Subject: WWII-L Digest - 15 Apr 1995 to 16 Apr 1995

From: Automatic digest processor <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 00:01:20 -0400

There are 9 messages totalling 445 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. fishy sub names
  2. INF: 50 Years Ago - 15-APR-1945
  3. TRIVIA: DUKW - Vehicle id
  4. INF: 50 Years Ago - 16-APR-1945
  5. Catholicism and Fasci
  6. Raid on Cabanatuan #20
  7. INF: 50 Years Ago - 17-APR-1945
  8. WW2 Books
  9. Italian submarines

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Date:    Sun, 16 Apr 1995 03:27:04 EDT
From:    Charles Mattocks <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: fishy sub names

Judi- you forgot 219 Amberjack... my first cousin was on it.  Diablo is spanish
for Devil.

Hope this helps.
Chip

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

Date:    Sun, 16 Apr 1995 11:48:05 EDT
From:    John Davis <[email-masked]>
Subject: INF: 50 Years Ago - 15-APR-1945

On 15-APR-1945, the following occurred -

World War II - The Battlefronts
-------------------------------
Western Front - In the Canadian 1st Army sector, the 49th division
completes the capture of Arnhem. In the British 2nd Army sector, the XXX
Corps is advancing towards Bremen and the VIII Corps towards Ulzen. In the
U.S. 9th Army sector, the XIII Corps attacks the right bank of the Saale.
The V Corps reaches the bridges over the Mulde between Colditz and Lastau.
In the 3rd Army sector, the XX Corps is crossing the Muld near Rochlitz and
Lunzenau. The 4th Armoured Division is advancing towards Chemnitz. In the
7th Army sector, the XV Corps continues advancing in the Nuremberg sector
while the XXI Corps continues advancing in the Neustadt sector. In the
French 1st Army sector, the II Corps occupies the Black Forest while the I
Corps crosses the Rhine.

Eastern Front - The 3rd Ukraine Front captures Radkesburg southeast of
Graz. The 2nd Ukraine Front is attacking north towards Brno. The 1st and
2nd White Russian Fronts are preparing for their great offensive against
Berlin.

Italian Front - In the 5th Army sector, the IV Corps pushes ahead in the
Suzzano and Vergato sectors. The II Corps launches an attack toward
Bologna. Elements of the Polish II Corps begin to cross the Sillaro.

Philippines - In the I Corps area, elements of the 37th Division push
forward on Highway 9 beyond Quioeng. In the XI Corps area, protracted
fighting by the 38th Division in the Mt. Pinatubo area is concluded.
Elements of the 11th Airborne Division open an eastward attack on the Mt.
Malepunyo hill mass. In the southern Philippines the Americal Division
continues in battle on the heights commanding Cebu City.

Okinawa - In the III Amphibous Corps area, fighting on Motobu Peninsula is
bitter and costly as the 6th Marine Division continues to press in on the
Yae-Take hill mass under heavy and effective fire from the dominating
terrain.

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

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/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Date:    Sun, 16 Apr 1995 23:04:11 +0700
From:    "Peter E. Beal" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: TRIVIA: DUKW - Vehicle id

On Thu, 13 Apr 1995, Gary R Speer wrote:

> To:   "William L. Huber - SAA" <[email-masked]>
>
>  - - - - - -
> >It was Ike who said there were 3 big factors in the US success
> >in Europe -   the C-47, the jeep and the DUKW.
>
> >He had high praise for those ugly beasts but they really did the job.
>
> > Cheers, Bill Huber / [email-masked]
>
> What about those Large, Slow Targets (LST's)?
>
> Gary Speer
>
And what about the perforated, linking, steel airfield matting?  It made
instant airfields of any odd piece of semi-level ground and allowed close
support aircraft to move right behind the advancing ground forces.

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

Date:    Sun, 16 Apr 1995 15:53:22 EDT
From:    John Davis <[email-masked]>
Subject: INF: 50 Years Ago - 16-APR-1945

On 16-APR-1945, the following occurred -

World War II - The Battlefronts
-------------------------------
Western Front - In the Canadian 1st Army sector, the II Corps captures
Groningen. In the U.S. 1st Army sector, the XVIII Airborne Corps pushes
deeper into the Ruhr pocket. The V and VII Corps extend their bridgeheads
on the Mulde. Elements of the V Corps enter Colditz. In the 7th Army
sector, the XV Corps reaches the outskirts of Nuremberg.

Eastern Front - The final offensive against Berlin begins. The 1st Ukraine
Front creates a bridgehead over the Neisse in the Triebel area. Heavy
attacks also occur near Ratibor. The 1st White Russian Front attacks north
and south of Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, advancing from the Kustrin bridgehead
over the Oder. On the northern front the 3rd White Russian Front are
clearing the Japanese from the Samland Peninsula in East Prussia. In
Austria, the 3rd Ukraine Front is advancing west of Vienna capturing Polten
and Furstenfeld.

Philippines - In the I Corps area, the 37th Division is advancing along the
west coast after overcoming heavy Japanese resistance. In the XIV Corps
area, elements of the 11th Airborne Division capture Mt. Maleypunyo and Mt.
Dalaga. On Cebu the Americal Division makes slow progress on the hills
around Cebu City.

Okinawa - Elements of the 6th Marine Division are sent in for a final,
all-out assualt on the Yae-Take hill mass in the Motobu peninsula. Heavy
fighting insues all day and the issue is very much in question as the day
comes to an end. The 77th Division begins landing on Ie Shima, west of the
Motobu peninsula. Kamikazes attack again sinking the destroyer Pringle and
seriously damaging the carrier Intrepid.

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

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:    Sun, 16 Apr 1995 06:22:00 -0500
From:    Frank Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Catholicism and Fasci

 WWID> WID> Would you be so kind as to re-post part 1 of 6.  Part 1 was "lost".

 WWID> Thank you.

 WWID> Rich Cameron

                    The Pope and the Holocaust:  1/6

                                Preface

There are two topics regarding Catholic history which are brought up
time-and-time again -- the Inquisition and the Holocaust.  What part
did the Church play in each?  The following information will be taken
largely from two sources:

(1) A national weekly news magazine, "Catholic Twin Circle", issue of
November 5, 1989.  The article, entitled "Anatomy of a Lie:  Pope
Pius XII and the Holocaust" is by Robert J. Hutchinson.
(2) The second source is a lecture entitled "Pius XII:  Years of
Praise,  Years of Blame", delivered at Theological College, The
Catholic University of America, on October 10, 1989, by Rev. Robert
A. Graham S.J., under the auspices of the Catholic League for
Religious and Civil Rights.  He had spent much of the previous 17
years searching and assembling files containing documents of the
Vatican Secretariat of State during World War II

Over one-third of a century has passed since the death, in 1958, of
Pope Pius XII.  That a Roman Pontiff so long dead should continue to
arouse not merely interest but even continuing controversy is
surprising.  Perhaps general interest in World War II and its
accompanying issues has much to do the this.  In any event, the
Vatican -- The Holy See, the Papacy -- and its wartime incumbent,
Pius XII, have been "discovered."  Evidently, what the Pope of Rome
says, or does not say,  does or does not do, can have significance
even outside the circle of his own faithful.

There were years, when Pius XII, born Eugenio Pacelli, pope since
1939, enjoyed a good press, as we say today, and others in which he
had a bad press.  His election on the eve of war was hailed with
satisfaction by the Western democracies.  He was in close contact
with President Roosevelt.  His pronouncements on the war were widely
and positively publicized.  When Rome was finally liberated in June
1944, officers and soldiers of all faiths crowded into the Vatican
halls for a treasured papal audience.  Jewish leaders, likewise, in
visits to the Vatican, expressed their appreciation for all the the
Holy Father had done for their afflicted people during the harrowing
years of the war.  At his death in 1958, world opinion -- not
excepting Jewish leaders in Israel and out of it -- was lavish with
expressions of admiration.

The most remarkable aspect to the ongoing controversy over what Pope
Pius XII did, or should have done to aid the 11 million Jews and non-
Jews murdered by the Nazis, is the vast difference between the
opinions of those who actually lived through the conflict and those
of modern commentators today, many of whom were not even born when
World War II ended.

Jewish writers and statesmen of the 1950s had only praise for the
pope's effort on behalf of Jewish and other persecuted minorities
during the war.  Many of them had seen firsthand the burnt-out
cities, the piles of bodies, the entire continent of Europe left a
desolate wasteland.  They knew the terrifying, indeed, satanic fury
of the Nazi onslaught, and were amazed that the fragile and largely
powerless pope, literally surrounded by Nazi tanks and facing the
like possibility of being taken hostage by the Gestapo, had summoned
the courage to say and do the things he did.

After the war, Rabbi Isaac Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, sent a
"special blessing" to the pope for his "lifesaving efforts on behalf
of the Jews during the Nazi occupation of Italy."

Rabbi Elio Toaff, for a time Chief Rabbi of Rome, said after the
death of Pope Pius XII that "more than anyone else, we have had the
opportunity to appreciate the great kindness, filled with compassion
and magnanimity, that the pope displayed during the terrible years of
persecution and terror, when it seemed that there was no hope left
for us"

Dr. Nahum Goldmann, then-president of the World Jewish Congress,
wrote at the time of Pius' death that "with special gratitude we
remember all he has done for the persecuted Jews during one of the
darkest periods in their entire history."

Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, who lost relatives to the
death camps, even eulogized this much-maligned pope on the floor of
the United Nations.  "During the 10 years of the Nazi terror, " the
Israeli prime minister said, "when our people went through the
horrors of martyrdom, the pope raised his voice to condemn the
persecutors and to commiserate with their victims."

All of this must be contrasted with the vituperative bigotry that has
been displayed against the Catholic Church in general and Pius XII in
particular in the years since the late 1960s, most of it in the US
press.  For reasons that have little to do with the historical record
of the Church and the Jews, many commentators, mostly liberals but
also one or two anti-Catholic conservatives such as George Will, have
felt free to express any malicious lie or innuendo against the
Church, no matter how ridiculous or unsubstantiated.

Why do they do this?  Because the Church stands as one of the few
pillars of opposition to many of the most cherished dogmas of both
"progressive" liberalism and laissez-faire capitalism -- dogmas such
as abortion, divorce, state versus family authority and so on.  This
has caused both liberal and neo-conservative elites, many but not all
of them Jewish, to unleash a furious assault of calumny on the
Church.  And always, Pius XII is the convenient first strike in this
general assault.

In February 1987, for example, the liberal weekly The Nation, run by
the Jewish editor Victor Navasky, reported that "it is of course
true: that "the Holy See was one of the patrons of Nazism" and that
"fascism was essentially a Roman Catholic movement."

Not to be outdone in mindless hatred of the Church, the equally high-
minded New Republic -- which unlike the more balanced Israeli
newspapers, Davar, Ma'ariv and Yediot ha-Achranot, seldom misses an
opportunity to vilify the Church -- stated that, as far as peace in
the Middle East is concerned, "the Vatican has just about the same
moral authority as the Kremlin."

Despite Pope John Paul II's "mawkish words about the sufferings of
the children of Abraham," the editors of The New Republic sneered,
"He and his Church have not quite been able to bring themselves to
accept the fact of a reconstituted Jewish commonwealth in the Holy
Land."

Why did the New Republic make such an obviously biased statement?
The reason, The New Republic explained, is that "however much they
[Catholics] may deny it," this reluctance stems from the "historical
hatred of the Church for the Jews."

         (Continued in "The Pope and the Holocaust" 2/6)

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

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

Date:    Sun, 16 Apr 1995 13:49:34 -0700
From:    James Wilson <[email-masked]>
Subject: Raid on Cabanatuan #20

INSTALLMENT TWENTY IN A SERIES
Raid on Cabanatuan
a scenario of the published book
"Raid on Cabanatuan"
by Forrest Bryant Johnson
(C) 1988 A Thousand Autumns Press
all rights reserved
REPRODUCED ELECTRONICALLY WITH PERMISSION
4/16/95

January 30, 1945:
8:15 P.M.
----------
In 28 minutes all the Japanese in the POW camp are dead.  The POW's
and Allied wounded are carried across the Pampanga River and placed
in waiting carabao carts. They begin to roll to Platero.

Captain Prince makes one last search of the camp to insure that everyone
is out. He overlooks one POW.

8:30 P.M.
----------
Captain Fisher is rushed into surgery at the Platero school house. A
Filipino doctor is assisted by two recently released POW doctors and
a number of combat medics and Filipino nurses.

--- TO BE CONTINUED ---
(For info on obtaining a copy of the Book and/or scenario,  and or
missed List episodes, E-Mail:  Jim Wilson :  [email-masked])

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

Date:    Sun, 16 Apr 1995 19:27:26 EDT
From:    John Davis <[email-masked]>
Subject: INF: 50 Years Ago - 17-APR-1945

On 17-APR-1945, the following occurred -

World War II - The Battlefronts
-------------------------------
Western Front - In the British 2nd Army sector, the XXX Corps is fighting
in the suburbs of Bremen. The VIII Corps has not been able to make progress
at Ulzen. In the U.S. 9th Army sector, the XIX Corps attacks Magdeburg. The
XVIII Airborne Corps reaches Duisburg, Solingen, Dusseldorg and Werden in
the Ruhr pocket. The VII Corps consolidates positions between the Mulde and
Elbe. Elements of the V Corps are approaching Leipzig. In the 7th Army
sector, the XV Corps is converging on Nuremberg.

Eastern Front - The offensive against Berlin continues. The 1st Ukraine
Front crosses the Neisse and advances quickly towards the Spree. The 1st
White Russian Front is advancing south of Frankfurt-on-the Oder. On the
Austrian Fronts, heavy pressure is being put on the Germans south of St.
Polten.

Italian Front - In the U.S. 5th Army sector, the 92nd Division is making
for Sarzana. The IV Corps reaches Monte Ferra and Monte Moscoso. In the
British 8th Army sector, the Polish II Corps advances west of Medicina.

Philippines - In the I Corps area, the 37th Division reaches the Irisan.
The 32nd Division continues mopping up around the Salacsac Pass. In the XI
Corps area, the 6th Division eliminates all Japanese resistance on Mt.
Mataba. In the XIV Corps area, the 1st Cavalry Division makes slight
progress on Mt. Mataasna Bundoc. In the southern Philippines, the 24th
Division lands on Mindanao Island. The landing force makes good progress
against no opposition. On Cebu, the Americal Division occupies the hills
around Cebu City.

Okinawa - The 6th Marine Division captures the summit of Yae-Take, finally
breaking through the Japanese defences. On Ie Shima, the 77th Division is
advancing towards Mt. Iegusugu which dominates the entire island. Elements
of the 77th reach the edge of Ie.

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

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:    Sun, 16 Apr 1995 19:54:17 -0500
From:    Burt Knight <[email-masked]>
Subject: WW2 Books

A while back, I thought of assembling a list of books about ww2.  We
each have our favourites and you may have read some I haven't. If each
member of the list who wants to participate would post a list of their
10 'best' books about ww2, it might give us all some new material to
seek out for our collections.
My 'top 10':
1. 'Wing Leader', JE Johnson (RAF Fighter Command, (1939-45))
2. 'Enemy Coast Ahead', Guy Penrose Gibson (RAF Bomber Command
(1937-1944))
3. 'Flight to Arras', Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French AF (1939-1944))
4. 'Night Action' (forget the author) (Small Boats in North Sea)
5. 'I Could Never be so Lucky Again', James Doolittle (You may have
heard of this guy ;>)
6. 'The Other Side of Time', Brendan Phibbs (Combat Surgeon)
7. 'A Bloody War', Hal Lawrence (Convoys in the North Atlantic)
8. 'A Bridge too Far', Cornelius Ryan (Attempt to cross the Rhine)
9. 'The Theory and Practice of Hell', Eugen Kogen (Concentration Camp
Management)
10. 'Safer Than a Known Way', Ian McHorton (Gurkha and British Troops,
Burma, 1942)

Most of these are still in print. If there are any you haven't read, I
highly recommend them.
 Lest anyone think I'm slanted to the British view, close behind the
above were 'Thunderbolt', 'Hit Hard', 'The Black March', 'Serenade to
the Big Bird', 'First and the Last', 'A Glorious Way to Die', 'Operation
 Drumbeat' and 'Janes World Aircraft 1945-46'.  I've read over 1,000
books on WW2, taught a course at the college level on it and these are
my choice for good narratives that can keep a reader focused on the
material, educate and inform (Except de Saint-Exupery who can put most
people to sleep in a matter of minutes.)  Looking forward to your lists.
BWK

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

Date:    Sun, 16 Apr 1995 22:36:16 -0400
From:    Paul Silverstone <[email-masked]>
Subject: Italian submarines

My question regaarding the sinking of the submarine Settembrini by the
USS Frament, a destroyer escort, was whether it was a simple collision,
or whether it was sunk in error in a case of mistaken identity as a U-boat.
Paul Silverstone

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

End of WWII-L Digest - 15 Apr 1995 to 16 Apr 1995
*************************************************