World War II Today

A remote outpost of RAF Coastal Command

Editor — Sun, 26 May 2013 06:00:19 +0000

One of the critical factors in winning the Battle of the Atlantic was the ever increasing use of airborne surveillance to hunt for U-Boats. This meant long tiring hours for the crews as they ceaselessly searched the sea below or monitored the radar. Very few patrols resulted in a sighting of a U-boat, much less [...]

Goebbels alarmed over the Dortmund raid

Editor — Sat, 25 May 2013 06:00:55 +0000

One can now see what a very short-sighted proposal it was of Goering’s to evacuate bombed-out people to Burgundy and other sections of occupied France. In Dortmund, between eighty and a hundred thousand people are homeless. Let the Reich Marshal go to Dortmund himself and propose that they evacuate to France!

Donitz withdraws his U boats from the Atlantic

Editor — Fri, 24 May 2013 06:00:23 +0000

Now, however, the situation had changed. Radar, and particularly radar location by aircraft, had to all practical purposes robbed the U-boats of their power to fight on the surface. Wolf-pack operations against convoys in the North Atlantic, the main theatre of operations and at the same time the theatre in which air cover was strongest, were no longer possible.

Dortmund: heaviest tonnage of bombs yet dropped

Editor — Thu, 23 May 2013 06:00:43 +0000

It was not often that I had a virgin target to aim at with no other bombing except the Oboe marker, but of course this also meant that we were way out front, an ideal target for the gunners below and, moreover, making life easy for them with the prolonged straight and level photo run. We had been getting a bumpy ride as the flak intensified almost to the point of realisation of the old line shoot, ‘The flak was so heavy you could get out and walk on it.’

A surprise from the US 7th Division artillery

Editor — Wed, 22 May 2013 06:00:09 +0000

A great flash ripped out of the very center of the tiny group, followed almost instantly by three other flashes, totally engulfing the five figures in a heaving mass of flying hunks of muck and smoke and rocks. The smoke hung in a big puff over the ripped area of our base point, and we could see five little piles of fabric lighter than the black holes over which they were scattered before the boom! baroomboom! of the explosions reached our ears.

A short spell in the ‘Cooler’

Editor — Tue, 21 May 2013 06:00:29 +0000

I hated the solitude — I cannot begin to describe how much — with nothing to read, nothing to look at, nobody to talk to. Even the food was punitive: a thin round of black bread for breakfast, thin ‘soup’ and a few potatoes for lunch, and another piece of bread in the evening. One lunchtime I had a bit of extra protein in the shape of grubs in the soup. Although very hungry, I passed that one up.

Eisenhower takes salute in Tunis victory parade

Editor — Mon, 20 May 2013 06:00:43 +0000

The Americans and French also looked grand, the French particularly so in their many different uniforms - the Foreign Legion; Chasseurs d’Afrique ; Tirailleurs; Zouaves; the Goums in their long, camel-hair robes and slapping sandals. The parade had been timed to last an hour and a half. Actually it took twice as long as the French had crowded in many more units than their proper allowance. They naturally wished to impress the Tunisian inhabitants, particularly the Arabs.

Japanese troops get ‘confused’ on Attu

Editor — Sun, 19 May 2013 06:00:22 +0000

As he came closer we saw that he was all gassed up, practically drunk, and he was carrying a bag of dried fish and rice balls right up to our front door. This little character kept coming until he was ten feet from us. Then he stopped. He stared at us, sort of dazed, like he had suddenly remembered he forgot to turn the water heater off, and he began backing up. We raised up out of the hole without rifles, and in good English he said, “Don't shoot, don't shoot!"

SS inspectors assess the efficiency of Auschwitz

Editor — Sat, 18 May 2013 06:00:34 +0000

Everything proceeds in a perfectly orderly fashion. Then they pass through a small corridor and enter a large cellar room which resembles a shower bath. In this room are three large pillars, into which certain materials can be lowered from outside the cellar room. When three- to four-hundred people have been herded into this room, the doors are shut, and containers filled with the substances are dropped down into the pillars.

Speer assesses the damage done by the Dambusters

Editor — Fri, 17 May 2013 06:00:19 +0000

At the largest of the reservoirs, the Sorpe Valley reservoir, they did achieve a direct hit on the center of the dam. I inspected it that same day. Fortunately the bomb hole was slightly higher than the water level. Just a few inches 1ower — and a small brook would have been transformed into a raging river which would have swept away the stone and earthen dam.‘