Posted on 08/16/2014 4:15:13 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy
The Zero Hour, with Orphan Ann
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1944/aug44/16aug44.htm#
Germans counterattack near Warsaw
Wednesday, August 16, 1944 www.onwar.com
Panthers of 5th SS Pz. Div. “Wiking” north of Warsaw [photo at link]
On the Eastern Front... Soviet forces reach Ossow, only 7 miles northeast of Warsaw. However, a counterattack by German forces compels the Soviet troops to withdraw.
On the Western Front... Troops of the Canadian 2nd Corps (part of Canadian 1st Army) enter Falaise and meet heavy resistance from German defenders. To the right, Polish forces of British 1st Corps move eastward, over the Dives River. To the south, the US 20th Corps (part of Us 3rd Army) captures Chartres.
In Southern France... The French 2nd Corps (de Lattre), part of US 7th Army, comes ashore and moves forward.
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/thismonth/16.htm
August 16th, 1944 (WEDNESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: The US Eighth Air Force in England flies 2 missions.
- Mission 556: 1,090 bombers and 692 fighters, in 4 forces, are dispatched to make visual attacks on oil refineries and aircraft plants in central Germany; 23 bombers and 3 fighters are lost (number in parenthesis indicate number of bombers attacking).
(1) B-17s hit Delitzsch air depot (102), the aviation industry at Schkeuditz (92) and Halle (60) and the oil industry at Bohlen (88); other targets are Naumburg (15), Halberstadt Airfield (13) and targets of opportunity (9); they claim 6-4-6 Luftwaffe aircraft; 10 B-17s are lost; escort is provided by 246 P-47s and P-51 Mustang; they claim 15-1-6 Luftwaffe.
(2) B-17s are dispatched to hit the oil industry at Rositz (105) and Zeitz (101); 3 others hit targets of opportunity; 6 B-17s are lost; escort is provided by 166 P-47s and P-51s; they claim 5-0-1 Luftwaffe aircraft; 2 P-47s are lost.
(3) B-24s are dispatched to Halberstadt Airfield (51); 10 others hit Quedlinburg Airfield and 1 hits a targets of opportunity; escort is provided by 42 of 46 P-38 Lightnings.
(4) B-24s are dispatched to hit the aviation industry at Dessau (99), Kothen (71) and Magdeburg/Neustadt (67) and the oil industry at Magdeburg/Rothensee; 2 others hit targets of opportunity; 7 B-24s are lost; escort is provided by 156 P-47s and P-51s; they claim 12-0-0 aircraft; 1P-51 is lost.
- Mission 557: 8 of 8 B-17s drop leaflets in France during the night.
Minesweeper HMS Squirrel commissioned.
FRANCE: Canadian troops from II Corps enter Falaise. Polish units of the British I Corps advance west over the River Dives. The US XX Corps liberates Chartres, France.
The French II Corps lands and passes forward through the US lines in the South of France.
The US Ninth Air Force dispatches about 130 B-26s and A-20 Havocs, with fighter escort, to hit a Foret de Roumare ammunition dump and rail bridges at Pont-Audemer, Thibouville, Brionne, Nassandres, and Le Bourg; fighters give air cover to an armored division and infantry forces, and fly patrol and armed reconnaissance over northern and western France.
Normandy: Lt. Tasker Watkins (b.1918), Welch regt., led a successful charge against superior numbers and later silenced a machine-gun post, saving his men. (Victoria Cross)
Savoy: The Resistance launched a general rebellion to coincide with the Allied landings in the south.
Adolf Hitler orders the withdrawal of all German forces in southern France.
The German Me-163 rocket-powered fighter sees action for the first time against a formation of B-17s.
GERMANY: U-2518 laid down.
EASTERN FRONT: POLAND: The Russian attacks reach Ossow, 7 miles NE of Warsaw where they are pushed back by a German counterattack.
Moscow: The Soviet government describes the Warsaw rising as a “reckless, appalling adventure.”
ITALY: The US Fifteenth Air Force in Italy bombs targets in Germany and France.
- In Germany, 89 B-24s, with fighter escort, bomb a chemical works at Friedrichshafen.
- In France, 108 B-17s, supporting Operation DRAGOON, attack railroad bridges at Saint-Vallier,
Saint-Pierre-d’Albigny, Grenoble, and Isere-Valence.
In support of the landings in Southern France (Operation DRAGOON):
- US Twelfth Air Force fighters and fighter-bombers continue to blast enemy defenses and communications on the beaches and in the invasion area of southern France; A-20s hit lights and vehicles during the night of 15/16 August from north of the beachhead to the Rhone River and during the day raid ammunition stores; medium bombers pound Rhone River bridges and gun positions throughout the general area.
- 42 US Fifteenth Air Force P-51s escort MATAF C-47 Skytrains on a supply dropping mission to the beachheads.
INDIA: The last IJA troops retreat to Burma.
BONIN ISLANDS: US Seventh Air Force B-24s from Saipan Island hit Chichi Jima Island and Pagan Island while Marshall Island-based B-24s bomb Truk Atoll.
CANADA: Frigate HMCS Thetford Mines arrived Halifax from workups in Bermuda.
Corvette HMCS Whitby arrived Halifax from refit Shelburne, Nova Scotia.
U.S.A.: Destroyer escort USS Mack commissioned.
Coast Guard-manned Army vessel FS-525 was commissioned with LTJG George C. Steinemann, USCGR, as commanding officer. She was assigned to and operated in the Southwest Pacific, and Western Pacific areas, including Milne Bay, Hollandia, etc.
Coast Guard-manned Army vessel FS-263 was commissioned at New York LTJG W. G. Hill, USCGR, was her first commanding officer. On 6 September 1944, she departed New York for the Southwest Pacific where she operated during the war. On 1 August 1945, the FS-263 anchored in Serida Lagoon, Biak, New Guinea, without cargo awaiting orders to proceed to the Philippine area, and departed on the 2nd for Finschhafen, New Guinea. Arriving on the 6th, after an uneventful voyage, she loaded mail and commissary supplies for Oro Bay, New Guinea and Milne Bay, New Guinea. On the 7th she entered drydock at Finschhafen, where she remained until the 9th having her bottom scraped and repainted. On the 11th she departed Finschhafen to search for a man lost overboard on the 10th, but returned to port when the man was located on Scarlet Beach having swum ashore during the night. On the 15th she departed Finschhafen for Oro Bay, New Guinea, and moored there on the 16th. Here the #3 cylinder liner of her starboard engine was found to be cracked and it was deemed inadvisable to proceed to sea with only one engine. She was, therefore, docked at Oro Bay for the remainder of August 1945 with cargo for Oro Bay discharged but cargo for Milne Bay still on board. While the engine was being repaired, the crew was engaged in routine cleaning and upkeep work aboard the vessel. On 12 October 1945, Coast Guard crew was removed from the FS-263 and she was decommissioned.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-862 sinks SS Empire Lancer.
So where’s the movie!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Gault_MacGowan
On 15 August 1944, he had one of his closest brushes with death as he was captured, along with a couple of other correspondents, by two German light tanks firing machine guns at them. His friend William Makin, on the jeep with him, was critically wounded. MacGowan’s capture was reported in daily newspapers in London, New York and elsewhere around the world. The New York Times headline read, “MacGowan of Sun Captured in France; Nazis Report Companion Hurt in ‘Scrape’”.[8] A couple of days later, he eluded his captors by leaping from a prisoner-of-war train in the middle of the night. In April and May 1945 he gave The Sun eye-witness reports of the liberation of the Buchenwald and Dachau death camps.
The picture on page one shows the real key to our victory in WWII: prayer. (Also the key to American success and prosperity over the last two centuries.)
Rees Howells was a Christian missionary and leader who later in life founded a Bible college in Wales where amazing intercessory prayer went on and spiritual battles were won in prayer BEFORE the actual events happens on the ground.
The link describes some of this from a chapter in the book, “Rees Howells Intercessor”.
Homer, did you paste together these NYT articles? Whoever did, it was a great job.
Technically, it is scotch tape. But thanks.
Quite a story. Looks like it could be a good movie.
Mums the word, at least in the news that I can see, on why Patton was stopped at Argentan.
However, from post-war observations and reflections, it looks like a combination of things were involved, some political (preset boundaries of the various allies), some strategic (Bradley’s preference to pound the enemy rather than entrap him), some tactical (possible lack of flank support and weakness), and some maybe simply attributable to “the fog of war”. Monty’s role here seems again to especially noxious.
It also appears that that Fortune smiled on the Allies as most of both of these German armies were eventually rounded up anyway between Falaise and the entrapment at the Seine.
From histyr.army.mil/books, Chapter 17, GENERAL BRADLEY’S DECISION AT ARGENTAN (13 AUGUST 1944) by Martin Blumenson (link below):
“Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the whole question [stopping Patton at Argentan] is General Bradley’s statement that he could not have let the XV Corps go beyond Argentan in any event because he lacked the authority to do so. The corps was already at the army group boundary and indeed slightly across it and into the 21 Army Group zone. Since General Montgomery commanded the ground forces in France, and since Bradley had already violated the demarcation delineating his own sphere of operations, Bradley needed Montgomery’s permission to go farther to the north. Though Montgomery did not prohibit American advance beyond Argentan, neither did Bradley propose it. [29] Perhaps the main reason why they both accepted the situation was the impending Canadian attack on Falaise, the second attack, scheduled for the following day, 14 August. Canadian success in attaining not only Falaise but Argentan would have made unnecessary any further intrusion into the 21 Army Group zone by the XV U.S. Corps.
“General Bradley himself later considered the failure to close the gap a mistake, and he placed the responsibility on Montgomery. He recalled that he and Patton had doubted ‘Monty’s ability to close the gap at Argentan’ from the north, and they had ‘waited impatiently’ for word from Montgomery to authorize continuation of the XV Corps advance. While waiting, according to Bradley, he and Patton had seen the Germans reinforce the shoulders of the Argentan-Falaise gap and watched the enemy pour troops and materiel eastward to escape the unsealed pocket. It seemed to him and Patton, Bradley remembered, that Dempsey’s British Second Army, driving from the northwest, accelerated German movement eastward and facilitated German escape by pushing the Germans out of the open end of the pocket like squeezing a tube of toothpaste. “If Monty’s tactics mystified me,” Bradley later wrote, “they dismayed Eisenhower even more. And ... a shocked Third Army looked on helplessly as its quarry fled [while] Patton raged at Montgomery’s blunder.” [30]
“Despite the foregoing observations made after the event, there is no doubt that the basis for General Bradley’s decision at Argentan included four justifiable tactical considerations: (1) on the evidence of the increasing resistance to the XV Corps on the morning of 13 August, there was no certainty that American troops could move through or around Argentan and beyond; (2) since the XV Corps left flank was already exposed, there was no point in closing the Argentan-Falaise gap at the expense of enlarging the Mayenne-Argentan gap on its deep left; (3) the Canadians were about to launch their second attack to Falaise, an effort that, it was hoped, would get them beyond Falaise to Argentan and make unnecessary a further American advance into the 21 Army Group zone; (4) bringing American and Canadian lines together would have inhibited the full use of the superior strength of Allied air and artillery.
“What were the consequences of the decision? General Patton was unhappy with the halt imposed on the XV Corps and impatient to keep moving. Bradley estimated that, “due to the delay in closing the gap between Argentan and Falaise, many of the German divisions which were in the pocket have now escaped.” Thus it was unnecessary to retain a large force at Argentan. Montgomery had earlier authorized, in the event the Germans escaped encirclement at Argentan, the drive to the Seine. The virtual absence of enemy forces in the region east of Argentan to the Seine and the greater mobility of American forces as compared to the Germans thought to be fleeing the pocket made it reasonable to turn Patton toward the eastern boundary of the OVERLORD lodgment area, which now appeared within reach. It was true that the Mayenne gap on the XV Corps left appeared well on its way to elimination because of the excellent advance of the VII Corps on 13 August, and thus the XV Corps could have attacked northward through Argentan with greater security on 14 August. But since Montgomery had had twenty-four hours to invite the XV Corps across the army group boundary and had not done so, Bradley, without consulting Montgomery, decided to retain part of the XV Corps at Argentan and send the rest eastward toward the Seine River. [35] General Patton seems to have had a hand in the decision, for he secured approval by telephone to institute this course of action, and on 14 August he instructed General Haislip to attack eastward. [36]”
http://www.history.army.mil/books/70-7_17.htm
That’s funny. Look at Bradley (who, although he had his problems with Patton, apparent really didn’t like Monty) and the others in the background. They look like they’re not so sure how funny whatever it is.
If you could put little cloud thoughts above the heads of Patton and Monty I wonder what they would say.
News/CurrentEvents in the Topics?
As suggested by the mod I post in the News/Activism forum and enter news,extended as topics.
Punch line for that picture:
Bradley - “I know I can count on you two to put your personal differences aside...”
Patton and Monty - Joint peals of laughter
I can understand that - but who put in Current Events?
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