in the Bulge and asan example of military professionalism. Mooredescribed Montgomery as “a feisty little some-body, and he pulled things together down therefor First Army during the Battle of the Bulge.”

Simpson and Monty had much in common.Both were energetic, charismatic leaders whokept in close touch with the lower ranks, andboth were meticulous planners who strove tokeep the battlefield orderly and conserve man-power. What Simpson particularly liked wasthat Monty left him alone and permitted free-dom of action in planning and execution. Andhe was delighted that his army was built up to12 full divisions while with the British.

After crossing the Roer, Simpson pushed his

army hard eastward against stiff resistance andthen took part in Operation Plunder, the mas-sive assault across the Rhine by Montgomery’s21st Army Group. He had lined up a quarter ofa million men for the biggest operation sinceD-Day. After an hour-long artillery barrage and7,500 sorties by Allied planes, the crossingsbetween Rheinberg and Rees got underway at2 AM on Saturday, March 24, 1945. The NinthArmy was on the right and General Sir MilesDempsey’s British Second Army on the left.Anderson’s U.S. XVI Corps crossed north ofthe Ruhr.

Prime Minister Churchill and General Eisen-hower joined a bevy of war correspondents towatch the crossings. The British leader exultedto Ike, “My dear General, the German iswhipped. We’ve got him. He is all through.”Eisenhower, who walked among the assaulttroops shaking hands and encouraging them,observed, “Simpson performed in his usual out-standing style.” Although fierce fighting fol-lowed, Operation Plunder went well, with only31 casualties. By the end of the day, the Alliedbridgehead was more than five miles deep.

Prime Minister Churchill, who had experi-enced action at Omdurman, in Cuba, in SouthAfrica, and on the Western Front in 1915-1916,was exhilarated to be on the front lines again,and, against Ike’s advice, went across the Rhineon the afternoon of Sunday, March 25. Accom-panied by Montgomery, Field Marshal Sir AlanBrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff,and Simpson, he rode a Buffalo amphibioustractor to the outskirts of the occupied town ofWesel. Simpson was nervous about having thethree most important British figures of the warso close to the enemy. His concern grew whenChurchill, with a cigar clamped in his teeth,dashed forward 40 yards and scrambled ontoa destroyed bridge while German shells fell 300yards downstream.

General Simpson appealed to him. “PrimeMinister,” he said, “there are snipers in front ofyou, they are shelling both sides of the bridge,and now they have started shelling the roadbehind you. I cannot accept the responsibilityfor your being here, and must ask you to comeaway.”

After putting his arms around one of thetwisted girders of the bridge for a final time,Churchill quietly withdrew. Sir Alan Brookereported, “The look on Winston’s face was justlike that of a small boy being called away fromhis sand castles on the beach by his nurse…. Itwas a sad wrench for him; he was enjoyinghimself immensely…. However, he came awaymore obediently than I had expected.” The fol-lowing day, Alan Brooke watched the prime


An American tanker of the 2nd Armored Division, Ninth Army, sits in the turret of his tank with a .50-calibermachine gun at his disposal. The soldier watches warily as a throng of curious civilians gathers around in theGerman town of Juchen, captured by American troops in March 1945.


minister wander off and solemnly urinate intothe Rhine as General Patton had done atOppenheim two days earlier.

The Ninth Army battled on across Germany.The 2nd Armored Division battered throughHaltern to the Dortmund-Ems Canal on March30, beginning what Simpson called “the breath-less race” to the strategic Elbe River. On April1, leading elements of Gillem’s XIII Corpsreached the outskirts of Munster while Har-mon’s tankers linked up with the First Army’s3rd Armored Division at Lippstadt, complet-ing the encirclement of the Ruhr.

Three days later, the Ninth Army reverted tothe command of the 12th Army Group.Infantry and armor of the XIII and XIX Corpsrolled on through crumbling resistance to cap-ture the cities of Hannover, Hildesheim, andBrunswick in quick succession, and on April11, the 2nd Armored Division raced 52 milesto gain a bridgehead on the River Elbe nearMagdeburg. The following day, the 83rdInfantry Division of the 19th Corps and Gen-eral Gillem’s 5th Armored Division reached theElbe, followed by the 84th Infantry Division.

By April 15, the XIX and XIII Corps wereclosed up on the Elbe. Simpson was elated, theNinth Army’s morale was high, and he rea-soned that he could forge on and reach Berlin,60 miles away. Since his army had advanced226 miles from the Rhine to the Elbe in 19

days, he was confident that his forces—spear-headed by the 2nd Armored Division—couldget to the German capital well before the SovietRed Army. But Texas Bill’s euphoria was swiftlyshattered that Sunday after he was ordered tofly to the 12th Army Group headquarters atWiesbaden.

“You must stop on the Elbe,” GeneralBradley told Simpson. “You are not to advanceany farther in the direction of Berlin. I’m sorry,

Simp, but there it is.” Simpson asked, “Wherein the hell did you get this?” Bradley replied,“From Ike.” Simpson was unaware that Ikehad decided on March 28 not to go to Berlin,but to link up with the Soviets along the Erfurt-Leipzig-Dresden line.

Simpson was stunned and “heartbroken.”He recalled later, “I got back in the plane in akind of daze. All I could think of was how amI going to tell my staff, my corps commanders,and my troops? Above all, how am I going totell my troops?” He insisted then and long afterthat his army could have reached Berlin in 24hours. General Gillem said, “Forty-eight hours.That’s all it would have taken.”

The last few weeks of the European war werean anticlimax for the disappointed Simpson ashis army mopped up pockets of enemy resis-tance, made contact with Soviet troops nearZerbst on April 30, and assumed occupationalduties. The war was over for the Ninth Army,much praised by U.S. and British commanders.The army had “performed magnificently inEurope,” said Colonel Jerry D. Morelock,director of the Winston Churchill Memorialand Library at Westminster College in Fulton,Missouri, later.

Simpson’s forces were transferred to Lt. Gen.Alexander M. Patch’s Seventh Army on June15, and the gallant Texan returned to America.After being feted in Fort Worth and his Weath-erford hometown, he flew to China to serve asdeputy to Lt. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer, thecommander of U.S. forces in the China-Burma-India Theater. While arranging for his NinthArmy headquarters to join him, Japan surren-dered, so Simpson returned home again.

The Ninth Army was deactivated at FortBragg, North Carolina, on October 10, 1945,and Simpson took charge of the Second Armyat Memphis, Tennessee, that month. Heretained the command until June 1946. Suffer-ing from ulcers and a hernia, he was forced toretire that November 30. He lived in San Anto-nio, Texas, from December 1947 and was pro-moted to general on the retired list in July 1954.General Simpson died at the age of 92 in theBrooke Army Hospital on August 15, 1980,and he and his wife were buried in ArlingtonNational Cemetery.

Although Simpson’s personal performanceduring World War II and the combat record ofthe Ninth Army are often overlooked, they arenevertheless worthy of high praise.

Author Michael D. Hull is a frequent contrib-utor to WWII History magazine. He writes ona number of military history topics from hishome in Enfield, Connecticut.


ABOVE: With troops of the U.S. Ninth Army taking cover behind it, a British tank fires on enemy positions ina German town. The U.S. Ninth Army fought under both American and British army group command during theAllied push eastward into Germany. BELOW: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill climbs across the rubbleof a bridge over the Rhine River at Wesel, Germany, on March 25, 1945. As Churchill moved forward, Gener-al William Simpson, commander of the U.S. Ninth Army, warned the prime minister that German snipers werestill quite active in the area.


Shortly after 11 AM on August 22, 1942,the roar of aircraft engines shattered thestillness over Henderson Field, Guadal-canal. Weary Marines looked up from

their foxholes to see what was causing thisracket, and then broke into wild cheers. As theformation of five long-nosed fighters circled toland, all below could read the words “U.S.ARMY” marked on each plane’s wings.

Reinforcements had come! The 13,000Leathernecks occupying the embattled islandof Guadalcanal in the Solomons, codenamedCactus, were no longer alone. Army Air Forcespilots of the 67th Fighter Squadron and their

sleek P-400 Airacobras had arrived to help theMarines hold this strategic island base againstvicious Japanese counterattacks. For weeksenemy bombers had flown almost unopposedover the American positions, and these heavilyarmed Army interceptors seemed just the solu-tion to checking the Japanese raids.

Yet when the 67th got into combat its pilotsdiscovered to their horror that the Airacobracould not even climb high enough to reachthose bombers. Down low, nimble JapaneseMitsubishi Zero fighters chewed their sluggish

P-400s to bits. Marine commanders on Cactuscalled the Airacobra “practically worthless,”and whispers of cowardice surrounded the 67thfor running away during air attacks.

Within weeks, however, the brass changedits tune. While hopelessly outclassed in air-to-air combat, the P-400 soon found its niche asa ground attack plane. Marine riflemen cameto rely on the 67th’s hard-hitting fighterbombers to destroy enemy troop formationsand defensive fortifications. The Airacobrasalso proved lethal against supply-laden Japan-ese barge convoys.

Flying as many as five missions per day, the67th Fighter Squadron played a key role in theAmerican victory on Guadalcanal. Its pilotssurmounted many obstacles in doing so, andtheir story of endurance and ingenuity beganlong before the first P-400s landed at Hender-son Field.

In the weeks following Pearl Harbor, the fullextent of America’s unpreparedness for warbecame shockingly apparent. American out-posts across the Pacific at Guam and WakeIsland fell swiftly to the Japanese juggernaut,while Allied forces in the Philippines fought abrave but doomed delaying action throughoutthe spring of 1942. The enemy was everywhere,or so it seemed to those officers in Washingtonwhose task it was to stop the Japanese.

Key to the Americans’ plan was a “last lineof defense” stretching 2,000 miles betweenHawaii and bases in Australia and NewZealand to encompass such strategic islands asFiji, Samoa, and New Caledonia. Forces sta-tioned on these bastions would help keep openvital sea lanes and deny Japan their use.

But the Allies had to get there first. DuringJanuary 1942, hastily organized shiploads ofU.S. Marines and soldiers set sail for the SouthPacific. Army Air Corps flying squadronswent along to provide air cover for these occu-pying troops.

One such unit was the 67th PursuitSquadron, nicknamed the “Fighting Cocks,”stationed at Harding Army Airfield in BatonRouge, Louisiana. The Fighting Cocks wereunderstrength, like most Air Corps outfits atthe time, and equipped with just a few obso-lete Seversky P-35 fighters. When orders arrived

38 WWII HISTORY FEBRUARY 2015© Jack Fellows, www.jackfellows.com

Cobras Over

Captain John A Thompson

Pilot John A. Thompson was one of only two airmenwho had any time in the P-400 Airacobra when the67th Fighter Group was assigned to fly the plane.

W-Feb15 67th at Guadalcanal_Layout 1 12/12/14 1:10 PM Page 38


On September 14, 1942, Bell P-400 Airacobra fighter bombers of the 67th Fighter Squadron attackJapanese positions near Edson’s Ridge on the embattled island of Guadalcanal in the Solomons. The Airacobra was a failure as a dogfighter but cameinto its own as a ground attack plane.

r Cactus

THE ARRIVAL OF THE 67th FIGHTER SQUADRON BOLSTERED THE AMERICAN ATTEMPTTO SEIZE GUADALCANALFROM THE JAPANESE.

BY PATRICK J. CHAISSON


to prepare for overseas movement, the 67th hadbarely 50 percent of its full complement ofpilots on hand, and most of these men werefresh out of flight school.

Fortunately, the squadron was led by twoexperienced lieutenants who together embodiedthe soul of the Fighting Cocks. Dale “D.D.”Brannon, an Ohio native whose lanky six-footframe almost disqualified him from flying fight-ers, held the unit together while a parade ofhigher ranking commanders came and went.And then there was Oregonian John A. Thomp-son, handsome, skilled, and fearless under fire.Brannon and Thompson made an unbeatableteam but could not imagine the challenges theywould have to overcome on a primitive, dan-gerous island halfway around the world.

On January 23 1942, the Fighting Cocksembarked from Brooklyn, New York, aboardthe Army transport ship Thomas A. Barry, aconverted passenger liner. Their trip to theSouth Seas was no pleasure cruise. The vesselwas dangerously overcrowded, and a shortageof fresh water meant each man received onecanteen per day for drinking, washing, andshaving. It took the Barry five weeks to reachAustralia, where the squadron recovered fromits unpleasant journey while headquarters fig-ured out what to do with the 67th.

The answer came on March 5, 1942. The67th’s destination was New Caledonia, aFrench possession 750 miles east of Australia.The men embarked the next day, squadron per-sonnel sailing in one troop ship while anotherfreighter carried their as yet unseen aircraft. Noone knew what type of fighter the squadronwould fly, only that 47 of them had been dis-assembled and put in crates for the long jour-ney from the United States.

The mystery of the crated airplanes wassolved at the port of Nouméa when 67th main-tenance personnel unloaded them onto thedocks. Inside were 45 P-400 fighters and two P-39Fs, built by the Bell Aircraft Corp. of Buf-falo, New York. It was the first time most of theFighting Cocks had ever seen either plane.

An export version of the Airacobra, the tri-cycle-geared P-400 was first offered to theBritish Royal Air Force as part of the Lend-Lease program. The Royal Air Force found thelittle Bell fighter’s high altitude performanceunacceptable and rejected it for combat service.The U.S. Army Air Corps, taking anything thatflew, quickly requisitioned the planes for dutyagainst Japan.

The Air Corps in 1941 considered the Aira-cobra a state-of-the-art interceptor. Its 1,150-horsepower engine sat mid-fuselage behind thepilot, leaving room for a heavy cannon in the

nose. The P-400 model came equipped with a20mm cannon, while P-39 variants mountedthe larger 37mm. Four .30-caliber and two .50-caliber machine guns rounded out the Bell’simpressive armament. It could also carry a 500-pound bomb on a centerline hard point.

The P-400, however, came with several flaws.It lacked a supercharger, which meant the Aira-cobra could not reach the altitudes at whichJapanese bombers routinely flew. The Bellsunloaded at Nouméa were also equipped withBritish high-pressure oxygen systems, incom-patible with the low-pressure canisters used onAmerican aircraft.

Worse, no one could find a manual telling theairmen on New Caledonia how to put theseAiracobras together. The 67th deployed with10 sets of mechanics’ hand tools but lacked thespecial equipment necessary to assemble andtest a modern fighter aircraft.

The squadron’s first problem was to get thecrated P-400s off the docks and to the nearestairfield. Using a borrowed truck, crews hauledeach 10,000-pound shipping container 35 milesover dirt roads to a newly built airstrip atTontouta. One trip took eight hours to accom-plish, but by working around the clock all 47Airacobras were delivered safely to the FightingCocks’ new home within a week.

Then the process of reassembly began. Mas-ter Sergeant Robert Foye, a veteran line chiefwith the 67th, recorded his impressions of thattime: “Assembly rig built from old timberspicked up around Tontouta ... no replacementparts. Every fifth ship was designated ‘spareparts’ before it was uncrated … no technicalorders or manuals of instruction but startedproducing airplanes at the rate of 1.5 a dayafter the first week.”

Foye continued: “Frequent troubles. Oneprop was missing from crate. Sometimes vitalfuel and pressure lines found to be mysteriouslyplugged with Scotch tape. One airplane had

electrical circuit hooked up at factory evidentlyby a maniac. Press flap switch and wheelswould retract. Press wheel switch and gunswould fire. Took days to straighten it out.”

Conditions at Tontouta taxed the crews’endurance as well. “Rain, mud, and mosqui-tos,” Foye noted. “Work day was from 5 AM

until dark … not a growl from any man.” Poorfood and unsanitary living spaces soon broughton a wave of dysentery, yet the Fighting Cockslabored day after day to get their Bell fightersready for combat despite insects, disease, andthe occasional Japanese air raid.

On March 28, 1st Lt. D.D. Brannon—whoalong with John Thompson was one of two67th pilots who had ever flown an Airacobra—made the first successful P-400 test flight overNew Caledonia. At last the planes were air-worthy, but plenty of hard work remained.Brannon and Thompson began checking outtheir novice aviators in the tricky Bell intercep-tors, training them to fly and fight as a team.

Morale soared on May 1, when the AirCorps reorganized as the United States ArmyAir Forces. This meant the 67th got a newname as well. The Fighting Cocks were nolonger a “pursuit squadron” but now calledthemselves the 67th Fighter Squadron. Theypassed the spring and summer patrolling NewCaledonia in their camouflaged P-400s, train-ing for the battles that everyone knew were justover the horizon.

Japan’s offensive plans had been stymiedwith the American strategic victory at the Bat-tle of the Coral Sea in May and in an even moredecisive setback at Midway a month later. Inboth encounters, American airpower hadarrested the enemy’s momentum and keptJapanese forces from invading key Allied basesin New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, andeven potentially Hawaii. Shipping lanesappeared safe as well for the time being.

Reconnaissance flights over the nearbySolomon Islands brought troubling news.Roaming patrol planes had discovered a newairstrip being built on Japanese-held Guadal-canal, only 560 nautical miles from U.S. instal-lations on Espiritu Santo. From Guadalcanal,land-based bombers could threaten vital sup-ply lines and potentially cut Australia off fromits American allies.

Guadalcanal had to be taken, and soon. Thejob went to Marine Maj. Gen. Alexander A.Vandegrift and his 1st Marine Division (Rein-forced), then training in New Zealand. Withina matter of five weeks Vandegrift’s Marinesplanned, rehearsed, and executed OperationWatchtower, the first major offensive landingof American forces in World War II.


Captain John A. Thompson

John Thompson, seated, meets with two other pilotsof the 67th Fighter Squadron at the Cactus Air Forceoperations shack at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal.


The invasion, occurring on August 7, 1942,did not go smoothly. While American troopseasily captured the partially completed airstripon Guadalcanal, enemy garrisons occupyingthe neighboring islands of Tulagi, Gavutu, andTanambogo resisted fiercely. Later that night asthe transports unloaded, a screening force ofU.S. and Australian warships met with disasteroff Savo Island at the hands of the ImperialJapanese Navy. This defeat caused Americannaval commanders to immediately stop unload-ing supplies and send the fleet off for saferwaters.

The 1st Marine Division had been aban-doned. While most of Vandegrift’s men wereon the beach, less than half of their artillery,heavy equipment, and supplies had made itashore before the transports fled. The Leather-necks were left with a 10-day load of ammuni-tion and so little food that for weeks they sub-

sisted on abandoned enemy rations of cannedfish and rice.

With the U.S. Navy’s unexpected departure,Japan controlled both the sea and the airaround Guadalcanal. Finishing the runwaybecame Vandegrift’s number one priority, sincefor the time being it was the only way to receivesupplies and evacuate the wounded. Vandegriftalso knew that warplanes based on Guadal-canal could strike back at the enemy bombersand surface ships then harassing his positions.

Henderson Field, named after Major LoftonR. Henderson, a Marine aviator killed duringthe Battle of Midway, was declared operationalon August 19. The next day, 12 Douglas SBDDauntless dive bombers and 19 Grumman F4FWildcat fighters arrived at Henderson Fieldfrom the escort carrier USS Long Island. They

were the first of the “Cactus Air Force,” a termused to describe the Marine Corps, Navy, andArmy aviators defending Guadalcanal duringits darkest hours.

Meanwhile, on New Caledonia the 67thFighter Squadron received orders to move tothe Solomons. D.D. Brannon, now a captain,led five P-400s on a three-day overwater hop,first to Efate, then Espiritu Santo, and finallyCactus on August 22. The 560-mile flight fromEspiritu Santo to Guadalcanal pushed the Aira-cobras’ maximum range, despite their being fit-ted with belly tanks. Two Boeing B-17 FlyingFortress bombers escorted the diminutive Bellfighters part of the way to their destination,ready with life rafts in case a fighter was forcedto ditch from fuel exhaustion.

Once parked on Henderson Field, the Armypilots surveyed their new surroundings. Gunfirewas clearly audible from the Marines’ perime-ter, a half mile from their hangar. Nearby stooda ramshackle old building, nicknamed thePagoda, which served as the Cactus Air Force’scommand post. Leathernecks there told Bran-non and his men to watch for a black flag beingraised on an adjacent flagpole; this was thefield’s air raid warning signal.

Japanese bombers normally paid Guadal-canal a visit every day around noon, “TojoTime” to the wisecracking Marines. For weeksthese high-flying intruders, operating frombases on Rabaul 565 miles to the northwest,bombed the Americans with impunity. Thearrival of the Marine Wildcats promised toequalize matters. Captain Brannon’s pilots

hoped they would get a crack at those bombersas well.

The first night on Cactus was a memorableone for the men of the 67th. Camped in a palmgrove 200 yards from the front lines, the Fight-ing Cocks experienced sniper fire, biting insects,and other jungle dangers. They also had a visitfrom “Washing Machine Charlie,” one of sev-eral enemy aircraft appearing overheadthroughout the night to randomly drop bombson the American perimeter. No one, includingthe 67th’s ground echelon which had arrivedby transport ship that evening, got much sleep.

August 23 was spent learning the ropes,which meant dawn to dusk patrols aroundGuadalcanal’s coast. No enemy aircraft werespotted. Marine scout planes did, however,detect a large number of troop transports andwarships steaming down “The Slot,” a body ofwater running through the Solomon Islands,from Japanese bases near Rabaul. This was theinfamous “Tokyo Express,” and the first ofmany convoys delivering troops determined toexpel the Americans from their tenuous holdon Guadalcanal.

Henderson Field felt the long arm of Japaneseair power the next afternoon. Pilots and groundcrews of the 67th were working on their aircraftwhen up went the black alert flag. Dashingmadly for their Airacobras, Captain Brannonand 2nd Lt. Deltis H. Finscher managed to getairborne just as a string of bombs hit the field.While Marine F4Fs shot down eight of nineenemy bombers, Brannon and Finscher hap-pened across a careless Zero at low level and



ABOVE: The wreckage of a Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber lies burned on the runway at Henderson Fieldafter a Japanese air raid. LEFT: Mechanics work on a plane at Henderson Field. These tireless ground crewmenwere often tasked with scrounging spare parts to keep P-400s of the 67th Fighter Squadron flying.


flamed it. The 67th was on the scoreboard.Yet, when SBDs from Cactus joined carrier-

based Navy aircraft to fight the Battle of theEastern Solomons on August 24-25, the short-legged P-400s stayed close to home. Patrollingat medium altitude, the Fighting Cocks neverquite knew whether those distant spots theykept seeing meant enemy aircraft or were justan illusion caused by their oxygen-deprivedbrains.

On August 26, the black flag signaling “TojoTime” ran up the pole, causing another franticscramble for takeoff. While a dozen Wildcatsscooted upstairs to engage the Japanese, four ofBrannon’s Airacobras wallowed around thou-sands of feet below the action. They returned toHenderson, guns unfired, finding the airstripplastered with bombs and the fuel dump ablaze.The disappointed Fighting Cocks had to swervearound bomb craters upon landing.

Nine more P-400s, led by newly promotedCaptain John Thompson, showed up fromNew Caledonia the next day. They arrived inthe middle of an air raid, and ground crewsquickly refueled the fighters so they could clearthe field. The 67th now had 14 of the poorlyperforming Bell fighters on Guadalcanal. Sofar—except for one lucky kill—they had yet toprove their worth in air-to-air combat. Moralebegan to sag.

Spirits fell even further on the 29th when 12P-400s took off to meet an incoming raid butcould not climb high enough to reach theenemy formation. While the Fighting Cocks cir-cled helplessly at their maximum altitude of14,000 feet, Marine F4Fs pounced on theJapanese and downed eight aircraft. Again theArmy pilots returned to a bombed airfield hav-ing done nothing to help the situation.

The 67th kept at it. On August 30, a flight of11 Airacobras went up to intercept a group ofsuspected enemy dive bombers. The divebombers turned out to be Zeros, 20 of them,and they tore through the American formationwith guns blazing. Four P-400s went down inflames while the remainder limped home rid-dled by Japanese gunfire. John Thompsonlanded with 15 holes in his fighter and a bulletin his shoulder—but he had bagged a Zero inthe process.

In three days the squadron went from 14 tothree serviceable planes, somehow patchedtogether by the resourceful mechanics. Hence-forth the 67th’s klunkers—as they now calledtheir P-400s—would no longer perform inter-ception duties. Instead, whenever a black flagfluttered over the Pagoda all flyable Airacobraswere to take off on what headquarters termed“reconnaissance” missions. The Fighting Cocks

called it something else—running away.The pilots felt frustrated and betrayed. They

were brave enough, but that mattered littlewhen the enemy’s aircraft so completely out-matched their sluggish klunkers. D.D. Brannonsaid, “We thought we were a fighter outfit, butif you got into combat with a Zero you weredone.”

So disappointed was Maj. Gen. Vandegriftwith the Airacobra’s air-to-air performance thathe begged Army commanders not to send himany more of the Bell fighters. In his diary hecondemned the P-400 as “practically worthlessfor any kind of altitude fighting.” Vandegriftwas right, but the klunkers of the 67th FighterSquadron could still provide valuable service tohis embattled Marines.

September brought with it both a new baseand a new mission for the Fighting Cocks. Dueto crowded conditions at Henderson Field, engi-neers opened another landing strip called FighterOne about a mile east of the main runway. Aira-cobras began flying out of Fighter One, nick-named the Cow Pasture, on September 2.

Their first mission began at dawn. Newlypromoted Major D.D. Brannon led four planes,each armed with a 500-pound bomb, to attackJapanese barges off the village of Tasimboko.After dropping their ordnance, the P-400s cir-cled around again to strafe enemy troops wad-ing ashore. One pilot later said he and his wing-man cut a “bloody X” on the water with theirbullets.

Returning to the Cow Pasture for more fueland ammunition, the Airacobras took off foranother sortie over Tasimboko two hours later.This became their daily routine, flying attackmissions from dawn to dusk.

Thus was born the moniker of the“Jagstaffel,” a corruption of the German wordfor fighter squadron. Sometimes flying five runsa day, the 67th went after the Tokyo Expresswith as many aircraft as their hard-workingground crews could get operational. Wheneverbarge hunting proved fruitless, the Jagstaffelmade low-level strikes against Japanese troopconcentrations and supply dumps in support ofMarines on the ground.

These close air support missions, unglam-orous and decidedly dangerous to fly, gave thesquadron a new sense of purpose. They werecontributing at last and in a way that directlyaided the 1st Marine Division’s fight to holdGuadalcanal.

In early September, Japanese efforts to retakeGuadalcanal increased dramatically. Almostevery night transports unloaded thousands ofsoldiers while Japanese warships bombardedU.S. positions mercilessly. Fuel depots andparked aircraft burst into flames while terrifiedmen huddled in their foxholes, sweating out thebarrages. All signs pointed to a major enemycounterthrust, but when would the Japaneseattack?

Meanwhile, the Jagstaffel tried to cope withconditions on the hellish island. Enemy actionnotwithstanding, the poor food and jungle dis-eases began to take their toll. Typhus, carried byhuge rats, was a constant threat. Ferociousmosquitos infected many men with malaria,and a steady diet of cold rice and tinned sar-dines often resulted in crippling dysentery.

Clothing, shoes, and equipment quickly rot-ted in the fetid jungle environment. A blazingsun pushed daytime temperatures into the 90swhile driving tropical rains turned runways,roads, and bivouac areas into muddy quag-mires. One Marine observed that Guadalcanalwas “the only place on Earth where you couldstand up to your knees in mud and still get dustin your eyes.”

Supply shortages, especially aviation gas,often curtailed operations. Once when Cactus


National Archives

Wikipedia Commons

ABOVE: This Japanese aircraft was photographedduring an attack on American shipping off Guadal-canal. The P-400 Airacobra proved ineffective indealing with enemy aircraft; however, it was con-verted to a ground attack role and excelled. BELOW:Japanese pilots such as this group, many of whomwere battle hardened and experienced after servicein China, flew combat missions against the Americansin the skies above Guadalcanal from the huge Japan-ese base at Rabaul.


ran out of bombs the 67th resorted to droppingcontact fused depth charges wrapped in lengthsof chain. Without spare parts or proper tools,mechanics struggled constantly to keep their P-400s flying. As the squadron history noted,“Every airplane in commission soon became anexample of the ground crew’s ingenuity andresourcefulness.”

Wrecked planes normally became a source ofreplacement parts, but on Guadalcanal the needfor serviceable aircraft grew so great that extra-ordinary measures frequently had to be taken.When one Airacobra cracked up on landing,maintenance personnel decided to rebuild theaircraft instead of scrapping it. Replacing thecrumpled wing with one off a derelict P-39,mechanics more or less balanced a set of recy-cled propeller blades by pouring molten leadinto them until they felt right. Christened TheResurrection, this battered Bell continued tooperate over Cactus for months.

Unknown to the Jagstaffel, 2,400 battle-hardened Japanese soldiers commanded byMaj. Gen. Kiyotake Kawaguchi were slowlymoving into assault positions along the Amer-ican perimeter. The tempo increased; seeminglyevery night there was a naval barrage while“Tojo Time” brought with it an inexhaustiblerain of enemy bombs. One 1,000-poundernearly buried Major Brannon alive on Septem-ber 12, when it exploded five feet from his com-mand bunker. Badly wounded by a shrapnelfragment, Brannon hastily turned command ofthe 67th over to Captain Thompson beforeboarding an outbound transport plane for med-ical treatment.

That night Washing Machine Charliedropped flares to mark American lines, signal-ing the start of another naval bombardment.Instead of targeting Henderson Field as usual,this barrage pummeled American positions ona grassy ridge 1,700 yards to the south. Oncethe warships ceased fire, riflemen fromKawaguchi’s 35th Brigade began moving for-ward to take that key terrain feature.

Leathernecks from the 1st Marine RaiderBattalion and 1st Parachute Battalion bluntedthese probing attacks, but Lt. Col. Merritt A.“Red Mike” Edson, commanding the Ameri-can defense, knew more were coming. “They’retesting, just testing,” Red Mike advised. “Butthey’ll be back.”

After dark on the 13th, the Japanese struckagain, their relentless assaults slowly pushingEdson’s hard fighting Marines halfway backacross the ridge. American artillery and mor-tars hammered Kawaguchi’s men, yet still theycame on. The situation had turned critical. Van-degrift fed his last reserves into the fight andprepared for the worst. If the enemy capturedEdson’s Ridge, as this knoll came to be known,they could then seize the airfields and finallyretake Guadalcanal.

Around 3 AM on September 14, Captain JohnThompson of the 67th Fighter Squadron wasawakened and told to report for orders at thePagoda. There he met a bloody, begrimedMarine officer from Edson’s headquarters whosought his help.

Thompson later recalled the scene: “Hegrabbed a pencil and a scrap of paper and drewa rough diagram of the ridge showing the posi-

tions of both sides. He said the Japanese wereexpected to make a big push at daybreak.” The67th had to stop them. There was enough fuelleft for three Airacobras. Thompson, alongwith Lieutenants B.E Davis and Bryan Brown,took off at dawn, circled the field, and dovedown to attack.

According to Thompson, “We came in lowover the trees, pulled up and saw the Marinepositions. In the clearing below were hundredsand hundreds of Japanese, ready to charge. Ilowered the nose, pressed the trigger and justmowed right through them. The next two pilotsdid the same thing.”

Enemy return fire damaged Brown’s P-400,so he used the momentum of his dive to pullaway and land deadstick on Fighter One.Thompson and Davis banked around foranother run, every moment of which was visi-ble to the 67th’s mechanics watching from lessthan a mile away. More of Kawaguchi’sinfantry fell under their chattering guns, butthis time Thompson took hits to his plane’sradiator and had to break off. Davis continuedto strafe until his ammunition trays ran empty.

The desperate airstrike broke up what wasto be the enemy’s final assault. As survivingJapanese riflemen withdrew into the jungle,Edson’s Leathernecks took time to reorganizeand reinforce their positions. The Marines, withhelp from the Army Air Forces, had held. Offi-cers later counted the bodies of 600 dead enemysoldiers below Edson’s Ridge, many of themfelled by the Airacobras’ gunfire.

Afterward, General Vandegr i f t met


National Archives

Photographed at Guadalcanal in October 1942, these Bell P-400 Airacobra fighter bombers are obviously battle worn. The Airacobra’s cannon and machine gun arma-ment proved well suited to reducing ground targets.




In the Lair of the BEAST

The initial Red Army offensive into East Prussia set the stage for the crushingadvance that followed in early 1945.

BY PAT MCTAGGART

W-Feb15 Red Army *SILO_Layout 1 12/12/14 1:14 PM Page 44


akg images

Red Army soldiers manhandle anartillery piece into position whilecomrades scramble forward across the sandy landscape nearthe East Prussian town of Tilsit on the Baltic Sea in October 1944.Soviet aircraft strike targets ofopportunity in the distance.

Soviet General Ivan Danilovich Cher-niakhovskii was in a good mood as hewaited for his generals to arrive. Bornin July 1906, in the city of Uman,Cherniakhovskii joined the RedArmy in 1924. In 1936 he attendedthe Red Army’s Academy forMotorization and Mechanization,eventually commanding the 28thTank Division in March 1941. Withthe outbreak of the war, his career

skyrocketed, not because of politicalconnections but through his actions.

From December 1941 to June 1942, hecommanded the 241st Rifle Division,

formed from his disbanded tank division.Promoted to major general in May 1942, hewas given command of the 18th Tank Corpsfor a month before he moved up to commandthe 60th Army. His troops recaptured Voronezhin January 1943, and promotion to lieutenantgeneral followed in February. The 60th Army

then took part in the Battle of Kursk and thesubsequent Dnepr and Kiev offensives.

Promoted to colonel general in March 1944,Cherniakhovskii became the commander of theWestern Front, making him the youngest frontcommander in the Red Army at age 38. Heretained command of the front when it wasrenamed the 3rd Belorussian and was pro-moted to general of the army on June 26, hav-ing received the Hero of the Soviet Union des-ignation twice.

During the Soviet summer offensive of 1944,Cherniakhovskii smashed through the lines ofthe German 3rd Panzer and 4th Armies, takingMinsk and pushing on to Vilnius, Lithuania.By the end of August, the 3rd Belorussian Fronthad crossed the Nieman River and taken Kau-nas before moving farther west. In September,Cherniakhovskii’s troops stopped to regroupand resupply. They had achieved great victo-ries, but replacements were also needed beforethey could continue their advance.

It had been a good run for the general. Hismen had helped liberate Belorussia while inflict-ing heavy losses on the enemy. Now, in the earlydays of October, the 3rd Belorussian Frontstood on the border of East Prussia—the firstprovince of Germany proper to be threatenedby the Red Army. Some of his advance unitshad already crossed the border in small prob-ing actions.

The Russians regarded East Prussia as theseat of German militarism. Many of theWehrmacht’s top commanders came from thearea, which had produced highly trained sol-diers for centuries. It was from East Prussia thatthe Teutonic Knights launched forays intoPoland and the Baltic regions in the 13th and14th centuries.

During World War I, the Russian Armyinvaded the province and had suffered decisivedefeats in the 1914 Battle of Tannenburg andthe 2nd Battle of the Masurian Lakes in 1915.Driving the czar’s army back, German forces


then moved into Russia. Detached from the restof Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, EastPrussia was reconnected with the Third Reichafter the defeat of Poland.

During the opening days of the invasion ofthe Soviet Union in 1941, East Prussia served asthe jumping off point for Army Group North’sdrive to Leningrad. Now, Army Group Northwas bottled up in the Baltic States and Cherni-akhovskii had received orders from Stavka (theSoviet high command) to continue his advance.It was time to enter the lair of the Germanbeast.

As his commanders filed into a crucial meet-ing, Cherniakhovskii greeted each one beforedirecting them to the map table. The mapsshowed a somewhat detailed area of the EastPrussian border and the interior of theprovince. Stavka’s orders were rather ambigu-ous. Given his successes against the Germandefenses in the Baltic States, it seemed that itmight be possible for Cherniakhovskii to drivehis forces straight through the German lines tothe province’s capital of Königsberg. However,Soviet aerial reconnaissance showed that theGermans had prepared a series of defensivelines and strongpoints to prevent such a move.

Once the initial breakthrough occurred,Cherniakhovskii could weigh his options as thebattle developed. If the German defenses col-lapsed quickly, the possibility of a quick driveto Königsberg was still in the cards. If not, the3rd Belorussian Front could penetrate as far aspossible and dig in to await support from itsneighboring fronts. Cherniakovskii could alsoswing his armies north to the Baltic Sea, cut-ting off several German divisions defendingpositions along the coast. Whatever the initialoutcome, the Soviet general planned to have hisfront inside East Prussia and not be kicked out.

Pointing out these possibilities, Cherni-akovskii unfolded his plan of attack, whichwould become known as the Goldap Opera-tion. His finger moved from the Soviet frontlinepositions through the initial German defensesto the town of Gumbinnen. From there, he fol-lowed the Gumbinnen-Insterberg-Königsburghighway to the East Prussian capital. Thatwould be his main axis of attack.

Colonel General Kuzma Nikitovich Galit-skii’s 11th Guards Army, composed of nine rifledivisions and an armored regiment, would hitthe Germans in an area around Edytkau, about40 kilometers west of Gumbinnen. To his left,the 31st Army (seven rifle divisions) under Col.Gen. Vasilii Vasilevich Glagolev, was toadvance on the Rominte Heath to the town ofGoldap. On the 11th Guards’ right, Lt. Gen.Ivan Illich Luidnikov’s 39th Army (eight rifle

divisions, an armored brigade and regiment,and an assault gun regiment) would breachGerman lines around Schirwindt, located about55 kilometers northeast of Gumbinnen, andhead for Schlossberg. He would be supportedby Lt. Gen. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Luchin-skii’s 28th Army (nine rifle divisions, anarmored brigade, two armored regiments, andtwo assault gun regiments).

Colonel General Nikolai Ivanovich Krylov’s5th Army (eight rifle divisions and an armoredbrigade and regiment) would be held in reserveto exploit any breaches in the German line. Inaddition, the 3rd Belorussian Front had Maj.Gen. Aleksii Semenovich Burdeinei’s 2nd GuardsTank Corps (three armored brigades and amechanized brigade), which would operate asan independent formation. Once the initialobjectives were taken, Cherniakhovskii coulddecide how he wanted the assault to progress.

Facing Cherniakovskii were the battered divi-sions of General Friedrich Hossbach’s FourthArmy. Since retreating into East Prussia, thesetroops had been busy repairing long neglecteddefenses. Hitler’s propensity for holding cap-tured territory contributed to the neglect sincehe thought preparing defenses too far behindthe front would lead to unauthorized with-

drawals. However, East Prussia was now thefront, and the men worked feverishly toimprove positions that might stop the Russians.

According to Cherniakhovskii’s plan, themain weight of the attack would fall on Gen-eral Gerhard Matzky’s XXIV Army Corps andGeneral Hermann Preiss’s XXVII Army Corps.Both men had served as general staff officers inBerlin before commanding forces on the East-ern Front, and both had received the Knight’sCross as divisional commander.

In early October, Matzky’s corps consisted oftwo infantry divisions, the 1st and the 56th.The 56th, commanded by Brig. Gen. EdmundBlaurock, was newly reformed after being dec-imated during the Soviet summer offensive.Brig. Gen. Hans Schittnig’s 1st Infantry Divi-sion was Matzky’s ace in the hole. The veterandivision was largely made up of men from EastPrussia and had garrisoned Königsberg, Inster-burg, and other East Prussian cities before thewar. During the coming battle they would notonly be fighting for the Reich but for the homesof their friends and families.

Preiss’s corps was a different case. Althoughhe controlled four divisions, three of them (the549th, 561st, and 547th) were Volksgrenadierdivisions that had been raised in July. The


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Young men of the German RAD, or Reich Labor Service, dig fortifications in a wooded area of East Prussiaduring the summer of 1944. The Germans knew that East Prussia would be a likely location for a Soviet RedArmy offensive into German territory and tried to prepare for the coming onslaught.


Volksgrenadier division (VGD) was a forma-tion created out of necessity. It had only six bat-talions compared to the normal nine and had ahigher proportion of automatic weapons thanthe standard German infantry division. Formedaround a small cadre of veteran troops and offi-cers, the Volksgrenadier divisions were fleshedout with raw recruits, teenagers, and men con-sidered too old or unfit for the regular army.Their main role was considered defensive.

The 549th was led by Brig. Gen. Karl Jank.Brig. Gen. Walter Gorn led the 561st, and Brig.Gen. Ernst Meiners commanded the 547th.Gorn and Meiners had received the Knight’sCross for bravery in battle. The other unit inPreiss’s corps was Maj. Gen. Friedrich Weber’s130th Infantry Division, which had been badlymauled during the summer but had receivedsome replacements from the recently disbanded196th Infantry Division. As the battle pro-gressed, both of these corps would be rein-forced, and the units would be traded back andforth as needed.

Hans Schittnig had only recently taken com-mand of the 1st Division. He was just gettingto know the division, and he made almost dailyvisits to the front, talking to his regimental, bat-talion, and company commanders and gettingtheir input on what their opponents might beplanning. On his first visit, he was appalled bythe inadequacy of the positions that his troopswere expected to defend.

The division had a 20-kilometer front in theSchirwindt area just inside the border. Thetown itself was located about 55 kilometersnortheast of Gumbinnen. As the division pulledinto the sector, enemy probing patrols andharassing artillery fire made it clear that theRussians knew of its arrival. The increasedenemy activity left little doubt that the sectorwas in danger of an impending attack, andSchittnig’s men worked around the clock toimprove the almost nonexistent positions.Aided by two corps engineer battalions, theymanaged to build a frontline barrier as well asa secondary line about three kilometers behindthe first. Rear area troops begin building morepositions behind the first two in order to havefallback points to give the division a fightingchance.

Work went on in other sectors of the front aswell. Hossbach and his corps commanders knewthat time was running out, and the old axiomthat “sweat saves blood” was repeated again andagain as the veterans and new recruits workedtogether before the Soviet attack. It would help,but most of the positions along the front werestill inadequate to stop the initial assault thatCherniakhovskii had planned.

On the Soviet side, the men had been bom-barded with propaganda. The Germans hadoccupied Mother Russia for three years, com-mitting many atrocities against soldiers andcivilians alike. The men of the Red Army hadpaid for the liberation of their country in blood,taking millions of casualties. It was now timefor revenge.

One of the most prolific propagandists onthe Soviet side was Ilya Ehrenberg. His pam-phlets were read daily by the political officersto the men of the 3rd Belorussian Front, fuel-ing their hatred for the enemy. One such pam-phlet read:

“The Germans are not human beings. Fromnow on, the word ‘German’ strikes us to thequick. We have nothing to discuss. We will notget excited. We will kill. If you have not killed

at least one German a day, you have wastedthat day…. If you cannot kill a German with abullet, kill him with your bayonet. If your partof the front is quiet and there is no fighting,then kill a German in the meantime…. If youhave already killed a German, then kill anotherone—there is nothing more amusing than aheap of German corpses. Don’t count the days;don’t count the kilometers. Count only onething—the number of Germans you have killed.Kill the Germans! Kill the Germans! Kill!”

Ehrenberg’s diatribes were not just directedagainst the German soldier. His message to theRed Army soldiers, heard over and over again,called for retaliation against the German peo-ple as a whole.

“Kill! Kill!” he wrote. “In the German racethere is nothing but evil; not one among the liv-ing, not one among the unborn but is evil! Fol-low the precepts of Comrade Stalin. Stamp outthe fascist beast once and for all in its lair! Useforce and break the racial pride of these Ger-man women. Take them as your lawful booty.Kill! As you storm onward, kill, you gallant sol-diers of the Red Army.”

With those words ringing in their ears, Cher-niakhovskii’s men prepared themselves for bat-tle. They were ready for vengeance, and thecivilian population of East Prussia would be thefirst to feel their wrath.

In Hitler’s headquarters there was denial. TheFührer could not bring himself to believe thatEast Prussia faced disaster. He refused repeatedrequests from Hossbach to turn the province

into an operations zone. Such a move wouldput East Prussia under the control of the Army,usurping the power of Gauleiter Erich Koch,who had been in the position since 1928. Afanatical Nazi, Koch had joined the party in1922 with membership number 90. Ever sinceHitler had come to power, he was charged withcontrolling every aspect of civilian life in theprovince.

If Hossbach’s request were granted, he wouldbe able to order the evacuation of civilians inpotential combat areas. The Army could alsouse the Nazi Party apparatus to help preparedefenses, which had so far been left to Koch,whose preparations were more of a hindrancethan having any military value. Hitler stead-


National Archives

Advancing near the border of East Prussia, Red Army soldiers launch a probing attack against nearby Germanpositions. The infantry support machine guns were often mounted on wheeled carriages, and these are promi-nently visible as the troops rush across a farmyard in September 1944.


fastly refused the notion—a move that wouldcost tens of thousands of civilian lives throughMay 1945.

German reconnaissance units had been activeduring the first half of October. On October14, after receiving intelligence reports and aer-ial photographs, Hossbach judged that he hadonly a day or two before the Russiansunleashed hell. As his troops filed into their for-ward positions there was an uneasy calm in theair. October 15 passed slowly, with the men stillworking on strengthening their positions beforefalling asleep—the sounds of insects echoingthrough the swamps and forests.

The calm was shattered at 4 AM on the 16th,when hundreds of Soviet artillery pieces openedfire. A three- to four-hour bombardment hit theGerman front, raining a hail of iron and explo-sives on the enemy positions. The intensity ofthe bombardment and accompanying bombingfrom the air shocked the German defenders.Such firepower had rarely been seen on theEastern Front. Men were buried alive astrenches collapsed or were blown apart by theheavy mortar shells fired by corps and armyartillery units. Frantic calls for help were cutshort as communication lines were blown apart

and eardrums were shattered by the force ofthe concussions from heavy shells.

As the bombardment moved to the rearwardGerman positions, the troops of Luchinskii’s28th Army advanced on Matzky’s corps. Theyexpected to find only corpses and dazed sur-vivors of the bombardment and the shatteredremains of the German defenses, but theyreceived an entirely different experience. Ris-ing from the rubble, the soldiers of the 1st and56th Infantry Divisions greeted the advancingSoviets with a withering fire. As the bombard-ment passed on, men struggled to right machineguns and mortars, while others dug up buriedcomrades. Two-man details were also sent torepair a damaged radio line that had been cut,and as more men were put back into action thedivisional and corps artillery battalions, guidedby surviving forward observers, brought downa wall of fire on the advancing Red Army.

Losses in front of Schittnig’s division wereparticularly heavy. Five rifle divisions, sup-ported by the 516th Armored Regiment, soughtto break the East Prussians, but attack afterattack was beaten off. Tank hunter squadsroamed the front, cautiously creeping up onSoviet tanks that had outrun the infantry and

destroying them with “sticky mines,” whichwere attached to the tracks or rear of thearmored vehicle. Many of these men were killedbefore they could accomplish their missions,but enough succeeded to make the Sovietspause.

Luchinskii ordered the self-propelled guns ofthe 122nd and 881st Assault Gun Regimentsforward. Reaching the front, the guns openedfire point blank, targeting several Germanstrongpoints. They were answered by the75mm antitank guns of Panzer-Jäger-Abteilung1. Those guns that had survived the earliershelling opened up from their concealed posi-tions, hitting several Soviet vehicles and forcingthe rest to withdraw.

Luchinskii was undeterred, and he orderedmore units into the battle. Calling upon his lastreserves, Schittnig succeeded in preventing adecisive breakthrough and ordered his troopsto retreat in hedgehog fashion. The Soviets hadreceived a bloody nose in his sector, but the 1sthad also paid the price with casualties on thefront line reaching 10 to 12 percent. With sur-vivors making it back to the secondary line, the1st Division prepared for another onslaught.

To the south, Galitskii’s 11th Guards Armyslammed into Jank’s 549th VolksgrenadierDivision, which was supported by elements ofMaj. Gen. Hans Bergan’s 390th SicherungsDivision (Security Division or SD). Bergan’smen were lightly armed, and although their pri-mary purpose was to control rear areas of thearmy, they suddenly found themselves in thethick of the fighting. The division itself was ahodgepodge of units that included a regimentalsecurity group, four companies from the divi-sional war school, engineer and signals com-panies, and a replacement battalion among itsformations.

To Jank’s right, Corn’s 561st VolksgrenadierDivision also came under heavy attack. With thehelp of Sturmgeschütz (assault gun) Brigade 276,commanded by Captain Axel Sewero, the Russ-ian assault was slowed, allowing the Germansto retreat toward Ebenrode and the Pissa River.Some Soviets managed to infiltrate the thin Ger-man defenses and had worked their way into therear areas. In one incident, 1st Lt. FriedrichStück, commanding Sewero’s 3rd Company,stopped his unit in front of a vast cornfield.

Stück, thinking that it would be a perfect spotfor an enemy ambush, ordered his guns to firehigh explosive shells into the field. A memberof the unit described the scene: “When we fired,we couldn’t believe our eyes. Hundreds of Russ-ian infantry had wanted to lead us into anambush and annihilate us in close combat.”

The Soviets, panicked by the fire from the


Map 2015 Philip Schwartzberg, Meridian Mapping, Minneapolis, MN

The Red Army offensive into East Prussia in the autumn of 1944 was a harbinger of the death and destructionthat were to come for German military personnel and civilians alike.


assault guns, retreated. Stück ordered his com-pany to continue firing, cutting down dozensof Russian soldiers. His accompanying infantryjoined in as the assault guns advanced. Dozensmore of the enemy perished before some madeit to the safety of nearby woods, but it was clearthat they had been totally disorganized by theattack as they disappeared among the trees.

While soldiers at the front struggled to holda cohesive line, the Red Air Force struck Ger-man supply lines in the rear. The town ofGumbinnen felt the full fury of the Soviet air-men as fighter bombers smashed the rail linethat ran through it. A follow-up by mediumbombers caused more damage, almost destroy-ing the entire town.

Frustrated by the first day’s action, Cherni-akhovskii urged his generals to make betterprogress, and October 17 opened with anothermassive bombardment. The East Prussians ofSchittnig’s division, which occupied positions

in and around Schirwindt, were once again theobject of Luidinikov’s 39th Army. The 1st Divi-sion stopped the initial attack of the day deadin its tracks.

Luidinikov then sent armor and infantry tooutflank the town from the north and south.Once again the antitank guns of Pz. Jag. Abt. 1destroyed several Soviet tanks, but the movewas effective. The Russians were able to enterthe town, and the battle deteriorated intohouse-to-house fighting. By evening, the Ger-mans had evacuated the town, leaving many ofSchirwindt’s 1,000 inhabitants dead in thestreets.

Meanwhile, Galitskii was making decentprogress against the hard-pressed 549th Volks-grenadier Division. After taking the village ofWirballen, about eight kilometers east of Eben-rode, the Soviets advanced another three kilo-meters and attacked Edytkau. Jank’s grenadiersfought for every house, but the enemy numberswere too great. Abandoning the town, the549th made a fighting withdrawal to Ebenrode,where it prepared to make a final stand to pro-tect the highway leading to Königsberg.

As they approached Ebenrode, the grenadiers

found a welcome sight. A battalion of the103rd Panzer Brigade, commanded by Maj.Gen. Werner Mummert, met them on the road.Mummert’s tanks were supported by a panzer-grenadier battalion, which immediately formeda defensive line in front of the town. As theSoviets approached, the combined infantry andtank fire demolished the advance units of Gal-itskii’s army, forcing the Soviet general to haltthe attack.

With his main avenue of attack blocked, Gal-itskii ordered the bulk of his army to movesouth and then head west, threading its waythrough an extremely marshy area filled withseveral small streams. It was a risky move, espe-cially for his armored units. Once through themarsh, the Russians would be greeted with alandscape marked by hills and valleys, whichwould hinder reconnaissance. Nevertheless,with the unexpectedly strong German defensein the north both Cherniakhovskii and Galitskiiagreed that the main effort of the assault shouldbe switched to the southern portion of the 3rdBelorussian Front.

The assault on the 17th finally shocked localNazi Party leaders into action. The Kreisleiter(district leader) of the Schlossberg District,where Schirwindt was located, belatedly issuedan order for the civilian evacuation of the dis-trict, too late for many civilians who had beencaught up in the fighting. Farther south, theKreisleiter of the Goldap District issued similarorders to his people after Glagolev’s 31st Army

had forced Brig. Gen. Siegfried Hass’s 170thInfantry Division and Brig. Gen. WernerSchultz’s 131st Infantry Division to retreat.

Panicked men, women, and children tookflight with only what they could carry, andhorse-drawn wagons clogged the roads, ham-pering the movement of reinforcements to thefront. The resulting chaos, which could havebeen prevented if Hossbach’s earlier requesthad been granted, worked in favor of the Rus-sians. During breaks in the clouds, Soviet fight-ers swooped down, strafing the columns andcausing more panic as the refugees fled west-ward.

By the morning of October 18, Galitskii’stroops, having made it through the marsh, wereassembled near the village of Schlossbach. Underan umbrella of Red Air Force fighters andbombers, the 11th Guards Army moved for-ward. While the Russian forces left at Ehrenrodeattacked German forces there, the bulk of thearmy moved westward, outflanking the Eben-rode defenses and continuing on to the RominteRiver. At the town of Grosswatersdorf, about 25kilometers southwest of Ebenrode, Galitskii’sforces crossed the Rominte and reached rela-tively open ground. From there, the 11th GuardsArmy pushed north and west on the plainbetween the Rominte and Angerapp Rivers.

Hearing news of Galitskii’s action, Hitlerissued an order to mobilize the Volkssturm,which was composed of boys and men whowere so far considered unfit for military ser-


National Archives

National Archives

ABOVE: Supported by heavy self-propelled assault guns, Soviet soldiers advance rapidly toward the west andGerman territory in East Prussia. LEFT: The mulitated corpses of women and children lie gathered for burial in theEast Prussian town of Metgethen. Soviet troops were encouraged to exact revenge and retribution for the atroci-ties suffered in the months that followed the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941.


vice, even in the Volksgrenadier divisions.Members of the units ranged in age from theirearly teens to well into their 60s. For the mostpart, Volkssturm units were not well trainedand were armed with various weapons thatincluded both German and captured enemyguns. Like their Volksgrenadier counterparts,they relied on light machine guns and Panzer-faust antitank weapons to stop the enemy.

Volkssturm battalions were usually com-manded by elderly or crippled reserve officersor by Nazi Party hacks. To make it worse,Gauleiter Koch insisted that the party remain incontrol of the units. This usually led to a totalbreakdown in communications with Wehr-macht forces, which resulted in neither forceknowing what the other was doing or wherethey were.

In the west, the Volkssturm usually meltedaway at the first sign of approaching Allied

troops. In the east, however, many Volkssturmunits fought bravely trying to stop theencroachment of the Red Army on their home-land. Like the East Prussian units of the regu-lar army, they were fighting for their familiesand their homes.

As Galitskii’s units advanced, Cherniakovskiiordered Luchinskii’s 28th Army to begin rede-ploying to the south to aid Glagolev’s 31stArmy in its advance across the Rominte Heath.This left Krylov’s 5th Army to continue pound-ing Matzky’s northern front.

As the Russians redeployed, Hossbachrushed to bring reinforcements to hold hisflanks. The recently formed Hermann Göring(HG) Parachute-Panzer Corps, consisting of the1st HG Parachute-Panzer Division (ColonelHans-Horst von Necker) and the 2nd HG Para-chute-Panzergrenadier Division (Colonel ErichWalther), came in from the north. Colonel Rolf

Lippert’s 5th Panzer Division also arrived onthe northern flank. Major Werner Freiherr vonBeschwitz’s Schwere Panzer Abteiling (HeavyTank Detachment) 505, which already had ele-ments fighting in the area, was also being read-ied for a possible counterattack.

In the south, elements of Colonel Hans-Joachim Kahler’s Führer-Grenadier Brigade(FGB) was arriving piecemeal. The FGB hadbeen formed in the summer, and although wellled, its troops were largely inexperienced.

While the 1st Infantry Division held strong inthe north, the combined forces of Galitskii andGlagolev continued to push the Germans backin the south on the 19th. Although the Sovietswere advancing, they were paying a price inmen and equipment. Defending the villages ofAlexbrück and Goriten southeast of Ebenrode,the Tiger tanks of von Beschwitz’s heavy tankdetachment knocked out seven Russian tanksbefore retreating to avoid being outflanked.The Germans were trading land for time, allow-ing the Soviets to edge westward and exposingtheir flanks for a counterattack.

The ferocity of the defense was costly for theGermans as well. Captain Gerhard Hoppe,commander of Sturmgeschutz Brigade 279, waskilled. His replacement, Captain Hans-JoachimHeise, was badly wounded in fighting on thenorthern edge of the Rominte Heath. His placewas taken by 1st Lt. Gerhard Stahlhacke, whocontinued the fighting withdrawal.

On October 20, the Soviet assault continuedunabated. A local attack on Galitskii’s rightflank was launched by the HG Panzer Corpsand von Beschwitz’s 505th. Von Beschwitz’sunit claimed four tanks and 26 antitank gunsdestroyed. The attack drove the Russians far-ther south, but the Soviets strengthened theirflank with more antitank units and continuedto advance toward the Angerapp and the rivercrossing at the village of Nemmersdorf.

While Galitskii fanned out to the north andwest, Luchinskii’s 28th Army was advancingon Goldap. Much of the town’s population of13,000 was already on its way out of the town,but many civilians remained. Schulz’s 131stInfantry Division, holding positions east of thetown, was successfully parrying Soviet attacks.He was supported by the 400-man strongGoldap Volkssturm Battalion. When the bat-talion was formed, Schulz immediately put itunder his command, refusing to accept partyauthority over the unit. Since then it had beenholding a defensive position between two ofSchulz’s battalions and had proven itself incombat.

October 21 saw more heavy fighting asGumbinnen came under attack. Soviet tanks,


ullstein bild / The Granger Collection, New York

In October 1944, German civilian residents of an East Prussian town are undergoing training for theVolkssturm, units composed of old men and boys who offered a last line of defense against the maraudingRed Army. These ill-prepared men are thus far without uniforms and fielding antiquated weapons.


some of them the massive IS (Josef Stalin) IIs.These heavy tanks weighed 45 tons fullyloaded, and had up to 160mm of armor forprotection. They were armed with a 122mmgun, which made them dangerous opponents,as Lieutenant Alfred Regeniter had alreadyfound out. As part of Sewero’s Sturmgeschutz276 Brigade, Regeniter had engaged part of the75th Tank Breakthrough Regiment near the vil-lage of Kleinschellendorf, nine kilometers northof Ebenrode. Recalling the engagement, Regen-iter wrote:

“I spotted an IS II with the telescopic sightstanding empty at about 2,000 meters. Everyone of our armor piercing shells hit exactly—we could see the tracers gliding slower andslower toward the target, six times—allbounced off!”

Regeniter had better luck that evening. Aburning T-34 revealed an IS II lurking in thedarkness. After firing four rounds with noeffect, his fifth shot managed to pierce the giant,which blew up a couple of minutes later.

By the end of the day, the Soviets had pushedeven farther westward. Cherniakhovskii, frus-trated by the continued German resistance, hadreleased his reserves, Burdeinei’s 2nd GuardsTank Corps, prematurely. Moving quickly, Bur-deinei’s 25th Guards Tank Brigade and 4thGuards Mechanized Assault Brigade swepttoward the Angerapp River and took the cross-ing at Nemmersdorf. After occupying Nem-mersdorf the Soviets set up defensive positionson the western edge of the village.

The Russian spearhead was now less than 80kilometers from Hitler’s headquarters at Ras-tenburg. Some of Hitler’s aides urged him toevacuate the headquarters, but he refused. Hewas worried about the effect on the morale ofthe troops if it appeared that he had abandonedthem.

Cherniakhovskii now found himself in arather precarious position. Galitskii had madethe farthest advance, but his flanks wereexposed until the neighboring armies overcameresistance in their sectors. In the Schlossbergarea the 1st Infantry Division still resisted allefforts from the 5th Army to break its line. Far-ther south, the line ran across Ebenrode toGumbinnen. That line had been strengthenedby the HG Panzer Division and Lippert’s 5thPanzer. The arrival of Brig. Gen. GüntherSachs’s 18th Flak Division added a deadly arrayof antiaircraft guns, including the renowned88mm, which were also used in an artillery andantitank capacity, to combat the Russians.

Fighting near Gumbinnen and Trakehnenwas particularly fierce. Elements of the HGCorps were forced to give way—a move that

threatened Trakehnen. As the infantryretreated, it ran into panzers from the HGPanzer Division, which had been sent to rein-force the sector. A swift counterattack pushedthe Soviets out of their newly captured posi-tions and restored the line.

Heavy attacks at Gumbinnen were repulsedby reinforcements from the 5th Panzer Divi-sion. In a series of sharp engagements the Rus-sians sustained substantial casualties. Germanlosses were also severe and included the com-mander of the XXVII Army Corps, GeneralPreiss, who was killed in action about five kilo-

meters southwest of Gumbinnen near the vil-lage of Hasenrode. His replacement, Maj. Gen.Maximillian Felzmann, arrived five days laterto take command.

To Galitskiis’s south, the 31st and 28thArmies were clawing their way toward Goldap.The hard-pressed 131st and 170th InfantryDivisions bore the brunt of the attack. A Sovietarmored column managed to break through the131st’s line, but disaster was averted by thetimely arrival of Sturmgeschutz Brigade 179,which destroyed several Russian tanks andforced the rest to retreat. A second break-through met the same fate. Goldap itself wouldfall the next day when the 170th was forcedout of its positions within the town.

Late on the evening of October 21, Hossbachordered a counterattack. He planned to use the5th Panzer, with von Beschwitz’s 505th attached,to attack from the north and link up with theFGB, which would advance from the south. If allwent well Galitskii’s forward elements would becut off from the main part of the army and bedestroyed. German units covering the flankscould then move forward and establish a shorterdefensive line on the main front.

The assault units moved into their jump-offpositions during the early hours of the 22nd.After a short artillery barrage, the Germansmoved forward. The Soviets, caught off guard,put up heavy resistance in some sectors andabandoned others without much of a fight. VonBeschwitz’s detachment recaptured the villageof Grünfliess, five kilometers southwest ofTrakenhnen, and continued to roll forwardwith the 5th Panzer Division.

With the support of 150 infantrymen, Lieu-tenant Regeniter, leading seven assault guns,attacked toward the village of Kleinschellen-dorf, eight kilometers north of Ebenrode. ThreeSoviet tanks were quickly destroyed as the Ger-mans advanced on the village. Regeniterrecalled:

“The enemy pulled back and we occupied thevillage in the early morning fog. Our infantryprovided security in the direction of the enemy.We crushed three light antitank guns under ourtracks and took a 76.2mm ‘Ratschbum’ [Ger-man nickname for the Soviet antitank gun thatmade a distinctive sound as it fired] in tow.”Regeniter had already knocked out five enemytanks during the first hours of the attack.

In the Daken sector the FGB was fighting offvicious counterattacks as the men pushed for-ward toward their objective—Grosswalters-dorf. In Daken itself a panzergrenadier battal-ion, supported by one Panther medium tank,held out against mixed tank and infantryattacks. By the end of the day, advance elementsof the FGB had reached Tellrode, about onekilometer south of Grosswaltersdorf, but themain objective was still in Soviet hands.

Around Nemmersdorf a variety ofVolkssturm and ad hoc units had formed adefensive line around the small Soviet bridge-head. Günter Koschorrek was a member of onesuch unit. Recovering from wounds receivedtwo months earlier in Galicia, he had been putin charge of a group of men training to becomepanzergrenadiers. When Cherniakovskiiopened his offensive, Koschorrek and his menformed up and were trucked eastward.

With the attack near Grosswaltersdorff goingwell, Koschorrek’s unit and others were orderedto attack the enemy positions to their front.Casualties were initially high as Soviet machineguns swept the field, but the Germans pressedon, taking forward enemy positions and reach-ing the outskirts of Nemmersdorff. There, theyfound out what total war meant.

“When we moved through the village, wefound no more Soviets,” Koschorrek recalled.“But we were greeted by grisly scenes of thepeople that had been caught up there, whichreminded me of the atrocities suffered by Soviet


National Archives

Bombers of the Soviet Red Air Force fly toward tar-gets in East Prussia. Soviet aircraft executed count-less sorties against German targets in the path oftheir offensive launched in the autumn of 1944.


villagers from their own soldiers, something Ihad often seen during our retreats early in1944. Here were German women, whose cloth-ing had been torn from their bodies so that theycould be violated and finally mutilated in hor-rific ways.

“In one barn we found an old man whosethroat had been pierced with a pitchfork, pin-ning him to the door. All of the feather mattressesin one of the bedrooms had been sliced open andwere stained with blood. Two cut-up femalecorpses were lying amid the feathers with twomurdered children. The sight was so gruesomethat some of our recruits fled in panic.”

A Volkssturm member named Karl Potrekdescribed finding “four naked women who hadbeen strangled behind a cart.” He estimated thatthere were about 70 civilian bodies, all but onebeing women and children. About eight kilome-ters to the southeast in the village of Schulzen-walde, about 95 more bodies were found.

Some of the body counts may have beenexaggerated, but it was clear that Ehrenberg’spropaganda had done its work well. As oneSoviet soldier stated, “All of us knew very wellthat if the girls were German they could beraped and then shot.” Another added, “Oursoldiers have not dealt with East Prussia anyworse than the Germans did with Smolensk.We hate Germany and the Germans deeply.”

He was right on that point. However pow-erful Ehrenberg’s words were, many of theaverage Red Army soldiers had already wit-nessed or heard about the atrocities perpetu-ated by German forces on the Soviet people.There were few rules of war on the EasternFront, and the slaughter of German civilianscaught up in the chaos of war was payback forthree years of terror that people living underthe German occupation had suffered.

The northern and southern German pincersmet on October 23, establishing a tenuousdefensive line that faced both east and west. Abattle group of the 5th Panzer Division underCaptain Alfred Jaedtke, commander of the I/Pz.Gr. Rgt.14, set out to the west to take on theSoviet units that had been cut off. Jaedtkehoped that those Russian units would becrushed between his battle group and the forcesthat were attacking from the west.

Russian pressure at Daken had finally forcedthe Germans out of the town. The battalionholding it retreated and set up a new defensiveline. Meanwhile, elements of the HG PanzerDivision were moving to the area to reinforcethe FGB. The commander of the I/HG Pz. Rgt.,Captain Joachim Renz, was killed as his bat-talion engaged the enemy.

Undeterred, 1st Lt. Gerhard Tschierschwitz,

commanding the battalion’s 2nd Company,moved forward with his men and pushed theenemy out of Wirballen. Lacking infantry sup-port, he continued the advance to the village ofJägershagen, seven kilometers southwest ofTrakehnen. In the village he found an enemycommand post and assembly area.

“There was no hesitation as to what to do,”he wrote in a letter to this author some 40 yearslater. “The Russians had not expected us to showup, and they were astonished to see us in theirrear area. I immediately ordered my panzers toadvance and use direct fire on the enemy.”

The ensuing engagement netted the 2nd Com-pany 16 destroyed Russian tanks, 16 antitankguns, six artillery pieces, and 13 machine guns.Tschierschwitz’a panzers also destroyed the com-mand post and killed almost 300 Russians.

With the Soviet troops near Nemmersdorf inconfusion, Jaedtke’s battle group surprised sev-eral units from the rear. He kept moving andfinally entered the village after overcomingenemy trench systems guarding Nemmersdorf’seastern sector. During his westward march,Jaedtke passed through the village of Brauers-dorf, about eight kilometers east of Nemmers-dorf. He noted:

“In Brauersdorf itself there were manywomen next to the village road who had theirbreasts cut off. I saw this with my own eyes.”

Although Galitskii’s spearhead had beenblunted, Cherniakhovskii had no intention ofadmitting defeat. He ordered his armies to con-tinue the attack, knowing that the Germans hadsuffered considerable casualties that could noteasily be made up. On the German side, it wasa matter of thrust and parry as the weakenedunits tried to keep their line intact.

Von Beschwitz’s heavy panzer detachmentand the 5th Panzer’s II/Pz. Gr. Rgt. 14 attackedGrosswaltersdorf on October 24. Russianforces, dug in on the western outskirts of thetown, threw up a wall of fire as the Germansadvanced. It was too much for the Germans,who were forced to retreat.

Fighting renewed along the front the follow-ing day with neither side making much head-way. Both were realigning their forces, hopingto outguess their opponent and exploit anyweaknesses. One of the few successes of the dayoccurred when Galitskii took Ebenrode on thenight of the 25th, which threatened the flanksof German units defending the highway toKönigsberg.

On October 26, a powerful Red Army com-bined force, including 50 tanks, broke througha sector of the HG Panzer Division’s defensiveline in the Trakehnen area. The commander ofthe 1st Company of the German division’s anti-

tank battalion, 1st Lt. Karl-Heinz Wallhäusser,launched an immediate counterattack. Collect-ing stragglers along the way for infantry sup-port, Wallhäusser’s self-propelled antitank gunsstruck the Russian flank, destroying a numberof tanks and heavy weapons and driving theremainder back to their start line.

In another sector, Private Albert Plapper,leading the 4th Company of HG’s Pz. Gr. Rgt.2, took over a machine gun that had been putout of action and stalled a Russian infantryattack. The Soviets called up tank support. Asthey approached, the 18-year-old Plapperdestroyed five of them with a Panzerschreckhand-held reloadable 88mm antitank weapon.He then led a counterattack that threw the Rus-sians back and restored the line.

At Grünweiden, about 4½ kilometers north-east of Grosswaltersdorf, a Soviet attack alsobroke through the German line. Four of vonBeschwitz’s Tigers were sent to the village ofWeidengrund, about two kilometers to thenortheast. There they engaged the point of theRussian attack, sending the enemy tanks andinfantry reeling.

Bringing up reinforcements, the Russiansattacked en masse, pushing the Tigers back.The situation was saved by the timely arrival ofsome Panthers and assault guns, whichlaunched a counterattack that broke the Sovietassault. Nine Soviet tanks and four antitankguns were destroyed in the operation.

Fighting continued the following day withthe same give and take. On the 28th, Schittnig’s1st Infantry came under another massiveattack. In the previous 12 days, the 1st hadbeen pushed back about 25 kilometers, but itstill hung onto Schlossburg. The division hadalso destroyed about 130 tanks and assaultguns as it fought to hold off the Russians.

The preliminary bombardment was huge,and parts of three Soviet armies took part inthe assault, but Schittnig’s men held. Smallreserve forces were formed from the decliningnumbers of the division and were rushed to anyarea that was in danger of a breakthrough. Bykeeping his reserves moving up and down theline, Schittnig was able to stop the Russians asthey attempted to break his defenses.

As the situation settled down once again,Hossbach moved to smash the Soviet salientaround Goldap that threatened the valleybetween the Rominte and Angerapp Rivers. Hecalled on Maj. Gen. Karl Decker, commanderof the XXXIX Panzer Corps, which had trans-ferred from the Third Panzer Army, to makethe attack.

The assault called for a two-pronged attack.From the north, Lippert’s 5th Panzer (which



Decker had previously commanded), supportedby the FGB’s panzergrenadier battalion, wouldmake a thrust toward Goldap. In the south,Haus’s 50th Infantry, supported by the FGB’sPanzer-Fusilier Battalion, would move to linkup with the northern force.

All of the units set for the attack had beenweakened by the previous fighting. For exam-ple, the monthly condition report of the 5thPanzer showed a total of only 21 Panthers and12 Panzer IV tanks fit for operations onNovember 1.

During the night of November 2, the twoforces moved into their jump-off points. There,they waited in darkness in the snow-coveredterrain. As midnight approached, officers andNCOs went through the plan of attack onemore time with their men. The movement totheir new positions seemed to have gone unno-ticed by the Soviets, and all was quiet on theenemy side of the line, so the chances of sur-prise seemed good.

At 10 minutes after midnight on November3, the attack rolled forward without any pre-liminary artillery bombardment of the enemypositions. As they advanced, the 5th Panzertanks opened fire. Captain Jaedtke describedthe action:

“The first tanks and half-tracks ran intomines, but we reached the first Russian

trenches, which they appeared to have aban-doned hastily. As we advanced we penetratedinto a trench system where, in places, the Rus-sians mounted stiff resistance.”

Overcoming the Soviet defenders, the 5thPanzer and FGB grenadiers continued toadvance, reaching Lake Goldap. By dawn theywere only two kilometers from Goldap itself.

To the south, Haus’s 50th Infantry and theFGB fusiliers fell upon the unsuspecting Rus-sians with a fury. Quickly overrunningtrenches, the Germans pressed forward. Alongthe way they destroyed 42 Soviet tanks. Theymade contact with the northern force and thenestablished defensive positions east of the town.

The combined elements of Decker’s forcenow moved to take Goldap while fighting offSoviet attacks intended to relieve the encircledtown. Casualties mounted during the back andforth struggle, but Decker’s force held offrepeated enemy assaults. Decker’s attack finallysucceeded when the Soviets inside Goldap wereeliminated on November 5, and German forcesrecaptured the shattered town. Looking at theshattered buildings, they knew that this wouldbe the fate of all of East Prussia if the Sovietsever took over the province. They were right.

Cherniakhovskii’s assault did not lead to thecapture of Königsberg. The Germans reestab-lished a solid front and fought 40 Soviet divi-

sions to a standstill, although the Russians nowretained a 40-kilometer-deep and 150-kilome-ter-wide foothold within the Reich.

With both sides exhausted and winter settingin, only minor actions took place for theremainder of November. The Soviets hadlearned that even the weakened enemy divi-sions, such as the 1st Infantry Division, couldstand up against sustained attacks now thatthey were defending their homeland, and thebreathing space in November was used toreplace losses and bring new forces into the areaas about 79,500 Soviet soldiers of the 337,000committed to the Goldap Operation hadbecome casualties.

When the red storm broke over East Prussiaon January 12, 1945, it would truly mean theend of the Third Reich and of East Prussia itself.The drive would take the Soviets in the norththrough East Prussia and down the Baltic coastinto the eastern part of Germany. At war’s endthe province of East Prussia was dividedbetween the Soviet Union and Poland, withalmost all of the German population that hadnot been killed expelled to the west. The seat ofGerman militarism was no more.

Author Pat McTaggart is an expert on WorldWar II on the Eastern Front. He resides in Elka-der, Iowa.


National Archives

Soviet soldiers streaming through an East Prussian village during the followup Red Army offensive in early 1945. Within months, the Nazi capital of Berlin was inSoviet hands and World War II in Europe was over.


Because the victorious Allies haddestroyed Imperial Germany’s fleet afterWorld War I, Adolf Hitler had no choice

but to construct a new navy after he came topower. This worked to his partial advantagesince, although Britain’s massive fleet vastlyoutnumbered Nazi Germany’s, its ships weregenerally older, slower, and more thinlyarmored than the sleek, state-of-the-art vesselsof the New German Navy, or Kriegsmarine.

New battleships, battlecruisers, pocket bat-tleships, and heavy and light cruisers were builtduring the 1930s. Among these was the battle-cruiser Scharnhorst, one of Nazi Germany’snew generation of fighting ships that were toofast to be kept bottled up in the North Sea liketheir Imperial predecessors had been 25 yearsearlier. German capital ships were at large inthe Atlantic during wartime, and the RoyalNavy was hard pressed to bring them to baywhile simultaneously dealing with menacingpacks of U-boats that continually raided mer-chant shipping.

Still, in many instances these warships failedto live up to expectations, largely because theywere so few in number. Grand Admiral ErichRaeder, chief of the Kriegsmarine, initiated hisZ-Plan for building the German surface fleetduring the 1930s. However, the constructioneffort was nowhere near completion with theoutbreak of hostilities in 1939. Other factorswere also involved.

Captain Hans Langsdorff scuttled Graf Speeoutside Montevideo, Uruguay harbor onDecember 12, 1939, rather than face a feebleBritish flotilla he believed was much more pow-erful than it actually was. British Prime Minis-ter Winston Churchill got away with commit-ting virtually his entire North Atlantic fleet tohunting down the battleship Bismarck withoutlosing any merchant ships. While much of theRoyal Navy’s resources were off hunting downand sinking the Bismarck, other free-rangingGerman commerce raiders somehow failed tolocate any of the lumbering, unprotected con-voys. Scharnhorst’s star-crossed career was themost fascinatingly bedeviled of all.

At 31,800 tons, Scharnhorst was lighter andmuch faster than older British battleships orbattlecruisers. Although her 11-inch rifles weresmaller than the 15-inchers of the Royal Navy’sbattlecruisers Hood, Repulse, and Renown, shehad much thicker armor. She was also fittedwith a newfangled device called radar, enablingher gunners to accurately shell targets that wereover the horizon. Regardless, all of Scharn-horst’s menacing armament and state-of-the-art systems were, some believed, more than off-

set by an element rumored to have dogged hereven before her construction was completed.She was damned.

While the ship was being constructed in dry-dock, her supporting timbers abruptly gaveway, and the huge hull rolled onto its sidecrushing to death 61 skilled workers and injur-ing 110 more. Jittery work crews had to be con-scripted for the three-month job of righting thevessel, and when the subsequently delayedlaunch date arrived so did Hitler, Luftwaffe

chief Herman Göring, Deputy Führer RudolfHess, and Admiral Karl Donitz, commander ofthe navy’s U-boat arm, all eager to witness thisdeadly marvel of the New Germany splash intoher native element.

She stood them up. During the previous nightScharnhorst had snapped her mooring lines andslid of her own accord into Kiel’s crowded har-bor, pulverizing two barges anchored in herpremature path. Despite the circumstances, itwas a victory of sorts. She was finally com-


In this 2010 painting by artist O. Rahardt, thesleek German battlecruiser Scharnhorst is shown slicing across the open sea. Scharnhorst and hersister warship Gneisenau were major threats toAllied merchant shipping in the North Atlantic, but Scharnhorst was dogged by misfortune duringher entire career.

W-Feb15 Scharnhorst_Layout 1 12/12/14 1:15 PM Page 54

pleted and in operation, which was more thanhad been expected by many.

After months of bitter international debate,the free city of Danzig was a mere backwater ofthe land battle when the Polish campaign com-menced. The garrison was reduced by offshorebombardment. The German Navy flotilla dis-patched to the scene experienced negligiblereturn fire, for all the good this did Scharnhorst.During the shelling one of her big gunsexploded, killing nine men. The ventilation sys-

tem shorted out in another turret, suffocatingthe 12-man crew.

After her self-inflicted damage was repaired,Scharnhorst, accompanied by her identical sis-ter ship Gneisenau, embarked on her firstwartime patrol. This sortie was not highly suc-cessful, with only a single merchantman sunk,and this vessel, Rawalpindi, got off a radio mes-sage that alerted the British to the raiders’ where-abouts. However, the Germans pulled off a daz-zling escape, hiding out near the Arctic Circle

until the arrival of inclement weather and thensteaming undetected through the middle of ahuge task force (the Royal Navy did not yet haveradar) sent to intercept them, arriving safely atWilhelmshaven on November 27, 1939.

The following spring Hitler was forced tocommit virtually his entire surface fleet in theinvasion of Norway due to the lack of a com-mon land border. Between enemy action andatrocious weather, the naval contingent sufferedunexpectedly heavy casualties, losing 10


THE GERMAN BATTLECRUISER SCHARNHORST WASPLAGUED BY HARD LUCK THROUGHOUT HER CAREER.

A CursedWARSHIP?

BY KELLY BELL

ullstein bild / The Granger Collection, New York


destroyers in the assault on Narvik alone.Meanwhile, Scharnhorst was off Oslo par-

ticipating in the bombardment of the city’sshore batteries, which turned out to be muchmore formidable than Danzig’s. She came awayfrom the battle crippled. Gneisenau towed herout of the combat area, and her engineerspatched her up sufficiently to enable her to limphomeward by night and hide from the RoyalAir Force by day. Entering the Elbe River onthe last leg of her journey home, she collided inthe darkness with the Bremen, Germany’slargest passenger liner. Scharnhorst’s armor-plated prow was barely dented, but Bremenwas severely holed and settled into the shallowwater as a sitting duck for the British bombersthat soon pounded her into junk.

Following extensive repairs, Scharnhorstresumed patrolling the Atlantic, and on June 9,1940, she and Gneisenau happened upon thefleet evacuating the last Allied forces to leaveNazi-occupied Norway. British and Norwegiantroops were being ferried to England with anumber of old Gloster Gladiator biplanesaboard the aircraft carrier Glorious. The planeswere used primarily for reconnaissance butcould launch torpedoes. Before any of themcould take off in the contrary wind, however,the German ships’ heavy guns had reduced theflotilla and its escorts to floating wreckage. Thedestroyer Acasta was burning and taking onwater when her captain had a great idea.

The Germans were 10 miles south of theirtargets and firing their main guns head-onwhen Acasta suddenly veered eastward andthen made a 180-degree turn at full steam.Unnoticed by her distant attackers, the Britishdestroyer had fired a full spread of torpedoesduring the brief moments in her directionchange when she was facing the Germans.Every man on the German battlecruisers wasbaffled by the strange maneuver, but they keptfiring and adjusting direction to port to keepfacing their westward-bound quarry.

Nine minutes later Scharnhorst’s starboardhull was ripped open just below the waterlineby a torpedo fired from the Acasta. The explo-sion and subsequent flooding killed 47 sailors.Gneisenau escorted her damaged sister to theNorwegian port of Trondheim for emergencyrepairs and then to Kiel for refit.

On February 8, 1941, the twin battlecruisersslipped through the Denmark Strait and reen-tered the Atlantic to participate in the Kriegs-marine highly successful worldwide offensiveagainst Allied shipping in the first half of thatyear. Commanded by Admiral Gunther Lutjens(who was soon to be killed in action as com-mander of the battleship Bismarck), the two

dreadnoughts sank 21 supply and merchantships totaling 115,622 tons and captured one.Whenever the Royal Navy pinpointed theraiders’ location, the Germans used their supe-rior speed to outdistance their frustrated foes.On March 23, they docked at the occupiedFrench port of Brest, where Scharnhorst wasidled several months for major engine repairs.

Between Scharnhorst’s sick motors and thebomb damage inflicted on Gneisenau by theRoyal Air Force while she was moored, it wasautumn before the German battlecruisers wereoperational again, and even then bomberspinned them down in the harbor until theevening of February 11, 1942, when, acting onorders directly from Hitler they slipped out ofBrest in a heavy fog and headed north at fullspeed in company with the heavy cruiser Prinz

Eugen in a desperate attempt to reach Norway. The Kriegsmarine high command had des-

perately opposed the plan as too risky, butHitler was convinced the Allies were preparingto invade Norway and, as he had foreseen, theynever dreamed he would send his precious sur-face raiders into the heavily patrolled EnglishChannel. The movement was codenamedOperation Cerberus.

A skilled and experienced naval commander,Vice Admiral Otto Ciliax led the Brestsquadron on its northward sprint. LuftwaffeGeneral Adolf Galland assembled a force of250 Messerschmitt Me-109 and Focke WulfFW-190 fighters for the crucial task of air cover,and Luftwaffe Director of CommunicationsGeneral Wolfgang Martini was assigned thetask of jamming the British radar system.

Hugging the French coastline, the warshipswould stay out of range of English coastal bat-teries while their own coastal gunners couldsupport them against any unfriendly warshipsthat might attack. The vessels left Brest atnightfall.

After covering the 240-mile stretch fromBrest to Cherbourg under cover of darkness,the Germans entered the Channel at dawn sothat the fighters could give them vital coverthroughout the daylight leg of the trip. Duringthe moonless night the three capital ships hadbeen joined by six destroyers and a number ofminesweepers, gunboats, and other smallercraft whose crews were determined to see themsafely through to their linkup with the rest ofthe fleet in the Norwegian fjords.

Scharnhorst was in the lead, and on herbridge Ciliax noted with little surprise theabsence of hostile aircraft in the cold, gray mid-winter skies. The weather was not ideal for airpatrols, and Martini was doing an excellent jobof jamming the Britons’ radar, so much so thatthe operators did not realize their blank setswere the result of deliberate interference. Theyattributed them to the foul weather.

The run was uneventful until 10:42 AM,when two British Supermarine Spitfire fightershappened to pass overhead. All along the Eng-lish coast the alert sounded, but the shockedAllies reacted with disbelief and hesitation. AsHitler had foreseen, they had been taken totallyby surprise. The Dover coastal batteries gamelyopened up on the distant targets, but their 9-inch shells fell a full mile short. After wasting33 rounds, the artillery fell silent.

By noon the task force had traversed theChannel’s narrowest point, between Dover andCalais, and was only 200 miles short of its des-tination. It was there that it encountered its firsthostile ships. A squadron of torpedo boats



ABOVE: This photograph records one of the proudestmoments in the star-crossed career of the battle-cruiser Scharnhorst, the commissioning ceremony forthe new warship in the harbor at Wilhelmshaven,Germany, on January 7, 1939. BELOW: The battle-cruiser Scharnhorst was launched in 1936. Hitler andother Nazi dignitaries, including Grand Admiral ErichRaeder, commander of the Kriegsmarine, to Hitler’sleft await the beginning of ceremonies.


churned from Dover harbor and attacked at 35knots through the roiling swells. Scharnhorstand the destroyers drove them off with a bliz-zard of shells. The torpedo boats managed tolaunch a few missiles, but all missed.

At this point, six Fairey Swordfish torpedoplanes swooped down on the squadron. Eightmonths earlier the Swordfish had been the onlyBritish plane capable of crippling the Bismarckso that she could not escape her pursuers, butBismarck had had no air cover. On this drearyday Galland’s Me-109s and FW-190s savagedthe Swordfish. Lowering their landing gear sothat they could fly slowly enough to stay on thelumbering biplanes’ tails, the Germans quicklyshot down every one, ending another impotentjab at the convoy.

The main danger to the German navalsquadron turned out to be thousands of minesboth sides had planted throughout the Channel.German minesweepers had toiled for daysclearing an avenue through the fields but onlyhad time to complete a narrow opening a halfmile wide in places. Shortly after the torpedoplanes attacked, a massive underwater explo-sion convulsed Scharnhorst as she strayed outof the safe corridor. As she shuddered to a com-plete stop, her admiral quickly abandoned her.Ciliax ordered the destroyer Z-29 alongsideand leaped from his stricken ship onto thesmaller one. Assuming repairs to his flagshipwould be fatally lengthy, Ciliax left her in thecare of her engineers and rushed to catch upwith the fleet’s main body.

At this point the German ships came underattack from a ragged pack of Bristol Beaufortlight bombers and Lockheed Hudson mediumbombers. This assault, too, came to naught asall the bombs missed. This was uncharacteris-tically good luck for Scharnhorst as the Britishwere so preoccupied with the fleet’s main bodythey failed to notice the stationary battlecruiserto the rear long enough for her engineers topatch her up sufficiently to resume the danger-ous trek.

The German ships had reached the widest partof the Channel, off Belgium, when the Alliesmade their last attempt to inflict serious dam-age. Six World War I-era destroyers normallyused only for coast patrol charged out of themouth of the Thames River in an attempt tointercept but were mistakenly bombed by RAFtwin-engine Handley Page Hampden bombers.Amazingly, all the bombs missed, and at 3:17 PM

the destroyers Campbell, Worcester, and Viva-cious, in a show of suicidal bravado, bore downon Gneisenau while the other three went afterPrinz Eugen. When the little attackers turnedbroadside so they could launch torpedoes,Gneisenau opened up on them from the closerange of 3,000 yards, wrecking Worcester withthree salvoes while the remaining five destroyersprudently ducked into a fog bank.

As daylight waned on the frigid afternoon,Gneisenau’s and Prinz Eugen’s antiaircraft bat-teries and covering Luftwaffe fighters repeat-edly turned back attacking bombers. Nightfalland inclement weather soon suspended all air

operations. Just before 8 PM, Gneisenau wasskirting the Frisian Islands when a mine seri-ously holed her. Scharnhorst, meanwhile, blun-dered into a second mine, sustaining sufficientdamage to her brand new hull to drydock herfor yet another round of lengthy repairs.

Two weeks after their brazen sprint soembarrassed the British, while Scharnhorst washaving her gaping wounds welded shut, RAFbombers severely damaged Gneisenau whileshe was docked at Kiel. Gneisenau was towedto the Baltic port of Gotenhafen, where navalengineers tried to patch her up, but the attempthad to be abandoned because of a lack of essen-tial materials. She never left the harbor. Threeyears later she was scuttled to prevent her fromfalling into the hands of the advancing SovietRed Army.

Repairing Scharnhorst was time consumingbecause of the scarcity of so many essentialmaterials. Relentless Allied air raids on Ger-many’s manufacturing and industrial facilitieswere beginning to tell, and the battlecruiser’sreturn to seaworthiness was delayed for sixmonths. For the bulk of 1943, she and the50,000-ton battleship Tirpitz rode at anchorin Norway’s Altenfjord, where their merepresence prompted the jittery British to setaside a substantial portion of the Home Fleetfor the sole purpose of keeping a watchful eyeon the potentially lethal raiders. The RoyalNavy would soon have more to do than standidle watch.

On December 19, 1943, a Luftwaffe recon-


National Archives

Operation Cerberus, the Channel dash by Nazi warships through the English Channel in February 1942, embarrassed the British Royal Navy, which mounted only feebleattempts to challenge the movement. Scharnhorst was one of several German warships that took part in the dash to safe ports in northern Germany, accompanied byan aerial escort of Luftwaffe planes.


naissance pilot spotted a 20-ship convoyescorted by 14 or 15 destroyers and cruisers.The German high command suspected poorvisibility had caused the airmen to mistakecargo-carrying vessels as warships and that theescort was smaller than reported.

On Christmas Day, Scharnhorst was sent outalone for the first time in her career, and badluck struck again. Her commander was Admi-ral Erich Bey, who had never before com-manded a ship of such size. Furthermore,because of Christmas leaves the vessel wasundermanned.

Had there been sufficient available fuel forTirpitz to come along, it is sobering to consider

the havoc that would likely have been wroughtin the Allied shipping lanes, but the Kriegsma-rine had only enough fuel for the smaller war-ship and her escort of five destroyers.

Bey was uneasy about the severe weather. Hisdestroyers were pitching wildly in the heavyseas, which would make aiming their guns withany degree of accuracy extremely difficult. Fur-thermore, their rudders and propellers werespending almost as much time out of the waterbetween swells as they were in it, making steer-ing a full-time, imprecise job.

In a thinly veiled plea to abort the mission,Bey radioed Narvik: “Use of destroyer weaponsgravely impaired.” It was ignored. The task

force had to sail. Admiral Dönitz had promisedHitler a major victory at sea, and the Führerwas pressuring his naval chieftain to produce.Dönitz’s reply was clear and uncompromising:“The fight is not to be half finished!” However,the operation was already unraveling.

By breaking radio silence Bey had alerted theRoyal Navy that something was afoot in theFar North, and the British Admiralty was deter-mined that there would be no repeat of the pre-vious year’s dismal showing during the Chan-nel dash. The British response was immediate,forceful, and effective.

The Germans’ target was convoy JW55B,whose escort had indeed been overestimated.Concerned with providing an antisubmarinescreen, the British had assigned just 10 destroy-ers and no cruisers to shepherd the freighters.Unknown to the hunters, however, news oftheir general whereabouts was spreadingrapidly across the wintry North Atlantic.

Vice Admiral R.L. Burnett’s force, includingthe cruisers Belfast, Sheffield, and Norfolk, wasescorting a convoy returning empty from Mur-mansk. Leaving these ships in the Barents Sea,Burnett made for the trouble spot at top speed.Also, Admiral Bruce Fraser’s squadron of fourdestroyers, the cruiser Jamaica, and the battle-ship Duke of York was making top speed fromoff the south coast of Iceland.

Worried about betraying his position, Beywas sailing blind, having turned off his surfacesearch radar. Just before 8 AM on December 26,he was bewildered at the convoy’s not beingwhere he had expected it and ordered hisdestroyers to veer southwest to search for theirquarry. It was an ill-advised move in suchstormy weather and protracted polar darkness,for Bey quickly lost contact with the smallerships. From that point Scharnhorst and herskeleton crew were completely alone.

The British had already noted this fact. Theimplications were clear. If Hitler was desperateenough to send out a solitary dreadnought,Germany must be in even worse straits thanthey had imagined. If they could eliminate thislast significant, active Nazi surface raider, com-plete control of the Atlantic would be theirs andthe end of the war would be in sight. Mean-while, there was a Wagnerian drama to act out.

At 8:40 AM, Belfast’s radar detected a largevessel 17 miles ahead. Forty minutes later it waspositively identified as Scharnhorst.

Bey was frantically searching for the elusiveconvoy. He had no way of knowing that Fraserhad sent it north to a safer position. Suddenly,a flare exploded overhead. Six minutes later, at9:30, a rain of 8-inch shells from Norfolk, fir-ing from 13,000 yards, bracketed his ship.


ABOVE: In this image from a German propaganda newsreel, the bow of Scharnhorst is awash in heavy seas inthe North Atlantic. Scharnhorst did successfully attack merchant shipping and elements of the British RoyalNavy during her short career. BELOW: This photograph of Scharnhorst was taken in the shelter of a Norwe-gian fjord in 1940. Scharnhorst and Geneisenau served as naval covering forces for the German assaults onthe Norwegian towns of Trondheim and Narvik during the February 1940 invasion.



On the bridge, Captain Fritz Hintze had justswitched on his forward radar to get a fix on hisattackers when a shell slammed into the fore-mast, wrecking the aerial and leaving him withonly aft radar. Belfast and Sheffield were alsoclosing, so Bey turned his ship around and fledsoutheast at full speed, easily outdistancing hisfoes. Should his vessel be severely damaged andstill manage to escape, there would be littlehope for repair in hard-pressed Germany.

Burnett suspected that Bey would attempt tolure him a great distance from the convoy,wheel around in a great arc, and with Scharn-horst’s superior speed double back to the lum-bering supply ships that would then be pro-tected only by the destroyers. Moreover,Burnett realized the German raider would bevirtually impossible to track down without airsupport, which was ruled out by the weather.

Returning to JW55B, Burnett dispatchedfour destroyers to aid the cruisers in laying atrap for Scharnhorst. Steaming 10 miles out infront of the convoy, they commenced zigzag-ging in front of the merchant ships.

As Burnett had suspected, Bey came at themfrom dead ahead just as the brief Arctic winterday was dawning about noon. Upon sightingthe hostile vessels, Bey again headed southeastat top speed, this time firing on the British. Thedestroyers tried to get in position for a torpedo

attack but were outrun.Norfolk was severely damaged in the

exchange, but the Germans were discouragedfrom further attempts to assail the convoy. Theychurned away to the southeast at 31 knots.

Some confusion surrounds the battle’s finalstage. Since none of Scharnhorst’s officers sur-vived, there is no way of knowing why her crewfailed to react to the menace of Fraser’s war-ships approaching from the west at 24 knots,for they had been shadowed by Luftwaffe nightfighters for several hours. The Germans’ radiomay have been wrecked in the same exchangethat knocked out the radar. Regardless, Beycontinued blithely straight ahead until he blun-dered directly into Fraser’s heavy warships.

Just before 5 PM, Belfast scattered star shellsin the inky sky above Scharnhorst, and 13 milesaway Duke of York opened fire with her 14-inch guns. Unlike her sister ships, the Duke ofYork was new and state of the art, but her heav-ier armament gave her opponent a four-knotedge in speed. When the Germans knocked outDuke of York’s radar, the Nazi dreadnoughthad an excellent chance to escape, but Fraser,noting how Bey was swinging his ship from sideto side to fire broadsides, had the Duke of Yorkfire a broadside in the direction he guessed histarget would next swerve. Predictably, the Ger-man ship swung directly into the path of the

storm of shells.His vessel immobilized by the barrage, Bey

radioed Berlin, “We shall fight to the last shell!”German sailors transferred their heavy, 11-inchshells by hand from the wrecked forward tur-rets to the aft guns and desperately continuedto defend themselves, but at 7:12 PM, Belfastknocked out the last aft turret, leaving the Ger-mans with only two 5.9-inch cannons. Thesekept firing until just before 8 PM, when thestricken ship suddenly turned on end and sankbow first. This brought to an end the last tra-ditional surface battle fought in the Atlantic.

Only 36 sailors from Hitler’s last sleek graylady survived to be plucked from the icy waterby the British, but Scharnhorst did not take herhex with her.

Two crewmen managed to paddle a raft to anearby island, for all the good it did them. Sev-eral months later their frozen bodies werefound there. Immediately after landing, theyhad been killed by the explosion of their faultyoil heater. Surviving the Allies and the icyAtlantic were long shots, but there was noescaping the curse of the Scharnhorst.

Author Kelly Bell writes regularly on variousaspects of World War II, including the navalwar in the Atlantic and the land war in West-ern Europe. He resides in Tyler, Texas.


National Maritime Museum, Greenwhich / The Image Works

In this wartime painting, flares illuminate the night sky on the day after Christmas 1943, as elements of the British Royal Navy led by the battleship Duke of York sur-round and overwhelm the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst, sending her to a watery grave in what came to be known as the Battle of the North Cape. Nearly 2,000German seamen were killed.


While America and Europe struggled througheconomic depression and nervously watchedthe spread of fascism in the second half of the1930s, the situation was far more ominous inthe Far East.

Expansionist Japan had sown the seeds ofwar in China early in the decade, and hostilitiesbroke out in July 1937. By that autumn, Japan-ese troops were advancing. Drunken and undis-ciplined soldiers pillaged and burned towns andvillages; civilians were captured and shot, andfemales of all ages were raped, murdered, and

mutilated.There were no limits to Japanese brutality;

piles of Chinese bodies were even used forgrenade-throwing practice. A Japanese generalapologized to a Westerner by saying, “Youmust realize that most of these young soldiersare just wild beasts from the mountains.”

Japanese troops marched into the city of Soo-chow in eastern China on November 19, andthe roads to the great cities of Nanking andShanghai were open to them. When Japaneseunits approached Nanking on November 21,


INCIDENTon the

YANGTZETHE U.S. NAVY GUNBOAT PANAY WAS SUNK BY

JAPANESE AIRCRAFT ON THE GREAT CHINESE RIVER,PUSHING THE TWO COUNTRIES CLOSER TO WAR.

BY MICHAEL D. HULL

Nat

iona

l Arc

hive

s

National Archives

W-Feb15 Panay_Layout 1 12/12/14 1:13 PM Page 60

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s office notifiedthe American Embassy that it should prepare toevacuate. Ambassador Nelson T. Johnson andmost of his personnel left the next day aboardthe gunboat USS Luzon. Chiang, his wife, andremaining members of the Chinese governmentfled from the threatened city on December 8.

Japanese diplomat Yosuke Matsuokaexplained that his country was fighting toachieve two goals in China: to prevent Asiafrom falling completely under white domina-tion and to stem the spread of communism.

Japanese troops soon triumphantly enteredNanking and began a month of unprecedentedatrocities. They roamed the city looting, burn-ing, raping, and murdering. Men, women, andchildren were “hunted like rabbits.” Woundedand bound prisoners were beheaded, and anestimated 20,000 men and boys were used forlive bayonet practice. Even the friendly Ger-mans in the city issued an official report brand-ing the Japanese Army as “bestial machinery.”

The invaders were supported by a new pol-icy ordering the sinking of “all craft on the


ABOVE: As the invading Japanese draw closer to theChinese city of Nanking, frightened civilians crowdthe city’s waterfront in a frantic attempt to findsafety and escape from the coming battle. TheJapanese committed horrific atrocities against theChinese civilian population. OPPOSITE TOP: Lieutenant Commander James J.Hughes, right, captain of the gunboat Panay, isshown in a still frame from a film that was made onthe day of the attack against the gunboat.OPPOSITE BOTTOM: The U.S. Navy gunboat Panaywas typical of the small river vessels that patrolledthe waters of the Yangtze River during the 1920sand 1930s to protect American interests in China.

© Bettmann / Corbis


Yangzi River,” regardless of nationality. Theaim was to leave China’s principal waterwayclear for Japanese operations. The order camefrom Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto, founder ofthe Cherry Society, the Army’s “Bad Boy,” andcommander of artillery batteries along theYangtze River. He told his men to “fire on any-thing that moves on the river.”

To protect Western citizens, legations, andbusiness interests, the waterway and its tribu-taries had been continually patrolled since the19th century by British and American gun-boats. The U.S. Asiatic Fleet established supplydepots in Tsingtao, Hankow, and Canton andorganized gunboats, which had been operatingon the river since 1903, into the famed YangtzeRiver Patrol (Yangpat) in December 1919. Itsfirst commander was Captain T.A. Kearney.

The U.S. Navy’s presence in China was

lengthy. In 1832, President Andrew Jacksonsent the 44-gun frigate USS Potomac to defendmerchant ships against piracy in East Asia. Shewas commanded by Captain Lawrence Kearny,a veteran of piracy patrols in the Caribbean andMediterranean. Named commander of theNavy’s East India Squadron, Kearny sailedfrom Boston to Macao and Canton aboard the36-gun frigate USS Constellation in March1842, just as the British-Chinese Opium Warwas ending. A skilled diplomat as well as a gal-lant sailor, Kearny formed good relations withChinese officials.

U.S. Navy vessels were thereafter regularlyassigned to East Asia, and in 1854 the side-wheel gunboat USS Ashuelot became the firstAmerican ship to patrol the Yangtze River. TheSino-American Treaty of 1858 granted U.S.

warships the right to navigate all Chinese riversand visit all ports. U.S. naval activity increasedsignificantly after victory in the Spanish-Amer-ican War in 1898, which led to the annexationof the Philippine Islands, and American navalunits served in the Boxer Rebellion of 1899when Chinese insurgents besieged the foreignlegations in Peiping.

The Yangtze Patrol comprised 13 vessels,including nine gunboats, and 129 officers and1,671 enlisted men. In addition, 814 men of the15th Infantry Regiment were stationed inTientsin, 528 U.S. Marines in Peking, andanother 2,555 Leathernecks in Shanghai.

As revolutionary upheavals swept the coun-try after World War I, the U.S. Navy beefed upits presence on the Yangtze in 1927-1928 bydeploying six gunboats built in China anddesigned especially for river duty. They were

the Guam, Luzon, Mindanao, Oahu, Tutuila,and the aging Panay.

The British and American sailors tensely ply-ing the great waterway faced heightened dan-ger as Japanese aggression mounted throughthe 1930s. The perceptive U.S. ambassador toTokyo, Joseph C. Grew, reported that Ameri-can-run churches, hospitals, universities, andschools across China had been bombed despiteflag markings on their roofs, and missionariesand their families killed. Stressing that theattacks were planned, he loudly protested thepillaging of American property.

As Japan’s undeclared war intensified, focus-ing especially on Shanghai with its internationalbusiness settlement, President Franklin D. Roo-sevelt warned Americans in China that theyshould leave for their own safety. If anything

happened to them or their property, he said,“The United States has no intention of goingto war either with China or Japan, but insteadwould demand redress or indemnities throughorthodox, friendly, diplomatic channels.”

The man on the spot was Iowa-born, 61-year-old Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, new com-mander-in-chief of the U.S. Navy’s Asiatic Fleet.An Annapolis graduate and veteran of theSpanish-American War and the Boxer Rebel-lion who had successfully “attacked” PearlHarbor during war games in 1932, Yarnellcommanded only two cruisers, 13 destroyers,six submarines, and 10 gunboats. Yet, on Sep-tember 27, 1937, he sent an order to his fleetcontradicting FDR’s policy.

“Most American citizens now in China areengaged in businesses or professions which aretheir only means of livelihood,” said the admi-ral. “These persons are unwilling to leave untiltheir businesses have been destroyed or they areforced to leave due to actual physical danger.Until such time comes, our naval forces cannotbe withdrawn without failure in our duty andwithout bringing great discredit on the UnitedStates Navy.” Yarnell reported his fleet orderto Washington and, surprisingly, it was notcountermanded by Roosevelt.

Public opinion supported the admiral’s ini-tiative, and FDR fell in line. In an October 5speech, the president declared, “When an epi-demic of physical disease starts to spread, thecommunity approves and joins in a quarantineof the patients in order to protect the health ofthe community.” His listeners understood whathe meant.

The uneasy quiet along the River Yangtze wasshattered at 9 AM on Sunday, December 12,1937, when Colonel Hashimoto’s gun crewsopened fire on the Royal Navy gunboat HMSLadybird. Four shells struck the vessel, killing asailor and wounding several others. A Britishmerchant ship and four other gunboats were alsofired on. Twelve miles above Nanking, a Japan-ese air attack missed the gunboats HMS Cricketand HMS Scarab, which were escorting a con-voy of merchant ships carrying civilian refugees,including some Americans.

Alarmed by the attacks, Ambassador Johnsonhastily composed a telegram that morning to thesecretary of state in Washington, the embassyoffice in Peiping, and the American consul inShanghai. Dispatched by the gunboat Luzon at10:15 AM, the telegram urged the State Depart-ment to press Tokyo to call a halt to attacks onforeigners in China. Prophetically, Johnson mes-saged, “Unless Japanese can be made to realizethat these ships are friendly and are only refugeavailable to Americans and other foreigners, a


National Archives

The U.S. Navy gunboat Luzon is shown prior to the attack by Japanese aircraft that sank the vessel in theYangtze River in December 1937.


terrible disaster is likely to happen.”That same morning Admiral Yarnell sent a

message to the USS Panay ordering her to getunderway at the discretion of her skipper, Lt.Cmdr. James J. Hughes. Japanese shells had beenlanding regularly and close to the gunboat.

At 8 AM the previous day, the Panay hadembarked Ambassador Johnson, Americanofficials, and some civilians and started upriveron a five-mile journey. The gunboat escortedthree Standard Oil Co. barges, the Mei Ping,Mei Hsia, and Mei An and was followed by afew British craft. American flags were hoistedon the barges’ masts and painted on theirawnings and topsides. For two miles, movingslowly against the current, the vessels were firedon by Japanese shore batteries. But the shoot-ing was wild, and the little flotilla was able topull out of range without suffering hits.

The Panay and the barges anchored nearHoshien, about 15 miles above Nanking, at 11AM on December 12. The berth was in a widespace that seemed secure, 27 miles away fromthe fighting around Nanking.

A veteran of service in the Philippines beforeWorld War I, the 450-ton Panay (PR-5) had beencommanded in 1907 by a 22-year-old ensignnamed Chester W. Nimitz, later to gain fame asthe commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in WorldWar II. The shallow-draft, two-funnel gunboatwas capable of 15 knots, and her crew com-prised five officers and 54 men. She mounted amain battery of two high-angle, three-inch gunsand eight .30-caliber Lewis machine guns ofWorld War I vintage. The vessel was paintedwhite and buff, and two large U.S. flags, 18 feetby 14 feet, were painted horizontally on herupper deck canvas awnings. The flags wereclearly visible from the air at any angle.

The mixed crowd aboard the gunboat thatmorning included several newsreel cameramenwho had just completed a short documentaryfilm about the Panay.

The day was sunny, clear, and still. The gun-boat crewmen ate their noon meal, secured, andgot ready for a peaceful Sunday afternoon.Eight bluejackets were permitted to take a sam-pan over to the Mei Ping for some cold beers,and others took naps. The Panay’s guns werecovered and unmanned.

Meanwhile, an attack force of 24 Japanesenaval bombers, fighters, and dive bombers hadbeen formed up after the Army mistakenlyreported that 10 ships laden with refugees werefleeing up the Yangtze from Nanking. It was agolden opportunity for eager young Navypilots to attack ships instead of ground targets.The enemy fliers took off with such haste thatno strike plan was set up. They roared toward

the river.Suddenly, at 1:37 PM the Panay lookout

reported two aircraft in sight at about 4,000feet. Commander Hughes peered from thepilothouse door to see planes rapidly losing alti-tude and heading his way. Three Aichi D1A2“Susie” dive bombers flew over the gunboatand released 18 bombs. Seconds later, an explo-sion threw Hughes across the pilothouse,breaking his thigh.

The bombs felled the gunboat’s foremast,knocked out the forward 3-inch gun, andwrecked the pilothouse, sick bay, and fire andradio rooms. When he regained consciousness,Hughes found the bridge a shambles. The quietSunday had erupted into a day of fury, and aUniversal Pictures newsreel cameramanrecorded it. His film showed the planes strafingat masthead level, so low that the pilots’ faceswere seen clearly.

Soon after the first strike, 12 more divebombers and nine fighters made several runsover the Panay, strafing for 20 minutes. She was

riddled with shrapnel from near misses. The response from the gunboat was imme-

diate but ineffective. Crewmen tore the coversoff their weapons, and the .30-caliber machineguns clattered away at the Japanese planes.The salvos were directed by Chief Boatswain’sMate Ernest Mahlmann, who fought withouthis trousers. He had been sleeping below deckswhen the attack started and had no time toget dressed.

Ensign Dennis Biwerse had his clothesstripped off by the bomb blasts, and LieutenantTex Anders, the executive officer, was hit in thethroat and unable to speak. He wrote instruc-tions in pencil on a bulkhead and navigationchart. Lieutenant C.G. Grazier, the medical offi-cer, heroically tended to the wounded duringthe ordeal. Suffering great pain and with hisface blackened by soot, Commander Hugheslay propped up in the galley doorway. Therewas no need for him to give orders to his well-trained crew.

The Panay was soon helpless in the water.An oil line had been cut, so no steam could beraised to beach her or use pumps to cope withthe rapidly rising water. By 2:05 PM, all powerand propulsion were lost.

While the crew strove to save its gunboat, theJapanese raiders paid special attention to thethree nearby oil barges. Half a dozen planesdropped bombs, but all missed their targets.Then six dive bombers and nine fighters boredown, bombing and strafing, but the oil bargeswere able to get underway. The eight gunboatbluejackets who had been drinking beer aboardthe Mei Ping helped the panicky Chinese sea-men fight fires and move the vessel out of rangeof the Japanese onslaught.



ABOVE: The Japanese Aichi D1A2 dive bomber was a biplane with fixed landing gear that was rapidly becom-ing obsolete by the mid-1930s. However, it was an effective weapon in the attack against the U.S. gunboatPanay. BELOW: During the fateful attack on the Panay, Boatswain’s Mate Ernest Mahlmann (right) and a fel-low crewman man antiaircraft weapons and return Japanese fire. Mahlmann attempts to shade his eyes tolocate the Japanese planes overhead.


The Mei Hsia made a valiant effort to easealongside the stricken Panay and take off sur-vivors, but Hughes and his crew franticallywaved her away. They did not want the highlyflammable barge alongside while bombs werestill falling. The Mei Hsia and Mei Ping thentied up to a pontoon on the southern side ofthe river, and the Mei An beached on the north-ern bank.

Less than half an hour after the first bombhit, it was obvious that the Panay, listing andsettling, was doomed. The forward starboardmain deck was awash, and there were six feetof water in some compartments. CommanderHughes gave the order to abandon ship, andcrewmen started making for shore in the gun-boat’s two sampans. While two of the oil bargeswere being bombed and destroyed, other low-flying enemy planes fired at the sampans, stitch-ing holes in their bottoms and wounding someof the occupants. At 3:05 PM, Ensign Biwersewas the last man to leave the gunboat.

Chief Mahlmann, still without his trousers,and a sailor gallantly returned to the gunboat toretrieve stores and medical supplies. While theywere paddling back to the riverbank, two boat-loads of Japanese soldiers machine-gunned thePanay, boarded her, and then quickly left. At3:45 PM, the gunboat rolled over to starboardand slowly slid beneath the water bow first.

The American survivors spent the rest of thatday hiding in eight-foot reeds and ankle-deepmud on the riverbank, while the enemy planescontinued strafing. “Doc” Grazier did his best

to make 16 wounded men comfortable.Because of Commander Hughes’s wounds,Army Captain Frank Roberts, an assistant mil-itary attaché who had been aboard the Panay,was put in command of the survivors. Hisknowledge of the Chinese language and the sit-uation ashore proved indispensable.

With few rations and inadequate clothing forthe near freezing nights, the survivors spent twogrueling days wandering through swamps andalong footpaths and canals to seek refuge awayfrom the river. They were treated kindly by theChinese and managed to get word of theirplight to Admiral Yarnell. They reached the vil-lage of Hoshien and were taken aboard thegunboats Oahu and HMS Ladybird.

The Panay was the first American vessel lostto enemy action on the 3,434-mile Yangtze River.Two crewmen and a civilian passenger werekilled, and there were 43 casualties, including 11officers and men seriously wounded.

The loss of the Panay and British vessels,including HMS Ladybird and HMS Bee, and thebombing of the gunboat USS Tutuila at Chungk-ing made headlines in the British and Americanpress. Outrage was widespread. Even the Japan-ese people and government were aghast, yet theinternational community failed to take effectiveaction. Remembering the sinking of the 6,650-ton battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor onFebruary 15, 1898, Ambassador Grew at firstexpected his country to declare war. PromptJapanese regrets and promises of reparationeventually turned away wrath.

In the Japanese capital, the government of46-year-old Prince Fumimaro Konoye, theprime minister, was as shaken by the sinkingsas were the Americans and the British. Anembarrassed Foreign Minister Kiki Hirota tooka note to Ambassador Grew expressing regretand offering full restitution for the loss of thePanay. “I am having a very difficult time,” saidHirota. “Things happen unexpectedly.”

The Japanese Navy high command showedits disapproval by dismissing the commanderof the 38,200-ton carrier Kaga, who wasresponsible for the Panay attack. “We havedone this to suggest that the Army do likewiseand remove Hashimoto from his command,”said Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the naval viceminister, who did not relish doing battle withthe U.S. Navy. After spending much time inAmerica, he was aware of the country’s poten-

tial military strength. Following an investiga-tion led by Yamamoto, the Japanese govern-ment was quick to apologize. AmbassadorGrew was intensely relieved, but he wroteprophetically in his diary, “I cannot look intothe future with any feeling of serenity.”

President Roosevelt called an immediatemeeting of his cabinet, and Navy SecretaryClaude Swanson, Vice President John NanceGarner, and Secretary of the Interior HaroldIckes urged a declaration of war. “Certainly,war with Japan is inevitable sooner or later,”noted Ickes. “If we have to fight her, isn’t thisthe best possible time?” FDR replied that theNavy was not ready for war and that the coun-try was unprepared. Senator Harry Ashurst ofArizona told the president that a declaration ofwar would gain no votes on Capitol Hill. Sen-ator Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota spoke formany when he suggested that American forcesin China be withdrawn. “How long are wegoing to sit there and let these fellows killAmerican soldiers and sailors and sink our bat-tleships?” he asked.

The president directed Secretary of StateCordell Hull to demand an apology from the


Wikipedia Commons

ABOVE: A Type 96 carrier-based attack plane of the Imperial Japanese Navy flies above the aircraft carrierKaga in 1937. Along with Aichi dive bombers, Type 96 aircraft flying from Kaga took part in the attack onPanay. RIGHT: Wounded during the attack, Lieutenant Commander James J. Hughes grimaces after beingbrought ashore from the stricken vessel.

National Archives


Japanese government, secure full compensa-tion, and obtain a guarantee against a repetitionof the Yangtze River attacks. FDR alsoinstructed Treasury Secretary Henry Morgen-thau Jr. to prepare to seize Japanese assets inthe United States if Tokyo did not pay and con-sidered the possibility of an Anglo-Americaneconomic blockade.

Intent on clamping a quarantine on Japan,Roosevelt summoned the British ambassadorin Washington, Sir Ronald Lindsay, and sug-gested that the two nations impose a navalblockade that would deprive Japan of vital rawmaterials. Lindsay protested that such a movewould lead to war but cabled London that his“horrified criticisms” had “made little impres-sion upon the president.” The British Admi-ralty, however, approved FDR’s blockade plan.The president was resolute and briefed the cab-inet about his quarantine plan on December 17.

Roosevelt’s stance was strengthened by areport from a court of inquiry called by Admi-ral Yarnell aboard the cruiser USS Augusta offShanghai stating that the attack on the Panayhad been wanton and ruthless. The presidentwas also informed that a message to the Japan-ese Combined Fleet had been intercepted anddecoded by U.S. naval intelligence indicatingthat the raid had been deliberately planned byan officer aboard the Kaga.

Foreign Minister Hirota informed Washing-ton that orders had been issued to ensure thefuture safety of American vessels in Chinesewaters and stressed that the commander of theforce that had launched the Panay attack hadbeen relieved. An official Japanese inquiry con-cluded that the attack was accidental and thatthe British and American vessels had been mis-taken for Chinese. The Japanese naval aviatorsthought they were bombing enemy troopsescaping upriver in Chinese merchant ships.Anxious to avoid a war for which it was ill pre-pared, the U.S. government accepted the “mis-take” theory together with an indemnity.

The Japanese apology arrived in Washingtonon Christmas Eve, 1937, and was officiallyaccepted on Christmas Day. Ambassador Grewbelieved that the timing was “masterly.” BritishPrime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s govern-ment also gracefully accepted an apology forthe sinking of HMS Ladybird.

Though it foreshadowed, generally unno-ticed, what was to happen four years later, thePanay incident ended agreeably with a sigh ofrelief passing across America. It bolstered iso-lationist efforts to keep America out of war, anda Gallup poll conducted in the second week ofJanuary 1938 showed that 70 percent of votersfavored a complete withdrawal from China—

the Asiatic Fleet, Marines, soldiers, missionar-ies, medical personnel, and all.

Eventually, on April 22, 1938, the Japanesegovernment complied with Washington’s claimby handing over a check for $2,214,007.36 as“settlement in full” for the Panay, three oilbarges, personal losses, and casualties. Tokyosaid that if the United States wanted a replace-ment gunboat for the Panay it would be gladto receive the contract. It also asked if it couldsalvage the gunboat and oil barges. Washing-ton refused.

Despite the apologies and reparations, theJapanese—led by Emperor Hirohito and Pre-mier Konoye—showed no remorse for the“China incident.” Colonel Hashimoto was notreprimanded and in fact was eventuallyawarded the Kinshi Kinsho Medal seven weeksafter the December 7, 1941, raid on Pearl Har-bor. Konoye denounced the Chinese govern-

ment’s “anti-Japanese movement,” and theoffensive continued in China. Aided by heavynaval air bombardment, fresh Japanese divi-sions assaulted Canton and the cities ofWuchang, Hankow, and Hanyang.

While European nations appeased Nazi dic-tator Adolf Hitler and America clung to neu-trality in the late 1930s, war was a brutal real-ity in the Far East. Time was running out. InJanuary 1938, Britain and the United Statessigned a secret agreement to the effect that ifthe Japanese made any southward move theU.S. Fleet would concentrate at Pearl Harborwhile a Royal Navy battle fleet would be basedat Singapore. That March, Representative CarlVinson of Georgia forwarded a bill in Congressto increase the Navy by 20 percent over 10years. The originator of an act to bring theNavy up to treaty strength, Vinson was theNavy’s best friend on Capitol Hill.

Only a few months after the loss of thePanay, a small-scale but shattering preview ofthings to come, omens of future threats wereevident to perceptive Western observers.Through the spring and summer of 1938, infor-mation flowed into the Washington-basedOffice of Naval Intelligence from attachés inTokyo and Berlin. The messages from each cap-ital indicated that the Axis powers were armingbut did not seek war with the United States.Some of the information received from Japan,however, was less than reassuring.


National Archives

ABOVE: Its decks awash in the waters of the Yangtze River, the gunboat Panay lies helpless following theDecember 1937 attack by Japanese aircraft. BELOW: The British gunboat HMS Ladybird lies in drydock atShanghai undergoing repairs after being attacked and seriously damaged by Japanese aircraft. One Britishsailor was killed and several others were wounded during the unprovoked attack.

Imperial War Museum



AFTER THE U.S. VICTORY AT MIDWAY IN JUNE 1942, THE FOCUS OF THE WAR IN THEPacific moved south. While the Imperial Japanese Navy had suffered a stunning defeat at Mid-way, it was still on the move elsewhere, particularly in the Solomon Islands.

Japanese forces there were trying to isolate Australia from its lifeline to the United States. Whenthe Japanese began constructing an airfield on the island of Guadalcanal, the Americans responded

by landing there and seizing it. This began a months-long struggle for controlof this vital island, one that ended in American victory. It was the first majorengagement in the area, but far from the last.

This was the beginning of a long, grueling campaign of land, air, and sea bat-tles in the South Pacific as the Allies began pushing the Japanese out of the ter-ritory they had seized in the first six months of the war.

Unfortunately, the herculean efforts of Allied troops in the South Pacific haveoften been glossed over in favor of Central Pacific battles such as Tarawa andSaipan. South Pacific Cauldron: World War II’s Great Forgot-

ten Battlegrounds (Alan Rems, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2014, 312pp., maps, photographs, notes, bibliography, index, $38.95, hardcover) goes a longway toward redressing that imbalance, systematically covering the struggle to recap-ture the islands on Australia’s northern frontier and beyond.

The book begins with a retelling of Guadalcanal, the gateway to all that came later.

I By Christopher Miskimon I

Campaign on Land &Sea and in the Air

The defeat of the Japanese in the Pacific required a tremendousAllied effort combining all available resources.

American forces landed unopposed on the islandbut suffered greatly in the effort to capture it.Japanese naval forces roughly handled a U.S.Navy still getting its feet under it, and the terri-ble conditions on the ground took a toll on thedefending Marine and later Army personnel. Thecounterattacking Japanese underestimated howmany Americans were on the ground and alwayshad trouble coordinating their multiprongedattacks in the thick jungle, often allowing theiropponents to deal with them piecemeal. Theauthor notes this was a particular flaw of Japan-ese planning throughout the war, a consistentunderestimation of enemy strength and theirown offensive moves, which were complicatedand difficult to coordinate.

After Guadalcanal the Allies embarked on asustained effort to carry the war to an enemydug in across thousands of square miles of oceandotted with islands large and small. The Japan-ese had been pushed onto the strategic defensiveat last, but they were determined to hold whatthey had, forming a perimeter around their vitalconquests so these could be protected until theAllies gave up and negotiated a peace settlement.Large forces were installed in places like Rabaul,boasting a major port and airfields capable ofsupporting hundreds of planes. Eventually thisgreat bastion was neutralized from the air andbypassed, but not all Japanese strongholds couldbe left to wither and die under air attacks. Oth-ers had to be invaded and taken.

This entailed combat in fetid jungles and dankswamps, where the conditions were nearlyunbearable. The Allied forces were a mix of sol-diers and Marines along with a substantial num-ber of Australians and New Zealanders. Eachcomponent had its own style of fighting, notalways in harmony with one another or thedesires of various leaders, including AmericanGeneral Douglas MacArthur or Australian Gen-eral Thomas Blamey. While the leadership gen-erally cooperated, there was friction. By 1945,the Japanese forces remaining in this theaterwere beaten, neutralized beyond the capacity foreffective action, and often starving. Despite this,fighting went on as the Australians in particularkept hounding the Japanese garrisons, a contro-versial decision at the time.

Although it covers the wide topic of an entiretheater of operations, this book is thoroughly

detailed, and the level of researchis obvious. The occasional squab-bles among the senior comman-ders are covered as well asnotable individual and small unitactions, such as instances where a

On June 30, 1943, U.S.Army troops take cover

wherever they can duringthe opening hours of thebattle for the island of

Rendova in the Solomons.


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soldier earned the Medal of Honor or VictoriaCross. The real strength of this book, however,is in its coverage of an often ignored area of thewar. This work places it into an easy to follownarrative that makes sense of the war in theSouth Pacific.

Invasion Rabaul: The EpicStory of Lark Force, theForgotten Garrison, Janu-ary-July 1942 (Bruce Gam-ble, Zenith Press, Min-neapolis, MN, 2014, 304pp., maps, photographs,notes, bibliography, index,

$18.99, softcover)Rabaul on the island of New Britain was

under the control of Australia when the PacificWar began in December 1941. A reinforcedbattalion of Australian infantry was stationedto defend it in case of Japanese attack. Whenthat attack came in January 1942, the garrison,known as Lark Force, was woefully out-matched by a Japanese force of almost 5,000backed by a powerful naval task force. Neitherequipped nor trained for such a battle, LarkForce was quickly overcome, the survivors flee-ing unprepared into the jungle.

Tragically, the Australian government had no

plan in place to evacuate survivors, thoughsome ad hoc efforts did occur. A small numberescaped in boats largely provided by local civil-ians and coastwatchers. This meant the major-ity of Lark Force became Japanese prisoners.Some were executed in brutal atrocities, whileothers were relegated to slave labor. Evenworse, about a thousand of the prisoners werelost at sea when the vessel taking them to Japanwas sunk by a U.S. submarine. The ship wasnot marked as a POW transport.

This is the first in Bruce Gamble’s Rabaul tril-ogy, telling the story of this naval base that fig-ured prominently in the South Pacific duringWorld War II. The story of Lark Force is rela-tively unknown in America but it is a fascinat-ing tale of the tragic unpreparedness of Alliedforces and the attendant consequences. Gamble’sprose is clear and easy to read, and his expertiseon the Pacific Theater is well established. Thesecond book in this trilogy was reviewed in thiscolumn recently; both are well done.

Evans Carlson, Marine Raider: The Man WhoCommanded America’s First Special Forces(Duane Schultz, Westholme Publishing, Yard-ley, PA, 2014, 280 pp., maps, photographs,notes, bibliography, index, $26.00, hardcover)

Like many leaders of special operations units,

Evans Carlson did not fitthe mold of a conven-tional military leader. Heeschewed standard hierar-chies and adopted an ethosof teamwork and a shareddesire to accomplish goalsfor the good of the group.

However, these methods allowed Carlson tocreate an elite fighting unit capable of accom-plishing extraordinary feats of endurance andcourage. The Marine Raider unit he formedwould go on to make a famous raid againstJapanese-held Makin atoll before going on toGuadalcanal. There it conducted the famous“Long Patrol” deep behind enemy lines.

This biography of Carlson delves deep intothe man and his life, highlighting the events thathelped make him the leader he was. His earlydays in the Army and then the Marine Corps,his time spent with Chinese troops fighting theJapanese in the 1930s, and his efforts to createa commando-style unit are all covered in detail.Likewise, the controversies surrounding Carl-son are evaluated. The Makin raid was used asa propaganda victory, but inside military cir-cles there were questions about how it was con-ducted and whether some Marines were leftbehind. Carlson’s unconventional leadership



NEW AND NOTEWORTHY

No End Save Victory: How FDR Ledthe Nation into War (David Kaiser,

Basic Books,2014, $27.99,hardcover) Roo-sevelt saw warwas coming forthe U.S. and wasdetermined toprepare for it.

This work shows how he workedaround a reluctant populace andan unready nation to get Americaon a war footing.

West Point ’41: The Class That Wentto War and SavedAmerica (AnneKazel-Wilcox andP.J. Wilcox, Univer-sity Press of NewEngland, 2014,$29.95, hard-cover) West Point’s

Class of 1941 was thrust directlyinto combat in World War II. The

service these men gave throughouttheir careers shaped the nation.

The Forecast for D-Day and theWeatherman Behind Ike’s GreatestGamble (John Ross, Lyons Press,$24.95, hardcover) James Staggwas the chief meteorologist forEisenhower during the D-Day inva-sion. This is the story of how hemade the most important predictionof his life.

Partisan Diary: A Woman’s Life inthe Italian Resistance (Ada Gobetti,Oxford University Press, 2014,$34.95, hardcover) This book pro-vides a firsthand look at the day today operations of Italian partisansin the Piedmont region. They had tofight both German troops and themountain terrain.

Hitler’s Last Witness: The Memoirsof Hitler’s Bodyguard (RochusMisch, Casemate Publishers,2014, $32.95, hardcover) Theauthor was assigned to Hitler’s per-sonal bodyguard. This memoir cov-ers his experiences in the Naziinner circle.

Lion Rampant: The Memoirs of anInfantry Officer from D-Day to theRhineland (Robert Woolcombe,Black and White Publishing, 2014,$15.00, softcover) An officer’saccount of his experience leadingsoldiers in Europe, full of detail onthe foot soldier’s life in combat.

D-Day Bomber Command: Failed toReturn (Steve Darlow, Sean Feast,Marc Hall, Andrew MacDonald,and Howard Sandall, Casemate

Publishers, 2014, $34.95, hard-cover) The story of the RAF’s cam-paign during the buildup to D-Day.This book discusses the high costBritish airmen paid to enable theinvasion.

George Marshall: A Biography(Debi and Irwin Unger, Harper-Collins, 2014, $35.00, hardcover)Marshall was an architect of Ameri-can victory in World War II. Thisbook covers the life of this greatman.

World War II Album: ConsolidatedB24 Liberator (Ray Merriam, Mer-riam Press, 2014, $24.95, soft-cover) This is a photo book of thefamous American bomber. Picturescover every aspect of the plane fromprototype to combat.



style also rankled some within the Marine hier-archy, so much so that eventually he was side-lined for the rest of the war. This book is a wor-thy read for anyone seeking a betterunderstanding of this much debated officer.

Hitler’s Generals in Amer-ica: Nazi POWs and AlliedMilitary Intelligence (DerekR. Mallett, University Pressof Kentucky, Lexington,2013, photographs, appen-dices, notes, bibliography,index, $35.00, hardcover)

As World War II progressed, more and moreGerman officers fell into Allied hands as pris-oners of war. As the American militaryadvanced through North Africa into Sicily andItaly, it began to accept the surrender of its ownshare of generals. Back in Germany these menwere of a distinctly different social class fromthe soldiers they commanded. Unlike theBritish, who recognized this reality and actedaccordingly, the Americans failed to appreciatewhat this meant. Thus German generals in U.S.captivity found themselves treated little better

than other prisoners, while those in Britishhands were treated according to their perceivedstation, something the British used to theiradvantage for intelligence purposes.

As the war progressed, American leadersbegan to see things differently. They began torealize their nation was growing into a super-power. Also, they could see that the loomingSoviet menace was waiting after the Nazis weredefeated. America would need every advantageit could seize to counter the Soviet threat. So,the U.S. military began to court captive Ger-man generals, capitalizing on their vast experi-ence fighting the Soviets. Many German gener-als wrote about their experiences on the EasternFront and elsewhere, providing insight forAmerican leaders for the coming Cold War.

The author does an excellent job showinghow the American military was able to drawthese enemy generals into cooperation andgather their useful insights. Interrogators hadto weigh the reliability of each man’s statementsand watch them for signs of betrayal. Manystayed in Allied hands for several years after thewar. Some were suspected of war crimes. Thiscomplex situation meant that American leaders


Simulation Gaming BY JOSEPH LUSTER

WORLD OF DIVINGPUBLISHER VERTIGO GAMES • DEVELOPERVERTIGO GAMES • PLATFORM PC • AVAILABLE NOW

World War II games span a plethora of genres andsub-genres, but a recent content update for World ofDiving might be one of the most unique. For the unfa-

miliar, World of Diving is a massively mul-tiplayer simulation game, and while it fallson the casual side of things, there’s stillplenty to do for those thirsty for somethinga bit more exciting. Players start off in the Caribbeanand, just as the name suggests, enter the world ofdeep sea diving in both single and multiplayer modes.Throughout the adventure World of Diving tasks youwith everything from tracking and documentingpeaceful marine wildlife to surviving disaster scenarios

that mirror real-world situations, hunting for treasure,salvaging shipwrecks, dealing with malfunctioningand limited gear, and more. Or you could just chilland dive, hence the casual nature of the game.

If one of the main features sounds like the perfectexcuse for mixing in a bit of World War II- flavoredaction into it all, well, Vertigo Games—the Dutchindie studio behind World of Diving—is way aheadof you. One of the content updates lets players dis-cover and explore the sunken remains of Germanbattleship Bismarck. As many of our readers are like-ly well aware, Bismarck was one of the two largestbattleships Germany ever built and was commis-sioned into the country’s battle fleet in 1940. Before

the British sank Bismarck during her maidenvoyage in 1941, she managed to assist indestroying British battle cruiser HMS Hood.An intriguing but brief life on the sea, to saythe least.

Now you can fully dive into Bismarck,including extensive exploration of the ship’s innerstructure. Thankfully the update also adds the ROV(remote operated vehicle) buddy, so players won’t beleft in the dark while combing the depths of Bismarck.

For an extra intense experience, World of Divingsupports the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset in addi-

World of Diving observes war from a different point ofview, while Company of Heroes 2 expands its playground.


had to make difficult decisions regarding theirlevel of trust in the German officers and theirpotential prosecution.

The Devil’s Alliance: Hitler’sPact with Stalin 1939-1941(Roger Moorhouse, BasicBooks, New York, 2014,photographs, notes, bibliog-raphy, index, $29.99, hard-cover)

On August 23, 1939, two of the greatestmass murderers of the 20th century made anagreement. Less than two years later theywould become implacable foes, flinging vastarmies across a continent. For the moment,however, Adolf Hitler was free to move eastinto a Poland isolated from Western support.Josef Stalin could focus on defeating Japan inthe East and annexing part of Finland withoutfear of German involvement. The pact hadother advantages for Germany and the SovietUnion. The two nations traded raw materialsand machinery across their new border. In theend, the Nazi-Soviet Non-agression Pactstrengthened both nations for the brutal warthey would fight against each other.

Many today are unaware of the temporaryalliance between Germany and the Soviet

Union at the beginning of World War II. Theauthor wrote this book with the intent ofenlightening readers about it, and he has donea commendable job, presenting the story inclear prose and fascinating detail. The numer-ous ways in which the Nazis and Soviets coop-erated are well documented, and the narrativeis structured in an easy to follow style. Thisbook is a political as well as a military history.

Dogface Soldiers: The Storyof B Company, 15th Regi-ment, 3rd Infantry Division,From Fedala to Salzburg:Audie Murphy and HisBrothers in Arms (Daniel R.Champagne, Merriam Press,Bennington, VT, 2011, 264

pp., maps, photographs, bibliography, $39.95,hardcover, $4.99 in PDF format on disc by mail)

Audie Murphy is one of the most famousAmerican soldiers of World War II, and forgood reason. He was the most decoratedAmerican soldier to come out of the conflict.Though he finished the war as a lieutenant,his exploits occurred while he was an enlistedman. This makes him one of only a few sol-diers from the ranks to gain lasting fame.Murphy’s actions are well known. He even


tion to a standard monitor, putting you as close to allof those underwater discoveries as possible withoutactually heading out into the unfathomable depthsyourself. As you might have guessed from the men-tion of “massively multiplayer,” you can also playwith friends, with World of Diving supporting up to16 players and the option of choosing NPCcompanions. Team up for cooperative explo-ration or go head to head in arcade chal-lenges, it’s up to you.

Since World of Diving is constantly indevelopment, player feedback plays a majorrole in how it grows over the course of itslifespan. Hopefully the addition of the Bis-marck dive paves the way for more WorldWar II-themed content, because it seems like a prettyfantastic opportunity for history buffs to get up closeand personal with some of the period-specific won-ders of war, even if said wonders eventually foundthemselves at the bottom of the unforgiving ocean.

COMPANY OF HEROES 2 CRACKS OPENOBSERVER MODEPUBLISHER SEGA • DEVELOPER RELIC ENTER-TAINMENT • PLATFORM PC • AVAILABLE NOW

Company of Heroes 2 players recently got a treat inthe form of an update that adds in some oft-request-ed features. First up is Observer Mode, which letsplayers sync up and watch live multiplayer matches,

viewing the games from a variety ofangles and different speeds while switch-ing between player perspectives. Observ-er Mode also grants access to previouslyinaccessible live data and should ulti-mately serve as a handy tool for analyz-

ing strategies and learning from some of the bestplayers Company of Heroes 2 has to offer. Thosewho want to fall on the broadcasting side of thingscan do so through an integrated Twitch interface,opening up an already wide audience. The Observ-er Mode itself allows for more than 500 concurrentviewers per live match, with the ability to scale up totens of thousands for special events.

The folks at Relic Entertainment also added in ModTools, serving up more creative opportunities for theever-growing modding community. Features in theMod Tools release include an Attribute Editor, ModBuilder, Archive Viewer, Tuning Packs, and Win Con-dition Packs. Now let’s see what some of our craftyreaders can cook up in Company of Heroes 2.

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wrote his own book. Like all infantrymen hewas part of a unit rather than a lone hero. Thisbook looks at that unit, Murphy’s company,the center of a foot soldier’s world then andnow. Company B entered the war in NorthAfrica during Operation Torch in November1942. The unit stayed in the war until it endedfor the company in Salzburg, Germany, inMay 1945. Along the way Murphy earned hishonors, and his fellow soldiers stood by himthrough hellish combat.

This book is full of veteran accounts, anec-dotes, and references to official records. Bookssuch as this seldom fail to entertain the readerwith the experiences of the men who lived thehistory. This book focuses well on the commoninfantryman.

Barbarossa Unleashed: TheGerman Blitzkrieg throughCentral Russia to the Gatesof Moscow June-December1941 (Craig W.H. Luther,Schiffer Publishing, Atglen,PA, 2014, 712 pp., maps,

photographs, notes, appendices, bibliography,index, $59.99, hardcover)

The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union wasthe largest military operation in history. Mil-lions of soldiers, tens of thousands of armoredvehicles, and a like number of aircraft all cametogether on the western frontier of the Sovietrealm. In the first six months of the offensive,Germany came as close to conquering its com-munist foe as it ever would. Army Group Cen-ter, carrying the German main effort, pushedfrom the Polish border to the very edge ofMoscow before a stiff counterattack pushed itaway from its prize forever.

The complexity and sheer scope of Opera-tion Barbarossa is enough to overwhelm mostminds, making concentrated study a require-ment even to attain a basic understanding. Thisnew book from Schiffer Publishing brings theentire effort of Army Group Center into onevolume, which examines nearly every aspect ofthe campaign. It combines material from vari-ous archives with extensive veteran accountsand other writings to provide a comprehensivelook at this world changing campaign. Thelevel of detail is extensive, and the author’sanalysis is insightful. Aside from recounting theactual fighting, the book also looks at the roleof the German Army in war crimes against bothcivilian and military personnel. Many Germanmemoirs seek to provide justification for vari-ous actions, but this book avoids that pitfallwhile still incorporating the useful informationfrom them.


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Carlson was kept in staff and training assign-ments until November 1943, when he wasallowed to participate in the invasion of Tarawaas an observer. Still, he managed to involve him-self so directly in the fighting that ColonelDavid Shoup (later Marine Corps Comman-dant) said memorably, “He may be Red, but heisn’t Yellow.”

In 1944, Carlson talked his way into joiningthe invasion of Saipan, once again as anobserver, which did not stop him from being atthe front. He was seriously wounded riskinghis life to rescue an injured enlisted man. Hewas sent to hospitals in California to recoverand never saw combat again.

The war was over for Evans Carlson, and sowas his career. His wounds required extensiveand repeated surgery. Between that and the lin-gering malaria and a growing sense of bitter-ness and disappointment, he never recoveredhis health or stamina.

Then in July 1946, Carlson and the Raiderswere stunned by the revelation at the Japanesewar crimes trials that nine Marine Raiders hadbeen captured on Makin and beheaded—twomonths after the raid. No one had known thatany Raiders had been left behind. Carlson hadbeen certain that every Raider still alive after thebattle had reached the safety of the submarines.

On May 27, 1947, Carlson died of a heartattack at the age of 51. General Alexander Van-degrift, then Marine Corps Commandant,attended the funeral at Arlington NationalCemetery in Virginia, but few others were pre-sent. The Marine Corps had made no publicannouncement of the service. When it was over,before the small group of mourners left, aMarine who had served with Carlson in Chinaoverheard General Vandegrift say, “ThankGod, he’s gone.”

At great personal cost, Evans Carlson hadachieved what he set out to do—create an elitespecial operations force that helped boost themorale of the American people when it was atits lowest point. And he accomplished this onhis own terms, in his own way, in defiance ofthe establishment and its rules.

Duane Schultz is a psychologist and author ofmore than a dozen acclaimed histories, includ-ing Coming Through Fire: George ArmstrongCuster and Chief Black Kettle, Crossing theRapido: A Tragedy of World War II, and EvansCarlson, Marine Raider: The Man Who Com-manded America’s First Special Forces, avail-able from Westholme Publishing.


P r o f i l e sContinued from page 11

An April 13 report from the naval minister inTokyo stated, “The [Japanese] Navy is notbuilding any super-dreadnoughts and has atpresent no intention of doing so.” In fact, thebuilding of the 72,000-ton Yamato had beenstarted a year earlier, and her sister, theMusashi, was laid down in 1938. In the samereport, a Japanese naval officer said, “A Japan-ese-American war is now out of the question.”However, he further remarked that “the pre-sent world situation may lead to a war betweendemocratic and totalitarian states, and in thisJapan would oppose America in the Pacific.”The officer “felt no doubt about the ultimatevictory of the Japanese Navy.”

A June 1938 intelligence report from Tokyodeclared, “The Japanese are going places. Forthe present, the United States has not much tofear. But when Japan has consolidated her gainsin China several years hence, a clash with heris inevitable.”

In April 1938, meanwhile, Admiral Yarnell’s1932 exploit had been repeated by Vice Admi-ral Ernest J. King, commander of the AircraftBattle Force, as part of Fleet Problem 14. Tak-ing advantage of foul weather, planes from theunnoticed carrier USS Saratoga north of Oahumade a successful mock raid on Pearl Harbor.After each of the war games, judges concludedthat if the attacks had been real they wouldhave succeeded. However, few people took themaneuvers seriously; they were just interest-ing exercises.

The growing list of Japanese war crimes inChina had prompted a call from President Roo-sevelt early in 1938 for a “moral embargo” ofJapan by American arms exporters, and thiswas made a policy that July after the bom-bardment of Canton. It was the first expressionof American displeasure with Japan, and itproved moderately effective.

Secretary Hull sent a long letter in Octoberprotesting Japanese activities in China, andTokyo responded the following month. PremierKonoye declared a “new order in East Asia”whereby Japan planned to entrench its domi-nation of Manchuria and China regardless ofanyone else’s “rights.” East-West relationsinevitably worsened, and just over three yearslater the Imperial Japanese Navy sent its car-rier planes against the U.S. Pacific Fleet, thrust-ing America into World War II.

Michael D. Hull is a frequent contributor to WWII History. He resides in Enfield, Connecticut.

P a n a yContinued from page 65

Thompson and said, “You won’t read about thisin the newspapers, but you and your flight of P-400s just saved Guadalcanal.” Vandegrift thenslipped a bottle of scotch into the pilot’s pocket,a much appreciated reward for the work he hadjust done.

Both Brown and Davis received Silver Starsfor their role in this mission. As flight leader,Thompson was awarded the Navy Cross, oneof only 11 Army Air Forces personnel to receivethis decoration during World War II. Thosewho were there insist all three pilots deservedthe Medal of Honor.

The defeat of Kawaguchi’s detachment didnot mark the end of combat on Guadalcanal.Twice more, in October and November, largeJapanese forces steamed toward Cactus intenton evicting the Americans from their islandlodgment. On the night of October 13, twoJapanese battleships hurled over 1,000 14-inchshells into the U.S. perimeter, wreaking incred-ible destruction while transports put ashoreanother 10,000 Japanese soldiers. Later thatmonth those infantrymen attacked Americanlines only to be stopped cold by Vandegrift’sweary Marines, reinforced now by a regimentof fresh Leathernecks and 4,000 U.S. Armytroops, the first of many soldiers to arrive onGuadalcanal that autumn.

Help for the Cactus Air Force arrived as well.New model P-39 Airacobras, fitted with properoxygen systems, began replacing the worn outklunkers, while fresh-faced pilots reported tolearn the dangerous business of aerial combat.In November, the Fighting Cocks joined Navyand Marine aircrews as they pounded theJapanese battleship Hiei, caught off Savo Islandas part of a final naval offensive againstGuadalcanal. Mortally wounded by torpedoes,bombs, and gunfire, the Hiei was scuttled—much like Japan’s dream of victory in theSolomons.

While victory was still a long way off, a grow-ing number of American aviators flying increas-ingly capable warplanes began carrying the fightback toward Tokyo. Yet, the 67th FighterSquadron, battling against incredible odds in anaircraft totally unsuited for its task, can takecredit for being there from the start—when guts,ingenuity, and stubborn determination began toturn the tide in the skies of the Pacific.

Patrick J. Chaisson is a retired U.S. Army offi-cer who served with the 82nd Airborne and42nd Infantry Divisions. He writes from hishome in Scotia, New York.

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