Posted on 07/31/2013 4:31:26 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring
#1 – “You’ll Never Know” - Dick Haymes, with the Song Spinners
#2 - “It Can’t Be Wrong” - Dick Haymes, with Song Spinners
#3 – “Comin’ In on a Wing and a Prayer” - Song Spinners
#4 - “All or Nothing At All” – Harry James, with Frank Sinatra
#5 - “In the Blue of the Evening” - Tommy Dorsey, with Frank Sinatra
#6 - “I Heard You Cried Last Night” - Harry James, with Helen Forrest
#7 – “You’ll Never Know” - Frank Sinatra, with the Bobby Tucker Singers
#8 - “It’s Always You” - Tommy Dorsey, with Frank Sinatra
#9 - “Johnny Zero” - Song Spinners
#10 – “In My Arms” - Dick Haymes, with the Song Spinners
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1943/jul1943/f31jul43.htm
Allies advancing in Sicily
Saturday, July 31, 1943 www.onwar.com
British and Canadian units on the move in Sicily [photo at link]
In Sicily... The US 45th Division occupies Santo Stefano. British and Canadian units move toward Regalbuto and Centuripe.
http://www.etherit.co.uk/frame.htm
July 31st, 1943 (SATURDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: The US Eighth Air Force’s VIII Air Support Command in England flies Missions Number 11A, 11B, 11C and 11D against 4 airfields in FRANCE:
(1) 20 B-26B Marauders bomb Merville Airfield at 1120 hours;
(2) 19 B-26Bs hit Nord Airfield at Poix 1122 hours with the loss of 1 B-26;
(3) 21 B-26Bs attack Drucat Airfield at Abbeville at 1617 hours: and
(4) 18 B-26Bs bomb Tricqueville Airfield at 1623 hours. Lille and Amiens, France are bombed by Royal Air Force (RAF) bombers, also fighter-escorted, in conjunction with the US raids.
Frigates HMS Braithwaite, Cam launched.
Corvette HMS Carisbrooke Castle launched.
An Allied diplomatic “note” is sent to neutral European governments requesting that they refuse asylum to “Nazi criminals”. (Glenn Steinberg)
GERMANY: Operation Gomorrah has destroyed Hamburg with fire from the air, dropping 8,621 tons of bombs on the city. Protected by “Window” foil which has blinded the German defences, RAF Lancasters have made three raids in five days on this great port, wreaking death and destruction on an unimaginable scale. Flying Fortresses of the US Eighth Army Air Force have joined in the operation, appearing over the burning city by day to add their precision bombing to the RAF’s mass attacks. In all, 2,752 planes flew in the raids, and 86 did not return.
During the second attack by the “Lancs”, on the night of 27-28 July, the incendiaries whipped up such a firestorm that, within half an hour, the city was transformed into a lake of fire over an area of two square miles. People driven into the shelters by the flames were reduced to ashes as they were bodies in a crematorium. One army flak observer, flying with the bombers, arrived over Hamburg in the last few minutes of the attack. “At that time,” he said, “the pall of smoke was five miles high, it was coming out of the target in a spiral and one could see big factory buildings burning. The defences seem to have been completely overwhelmed.”
The death-toll is awesome. Some 40,000 people are believed to have been killed - more than during the entire London Blitz. Refugees, haggard with fear, are fleeing from the smoking ruins. Those that remain are being fed from soup kitchens. The chaos is worsened by the destruction of the telephone exchange.
Enormous damage has been done to war industries - 170,000 tons of shipping and three U-boats have been destroyed, 580 factories wiped out and 37,000 civilians severely wounded. The vital tunnel under the Elbe has been destroyed. One German commentator said: “Terror, terror, terror. Pure, naked bloody terror. Hamburg was heavily hit by this terror raid. It is a fact and we will not deny it.”
The Hamburg firestorms were made worse by the weather: a long dry spell increased the risk of fire when the RAF bombers dropped their lethal mixture of incendiaries and HE bombs. The smaller incendiaries set light to roofs, while the heavier penetrated the interiors, starting further fires. The HE bombs, on the other hand, created the blast necessary to fan the flames still further.
At the centre of each major conflagration the available oxygen was quickly used up as the fires grew hotter, and vacuums were created. As the hot air rose, the cold air was sucked in, fanning the flames and creating winds strong enough to drag people in with them.
Crucial to the success of the current bombing of Hamburg has been the employment of a new technical aid by RAF Bomber Command. Unlike others in its armoury, this is a very simple one.
“Window”, as it is codenamed, consists of bundles of aluminium foil strips, which are dropped from the aircraft over the target. Their object is to confuse the enemy radars. Cut to a particular size they create spurious signals on the radar screen.
When Window was used during the first attack on Hamburg on the night of 24-25 July it threw the German nightfighter controllers into complete confusion. One was overheard exclaiming “The English bombers are propagating themselves!” They could not direct the fighters onto the attacking bombers, which is why so few were lost. During the two subsequent attacks they stopped trying to find individual targets for fighters, and have merely given a running commentary of the height and position of the bomber stream.
Rastenburg: Hitler has become very depressed, according to his secretary, Traudl Junge: “He is very serious. He sits and stares into his soup without saying a word.”
The mood took hold of him after the catastrophe at Stalingrad and the defeat of the Axis in forces in North Africa. Since then, his strategic options have been steadily diminishing. In his Wolf’s Lair HQ at Rastenburg he broods on the looming threat of an Anglo-American landing on mainland Europe. German army analyses suggest that the blow will fall in Greece, but Hitler, having seen a transcript of a telephone conversation between Churchill and Roosevelt, knows that King Victor Emmanuel is about to pull Italy out of the war.
Troops and planes have been withdrawn from Russia and sent to Italy to meet the Allied threat, and this at a time when the Russians have shown they can hit back hard. The Germans have had to call off the Kursk battle after losing 3,000 tanks.
Elsewhere, the war news is no less sombre. Allied merchant ship construction has exceeded losses for the first time this month, and Dönitz has withdrawn his submarines from the Atlantic after losing 37 in July alone. The RAF has injected an entirely new phenomenon into aerial war: the firestorm. When 2,326 tons of bombs were dropped on Hamburg three nights ago, a shrieking hurricane-style wind was created that dried up canals and uprooted trees; an estimated 40,000 people died.
Even Hitler’s closes comrades no longer believe in victory. Himmler has set up a special SS team to go to extermination camps and burial grounds and destroy evidence of the mass murder of the Jews. But Hitler still hopes. At Peenemunde, new weapons are being tested: a pilotless plane and a massive rocket bomb.
U-748 commissioned.
U.S.S.R.: Moscow: The Supreme Soviet decorates Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov with the Order of Suvorov, and General Ivan S. Konev with the Order of Kutuzov, for their roles on the eastern front.
Soviet Navy records 1 submarine loss during the month that is not listed by day:
Shch-422 Northern Fleet off coast of Norway (failed to return from patrol off Norway coast) (Mike Yared)
ITALY: Hedley Verity, the Yorkshire and England cricket captain, dies in a PoW camp.
SICILY: The US 45th Division captures Santo Stefano. Other US forces prepare to attack east along the coast and further inland press towards Troina. British and Canadian units to the south advance on Regalbuto and Centuripe. They encounter fierce opposition at Regalbuto.
An Allied diplomatic “note” is sent to neutral European governments requesting that they refuse asylum to “Nazi criminals”. (Glenn Steinberg)
Northwest African Strategic Air Force B-26s bomb Adrano while Northwest African Tactical Air Force fighters, light and medium bombers hit Paterno, Santa Maria di Licondia and Centuripe, the general area around Paterno, and vessels in the Milazzo-Orlando area. Ninth Air Force P-40s also hit shipping in the Milazzo area.
EUROPE: Up to 50,000 civilians have been killed and over 800,000 made homeless by the Allied bombing so far.
CHINA: Over two million people have died or become refugees because of a severe famine in Hunan province.
SOLOMON ISLANDS: On New Georgia Island, 17 P-40s and P-39Airacobras of the US Thirteenth Air Force join 90+ US Navy and Marine Corps aircraft in pounding guns and defensive positions on Bibolo Hill as Allied ground forces close in on airfield at Munda. B-17s, B-25 Mitchells, P-40s, and US Navy aircraft attack the airfield at Vila on Kolombangara Island.
US forces mop up resistance on Bartley Ridge, but are driven off Horseshoe Hill.
PACIFIC OCEAN: USN submarines sink a Japanese army cargo ship and an aircraft transport. They also land supplies and equipment on Panay Island, Philippine Islands, and a survey party on the west coast of Bougainville Island, Solomon Islands.
SOUTH PACIFIC: The British aircraft carrier HMS Victorious is detached from service with the US Third Fleet and resumes operations with the British Fleet.
CANADA: Corvette HMCS Norsyd launched Quebec City, Province of Quebec.
Frigate HMCS St Catharines commissioned.
U.S.A.: Minesweeper USS Mirth laid down.
Minesweepers USS Mainstay, Marvel launched.
Destroyer escort USS Thomas launched.
Destroyer USS Prichett launched.
Submarine USS Aspro commissioned.
Destroyer USS Young commissioned.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: The German submarine U-199 is sunk in the South Atlantic east of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in position 23.54S, 42.54W, by depth charges from PBM-3C Mariner of Patrol Squadron Seventy Four (VP-74) based at NAF Natal, Brazil, and a Brazilian Catalina and Hudson; 12 of the 61 men aboard the U-boat survive and are rescued by the US small seaplane tender USS Barnegat (AVP-10).
"By the time Treblinka was shut down in July 1943, its gas chambers had taken the lives of at least 750,000 people, mostly Jews from Poland.
Following Heinrich Himmler's visit to the camp in March 1943, the Nazis exhumed hundreds of thousands of bodies that had been buried.
Huge pyres were built, and the bodies were burned to obliterate the evidence of the mass murder that had occurred.
These bones bear silent testimony to the Nazis' failure to achieve their goal."
"In 1942, when the Allies caught wind of the Nazis' mass murders--and when hundreds of thousands of hastily buried bodies posed a serious health hazard--the Nazis planned their most gruesome operation of all: Revisit the mass graves, dig up the corpses, and burn them.
"This Aktion 1005 was headed by Paul Blobel, the mastermind of the Babi Yar massacre.
Each Sonderkommando 1005 was supervised by members of the Security Service, Security Police, and regular German police. Nazi prisoners, mostly Jews, did the dirty work.
Beginning in June 1942, the Sonderkommandos burned the corpses that had been dumped at the Nazi death camps.
Starting in June 1943, they ventured to the mass graves of Poland and the Occupied Soviet Union.
"The prisoners were divided into three groups.
The first opened the graves and exhumed the bodies.
The second group arranged the corpses on pyres for burning.
The bodies were alternated with wood logs, doused with fuel, and lit.
The third group sifted and scattered the ashes and crushed the bones. "The Nazis covered up many, though not all, of their mass burials.
As for the Sonderkommando 1005 prisoners, most were killed after they completed their work.
Dozens of others survived after revolting and running away."
It’s very depressing, Joe. I realize now from following your posts that most of the Holocaust has already been accomplished or soon will be. And American troops have not yet landed on the European mainland.
John F. Rauth of York, Neb., was rescued by fishermen in Sicily when he was shot down during an encounter. He was then invited by Italian soldiers to watch the Allied shelling of Trapini. Finally, the thirty-five officers and men, including a lieutenant colonel, surrendered to him.
The pictures of the bodies interweaved with the cord wood is very graphic. Very much like the jumpers on 9/11 we can’t show because it might strong feelings.
Rastenburg: Hitler has become very depressed, according to his secretary, Traudl Junge: “He is very serious. He sits and stares into his soup without saying a word.”
Me too. I was going to comment on it and had the presence of mind to review the comments before transcribing the item. Thanks.
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