WW II Historical Thread, Discussion, Pics, Videos
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Miragedriver
Brigadier
Three troopers of the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 17th Airborne Division taking a break after 5 days frontline fighting.
From left to right : Pvt William H. Sandy (ASN 13032007) from Charlottesville, VA, Sgt Dehaven Nowlin (ASN 15046241) from Goshen, KY and Pvt Howard Fredericks (ASN 39241668) from Los Angeles, CA., near Essen (Germany) 10th of April 1945
'Operation Varsity' (24th March 1945) was a successful joint American, British and Canadian airborne operation that took place toward the end of World War II. Involving more than 16,000 paratroopers and several thousand aircraft, it was the largest airborne operation in history to be conducted on a single day and in one location.
The XVIII Airborne Corps was selected to assist in the Rhine River crossing in the vicinity of Wesel, just north of the Ruhr on March 24, 1945. Operation Varsity would be the last full scale airborne operation of the war. The 17th Division with the 507th spearheaded the assault and dropped at the southern edge of the Diersfordter Wald (Diersfordt Forest), three miles NW of Wesel. The 507th performed well and captured their objectives. The Medal of Honor was awarded to Pfc George J. Peters posthumously for his single handed assault on a German machine gun position, eliminating the position and allowing his fellow troopers to gather their equipment and capture their first objective. The 17th Airborne suffered 1300 casualties in the operation. The 17th then moved through Germany and on the 10th of April, the division captured Essen, the home of Krupps Steelworks.
After Germany’s surrender, the 17th Airborne was shipped home and deactivated in September 194
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Miragedriver
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A Finnish Brewster Buffalo 239 fighter (BW-352) of (Squadron) Lentolaivue/24 at Selänpää airfield. 24th June 1941.
The account of Corporal Heimo Lampi, 2/LeLv 24, after his first air victories at Selänpää 25.6.1941;
"We didn't know that the war was about to begin on the morning of the 25th of June 1941. I hadn't even completed my shooting training with the Brewster, but on that morning we had to begin shooting at the edge of field constructed ground targets. Just before the clock was about to strike seven the phone rang, and we we're told, that the soviets had begun their assault on Inkeroisten kauppalaa.
We scrambled our Brewsters into the air, the first men of our squadron spotted the enemy, 18 Tupolev SB-2 bombers flying in formation. They didn't have any fighters covering them. After some slight confusion at the beginning a battle started. I shot the first bomber which was at the very end of the right in their formation, It crashed with it's full bomb-load right straight to an cliff and exploded to pieces. Then I managed to shoot my second victims engine. The bomber broke from the formation and flew low with the remaining power of it's one last engine. I attacked again, but I was flying at such high airspeed that I flew right next to it and the SB gunner managed to get a few hits on me, when I was about 10 metres from it. I did a turn and managed to shoot it's remaining working engine until it was set on fire. I saw how the SB crashed straight into a shallow lake near Selänpää airfield.
I also had got a few hits on my machine. My fuel tank ruptured, the gas was leaking inside the cockpit, the machine gun belt breached and the brake line cut off. When I was landing on the Selänpää airfield, I was about to crash, I didn't know the brakes we're inoperative. The brakes on one side worked, but weren't working on the other. I managed to land without crashing with the use of my engine to keep the plane balanced. I was afraid that the plane was about to set on fire, but however that didn't happen. My knees we're totally wet with the fuel."
During the Continuation War of 1941–1944, the B-239s (a de-navalised F2A-1) operated by the Finnish Air Force proved capable of engaging and destroying most types of Soviet fighter aircraft operating against Finland at that time and achieving in the first phase of that conflict 32 Soviet aircraft shot down for every B-239 lost, and producing 36 Buffalo "aces".
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Miragedriver
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Flying Officer Philip Ingleby 137140, the navigator of an Avro Lancaster B Mark III of No. 619 Squadron RAF based at Coningsby, Lincolnshire, seated at his table in the aircraft.
February 1944.
Taking off at 10.50 hrs on the 7th August 1944, the de Havilland Mosquito VI (s/n NT202) AJ-N of No. 617 Squadron, was on a training exercise from R.A.F. Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire.
It had completed three runs over the Wainfleet bombing range and at 11.12 hrs. whilst pulling up in a climbing turn to port the starboard engine failed, followed immediately by structural failure of the starboard wing. Out of control, the Mosquito plunged into shallow water by the foreshore.
The Pilot F/O. Warren Duffy (aged 21) and Navigator P. Ingleby (Aged 23) were both killed.
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Miragedriver
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Sgt. Carl Wienke (1911-1982) and Pfc. Ernest Marjoram (1920-2002), Signal Corps cameramen, wading through a stream while following infantry troops in a forward area during the invasion at a beach in New Guinea. Photograph by Technician 4th Class, Ernani D'Emidio (1918-2008).
April 22, 1944.
"Sergeant Carl L. Wienke and Private First Class Ernest B. Marjoram ford a stream with the photographer, Ernani D'Emidio behind Red Beach 2 during the invasion of Tanahmerah, Hollandia. Their 8-man Signal Corps Unit under Lt. Hillock arrived by LST three hours after the initial landing. Later, Marjoram and D'Emidio, ordered to catch up with the front line, wandered in the jungle for three days and nights attempting to catch up with the fast-moving combat. Marjoram was on his third tour; he was the only man from his first and second tours to survive the war unharmed. When the photo was widely published, it was the first time his mother learned he was in combat. Wienke also saw heavy combat but only was injured "by a coconut thrown by a monkey." Wienke was a reporter for the Detroit News. He worried that "his obituary would list the coconut as the cause of death."
(Source - US National Archives)
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Miragedriver
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United States Marines climbing down the nets into landing craft during the Battle of Peleliu, September-November 1944.
Peleliu is a small coral island, one of the southern most islands of the present-day Republic of Palau, situated in the western Pacific Ocean, east of the Philippines.
The Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II, involved marines of the First Marine Division and later soldiers of the US Army 81st Infantry Division. The aim was to take the airstrip used by Japanese bombers, and which was considered to be of vital strategic importance for the US if they were to continue the liberation of Japanese-occupied Pacific islands, particularly the nearby Philippines.
However, the island proved incredible difficult to secure and the original estimated four-days dragged on in to a bloody two month campaign due to strong Japanese fortifications. The resulting US casualty rate was the highest for the Marine Corps during the Pacific War. USMC Colonel Merwin Silverthorn, one of the commanders involved in the operation, later remarked that "everything about Peleliu left a bad taste in your mouth."
Eighteen-year-old Eugene Sledge, who was in the second wave ashore, offers a vivid account of the landings:
'We moved ahead, watching the frightful spectacle. Huge geysers of water rose around the amtracs [landing vehicles] ahead of us as they approached the reef.
The beach was now marked along its length by a continuous sheet of flame backed by a thick wall of smoke. It seemed as though a huge volcano had erupted from the sea, and rather than heading for an island, we were being drawn into the vortex of a flaming abyss. For many it was to be oblivion. ...'
Photographer: Griffin
Image courtesy of the United States Marine Corps History Division, Peleliu 117058
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Miragedriver
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Men of “E Squadron” Glider Pilot Regiment photographed at RAF Down Ampney shortly before 'Operation Market Garden' in September 1944.
The men pictured here piloted Horsa Gliders in to the operational area on the 17th & 18th of September 1944. Once on the ground many of E Squadron defended the Divisional HQ at Oosterbeek. The Regiment suffered 60% casualties during ‘Market Garden’ and never recovered from the losses.
Brigadier Hackett, commanding 4 Parachute Brigade said of the these men that “they were the finest body of soldiers that the British Army produced in WW2”
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Miragedriver
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Lt. Col. Robert Wolverton, C/O 3 Btn, 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, checking his gear before boarding the C-47 "Dakota", 8Y-S, "Stoy Hora" of the 440th Troop Carrier Squadron at an airfield in Exeter, England.
The evening of the 5th of June 1944.
On that evening in June 1944, he gathered his men in an orchard adjacent to what is now Exeter airport, and said:
"Men, I am not a religious man and I don't know your feelings in this matter, but I am going to ask you to pray with me for the success of the mission before us. And while we pray, let us get on our knees and not look down but up with faces raised to the sky so that we can see God and ask his blessing in what we are about to do.
"God almighty, in a few short hours we will be in battle with the enemy. We do not join battle afraid. We do not ask favors or indulgence but ask that, if You will, use us as Your instrument for the right and an aid in returning peace to the world.
"We do not know or seek what our fate will be. We ask only this, that if die we must, that we die as men would die, without complaining, without pleading and safe in the feeling that we have done our best for what we believed was right.
"Oh Lord, protect our loved ones and be near us in the fire ahead and with us now as we pray to you."
Sadly, within hours, the orator himself was dead; a cruel twist of fate meant his feet never touched French soil.
Lt Col Robert L Wolverton (aged 30), was killed by ground fire and left suspended by his parachute from an apple tree in an orchard just north of the hamlet of St Côme du Mont in Normandy.
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Miragedriver
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'Stalag 13-C'
US troops from Combat Command B of the U.S. 14th Armored Division entering the Hammelburg Prison in Germany by opening the main gate with bursts of their M3 "Grease Guns". Hammelburg, Germany. April 6, 1945.
Hammelburg was a large German Army training camp, set up in 1893. Part of this camp had been used as a POW camp for Allied army personnel in World War I. After 1935 it was a training camp and military training area for the newly reconstituted German Army.
In May 1940 the camp was established in wooden huts at the south end of the training ground. The first prisoners included Belgian, Dutch and French soldiers taken during the Battle of France. In May–June 1941 Yugoslavian, predominantly Serbian prisoners arrived from the Balkans Campaign, and soon after in June–July 1941 Australian and other British Commonwealth soldiers arrived, captured during the Battle of Crete.
American soldiers that had been captured during the Battle of Normandy arrived in June–July 1944, and more from the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945. In March 1945 a large group of prisoners arrived in deplorable condition after marching the 500 miles from Stalag 13-D in severe winter conditions.
"It seems the opening of the gates with machine gun fire is most likely symbolic and a show for the camera's.
There are other photos of this POW liberation that show Sherman tanks rolling easily through the fences - which is far safer IMO than the method used in photo."
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