Posted on 08/19/2012 4:49:29 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Richard Tregaskis, Guadalcanal Diary
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1942/aug42/f19aug42.htm
Canadians raid Dieppe
Wednesday, August 19, 1942 www.onwar.com
Canadian dead at Dieppe [photo at link]
In Occupied France... A major raid by mainly Canadian Forces (2nd Canadian Division, under General Roberts), with a British commando component (Nos. 3 & 4 commandos under Lord Lovat) and 50 American Rangers, is staged on the French coast, at Dieppe. Its function is to test German coastal defenses and gather intelligence. The raid goes badly and there is much controversy about it, including the cancellation and remounting of the raid, the inaccurate intelligence concerning German defensive positions and the lack of bomber support for the raid. In all there are 3600 casualties on the Allied side. 106 aircraft, one destroyer, 30 tanks and 33 landing craft are also lost. German casualties are light, 600 men and 50 tanks.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/frame.htm
August 19th, 1942
UNITED KINGDOM: The US Eighth Air Force flies Mission 2: 22 B-17 Flying Fortresses bomb Drucat Airfield, Abbeville, France between 1032-1040 hours while 6 B-17s fly a diversion. This mission is flown to occupy the Luftwaffe and prevent them from opposing an invasion by over 5,000 Allied troops, mostly Canadians, who raid Dieppe, France. 123 Spitfire Mk Vs of the US VIII Fighter Command support the raid on Dieppe and claim 1-1-5 Luftwaffe aircraft with the loss of 8 Spitfires; 2d Lieutenant Samuel F Junkin Jr of the 309th Fighter Squadron, 31st Fighter Group, flying a Spitfire Mk V in support of the amphibious raid on Dieppe, shoots down a German fighter, this being the first aerial victory won by an 8th Air Force fighter pilot flying from the UK. (Jack McKillop)
During the ensuing dogfight, Lieutenant Junkin was one-versus-one with a FW, which he managed to shoot down before he was subsequently attacked by a second FW. Wounded in the shoulder by cannon fire, he momentarily passed out, but re- gained consciousness just above sea level. He climbed to 1,000 feet where he planned to bail out, having to break through his stuck canopy before he managed to get out at an altitude of 600- 700 feet. Rescued by an Allied torpedo boat, he was transferred to another ship which had also picked up Lieutenant Collins, another Spitfire pilot who had been shot down. (Bob Castle)
Duncan Scott-Ford, a Royal Navy sailor, is arrested for passing information to the enemy.
Lancashire: Tommy, a racing pigeon who strayed into the Netherlands during a race, arrives home bearing valuable military information attached to his leg by a Dutch resistant.
Minesweeper HMS Brixham commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
FRANCE: During Operation JUBILEE, 4,963 Canadians of the 2nd Canadian Division, 1000 British Commandoes of Nos 3 and 4 Commando and 50 U.S. Army Rangers raid along a 10 mile (16 kilometer) wide beachhead centered on the English Channel port of Dieppe. This raid will end in disaster. It ends with a long casualty list of 3600 Allied soldier vs. 60 Germans and most of the installations designated for destruction are not reached, much less destroyed. Some lessons about opposed landings are learned. This raid will become one of the most controversial actions of the war.
Dieppe: Along an 11-mile stretch of the French coast, burning tanks, destroyed landing craft and the crumpled bodies of at least 1,000 soldiers remain as a grim memorial to today’s disaster. Lieutenant Edwin Loustalot, of the 1st Ranger Battalion, became the first American to be killed in land fighting in Europe in this war. A Canadian chaplain, John Foote, tended wounded on the beach and carried them to the boats to be taken off. He refused to embark with them, preferring to become a PoW and help wounded captives. Lieutenant-Colonel J. P. Phillips, RM, died almost instantly as he stood to signal rear landing craft to turn back, but saved 200 of his men.
Combined-Ops HQ: A badly-mauled Allied commando force is returning to England this afternoon after a fruitless nine-hour attempt to seize the French port of Dieppe and destroy the German defences.
Of the 6,100-strong force of Canadians, British, Americans and Free French, around 4,100 officers and men are reported killed, wounded or missing. The 4,963 Canadians, the bulk of the force, bore the brunt of the casualties: 907 dead and 1,496 taken prisoner. Operation Jubilee, as it was codenamed, was planned last April as a reconnaissance in force to test enemy defences on a well-defended sector of the coast, and to persuade the Germans to withdraw men from the eastern front. A fleet of 252 ships sailed from four south-coast ports, and arrived off France at 0330 hours. H-hour was 0450 hours. Five thousand men were ready to go ashore in assault craft. Then the mishaps began.
At 3.47am the commando force in the east ran into an escorted German convoy. In the exchange of fire that followed two German ships were sunk and the eastern flank landing party considerably disordered. Most importantly, the sound of the battle alerted the German land forces and the advantage of tactical surprise was lost.
The force went ashore on an 11-mile stretch of coast centred on the port. The task was to destroy a series of shore batteries and a radio-location station and capture the German divisional HQ. One battery was silenced with brisk efficiency and another sniped at; but the others poured a hail of shells on the Canadians trapped against against barbed-wire on the beaches.
Of 24 tank-landing craft, ten managed to land 27 tanks, all of which were lost. One destroyer (Hunt class HMS Berkeley) and 33 landing craft were sunk. The navy’s 550 casualties include 75 dead and 269 missing or captured.
The RAF, including the Duxford Wing’s new Hawker Typhoons, gave air cover, but lost 106 machines to the Germans’ 170. The Germans lost 314 killed and 294 injured in the day’s battles; 37 Germans were taken prisoner and brought back to England. (22)
Whilst participating in the Dieppe raid, destroyer HMS Berkeley is subjected to a number of air attacks which cause serious structural damage, requiring the ship to be abandoned and finally scuttled by a torpedo fired from HMS Albrighton 4 miles NW of Dieppe at 49 57N 01 04E. (Alex Gordon)(108)
Dieppe: Capt. (Reverend) John Weir Foote (1904-88), Canadian Chaplain Services, assigned to the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, saved wounded and volunteered to leave the landing craft evacuating him and et himself be captured so that he could minister to PoWs (Victoria Cross)
Dieppe: Lt-Col Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt (b.1908) of the South Saskatchewan Regiment, Canadian Army, led survivors of four parties across the Scie River bridge under fire, and helped to cover the withdrawal from the port. (Victoria Cross)
Dieppe: Capt. Patrick Anthony Porteous (b.1918), Royal Regt. of Artillery, was shot through the hand, yet ran, under fire, to take charge of a leaderless detachment until he was severely wounded. (Victoria Cross)
GERMANY: U-747 laid down.
U-269 commissioned.
U-386 launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
U.S.S.R.: Polish General Anders along with 115,000 Poles, held as prisoners since the fall of 1939, leaves the Soviet Union. General Anders feels that for the first time since September of 1939, he was indeed a free man.
The decision was made, March 26, 1942, that the only way to properly feed and equip the Polish Army in the Soviet Union was to transport them to Iran. Once in Iran, the British could provide adequate food and equipment to train and prepare the Poles for combat. (Alex Bielakowski)
Leningrad is still besieged, but warm weather enables ferries to cross Lake Ladoga bringing in much needed supplies and evacuating civilians. (Jack McKillop).
EGYPT: The Commander in Chief, Middle East, Field Marshal Harold Alexander orders Eighth Army Commander General Bernard Montgomery to hold positions while preparing the offensive. (Jack McKillop)
INDIAN OCEAN: Seychelles Islands: Northeast of Africa’s Zanzibar, the Japanese submarine HIJMS I-29 launches a “Glen” reconnaissance seaplane (Yokosuka E14Y, Navy Type 0 Small Reconnaissance Seaplane) to reconnoitre the islands. (Jack McKillop)
SOLOMON ISLANDS: General Nishino, with the Kawaguchi Detachment, approaches
Guadalcanal by sea. His men read a training manual that says, “Westerners — being very haughty, effeminate, and cowardly — intensely dislike fighting in the rain or mist or in the dark. They cannot conceive night to be a proper time for battle — though it is excellent for dancing. In these weaknesses lie our great opportunity.”
Colonel Kiyamo Ichiki’s First Echelon of 917 men arrives at Guadalcanal’s Taivu Point at 0100 hours local. The men unload and start marching in the dark nine miles to Tetere, where they take a break.
Early in the morning, Martin Clemens is asked to provide native guides and scouts to locate the Ichiki force.
Daniel Pule is assigned to a Marine patrol, and police Sergeant Major Jacob Vouza leads a native patrol of his own.
Early that day, Marine Captain Charles H. Brush hits the trail with a patrol of 60 men from Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. They run encounter a 38-man patrol from Ichiki’s detachment. A jungle firefight ensues, and the Marines kill all but five of the Japanese. Brush notes that the bodies of four Japanese officers and 29 men wear the star insignia of the Imperial Army as opposed to the chrysanthemum of the Imperial Navy on their fresh clothes. Obviously this is a new force. Their large amounts of communications equipment suggest a large unit. Their maps show the Japanese know the Marine positions. Brush immediately returns to headquarters.
The Japanese survivors return to Ichiki’s force and although his patrol has been annihilated, Ichiki presses on through the jungle.
Marine General Vandegrift studies the captured maps, and realizes that the Japanese are coming and know his dispositions. His officers urge a counterattack but Vandegrift wisely decides to await the Japanese within his perimeter.
The Marines will dig in along Alligator Creek, which Martin Clemens has named after its inhabitants, which are
actually crocodiles. The Marines think the sluggish waterway is actually the Tenaru River.
Three Japanese destroyers, HIJMS Kagero, HIJMS Hagikaze and HIJMS Maikaze, shell Tulagi. Allied Air Forces B-17s, flying from Espiritu Santo, bomb the destroyers and one aircraft scores direct hits on the HIJMS Hagikaze’s stern, killing 33 and wounding 13. Hagikaze limps home. (Jack McKillop)
NEW GUINEA: Troops of the Australian 7th Division start a series of landings at Port Moresby.
TERRITORY OF ALASKA: ALEUTIAN ISLANDS: Mechanical failure prevents a US 11th Air Force B-24 Liberator from flying reconnaissance over Tanaga Island.
CANADA: Patrol vessels HMCS Blue Nose and Sea Wave (ex HMCS Chatham S) acquired from seized Japanese fishing fleet. (Dave Shirlaw)
U.S.A.: Submarine USS Harder launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: During an aircraft attack on U-155 a man was lost overboard. [Maschinengefreiter Konrad Garneier]
U-162 sank SS West Celina in Convoy TAW (S)
U-564 sank SS British Consul and Empire Cloud in Convoy TAW (S)
U-217 sank SS Sea Gull
U-406 sank SS City of Manila in Convoy SL-118
U-507 sank SS Jacyra
U-510 sank SS Cressington Court. (Dave Shirlaw)
BBC Eyewitness to Landing at Dieppe:
Canada Ping!
During the early hours of the 16th of August, the VIII th Army Corps had crossed the Don on both sides of Akatov and established a bridgehead.
This was one of the most senseless actions of the entire war. Eight days later the bridgehead had to be abandoned, leaving three hundred dead on the eastern bank.
By the 19th of August the Fourth Panzer Army had advanced from the south to within eighteen miles of the Stalingrad- Kalatch railway. On the west bank of the Don the assault divisions of the Sixth Army stood ready.
Their tasks had been allotted. The LI st Army Corps was to seize the bridgeheads at Vertiatchi and Peskovatka, from which the XIVth Panzer Corps, with the 16th Panzer Division and the 3rd and 60th Motorized Infantry Divisions, could then push eastwards to the Volga.
The attack across the Don was fixed first for the 19th and then for the 21st of August.
The assault troops occupied their jumping-off positions under cover of darkness.
The troops that would carry out the actual assault were the 178th and 203rd Infantry Regiments of the 76th Infantry Division and the 516th and 517th Infantry Regiments of the 295th Infantry Division.
The night before the attack was clear and starry, the wind blew from the south-east, and a light mist lay over the Don.
For reasons of visibility and to facilitate the clearing of the enemy's minefields, zero hour had been fixed for 0310 hours. Without any preliminary barrage, Sixth Army's assault troops moved across the river in one hundred and twelve assault craft and one hundred and eight kapok rafts of the 912th Assault Boat Commando.
One hour and fifty minutes later all the combat troops of the 516th Infantry Regiment were in position on the eastern bank; the 517th Infantry Regiment met with strong enemy resistance and needed four hours and twenty minutes to get across.
Matters did not go so smoothly with the 76th Infantry Division; the 178th Infantry Regiment did indeed establish its allotted bridgehead at Akimovskii relatively quickly, but the 203rd Regiment met desperate resistance.
At 1630 hours the pontoon bridge at Lutchenskii was in position and a bridge was built at Akimovskii by 0730 hours on the 22nd of August.
The twenty-ton pontoon bridges were subjected to heavy bombing during the night of the 23rd of August, no fewer than seventy-six separate attacks being made on them. The bridges remained unscathed.
The northerly crossing of the Don was made by the Sixth Army at the cost of seventy-four dead and three hundred fifty-one wounded. Nineteen assault craft and twenty-six kapok rafts were shot to pieces.
On the 22nd of August Sixth Army, with the 44th , 76th , 295th , 305th , 384th and 389th Infantry Divisions, stood ready for the advance on Stalingrad, while the 71st (Lower Saxony) Infantry Division was fighting for the southerly crossing of the Don at Kalatch.
Its losses totaled fifty-six dead and one hundred and six wounded.
Commander of the 6th Army, Generaloberst Friedrich von Paulus with two members of his staff during their August 1942 advance on Stalingrad. In the summer of 1942 Hitler divided Army Group South, ordering List's Heeresgruppe A south, towards Rostov and the Caucasus, and Weich's Heeresgruppe B to drive east across the Don to the Volga-and Stalingrad. Von Paulus' 6. Armee spearheaded the eastern thrust...toward obliteration. Under his command were 23 German and Romanian divisions: 250,000 men, 500 tanks, 7,000 guns and mortars, and 25,000 horses. General von Paulus was a technically proficient officer, but he lacked decisiveness and had convinced himself that Hitler was an infallible military genius. The German soldier referred to Hitler as the Grofaz, a contraction of Grosser Feldherr aller Zeiten ("Greatest general of all time") based on a propaganda claim attributed to Generalfeldmarschall Walter Keitel.
German infantrymen cross one of the numerous marshes bordering the Don River. They use 10-foot long, three-man Schlauchboote-small inflatable boats as well as commandeered local boats. Two antitank riflemen are seen boarding one boat with their 7.92mm PzB.39 Panzerbuchse. Buchse is normally translated as "container," but it is also an old term for a firearm. A 7.92mm MG-34 machine gunner flowed by his 9mm MP-40 submachine gun-armed group (squad) leader and an assistant gunner debark another boat.
Wending their way through the Don River marshes. Aug 17th 1942 Toward Stalingrad.
German troops leaving their boats on the eastern side of the Don river. Aug 18th 1942 Toward Stalingrad.
At midday on 22 August 6. Armee pioneers completed the pontoon bridges across the Don River. Here pioneers of General Hube's 16 Panzer Division relax atop spare medium pneumatic boats taking a Feuerpause (firebreak), the formal term for "cease-fire," a cigarette break or a short rest break. These boats had a 6-foot beam and 18-foot 1ength, and could carry seven men, but were extensively used to construct rafts using one to three pairs of boats. Pioniertruppen were highly trained specialists most likely to be found on the front spearheading assaults by crossing rivers and streams, breeching obstacles and minefields, and assaulting fortifications. They fought side-by-side with infantrymen. Pioneers were armed with flamethrowers, demolitions, mines, smoke generating equipment, mine detectors, and other specialist gear. The Bruckenpionere were bridge construction units and possessed pneumatic boats and pontoon equipment for bridges and ferries. Each division had two bridge columns. In the background is an Sd.Kfz.251/3 halftrack Funkwagen (radio vehicle) bearing a Panzergruppe command pennant.
Infantry from the west bank of the Don watch a raft ferry across 1a.5cm light field howitzers. Within days these guns would be employed against Soviet artillery positions and vessels on the Volga. Pontoons were used to construct rafts just as much as there were for floating bridges.
Early the following morning on 23 August a battalion from a Panzer Regiment, reinforced with Panzergrenadier companies, advanced forward from the Don River towards the Volga. Here a 12-ton Sd.Kfz.8 halftrack has crossed the Don over a pontoon and trestle bridge.
A rare opportunity to see vehicles crossing the Don during the 24th Panzer Division's advance to the Volga in late August. These (3) photographs taken in sequence show the type of construction which was built by the divisional Pioneer Battalion. A number of cross-country Horch cars can be seen crossing along with Opel "Blitz" trucks, halftrack personnel carriers, and other vehicles. In one of the photographs a captured Soviet T-34 tank can be seen to the left of the bridge's access. A white Balkenkreuz has been painted on the turret's side.
Don Bridge (2)
Third of 3 photos (see above)
“Baltische Landeswehr”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltische_Landeswehr
Baltische Landeswehr (”Baltic Land Defence”) was the name of the unified armed forces of the Couronian and Livonian nobility from 7 December 1918 to 3 July 1919.[1]
After taking command of the Baltische Landeswehr in mid-July 1919, Lieutenant-Colonel Harold Alexander (the future Field Marshal the Earl Alexander of Tunis and Governor General of Canada, 1946-1952), gradually dismissed German nationals born within the borders of Imperial Germany. The Germans released from the Baltische Landeswehr were incorporated into the Deutsche Legion in September 1919. The legion served under the West Russian Volunteer Army commanded by Colonel Prince Pavel Bermondt-Avalov. The British insisted that General von der Goltz leave Latvia, and he turned his troops over to Bermondt-Avalov's West Russian Volunteer Army. General von der Goltz later claimed in his memoirs that his major strategic goal in 1919 had been to launch a campaign in cooperation with the white Russian forces to overturn the Bolshevik regime by marching on Saint Petersburg and to install a pro-German government in Russia. The Baltische Landeswehr subsequently liberated Latgale in January 1920.
“Spies, Enigma machine and James Bond’s creator help explain mystery of Canada’s wartime disaster Dieppe”
Over the years, historians have floated various theories about the motivation behind the raid.
Was it a push to establish a Western front?
Was it a dress rehearsal for a major assault on an-other German stronghold?
O’Keefe’s research has revealed that the raid was launched as a diversionary tactic designed to provide cover for a commando unit ordered to penetrate Ger-man naval headquarters - believed to be housed in the town’s Hotel Moderne - and to board certain boats in the harbour, all in a bid to steal German code books and a code machine.
In military parlance - and only at the very highest levels of command - the Dieppe Raid was dubbed a pinch operation.
The head of the commando unit was none other than Ian Fleming, a Second World War British intelligence officer and the creator of spy-extraordinaire James Bond.
When O’Keefe presented his research to British naval authorities two years ago, they admitted to the operation’s true motive.
Interesting photos. Little did any of the subjects realize that within a few months, the lucky ones would be the evacuated wounded and any specialists fortunate enough to be evacuated.
Thanks. I have other photos that were taken throughout the Stalingrad battle that I will post in the coming days.
It appears there was a propaganda company traveling with 16th Panzer Division and taking photos. There was also another unit with Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army so that between them they left a descent photographic record of the battle.
Many of the photos were captured by the Soviets but enough (photos) seem to have reached the rear to give a good idea of the battle.
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