On the morning of Saturday April 7th,
1945 tension aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-12) was times a
thousand. The fighter pilots with Hornet’s Air Group 17 were grim
after the heavy kamikaze raids the day before but remained optimistic.
On this particular day the skies above them lay in a dull overcast and
threatening clouds darkened the horizon in all directions. Six days
earlier on April 1, US forces under Lt. Gen. Simon Buckner had invaded
Okinawa. Five days after that, on Friday, April 6, suicide planes from
Japan and Formosa rained down upon the Okinawa invasion forces by the
hundreds. American ships were sunk at random and sailors were maimed
beyond recognition all according to the unfathomable fortunes of war.
German
surrender of a JagdTiger equipped company of the 512th Heavy Tank
Destroyer Battalion (512th sJgdPzAbt) at Iserlohn, Germany. The company
was under the command of Knights Cross holder Hauptmann Albert Ernst and
he chose to surrender the town and his unit to the Americans rather
than see its destruction.
The
battalion was formed at Döllersheim on 11 February 1945, it received
its first Jagdtigers on 16 February and by 13 March, it had been brought
up to a strength of 20 vehicles in two companies, with the 3rd Company
made up of personnel transferred from the 511th Heavy Panzer Battalion.
It
was wholly dark. In the sea north of Tromsø in Norway, the great German
battleship Scharnhorst was on a mission to sink an Allied supply convoy
bound for Russia.
Unknown
to the German command, the convoy’s British escort, led by Admiral Sir
Robert Burnett and Admiral Bruce Fraser, had successfully intercepted
the Scharnhorst’s radio communications. They were fully aware of the
Scharnhorst’s plan to sink the convoy.
It was the day after
Christmas. On the north sea, December 26th, total darkness reigned for
most of the day. The British Admiral Fraser commanded from the HMS Duke
of York, a powerful and heavily armed battleship. Supporting the Duke of
York were the Cruiser Jamaica and four destroyers.
Miyamoto
Musashi was three hours late. This was his way. On the beach the
tension in the air was palpable. Sasaki Kojiro paced up and down on the
fine sand with his hands behind his back. His wrath was rising with the
sun, and with every passing minute he felt the insult to his honour
growing. The date was the 13th of April, 1612.
Kojiro
was considered one of the greatest Samurai in Japan. He was famous
throughout the land for his speed and precision, which was made even
more remarkable by his preferred weapon. He wielded a huge no-dachi
blade, a curved Japanese sword in the classic style, but with a blade
over a meter in length. The size and weight of the no-dachi made it a
brutal, unsubtle weapon, but Kojiro had perfected its use to a degree
unheard of in all Japan.
Veterans
of Latvian Legion held a parade this month in Riga to honor a key 1944
World War II battle. The parade is controversial because the Legion was
commanded by the German Waffen-SS, the Nazis’ elite police force, and
fought against the Soviet army.
More than 1,000 people paraded through the Old Town of the Latvian capital. The security presence was strong during the parade.
Jewish
groups, Moscow, and much of Latvia’s Russian minority felt that the
parade glorified Nazism. 25% of the 2 million people living in Latvia
identify as Russian. They dislike the Legion and all it represents.
The
term “battle rifle” is a colloquialism that is generally used to refer
to rifles firing a full caliber cartridge and generally are select fire.
After WWII, many nations decided to forego intermediate rounds in favor
of heavy hitting, powerful fully automatic long arms that lasted until
intermediate cartridges seized the day. In this video, we take a look at
5 that we consider the best.
This
was not the actual last battle in Europe, although I believe it is the
last one in Western Europe. However, this story is a fascinating one and
one I wasn’t aware of until recently.
The Georgian Uprising on Texel (5 April 1945 – 20 May 1945) was an insurrection by the 882nd Infantry Battalion Königin Tamara (Queen Tamar or Tamara) of the Georgian Legion of the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) stationed on the German-occupied Dutch island of Texel (pronounced Tessel). The battalion was made up of 800 Georgians and 400 Germans, with mainly German officers.
For
five years it was as idyllic as war could be. But for the last six
weeks – extending beyond the official end of the Second World War – it
was bloody carnage. Those who were once comrades in uniform suddenly
took to butchering one another in a conflict that has come to be called
Western Europe’s last battle.
A
Hungarian company lashes two MiG engines to a Soviet T-34 tank and
proceeds to huff and puff and blow out the worst sort of raging oil-well
fire.
The
Kuwaiti oil fires were caused by Iraqi military forces setting fire to a
reported 605 to 732 oil wells along with an unspecified number of oil
filled low-lying areas, such as oil lakes and fire trenches, as part of a
scorched earth policy while retreating from Kuwait in 1991 due to the
advances of Coalition military forces in the Persian Gulf War.
Caraktère
Presse et Éditions are based in sunny Aix-en-Provence in France. They
produce a number of vibrant looking magazines filled with superb archive
imagery and artwork on a range of military history subjects.
Unfortunately my schoolboy French isn’t good enough to appreciate much
of the text, so I am glad this colourful and dynamic book, typical of
their style; is published in English.
We
saw their look at German panzers towards the end of last year and this
time round the publisher turns our attention to the Messerschmitt Bf 109
fighter plane. The book takes the reader through the history of design
and development of the famous fighter before looking at the long
sequence of production variants including a phalanx of differences in
detail. The authors finish up by outlining the special versions of the
aircraft and the appendices include a wealth of technical information.
Republic P-47D-22-RE Thunderbolt 42-26057 of the 63d Fighter Squadron in D-Day invasion markings, 1944
Republic P-47D-22-RE Thunderbolt 42-26057 of the 63d Fighter Squadron in D-Day invasion markings, 1944Lieutenant
Harry F. Warner, Jr., was a decorated WWII hero killed during a bombing
mission with the 63rd Fighter Squadron. His plane was shot down over
the French village of Liancourt Saint-Pierre on June 7, 1944.
An
army can help win a war without even existing. Strange as it might
seem, that was exactly what happened with the First United States Army
Group (FUSAG), a fictional formation that played a key role in the
Second World War.
Preparing for D-Day
Landing craft in Southampton ready for the invasion.By
the spring of 1944, Nazi Germany was on the retreat. The Red Army was
pushing German forces back on the Eastern Front while American and
British troops fought their way up Italy. Defeat was clearly coming for
the Germans.
But for the western powers, this created a problem.
The Germans under Kesselring were slowing their advance up Italy, and
would become even harder to fight in the mountain passes of the Alps. By
the time the British and Americans reached beyond Italy, the Russians
might have taken most of Europe, something the western nations feared.
After all, they and Russia were allies of convenience.
OK,
so we have added the British Typhoon or the Soviet Ilyushin Il-2 as
they they are multi-role attack aircraft. Over a period of six years of
conflict, from 1939 to 1945, aircraft designs had progressed in leaps
and bounds. From the obsolete biplane, to the world’s first jet fighter,
from crude two-engined bombers, to radical designs of the B-29
Superfortress heavy bombers, World War Two had seen the most radical use
of aircraft in the battlefield. So lets have a look at the 10 deadliest
fighters of WWII. It will cause debate but lets see what you think….
Hawker Hurricane
sourceThe
Hawker Hurricane is a British single-seat fighter aircraft that was
designed and predominantly built by Hawker Aircraft Ltd for the Royal
Air Force (RAF). Although overshadowed by the Supermarine Spitfire, the
aircraft became renowned during the Battle of Britain, accounting for
60% of the RAF’s air victories in the battle, and served in all the
major theatres of the Second World War.
Aircraft
return to the carrier during the Gilberts operation, November 1943.
Crewmen in the foreground are sitting on the wing of an SBD-5, as an F6F-3 lands and a TBF-1 taxis to a parking place on the forward flight deck.
A little after 1:20 AM on March 28th,
1942, searchlights on both sides of the Loire Estuary flooded the
waterway to reveal the convoy of 12 motor launch boats, a motor gun
boat, motor torpedo boat and a destroyer which had somehow managed to
slip over the sand banks flying German colors and signal lighting
friendly code.
That little delay didn’t last long before the Germans guarding the Estuary and the vital Saint Nazaire harbor and Normandie
dry dock opened up all their guns on the approaching British sailors
and commandos. At 1:28 AM, Lieutenant Commander Stephen Halden Beattie
ordered the Royal Navy’s White Ensign raised and kept his command, the
destroyer HMS Campbeltown, sailing for her target: ramming the gates of
the dry dock.
A few minutes of exchanged gunfire with the German
shore positions later, Campbeltown drove her weight into the gates,
pushing 33 feet into the dock. A commando group divided into assault,
demolition, and protection teams disembarked, cleared the area, and blew
up the dock’s water pump and gate machinery at great cost of life.
But
their comrades in the two columns of motor launch boats that had come
in on the port and starboard sides of the Campbeltown were dying even
faster. Most of those boats were burning or exploded on the push down
the Estuary under fire. Some managed to put their troops ashore to
little better life-expectancy. HMS
Campbeltown being converted for the raid. There are twin lines of
armour plate down each side of the ship and the Oerlikon mountings. Two
of her funnels have been removed, with the remaining two cut at an
angle.All these men knew the importance of the
mission and 169 of the 346 Royal Navy sailors and 264 commandos that
participated perished with a further 215 taken as prisoners of war. They
did, however, destroy the most important harbour in German-occupied
France, dealing a monumental blow to Germany and especially the
Kriegsmarine.
SS
Normandie, is one of the relatively few legitimate contenders for the
title “Greatest Liner Ever”, was an ocean liner built in Saint-Nazaire,
France, for the French Line Compagnie Générale Transatlantique. The ship
would be renamed the USS Lafayette, in honor of the French General who
had helped make U.S. independence possible during the revolution. Vladimir Yourkevitch working on the design of SS Normandie. sourceThe
designers intended their superliner to be similar to earlier French
Line ships. Then they were approached by Vladimir Yourkevitch, a former
naval architect for the Imperial Russian Navy, who had emigrated to
France after the revolution. His ideas included a slanting clipper-like
bow and a bulbous forefoot beneath the waterline, in combination with a
slim hydrodynamic hull. Yourkevitch’s concepts worked wonderfully in
scale models, confirming his design’s performance advantages. The French
engineers were impressed and asked Yourkevitch to join their project.
A new Viking exhibition will be coming to Times Square in New York City within the coming months. The exhibit is called Vikings and
will actually be the largest collection of Viking artifacts ever
assembled in North America. There will be over 500 artifacts that
archeologists hope will help set people straight. When people generally
think of Vikings, they think of the armor and horned helmets. However,
the horned helmets are nothing but a myth.
The idea that Vikings wore horned helmets began in the 19th
century. Authors and artists alike gave people a romanticized version
of the Norse culture. However, no horned helmet that has been described
and depicted has actually ever been excavated.
Many
think of war as either one-on-one combat or trench battle; tending to
forget that there were also battles going on above the soldiers’ heads.
Many mid-air skirmishes took place over the years of war. Here are
some of the top air battles in history.
