155 - No Soviet Oil for Hitler - WW2 - August 14, 1942
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- čas přidán 13. 08. 2021
- The Axis advance into the Caucasus is going great... except the oil towns they take have no oil, and wasn't that the whole purpose? Meanwhile in the Pacific, the US Navy is suffering perhaps its greatest defeat ever off Savo Island, even as the Marines take Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tanambogo.
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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Written by: Indy Neidell
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Lucas Aimó
Map animations by: Daniel Weiss
Map research by: Markus Linke
Sound design by: Marek Kamiński
Colorizations by:
Daniel Weiss and Mikolaj Uchman
Source literature list:
John Costello, "The Pacific War"
Richard B. Frank, "Tower of Skulls"
Gerhard Weinberg, "A World at Arms"
Robert Forczyk, "The Caucasus 1942-43"
David Glatz, "To the Gates of Stalingrad"
Martin Gilbert, "The Second World War"
Archive footage: Screenocean/Reuters - www.screenocean.com
Image sources:
IWM
USHMM
Bundesarchiv
Wikipedia Commons
Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
Weapon of Choice - Fabien Tell
Trapped in a Maze - Philips Ayers
Not Safe Yet - Gunnar Johnsen
Break Free - Fabien Tell
Warning Signal - Max Anson
Dark Beginning - Johan Hynynen
I Am Unbreakable - Niklas Johansson
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
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Thanks for your hard work!
Great outfit today.
The longer the better!
MY KOP
not may kop
is the correct pronunciation of the city of Maikop
lol u said it both ways
I for one won’t complain about longer episodes. I love 💕 them! If anything they are too short.
German strategy since the start of Barbarossa: Just assume everything will go your way
Looking at the Japanese strategy in the Pacific, that seems to be the standard Axis way of thinking.
Well to be fair it was working quite well. Not without drawbacks but it worked.
Yes, theres some irony in that... German staff was considered to be the best and most qualified of all the armies in WW2, and yet, It seems that Germany displayed lack of adaptation more than any other fighting army in WW2. German war theory was all about exploiting weaknesses, but less on how to create them.
@@Kubinda12345 The problem with the Strategy like that is that you kind of have to succeed without drawbacks as drawbacks have nasty way of building up in a way that ultimately you either get victories that are so costly that they're essentially defeats or actual defeats. The allies planned for drawbacks or even defeats to happen so they had the reserves to deal with those, while Germany and Japan tended to lack resources to deal with things if things didn't perfectly go their way and did cost them the war.
To be fair, in large part so far it has. Not a reason to assume it continues though...
1:03 I'm pretty sure they used sound effects from minecraft for the water splashes.😂
I believe it is!
Lmao, i noticed that right away too and had to rewind because i thought i was going crazy.
I am not going crazy?
nice
Don't think I've heard a Wilhelm Scream yet in this series, but been expecting one for a while.
@@Raskolnikov70 I HATE that sound effect
It's interesting how the run up to Stalingrad is traditionally described as going very smoothly for the Germans as Panzer divisions advance across seemingly endless grassland and sweeping all before them until they actually arrive at Stalingrad. As per usual, do a bit of digging and it definitely isn't the case. Even as a WWII enthusiast, I've learned plenty in the last few weeks :)
Agreed! Fall Blau isn't even close to Barbarossa in scale or success. It's a mistake to present them as similar in scale.
The lack of prisoners taken during Blau should have been an indicator that the Red army was learning how to fight the Wehrmacht
TIK is doing a great series on Stalingrad.
I always thought Fall Blau was a succes up until 6th Army was surrounded in Stalingrad. But from watching these videos the past couple of months i am suprised to see that other than taking empty land with nothing in it this offensive really isnt going too well after all
@@alexamerling79 Well actually theres still argument wether the lack of prisoners was a deliberate or accidental success (probably a mixture of both) by the red army.. the massive fleeing of soldiers in the prelude to Stalingrad, on the one hand prevented more catastrophic encirclements while on the other hand it shocked the Stavka which lad to the famous order 227.
An interesting trivia this week is that on August 12 1942, Hollywood movie star Clark Gable enlists as a private at the age of 41. He will later go on to serve in combat missions around Europe. Apparently, Adolf Hitler was a fan of Gable and offered a huge reward to anybody who was able to capture and bring Gable to him unharmed.
I wonder if Hitler would have forced him to make movies like Kim Jong Il did to that South Korean director
Hi Dickson.. Its pleasure to read your comment every week.
Been following for a year..
Gable was worried about being captured, saying that if he was the Germans might put him in a cage and exhibit him.
What a very interesting piece of history. I never knew this. well done.
@@tomflendodo7297 you are so right! that was a fear of hitters. once he saw musolinnis fate, he was determined that he would not be taken alive. hitler didn't trust the cyanide capsules given to him by 'traitor' himmler, that's why he had them 'tested' on blondie. as a side note, had the British captured hitler & brought him back to England, it is said that Churchill wanted to put him in the 'electric chair'.
No wonder the Japanese probably won't be able to push the Marines off Guadalcanal. They gave the Marines beer.
The marines won't give up their brew without a fight. Now if the Navy can just get its act together. Again, where is Arleigh Burke when you need him!!!
😆
At a freaking Naval Gun factory in D.C. Free Arleigh!!!!
Literally, LOL!
😂😂
“ Only 3 of the 350 Japanese defenders surrendered”
That’s a line we better get used to hearing
I thought only one Japanese was captured alive on Tulagi, and he had been concussed by an explosion.
This aged like fine wine
I was puzzled for a moment when Indy said "they take 3 AA batteries".
Then I realised, different type of batteries and different meaning of AA.
lol
It would be really embarrassing if that was all they captured, in the sense of electrical batteries.
@@robertjarman3703 I mean, you'd have to put some intelligence officers on charge.
@@curtinj98 but batteries are typically not included
Fun fact about the US Mk 14 torpedo: not only did it have the technical problems Indy mentioned, but for almost 18 months, the Navy actively tried to discredit submarine captain reports that the torpedoes weren't working. It blamed faulty tactics and human error instead. It was quite the scandal.
The Bureau of Ordnance still lingered many years after the war, despite the torpedo scandal.
My grandfather was on the USS Quincy when it went down. I have his medals hung up on my wall.
You can be proud of him. He fought when things were not looking great, and did his duty.
Sounds like you had a badass grandfather.
The Japanese night fighting effort was fascinating. I say "effort" because it wasn't really technology - it was the direction of ship crewman to maximize their ability to see at night. Night spotters were considered a class by themselves on Japanese ships. They were tested to have perfect vision. They were not allowed to work in daylight. They spent their off time in dark rooms. Except in dire emergencies, they were not to be disturbed or to work in well-lit areas. They spent virtually their entire time on ship in darkness. Of course, they were also well-trained in the traditional spotting tasks, such as ship recognition. These crew spent months or years in these conditions, and had the physical ability to see farther, with more detail, at night, than perhaps any human beings on earth.
I understand that the IJN had also developed very good optics, so there was technological side to it, but not in electronics, which was much of the well known naval sensing advances at this time were made.
do you have a source for where you learned this? Would love to know more and my searches are coming up short.
Morlocks...
All for shit, when the search ,and lead lights go on.
In low light conditions there is a black dot in the centre of your vision created by the colour cones of the retina being centred in the macula. The colour cones require more light to work. You need to use your peripheral vision and you will see in black and white. ( Or 50 shades of grey)😂
Another big failure of German intelligence, not knowing where the oilfields you want to capture actually are.
The Germans may have been contenders for worst intelligence apparatus of WW2.
@@stevekaczynski3793 But you would think they could manage aire reconnaissance? Or those Russian-speaking Wehrmacht that posed as NKVD? If the Nazis could manage that, you’d think they could infiltrate and exfiltrate small teams.
Prior to this video series, I had always thought that the Germans ran into trouble with the Russian Winter and then with Russian mud. It has become clear that the trouble started long before (as early as the the decision to invade). If the German forces were a well oiled machine (as we saw in Western Europe 1940), the cascade of problems was due to those behind the steering wheel.
Kinda like american intelligence thinking the HUGE Japanese airforce was inbound bombers heading for hawaii instead of doing nothing and losing much of pearl?
@@MarcosElMalo2 The Brandenburgers dressed up in enemy uniforms, including NKVD as here. They sometimes had intelligence information to act on but quite often were operating blind, picking up the information as they went along.
@@tylerdurden4006 well they made up for it at Midway
Normal episode in summer of 1942 is as long as 'special-double length' episode in summer of 1940 was.
More and more fronts are opened so i would imagine the duration to increase even further in the future
Here's hoping no other countries join in this war or we'll be watching hour-long episodes.
@@Raskolnikov70 just imagine if he put more focus on the east and southeast Asian mainland fronts
Before May 1940 you really had to stretch it out doring the phony war days
Well, there is a lot going on. This is the pivotal period where desperation is still the Allies mood, but they might have better times ahead...
_"Navy's kicking ass"_
- USS Quincy explodes in the distance -
Next morning
_"Hey, where did the Navy go?"_
-The Pacific, Ep1
To be fair to Mikawa, in hindsight it is easy to judge over him. He was told to avoid losses if possible (since the loss at midway, cruisers were pretty much japans sharpest weapon, and their numbers were so low that japan could not consider them expendable), and in addition the army air force had claimed they could deal with the transports. He couldn't possibly know that Guadalcanal would turn into such an important battle, that the american carriers had withdrawn, and many other factors.
I believe Mikawa made the correct decision based on the knowledge available to him. I would rather want to serve under a commander who acts responsibly towards his own forces than under a hothead who might get everyone under his command killed (like Phillips did with Force Z)
True, the fog of war was in full effect here and Mikawa had to preserve his forces. Unfortunately for him he loses the Kako to a US torpedo just hours after Savo. The first of many wounds that the USN will deliver to him and his fleet. He'll punch above his weight, but US industry will simply replace lost hulls with even better ships. Every ship lost at Savo will be replaced within a year by a Cleveland or Baltimore class cruiser carrying the same name. Every ship Mikawa and his admirals lose is irreplaceable.
@@rcgunner7086 exactly. In a war with an enemy who possesses superior industrial power, preserving the own forces is paramount. Mikawa was an excellent commander.
He did everything right and inflicted a devastating loss on the US, had he known he could have gotten the transports without being harassed by the carriers he would have done it but as history would have it, he didn’t know.
Yup. It's always weird to me yo see viewers mock these "tactical blunders" when we only know they're blunders in the first place because we know exactly where everyone was and what they were doing while it was taking place. Commanders very rarely had this luxury in the field.
Also, of the few hits the Japanese cruiser suffered, one destroyed the chart room and all their maps.
This week, the 101st *Airborne* Division is formed in the US. It will be interesting to see what they will do during the war.
I heard that the recruits training in Toccoa all had their weekend passed revoked.
Just Easy Company....
They say it was because of rusty bayonets but rumor has it that someone bloused their boots.
Ross revoked all passes
The one where Ross made everyone run three miles up, three miles down! CURRAHEE!!!
And then there was the army noodles with ketchup, followed by a run up a mountain.
What a surprise, the nation that has practiced a scorched earth policy this entire invasion continues this policy when their oilfields are at threat of being captured. Who could have seen this coming?!
Certainly not the Germans. They only plan for the best-possible scenario and have no backup. To be fair, however, Germany's geostrategic position in 1942 was already critical, it was do or die for them.
Indeed, a far better strategy would have been to use those forces in the main push and sever the transport links between the Caucuses and the rest of the USSR depriving the rest of the soviet union of most of its oil (they would still be receiving a trickle from the US via the Pacific supply line and the British via the Arctic). The soviets supply lines within the USSR were just as long as the Germans and they needed oil and railroads to bridge the vast distances.
@@watcherzero5256 might have been better, but i don't think that they could have supplied this concentration of forces. Spreading out eases logistical issues a bit.
@@watcherzero5256 An even better idea would have been to do it in 1941 instead of focusing on Moscow. They still had the strength and the resources to reach the Caucusus and cut off the USSR from Iran, and might have had enough oil to last until they could bring those oilfields back into production.
Anyone who has read Russian military history, especially the Napoleonic Wars.
This is what AC/DC's song _Let me cover you in oil_ is really about.
It would be amazing if true. Of course it is Ac/DC, so we know what it's about lol.
8:05 I think this is a bit overly harsh on Mikawa, keep in mind the Imperial Navy Concept of "Sea Control", from his perspective the Japanese taking sea control by destroying the screens should have forced the transports to withdraw regardless.
He did not have future hindsight that fletcher had withdrawn and was under the impression if he attacked the transports it would mean withdrawing in daylight without air cover. (Remember what happened to the heavy cruisers Mogami and Mikuma at Midway when they were caught in that situation, Mikawa remembered that)
Mikawa survived the war, and in 1957 he was asked about his decision and stated that if had known fletcher had withdrawn of course he would have attacked the transports.
Montemayor does an excellent segment on the whole decision to not attack the transports:
czcams.com/video/lICRQPIduFc/video.html
I will second that. Montemayor's video on the Battle of Savo Island is one of the best I have ever seen on a battle.
You are 13 minutes earlier than me. Wanted to write the same. :)
I recommend the video too.
It's almost hard to believe how strongly the war has shifted away from the Axis in the past month. They seem to have lost the initiative on every front almost simultaneously this week. Nothing but frustration in the USSR, hollow victories in the Pacific, and the denial of a potential victory in North Africa.
yea , what a week
Thank God the Germans were taking orders from a tweeked out corporal playing risk
"Under new management"
My kind of humor. ^^
Good humor is needed in time of war :)
Ice Co, not "factory" as Indy said.
That sounds like standard Australian humour.
Fletcher pulling out the carriers was hugely controversial at the time (and long after) but most modern historians conclude that it was the correct action.
Yeah he needed to refuel and re-arm, had he stayed on station his carriers may have been more of a liability than an asset. The failure falls on Admiral Turner but after the battle he deflected blame, even trying to blame his Australian allies.
@@MikeJones-qn1gz Such "standard operating procedure" for admirals and generals. Blame someone else. But that is how you get to those ranks. You become a politician, in the pejorative sense of the word.
@@ToddSauve Victory has many parents. Defeat is always an orphan.
There's no ideal situation for the USN at this point of the Pacific War, as it lacks the ships to gain undisputed command of the sea. The fleet it really needs is under construction. Sending your ground forces to invade an island when you don't yet fully control the waters around the island is kind of insane. But it's all going to come down to getting that airfield operational. Carriers can't remain on station very long when they can't yet fully protect themselves, much less protect their own supply ships - you need an airfield on land that can't be sunk or put out of operation by a single bomb hit.
@@Overlord734 Yes, I have heard that before! Ha, ha, ha! 😉
Here's another one; Excrement always flows downhill in the military.
And back in the United States, Oppenheimer has concluded his summer physics symposium at Berkley with the top nuclear physicists who are meeting to consider the "uranium problem." While in Washington D.C., Vannevar Bush and Henry Stimson are meeting with General Brehon Somervell as to how the Army will administer the atomic bomb project. Somervell has a plan in mind to put the Corps of Engineers in charge of the project and even has a specific man to assign - Leslie Groves. So, while the Japanese are scoring small victories in the south Pacific, the United States is beginning the project that will provide a weapon that cannot be defeated by the Japanese.
It Is weapon that will forever change the world.
@@Zen-sx5io - It even erases itself from sentences, leaving not a trace.
@@danielmocsny5066 I've rediscovered It now.
For those interested in the naval stuff (and who haven't done so already in the first place), I'd like to recommend Drachinifels channel, who did all of the Guadalcanal naval battles recently, as well as videos about the issues with the US torpedoes.
Definitely worth the watch
Great Channel especially his Guadalcanal Sires
And don't miss Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal by James D. Hornfischer, the definitive written account of the USN's crash course in night fighting. (Learn quickly or die. Good thing the USN had its able students e.g. Willis "Ching" Lee.) 1942 was a different era from later in the war, as the USA was only starting to ramp up its war production and had to fight the Japanese on roughly equal terms. The Pacific theater was also being starved of resources by the buildup for Operation Torch, which took the lion's share of what relatively meager supplies and manpower were available this early in the war. The Torch landings will feature 107,000 combat troops, 350 warships and
500 transports, dwarfing the 11,000 under-supplied U.S. Marines in the initial Guadalcanal invasion (although eventually involving 60,000 ground troops). Therefore an island conquest that would have taken just a few weeks in 1944 will consume 6 months in a grinding battle of attrition. And unlike in later island battles, where Japanese defenders will get virtually annihilated, the IJN will be able to evacuate most of the surviving Japanese forces from Guadalcanal at the end - although many of those soldiers will be in such poor condition that they won't return to combat.
Histograph, Operations Room are two animation channels worth to check out. They also do Savo Island
Montemayor has a far better video, that offer very in-depth comprehensive analysis on the Battle of Savo Island.
Drachinifel is highly overrated. He often just parrots Wikipedia articles (sometimes word for word) and often makes factual errors.
I was kind of hoping for you to cover the closing of the Rzhev meat grinder a couple weeks ago, but too bad I guess. Otherwise, phenomenal work as always
Dont worry rzhev meat grinder had 4 offensives this year. The first was part of winter offensive. 2nd we saw. 3rd would be a bit later. Then finally mars. I guess thats why it was a sausage factory.
Halder records in his diary 14 August 42 - 'In Center very serious situation...von Kluge gives a very grave picture of the situation.'
The Rzehv front was a huge WO I style trenchwar battle with 300000 Soviet and 50000 Nazi German casualties that the Soviets considered the main front.It is only with hindsight that Stalingrad turned out to be the battle field that broke Germany. The eastern front fought between the two most abhorrent and dangerous totalitarian regimes was, by a very large margin, the main theater of war against the Nazis in WOII.
Additionally the contact exploder on the USN Mark 14 torpedo was defective, if the target was hit straight perpendicular, a retaining ring would fracture before the fuse could click, so perfect direct hits were duds
The morons at BuOrd should all have been shot.
The Japanese had solved an age-old problem with the torpedo bubbles. Well the allies used the combination of oxygen and alcohol which left a trail of bubbles, the Japanese use compressed air in their tanks purox they were able to go farther faster and carry are bigger warhead they were effective all the way up until the end of the war!
Also the magnetic detonators and gyros were defective. The torp was never tested before introduction to service.
@@tulmar4548 YEAH US was trying to save money! Not a single mark 14 torpedo had been tested when it was first introduced in the late 30's!!! They cost 15.000$ per torpedo!
@@mikaelcrews7232 wierd hey, they tried to save money not testing but by the end of the war had wasted over a half with failures and had so many in storage they used them until the late 80s early 90s , they had been fixed by then though I think.
Edit: I don't think it was over half lol it was less , I was over exaggerating.
finally someone tells the story of the Henderson airfield namesake. Many tanx!!
I think the whole operation Pedestal should have deserved more than a mere 30 seconds.
Hell, 16 seconds couldn’t even cover what Ohio went through and merely saying she arrived doesn't do justice to the heroism involved in getting her there.
Operation Pedestal deserved and received multiple documentaries, available on a CZcams near you. Imagine, if Amazon's shipping costs were so high per unit of freight delivered, Bezos probably couldn't afford to fly into space.
@@DraigBlackCat I was hoping the Immortal Tanker Ohio would get more discussion, I remmeber seeing a memorial to her in London years back.
In their defence, they have a lot to cover, especially this week when there was a lot going on
@@warwickeng5491 are you kidding?! They spent as long talking about some beer and a refrigeration plant as about an entire convoy battle which prevented a change in the entire strategic picture in the central Mediterranean and with it in North Africa!
_"Move it, ladies! This is not your Aunt Fanny's dance!"_ - Captain Foley
This week on August 10 1942, the first mission of the 2003 video game *Call of Duty* (and by extension the first level of the entire Call of Duty series although not chronologically), the Camp Toccoa level under Private Martin begins at Camp Toccoa in Georgia. This is a tutorial level where Sergeant Moody asks you not to screw around with the Thompson melee attack and respect the power of explosives. 😊
From this month onwards, many Call of Duty and Medal of Honor missions will enter the mainstream here with at least 1 mission happening each month. As a sneak peek, there is another one coming up next week.
nice trivia :D
Still have ALL the "Medal of Honor" games on Play Station 1 & 2 and play them periodically. Also have the "Call of Duty" games on Play Station 2 when they focused on WWII.
No one fights alone!
Britain: No landings in Europe this year!
Canadian 2nd Infantry Division... Yea, stay tuned for next week buds.
I never got the point of the attack on dieppe.
Was this actually a D-Day or what was it good for?
@@opressedrussianminority7421 according to new evidence the true goal of the raid was to cover a commando raid that was trying to steal the new version of the enigma machine and its code books located in a German navel HQ that was in the town. The reason for the elaborate assault was so that the Germans wouldn’t know they had been taken as after the commandos hit the HQ they would blow it up making it look like it was hit by a ship in the bombardment. Unfortunately due to the failure of the landing this never happened.
@@MikeJones-qn1gz Yea that's the narrative. It doesn't make sense to throw away *6,000* men like that on a "raid" to capture a machine they could try and obtain by other means though. Either that was the objective and UK High Command was highly incomptetant/didn't care about "colonial" troops, or it was something else that makes sense with that scale but they backpeddled post-defeat.
@@m.a.118it was a concept test for the ultimate landing. 2nd Division trained for months before Dieppe
2:53 asahi gets its first exposure to the american market
LOL
Fall Belau was a a disaster and let's not forget how great Halder is at his preparations and his lies about WW2
Glad the tide is turning
Halder : But...but it was all Madman Hitler's fault. If only he listened his generals (and me), Germany would won !
@@auguststorm2037 *plays Madman Hitler card*
It’s the whole German system
That famous Franz Halder - `` all blame to Madman Hitler`` who proclaim in late august 1941 - `` We won the war in the east``.
@@danielkurtovic9099 "But then, Madman Hitler refused to drive immediately towards Moscow, losing us the war."
- Franz Halder, probably
Another very good video. Notice at 3:20 that the Marine in the lower left has a 1928 Thompson with a drum magazine. That looks like one of the 100 round drums. The Thompson on the right looks like the common 50 round drum. When I was taught to use one in the Army, we aimed to the left of the target, laid the gun on its right side, and pulled. The recoil of the gun made it pull to the right so that it cut across the target. It was awful heavy to carry with enough ammo. Good Luck, Rick
Brits loved them although they found it extremely heavy too! The drums were problematic and the equivelent ammo load carried in box magazines weighed less. The ones that went to the Brits at least had one 100 rounde drum, one 50 round drum, and five 20 round box mags. I was just reading an old _American Rifleman_ that had a feature on the Tommy Guns used by the Tommies. They also commented that the weapons were extremely well made. "Beautifully made" was one comment at the time. Imagine turning your M1928 in for a Sten MKII. Must have been a bittersweet moment...and the Sten was a bit more dangerous to carry and use than the good old Chicago Typewriter.
After his meeting with Churchill, Stalin was quoted as saying"the Allies are willing to fight to the last Russian".
At least the Allies and Stalin had something in common, then.
According to US Naval historian Adm. Samuel Elliot Morrison the IJN also had better nighttime binoculars and much better spotting flares that burned brighter and longer.
Also because of how quickly the US ships burned in the battle all US navy ships had flammable paint scraped up and wooden furniture removed.
USS Canberra (CA-70/CAG-2) was a Baltimore-class cruiser and later a Boston-class guided missile cruiser of the United States Navy. Originally to be named USS Pittsburgh, the ship was renamed before launch to honor the loss of the Australian cruiser HMAS Canberra during the Battle of Savo Island. USS Canberra was the first USN warship named after a foreign capital city.
Wackipedia
What were the others? I can think of USS London, but that was a destroyer.
@@Dave_Sisson Apologies, can not help with that question.
@@Dave_Sisson ....Was it named after London Ontario and not London England.
Canada hasnt been featured as much yet, mostly in the Battle of the Atlantic and Hong Kong. But I have a feeling next week will not go well for us at all
Yieppe, I know what you mean.
@@danielmocsny5066 yes, could be in deep trouble, emphasis on 5th word:(
america talk about allies who helped? Lmfao, are you new to american propaganda? They still think they the ones that defeated nazi germany 🤣
yes our Operation Jubilee did not go so well....hopefully the reasons behind this operation will be discussed
I will never forget as a child seeing the graveyard at Dieppe. I was only 12 years old, but the memory of seeing hundreds and hundreds of gravestones, all with a Canadian leaf on them, would be forever imprinted upon my mind.
It'sA shame most history channels focus on Europe or the Pacific. I had no idea the First Battle of Savo Island was contemporary with this supply mission to Malta. We gotta stop splitting US and European history is school here in the US. Thanks for all you do Time Ghost History.
I do hope you guys cover John Basilone...what he did was incredible.
Visited his grave in Arlington a few weeks ago
Finally learned who Henderson Airfield was named after.
I really enjoy this channel
Something Indy had left out, about the aftermath of Savo Island. On August 10, at 6:50am, the US submarine S-44, sighted the force headed for Kavieng, at close range. Firing 4 torpedoes at a range of 700 yards, at the rear most ship, the Kako. At 0708, three torpedoes struck her. Having all portholes open did not help, and by 0715, she had rolled over and sunk.
Well atleast the Americans managed to get 1 for all their losses.
For those who have not read accounts of the Pedestal convoy, the tanker SS Ohio was so badly damaged that during one of the final air attacks, an AA gunner leaned over the side of the ship to get a bucket of sea water to cool his guns. The ship actually sank in Valetta harbour when the unloaded her because the oil she was carrying was the only thing keeping the ship afloat! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Ohio
One minute about Operation Pedestal when it almost deserved a dedicated episode. Such a shame. But expected.
This week on August 9 1942, The Death Match is played between the Ukrainian team FC Start and the German team Flakelf in Kiev (now Kyiv), resulting in a 5-3 win for FC Start. Both teams had previously met three days earlier on August 6, with a 5-1 win for FC Start. The FC Start players would soon be arrested by the Gestapo shortly afterwards on August 18, and some of them would eventually die in Gestapo custody or executed in concentration camps.
Contrary to the myth during the Soviet era that their deaths were caused by The Death Match, recent Ukrainian historians have concluded that it is more likely that the players had been denounced to the Gestapo by Rukh trainer Georgi Shvetsov. This was because he was very angry after FC Start had defeated Rukh 8-0 in a football match on August 16.
Damn, this takes "unable to handle defeat" to a new level
@@michaelkovacic2608 It certainly does. It also shows a complete disrespect of his competitors and their lives. What an arsehole!
I think you have swapped the names of the city. Kyiv is the Ukrainian name and is now used more than it was used historically. Kiev is the Russian name of the city.
So that's the place where Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine and Pelé movie come from
@@Thomasan9 Noted, I have changed accordingly. Thanks for highlighting it!
Interesting enough Indy, my Italian Barber's grandpa from Napoli fought in the Siege of Tobruk and Battle of El Almein and the Tunisian campaign. After Rommel and his men retreated to Europe my barber's grandpa fought with the Germans under Albert Kesselring in Northern Italy. The British captured him in April 1945 and he came to Cape Town South Africa to work here for the British and after 2 years he started working for a veterinarian at his horse farm in 1948. Pretty cool storie 🇿🇦✌
1955! I would appeal to the UN. There must be a rule against this! Yes, I know it was a typo - but, I couldn't resist.
@@winnywin You idiot it's a typo error what the hell does this have to do with the UN !!
@@cookingwithchefluc7173 In 1955, the United Nations would of definitely got involved if an Italian citizen was taken as a POW, 10 years after the war. I acknowledged you typo and made a joke.
BTW, I served in the British Army 1985-1994. I guarded Rudolph Hess in Spandau prison, I did 2 tours of NI and served in Op Granby. My sense of humour may be poor - but, I am no idiot.
@@cookingwithchefluc7173 Pleased you have changed the year from 1955 to 1945. Congrats!
For those looking on a map, Napoli=Beautiful Naples. See it and...live!
Just a minor note, Lofton Henderson led the glide bombing attack launched from Midway, not the torpedo run.
Keep them coming, the production values are getting better and better.
"The behavior of the Russian troops, even in the first battles, was in striking contrast to the behavior of the Poles and the Western Allies in defeat. Even in the encirclement, the Russians continued to fight hard." Anyone who survived a meeting with a Russian soldier and the Russian climate knows what war is. After that, he has no need to learn to fight."
Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht's 4th Army, General Günther Blumentritt
Bastogne look it up. Soviets surrendered by the hundreds of thousands.
@Wallace Foster Bennett I wonder if he meant Barbarossa instead of Bastogne...
When you make the war existential, you do not give the enemy soldiers much incentive to surrender.
@@carsonm774 Those Red Army soldiers didn't surrender because they were cowards. They surrendered because their incompetent leadership allowed them to get cut off and surrounded and deprived of the resources they needed to keep fighting. And even then a heck of a lot of them fought their way back to their own lines so they could keep fighting.
But no one could beat the Finnish soldier Who beat the Russians badly in the winter war. Finland save the world. Hitler thought Russia was going to be walk in the park? What were they thinking?
Surely discuss Kokoda and the Australian Chocco troops who a barely trained fighting force that managed to halt the Japanese long enough for the desert AIF divisions to return and fight them head on
Check out their Instagram, they are covering that there, really interesting
I sympathise, but how can you fit a Battalion level action in during the same week as Savo Island and Maikop. Even Pedestal only got about 30 seconds.
@@greybirdo
Have a bigger episode 😉😇
Operation Pedestal is one of those incredible stories that it's hard to believe hasn't been made into a major blockbuster
Question, have you ever thought of doing a special on carriers in the Atlantic? The carriers of the Pacific are legendary, but little is ever talked about in the European theater, except getting sunk.
They didn't do much other than get sunk.
@@patrickhamilton9242 The British carrier attack at Taranto was literally the inspiration for Pearl Harbour.
The naval losses taken by the Allied nations in the Mediterranean so far are really quite large, the expense this effective entails is massive really, carriers, cruisers, etc don't come cheap. It makes the movies for the British in wanting to win on the African front much more comprehensible. Once they secure that coast line, the air cover allowed by that should allow them to greatly counter Axis air raids and thus reduce such issues by a lot.
I guess the West front naval warfare is much more brutal then one would think from your average WW2 text, so many ships and lives lost in the contest for the seas there.
That is the ultimate insult --- the Japanese lost their beer!
I am a little surprised they had some in the first place. Guadalcanal was at the end of a long logistic chain.
I LOVE the graphics you guys came up with for Savo Island! I can't wait to see them develop as the Guadalcanal Campaign gets into high gear. Great job there Time Ghost!!
In fact, if I'm right, they use the graphics of The Operation Room use in their Savo battle video czcams.com/video/HGsqFxVnC8E/video.html
Chuikov already done a great job by beating and stop Hoth 4th Panzer army, hmmm he's got potential wondering what kind of good things he would done in the future
He had done rather poorly in the war with Finland but the Stalingrad fighting will definitely play to his strengths.
Even if the Germans had been able to get the oil, how would they use it? They would have to transport it to refineries or build a refinery there. They lacked the infrastructure to transport the oil (refined or not) to where it was needed. Their own experts estimated it would take a year or more to make use of any captured oil.
Yes, the thinking people in the German army must have realized that they were done for. It was just a matter of time.
@Fabian Kirchgessner I don't think peace was a possibility. The Nazis had committed too many atrocities for that to be palatable to the Soviets. I know that feelers were put out there but rejected by the Russians.
Small nitpick about the Kalach pocket map. 16th and 24th Panzer Divisions actually did not cross the Don as pictured there, instead staying on the other bank of the river.
Amazingly well structured episode as always! The flawless transition between the theaters of the war is just stunning!
With the sinking of the USS Astoria, 4 brothers, the Sullivan family are lost. Three die directly from the sinking, the oldest dies waiting for rescue.
There were 5 Sullivan Brothers and they died in the sinking of the USS Juneau by a Japanese submarine in the aftermath of the Nov 13 naval battle off Guadalcanal.
I find it criminal that we've never had a film or TV series on Operation Pedestal (other than The Malta Story... which is okay but still).
Sieges tend not to make very compelling material for entertainment, although a good writer might be able to come up with a way to make it interesting. I've always wanted someone to make a series about the Boer War but doubt anyone will because of the same reason - like 90% of it is 'sitzkrieg' style trench and siege warfare.
@@Raskolnikov70 I think the biggest problem is that the average viewer is far less intelligent (not that the people are stupid, but that they are usually running on lower mental power as viewers) and will confuse the story with WWI.
@@ScottyShaw That's what I find so interesting about it - everything that happened in the early years of WWI happened 15 years prior in South Africa. It was the first real modern war, fought between two 'western' armies armed with similar equipment rather than the asymmetrical colonial battles most of them were fighting in those days. If those generals in 1914 had paid more attention to it instead of being stuck in the 19th Century things might have gone differently. You're right though, and I'm probably in the minority even among people who love history documentaries.
@@Raskolnikov70 The Boer War also started pre-modern, so many evolutions that led to modern warfare came from that. Definitely fascinating, so maybe you're the one to bring it to our screens!
@@Raskolnikov70, One could argue that the 1904-05 Russian - Japanese war was the true precursor to the carnage to come on the WW1 battlefields with the same era weaponry. The massed wave attack and counter attackss against heavily defended positions with machine guns and artillery around Port Arthur cost the Japanese heavily. These same positions were assaulted time and time again over the space of months.
The Boer War, while it had elements of what was to come, the Boers at the beginning essentially settled into laying siege to various towns (sitzkrieg) to starve out the towns with blocking forces in various locations against the British attempts to lift the sieges. They dug in and basically let the British come to them.
This gave early success for the Boers from Oct '99 through to Feb '00 in a number of battles with defeat for the British. Advancing up hill slopes into well aimed long range entrenched enemy fire while wearing Crimean red jackets proved costly at first, but by March the Boers were on the back foot against the British in larger battles with a change of British commander and the Boers still hadn't captured the main towns they had laid siege to. They then splintered into commandos for more guerilla style fighting.
The main component of the Boer war really was all about asymmetrical warfare. More troops died to disease than to active combat.
Just wondering if you guys are going to finish that series on pandemics? Because I found those videos very unique and interesting. Thanks for the great content.
Thank you for the lesson.
In depth coverage of many subjects rather than just names dates and generals.
0:11 I love the little touches of this channel that Indy and team do that makes this channel more fun.
You should do a special on Italian Eastern front General Messe, Ion Antonescu, or another Axis power commander who fought in the East. The contributions of other Axis powers on the Eastern front is highly overlooked yet extremely interesting
At 16:25, a group of Italian officers. One who raises his binoculars seems to have the cuff insignia of a colonel. They may be a regimental staff, trying to figure out where they are on the featureless steppe.
I look forward to your coverage of the upcoming battle of Milne bay.
This is the clearest and most concise description of the Battle of Savo Island I've ever seen.. Bravo!!!
Operation Pedestal showed how effective the Italian navy and air force could be. HMS Manchester was sunk by Italian PT boats meanwhile Italian submarine Axum hit three vessels with a single salvo of four torpedoes, one of them later sank and another was the tanker Ohio which miraculously (for the Allies) kept afloat long enough to reach Malta.
Ohio reached Malta because of excellent seamenship and damage control training of her crew and volunteer AA gunners from other sunk ships who boarded on her under constant air attack plus destroyers HMS Penn and HMS Ledbury towing her under air attack and defencelees tied to a big target like Ohio.
Italian Navy in small craft , fast torpedoboats and submarines were very good and extremely capableand dangerous but their big capital ships larger than a destroyer were usually disappointments
By the way Royal Navy submarine HMS Unbroken also torpedoed and fatally damaged two Italian cruisers (Bolzano and Muzio Attendolo) off Naples at the same time
Correction: Lofton Henderson commanded 18 SBD dive bombers from VMSB-241, not torpedo bombers.
Savo Island and Pedestal in one week! I think the story of the Ohio is almost worth a special episode.
Absolutely love the phone calls at the start of these episodes !!
Powerful episode! It is one of the best-offs in my opinion... A week with deep consequences on the rest of the war. Can't wait to watch the next episode's surprises. Cheers Indy!
Awww man how did I not know about this channel for 2 years? I loved your work on The Great War. Looks like I have a lot of catching up to do.
Welcome!
I don't know if Mikawa can be blamed for failing to sink the landing force at Guadalcanal. He didn't know if or when any screening US carrier taskforces would intercept or attempt to halt his attack, and due to a lack of air cover, he was forced to make the surprise attack at night. This was also after Midway, and that meant Mikawa had likely been instructed to preserve his naval forces against a future need. It looks like a historical blunder in hindsight, but given Mikawa's lack of information at the time and his situation, I think any admiral can be forgiven for choosing the safe route in his position.
"So how many AA guns do you want on troop transports?"
"How many can you fit and it'll still float?"
Phenomenal delivery on the: "Dude, everybody saw that coming." Was immaculate. I think that alone should qualify you for an acting degree, just perfect Indy 😂 How grateful I am to have a most fascinating episode following such a noteworthy introduction! Poor Sparty can't really add much humour to his series. Ah well, humour has no place in some places. Appreciate your every effort @TimeGh0o0st Army party leaders ❤
INDIE STARTED SAYING "BYE" ON THE PHONE ADJSJAKFJAJAKCJJD
Une heure et déjà plus de 200 commentaires bravo. Personnellement je trouve vos travaux, très fouillés et très intéressants,biens documentés ect.. un grand merci.
We don't speak baguette here. This a murica
@@chriscarlone527 tu speack quoi alors mr. Superieur
Fantastic Video. Indy's presentation of the naval was thrilling. Well doe!
I really appreciate the excellent, really superior use of maps in this series- being (lack thereof) the most frustrating part of the recent flood of war dox on utoob. But detailed labeling is CRUCIAL!! Might want to put a label on the largest of the islands on your area map of Guadalcanal....
Fantastic stuff as always!
Ah the Battle of Savo Island, the site of the United States Navy's worst defeat and already covered in detail prior by many other CZcamsrs as well. It was even portrayed briefly in the first episode of The Pacific.
The Japanese will probably take this opportunity to try land troops and take down the Marines with their loss of naval support (except naval transports). Next, the Alligator Creek near the Tenaru River awaits...
Has anyone seen Yamamoto lately? Oh he is going to raubal, hmmm nothing bad could ever happen to him, even in a plane
@@steffanyschwartz7801 Living in Truk's "Hotel Yamato", isn't he?
Great episode again guys. Insight into the growing logistic problems of Fall Blau. If anyone would like to read a fascinating account of the logistical difficulties faced by the German tank crews I can recommend Panzer Ace, the memoirs of an Iron Cross Panzer Commander by Richard Freiherr Von Rosen. The account covers his experiences including Barbarossa, Kursk, Normandy and finally Hungary and, suprisingly, his survival. Also An Eagles Odyssey by Johannes Kaufmann describing his BF110 operations in Russia.
*Love the videos! I've been binge watching the "Week by Week" videos, I'm glad I found your channel when the War is almost over so I can binge watch all the episodes while the new ones come out... BUT sad at the same time because I wasn't here to witness it in real time. Thanks for the videos!*
Thank you for your comment! Hope you enjoy the long ride.
-TimeGhost Ambassador
2:02: Small nitpick- they’re 20mm cannons, not machine guns
I believe the Germans called everything up to and including 20mm machine guns.
7:56 a great victory that didn't achieve its objective....hmm where have I heard that before with Japan?
“When they approach, we run...away!”
Drachinfel’s channel has a great mini series on these naval battles.
Is there a video or two that goes into more detail about the Soviet sabotage of the oil resources?
The Ohio was technically sunk but it was kept afloat by tugs. They kept it up as the precious cargo was being unloaded in the harbor. The Allies paid a heavy price keeping Malta in operation and were lucky the most important ship, the Ohio, somehow managed to make port. The escort ship turned around off the coast of Libya leaving the transports to make the rest of the way on their own.
The air battles over Malta were really hot at this time as well. Some fighter pilots like George "Buzz" Beurling were racking up impressive scores. Malta was the most bombed piece of real estate in the world!
Who is Indy talking to on the phone? LOL! I love this series. It helps to understand how complex and massive this war was, and the deprivations that regular people went though to hold back the tide of fascism.
Best series ever been watching 1 episode a week for week 2 :)
Thank you for your support!
You can really see the disappointment in the thumbnail
So you forgot about sunk of hvy CR Kako by us submarine S38 after battle of savo f
Drachinifel made some great videos about the naval battles in the Solomon Islands.
Let me know when the episodes get long. There's so much going on, time flies.
Lots of Germans paid for that offensive, and all sorts of efforts surrounding it.
Guadalcanal and the subsequent fighting for the Solomon Islands, and action nearby at New Guinea would be a long and bloody campaign. But this would set the stage for Allied success later in the war. For Guadalcanal, the USN would pay more heavily for that island and its airfield than even the US Marines. More US Sailors would die at sea than Marines ashore in jungle combat.
Fun typo at 3:10 "The situation appeared swell"
...
"in hand"
3:03 "They also took 3 AA batteries"
...
"to power their flashlights"
4:03 accelerate to crusing speed!
14:17 deputy coomander teehee
By far one of the best researched and presented WW2 channels I’ve seen. Kudos from Canada
Thank you Perry! 🇨🇦 I hope you'll like, share, subscribe, and please consider joining the TimeGhost Army so we can make the channel better all the time www.patreon.com/join/timeghosthistory
Drachinifel has some really good videos on the naval battles for Guadalcanal.
13 August 1942
Caribbean Sea : German submarine U-658 torpedoed and sank Dutch cargo ship Medea of Allied coastal convoy WAT-13 between Cuba and Haiti at 0507 hours; 5 were killed, 23 survived.
German submarine U-171 torpedoed and sank US tanker R. M. Parker, Jr. with two torpedoes and her deck gun 25 miles off Louisiana, United States at 0750 hours; all 44 aboard survived.
At 0948 hours, U-600 attacked Allied convoy TAW-12 between Cuba and Haiti, torpedoed and sinking Latvian cargo ship Everlza (23 were killed, 14 survived) and US passenger-cargo ship Delmundo (8 were killed, 50 survived).
Atlantic Ocean : German submarine U-752 torpedoed and sank US cargo ship Cripple Creek 400 miles southwest of Freetown, British West Africa at 0740 hours; 1 was killed, 51 survived. Also on this day, Italian submarine Reginaldo Giuliani torpedoed and sank US cargo ship California 1,400 miles west of Freetown; 1 was killed, 35 survived.
Scotland , UK : US Navy cruiser USS Tuscaloosa, destroyers USS Rodman, USS Emmons, and HMS Onslaught departed Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom with ammunition, aircraft parts, and other war goods for the Soviet Union.
Cairo , Egypt : General Bernard Montgomery officially took over command of Eighth Army. Montgomery goes to Eighth Army’s Tac HQ and briefs all the headquarters officers at sunset. Chief of Staff Gen. Francis de Guingand writes, “We all felt that a cool and refreshing breeze had come to relieve the oppressive and stagnant atmosphere.” Monty tells his men, "Any further retreat or withdrawal is quite out of the question. Forget about it. ‘If we cannot stay here alive, then let us stay here dead.’
General Douglas Wimberley , commander of 51st Highland Division just aqrrived to Egypt and in reorientation amnd desert training , ran into both Alexander and Montgomery at the officers’ shop in Cairo buying khaki drill uniforms. Although neither would explain their presence, Wimberley, who had already witnessed the suppressed excitement at General Headquarters, guessed what was happening. He was delighted:‘
“Alex’ had been head student of my year at the Staff College . . . Monty had been not only my late commander in S.E. England, but had been Brigade Major to our Brigade in Ireland 20 odd years before, and had taught me at Staff College.”
This was just one example of the web of connections which both Alexander and Montgomery had built up during their careers (unlike previous Eighth Army and Middle East Commanders) which would serve them well in the future.
Montgomery drove up to Eighth Army on 13 August. His meeting with Eighth Army Acting (not official) Chief of Staff Brigadier Freddie de Guingand went well; Freddie told Montgomery that ‘the Eighth Army wanted a clear lead and a firm grip from the top; there was too much uncertainty and he thought the “feel of the thing” was wrong’. Montgomery met with Ramsden, the acting Army Commander, who explained the current situation and the future plans for meeting an Axis offensive and the projected attack in the north in September. Montgomery then dismissed him with: ‘All right, I’ll carry on here. You can go back to your corps.’ The interregnum was over.
After a day of ‘savage thinking’, Montgomery addressed his new staff and gave the clear direction which was most certainly needed. Montgomery told his staff that he was going to create a new atmosphere: ‘The bad old days were over, and nothing but good was in store for us.’ He ordered the removal of the headquarters from the Ruweisat ridge and insisted that Eighth Army Headquarters must be linked with the Air Headquarters. He cancelled all orders for retreat or withdrawal. He informed his staff that he would immediately start with the planning for an offensive and mentioned the need for a corps d’élite of two armoured divisions and the New Zealand Division. Most importantly , army command as his authority and orders would be final , and his orders would be obeyed immediately , “No more bellyaching” or questioning or disobeying army commander authority.
According to Monty the terms like battlegroup and Jock Colums would cease to exist and divisions would henceforth fight as divisions. Firepower of divisions , artillery , anti tank guns and armor would be concentrated as divisions , no more piecemental small unit deployments as easy prey for Rommel’s Afrikakorps. And there would be no more box style defensive deployments that could be infltrated or or open flanks to be turned around. “Box is apparatus with a lid that you put something in , that’s it !” he said. The deployments would be on a regular defensive line and all arms artillery , infantry , armor , air force would combine and coordinate and cooperate each other (indiciplined British armored commanders clashed a lot with Monty after that)
Perhaps his most important decision was to appoint Freddie de Guingand as his Chief of Staff. This role had not hitherto been used within the British Army. The accepted role for the Brigadier General Staff, the senior staff officer at an Army Headquarters, was to act as a first among equals; the commanding general was still expected to manage his staff. Montgomery dispensed with this system. As Chief of Staff, de Guingand would now act as the main conduit for all Montgomery’s decisions and the responsibility and management of all staff work would lie with him. As de Guingand later recalled:
"That address by Montgomery will remain one of my most vivid recollections. It was one of his greatest efforts. We all felt that a cool and refreshing breeze had come to relieve the oppressive and stagnant atmosphere. The effect of the address was electric - it was terrific! And we all went to bed that night with a new hope in our hearts, and a great confidence in the future of our Army. "
There is no doubt that Montgomery’s address re-energised the staff of Eighth Army. Montgomery had begun to execute the ‘Projection of Personality’ he had taught at Staff College in the twenties. He projected confidence, determination and a clear direction which was bound to be appealing to a rather jaded and confused group of staff officers.
However, it is difficult in hindsight to disentangle the triumphant ‘Monty’ of post-1942 fame from the white-kneed lieutenant-general who came to command Eighth Army. Montgomery’s last experience of command in action had been with the 3rd Infantry Division during the retreat to Dunkirk. Since then, he had developed a powerful reputation as an energetic trainer of troops and an unconventional commander who drove his men hard. However, he had no experience of actually commanding mechanised forces in action or of the very different dimensions of time and space as they now operated in the deserts of Egypt.
His initial orders to burn all plans for withdrawal included both the tactical plan for the ‘thinning out’ of Eighth Army to take up its defensive positions and Auchinleck’s (previous now sacked Chief of Staff) Corbett’s plans for the retreat of the whole army. As part of this policy of ‘no retreat’, Montgomery also ordered the removal of all unnecessary transport from the front lines. Any possibility of tactical mobility or rapid redeployment of the front line forces was removed. At one stroke, Montgomery had committed Eighth Army to a static defence (as they were trained , doctrinated and their most accustomed comfortable operational way. Monty knew how his army functioned far better than his predecessors. He was methodic , systematic , careful and meticilous and fit to the British Commonwealth Eighth Army he commanded like a glove) in the face of any future Panzer Army Afrika attack.
Montgomery’s response on seeing the spartan mess for Eighth Army Headquarters was also legendary. Brigadier Kisch , chief of army engineers had constructed a wire cage around the mess tables in an attempt to keep flies out but instead this had acted as a flytrap and Auchinleck set the entire field HQ very close to frontline in vey spartan and uncomfortable conditions. Montgomery burst out: ‘What’s this, a meat safe? . . . You don’t expect me to live in a meat safe, do you? Take it down at once, and let the poor flies out!’ Montgomery reacted badly to conditions that were far from unusual in Eighth Army. Auchinleck’s Headquarters on Ruweisat ridge had never been intended to be permanent. It only became so when the expected advance in pursuit of a beaten Panzer Army Afrika never happened. The quality of accommodation and fare was quite usual for the Eighth Army but certainly unusual for a commander straight from England. Nonetheless, Montgomery was correct in moving the Headquarters to Burg el Arab where a proper, more comfortable mess could be arranged and where the staff officers could bathe in the sea after a long day. The crisis at Alamein was over and the Main Headquarters no longer needed to be up in the front line. The move of the mess also acknowledged the important fact that there would be no more fluid fighting; static positional warfare would predominate for the next few months. On top of that Montgomery moved Eighth Army HQ directly next to Desert Air Force Tactical HQ at Burg El Arab to coordinate and cooperate with RAF better. That alone shows his coordinated and cooperated operational doctrine emphasis with other arms.
13 August 1942
Montgomery’s reception by the officers and men of Eighth Army was more cautious than perhaps the legend allows. Montgomery met General Freyberg , the commander of 2nd New Zealand Division on his first day in the desert. Freyberg emphasised the importance of his charter from the New Zealand government. He went on to say:
"I have had great anxiety in the past with higher commanders who have a mania for breaking up military organisation. . . . I have seen two full Generals, eleven Lieutenant-Generals and innumerable Major-Generals sacked because they have put their trust in:
1 The ‘Jock Columns’
2 The ‘Brigade Group’ Battle
3 The ‘Crusader Tank’. "
Along with most of Eighth Army, Freyberg maintained a healthy scepticism about any new commander fresh from England. Indeed, Freyberg was ‘determined not to take part in the Battle of Alamein unless I was given an undertaking that we would fight as a Division’. Not surprisingly, Montgomery’s insistence on fighting ‘Divisions as divisions’ was music to the ears of Freyberg and Morshead, neither of whom had agreed with the brigade group policy. Freyberg noted pointedly that:
“after the abolition of the Brigade Group battle there was no disagreement between the N.Z.E.F. and the C.in C. on questions of battle policy, and harmonious relations were maintained up to the finish of the war.”
At the same time, Montgomery’s policy of ‘no withdrawal’ was welcomed by Australian general Morshead who had opposed any withdrawal from the Tel el Eisa salient. (as Auchinleck intended before as “mobile elastic defence”) Eighth Army finally found a winner commander who understood how they worked in most efficient way.
He asked Alexander to send him two new British divisions (51st Highland and 44th Home Counties) that were then arriving in Egypt and were scheduled to be deployed in defence of the Nile Delta. He moved his field HQ to Burg al Arab, close to the Air Force command post in order to better coordinate combined operations.
Field Marshal Lord Gort, Commander of the BEF in France in 1940 and, by the summer of 1942, Governor of Malta, once remarked that in dealing with Monty, ‘*one must remember that he is not quite a gentleman’. This was not an insult anyone could throw at General Harold Alexander, but the fact that Monty was such an outsider in the boys’ club that was the British Army, and yet had still made it to lieutenant-general, says much about his determination and utter belief in his abilities and destiny.
They made an unlikely couple, Alex and Monty, yet their backgrounds, experience, and differing skills complemented one another perfectly. Together they made a team, as solid as Mary Coningham and Tommy Elmhirst in Desert Air Force, a team which, both Churchill and Brooke desperately hoped, would bring them victory and the prestige to give them a lasting equal partnership with the Americans.
Montgomery was determined that the army, navy and air forces should fight their battles in a unified, focused manner according to a detailed plan. He ordered immediate reinforcement of the vital heights of Alam Halfa, just behind his own lines, expecting the German commander, Erwin Rommel, to attack with the heights as his objective, something that Rommel soon would do.
Mediterranean Sea : Royal Navy submarine HMS Unbroken torpedoed and damaged Italian heavy cruiser Bolzano (so severely damaged that after towed to Spezia she was never repaired again and used as an empty hulk) and Italian light Muzio Attendolo 21 miles north of Capo d’Orlando, Sicily, Italy.
Operation Pedestal continues. Pedastal convoy entered E-Boat Alley in Skerki Bank in early hours of 13th August. The main part of the convoy was attacked at 00:40 by four fast torpedoboats of the German III Squadron and thirteen torpedo boats of the Italian 18° MAS, 2° MS and 20° MAS, which made 15 attacks; the long line of merchant ships and the reduced number of escort ships providing an easy target. The 18° MAS detected the convoy on radar, south-east of Pantelleria and attacked the escorts at the head of the procession, coming under fire, as they fired torpedoes to no effect. The Italian boats then attacked the merchant ships.
The convoy was vulnerable because the lighthouse at Cap Bon revealed their position about 10 nmi (12 mi; 19 km) offshore. German fast torpedoboats S 58 and S 59 sighted the first ships at 00:20, attacked and S 58 was damagedby gunfire from Royal Navy escort ships , turning away for Port Empedocle. S 59 attacked and claimed a freighter about 5 nmi (5.8 mi; 9.3 km) north-east of Cap Bon, but no ships were hit there. At 01:02 near Ras Mustafa south of Kelibia, Italian fast torpedoboats MS 16 or MS 22 attacked the convoy to no effect but then attacked light cruiser HMS Manchester from close range and each scored a hit, flooding its boilers, fuel tanks and magazines and that wrecking three of its four propeller shafts, the ship taking on a 12° list until counter-flooding reduced the list to 5°. The cargo ships in the convoy Waimarama, Almeria Lykes and Glenorchy following on, swerved around HMS Manchester and lost formation. Glenorchy mistakenly claimed the destruction of a torpedo boat and the two Italian MAS torpedoboats ran aground in Tunisia. Power was restored on HMS Manchester and 156 men were taken on board destroyer HMS Pathfinder but at 05:00, the captain ordered the ship be scuttled and the remaining crew to make for the Tunisian coast. (where they were interned by Vichy French)
Between 03:15 and 04:30 about 15 nmi (17 mi; 28 km) off Kelibia, German fast torpedo boats hit and sank cargo ships Wairangi, Almeria Lykes (US), Santa Elisa (US) and Glenorchy, as they took a short cut to catch up with the convoy. Rochester Castle was torpedoed but escaped at 13 kn (15 mph; 24 km/h) and caught up with the main body by 05:30, by when light cruiser HMS Charybdis, destroyers HMS Eskimo and HMS Somali had arrived, increasing the escort to two cruisers and seven destroyers around cargo ships Rochester Castle, Waimarama and Melbourne Star. The tanker Ohio and its destroyer escorts were slowly closing the distance and further back were cargo ship Port Chalmers and two destroyers. Another cargo ship Dorset was sailing independently and last cargo ship Brisbane Star lurked near the Tunisian coast, ready to make a run for Malta after dark. Dawn brought an end to the torpedo boat attacks and at 07:30, Admiral Burrough sent HMS Eskimo and HMS Somali back to help sinking HMS Manchester but they arrived too late, took on survivors who had not reached the shore and made for Gibraltar.
An attack by the Italian cruisers appeared imminent, after RAF air reconnaissance had sighted them the previous evening, heading south about 80 nmi (150 km; 92 mi) from the west end of Sicily, on course to reach the convoy at dawn. At 01:30 the cruisers had turned east and run along the north coast of Sicily; British aircraft from Malta had conducted a ruse to decoy the cruisers but the main attacking force on Malta was held back, in case the Italian battleships sailed from Taranto. Some of the Italian cruisers were ordered to return to port and the rest were sent through the Straits of Messina to join the 8th Cruiser Division against the MG 3 decoy convoy in the eastern Mediterranean.
Royal Navy submarine HMS Unbroken (commanded by Captain Alastair Mars , one of best Royal Navy submarine officers) had been waiting since 10 August 2 nmi (2.3 mi; 3.7 km) north of the Capo Milazzo lighthouse and after being attacked, moved close to Stromboli, arriving early on 13 August. The Italian cruisers were heard first by hydrophone and then seen through the periscope at 07:25, heading north between the islands of Filicudi and Panarea. The ships were making 20 kn (37 km/h; 23 mph) with eight destroyer escorts and two Italian CANT Z.506 aircraft overhead. Her commander Captain Mars raised the periscope for only short periods, to avoid being seen by the destroyers and the Cants, while manoeuvring into an attack position.
At 08:05, the cruisers slowed to 18 kn (33 km/h; 21 mph) for Italian light cruiser Gorizia to fly off a seaplane and then Italian destroyer Fuciliere machine-gunned a periscope seen at 450 yd (410 m). The Italian destroyers chased several Asdic contacts and three sailed within 1,000 yd (910 m) of HMS Unbroken, which fired four torpedoes after they had passed by. HMS Unbroken dived to 80 ft (24 m) and after 2.15 minutes, an explosion was heard followed by a second after another 15 seconds. Observers on Italian cruisers Gorizia and Bolzano had seen torpedo tracks and Gorizia was turned sharply but Bolzano was hit while beginning its turn. The deck crew of Muzio Attendolo had not seen the torpedo tracks or received the alert from Fuciliere and the ship took evasive action only after Bolzano was hit, which was too late when Italian cruiser was also hit by a torpedo.
13 August 1942
HMS Unbroken descended to 120 ft (37 m) and commenced silent running; Italian destroyers Fuciliere (carrying Asdic) and Camica Nera slowed to hunt the submarine. The destroyers detected HMS Unbroken at 08:45 and accurately dropped 105 depth charges in the next 45 minutes but at too shallow a depth. Two destroyers escorted Gorizia and Trieste to Messina and five remained with Bolzano and Muzio Attendolo, periodically dropping depth charges as a deterrent.
Italian light cruiser Muzio Attendolo was hit forward and 82 ft (25 m) of its bow was blown open but suffered no fatalities. The ship was towed towards Messina but when the bow fell off, the ship managed to sail on at 5 kn (5.8 mph; 9.3 km/h), escorted by destroyers Grecale, Ascari and later Freccia, reaching Messina at 18:54. Italian heavy cruiser Bolzano was struck amidships, six engine rooms and a magazine flooded and a fire started, the commander of the 11th Destroyer Flotilla being ordered to tow the ship and run it aground on Panarea. Bolzano burned until the next day, watched over by Italian fighters and after a month of crude temporary repairs, was towed to Naples then she was towedto La Spasia naval base but damage of Bolzano had been so heavy she could never be repaired by Axis. Muzio Attendolo also remained damaged for the duration of the war, and Bolzano was destroyed in June 1944, in an attack by two British SBS (Special Boat Squadron) human torpedo craft.
After remaining submerged for ten hours, HMS Unbroken surfaced and was recalled to Malta. (Supermarina had re-routed the cruiser force after a submarine (Unbroken) had been detected, which had been predicted by Mars, enabling him to forestall the Italians, who broke orders by not zigzagging and by slowing. After the incident, Supermarina assumed that the submarine had escaped because Italian depth charges were not powerful enough, rather than the Asdic-equipped ships had been hampered by the turbulence of destroyer wakes and depth charge explosions.)
At 07:00 Pedestal convoy was about 120 miles (220 km) from Malta and Axis reconnaissance accurately reported four freighters two cruisers and seven destroyers but not five more destroyers. Trailing behind were cargo ships Dorset and Port Chalmers with two destroyers and two more off to the west. Another cargo ship Brisbane Star was in the Gulf of Hammamet and south of Pantelleria were six British submarines. However by the morning the remants of the convoy was fighter range and air cover from Malta and Vice Air Marshal Park sent every fighter available to protect Pedestal convoy. Fliegerkorps II sent 26 Ju 88 bombers in several waves and at 09:15, 16 Ju 87s escorted by eight ME 109s and ME Bf 110s attacked. Ten Ju 88 bombers of II/LG 1 near missed Ohio and hit cargo ship Waimarama which disintegrated; the aviation fuel on deck burst into flame and one of German bombers was destroyed in the explosion. HMS Ledbury passed through the fires, rescuing 27 survivors of the ship’s complement of 107 men.
The wreckage of Waimarama showered flaming debris on Melbourne Star and several of her crew abandoned ship prematurely, some of whom were later rescued by Royal Navy HMS Ledbury which bravely plunged into burning patch sea among flaming debrids and rescued survivors. Then the crew of Melbourne Star reboarded their ship , restarted the engines and continued their passage to Malta.
At 09:23, eight Italian Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers with ten MC.202 escorts attacked to tanker Ohio sailing in 13 knots and a Stuka was shot down by accurate anti aircraft fire from tanker Ohio (by Norwegian merchant marine gunner Fred Larssen) and crashed onto deck of Ohio, another was shot into the sea by anti aircraft fire and a Spitfire was shot down, either by a MC.202 or navy anti-aircraft fire. Aboard Ohio , a little later the chief officer telephoned Captain Mason to announce that a shot-down Stuka had just arrived on the stern. Mason answered nonchalantly, ‘Oh that’s nothing. We’ve had a Ju 87 on the bow for nearly half an hour.’
The cargo ship Rochester Castle was damaged by a near miss from a Ju 88 and cargo ship Dorset was hit by Stukas of I/StG 3 and abandoned. The attackers lost two Ju 87s and a Bf 109 and a RAF Beaufighter was shot down. The cargo ship Port Chalmers was hit and at 11:25, five Italian SM.79 torpedo-bombers, with 14 MC.202 escorts, attacked and the crew found a torpedo caught in the starboard paravane, a torpedo became entangled in the paravane floats streaming behind Port Chalmers which had been meant to catch mines. The crew carefully released the paravane, the weight of which pulled the torpedo underwater, where it exploded harmlessly. An Italian SM.79 was shot down by a Spitfire and two Royal Navy destroyers were left behind with the disabled ships.
20 Ju 88s returned later that in the afternoon, and scored a bomb hit on Ohio’s starboard side, knocking out the power and boiler fires. Hard-working engineers use fuel starter torches to re-light the boilers, and Ohio is doing 16 knots within 20 minutes…only to get hammered by more bombs that also damage the electric fuel pumps. These hits finally stop the engines.
Ohio is joined by destroyers HMS Penn and HMS Ledbury , which start towing the battered tanker with 10-inch manila rope. Not only is Ohio immobile, but unable to defend herself as her 20mm Oerlikon anti aircraft guns are all damaged from heavy use.
The Luftwaffe tries again at 1:30, and a Ju 88 drops its bomb just before anti aircraft fire destroys the plane. The bomb rips open Ohio. Capt. Mason orders his exhausted crew to abandon ship. Destroyer and tanker crews, having gone without sleep for three days, are near the limits of their endurance. Royal Navy escort destroyer HMS Ledbury’s captain boosts morale by ordering a rum issue.
The remnants of the convoy steamed on to meet the four minesweepers and seven motor minesweepers of the 17th Minesweeper Flotilla of the Malta Escort Force at 14:30. RAF fighters from Mala dispersed rest of Axis aircraft on rest of the ships , shooting down five JU-87 Stukas , three Italian SM79 torpedo bombers , three German JU-88 bombers and four Italian Macarati 202 fighters and one German ME-109 fighter.
The cargo ships Melbourne Star, Port Chalmers and Rochester Castle reached Grand Harbour at Valletta at 16:30 the cheers of inhabitants lining the ramparts. Malta’s Governor, Lord Gort, was on the Upper Barrakka gardens overlooking the harbour, listening to the cries of ‘Wasal il-Konvoy! Diehel il-Konvoy! (The convoy is here! The convoy is entering the harbour!)’. Amid the continuous roar of Spitfires overhead, a band struck up the Maltese national anthem and a selection of naval marches. The flags were out too - British, American and Maltese. The warships came in with their guns pointing up, and their crews standing on the edges of the decks stripped to the waist. Meanwhile, seventy miles out to sea, two motor launches and the minesweeper HMS Rye had also gone to help the Ohio.
Malta now has food to sustain the siege till winter, but the critical oil is still 70 miles away, on a sinking ship.
In Valetta where Operation Ceres, the immediate unloading of the ships began. Another air attack at dusk by 14 Ju 87s, sank the cargo ship Dorset but when the main body was within 80 nmi (150 km; 92 mi) of Malta, 18 Ju 88s were recalled in the face of 407 Spitfire sorties from the island.
Royal Navy escort estroyer HMS Penn tried to tow tanker Ohio but the tanker was listing and snapped the tow line and in a later attack, a bomb hit the same area as a previous torpedo hit and broke Ohio’s keel. Still she is afloat.
13 August 1942
Mediterranean Sea : The last cargo ship from Pedestal Convoy to arrive Valetta Harbour , Brisbane Star evaded a U-boat and managed to steam at 5-9 kn (9.3-16.7 km/h; 5.8-10.4 mph) despite the damage to its bows. Off Tunisia, the last cargo ship of the convoy straggled behind Brisbane Star was attacked by two SM.79 torpedo bombers, whose torpedoes turned out to be duds. The cargo ship evaded Italian MAS boats; it was then boarded by Vichy French Sousse harbour master, who tried to impound the vessel until persuaded to relent and let the ship sail on after dark. Next day Brisbane Star arrived Valetta harbour to the suprise of everybody , fourth cargo ship that reached Malta from remants of Pedestal.
Now only tanker Ohio and its precious 14.000 tons of fuel to be delivered to Malta remained. Royal Navy destroyer HMS Ledbury escorting damaged tanker Ohio was attacked by two SM.79 torpedo bombers but anti aircraft gunners shot them down. On Royal Navy destroyer HMS Penn, Capt. Mason sees Admiral Burrough’s ships coming and minesweeper HMS Rye approaching, and knows he has more resources to bring his ship to Malta. He asks for volunteers from his crew to go back aboard Ohio, and all weary merchant sailors volunteer do so, checking valves and steering gear, stopping leaks. Mason removes his ship’s rudder and auxiliary steering gear. The ship will be hand-steered to Malta.
But at 6:30 the Luftwaffe comes back for one more try, and a JU-88 score a bomb hit that explodes on the boiler tops, blowing most of the engine room to pieces. Ohio has broken her back. Mason again orders abandon ship.
That evening, Mason and Lt. Cdr. Swain, HMS Penn’s skipper, discuss the situation. Ohio is flooding, but Mason is determined to get her oil to Malta. “We’ll do everything we can,” Swain says. They come up with a new plan to save the tanker.
Force X had turned for Gibraltar at 16:00 with the cruisers HMS Charybdis, HMS Kenya and five destroyers and Fliegerkorps II made a maximum effort against the force, which made it easier for the remaining merchant ships to reach Malta. Force X was attacked by 35 Ju 88s and 13 Ju 87s, achieving only a near-miss on HMS Kenya for a loss of a Ju 88 and a Stuka. The Regia Aeronautica attacked with 15 bombers and 20 torpedo-bombers for no loss and during the afternoon, Force X met Force Z, the ships being attacked by aircraft, submarines and light craft but reached Gibraltar next day without further damage. The destroyers HMS Eskimo and HMS Somali, carrying survivors from HMS Manchester were the last to reach Gibraltar at 17:30 on 15 August.
Caucausian Front , Russia : First Panzer Army captured Elysia , 200 miles south of Stalingrad, and 155 miles from the Caspian Sea. The Caucasian town of Mineralniye Vody falls to the Germans as well.
Vinnisa , Ukraine : At his wooden headquarters - “Werewolf” - at Vinnitsa in the Ukraine, Hitler discusses the French coast. If Nazi strategy fails, the Second Front will come sooner or later. Hitler orders Armaments Minister Albert Speer to create an “Atlantic Wall” of fortifications against any Allied landing. Hitler wants 15,000 concrete bunkers set at 50- or 100-yard intervals, to be built without regard for cost. Hitler recalls for Speer’s benefit his World War I days, how hard it was for the Allies to dig German troops out of trenchlines. “Our most costly substance,” Hitler says, “Is the German man. The blood these fortifications will spare is worth the billions.” It is a strange move for the man who has espoused mobile warfare with such success, to fall back on fixed fortifications.
Don River , Russia : German Sixth Army was held off by remants of 62nd Soviet Army and 1st Tank Army at Kletskaya in narrow bridgehead , 40 miles away from Stalingrad. Since he was short of manpower , General Paulus , commander of Sixth Army decided Fourth Panzer Army to attack rear of this ramshackle blocking force and destroy it. Meanwhile with total mobilisation , Soviet defences around Stalingrad are getting stronger each day.
Stalingrad : On 12 August, Vasilevskii conferred with Yeremenko about the defensive preparations required to deal with this even more dangerous situation: Yeremenko was of the opinion that the first stage of the German offensive - wiping out the Soviet bridgeheads on the western bank of the Don and west of Kalach - was now done. He anticipated a heavy German attack against 4th Tank Army and the forcing of the Don, at the same time as German formations struck from the south. The intelligence data at Yeremenko’s disposal confirmed this: for Kalach-Stalingrad, up to 10-11 German divisions, to the south (Plodovitoe-Stalingrad) some 5-7 German divisions, indicating a concentric blow. In the wake of Vasilevskii came V.A. Malyshev, deputy chairman of the GKO with a group of senior officials, to look into local supply, railway transport and the movement of Volga river traffic.
Moscow , Russia : Second Moscow Conferance continues. General Alan Brooke , Imperial Chief of Staff (whose aircraft was behind Churchill’s) landed on Moscow and joined second day of talks. The good humour with which two sides had parted the previous evening had disappeared.
It crossed Brooke’s mind that Stalin had taken the bad news about the Second Front to his Politburo and had been shaken by their reaction. Whatever had happened, Stalin had returned to the theme of an invasion of France in 1942, his insistence reinforced with more insulting attacks on the British, culminating in some withering criticism of the Royal Navy for their conduct during the PQ17 convoy.
“This is the first time in history that the British Navy has ever turned tail and fled from the battle. You British are afraid of fighting. You should not think the Germans are supermen. You will have to fight sooner or later. You cannot win a war without fighting.”
Churchill, beginning to lose his temper, defended British courage and described the months during which his country had fought on alone in 1940 and ’41. He did not go so far as to point out that at that time Stalin had been allied to Hitler, but doubtless meant Stalin to reflect on the fact. Churchill became so transported by his own passionate eloquence that he barely left time for the translator and had to keep stopping to ask, ‘Did you tell him that?’ He concluded by saying that he would pardon Stalin’s abuse of the Royal Navy, but only ‘on account of the bravery of the Russian troops’. Stalin laughed. He replied that although he had not understood everything that Churchill had said, he could tell from his demeanour that Britain’s fighting spirit burned brightly in her Prime Minister.
Having vented all his anger, Stalin asked Churchill and his party to join him for a banquet. A hundred people gathered in one of the Kremlin’s most ornate dining rooms: ministers, diplomats and Soviet generals festooned with medals. Just before he was driven there, Alan Brooke received the latest, depressing news from the Pedestal convoy. As if this were not enough to put him off his food, the sight of it made him feel distinctly queasy. The tables were piled high with every kind of roast meat, poultry and fish, with generous quantities of caviar and dozens of bottles of vodka. Brooke spent most of the evening trying to avoid the gaze of a small sucking pig, smothered in an unappetising white sauce, and equipped with a black truffle eyeball that threatened to drop out. Whenever he felt that no one was looking he carefully refilled his vodka glass with water.
Churchill, however, was in his element. Piling food on to his plate with aplomb, he joined in enthusiastically as Stalin toasted all of his generals and admirals in turn. Stalin toured the room, insisting on clinking glasses with the recipients of his toasts, some of whom, Brooke noted disapprovingly, were soon glassy-eyed and unsteady on their feet. Churchill drank to Stalin’s own health while other guests proposed ‘Death and damnation to the Nazis!’ and suchlike. Stalin teased Churchill by recalling pre-war visits to Moscow by sympathetic British politicians who had told him that ‘Churchill, the old warhorse’ was finished. Stalin claimed to have predicted even then that the warrior would make a comeback.
The next day was spent recovering from the banquet. Stalin and Churchill had parted on extremely good terms the night before, with Stalin taking the unusual step of escorting his guest to the gates of the Kremlin. Then, during the evening of 14-15 August, Stalin asked to see Churchill again in private. He arrived at seven in the evening and stayed until three in the morning after Molotov joined them for another boozy dinner. Abuse had now softened into jokes, and even nostalgia. Stalin remembered London where, in 1907, he had been a young Bolshevik agitator alongside Lenin, while Churchill was already a minister in the British government. Stalin asked Churchill why he had ‘bombed his Molotov’, reminding him of the moment when the RAF had attacked Berlin during one of Molotov’s meetings with his German opposite number in the days of the Nazi-Soviet alliance. The Germans were talking of Britain’s imminent defeat, as they cowered in a shelter from British bombs, something that Stalin and Molotov thought very funny indeed.
13 August 1942
Berlin , Germany : SS Lt. Gen. Karl Wolff writes the manager of the German Ministry of Transportation, saying, “It gives me great pleasure to learn that already, for the last 14 days, one train goes daily with 5,000 passengers of the Chosen People to Treblinka; and we are even in a position to complete this mass movement of people at an accelerated rate.”
Kokoda Track : Japanese Army troops attacked Australian positions at Deniki, Australian Papua but they were repulsed by well prepared defensive positions of 39th Australian Militia Battalion. Next day though when realising they are being outflanked Australians retreated from Deniki to Isauva village where they prepared a new series of defensive entranchments , prepared positions and reinforcements from rest of the battalion concentrated.
Rabaul , New Britain : Japanese 17th Army plots its grand counterattack to regain Henderson Field in Guadalcanal. Chief of Staff Gen. Akisaburo Futami reckons American numbers at 7,000. They’re actually twice that.
Col. Kiyono Ichiki, boss of the 2,000-man Ichiki Detachment, gets his orders. He holds a distinguished record…expert infantry tactician, hard-driving officer…he led troops in the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge incident, thus singlehandedly starting the Sino-Japanese War. His 28th Infantry Regiment has led numerous amphibious assaults, and his Ichiki Detachment (part of that force) was to land on Midway. His tactics so far have relied on night attacks with bugles, swords, and bayonets - and he has never lost.
Ichiki is told that the Americans are going to withdraw. He tells his bosses he will attack two days after landing on Guadalcanal. His men will carry only 250 rounds of ammo per man and seven days’ rations.
Philippines : In the Philippines, Gen Nishino, the newspaper correspondent with the Kawaguchi Detachment of 3,500 men, gets word from the detachment’s CO, Gen. Kiotake Kawaguchi, that the detachment is heading for Guadalcanal.
Kawaguchi briefs the reporter, saying, “This is our new destination - Gadarukanaru. It’s true there will be nothing heroic in it, but I’d say it will be extremely serious business. If you decide to continue on with us, you must put your life in my hands. Both of us will probably be killed.” Nishino says he will go.
My great-grandfather was a sailor on the transport ship destroyed on the 8 August torpedo bomber raid at Guadalcanal. The ship was the USS George F. Elliot.
Does anyone else watch these episodes while following on in Google Maps and look at the battle locations? I'm always surprised by the South Pacific isolated battlefields and how significant they were, the expanse of desert in North Africa where fighting was limited to where the ground was firm. And on the Eastern Front the immense size of the front often makes me wonder just how well it was manned. There had to be numerous gaps of very light to no troops on either side.
On the Eastern Front a continuous line rarely existed. Both too fluid and too large. There was something approximating to trench warfare in some places like the Volkhov front near Leningrad but this was not typical.
The Russian film "Zvezda" ("Star") has Red Army scouts moving off into a swampy area but they do not know exactly where the Germans are. They just keep moving forward cautiously until they spot them, and hope they are not spotted first.