Subject: WWII-L Digest - 23 Feb 1995 to 24 Feb 1995

From: Automatic digest processor <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Feb 1995 00:01:26 -0500

There are 33 messages totalling 2034 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Hitler and the Germans
  2. Japan-- loose ends and further thoughts (2)
  3. Scheduling Japan's de
  4. INF: USN Chronology 02-24-95
  5. INF: 50 Years Ago - 25-FEB-1945
  6. (INF) Ques on Iwo Jima (2)
  7. Copenhagen Gestapo HQ's (2)
  8. Japanese airborne ops
  9. ADMIN: more network problems.
 10. Endlosung (was:Is it true that they can trace a single document) (2)
 11. MEDIA:WWII Documents
 12. MEDIA:Enola Gay
 13. MEDIA:More Enola Gay
 14. MEDIA:Hitler's Redoubt Returned
 15. MEDIA:British Tribute to Colonies
 16. MEDIA:Iwo Jima Today
 17. MEDIA:Japanese Disarm Chemicals
 18. Today in history
 19. Bloopers
 20. MacArthur (was Re:  Japan points 3 & 4...)
 21. Japan points 3 & 4 (& there ain't no more...)
 22. Japanese Peace Offerings
 23. [INF] USAAF 25 FEB 45
 24. [INF] USAAF 26 FEB 45
 25. Is it true that they can trace a single document
 26. [INF] 27 FEB 45
 27. INFO: Hitler and Votes
 28. SCHEDULING JAPAN'S
 29. (INF) QUES ON IWO

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 00:39:34 PST
From:    Jim Brady <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Hitler and the Germans

>   If one accepts the polycentrist idea, that the Reich was the result of
>not only Hitler and Himmler et al. but the workings of individuals and
>ideas involved in the evolution and maintenance of the Reich, then the
>Germans bear a much greater amount of guilt.
>   I won't give my opinion here, yet, but I'm interested to see what other
>people think?  Is it just an ambiguous question to begin with?
>
>William Lippert
>The American University
>

My .02:  Other key Nazis, and the German electorate and "abstentionists",
 are as much a part of the complicated, interlocking events that brought the world to war
 and millions to death factories, as Hitler was. The horrific acts were not abhorations, but
adaptations, of Hitler's policies.

-- Jim Brady

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 02:38:39 EST
From:    "Cassady B. Craft" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Japan-- loose ends and further thoughts

For the history of the design of the A6M series (Zeke or Zero), I would
suggest Caido's _Zero_ and also _Eagles of Mitsubishi_ (I don't have the
authors name).  I think that Mitsubishi designed this one without British
help :).

Cassady Craft
e-mail [email-masked]
or
[email-masked]

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 05:23:00 UTC
From:    "Edward S. Miller" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Scheduling Japan's de

OK, you asked for it.  Here's my full article from Military History
Quarterly (MHQ), Spring 1945.  It's a great issue, devoted to the end-game
of the Pacific war.

                              SAVVY PLANNING

     In July 1943, Allied military planners gloomily prophesied the defeat
 of Japan in 1947 or 1948, after five more years of combat.  Since the start
 of the Pacific counteroffensive a year earlier, Allied forces had advanced
 barely 200 miles in the Solomons, from Guadalcanal to New Georgia, and 200
 miles in New Guinea, from Kokoda to Salamaua.  At that rate, a journalist
 snidely observed, we would get to Tokyo in 1960.

     The planners' vague schemes consisted of a trio of slow crawls, across
 the southwest and central Pacific by the Americans and from Burma by
 British Empire forces, linking up at Hong Kong in 1946.  Strategic bombing
 of Japan from China in 1947 and perhaps an invasion of Japan in 1948 would
 end the war.  (Of course, the planners knew nothing of the atomic-bomb pro-
 ject, and senior leaders who did regarded it as a remote, unproven pros-
 pect.)

     Then, on August 8, 1943, Rear Admiral Charles M. Cooke, Jr., known
 throughout the U.S. Navy as "Savvy" for his brilliant if sometimes hyper-
 imaginative mind, stepped into the picture.  As assistant chief of staff
 (plans), Cooke was the strategic brain of the chief of naval operations,
 Admiral Ernest J. King.  (Cooke was serving an unprecedented ten-year stint
 in war planning and had commanded the flagship of the Pacific Fleet, the
 battleship =Pennsylvania=, when it was damaged at Pearl Harbor.)  Fifty-
 seven years old and in somewhat frail health, Cooke belonged to the
 "thruster" school of naval planners who advocated extravagantly offensive
 war.

     When the U.S. and British Combined Planners, as they were known,
 gathered for the Quadrant Conference in Quebec in August 1943, Cooke was
 outraged by their torpid schedule and their pessimism.   He proceeded to
 invert prevailing assumptions--military and political--with the startling
 proposal that Japan had to be crushed within a year of an Allied victory in
 Europe, probably by the end of 1945.  He believed that the forces already
 marshaling in the Pacific could bypass many of Japan's island strongholds,
 destroy its naval and air power--even before Hitler's defeat allowed units
 to be transferred from Europe--and arrive at the gates of Japan to compel
 its unconditional surrender in short order.  A speedup was politically
 essential, Cooke insisted, because Americans at home would grow weary of a
 protracted war of attrition and demand a negotiated peace, an outcome he
 equated with losing the war.  Instead, he fixed a victory date, challenged
 the planners to devise a strategy to meet the deadline, and convinced the
 Allied high command to bless his fast-track plan.

     The adoption of Cooke's timetable was the third great command decision
 of the Pacific war.  At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, just
 after the tide had turned at Stalingrad, in North Africa and the South
 Pacific, President Roosevelt had felt confident enough to declare the
 ultimate Allied aim to be the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers.
 And almost two years earlier, at 1941 military conferences, U.S. and
 British planners had forged Plan Rainbow Five, calling for a massive inva-
 sion of the European continent to give Germany the coup de grace.

     By the summer of 1943, America was sufficiently mobilized for the
 Allies to plan a landing in France by mid-1944.  Fighting on two fronts,
 Germany must soon collapse, the planners believed.  After Casablanca,
 strategists had set to work on a timetable for defeating Japan.  But the
 Allies felt that victory would have to await reinforcements from Europe,
 and even then the war could drag on for years.

     Before the war, Cooke had been an architect of War Plan Orange, the
 prewar U.S. blueprint for beating Japan, which foresaw Japanese defeat in
 naval battles, an amphibious U.S. march across the central Pacific, and
 Japan's subjugation by a siege of blockade and bombing.  No invasion, no
 engagement with the fearsome Japanese army on a wide front, was thought
 necessary; the siege alone would compel total capitulation.  For three
 decades, Plan Orange had echoed with stern phrases of resolve to enforce
 Japan's submission to our aims.

     Now the problem, as Cooke saw it, was simply to achieve the paramount
 objective--unconditional surrender--as swiftly as possible.  The American
 public would not stand for years of further bloodshed after the great
 crusade in Europe, he said, warning that "we would never achieve our objec-
 tive" unless Japan were beaten within one year after the collapse of
 Germany.

     In Quebec, Savvy Cooke offered no studies or surveys, just his intui-
 tion.  He wrote no postwar memoirs explaining his judgment.  From the con-
 text, however,  three strategic principles apparently merged in his mind.
 One was the need to win in the Far East quickly enough to forestall
 American impatience.  Second, Cooke supported his boss, Admiral King, who
 considered the Pacific war a personal vendetta and wanted earlier and
 grander efforts there, even before victory in Europe.  Third, an advance by
 way of China required Britain to recapture Burma in 1944 and reopen the
 Burma Road supply route to China.  (The weary British balked at committing
 large armies in Asia;  Burma was not liberated for nearly two years, by
 which time China had crumpled into strategic insignificance.)

     Savvy Cooke's deadline struck a responsive chord.  His U.S. planning
 colleagues agreed that a tedious advance would produce a "stultifying
 effect" on the will to finish the fight.  General George Marshall, the army
 chief of staff and Roosevelt's politically astute adviser, enthusiastically
 seconded "forcing the issue" rapidly.  Even Winston Churchill, overriding
 his military chiefs, endorsed it despite the implied diversion of effort
 from Germany.  The accelerated date for the unconditional surrender of
 Japan was now December 31, 1945.

     Cooke's schedule profoundly shaped the subsequent course of the
 Pacific war.  Admiral Chester Nimitz and General Douglas MacArthur realized
 they had to step up their leisurely pace.  Growing American power would
 have assured a pickup in any event, but the acceleration was breathtaking.
 The island-by-island grind of the Solomons campaign was replaced by sweep-
 ing ocean operations that surged ahead a thousand miles at a leap.  The
 citadels of Truk and Rabaul and many other islands were bypassed.  More
 Japanese troops were stranded than were killed on the invaded islands.
 MacArthur returned to the Philippines nearly a year ahead of schedule.  In
 a momentous alteration, the Marianas Islands were seized in the summer of
 1944.  That campaign resulted in the destruction of Japan's carrier avia-
 tion and the fall of the Tojo government.  The feckless bombing-from-China
 strategy was scrubbed; new B-29 bombers were sent instead to the Marianas,
 closer to Tokyo, to unleash the hell of strategic bombing on Japan.

     Yet the rapid advance merely assured that the economic ruin of Japan
 would be complete by mid-1945.  It did not assure that the Japanese would
 see reason and surrender unconditionally.  In fact, they fought with
 greater fury, launching suicide kamikaze attacks and exacting a larger toll
 of American lives than before.

     Cooke and the other planners also recognized that economic war was
 slow war.  A siege would surely win, but over how many years?  And with
 what awful consequences?   The advocates of siege, mainly naval and air
force officers, hoped it would take only a matter of months after the
seizure of Okinawa in the spring of 1945.  Japan's navy was sunk, its
harbors choked with mines, 60 percent of its urban areas incinerated by
firebombs.  After the war, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey predicted that
Japan probably would have surrendered to a conventional siege before
November 1, 1945.  Nevertheless, at the time it appeared that the enemy was
opting to hold until the United States was forced to launch a terribly
costly invasion.

     Cooke's one-year timetable had hardened into dogma by 1945.  Germany's
 surrender on May 7 meant that Japan had to be overwhelmed by the spring of
 1946.  Most planners concluded that only an invasion could accomplish this.
 So they abandoned the long-held central concept of Plan Orange--that siege
 alone would win--and opted to invade the home islands.  MacArthur and
 others lobbied for a landing on the southernmost island of Kyushu on Novem-
 ber 1, 1945, and, if necessary, a final landing on the Tokyo plain the fol-
 lowing March.  By May 7, 1946, they believed, there would be no resistance
 left in Japan, not even guerrillas in the hills.  President Truman listened
 to the arguments, then approved the planning and preparation--but not the
 execution--of the invasion.

     Then the war ended abruptly on August 14, 1945, after atomic bombs
 were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet Union had joined the
 fight.  Certainly Cooke's timetable lurked in the background of the nuclear
 decision.  He had recast America's grand strategy to quickly force an
 unconditional surrender.  No surer means to this end was available than the
 atomic bombs.

     Japan's surrender came only three months after Germany's, even before
 the redeployment from Europe.  Cooke's timetable, almost unbelievably
 optimistic when adopted, eventually proved to be nine months too slow.
 Still, his perception had served America well.  In the face of a firm dead-
 line, U.S. strategists grew more daring, applying their newfound might with
 vigor, so that Japan's end was already in sight when Hitler died in his
 bunker.  At the finale, when nuclear weapons promised peace well within the
 deadline, the little-known command decision inspired by Savvy Cooke was
 fulfilled in blinding flashes.

         Allied Timetable: July 1943 (pre-Cooke) vs. Actual Result

                         Date Operations Completed

                                   Plan,           Actual WWII  Months
                                   July 1943                    Saved
                                   =========       ===========  =====
 Gilbert and Marshall Islands       May 1944        Feb 1944     3

Truk                               Nov 1944        Bypassed     -

New Guinea; Marianas               May 1945        Aug 1944     9

Western Carolines                  May 1945        Sep 1944     8

Southern Philippines               Nov 1945        Oct 1944     11

Luzon                              Not scheduled   Mar 1945     -

Hong Kong or Formosa               May 1946        Bypassed     -

Okinawa                            Dec 1946        Jun 1945    18

Bombing of Japan                   Begin 1947      Begin 1944  30-42

Invasion of Japan (if needed)       1947 or 1948    Canceled    -

Surrender of Japan                 1947 or 1948    Aug 1945    27-40

== Edward S. Miller has lectured at war colleges, military conferences, and
 the Pentagon, and is the author of =War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to
 Defeat Japan, 1897-1945 (Naval Institute Press, 1991.)==

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 04:01:12 PST
From:    "Keller, Theron P." <[email-masked]>
Subject: INF: USN Chronology 02-24-95

UNITED STATES NAVY CHRONOLOGY
from:
//byrd.mu.wvnet.edu/pub/history/military/wwii/naval_chronology/chr4(4,5).txt

1945
02/24 Sun. Japanese resistance in Manila, Luzon, P. I., ceases.
            United States naval vessels damaged, Iwo Jima area:
             Heavy cruiser SAN FRANCISCO (CA-38), by storm,
              30 d. 00'N., 145 d. 00'E.
             Destroyer COLAHAN (DD-658), by  storm,
              29 d. 45'N., 146 d. 20'E.
             Destroyer HEYWOOD L. EDWARDS (DD-663), by collision,
              24 d. 47'N., 141 d. 25'E.
             Destroyer BRYANT (DD-665), by collision,
              24 d. 47'N., 141 d. 25'E.
             Destroyer MOALE (DD-693), by storm,
              25 d. 00'N., 141 d. 00'E.
             Submarine chaser PC-578, by collision,
              24 d. 46'N., 141 d. 19'E.
             LST 792, by coastal defense gun,
              24 d. 46'N., 141 d. 19'E.
            Japanese submarine sunk:
             RO-49, by submarine LEGARTO (SS-371), off Kyushu,
              32 d. 40'N., 132 d. 33'E.
            German submarine sunk:
             U-3007, by Army aircraft, Bremen, Germany.

Information compiled by U.S. Navy Historians.  For more information,
contact the Naval Historical Center at (202) 433-3940.
Archived by: "Larry W. Jewell" <[email-masked]>
Posted by:
Theron P. Keller
Logicon, Inc.
Dahlgren, VA  22448 USA
[email-masked]

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 07:22:33 EST
From:    John Davis <[email-masked]>
Subject: INF: 50 Years Ago - 25-FEB-1945

On 25-FEB-1945, the following occurred -

World War II - The Battlefronts
-------------------------------
Western Front - In the U.S. 9th Army sector, the 35th Division and elements
of the 5th Armoured Division begin crossing the Rur River opposite Linnich.
The XIX Corps continues to advance as units reach Muntz and Rodingen. In
the 1st Army sector, the VII Corps completes the capture of Duren. The 1st
Division begins crossing the Rur. In the 3rd Army sector, elements of the
4th Armoured Division establish a bridgehead over the Nims at Rittersdorf.
In the XX Corps area, units of the 10th Armoured Division cross the Saar
near Taben and advance towards Zerf.

Italian Front - In the U.S. 5th Army sector, the IV Corps ends the first
phase of a limited offensive west of Highway 64 as organized resistance on
M. Torraccia and in the La Serra area collapses.

Philippines - The XIV Corps continues preparations for the assault on the
last three strongholds in Manila. The 1st Cavalry Division is being held up
by stubborn resistance in the Antipolo area. The 6th Division is also being
strongly opposed. On Corregidor another 1,000 yards is gained along the
east end of the island.

Iwo Jima - VAC, with three divisions abreast continue to attack toward the
O-2 line, making the main effort in the center.  The 3rd Marine Division
begins to attack in the center for the rest of Airfield 2 and gains several
hundred yards under very heavy fire from the heights commanding both
runways. On the right flank of the corps, the elements of the 4th Marine
Division secure portions of the east-west runway. By the end of the day,
the east-west strip and two thirds of the north-south strip of Airfield 2
are secured. Elements of the 5th Marine Division continue to mop up on Mt.
Suribachi. Airfield 1 is now ready for emergency use.

Japan - Major air attacks by B-29's against Tokyo with incendiary bombs
have clearly demonstrated the effectiveness of this weapon, which is still
being used experimentally. This results in a change in tactics from
daylight precision attacks on industrial targets, which have proved none
too successful, to night fire attacks on the Japanese urban areas. TF 58
begins a 2-day strike on targets in the Tokyo area.

Burma - The Indian 17th Division takes Mahlaing.

The Homefront
-------------
January Production Declined - The War Production Board reports that
munitions output in January, which had been scheduled for a 1% increase
over December, actually fell 1% short of December's production. But more
serious is the loss in output of raw materials, steel in particular, which
will slow the entire munitions program up to June. WPB chief Hiland
Batcheller says that continued manpower problems and transportation
difficulties due to the "worst winter since 1918" are the reasons for the
decline.

Sam Snead Wins Again - Sam Snead has won his fifth golf tournment of the
year, by winning the Pensacola Open with a 72-hole score of 267, beating
Byron Nelson, runner-up, by seven strokes.

=============================================================================

Sources: "United States Army in World War II, Chronology 1941-1945" compiled
by Mary H. Williams, Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of
the Army, "2194 Days of War" by Cesare Salmaggi and Alfredo Pallavisimi,
"Facts On File Yearbook 1945, Person's Index Of World Events" edited by R.L.
Lapica.

Copyright 1995 by John B Davis, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Previous articles are archived at ftp.webcom.com in directory /pub/jbd/www
and can be accessed via the WWW by URL: http://www.webcom.com/~jbd/ww2.html.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Davis                           | [email-masked]
Cary, North Carolina                 | http://www.webcom.com/~jbd/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 07:25:31 EST
From:    "SGM Robert S. Rush" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: (INF) Ques on Iwo Jima

Jim,
It is obvious I am not as email literate as I thought.
Please s-mail the information.
Thanks
Rob

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 07:40:29 GMT-6
From:    "Robert T. Moore" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Copenhagen Gestapo HQ's

Hello, All!

Here goes with the last installment on the bombing of Copenhagen's
Gestapo/SD HQ.

Four days later, Ole Lippmann transmitted another message to London
that evaluated the results of the raid less enthusiastically. In the
intervening period Lippmann had learned that Gestapo personnel killed
during the raid were office workers or minor functionaries. All three
top German leaders whom the Allies had hoped to kill had escaped,
including General Guenther Pancke of the SS, Danish Gestapo Chief
Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, and his chief aide, Otto Bovensiepen. They were
all unexpectedly away from their offices that day, attending the
funeral of a fellow Gestapo agent who had died of natural causes.
Lippmann complained: "Whether Carthage has proved the great relief
expected, it is impossible to say. The damned funeral is responsible
for a lot."

The raid did give Danish resistance some relief from Gestapo
pressure. Most German files concerning resistance activity were
destroyed in the fires sthat blackened Shellhus, and even though the
Gestapo immediately set about trying to rebuild their secret files
and dossiers, time was no longer on the German side. Within less than
two months, German forces had laid down their arms in Denmark and
Norway, ending for all time the threat against the Scandinavian
underground forces.

Hope this has been of interest.

All the best.

Terry

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 09:32:52 -0400
From:    Mike Yaklich <[email-masked]>
Subject: Japanese airborne ops

        Although I've been maintaining that the Japanese Army fought a "poor
man's war" and was in general somewhat technically deficient, the Army did show
some interest in the revolutionary format of airborne assault.  In fact, both
the Army and the Navy raised their own separate parachute units.  It was the
Navy's airborne "Yokosuka Special Naval Landing Force" which carried out the
first Japanese combat air drop of the war.
        NOTE: the Japanese did not have a marine "corps" in the American sense,
but each major home naval station (Yokosuka, Kure, Sasebo, etc) raised a
half-dozen or more of these "special naval landing forces," each of which was
the size of a reinforced battalion and intended to operate independently.
These Japanese marines, whose helmet emblem was a white chrysanthymum (sp?) and
anchor, fought in virtually every theatre.
        On Jan 11, 1942, four hours after an amphibious landing near the
seaport of Menado on the northwest tip of Celebes, the paratroopers of the
Yokosuka Special Naval Landing Force were dropped on an airfield south of the
city.  The Dutch defenders were taken completely by surprise, and the Navy
paratroopers quickly secured their objective.  This operation began the land
portion of the Japanese campaign to secure Indonesia.
        On February 14, 1942, at 8:30 am, Ki-57 transports began dropping 700
men of the Army's 1st Parachute Brigade at three sites near Palembang on
Sumatra.  Their objectives were an airfield and two large, important oil
refineries, which they hoped to secure before they could be destroyed.
Although the airfield was quickly taken, a small force of Dutch, British, and
Australian troops held on to the two refineries for two days, until Japanese
reinforcements arrived by sea.  This dogged defense allowed thorough
demolitions of the refineries in question to be carried out, a considerable
set-back to Japanese plans to rapidly integrate the Indonesian oil industry
into their own war machine.
        NOTE: the Ki-57 was the transport version of the Mitsubishi Ki-21, the
Army's standard two-engined bomber at the start of the war, which remained in
service throughout the conflict, although it proved vulnerable to the British
Hurricane and AVG P-40's over Burma as early as late '41.
        On Feb 20, 1942, the Navy's Yokosuka paratroopers were in action once
again, dropping on Koepang (Timor) in another coordinated operation that also
involved an amphibious landing.  This operation took place with virtually no
resistance.  (the descriptions of these actions in Indonesia was taken almost
verbatim from Charles MacDonald, "Airborne")
        The Army paratroopers got to participate in one other airborne
operation of note.  On December 7, 1944, after a day's delay due to bad
weather, paratroopers of Lt-Col Tsunehiro Shirai's 3rd Parachute Regiment took
part in an attempt to seize Barauen airfield on Leyte.  At 6:40 am 26 transport
planes began dropping 356 paratroopers of Shirai's unit.  Heavy antiaircraft
fire brought down four of the planes before they could complete their drops,
and many of the other 'troopers were scattered.  Lt-Col Shirai himself came
down more or less on target near Barauen, but only 60 of his men were
with him.  The bulk of the paratroopers were mistakenly dropped on another
airfield, San Pablo, about a mile and a half away.  This airfield was quickly
overrun, the few American base personnel mainly scattering, and the Japanese
proceeded to destroy the planes and stores they found there.  Shirai,
meanwhile, had too few men to accomplish anything, but he did join up with a
force of infantry from 16th Division which had been hiding in the jungle
nearby, and were supposed to cooperate with the mission.  Bad weather which
soon closed in once more prevented the dropping of a second wave of
paratroopers equal in size to the first drop.
        However, at dawn the following day, the 'troopers at San Pablo, having
realized they were in the wrong place, moved to Barauen and joined up with
Shirai.  Counting the bedraggled 16th Division footsoldiers, Shirai now had
about 500 men, and by mid-day they had seized the Barauen airstrip in spite of
the resistance of a battalion of US paratroopers from the 11th Airborne
Division.  For three days Shirai's scratch force held the field against
counterattacks from four US battalions, until finally the few remaining
survivors escaped back into the jungle. (mostly from Toland)
        There was one final airborne suicide assault, on Okinawa, May 25, 1945
(a similar attack had also been attempted on Leyte prior to the parachute
drop).  The so-called Giretsu ("Heroic") airborne group consisted of 65 suicide
commandos in five Ki-21 bombers.  Their mission was to wreack the greatest
possible destruction on Yontan airfield, used by the Americans since their
second day ashore.  The assault came on a perfect, clear, moonlit night-- a
"bomber's moon," as it was called.  First the field was pounded by six waves of
Japanese bombers.  Then the five Ki-21's approached.  It was also an
antiaircraft gunner's moon, apparently, since American flak brought down seven
of the bombers, and four of the five Ki-21 assault planes (each of these
aircraft carried 13 commandos plus a pilot).  However, one Ki-21 managed to
make a belly-landing square in the center of Yontan's runway.  Ten Japanese
soldiers popped out, flinging grenades and firebombs.  They managed to destroy
six US aircraft, damage 26 others, torch two fuel dumps containing 70,000
gallons of fuel, kill two Americans and wound 18 others before all ten were
shot down.  Three commandos were found dead inside the crash-landed Ki-21 on
the airfield, apparently killed by AA fire on the way in.
        I should also say that, in addition to their special uniforms
(consisting of jump boots, small fiber or canvas-covered steel helmet, and
coverall jump suit worn over the uniform-- Army and Navy paratroopers wore
essentially the same gear except for insignia) the parachute units also had
some special weapons.  I mentioned in an earlier post the use of the Type 100
submachinegun by Army paratroopers at Palembang, practically the only Japanese
use of these weapons in the war.  There were also two special models of the
7.7-mm Arisaka rifle for paratroopers, one with a hinged, folding buttstock,
the other in which the stock unscrewed so the rifle was transported in two
parts.  There was in addition a paratrooper model of the 7.7-mm Nambu light
machinegun, again with a wooden buttstock that unscrewed for transport and was
reassembled upon landing.  For the Leyte operation described above, the Army
paratroopers were typically EACH carrying a paratroop rifle as described above,
with 30 rounds (six 5-shot clips); a 50-mm "knee mortar" with eight rounds; two
hand grenades; two antitank hand grenades; three magnetic antitank mines; six
small blocks of demolitions explosives; and two small smoke candles (in
addition to bayonet, entrenching tool, rations, spare socks, and a length of
rope).  Japanese paratroopers when dropping usually carried their weapons and
equipment in up to four canvas bags secured to the legs and lower body so as to
be out of the way of the parachute cords when opening.
        I mentioned Masonori Ito yesterday, just to let you know, he was a
well-connected Japanese journalist during and after the war, who was able to
interview many highly-placed officers and surviving participants for his book
"The End Of The Imperial Japanese Navy."
        I don't know why I included that spiel about Allied generals in my last
post, perhaps just to illustrate that conflicting opinions and difficult
personalities were not a monopoly of the Japanese forces (and I only talked
about a few prominent land commanders, not even mentioning the Navy or the
Allied high commands!)

        Regards

        Mike Yaklich

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 09:16:26 CST
From:    Robert Hohlt <[email-masked].>
Subject: ADMIN: more network problems.

>Also please respond to me directly as
>well rather than to the list.  Thanks.

Joe Barone,  could you please send your numerical IP
address to me.  I have tried to send you mail privately
to no avail.

Sorry to use the list like this but it is my ONLY way
to contact you.

Robert Hohlt, Jr.

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 11:09:19 EST
From:    Mike Oaks <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Copenhagen Gestapo HQ's

On Fri, 24 Feb 1995 07:40:29 GMT-6,
Robert T. Moore  <[email-masked]> wrote:

>Hello, All!
>
>Here goes with the last installment on the bombing of Copenhagen's
>Gestapo/SD HQ.
>
>
snip snip snip snip

 Terry,
   Thanks for taking the time and effort to tell us about Shellhus and
the Copenhagen Gestapo. It filled an information void I had about the
Scandinavian campaign of WWII.
  Again,
        Thank You!!
                Mike

/====================================================================\
|    Michael A. Oaks                                                 |
|    Systems Analyst                  Music: A means to mark times   |
|    [email-masked]              stepping stones through |
|    Kennesaw, Georgia 30144                 your calendar of life.  |
|    Tel: (404)423-6049  Fax (404)423-6541          ~ ~ ~ ~      MAO |
|    VWAR-L #146 - - (USAF = / AFCS / AFSS / AFDC)                   |
|    Break, Break...Kadena, Kadena, Yokota, Yokota, Clark, Clark...  |
|    Break, Break...Request you echo the following broadcast...      |
|    (Some things you never forget...even after 25 years...)         |
\====================================================================/

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 17:52:15 +0100
From:    Emmanuel Gustin <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Japan-- loose ends and further thoughts

On Thu, 23 Feb 1995, chris garcia wrote:

> and I'd liketo reread. I have the book "Zero!" by Martin Caiden, but
> haven't read it yet. I remember reading somewhere the Zero was designed
> in collaboration with the British DeHavviland  co.  do you know anything

During and after WWI, the Japanese aviation industry was built up with
French and British help. Japan had been an ally in WWI, after all. After
WWI Japan also called in German help --- Germany was not allowed to build
combat aircraft, but the Japanese representatives in the disarmament
committee helped to hide such developments. Among the license-built types
were the Gloster Gambet and Heinkel HD-25. Designers from Sopwith and
Dewoitine worked in Japan, as well as the German Dr. R. Vogt, the
eccentric designer who worked for Blohm und Voss during WWII.

By the time the Mitsubishi A6M "Zero" was designed, the Japanese
engineers were well able to develop their own combat aircraft, however.
Many people didn't believe this, and the claim was easily made that the
Japanese had just followed the old practice and copied foreign designs.
The US intelligence 'identified' numerous foreign aircraft in Japanese
service, such as the Messerschmitt Bf 109, Heinkel He 111, Junkers Ju 87,
and Focke-Wulf Fw 190.

As far as the A6M is concerned, the de Havilland claim is new to me.
There were rumours that the Northrop 3A fighter prototype, which had
disappeared on a flight above the see, had been handed over to the
Japanese, and that these had developed to "Zero" from it. Later these
rumours were extended to include the Vought V-143, a development of the 3A
(Vought had bought Northrop). The V-143 was indeed sold to the Japanese,
for $64800 -- a fraction of the development costs. The Japanese designers
certainly studied to V-143, but it was a very poor basis for development.

Emmanuel Gustin

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 11:50:55 -0500
From:    David Rising <[email-masked]>
Subject: Endlosung (was:Is it true that they can trace a single document)

On Thu, 23 Feb 1995, Henry Sirotin wrote:

-deletions-

> What changed was the fact that Germany's position after the fall of
> France was considered impregnable in Europe, and the real agenda could
> now be applied.

There are really two scholarly positions on this question. The above is
the "Intentionalist" approach, which is well voiced by Lucy Dawidowicz
in a number of different books.

The other approach is the "functionalist" approach, which basically says
that the Nazi policy towards the Jews was a function of circumstance
rather than a well thought out plan from the beginning. Christopher
Browning and Michael Marrus are two well known Holocaust-historians who
subscribe to this theory.

In "functionalist" thinking, the Nazis were trying to make Germany and
her occupied countries Jewish free. Before the invasion of the S.U., they
were quite willing to solve their "problem" by simply letting the people
emigrate. Once the Soviet Union, and the other half of Poland, was
invaded, they found themselves with a larger Jewish population than ever
(actually, even the Anschluss of Austria encorporated more Jews than had
ever left, but there was still somewhere to send them). The
Einsatzgruppen and the Death Camps were, then, a pragmatic solution to
their new found "problem".

In the "functionalist" thinking then, there was not a "real agenda" to
be followed once they had become "unbeatable", but rather a new agenda
to follow in response to a new situation.

This is, of course, not to say that the Nazis didn't actively pursue a
racist policy designed to rid Germany and her territories of Jews. It
does, however, suggest that "rid" meant emigrate until very late when it
became "exterminate."

Hope this helps,
David Rising

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 12:12:30 -0500
From:    James E Irwin <[email-masked]>
Subject: MEDIA:WWII Documents

>From the DoD Newswire 24 February 1995

:MOSCOW UNVEILS WW II DOCUMENTS

   MOSCOW  -- Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery unveiled the original
secret 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop protocols to the Russian public for
the first time Thursday, coinciding with Russia's biggest military
holiday.
   The protocols, which the Soviet government kept secret for
decades, are part of an exhibit of nearly 400 previously secret
documents from World War II.
   Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign
Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop signed the protocols in 1939,
dividing Eastern Europe between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
   The museum also displayed the original map dividing Poland, signed
by Ribbentrop and Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
   The exhibit includes the original copy of Nazi Germany's statement
of unconditional surrender, signed by the chief of staff of Germany's
armed forces, Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl, on May 7, 1945.
   The Tretyakov also displayed military decrees ordering the Red
Army into Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in 1941 -- where they
remained until the last Russian troops withdrew last summer.
   Documents from the Allies' conferences at Yalta, Tehran and
Pottsdam are also on display.
   A spokeswoman for the Tretyakov said the exhibit features only a
small part of Russia's wartime archives, and that the museum plans to
continue bringing such documents to the public.
   President Boris Yeltsin's chief of staff, Sergei Filatov, said at
Thursday's opening, "It is of great importance that these archives
are being gradually declassified," the ITAR-Tass news agency
reported.
   Filatov also said that it is time for Russia to "pay for" its long
silence about the protocols.
   Defenders of the Fatherland Day, formerly Red Army Day, was marked
Thursday by celebrations and protests across the country.

=====

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 James E. Irwin (Jim)                  Internet address:
 Defense Personnel Support Center        [email-masked]
 2800 S. 20th Street                   215-737-3678
 Philadelphia PA  19101-8419           Autovon 444-3678

                     "Never in the field of human conflict
                     was so much owed by so many to so few."
                               Winston S. Churchill
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 12:14:29 -0500
From:    James E Irwin <[email-masked]>
Subject: MEDIA:Enola Gay

>From the DoD Newswire 21 February 1995

:WHY HIROSHIMA EXHIBIT WAS AXED

   WASHINGTON  -- War historian Paul Fussell was a 21-year-old
infantry lieutenant in France in the summer of 1945. Wounded in the
legs and the back, he still got orders to prepare for the
forthcoming invasion of Japan, a battle too dreadful to contemplate.
And then came Hiroshima.
   "We cried with relief and joy," he recalled years later. "We were
going to live. We were going to grow up to adulthood after all."
   Rarely does an entire people share a single emotion. But as it
became clear that the A-bomb meant the war would soon be over,
virtually every American greeted the atomic attack of Japan with
joy, relief, thanksgiving.
   Over the years, others developed more ambiguous feelings. The
bomb introduced the nuclear age; the nuclear age became an era of
fear. Questions were raised about the need for a democracy to have
used this terrible weapon. Could there have been a demonstration
bombing? Would Japan have surrendered anyway, without an invasion?
   Last month, a museum exhibit about these issues fell victim to
the emotions they still evoke. To the Smithsonian Institution,
custodian of America's collective memory, Hiroshima became a story
too hot to tell.
   Bowing to pressure from Congress and veterans' groups,
Smithsonian leaders junked the exhibition about the Enola Gay, the
B-29 that bombed Hiroshima and launched the nuclear age. Only the
fuselage of the plane is to be shown.
   Smithsonian Secretary I. Michael Heyman said the exhibit had two
irreconcilable goals -- to honor the valor of the soldiers who
fought the war and to reassess the Enola Gay's heritage.
   Veterans and their families "were not looking for analysis" he
said, "and frankly we did not give enough thought to the intense
feelings such an analysis would evoke."
   Heyman's conclusion was foreshadowed early on in a note from
curator Tom Crouch to museum director Martin Harwit, a memo promptly
leaked by internal critics. (The museum staff has declined to be
interviewed about the controversy.)
   "Do you want to do an exhibit intended to make veterans feel
good," Crouch asked, "or do you want an exhibition that will lead
our visitors to think about the consequences of our atomic bombing
of Japan? Frankly I do not think we can do both."
   Why not? If a high school history book can offer a
non-controversial account of Hiroshima, why couldn't the
Smithsonian?
   --Museums have changed their view of their role in society. They
are not satisfied just displaying stuff -- arrow heads, moon rocks,
airplanes. The Smithsonian bristles at being described as "the
nation's attic." Now artifacts are "tools" used in interpreting
history. "Analysis" -- Heyman's word -- is the name of the museum
game.
   --Of all museums, the National Air and Space Museum, which
celebrates American ingenuity and spunk, holds a special place. It
is the world's busiest; eight million visitors a year come to be
awed by the Wright Brothers' 1903 Kitty Hawk Flyer, Charles
Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, Chuck Yeager's X-1 and the Apollo
11 crew's command module Columbia. In these halls of marvels,
photographs of Hiroshima pedestrians turned into columns of ashes
would seem incongruous.
   --A generation gap exists in the museum and in society. Project
manager Crouse was born in 1944, curator Michael Neufeld in 1951.
Their generation associates the bomb not with the joy of release
from the grip of war; instead the bomb is associated with the
doctrine of "mutually assured destruction," the pleas by John F.
Kennedy to build bomb shelters, the newsreels telling of Pacific
Islanders and U.S. guinea pigs sickened by radiation in atomic
tests.
   --Distrust grew between the museum staff and its veteran-critics.
Rather than relieve it, negotiations between them only heightened
suspicions.
   The American Legion first picked up rumors in 1993 that the
exhibit was taking a decidedly skeptical view of Enola Gay's
achievement.
   A committee of World War II B-29 veterans collected nearly 10,000
signatures asking the Smithsonian to properly display the aircraft
or turn it over to a museum that would.
   The American Legion adopted a resolution objecting "to the use of
the Enola Gay and the heroic men who flew her in an exhibit which
questions the moral and political wisdom involved in the dropping of
the atomic bomb."
   Paul Tibbets, who piloted the Enola Gay and named it after his
mother, called the exhibit plans "a package of insults."
   Harwit undertook to repair the damage.
   The 500-page exhibit script underwent five revisions. The result
was to make outsiders part of the process but the veterans said they
were asked for their opinions, then largely ignored. It only
deepened suspicions.
   Particularly galling to the veterans were a couple of sentences
from the script and an emotionally charged artifact borrowed from
the A-bomb museum at Hiroshima.
   "For most Americans," read the offending excerpt, later
abandoned, "it was a war of vengeance. For most Japanese, it was a
war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism."
   The artifact: a schoolgirl's charred lunchbox with remains of
peas and rice reduced to carbon.
   The critics said such artifacts were selected to make visitors
sympathetic to the victims of the bombings.
   John Correll, editor-in-chief of the Air Force Association's
magazine, noted that the plans called for: 49 photos of Japanese
casualties, but three of American casualties; two references to
Japan's search for a diplomatic solution and four "on U.S. avoidance
of a diplomatic solution"; one "aggressive, anti-American statement
by Japanese" and 11 "aggressive, anti-Japanese statements by
Americans."
   "It was handled badly from the beginning," says Stanley Goldberg,
a historian of science who served on the advisory committee but
resigned when he concluded the Smithsonian was allowing the
veterans' groups to act as censors.
   Edwin C. Bearss, a National Park Service historian who was
wounded in the Pacific in World War II and spent 26 months
recovering, was another panel member. In retrospect, he thinks
Hiroshima may simply be too touchy.
   "Maybe you have to wait 100 years," he said. "You're having
people who came along in the 1950s and '60s putting a judgment on
the '40s. It's a problem you run afoul of because wars are emotional
and politicians are going to listen to veterans."
   Perhaps the controversy was encapsulated in a memo last April
from Neufeld to Harwit, discussing whether the decision to drop the
bomb could be considered "debatable."
   From the critics' viewpoint, only pacifists would debate the
decision, Neufeld wrote. But from his viewpoint, "30 years of
scholarly research ... has shown that the decision is debatable on
its political and military merits -- a conclusion which goes to the
heart of the exhibit concept. ... This research has produced much
new knowledge that must be communicated in some form to the public."
But the Air Force Association was expert at rallying public opinion
and some members of Congress jumped on the issue.
   The Smithsonian blundered one more time: Word leaked out that it
had submitted the script to officials of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A
spokesman said the drafts were sent in soliciting artifacts, but the
Japanese would be permitted to make factual corrections.
   The last straw came when -- after the American Legion had
reluctantly signed off on the final draft of the script -- Harwit
notified the Legion that the Smithsonian was making one substantial
change: lowering the exhibit's estimate of the number of Americans
who would have perished in an invasion of Japan.
   Harwit said the exhibit would accept an analysis by Stanford
University historian Barton Bernstein that put the number at 63,000,
far below others' estimates.
   Legion officials said the estimate was lowered to belittle the
need for the bomb and to make it seem it was used for "revenge."
   The Legion called for canceling the exhibit and 81 members of
Congress called for firing Harwit. Within a few days, Smithsonian
chief Heyman pulled the plug on the Enola Gay. Its story will have
to wait.

======

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 James E. Irwin (Jim)                  Internet address:
 Defense Personnel Support Center        [email-masked]
 2800 S. 20th Street                   215-737-3678
 Philadelphia PA  19101-8419           Autovon 444-3678

                     "Never in the field of human conflict
                     was so much owed by so many to so few."
                               Winston S. Churchill
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 12:16:07 -0500
From:    James E Irwin <[email-masked]>
Subject: MEDIA:More Enola Gay

>From the DoD Newswire 24 February 1995

:ENOLA GAY SPAT BRINGS PROBE

   WASHINGTON  -- Reacting to the flare-up over a planned display
of the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, the head of the
Smithsonian Institution said Thursday he has commissioned a study of
the management of the National Air and Space Museum.
   Smithsonian Secretary I. Michael Heyman canceled the exhibit after
veterans groups complained it would have portrayed them as villains
and after 81 members of Congress called for the removal of Martin
Harwit, director of the National Air and Space Museum, site of the
planned exhibit.
   In a speech at the National Press Club, Heyman said the
Smithsonian -- "almost a sacred place for the people of the United
States" -- has an obligation to explore important contemporary
issues.
   The fuselage of the bomber, the Enola Gay, was to have been the
centerpiece of a major exhibit commemorating the 50th anniversary of
the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II.
   Instead, Heyman and the Smithsonian's regents directed that the
fuselage be displayed without commentary.

===

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 James E. Irwin (Jim)                  Internet address:
 Defense Personnel Support Center        [email-masked]
 2800 S. 20th Street                   215-737-3678
 Philadelphia PA  19101-8419           Autovon 444-3678

                     "Never in the field of human conflict
                     was so much owed by so many to so few."
                               Winston S. Churchill
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 12:17:44 -0500
From:    James E Irwin <[email-masked]>
Subject: MEDIA:Hitler's Redoubt Returned

>From the DoD Newswire 21 February 1995

:U.S. RETURNS HITLER REDOUBT

   FRANKFURT, Germany  -- After 50 years, the U.S. military is
giving some prime Bavarian real estate back to Germany. Not just any
old piece of land.
   The property was once Hitler's Alpine Redoubt, and the German
government wanted the Americans to keep it.
   Since May 1945, when the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne confiscated
Nazi property in Berchtesgaden and on nearby Obersalzberg mountain,
countless American troops and their families have enjoyed the
hotels, villas and ski slope once used by the Third Reich's elite.
   With the reduction of American forces in Europe from 300,000 in
the late 1980s to 100,000 this year, the U.S. military decided to
close one of its three vacation centers in southern Germany.
   Col. Richard Bridges of U.S. Army Headquarters in Heidelberg said
the Obersalzberg and Berchtesgaden facilities weren't needed because
they needed extensive renovations.
   But the German government asked the Americans to reconsider for
two reasons:
   --Finance Minister Theo Waigel, a Bavarian, had told the town of
Bernau it could get back the U.S. resort at Lake Chiemsee.
   --Bavaria state officials wanted the Americans to keep the
Obersalzberg property for at least 10 more years to prevent
neo-Nazis from visiting Hitler's former retreat.
   In June 1993, the U.S. military agreed to give up the Chiemsee
resort if Germany paid $20 million to renovate the U.S. resort in
Berchtesgaden and Obersalzberg.
   But the deal fell through, Bridges said, because "it would not
have been prudent of us to guarantee staying 10 years." So the Army
went back to its original plan of abandoning the
Berchtesgaden-Obersalzberg resort.
   Now, the Chiemsee resort east of Munich and U.S. military hotels
in Garmisch-Partenkirchen south of Munich will be kept open
indefinitely, he said.
   "Garmisch is the centerpiece of the armed forces recreation
centers ... and we had invested roughly $14 million between 1987 and
1990 in some major upgrades at Chiemsee," Bridges said.
   The Obersalzberg resort includes a 270-bed hotel and two villas
on the ski slopes of the 3,300-foot mountain above Berchtesgaden.
The buildings are connected by tunnels and bunkers that were
designed as Hitler's Alpine fortress, but were never completed.
   Nearby is Kehlstein peak, with a restaurant known as "Eagle's
Nest," also used by Hitler. It's open to tourists from from May to
October.
   In the town of Berchtesgaden, population 12,000, the U.S.
military is turning over a 90-room hotel, two barracks, 12 family
apartments, a post office, shopping center, and a garage.
   The turnover should be completed by September, Bridges said.
   Meanwhile, the U.S. resort at Chiemsee will be reopened and 130
employees rehired for the summer season.
   Bernau administrator Helmut Schuhbeck said town of 6,000 had
counted on $660,000 a year in tourism revenues from the Chiemsee
properties.
   "It's too bad," he said. "They're not mad at the Americans
because they see them as friends, but a lot of people are really
upset by the finance ministry."
   Under the Status of Forces Agreement, the U.S. military returns
confiscated German property to the federal government. The Finance
Ministry then decides whether to hold the property or return it to
states and communities.
   Ownership of the Obersalzberg properties is already contested.
   Berchtesgaden attorney Oskar Steuer represents five descendants
of former landowners, who claim they were forced out in the 1930s so
Hitler could have his Alpine retreat.
   "The expropriation was immoral because the residents were
collectively forced into submission," Steuer said. "We will sue for
return of the property."

=====

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 James E. Irwin (Jim)                  Internet address:
 Defense Personnel Support Center        [email-masked]
 2800 S. 20th Street                   215-737-3678
 Philadelphia PA  19101-8419           Autovon 444-3678

                     "Never in the field of human conflict
                     was so much owed by so many to so few."
                               Winston S. Churchill
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 12:20:02 -0500
From:    James E Irwin <[email-masked]>
Subject: MEDIA:British Tribute to Colonies

>From the DoD Newswire 24 February 1995

=====

:WAR MUSEUM HONOURS EX-COLONIES' WAR EFFORT

    LONDON, Feb 23  - Britain's Imperial War Museum launched
an educational initiative on Thursday on the role of the country's
former colonies in World War Two, following complaints that it had
been underestimated.
     Celebrities and members of parliament gathered for the release of
a teaching aid for schools which includes film footage and taped
reminiscences from Asian, African and Caribbean servicemen and women.
     War veterans at the ceremony said they felt posterity had ignored
them. "We had no complaint during the war," said Rene Webb, 72, who
served with the Royal Air Force. "It was after the war that we were
forgotten."

=====

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 James E. Irwin (Jim)                  Internet address:
 Defense Personnel Support Center        [email-masked]
 2800 S. 20th Street                   215-737-3678
 Philadelphia PA  19101-8419           Autovon 444-3678

                     "Never in the field of human conflict
                     was so much owed by so many to so few."
                               Winston S. Churchill
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 12:21:30 -0500
From:    James E Irwin <[email-masked]>
Subject: MEDIA:Iwo Jima Today

>From the DoD Newswire 21 February 1995

:IWO JIMA AFTER 50 YEARS

   IWO JIMA  -- This remote Japanese island still carries the
scars, relics and haunted memories of one of the most brutal battles
of the Pacific War.
   Veterans arriving for 50th anniversary commemorations next month
will land at a Japanese military air station that is normally the
island's only facility.
   The airfield is the expanded descendant of an airstrip that
American commanders wanted to support U.S. air raids on Japan in the
last months of World War II.
   The U.S. Marines lost 5,931 men in 36 days of combat, more than in
any other single battle in the Corps' history. Of 82 U.S. Medals of
Honor won by Marines in World War II, 26 were on Iwo Jima. About 900
other Americans also died in the fighting.
   Nearly all the 20,000-man Japanese garrison died in a defense
praised by Marine Corps analysts for its planning and discipline.
Most of their bodies are still here, many entombed in tunnel defenses
shattered and sealed by attacking Americans.
   The Marines -- including my father, Staff Sgt. William S. Miller,
a combat reporter for Leatherneck magazine, and Leatherneck
photographer Lou Lowery -- landed on Iwo Jima's black volcanic
beaches on the morning of Feb. 19, struggling through mortar shells
and machine-gun fire.
   Thanks to copies of Lowery's pictures, my brothers and sister and
I grew up with clear images of the landings: Marines burrowing into
black sand, Navy guns pounding Mount Suribachi in the background. We
saw other pictures, also from Lowery, that Marine censors found too
grim for publication in 1945.
   Over the years, volcanic activity has raised Iwo Jima some 30 feet
and the original landing beaches are evolving into a terrace partly
covered by low vegetation.
   Above the beaches are the shattered remains of Japanese pillboxes
and gun emplacements. One holds a 20 mm gun, rusted frozen in the
direction of the northern beaches where my wife's uncle, Pfc. Wayne
Martin of Wilkesboro, N.C., came ashore as my father landed to the
south. He died 17 days later.
   The 2.5-mile landing beach has long been cleared of most of the
battle debris that once covered it. But the sea continues to unearth
relics large and small.
   A rusted, overturned Sherman tank lies half-buried on a beach used
by the 5th Marine Division. Nearby is the corroded front ramp of a
landing craft. Shrapnel and relics as small as a loaded clip from an
American M-1 rifle can be found in the black sand.
   The 5th Marine Division fought its way across a narrow neck of Iwo
Jima and then northward up the island's western side, a shell-torn
area now largely overgrown with tropical vegetation -- a big change
from the denuded landscape produced by naval and aerial bombardments
before the Marine landing.
   Veterans of the 3rd and 4th Marine divisions, who fought northward
up the center and rugged eastern side of the island, will find
similar vegetation on much of their battlefield.
   There is a small golf course near what the Marines called the
Amphitheater, an area of especially heavy fighting. Hill 382, another
focus of bitter combat, has disappeared, bulldozed away to expand the
airfield. Somewhere here my wife's uncle died on March 8, one of the
most violent days in the battle.
   All over the tiny island are broken concrete bunkers and
pillboxes, some still bearing the marks of the flamethrowers used by
Marines to kill defenders they could not dislodge or capture.
   Paths through the brush lead to entrances of the elaborate system
of defensive tunnels. One was the headquarters of Lt. Gen. Tadamichi
Kuribayashi, the Japanese commander who committed suicide as the
battle neared an outcome that neither side had ever doubted.
   On the western side of the island is a hospital cave reopened in
1984 by a Japanese veterans group that found the mummified remains of
53 soldiers. Jumbled piles of medical dressings, rice bowls, teapots,
rolls of communications wire and other relics remain untouched.
   Military personnel tell of finding their way into unexplored
tunnels and finding a virtually intact communications center, a
kitchen, a tunnel full of mortar shells, and other relics.
   Slender granite memorials stand across the island, naming Japanese
units wiped out in the fighting. Japanese veterans and families still
try to find the remains of missing soldiers.
   At the southern end of the island is Mount Suribachi, the 568-foot
volcano that became a part of American history through an Associated
Press picture of five Marines and a Navy medic raising the flag on
Feb. 23, four days after the landing.
   The road up the still-active volcano takes visitors past rock
faces scarred by bullets and explosions. Vegetation that has grown
back on the mountain includes delicate tropical flowers native to Iwo
Jima, whose name means Sulphur Island.
   Three memorials stand on the northern crest of the volcano where
the U.S. flag was raised.
   One honors Japanese suicide pilots who attacked the invasion fleet
in the only effort Japan was able to mount to help the island's
garrison. Another, also Japanese, honors the defenders of the
volcano.
   The third and oldest was erected by the 2nd Battalion of the
Marines' 5th Division, which captured the volcano and raised first a
small American flag and then later the same day a larger one captured
in the famous picture by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal.
   Staff sergeants Lou Lowery and Bill Miller were on top of
Suribachi for the first flag raising. Lowery took pictures, then
broke his last camera diving down the side of the crater to escape a
Japanese hand grenade. They left with the Marine patrol and were not
there when the second flag was put up.
   My father, back in Logan, Ohio, after the war, spent the rest of
his working life with photos of both flag raisings on his office
wall.
   He kept a small vial of black volcanic ash in his desk drawer.

===

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 James E. Irwin (Jim)                  Internet address:
 Defense Personnel Support Center        [email-masked]
 2800 S. 20th Street                   215-737-3678
 Philadelphia PA  19101-8419           Autovon 444-3678

                     "Never in the field of human conflict
                     was so much owed by so many to so few."
                               Winston S. Churchill
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 12:23:38 -0500
From:    James E Irwin <[email-masked]>
Subject: MEDIA:Japanese Disarm Chemicals

>From the DoD Newswire 21 February 1995

:JAPAN TO DISARM WW II WEAPONS

   TOKYO  -- Japanese experts will go to China next week to start
cleaning up chemical weapons left by its soldiers during World War
II, officials said Thursday.
   Military and chemical company experts will seal 30 decaying poison
gas shells dug up by the Chinese and three cans of mustard gas, and
experiment with techniques for disarming chemical weapons, the
Foreign Ministry said.
   Japan conquered northeastern China's Manchuria region in 1931 and
established a puppet state. Its control spread to other areas of
China before Japan surrendered in August 1945.
   China says Japan used poison gas on its soil at least 2,900 times,
killing 80,000 people.
   Historians say 2 million poison gas shells remain in China, most
of them buried in the northeastern province of Jilin.
   Japan has sent officials to China in recent years to check
possible soil contamination from decaying chemical weapons, but this
will be the first attempt to neutralize them.

=====

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 James E. Irwin (Jim)                  Internet address:
 Defense Personnel Support Center        [email-masked]
 2800 S. 20th Street                   215-737-3678
 Philadelphia PA  19101-8419           Autovon 444-3678

                     "Never in the field of human conflict
                     was so much owed by so many to so few."
                               Winston S. Churchill
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 12:36:34 -0400
From:    Mike Yaklich <[email-masked]>
Subject: Today in history

        Noticed in todays newspaper that a couple events of interest to the
Pacific war had their anniversary today.  Since I just got done downloading so
much gab on the Japanese, I'll note that on Feb 24, 1945 US forces finally
cleared Manila of Japanese resistance.  Today is also the anniversary of the
death, at the ripe old age of 89, of Emporer Hirohito.
        I made earlier repeated mention of some famous Japanese atrocities
without quantifying them.  For the sake of dotting i's and crossing t's (not
the naval tactic), the "rape of Nanking" after Chiang's capital fell to the
Japanese in Dec '37 resulted in the murder of, by the most conservative
estimates, at least 38,000-60,000 Chinese-- by the most sensational claims,
more like 300,000.  This included up to 20,000 captured Chinese soldiers (or
those suspected of being soldiers).  Whatever the actual numbers, the photos of
streets strewn with dead bodies, including numerous women with their pants
pulled down around their ankles, speak for themselves.  The Bataan Death March
caused the death of 7,000-10,000 American and Phillipino soldiers (about 2,300
were US).  For the building of the Burma-Thailand railway by prisoners of war I
don't have exact numbers handy, but I saw recently on the list that just from
22,000 Australians captured by the Japanese about 8,000 died in captivity.
The decision to defend Manila by Rear-Admiral Kenji Iwabuchi and 16,000
Japanese marines, contrary to the wishes of General Yamashita but according to
orders of the Japanese naval command in the Phillipines, also resulted in
massive destruction and the deaths of several thousand civilians either
murdered or caught in the crossfire.
        One last thought on the Japanese Army's "poor man's war" (I liked the
way Ed Miller phrased it in his lucid post on Japanese war aims-- they were
able to fight a "soft war").  Even in the Malaya/Singapore campaign, which I
used as a positive example of what the Japanese could accomplish with proper
preparation, Yamashita's forces were running critically short of artillery
ammunition by the time they started pushing into Singapore city.  This and the
fact that Yamashita didn't want a street fight with British forces that still
outnumbered his own (albeit a very high percentage of these were rear-area,
non-combat troops) made him push for a quick British surrender, facilitated by
the Japanese cutting the city's water supplies (Toland, Tsuji, Albert Swinson,
"The Fall of Singapore")

        Regards

        Mike Yaklich

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 10:43:40 -0700
From:    Jim O'Neil <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: (INF) Ques on Iwo Jima

>Jim,
>It is obvious I am not as email literate as I thought.
>Please s-mail the information.
>Thanks
Rob,
Not a problem, it went out yesterday. Hope it answers your question(s).

Jim O'Neil  From the interrogation of a German General at the end of WW II:

               "The reason the American Army does so well in War, is that War
                is Chaos, and the American Army practices it on a daily basis"

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 22 Feb 1995 22:09:00 -0600
From:    George Bauer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Bloopers

Your essay is fascinating!  A satirist could not be so creative!

I wish I could be skeptical of all this,and believe that you just
made it all up.  But, with what I hear about educational
institutions today, I could believe what you say is true.
Please tell me you just made it up one night when you were up late
and bored!  I would feel a LOT BETTER!

[email-masked]

 * RoboBOARD/FX 1.04

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 14:27:46 -0500
From:    Barone <[email-masked]>
Subject: MacArthur (was Re:  Japan points 3 & 4...)

Mike Yaklich <[email-masked]> writes:

>        4. I've talked about a lot of Japanese commanders, thought I'd give my
>quick $.02 review of the guys on our side, since their personalities also
>affected strategy and tactics as well.  MacArthur is the guy I have the most
>trouble with, probably because I personally find his vanity, politicking, and
>self-aggrandizing qualities more than a little distasteful (also his knack for
>twisting the truth to make MacArthur look good, no matter who suffered).  It
>seems to me his career alternated between serious blunders and brilliant
>strategic and grand tactical maneuvering.  I.e., he lets his air force (with
>its impressive fleet of four-engined B-17's) get surprised on the ground and
>wiped out hours after Pearl Harbor, but then conducts a supremely difficult
>double withdrawal into the Bataan perimeter almost without a hitch (however,
>his whole plan for Bataan is predicated on early relief which is not in the
>cards).

        The withdrawal to Bataan was a problem that MacArthur himself
created, though.  The US defense plans for the Philippines were for
the US forces to withdraw to Bataan immediately, moving stockpiles of
materiel to the peninsula from Manila.  Instead, MacArthur chucked
that plan and rushed his forces to the north to defend the beaches.
When things didn't go well, he finally resorted to the original plan
but no longer had the time to move the supplies.  As a result, his
troops suffered low rations, ammunition, and medical supplies.  Also
he helped propogate the myth that they were going to be resupplied.
If he truly believed it, he did not have a realistic grasp of the
situation.
--
Joe Barone
[email-masked]
We have our own ammunition -- it's filled with paint.  When we
fire it, it makes pretty pictures -- scares the hell out of people!

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 20:35:21 GMT+1
From:    SYSTEM OPERATOR <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Japan points 3 & 4 (& there ain't no more...)

Mike Yaklich <[email-masked]> writes:

>         3. I also referred yesterday to losses of American armor on Okinawa.
> To cite a couple of examples: On the sector facing Wana gorge, a canyon leadi
> to Okinawa's ancient hilltop capital Shuri, a Marine tank unit that started
> with 60 Shermans lost so many to enemy action or breakdowns that when Shuri w
> finally taken it only had six tanks still operating (this is from some notes

This is in no way surprising for a tank unit. Col. R.N. Dupuy made
interesting statistics on WWII and tank units losses, in percentage, were
shown to be 7-10 times those of infantry units, which are much higher than
artillery. Tank units have very high breakdown rates which nearly always
account for a large part of the casualties. In Operation Little Saturn for
example, Russian tank corps took 60% casualties by moving 120 km without
fighting. Eventually a large proportion are repaired. Okinawa's terrain
must have been worse than Russia.

> landed was covered by 100 machineguns.  I should note that at Tarawa, as at
> Iwo, the Japanese actually managed to inflict more casualties than they
> suffered-- Admiral Shibasaki's force on the atoll totalled almost 5,000 men,
> but of these only 2,600 from two Japanese marine units were fighting troops,
> and the rest laborers.  Marine casualties amounted to over 3,000 men.  Howeve

Again Mike, what is a casualty ? Japanese ones were 100% KIA, U.S. ones were
WIA+KIA+MIA. Many wounded Japanese kept on fighting, despite wounds for which
a U.S serviceman would have needed evacuation. Furthermore, a wounded
Japanese soldier would generally keep on fighting until killed for good,
thus not being counted as WIA, typically the casualties' manstay.
In reality, in the 1944 battles, Americans killed about 5-10 Japanese for
an American dead. At Tarawa there were 985 Marine KIA and 2183 WIA, versus
5200 Japanese KIA. According to Millot, among the 5,200 men, 4,800 were
combatants, not 2,600 (you are obviously not counting the 2,217 military
engineers, who fought to the death). The Korean workers are not counted.

Given the sensitivity on this subject, don't see "hidden intentions" behind
my note. I am only saying, analyze casualty figures with extreme caution.
Your posts are great Mike.

Arnaud.

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 18:09:11 -0500
From:    Henry Sirotin <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Endlosung (was:Is it true that they can trace a single document)

Dear David,

You've done a good job elucidating the "functionalist" school, but two
things bother me about it: first, the Germans took control of their first
large numbers of non-German Jews, about 350,000 in Czechoslovakia, in
March 1939. Extermination became the option within eighteen-twenty months.
This is hardly "very late." Second, the Germans knew they would be taking
control of very large numbers of Jews the minute they planned to occupy
Poland, and they had to know the war situation would make emigration
impossible, at least while the war lasted. They expected the war against
Russia to last three months. So in March 1941, if the "emigration"
hypothesis is valid, the Germans could have expected to be ready to
exile the European Jewish population by, say, November 1941. It could
even have been made a part of a German-Soviet peace treaty after a German
victory- send all of Europe's Jews to the Soviet Far East, where an
ostensibly "Jewish" Soviet republic already existed. But in March, 1941,
it is clear the extermination program was already planned, as witness
the Einsatzgruppen.

If the extermination program had begun in 1942, after the East Front
began to turn sour, or even later, I would say the functionalists had
a strong case. As it is- with extermination fully programmed *at a time
when the Germans expected the war to be all but over in a matter of months*-
I don't believe they have a case at all. The Einsatzgruppen were not a
response to conditions- they were the first step in creating the New Europe
the Nazis fully expected to be able to begin to realize without serious
external threat by the end of 1941.

Regards,

Henry Sirotin

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 18:42:08 -0500
From:    Henry Sirotin <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Japanese Peace Offerings

Dear Tim,

This is from memory, so... My understanding is that the Japanese never
formally contacted the US re peace offerings, but approached the Soviets,
who, with their own agenda to enter the Pacific War, never notified
Washington about the contacts. We learned of them because we were
reading the Japanese diplomatic code. So we had nothing to formally
respond to other than the broadcasts of Radio Tokyo, unless we were
prepared to risk blowing our cryptologic successes, which would have
been crucial in any real negotiation, or if those negotiations fell
through.

Regards,

Henry Sirotin

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 21:15:00 EST
From:    mc killop <[email-masked]>
Subject: [INF] USAAF 25 FEB 45

COMBAT CHRONOLOGY OF THE US ARMY AIR FORCES
SUNDAY, 25 FEBRUARY 1945
FTP SITES
  1. ftp.rutgers.edu in directory pub/wwii/usaf
  2. byrd.mu.wvnet.edu (129.71.32.152) in pub/history/military/airforce/
     wwii_chronology

AIRCRAFT MENTIONED IN THIS REPORT:
  A-20, Douglas Havoc
  B-17, Boeing Flying Fortress
  B-24, Consolidated Liberator
  B-25, North American Mitchell
  B-29, Boeing Superfortress
  C-47, Douglas Skytrain
  F-5, Lockheed Lightning
  P-38, Lockheed Lightning
  P-40, Curtiss
  P-47, Republic Thunderbolt
  P-51, North American Mustang

NOTE: A number in parenthesis after a target name indicates the number of
bombers attacking.

CHINA-BURMA-INDIA THEATER

  CHINA THEATER (Fourteenth Air Force): In China, 6 B-25s, supported by 5
P-40s, hit sampans and buildings in the Puchi area; 3 B-25s and 19 P-40s
pound the Isuho ferry and attack river and road traffic from Siangtan to
Hengyang; a single B-25 bombs truck convoys S of Hengyang; 4 B-24s over the
Gulf of Tonkin and S China Sea claim damaging hits on 2 vessels; 44 P-51s and
P-40s hit bridges, river shipping, troop areas, and motor transport at
Kweiyi, Paoching, and Siangtan, from Lingling to Hengyang and Leiyang, from
Anjen to Chaling, N of Liuchow, and W of Ishan.

  HQ AAF (Twentieth Air Force): HQ 40th Bombardment Group (Very Heavy) begins
a movement from Chakulia India to the Mariana Islands.

  INDIA-BURMA THEATER (Tenth Air Force): In Burma, in joint operations with
the British and Chinese army forces, 16 P-47s support the British 36 Division
in the Mongmit sector while 31 P-47s support the Chinese 38th and 50th
Divisions near Lashio and Namtu, respectively; a low B-25 strike knocks out a
suspension bridge at Namsang; 9 B-25s and 85 fighter-bombers blast troop
concentrations, supply areas, road traffic, and general targets of
opportunity behind enemy lines. 600+ transport sorties are completed to
forward areas.

EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS (ETO)

  AIRBORNE OPERATIONS (IX Troop Carrier Command): HQ 437th Troop Carrier
Group and the 83d, 84th, 85th and 86th Troop Carrier Squadrons move from
Ramsbury, England to Voisins Airfield, Coulommiers, France with C-47s.

  STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Eighth Air Force): 2 missions are flown.
  Mission 847: 1,197 bombers and 755 fighters are dispatched to hit tank
factories, airfields associated with jet aircraft, oil depots and rail
targets visually; they claim 34-0-21 Luftwaffe aircraft; 5 bombers and 8
fighters are lost:
  1. 377 B-17s are sent to hit the Maybach tank factory at Friedrichshaffen
(63) using Gee-H, and the station and marshalling yard (73) and oil storage
tanks and marshalling yard (174) at Munich; 51 hit the secondary target, the
marshalling yard at Ulm; 1 other hit Kenzingen, a target of opportunity; 2
B-17s are lost, 1 damaged beyond repair and 135 damaged; 1 airman is KIA, 2
WIA and 18 MIA. Escorting are 136 of 149 P-51s; they claim 1-0-2 aircraft on
the ground; 2 P-51s are lost (pilots MIA).
  2. 452 B-17s are dispatched to hit the marshalling yard at Munich (315) and
Neuburg (88); targets of opportunity are Kaufbeuren (13), Ludwigsfeldt
marshalling yard (12), Kempten (1), Durladingen (2), Rortwell (1) and other
(5); 3 B-17s are lost, 1 damaged beyond repair and 197 damaged; 1 airman is
KIA, 3 WIA and 27 MIA. 140 of 145 P-51s escort and claim 2-0-3 aircraft on
the ground.
  3. 368 B-24s are sent to hit the marshalling yard (115) and tank factory
(54) at Aschaffenburg and the airfields at Giebelstadt (96) and Schwabishch
Hall (93); 1 B-24 is damaged beyond repair and 31 damaged; 3 airmen are KIA
and 6 WIA. The escort is 126 of 135 P-51s.
  4. 262 P-47s and P-51s fly close escort and area patrols claiming 21-0-4
aircraft in the air and 10-0-12 on the ground; 6 P-51s are lost (pilots MIA)
and 1 P-47 is damaged beyond repair.
  5. 8 P-51s escort 4 F-5s on a photo reconnaissance mission over Germany.
  6. 32 of 34 P-51s fly a scouting mission.
  Mission 848: 12 B-24s drop leaflets in France, the Netherlands and Germany
during the night.

  TACTICAL OPERATIONS (Ninth Air Force): In Germany, the 9th Bombardment
Division strikes 4 rail bridges, 4 communications centers, a marshalling yard
and 9 targets of opportunity as part of the interdiction campaign against
Germany; fighters escort the bombers, attack assigned ground targets, fly
armed reconnaissance, and support the 8th and 104th Infantry Divisions in the
Duren area, the XIII and XlX Corps E of the Roer River, and the VIII, XII,
and XX Corps along the Prum and Saar Rivers.

MEDITERRANEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS (MTO)

  STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Fifteenth Air Force): In Austria, 600+ B-17s and
B-24s bomb marshalling yards in Amstetten, 2 in Linz, 2 in Villach, and
Salzburg, plus the Linz benzol plant and ordnance depot and several targets
of opportunity. Fighters escort and some afterwards strafe targets of
opportunity in Austria, SE Germany, and W Czechoslovakia. In Germany, 37
P-51s strafe railroad targets in the Rosenheim-Muhldorf-Landshut-Augsburg
areas. Routine reconnaissance and supply missions continue.

  TACTICAL OPERATIONS (Twelfth Air Force): In Italy during the night of 24/25
Feb, A-20s attack marshalling yards at Villafranca di Verona, Cittadella,
Castelfranco Veneto, Trento, and Turin, and airfields at Villafranca di
Verona and Bergamo; medium bombers cut or damage bridges at Vipiteno, Dogna,
Ala, and Campo San Pietro, and a railroad fill at San Felice del Benaco; XXII
Tactical Air Command fighters and fighter-bombers are restricted by ground
haze in the Po Valley but attack rail lines, marshalling yards, rolling
stock, motor transport, and dumps.

PACIFIC OCEAN AREA (POA)

  AAFPOA (Seventh Air Force): Lieutenant General Millard F Harmon, Commanding
General AAFPOA and Deputy Commander of the Twentieth AF, is lost near
Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands when his aircraft disappears enroute
to Washington DC. (On 2 Mar Major General Willis H Hale, AAFPOA deputy
commander for operations, assumes Harmon's positions).
  9 Guam Island-based B-24s hit blockhouses, and mortar and rocket-launching
positions on the NW part of Iwo Jima Island; 8 B-24s, flying separate
harassment strikes, pound airfields on Chichi Jima during the night of 25/26
Feb. In Hawaii, HQ 508th Fighter Group and the 466th Fighter Squadron move
from Kahuku to Mokuleia with P-47s.

  HQ AAF (Twentieth Air Force): Mission 38: 172 of 229 B-29s bomb the urban
area of Tokyo; 29 others hit alternates and targets of opportunity; this is
the XXI Bomber Command's largest mission to date and its first 3-wing strike
against Japan as the the 73d and 313th Bombardment Wings (Very Heavy) are
joined by the 314th; 3 B-29s are lost.

SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA [SWPA, Far East Air Force (FEAF)]: In Formosa, B-24s
bomb Takao and P-51s hit targets of opportunity along the E coast. On Luzon
Island, B-24s attack troop concentrations on the E side of the Ipo River and
pound Japanese positions between Ipo and Osboy. B-24s bomb Tawau and Labuan
Airfields in Borneo. HQ 49th Fighter Group and the 7th Fighter Squadron move
from San Jose, Mindoro Island to Lingayen, Luzon with P-38s.

SOURCES:
AIR FORCE COMBAT UNITS OF WORLD WAR II, Office of Air Force History,
  Headquarters USAF, 1961, ISBN 0-912799-02-1
COMBAT SQUADRONS OF THE AIR FORCE, WORLD WAR II, Office of Air Force
  History, Headquarters USAF 1982
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II: COMBAT CHRONOLOGY, 1941-1945 by the
  Office of Air Force History, Headquarters USAF, 1973
THE MIGHTY EIGHTH WAR DIARY by Roger A. Freeman, ISBN 1-85409-071-2

Jack McKillop
USAF (Airways and Air Communications Service)
1955-59

-------------------------------------------------------------------
|  Jack McKillop         |  Those who have long enjoyed such      |
|  Bellcore              |  privileges as we enjoy forget in      |
|  Piscataway, NJ USA    |  time that men have died to win them.  |
|  [email-masked]  |                       FDR              |
-------------------------------------------------------------------

25/0214Z FEB

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 21:28:00 EST
From:    mc killop <[email-masked]>
Subject: [INF] USAAF 26 FEB 45

COMBAT CHRONOLOGY OF THE US ARMY AIR FORCES
MONDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 1945
FTP SITES
  1. ftp.rutgers.edu in directory pub/wwii/usaf
  2. byrd.mu.wvnet.edu (129.71.32.152) in pub/history/military/airforce/
     wwii_chronology

AIRCRAFT MENTIONED IN THIS REPORT:
  A-20, Douglas Havoc
  A-26, Douglas Invader
  B-17, Boeing Flying Fortress
  B-24, Consolidated Liberator
  B-25, North American Mitchell
  B-26, Martin Marauder
  C-47, Douglas Skytrain
  P-38, Lockheed Lightning
  P-47, Republic Thunderbolt
  P-51, North American Mustang

NOTE: A number in parenthesis after a target name indicates the number of
bombers attacking.

CHINA-BURMA-INDIA THEATER

  CHINA THEATER (Fourteenth Air Force): In China, 20 B-25s, some with fighter
escort, bomb Ishan, Luchai, Siangtan, and hit bridges at Chuchou and Loshan.
In French Indochina, 9 B-25s attack bridges, railroad tracks, and heavy port
equipment at Ha Trung, along the Chu R, and at Hongay and Haiphong. 70+
fighter-bombers on armed reconnaissance over S and E China and N French
Indochina attack numerous targets of opportunity including airfields, town
areas, and river, rail, and road traffic.

  HQ AAF (Twentieth Air Force): HQ 462d Bombardment Group (Very Heavy) begins
a movement from Piardoba, India to the Mariana Islands.

  INDIA-BURMA THEATER (Tenth Air Force): In Burma, 12 P-47s support troops of
the British 36 Division in the Mongmit area; 8 support the MARS Task Force,
a composite Chinese-American force, in the Lashio sector while 16 others fly
close support for Chinese 50th Division troops near Namhsam; 8 B-25s on low-
level strikes knock out bypass bridges at Mong Pawn and Loi-leng; 80+
fighter-bombers and 4 B-25s continue to attack troops, supplies, road
traffic, and other targets immediately behind lines.  Again 600+ transport
sorties are flown.

EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS (ETO)

  AIRBORNE OPERATIONS (IX Troop Carrier Command): HQ 436th Troop Carrier
Group and the 80th, 81st and 82d Troop Carrier Squadrons move from Membury,
England to Melun, France with C-47s.

  STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Eighth Air Force): 2 missions are flown.
  Mission 849: 1,207 bombers and 726 fighters are dispatched to make H2X
radar attacks on three Berlin rail stations; they claim 6-0-0 Luftwaffe
aircraft; 3 B-17s and 3 P-51s are lost:
  1. 377 B-17s are sent to hit the Schlesischer rail station (363); 1 hits
Osnabruck, a target of opportunity; 2 B-17s are lost and 21 damaged; 1 airman
is WIA and 18 MIA. 214 of 244 P-51s escort claiming 4-0-0 aircraft in the
air.
  2. 446 B-17s set out to hit the Alexanderplatz rail station (418); 4 others
hit a target of opportunity; 1 B-17s is lost, 1 damaged beyond repair and 43
damaged; 8 airmen are KIA, 2 WIA and 9 MIA. Escorting are 232 of 240 P-51s;
they claim 2-0-0 aircraft on the ground; 3 P-51s are lost (2 pilots MIA).
  3. 361 B-24s are dispatched to hit the North rail station (285); 37 hit
Eberswalde, the secondary target; 4 hit a target of opportunity; 2 B-24s are
damaged beyond repair and 26 damaged; 3 airmen are WIA and 3 MIA. The escort
is 20 P-47s and 190 P-51s.
  4. 17 B-17s and 6 B-24s fly screening missions.
  5. 31 of 32 P-51 fly a scouting mission.
  Mission 850: During the night, 12 B-24s drop leaflets in the Netherlands
and Germany; and 5 B-24s fly a CARPETBAGGER mission.

  TACTICAL OPERATIONS (Ninth Air Force): In Germany, 235 A-20s, A-26s, and
B-26s attack the communications center at Wickrath, rail and road junctions
at Zieverich and Gladbach, a supply and ammunition depot (casual target), the
towns of Kapellen, Viersen, and Munstereifel, and targets of opportunity;
weather limits fighter operations to armed reconnaissance flights in the
Aschaffenburg-Wurzburg area by the XIX Tactical Air Command.

MEDITERRANEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS (MTO)

  STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Fifteenth Air Force): During the night of 25/26 Feb,
supply drops to N Italy continue. In Austria during the day 32 P-38s dive-
bomb and strafe the Graz-Bruck an der Mur-Wiener Neustadt rail lines and 12
others fly top cover. Other P-38s and P-51s fly reconnaissance and escort
missions. 102 B-24s, with fighter escort, dispatched against tactical targets
in Yugoslavia, are recalled when clouds completely cover the objectives.

  TACTICAL OPERATIONS (Twelfth Air Force): In Italy during the night of 25/26
Feb, A-20s considerably damage marshalling yards at Castelfranco Veneto and
Bazzano; medium bombers bomb railroad bridges at Legnago, Ala, Pontetidone,
and San Michele all'Adige; fighters and fighter-bombers hit bridges,
marshalling yards, rail lines, and transport targets at numerous points
including Nervesa della Battaglia, Ora, Bologna, Trento, Vicenza, Castelnuovo
di Garfagnana, and Avisio, and bomb airfields at Ghedi and Bergamo; XXII
Tactical Air Command aircraft also support US Fifth Army forces in the battle
area S of Bologna.

PACIFIC OCEAN AREA (POA)

  AAFPOA (Seventh Air Force): 9 B-24s sent from Guam Island against positions
on Iwo Jima Island are recalled due to cloud cover; 8 B-24s hit Chichi Jima
Island during the night of 26/27 Feb, flying individual harassment strikes.

SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA [SWPA, Far East Air Force (FEAF)]: B-24s over Formosa
hit Takao Airfield while fighters on a sweep strafe railroad targets. On
Luzon Island, B-24s bomb troop concentrations in the Ipo Dam area and support
ground forces NE of Manila; A-20s and fighter-bombers support ground forces
in the Echague Airfield area, at Ternate, Trinidad, and Antipolo, and hit
troops W of Ft Stotsenburg. A-20s, P-38s, and P-47s hit Puerto Princesa on
Palawan Island and B-25s bomb Zettle Airfield on Jolo Island. In Borneo,
B-24s hit Manggar and Sepinggang Airfields. The 9th Fighter Squadron, 49th
Fighter Group, moves from San Jose, Mindoro Island to Lingayen, Luzon with
P-38s and the 70th Fighter Squadron, 18th Fighter Group, moves from Lingayen,
Luzon to San Jose, Mindoro with P-38s.

SOURCES:
AIR FORCE COMBAT UNITS OF WORLD WAR II, Office of Air Force History,
  Headquarters USAF, 1961, ISBN 0-912799-02-1
COMBAT SQUADRONS OF THE AIR FORCE, WORLD WAR II, Office of Air Force
  History, Headquarters USAF 1982
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II: COMBAT CHRONOLOGY, 1941-1945 by the
  Office of Air Force History, Headquarters USAF, 1973
THE MIGHTY EIGHTH WAR DIARY by Roger A. Freeman, ISBN 1-85409-071-2

Jack McKillop
USAF (Airways and Air Communications Service)
1955-59

-------------------------------------------------------------------
|  Jack McKillop         |  Those who have long enjoyed such      |
|  Bellcore              |  privileges as we enjoy forget in      |
|  Piscataway, NJ USA    |  time that men have died to win them.  |
|  [email-masked]  |                       FDR              |
-------------------------------------------------------------------

25/0227Z FEB

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 20:02:54 EST
From:    William Lippert <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Is it true that they can trace a single document

On Thu, 23 Feb 1995 14:06:39 -0500 Henry Sirotin said:
>Planning for the mass extermination of Jews began in the winter of 1940-41,
>implemented by the March 1941 decision to include four special purpose
>Einsatzgruppen in Barbarossa. These four commandos, whose only mission
>was exterminating Jews, killed perhaps 1,250,000 by the end of October.
>
>Henry Sirotin

   I have read that the Einsatzgruppen had the responsibility not of killing
Jews, but removing all elements of the occupied territories that posed a
threat to the Reich.  These included intellectuals, local political figures,
religious persons, etc.  The Jews, of course, were included in the people
to be liquidated.

William Lippert
The American University

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 21:37:00 EST
From:    mc killop <[email-masked]>
Subject: [INF] 27 FEB 45

COMBAT CHRONOLOGY OF THE US ARMY AIR FORCES
TUESDAY, 27 FEBRUARY 1945
FTP SITES
  1. ftp.rutgers.edu in directory pub/wwii/usaf
  2. byrd.mu.wvnet.edu (129.71.32.152) in pub/history/military/airforce/
     wwii_chronology

AIRCRAFT MENTIONED IN THIS REPORT:
  A-20, Douglas Havoc
  A-26, Douglas Invader
  B-17, Boeing Flying Fortress
  B-24, Consolidated Liberator
  B-25, North American Mitchell
  B-26, Martin Marauder
  B-29, Boeing Superfortress
  C-46, Curtiss Commando
  C-47, Douglas Skytrain
  F-5, Lockheed Lightning
  P-38, Lockheed Lightning
  P-47, Republic Thunderbolt
  P-51, North American Mustang
  Spitfire, Vickers Supermarine

NOTE: A number in parenthesis after a target name indicates the number of
bombers attacking.

CHINA-BURMA-INDIA THEATER

  CHINA THEATER (Fourteenth Air Force): 12 B-25s knock out 4 bridges and
damage 2 others in N French Indochina. In China, 12 others bomb Ishan and
Hwaiyuanchen; 4 B-24s over the Gulf of Tonkin and S China Sea attack
shipping, claiming 2 vessels sunk; 19 fighter-bombers hit barracks SW of
Ishan, 15 attack Kiungshan Airfield, 12 hit targets of opportunity in the
Yoyang area, 23 hit targets of opportunity around Kiyang, and 30 others hit
scattered targets of opportunity at other points in S and E China; the 22d
Bombardment Squadron (Medium), 341st Bombardment Group (Medium), based at
Yangkai with B-25s, sends a detachment to operate from Peishiyi; the 35th
Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, Fourteenth AF, based at Chanyi with
F-5s, sends a detachment to operate from Laohwangping (another detachment is
operating from Chengkung).

  HQ AAF (Twentieth Air Force): Mission 40: In the Malayan States during the
night of 27/28 Feb, 10 of 12 B-29s mine Johore Strait on the E of Singapore
and 1 mines Penang harbor.
  Personnel of the 58th Bombardment Wing (Very Heavy) begin shipping out of
Calcutta, India for Tinian and Guam Islands, implementing the redeployment
orders of the 6 Feb War Department directive; the final shipment arrives in
the the Mariana Islands on 6 Jun, completing the transfer of the wing from
India without loss of a single life or aircraft.

  INDIA-BURMA THEATER (Tenth Air Force): In Burma, 18 P-47s closely support
ground forces in the Mongmit area; 4 others knock out a small bypass bridge
at Hay-ti; about 100 fighter-bombers attack troop concentrations, supplies,
gun positions, elephant transport, and road traffic along the battlefronts
and behind enemy lines. Transport operations continue on a large-scale as 589
sorties are completed.

EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS (ETO)

  STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Eighth Air Force): 2 missions are flown.
  Mission 851: 1,107 bombers and 745 fighters are dispatched to hit road and
rail communications at Halle and Leipzig using H2X radar; they claim 83-0-19
Luftwaffe aircraft; 2 B-24s and 2 P-51s are lost:
  1. 314 of 351 B-24s hit the marshalling yard at Halle; targets of
opportunity are Bitterfeld (21) and other (3); 2 B-24s are lost and 4
damaged; 1 airman is KIA and 18 MIA. Escorting are 196 P-47s and P-51s; they
claim 1-0-0 aircraft in the air and 45-0-3 on the ground; 2 P-51s are lost
(pilots MIA).
  2. 717 of 756 B-17s hit the rail center at Leipzig; 7 others hit targets of
opportunity; 1 B-17 is damaged beyond repair and 3 damaged; 2 airmen are KIA.
The escort is 453 of 489 P-51s; they claim 1-0-0 aircraft in the air and
36-0-16 on the ground without loss.
  3. 28 P-51s fly a scouting mission without loss.
  4. 13 P-51s escort 2 F-5s and 2 Spitfires on a photo reconnaissance mission
over C and E Germany.
  Mission 852: During the night of 27/28 Feb, 23 of 26 B-24s bomb
Wilhelmshafen oil storage by PFF without loss and 1 B-17 and 11 B-24s drop
leaflets in the Netherlands and Germany.

  TACTICAL OPERATIONS (Ninth Air Force): In Germany, 118 A-20s, A-26s and
B-26s attack the Ahrweiler rail bridge, communications centers at Glessen,
Munstereifel, and Monheim, and a target of opportunity; fighters fly leaflet
missions, attack Frankfurt/Main oil storage tanks, fly alerts, and strafe
from W of Duisburg to Worringen; the XXIX Tactical Air Command (Provisional)
also flies support for the XIII and XIX Corps SW and S of Monchen-Gladbach.

MEDITERRANEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS (MTO)

  STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Fifteenth Air Force): 540+ B-24s and B-17s, with
fighter escort, bomb marshalling yards at Augsburg, Germany and Salzburg,
Lienz, and Jenbach, Austria plus several targets of opportunity; escorting
fighters strafe targets of opportunity during the return flight. Routine
reconnaissance and supply missions continue.

  TACTICAL OPERATIONS (Twelfth Air Force): In Italy during the night of 26/27
Feb, A-20s bomb enemy movement at 14 different places in the Po Valley,
marshalling yards at Villafranca di Verona and Isola della Scala, the town of
Bazzano, and airfields at Villafranca di Verona and Ghedi; XXII Tactical Air
Command fighter-bombers concentrate on railroad cutting in the Brenner area
and NE Italy, claiming 36 cuts, and attack rolling stock in the Villach,
Austria area; medium bombers destroy a railroad diversion bridge at San
Michele all'Adige and cut approaches on the Ala and Lavis bridges and
effectively blast the Spilimbergo and Pagnocco dumps.

PACIFIC OCEAN AREA (POA)

  AAFPOA (Seventh Air Force): 9 Guam Island-based B-24s blast pillboxes,
artillery emplacements, blockhouse, and mortar positions on the N part of Iwo
Jima Island. On Mindanao Island, 22 B-24s from Angaur Island bomb Daliao and
Libby Airfields. During the night of 27/28 Feb, 9 B-24s, flying snooper
strikes out of Guam, bomb airfields, radio stations, and the town of Okimura
on Haha Jima Island.

SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA [SWPA, Far East Air Force (FEAF)]: B-24s, A-20s, and
P-38s strike Puerto Princesa on Palawan Island in preparation for the
following morning's allied amphibious landings. On Luzon Island, ground
support continues on a largescale including a strike on Baguio by P-51s. On
Mindanao P-38s and USMC aircraft hit airfields. B-24s bomb Tarakan and
Jesselton Airfields in Borneo. On Formosa, Takao is hit by B-24s while
fighters sweep the W coast. Sweeping the China coast, B-25s hit a fleet of
junks and sampans near Hong Kong destroying and damaging 25+. The 8th Fighter
Squadron, 49th Fighter Group, moves from San Jose, Mindoro Island to
Lingayen, Luzon with P-38s and the 12th Fighter Squadron, 18th Fighter Group,
moves from Lingayen to San Jose with P-38s. The 65th and 66th Troop Carrier
Squadrons, 403d Troop Carrier Group, moves from Biak Island to Morotai Island
with C-46s and C-47s (the squadrons cease operating from Hill Field,
Mindoro); and the 432d Fighter Squadron, 475th Fighter Group, moves from
Dulag, Leyte Island to Clark Field, Luzon with P-38s (a detachment is
operating from San Jose, Mindoro).

SOURCES:
AIR FORCE COMBAT UNITS OF WORLD WAR II, Office of Air Force History,
  Headquarters USAF, 1961, ISBN 0-912799-02-1
COMBAT SQUADRONS OF THE AIR FORCE, WORLD WAR II, Office of Air Force
  History, Headquarters USAF 1982
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II: COMBAT CHRONOLOGY, 1941-1945 by the
  Office of Air Force History, Headquarters USAF, 1973
THE MIGHTY EIGHTH WAR DIARY by Roger A. Freeman, ISBN 1-85409-071-2

Jack McKillop
USAF (Airways and Air Communications Service)
1955-59

-------------------------------------------------------------------
|  Jack McKillop         |  Those who have long enjoyed such      |
|  Bellcore              |  privileges as we enjoy forget in      |
|  Piscataway, NJ USA    |  time that men have died to win them.  |
|  [email-masked]  |                       FDR              |
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25/0235Z FEB

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Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 20:42:18 EST
From:    William Lippert <[email-masked]>
Subject: INFO: Hitler and Votes

There has been some discussion here saying that the Germans are responsible
for Hitler because they voted him into power.  I do not find this valid insofar
as one bases that opinion based on voting numbers.  Here are some little facts:

In January 1919, the SPD (Social Democrats) had 37.9% of the votes.  This
went up and down,though it generally dropped to a level of 20.4% in Nov. 1932.
If one would like to add the Independent Socialists (USPD), who merged with
the SPD after this election, the number climbs to 45.5%

The KPD (Communists) did not run until June 1920, receiving 2.1%.  By Nov. 6,
1932, they had 16.9% (5,980,200 votes)

The Center Party started with 19.7% in Jan 1919, and steadily declined to 11.9%

The Democrats (DDP) started at 18.6% in Jan 1919 and dropped to 1.0% in Nov
1932.

The Nationalists (DNVP) started at 10.3% in Jan 1919 and made a steady climb
in Dec 1924 to 20.5%.  But by July 1932, this had dropped to 5.9%.  But in
the Nov 1932 elections, they regained some votes to a total of 8.8%.

The NSDAP (Nazis) started their votes in May 1924, receiving 6.5%.  But by
May 1928, their support had dropped to 2.6%.  With the depression, they
made a phenomenal jump to 18.3% in the Sept 1930 elections.  The next time,
in July 1932, they received 37.4%.  HOWEVER, in Nov. 1932, their votes
actually dropped to 33.1%

What can be learned from this?  The Nazi's went up and down with economic
conditions.  I believe that it was by a stroke of luck that they were able
to get power.  As one can see here, their support was waning by November
1932 due to many factors.  It is signifcant, I think, that the KPD and the
DNVP both gained in the polls, to the loss of the NSDAP.

There was another election in 1933, but I do not include this for an important
reason: when the next vote was held, the Nazis controlled the press, the police
, and local governments.  The elections of 6 November 1932 were the last
"Free" elections, and to cite the next elections in which the Nazis received
a considerable majority is ignoring the conditions of the election.

William Lippert
The American University

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 23:32:36 -0500
From:    Ben Frank <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: SCHEDULING JAPAN'S

Yes, Ed. Why don't you post your articlesoon? I'd like to read it. Ben Frank

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Feb 1995 23:34:44 -0500
From:    Ben Frank <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: (INF) QUES ON IWO

Rob, once the troops advanced beyond the airfields, they entered an area of
twisted, cross-compartmented rocky areas, where you could at least hide behind
boulders, or around the corner from pillboxes which were sighted right on the
only routes of advance. A friend of mine, a company commander, who is now a
retired colonel--you may have seen him on NBC news Sunday evening, Tom
Fields--left Iwo with only 44 of his original company. Many units suffered
losses of 200 percent or more. Replacements were fed in, but, as you indicated
in your Huertgen series, and as my late, lamented friend, Charles MacDonald,
noted in "Company Commander," except for providing bodies to fill in, these
replacements, with some exceptions, just could not fit into a formerly bonded
organization. The replacement situation was sad, especially on Iwo and at
Okinawa. The replacements were worked as shore party troops until they were
needed at the front, and then they were fed in to the units, and were often
killed before anybody got to know who they were. I think that was typical of
both Europe and the Pacific. Re/interviews, none were conducted immediately
after the battle for the reason the Marine Corps did not have a field history
program until the time of Okinawa, and that one yielded meagre results, unlike
the Army's great program, with such professionals in the teams as Martin
Blumenson, Forrest Pogue, James MacGregor Burns, and the like, and of course
Slam Marshall. And so, the only interviews we have in our collection are with
senior officers who were junior or field officers on Okinawa. And I will send
you the Iwo pamphlet Monday, when I return to my office. Cheers, Ben. BTW, I
live only down the road from you in Bowie.

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End of WWII-L Digest - 23 Feb 1995 to 24 Feb 1995
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