Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

CITY OF GUILDFORD (March 27, 1943)

Ellerman Lines passenger/cargo ship of 5,157 tons, en route from Alexandria to Tripoli, North Africa, carrying aviation spirit and munitions, was sunk by the U-593(Kptlt. Gerd Kelbling, Knights Cross) near Derna. Sixty-eight of her crew, 11 gunners and 46 passengers were lost, a total of 125. There were 13 survivors. The U-593 was sunk on December 13, 1943 in the Mediterranean by depth-charges from USS Wain and HMS Calpe. All her crew survived.

[Peter Clare]

March 28, 1941
Cunningham leads fateful British strike at Italians

On this day, Andrew Browne Cunningham, Admiral of the British Fleet, commands the British Royal Navy's destruction of three major Italian cruisers and two destroyers in the Battle of Cape Matapan in the Mediterranean. The destruction, following on the attack on the Italian Fleet at Taranto by the British in November 1940, effectively put an end to any threat the Italian navy posed to the British.
Admiral Cunningham was one of Britain's most distinguished naval officers, having served as Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's naval deputy. As Commander in Chief Mediterranean, he had a clear-cut goal: to disable the Italian navy. When the war began, Britain's ships were generally older than Italy's. By the fall of 1940, with the surrender of the French to the Germans the previous June, Britain was alone and shaky in the Mediterranean.
Admiral Cunningham knew he had to confront the Italian navy soon and considered an offensive while the Italian Fleet was still in harbor the most prudent strategy. On November 11, 1940, the British aircraft carrier Illustrious was 170 miles southeast of the Italian navy port at Taranto in southern Italy. Twenty-one Swordfish aircraft took off from the Illustrious and launched a raid against the Italian Fleet. The Italians lost three battleships, sending a shockwave through the Italian navy.
The next major engagement between the Royal and Italian fleets was at Cape Matapan, off Greece's southern tip. On March 25, 1941, British air reconnaissance picked up increased Italian naval activity off Greece and Crete, and further intelligence confirmed an Italian plan to attack a British convoy in the area. Two days later, Admiral Cunningham put his battle fleet to sea to meet up with Vice-Admiral Pridham-Wippell's cruiser force. The element of surprise was crucial, given that the Italian fleet was larger, faster, better armed, and more modern.
The Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto spotted Pridham-Wippell's cruisers and opened fire. The Italians missed and the Brits got away; the RAF followed up with an air attack, but this time it was the Vittorio Veneto that got away. But, on March 28, the British battleship Warspite proved a better shot, firing five 15-inch shells at the Italian cruiser Fiume, crippling it. Another Italian cruiser, the Zara, was hit broadside by the Brits' Valiant and Barham and suffered a similar fate. The Pola was also struck by an 18-inch torpedo; it caught fire and lay dead in the water. Once the crew was taken off, torpedoes sank it. On top of these crushing losses, two escorting destroyers, the Alfieri and the Carducci, were also sunk by the Royal Navy.
In total, the Italians lost 2,303 men from the five ships. The long-term effect on the Italian navy was to effectively render it impotent.
Footnote: Exactly one year later, on March 28, 1942, a British sub near Antipaxo sunk the Italian ocean liner Galilea, which was being used to transport troops from North Africa back to Italy. The loss of the liner entailed the loss of 768 Italian soldiers and crewmen.

[Peter Clare]

FIUME, POLA and ZARA (March 28, 1941)

Italian cruisers of the 1st Naval Division, each of 10,000 tons, together with two escorting destroyers, the Alfieri and Carducci were sunk at the Battle of Cape Matapan off the southern tip of Greece. In this night action the Italian ships were engaged by the British battleships, HMS Warspite, Valiant and Barham. Caught completely by surprise in searchlights from the destroyer Greyhound, the Fiume (13,260 tons) was hit by five 15-inch shells from Warspite, the Zara (13,580 tons) by a broadside of 15-inch shells from Valiant and Barham. The Pola (13,531 tons) crippled and on fire, lay dead on the water and after her crew were taken off she was sunk by torpedoes. The Italian force suffered a crushing defeat, 2,303 men from the five ships were killed. Thirteen officers and 147 ratings were picked up by the Italian hospital ship Gradisca sent in response to a radio message transmitted to the Italian Admiralty from the Royal Navy ships. Another 110 were rescued by Greek destroyers, and the rest, numbering around 700, were picked up by the British destroyers. (During World War II, around 33,000 Italian sailors lost their lives).

[Peter Clare]

GALILEA (March 28, 1942)

Italian liner of 8,040 tons, torpedoed and sunk by a British submarine near Antipaxo. The Galilea was carrying Italian troops from North Africa to Italy when attacked. The ship went down taking the lives of 768 troops and crewmembers to their deaths.

[Peter Clare]

March 29, 1945
Patton takes Frankfurt

On this day, Gen. George S. Patton's 3rd Army captures Frankfurt, as "Old Blood and Guts" continues his march east.
Frankfurt am Main, literally "On the Main" River, in western Germany, was the mid-19th century capital of Germany (it was annexed by Prussia in 1866, ending its status as a free city). Once integrated into a united German nation, it developed into a significant industrial city-and hence a prime target for Allied bombing during the war. That bombing began as early as July 1941, during a series of British air raids against the Nazis. In March 1944, Frankfurt suffered extraordinary damage during a raid that saw 27,000 tons of bombs dropped on Germany in a single month. Consequently, Frankfurt's medieval Old Town was virtually destroyed (although it would be rebuilt in the postwar period-replete with modern office buildings).
In late December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, General Patton broke through the German lines of the besieged Belgian city of Bastogne, relieving its valiant defenders. Patton then pushed the Germans east. Patton's goal was to cross the Rhine, even if not a single bridge was left standing over which to do it. As Patton reached the banks of the river on March 22, 1945, he found that one bridge -- the Ludendorff Bridge, located in the little town of Remagen -- had not been destroyed. American troops had already made a crossing on March 7 -- a signal moment in the war and in history, as an enemy army had not crossed the Rhine since Napoleon accomplished the feat in 1805. Patton grandly made his crossing, and from the bridgehead created there, Old Blood and Guts and his 3rd Army headed east and captured Frankfurt on the 29th.
Patton then crossed through southern Germany and into Czechoslovakia, only to encounter an order not to take the capital, Prague, as it had been reserved for the Soviets. Patton was, not unexpectedly, livid.

[Peter Clare]

HMS LAFOREY (March 29, 1944)

Destroyer of 1,935 tons sunk by the U-233 (Gerlach) while carrying out a routine anti-submarine sweep off Palermo, Sicily. After a twenty hour chase and twenty-two separate depth charge attacks, the U-233 survived by diving to a depth of 772 feet. Surfacing after being submerged for twenty-five hours the U233 made another attempt to escape but before doing so managed to fire three torpedoes at the Laforey. The torpedoes struck with such force that the Laforey blew up. Of her crew, a total of 189 men were killed, only 69 survived.

[Peter Clare]

March 30, 1940
Japanese set up puppet regime at Nanking

On this day, Japan establishes its own government in conquered Nanking, the former capital of Nationalist China.
In 1937, Japan drummed up a rationale for war against Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist China (claiming Chinese troops attacked Japanese troops on maneuvers in a so-called "autonomous" region of China) and invaded northeastern China, bombing Shanghai and carving out a new state, Manchukuo.
Money and supplies poured into Free China from the United States, Britain, and France, until the Burma Road, which permitted free passage of goods into China from the West, was closed after a Japanese invasion of Indochina. Making matters more difficult, Chiang was forced to fight on two fronts: one against the Japanese (with U.S. help in the person of Gen. Joseph Stillwell, Chiang's chief of staff), and another against his ongoing political nemesis, the Chinese Communists, led by Mao Tse-tung. (Although the United States advised concentrating on the Japanese first as the pre-eminent threat, Chiang was slow to listen.)
The Japanese proceeded to prosecute a war of terror in Manchukuo. With the capture of Nanking (formerly the Nationalist Chinese capital, which was now relocated to Chungking) by the Central China Front Army in December 1937, atrocities virtually unparalleled commenced. The army, under orders of its commander, Gen. Matsui Iwane, carried out the mass execution of more than 50,000 civilians, as well as tens of thousands of rapes. Nanking and surrounding areas were burned and looted, with one-third of its buildings utterly destroyed. The "Rape of Nanking" galvanized Western animus against the Japanese.
On March 30, 1940, Nanking was declared by the Japanese to be the center of a new Chinese government, a regime controlled by Wang Ching-wei, a defector from the Nationalist cause and now a Japanese puppet.

[Peter Clare]

March 31, 1940
Germany's Atlantis launches

On this day, the German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis sets off on a mission to catch and sink Allied merchant ships.
By the time the Atlantis set sail from Germany, the Allies had already lost more than 750,000 tons worth of shipping, the direct result of German submarine attacks. They had also lost another 281,000 tons because of mines, and 36,000 tons as the result of German air raids. The Germans had lost just eighteen submarines.
The Atlantis had been a merchant ship itself, but was converted to a commerce raider with six 5.9-inch guns, 93 mines ready to plant, and two aircraft fit for spying out Allied ships to sink. The Atlantis donned various disguises in order to integrate itself into any shipping milieu inconspicuously.
Commanded by Capt. Bernhard Rogge, the Atlantis roamed the Atlantic and Indian oceans. She sank a total of 22 merchant ships (146,000 tons in all) and proved a terror to the British Royal Navy. The Atlantis's career finally came to an end on November 22, 1941, when it was sunk by the British cruiser Devonshire as the German marauder was refueling a U-boat.

[Peter Clare]

HMS BONAVENTURE (March 31, 1941)

British light cruiser built at Greenock, Scotland and launched in April 1939, was sunk south-east of the island of Crete by a torpedo from the Italian submarine Ambra. The cruiser was escorting Convoy GA-8 from Greece to Alexandria. The Bonaventure took 139 of her crew to the bottom. There were 310 survivors.

[Peter Clare]

April 1, 1945
U.S. troops land on Okinawa

On this day in 1945, after suffering the loss of 116 planes and damage to three aircraft carriers, 50,000 U.S. combat troops of the 10th Army, under the command of Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner Jr., land on the southwest coast of the Japanese island of Okinawa, 350 miles south of Kyushu, the southern main island of Japan.
Determined to seize Okinawa as a base of operations for the army ground and air forces for a later assault on mainland Japan, more than 1,300 ships converged on the island, finally putting ashore 50,000 combat troops on April 1. The Americans quickly seized two airfields and advanced inland to cut the island's waist. They battled nearly 120,000 Japanese army, militia, and labor troops under the command of Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima.
The Japanese surprised the American forces with a change in strategy, drawing them into the mainland rather than confronting them at the water's edge. While Americans landed without loss of men, they would suffer more than 50,000 casualties, including more than 12,000 deaths, as the Japanese staged a desperate defense of the island, a defense that included waves of kamikaze ("divine wind") air attacks. Eventually, these suicide raids proved counterproductive, as the Japanese finally ran out of planes and resolve, with some 4,000 finally surrendering. Japanese casualties numbered some 117,000.
Lieutenant Buckner, son of a Civil War general, was among the casualties, killed by enemy artillery fire just three days before the Japanese surrender. Japanese General Ushijima committed ritual suicide upon defeat of his forces.
The 1952 film Okinawa starring Pat O'Brien, is one of several movies to depict this decisive episode in the history of the war.