SOFT COAL STRIKE SATURDAY SET BY LEWIS, DEFYING WLB; 26,000 MINERS ALREADY IDLE (4/28/43)

Microfilm-New York Times archives, Monterey Public Library | 4/28/43 | Drew Middleton, Clyde Farnsworth, George Tucker, Arthur Krock

[Homer_J_Simpson]

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[Homer_J_Simpson]

Free Republic University, Department of History presents World War II Plus 70 Years: Seminar and Discussion Forum
First session: September 1, 2009. Last date to add: September 2, 2015.
Reading assignment: New York Times articles delivered daily to students on the 70th anniversary of original publication date. (Previously posted articles can be found by searching on keyword “realtime” Or view Homer’s posting history .)
To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by freepmail. Those on the Realtime +/- 70 Years ping list are automatically enrolled. Course description, prerequisites and tuition information is available at the bottom of Homer’s profile. Also visit our general discussion thread.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Selections from West Point Atlas for the Second World War
Tunisia, 1942: Final Allied Offensive – 22 April Attack, 3 May Attack, and Exploitation
The Far East and the Pacific, 1941: Status of Forces and Allied Theater Boundaries, 2 July 1942
India-Burma, 1942: Allied Lines of Communication, 1942-1943

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Union For a Test – 2-3
The Mine Union’s Letter – 2
Allies Lost Million Tons Net of Shipping in ’42, Says Knox – 3
First Army Gains (Middleton) – 4-5
War News Summarized – 5
Aid to Russia Gluts Iran Artery; Flow of U.S. Supplies Taxes Port (by Clyde Farnsworth and George Tucker, first-time contributors) – 6
Year More Needed to Equip Our Army, Somervell Says – 7
Something Fast for a General Who Travels Fast (photo) * – 8
Need for Balance (Krock) – 9
The Texts of the Day’s War Communiques – 10-11

* See April 11 excerpt from Ike: An American Hero, by Michael Korda (reply #3).

[Homer_J_Simpson]

http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1943/apr1943/f28apr43.htm

Panzers counterattack in Tunisia
Wednesday, April 28, 1943 www.onwar.com

German troops sleeping in the desert at night [photo at link].

In Tunisia... The German 8th Panzer Regiment counterattacks the British forces that have occupied Djebel Bou Aoukaz. American forces make some gains in “Mousetrap Valley.”

In the Atlantic... Convoy ONS-5 is attacked by 51 U-boats over the course of a following week (April 28-May6th). It loses 13 ships (out of 42) but 7 U-boats are sunk, 5 are seriously damaged and 12 are slightly damaged. This is considered a successful rate of exchange for the Allied convoys.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/frame.htm

April 28th, 1943 (WEDNESDAY)

UNITED KINGDOM: HMC ML 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120 and 121 ordered.

Frigate HMS Tweed commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)

GERMANY:

U-1019, U-1202 laid down.

U-549, U-719 launched. (DS()

FINLAND: Finnish Parliament passes a law decreeing that all recipients of the Mannerheim Cross (the Finnish equivalent of the VC or MOH) would additionally receive the sum of 50 000 Finnish marks. It is a considerable sum, equivalent to a lieutenant’s yearly pay. (Mikko Härmeinen)

Stockholm: SWEDEN protests against the mining of its territorial water by Germany.

MEDITERRANEAN SEA: The British submarine HMS UNSHAKEN sinks an Italian torpedo boat, Climene.

TUNISIA: L/Cpl John Patrick Kenneally (b.1921), Irish Guards, stormed a body of enemy troops preparing to attack, who broke up in surprise. He repeated the exploit two days later. (Victoria Cross)
BOUGAINVILLE: A US submarine lands two coastwatchers and 14 commandos on this Japanese-occupied island. It evacuates Lt. Mackie and the 12 commandos who have been on the island for the last two years. It also evacuates Bishop Wade and Father Lebel. (Michael Alexander)

U.S.A.: Destroyer escorts USS Borum, Snyder and Witter laid down.
Destroyer escort USS Pettit launched.

Destroyer USS Stephen Potter launched.

Destroyer escort USS Griswold commissioned.

(Dave Shirlaw)

ATLANTIC OCEAN: A series of running battles, between German U-Boats and Convoy ONS-5, begin. These battles will last until May 6th. The convoy will lose 13 transports. 7 U-Boats are sunk with damage to others. The ratio of 2 transports to 1 U-boat is unacceptable.
This convoy is being protected by British escorts and Consolidated PBY-5A Catalinas of the US Navy’s Patrol Squadron Eighty Four (VP-84) based at Naval Air Facility (NAF) Reykjavik, Iceland. (Jack McKillop)
The effective air escort during the main battle was RCAF No. 5 Squadron from Newfoundland which sank U-630 on 4th May. Earlier in the voyage, on 24th April, U-710 was sunk by RAF 206 Squadron. The surface escort accounted for the remainder of the U-boat losses. The weather from 28th May onwards was atrocious. (Peter Beeston)

US Navy hunter-killer group comprised of the auxiliary aircraft carrier USS Bogue (ACV-9) and four destroyers drives off five German U-boats deploying against convoy HX 235. (Jack McKillop)

[Zhang Fei]

It’s astonishing that in the middle of a major shooting war, the unions somehow find a way to stab in the back the millions of GI’s fighting for their lives.

[EternalVigilance]

“Clearly, logistics is the hard part of fighting a war.”
- Lt. Gen. E. T. Cook, USMC, November 1990

“Gentlemen, the officer who doesn’t know his communications and supply as well as his tactics is totally useless.”
- Gen. George S. Patton, USA

“Bitter experience in war has taught the maxim that the art of war is the art of the logistically feasible.”
- ADM Hyman Rickover, USN

“Forget logistics, you lose.”
- Lt. Gen. Fredrick Franks, USA, 7th Corps Commander, Desert Storm

“Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.”
- Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps) noted in 1980

“I am tempted to make a slightly exaggerated statement: that logistics is all of war-making, except shooting the guns, releasing the bombs, and firing the torpedoes.”
- ADM Lynde D. McCormick, USN

“Because of my wartime experience, I am insistent on the point that logistics know-how must be maintained, that logistic is second to nothing in importance in warfare, that logistic training must be widespread and thorough...”
- VADM Robert B. Carney, USN

“Logistic considerations belong not only in the highest echelons of military planning during the process of preparation for war and for specific wartime operations, but may well become the controlling element with relation to timing and successful operation.”
- VADM Oscar C. Badger, USN

“… in its relationship to strategy, logistics assumes the character of a dynamic force, without which the strategic conception is simply a paper plan.”
- CDR C. Theo Vogelsang, USN

“Logistics is the stuff that if you don’t have enough of, the war will not be won as soon as.”
- General Nathaniel Green, Quartermaster, American Revolutionary Army

“Strategy and tactics provide the scheme for the conduct of military operations, logistics the means therefore.”
- Lt. Col. George C. Thorpe, USMC

“Only a commander who understand logistics can push the military machine to the limits without risking total breakdown.”
- Maj.Gen. Julian Thompson, Royal Marines

“There is nothing more common than to find considerations of supply affecting the strategic lines of a campaign and a war.”
- Carl von Clausevitz

“In modern time it is a poorly qualified strategist or naval commander who is not equipped by training and experience to evaluate logistic factors or to superintend logistic operations.”
- Duncan S. Ballantine, 1947

“The war has been variously termed a war of production and a war of machines. Whatever else it is, so far as the United States is concerned, it is a war of logistics.”
- Fleet ADM Ernest J. King, in a 1946 report to the Secretary of the Navy

“A sound logistics plan is the foundation upon which a war operation should be based. If the necessary minimum of logistics support cannot be given to the combatant forces involved, the operation may fail, or at best be only partially successful.”
- ADM Raymond A. Spruance

“The line between disorder and order lies in logistics…”
- Sun Tzu

“Leaders win through logistics. Vision, sure. Strategy, yes. But when you go to war, you need to have both toilet paper and bullets at the right place at the right time. In other words, you must win through superior logistics.”
- Tom Peters - Rule #3: Leadership Is Confusing As Hell, Fast Company, March 2001

“Logistics sets the campaign’s operational limits.”
- Joint Pub 1: Joint Warfare of the Armed Forces of the United States

“Logistics comprises the means and arrangements which work out the plans of strategy and tactics. Strategy decides where to act; logistics brings the troops to this point.”
- Jomini: Precis de l’ Art de la Guerre. (1838)

“Behind every great leader there was an even greater logistician.”
- M. Cox

“Logistics ... as vital to military success as daily food is to daily work.”
- Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Armaments and Arbitration, 1912

“The essence of flexibility is in the mind of the commander; the substance of flexibility is in logistics.”
- RADM Henry Eccles, U.S. Navy

“My logisticians are a humorless lot ... they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.”
- Alexander

[fella]

The story on page 9 where the union leaders say they are OK with the Soviets executing 2 Polish union leaders is interesting too.

[knarf]

That was my thought also.

I didn't read the entire union letter, but I got enough of it to determine it was about wages agreed to.

That may have been well and good, but marriages all over America had started agreeing to care for one another and found themselves unable to do so in the manner in which they were accustomed.

Families volunteered to give up goods and services and to recycle just about everything for the war effort.

I'm pretty sure more than 26,000 voluntary citizens were involved with providing whatever they could to keep 'our boys' flying and fighting.

Makes me wonder, though ... What 'patriotic or war mentality' the miners had in the first place.

It sure sounds like me, me, me and t'hell with the war .. I didn't start it.

[AppyPappy]

Many Union leaders were married to the Soviet Union.

[MuttTheHoople]

The "Soft Coal Strike" would've been much harder if Hitler hadn't had made the mistake of invading the hero-country of Democrats and the American Left, the Soviet Union. As a matter of fact, I now believe all the problems we had in the Vietnam and Iraq would've been dwarfed by what the Left would've done if Stalin and Hitler had stayed buds.

Contrary to popular belief, most American wars have had a harsh and violent anti-war movement, starting with the American Revolution and the Loyalists, New England almost seceding during the War of 1812, Abe Lincoln opposing the Mexican-American War, Northern Democrats rioting during the Civil War, President McKinley's reticence for the Spanish-American War, anarchists during World War I, and of course Democrats sabotaging the Vietnam War and Iraq War.

[colorado tanker]

Thanks for the logistics quotes! They are very true. Logistics was my secondary specialty.

The fact is no matter what Stalin wanted, or Marshall and the American staff for that matter, we could not invade France until we completed the personnel build-up in Britain and those forces had all their equipment and supplies. Although there is probably some disinformation in today's remarks, it is increasingly apparent that point will be reached in 1944.