Remembering History by day WW2

[Peter Clare]

15 April 1942

From the war diaries of Luftflotte 5

Air attacks on Murmansk.

In the course of an attack on shipping and installations in Murmansk harbour, one passenger and fright-ship of about 10,000 tons received a direct hit amid-ships. It can be counted as destroyed. At 1740hrs there was a dive-bombing attack on quay installations and two merchant ships (each 2,000 tons) in Murmansk harbour; there were two direct hits on a storage shed and two direct hits on quay installations. In air fights over Murmansk 4 Hurricanes, two J.180s and 1 J.16 were shot down. In the two Stuka attacks on Murmansk, two medium-sized merchant ships were badly damaged and probably destroyed; hits were scored on installations and stores. Seven enemy fighters were shot down. None of our aircraft were lost.

[Peter Clare]

15 Apr 1941 - The Admiralty assumes operational control of RAF Coastal Command.

[Peter Clare]

April 16, 1897
Frederick William Winterbotham, one of Britain's top code breakers, is born

Winterbotham, a British secret service official who would play a decisive role in the World War II Ultra code-breaking project, is born on this day in 1897.
A graduate of Oxford and trained in law, Winterbotham had been a pilot with the Royal Flying Corps in World War II before joining the British secret service (MI-6) in 1929 as chief of air intelligence. In 1938, Winterbotham and MI-6 colleagues learned of a German encrypting device called Enigma. By 1940, British experts broke Enigma's code, enabling MI-6 to intercept top secret and highly sensitive messages (even from Hitler himself) transmitted to and between German armed forces. Winterbotham was given the responsibility of distributing the German data, code-named Ultra, to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, among others. This data proved invaluable to the Allies as a strategic tool in anticipating and undermining Axis military operations, from the Battle of Britain to Normandy.
Winterbotham was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1943 and was awarded the Legion of Merit in 1945. He died in Blandford, Dorset, in 1990.

[Peter Clare]

CONVOY 'TARIGO' (April 16, 1941)

Named after the lead Italian escort destroyer Luca Tarigo. The convoy, consisting of four German freighters and one Italian ship was en route to North Africa, when attacked near the island of Kerkennah, off the Mediterranean east of Tunisia, by the Malta based British 14th Flotilla. The Flotilla consisted of the destroyers HMS Nubian, Mohawk, Janus and Jervis. The freighters were carrying around 3,000 German troops and the Italian vessel 'Sabuadia' was loaded with munitions. All the freighters were sunk during the engagement.
A total of 1,248 German soldiers were rescued from the sea by Italian rescue ships including the hospital ship Arno. Over 1,700 perished. The British destroyer Mohawk (1,870 tons) was torpedoed and badly damaged by the Tarigo and had to be abandoned by her crew and sunk. The Luca Tarigo was also sunk.

[Peter Clare]

SS GOYA (April 16, 1945)

A passenger/cargo ship (5,230 tons) built in Norway for the Hamburg America Line, it was taken over by the German Navy to help in the evacuations from the Hela Penninsula in the Bay of Danzig. It had taken on board the remnants of the 35th Tank Regiment and thousands of pleading refugees. When sixty miles off the port of Stolpe near Cape Rozewie, she was attacked by the Russian submarine L-3 commanded by Captain Vladimir Konovalov. Two torpedoes were fired, hitting the Goya amidships. Immediately the ship broke in half and sank in about four minutes. Of the estimated 6,385 people on board, only 183 were rescued. For this episode, Konovalov was awarded the medal, ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’.In spite of the huge losses suffered during the evacuations (Operation 'Hannibal' and often referred to as Germany's Dunkirk) around two million people, including 700,000 soldiers, were saved, thus avoiding capture by the Red Army.

[Peter Clare]

April 17, 1941
The Yugoslav army surrenders

On this day in 1941, the Yugoslav army, encircled in Bosnia, surrenders to Germany and signs a formal capitulation in Belgrade.
By the time the Yugoslav government surrendered, 6,000 Yugoslav officers and 335,000 men had been taken prisoner, overwhelmed by the sheer force of Axis numbers.

[Peter Clare]

April 18, 1945
Ernie Pyle killed at Okinawa

On this day in 1945, Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire on the island of Ie Shima off the coast of Okinawa. Extremely popular, especially with the average GI, whose life and death he reported on (American infantrymen braved enemy fire to recover Pyle's body), Pyle had been at the London Blitz of 1941 and saw action in North Africa, Italy, France, and the Pacific. A monument exists to him to this day on Ie Shima, describing him simply as "a buddy."

Burgess Meredith portrayed him in the 1945 film The Story of GI Joe.

[Peter Clare]

April 19, 1943
Warsaw ghetto uprising put down

On this day in 1943, Waffen SS attacks Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto.
Shortly after the German invasion of Poland, in September 1939, nearly 400,000 Polish Jews were confined to a 3.5-square-mile area that normally housed about 250,000. The "ghetto" was sealed off with a 10-foot-high wall. Anyone caught leaving was shot on sight. As if this weren't bad enough, the Nazis strictly controlled the amount of food that was brought into the ghetto, forcing Jews to live on a bowl of soup a day. By July 1942, about 80,000 Jews had died.
On July 22, 1942, Heinrich Himmler ordered that Jews be "resettled" to extermination camps, such as Treblinka. Two months later, more than 300,000 Jews had been sent to the gas chambers. Less than two years after the internment in the ghetto, only 60,000 Jews remained. But those who survived formed a Jewish Fighting Organization, called ZOB, which managed to smuggle in weapons from anti-Nazi Poles. Armed, they were able to resist further deportations by attacking Germans from rooftops, cellars, and attics. A severe winter and a shortage of trains also prevented the SS from deporting more Jews to death camps.
But spring brought Nazi retaliation. On April 19, 1943, Passover, Himmler sent more than 2,000 Waffen SS soldiers to combat the Jewish resistance. German tanks, howitzers, machine guns, and flamethrowers were met with Jewish pistols, rifles, homemade grenades, and Molotov cocktails. The Jews were able to fend off the German assault for 28 days. Finally, SS General Jurgen Stroop set the entire ghetto block, now reduced to an area 1,000 yards by 300 yards, on fire and blew up the synagogue. By May, 56,065 Jews were dead. It is estimated that the Germans lost 300, with 1,000 wounded.

[Peter Clare]

SS FRANCESCO CRISPI (April 19, 1943)

Italian passenger ship of 7,464 tons, built in 1926 and used by the Italian Army as a troop transport was torpedoed and sunk by HMS Saracen off Punta Nere in position 42º46'N 09º46'E. The Francesco Crispi was en route from Leghorn to Bastia in Corsica when attacked. She sank with the loss of around 800 men.

[Peter Clare]

April 20, 1945
Operation Corncob is launched while Hitler celebrates his birthday

On this day in 1945, Allied bombers in Italy begin a three-day attack on the bridges over the rivers Adige and Brenta to cut off German lines of retreat on the peninsula. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler celebrates his 56th birthday as a Gestapo reign of terror results in the hanging of 20 Russian prisoners of war and 20 Jewish children: Of these, at least nine are under the age of 12. All of the victims had been taken from Auschwitz to Neuengamme, the place of execution, for the purpose of medical experimentation.