Posted on 04/15/2012 4:45:19 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Carroll V. Glines, The Doolittle Raid
Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1942/apr42/f15apr42.htm
Japanese advancing northward in Burma
Wednesday, April 15, 1942 www.onwar.com
In Burma... Japanese follow up their breakthrough the British defenses on April 13th with a drive northward. One British division is encircled in the advance.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/frame.htm
April 15th, 1942
UNITED KINGDOM: London: Lord Louis Mountbatten’s dazzling progress through the military hierarchy continues apace. Less than six months after being appointed chief of the tri-service Combined Operations, he has been made a vice-admiral of the Royal Navy, a lieutenant-general in the army, an air-marshal of the RAF and a full member of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. At yesterday’s meeting in London of the Anglo-American Combined Commanders’ Group. it was decided that no major Allied assault on the Nazis in western Europe could be launched this year. The decision puts the onus on Mountbatten at Combined Operations to keep the Germans guessing by delivering a succession of hit-and-run raids. One report, unconfirmed, says that he is planning an assault in strength on one of the French Channel ports. Such an operation, it is said, would provide invaluable experience for a full-scale invasion.
There are to be no more frills and fripperies in Britain as from 1 June. A new order issued by the board of trade bans embroidery, applique work and lace on women’s and girl’s underwear and also introduces stringent rule designed to minimize the work and material put into clothing. Skirts are to have no more than three buttons, six seams, one pocket and two box pleats or four knife pleats. Double-breasted suits are out, and men will also lose pockets on pyjamas.
POLAND: Sobibor, the new camp set deep in the woods near the river Bug, on a former railway siding, is ready to receive its first transports of Polish Jews and Gypsies. Like Chelmo and Belzec, it is a death camp: there will be no forced labour here, just immediate extermination in the gas chamber.
SS Staff Sergeant Paul Grot is one of the staff waiting to greet the first arrival. He is especially proud of his enormous dog Barry, trained to rip off the testicles of his master’s chosen victim on the command Jude! [Jew]
UNITED KINGDOM: King George VI writes to the governor of Malta awarding the island the GC “to honour her brave people” and “to bear witness to a heroism and devotion that will long be famous.”
ATLANTIC: German submarine U-575 torpedoes and sinks the unarmed U.S. freighter SS Robin Hood, en route to Boston, Massachusetts from Trinidad, British West Indies, about 300 miles (483 km) off Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. (Jack McKillop)
U.S.A.: US Navy Motor Torpedo Squadron 3 is decommissioned. (Jack McKillop)
Claire Chennault is recalled to active duty in the USAAF as a colonel. (Jack McKillop)
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: The last remaining motor torpedo boat, PT-41, her torpedoes expended and lacking gasoline to operate, is transferred to the Army to be moved overland to Lake Lanao where she is slated for service as a machine gun boat. The rapid Japanese advance across Mindanao, however, compels the Army to destroy PT-41 to prevent her capture. (Jack McKillop)
"The old argument that 'planes can sink ships' is as much beside the point as it ever was.
No proof of that statement was ever needed -- though, for the doubting Thomases the headlines have offered redundant proof.
But sunken ships -- no matter how sunk -- no more invalidate the concept of the ship as a commerce carrier and man-of-war than wrecked planes invalidate the concept of the plane as a commerce carrier and aerial man-of-war."Any ship ever built, no matter how strong, can be sunk by air attack if enough force can be concentrated against it.
Planes and fleets of planes can be destroyed if enough force can be concentrated against them.The air extremists have now dismissed navies and merchant navies as obsolescent, if not obsolete, just as the surfact-ship conservatives in the past blocked the full development of naval air power.
Neither is right.
The plane is a commerce carrier and an aerial man-of-war; but despite the predictions of a few air extremists, it probably will never totally replace -- certainly not within the foreseeable future -- the surface ship in either function."The quantity of air freight carried will unquestionably increase in the future, but today and tomorrow and probably throughout our generation the red-leaded tramp and the humble, smoking freighter will continue to carry the great majority of the world's bulk freight.
Heavy machinery, heavy munitions, wheat, manganese, railroad rolling stock, crude rubber, oil, gasoline -- indeed, nearly all of the important international commodities except those items relatively light in weight and small in bulk -- will certainly continue to be carried by surface carriers."
Baldwin did not foresee the advent of super-tankers and super cargo ships carrying hundreds of thousands of tons -- not-so-humble as the old smoking tramp freighters.
Otherwise, still spot on.
And when did anyone last see or hear the term "red-leaded tramp"?
Didn't Willie Nelson have a hit song about one of those some years ago?
Maybe not.
I'm finding this series on air power instructive. I have been saving my hard copies as I post them (normally I recycle the whole post) and when I find the time I think I will transcribe the series for posting on the discussion thread. Like I did with Baldwin's series on Pearl Harbor.
The M3 White scout car had full-time four-wheel drive, armor plating and mounted three machine guns.
But it weighed nearly 5 tons, and the engine was only 110 horsepower.
It had a 4-speed transmission and no power steering.
All told, about 21,000 M3s were built during the war, and some served in other countries' armies into the 1950s and beyond.
By April 1942 the US had already designated a new 6X4 as the M8 Light Armored Car.
Weighing twice the old M3, the M8 had a longer range and better crew protection.
About 8,500 M8s were built, but it wasn't perfect:
The newer Ford built M8:
If I remember right, dedicated "scout cars" have always been a problem for the US Army.
One result is that today there is no such single purpose vehicle.
Such great reading. I don’t thank you often enough for posting these threads and I know what it takes. When we did the FReeper Foxhole daily threads it was a lot of work.
I really enjoy these though I don’t often post. I wanted you to know that.
Thanks again.
I thought mostly the same when reading Baldwin today. Spot on about maritime commerce. The only thing he didn’t predict was that post-war American naval hegemony and those huge container ships and tankers would make it cheaper to make and ship items overseas than it does to make things locally.
Baldwin hedged his bets on the aircraft carrier, and wasn’t ready to completely abandon the battleship yet. But I’ll bet that he’ll come around before the year is out.
Patton would later in a tongue and cheek manner describe the half-track as being one of the two best weapons in the German arsenal.
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