Posted on 07/27/2012 4:08:39 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Richard Tregaskis, Guadalcanal Diary
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1942/jul42/f27jul42.htm
Army Group B clears elbow of the Don
Monday, July 27, 1942 www.onwar.com
German battery deployed in the elbow of the Don River [photo at link]
On the Eastern Front... Elements of German Army Group B, including the 6th Army under General Paulus, battle the Soviets to clear the elbow on the Don River. The Soviet city Kalach is attacked by German troops
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/frame.htm
July 27th, 1942
UNITED KINGDOM: The first RAF unit to get the North American P-51 Mustang is No. 2 Squadron, RAF Army Co-Operation Command based at RAF Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire. In April 1942 they swapped their CurtissMk. I and IIA (P-40) Tomahawks for the Mustangs.
Today is their first mission.
The mission assigned to No. 2 Squadron on 27 July 1942 was a harassment of the shipping in the Ruhr industrial complex. The manufacturing city of Dortmund received ore and coal through a system of canals connected with the Ems River, the Rhine River and the North Sea. The aqueduct system at Dortmund carried 400 trainloads a day between the Rhineland and central Germany. This would be the first crossing of the German border by fighter airplanes of any type during World War II from bases in England. Sixteen Mustang aircraft left Sawbridgeworth and flew eastward across the Netherlands.
The first target was a German military installation on the Dutch border. Several strafing passes were made over the camp and then the squadron reformed and headed into Germany. On crossing the Ems River, the formation turned south and the first city in Germany presenting desirable targets was Lathan. The Mustangs strafed a factory and petroleum storage tanks at Lathan and followed the river toward the manufacturing center of Dortmund. The canal leading into the city from the Ems River was congested with barges and the formation raised havoc with the ore laden boats and lock gates along the canal. The formation reassembled and headed towards England. The pilots were pleased with the results of the mission and the fact that no enemy aircraft had been encountered. After crossing the Dutch border, the squadron leader sought still one more target. This was presented on the Zuider Zee, along the Dutch coast, in the form of two large ships. The Mustangs again attacked and left one ship afire and the other shattered by an explosion. All 16 aircraft returned to home base and the mission debriefing. There was praise for the Mustang from every quarter. (Jack McKillop)
GERMANY: RAF bombers raid Hamburg.
USSR: Army Group B, including the German 6th Army of General Paulus, meets heavy Russian resistance in their battle to clear the elbow of the Don River.
Moscow: The Red Army is pulling back to the river Don where Marshal Timoshenko, who has withdrawn his main forces in good order, is setting up a new defence line.
The Germans have already claimed the recapture of Rostov-on-Don from which they were driven last December. But many Russian soldiers remain in the shattered city, and, holed up in the ruins of big blocks of apartments, are causing the Germans heavy casualties as they work their way house by house through the city.
North of Rostov, the Germans are pushing on to Stalingrad. Formerly called Tsaritsyn, it has a special affection for Stalin who was active in its defence during the civil war. Today it is a vital industrial and communications centre, guarding the approaches to the Caucasus. There can be no doubt that the Russians will fight for it.
ALEUTIAN ISLANDS: The bombardment of Kiska Island by the 2 heavy cruisers, 3 light cruisers and destroyers of the USN’s Task Force 8, is postponed due to limited surface visibility and the ships retire to Kodiak. While covering TF 8, four USN PBY Catalinas bomb Kiska. (Jack McKillop)
PACIFIC: The light cruiser USS Boise (CL-47) departs Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii via Midway Islands towards Japan. The Boise is tasked with emitting enough radio traffic to create the impression of an approaching American task force.
US Navy Motor Torpedo Squadron 3 is recommissioned and sent to the Solomon Islands. (Jack McKillop)
NEW GUINEA: USAAF B-26 Marauders and A-24 Dauntlesses support Australian troops by bombing Gona and targets along the Buna trail.
All Allied air units in the South Pacific Area are placed under the command of Rear Admiral John S. McCain, USN, Commander, Aircraft South Pacific Area (ComAirSoPac). (Jack McKillop)
U.S.A.: German submarine U-166 completes mining operations off the Mississippi River Delta south of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. (Jack McKillop)
U-90 is sunk by HMCS St Croix as she is escorting convoy ON113. (Ron Babuka)
Singer Peggy Lee records her first hit record in New York City. With the backing of the Benny Goodman and his Orchestra, Miss Lee sings “Why Don’t You Do Right” for Columbia Records. (Jack McKillop)
"Composed of Jewish patients, mostly women, Block 10 at Auschwitz was the site of Nazi medical research.
The barrack was known as "Clauberg's Block" after the physician, Carl Clauberg (left), who conducted much of the experimentation there.
Clauberg was especially interested in infertility and sterilization research, areas that won him the personal backing of Heinrich Himmler, who wondered 'how long it would take to sterilize a thousand Jewesses.'
Clauberg used injections, probably of the substance formalin, to cause obstructions in the fallopian tubes and prevent pregnancy."
On 23rd July Colonel-General Halder was summoned to report.
Hitler was suffering terribly from the heat, and the news from the front made his temper even worse. Victory succeeded victory, the Russians were in flight—but, oddly enough, the expected large-scale annihilation of enemy forces had not come off between Donets and Don, either at Staryy Oskol or at Millerovo.
Nor, for that matter, did it seem to be taking shape at Rostov. What was the reason? What was happening?
"The Russians are systematically avoiding contact, my Fuehrer," Halder argued.
"Nonsense." Hitler cut him short. "The Russians are in full flight, they're finished, they are reeling from the blows we have dealt them during the past few months."
Halder remained calm, pointed at the map which lay on the big table, and contradicted: "We have not caught the bulk of Timoshenko's forces, my Fuehrer. Our encircling operations at Staryy Oskol and Millerovo were punches at nothing. Timoshenko has pulled back the bulk of his Army Group, as well as a good part of his heavy equipment, across the Don to the east, into the Stalingrad area, or else southward, into the Caucasus. We've no idea what reserves he has left there."
"You and your reserves! I'm telling you we didn't catch Timoshenko's fleeing masses in the Staryy Oskol area, or later at Millerovo, because Bock spent far too much time at Voronezh. We were too late to intercept the southern group north of Rostov, as it was flooding back in panic, simply because we wheeled our fast troops south too late and because Seventeenth Army began frontally pushing them back east too soon. But I'm not having that happen to me again. We've now got to unravel our fast troops in the Rostov area and employ our Seventeenth Army, as well as First Panzer Army and also Fourth Panzer Army, with the object of coming to grips with the Russians south of Rostov, in the approaches to the Caucasus, encircling them and destroying them. Simultaneously, Sixth Army must administer the final blow to the remnants of the Russian forces which have fled to the Volga, to the area of Stalingrad. At neither of these two vital fronts must we allow the reeling enemy any respite at all. But the main weight must be with Army Group A, with the attack against the Caucasus."
Colonel-General Halder, Chief of the Army General Staff, tried in vain in his conversation with Hitler on 23rd July 1942 to disprove the Fuehrer's thesis. He implored Hitler not to split his forces and not to strike at the Caucasus until after Stalingrad had been taken and the German flank and rear on the Don, as well as between Don and Volga, sufficiently protected. Hitler brushed aside these misgivings of the General Staff. He was confident of victory and completely obsessed by the belief that the Red Army had already been decisively defeated. This is borne out by several more positively dumbfounding decisions.
He transferred the bulk of Field-Marshal von Manstein's Eleventh Army with five divisions from the Crimea, where it was standing by to operate against the Caucasus, all the way up to Leningrad in order to take this irritating fortress at long last.
But that was not all.
Hitler also pulled out the magnificently equipped SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Leibstandarte" from the Eastern Front and transferred it to France for rest and reorganization into a Panzer Division. Yet another crack formation from the southern front, the Motorized Infantry Division "Grossdeutschland," was similarly withdrawn from the fighting-line shortly afterwards. Hitler commanded that as soon as the Manych Dam was reached this division was to be pulled out of the front and transferred to France to remain at the disposal of the High Command.
This decision was partly due to the shortage of motor-fuel on the southern front. The principal reason, however, which Hitler advanced for these decisions was that, according to his information, the invasion of Western Europe was imminent. It was an incomprehensible and fatal mistake.
These seven divisions, quite needlessly, withdrawn from the southern front would certainly have been enough to avert the catastrophe of Stalingrad.
Halder was bitter as he returned to his headquarters on the edge of Vinnitsa from his interview on 23rd July.
He wrote in his diary: "His persistent underestimation of the enemy's potential is gradually taking on grotesque forms and is beginning to be dangerous."
But Hitler stuck to his mistaken assessment of the situation, and summed up his ideas in a fundamental "Fuehrer Directive No. 45" which he dictated on the same day, 23rd July, following his argument with Halder. The Directive was delivered to the Army Groups on 25th July. In its introduction it declared—contrary to the actual facts and to the experience of the previous three weeks' fighting—that only weak enemy forces of Timoshenko's Armies had succeeded in escaping German encirclement and reaching the southern bank of the Don. Contrary to Directive No. 41 for "Operation Blue," which envisaged that Stalingrad should first be reached before the offensive was launched into the Caucasus for the seizure of the Russian oil, the new directive laid down the various objectives as follows:
(1) The first task of Army Group A is the encirclement and annihilation in the area south and south-east of Rostov of the enemy forces now escaping across the Don. For this purpose powerful fast formations must be employed from the bridgeheads, to be formed in the Konstantinovskaya-Tsimlyanskaya area, in a general south-westerly direction, roughly towards Tikhoretsk across the Don; these formations to consist of infantry, Jäger, and mountain divisions. The cutting of the Tikhoretsk-Stalingrad railway-line with advanced units is to be effected simultaneously. . . .
(2) Following the annihilation of the enemy force south of the Don the main task of Army Group A is the seizure of the entire eastern coast of the Black Sea, with a view to eliminating the enemy's Black Sea ports and his Black Sea Fleet. . . .
Another force, to be formed by the concentration of all remaining mountain and Jäger divisions, will force a crossing of the Kuban and seize the high ground of Maykop and Armavir. . . .
(3) Simultaneously another force, to be composed of fast formations, will take the area around Groznyy, with some of its units cutting the Ossetian and Georgian Military Highways, if possible in the passes. Subsequently this force will drive along the Caspian to take possession of the area of Baku. . . .
The Italian Alpini Corps will be assigned to the Army Group at a later date.
This operation of Army Group A will be known under the code name "Edelweiss."
(4) Army Group B—as previously instructed—will, in addition to organizing the defence of the Don line, advance against Stalingrad, smash the enemy grouping which is being built up there, occupy the "city itself, and block the strip of land between Don and Volga. As soon as this is accomplished fast formations will be employed along the Volga with the object of driving ahead as far as Astrakhan in order to cut the main arm of the Volga there too. These operations of Army Group B will be known by the code name of "Heron."
Field-Marshal List, a native of Oberkirch in Bavaria, a man with an old Bavarian General Staff training and with distinguished service in the campaigns in Poland and France, was the General Officer Commanding Group A. He was a clever, cool, and sound strategist—not an impulsive charger at closed doors, but a man who believed in sound planning and leadership and detested all military gambles.
When a special courier handed him Directive No. 45 at Stalino on 25th July, List shook his head. Subsequently, in captivity, he once remarked to a small circle of friends that only his conviction that the Supreme Command must have exceptional and reliable information about the enemy's situation had made the new plan of operations seem at all comprehensible to him and his chief of staff, General von Greiffenberg.
Always form strongpoints—that had been the main lesson of Clausewitz's military teaching. But here this lesson was being spectacularly disregarded. To quote just one instance: moving up behind Sixth Army, which was advancing towards Stalingrad and the Volga valley, were formations of the reinforced Italian Alpini Corps with its excellent mountain divisions.
List's Army Group A, on the other hand, which was now faced with the first real alpine operation of the war in the East—the conquest of the Caucasus—had at its disposal only three mountain divisions, two of them German and one Rumanian. The Jäger divisions of Ruoff's Army-sized combat group (the reinforced Seventeenth Army) were neither trained for alpine warfare nor did they possess the requisite clothing and equipment. Four German mountain divisions—hand-picked men from the Alpine areas and thoroughly trained in mountain warfare—were employed piecemeal all over the place.
A few weeks later, when it was too late, the Fuehrer's Headquarters was to be painfully reminded of that fact when General Konrad's Mountain Jäger battalion found themselves pinned down along the ridges of the Caucasus, within sight of their objective.
so, if there is a needle in your heart just leave it alone.
Could you imagine if we had a daily newspaper archive from the Roman Empire? This kind of daily posting would take decades or more. lol.
Was there really a 40 mph speed limit? Talk about austerity.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.