Archive for the ‘World at War’ Category

The English Channel, nearly a hundred miles wide between Portsmouth, England, and the Normandy beaches, was a formidible military barrier. Early in the previous century it had thwarted Napoleon. In 1940 it stopped the conquering Germans. Now, in the spring of 1944, the Allies needed thousands of ships and craft to transport their armies across the Channel and begin the liberation of France. To compound the difficulties of a long water passage, the always problematical weather could fatally disrupt landing operations, and the Germans had liberally planted sea mines in the central Channel and off likely invasion beaches.

A storm delayed the operation, originally scheduled for 5 June, after much of the invasion force had left embarkation points, forcing landing vessels back into port, where their crews and passengers endured the wait amid often crowded and uncomfortable circumstances. Presented with a better forecast for the sixth, General Eisenhower made a tentative decision late in the evening of 4 June to get shipping moving, and gave the final “O.K. We’ll go.” shortly after 4AM on the fifth.

By then, minesweepers were clearing shipping lanes through a fifteen mile wide southward path. Invasion shipping, nearly sixty separate convoys in the initial assault, with more behind, headed for the target area via a wide-topped “T&quot-shaped route, gathering off the Isle of Wight from various ports along England’s southern coast, then turning south to cross the Channel in the recently swept lanes. Many vessels towed barrage balloons, protection against German bombing attacks that didn’t come, since the enemy’s weak air reconnaissance kept him ignorant of what was happening.

The passage across was anything but smooth, especially for infantry and tank landing craft, many of whose passengers suffered hours of seasickness during the night of 5-6 June. As the convoys approached Normandy, their courses flared out somewhat, taking them to staging areas off the individual landing beaches. Most ships were in their places well before dawn. Further inshore, the busy minesweepers continued their work, opening safe (or at least relatively safe) channels and working areas for landing boats and gunfire support ships.

Overhead in the darkness, a steady procession of hundreds of transport planes and gliders moved over Normandy, dropping U.S. paratroopers inland of the westernmost (“Utah”) beach. British parachutists descended in the southeastern part of the assault zone. Behind the initial waves of ships and planes came more, in a flow that would continue for months to come, reinforcing the initial landings and providing logistics support for the armies as they consolidated their beachhead, broke out, and fought their way across northwestern Europe.

Imagine living in Philadelphia during the early days of the Civil War and reading the latest issue of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. A front-page story reveals a strange and alarming tale: Harbor police have captured a partially‑submerged, 33‑foot long, cigar‑shaped contraption moving slowly down the Delaware River.This “infernal machine,” as the paper described it, was the creation of French inventor, Brutus De Villeroi, self proclaimed “Natural Genius,” who built the submarine to salvage the 1798 wreck of the DeBraak, sunk off Lewes, DE. Taking immediate action to safeguard the safety of its citizen in time of war, the Philadelphia police impounded the submarine. Meanwhile, the local Navy Yard, answering the call from the Lincoln administration, was looking for a technological edge for fighting the Confederacy. The 1861 Philadelphia incident convinced them to invest in a submarine of De Villeroi’s design.

Jules Verne (1828-1905)

Hence begins the little-known story of the United States Submarine Propeller U.S.S. Alligator ‑‑ a technological wonder akin to other great maritime advances of the Civil War era, including the well‑known ironclad USS Monitor and the recently‑raised Confederate submarine CSS Hunley. The story of the Alligator is right out of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In fact, according to one translation of that novel, De Villeroi was Verne’s math teacher.

Built to counter the threat of Confederate ironclads, the 47-foot-long, green, oar-propelled sub was a vessel like no other. Among its most notable features was an airlock designed to allow a diver to exit the vessel while submerged and place an explosive charge on an enemy ship. The Alligator’s design also included an air purification system. Both are standard components of modern submarines.

Following its launch from a Philadelphia shipyard in 1862, the Alligator was tasked with destroying bridges crossing the Appomattox River and clearing obstructions in the James River in Virginia. But the Alligator would never get the chance to prove itself in battle. After arriving in the combat zone, the waters of the James and Appomattox proved too shallow to allow the sub to submerge. The Alligator was also less maneuverable than expected.

Fearing that it could be captured by the Confederacy, the Alligator was withdrawn and towed to the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., where it was refitted with a hand-cranked screw propeller. President Lincoln himself witnessed a demonstration of the “improved” vessel. After declaring that the Alligator was ready for action, Rear Adm. Samuel Dupont ordered the sub to Charleston, S.C., in March 1863. It would be a fateful journey.

While heading south along the North Carolina coast, the Alligator and its tow vessel, the USS Sumpter, encountered a storm so fierce that the Sumpter’s crew, facing the loss of their own ship, was forced to cut the unmanned submarine loose on April 2, 1863. The Union sub was never seen again.

Because of the movie WindTalkers many of us have been exposed to a secret code used by the US Military in WWII. This secret code was based on the Navajo language and was unbreakable by the Japanese.

The dictionary used by the codetalkers was declassified by the Navy and posted on their website. For historicans interested in the Asian Theater during WWII, this makes for a fascinating addition to their WWII literature collection. The entire dictionary is online. You can view the entire dictionary here.

It also includes the Navajo Codes for letters of the alphabet, specific words, country names, dates, ships, airplanes, officer, organizations and a translation of The Marine Hymm into Navajo Code.

Throughout the years, the Department of Defense has knowingly performed a variety of radiation experiments to learn the effects of different types and dosages of radiation on the human body.

The entire history of radiation experiments and potential radiation experiments is documented in the Report on Search for Human Radiation Experiment Records 1944 – 1994, was prepared by the Department of Defense Radiation Experiments Command Center (DoD RECC).

The document makes for interesting reading for anyone interested in the history of nuclear radiation and humans.

This web site has a collection of aerial photos of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

Here are some of the photos you can find on this site.

• CIA annotated photo showing the entire Auschwitz-Birkenau complex.
• CIA photo showing a close-up view of the gas chambers and prisoners being conducted from the trains.
• Close-up of Krematorium II clearly showing the Zyklon introduction ports on the roof of the gas chamber on August 25, 1944.
• Photo of the southern portion of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp. It clearly shows Krematoriums II, III, IV, and V. Photo was taken on  September 13, 1944.
• Aerial photograph showing the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camps during a bombing raid on September 13, 1944.
• A large scale photograph of the Town of Oscwiecim on June 26, 1944. Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II (Birkenau), and the I.G. Farben industrial complex at Monowice are clearly visible. This photograph allows you to see the size, relationship and the distances between the various camps.
• and several other very detailed photos of these camps.