Posted on 01/22/2014 4:47:17 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
#1 Paper Doll - Mills Brothers
#2 - My Heart Tells Me - Glen Gray, with Eugenie Baird
#3 - Star Eyes - Jimmy Dorsey, with Bob Eberly and Kitty Kallen
#4 - My Shining Hour - Glen Gray, with Eugenie Baird
#5 Boogie Woogie - Tommy Dorsey
#6 Shoo Shoo Baby - Ella Mae Morse, with orchestra
#7 - Theyre Either Too Young or Too Old - Jimmy Dorsey, with Kitty Kallen
#8 - People Will Say Were in Love - Bing Crosby, with Trudy Erwin
#9 - Blue Rain Glenn Miller, with Ray Eberly
#10 How Sweet You Are Kay Armen
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1944/jan44/f22jan44.htm
Allies land at Anzio
Saturday, January 22, 1944 www.onwar.com
American troops land at AnzioIn Italy... Allied forces establish a beachhead at Anzio. The assaulting forces are drawn from the US 6th Corps (Lucas). To the north of the town the US 3rd Division lands. Naval support is provided by forces under the command of Admiral Lowry. To south, the British 1st Division comes ashore. Naval support in the south is provided by forces commanded by Admiral Troubridge. The landings meet light resistance. By the end of the day, 36,000 troops have been deployed and only 13 are killed. The port of Anzio is captured intact. The German commander in chief in Italy, Field Marshal Kesselring requests reserves from OKW while organizing a defensive cordon around the beachhead with improvised units.
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/thismonth/22.htm
January 22nd, 1944 (SATURDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Scotland: Loch Ewe: Convoy JW-56B sails for Murmansk. Destroyer HMCS Huron departed Loch Ewe as part of the close escort for a 15-ship convoy to the Kola Inlet. In the summer of 1942, all subsequent Arctic convoys to Russian sailed in the winter months, taking advantage of foul weather and reduced daylight to conceal their movements from German aerial reconnaissance. This was very successful and subsequent losses were negligible. Submarine HMS Terrapin commissioned.
GERMANY: U-399 commissioned.
U.S.S.R.: Soviet forces surround the Germans at Vitebsk.
ITALY: The Allied landings begin at Anzio.
Anzio: Midnight. In the inky blackness, British and American troops of VI Corps, taking part in Operation SHINGLE, boarded landing craft from a convoy of 243 ships that arrived off this small port on the Tyrrhenian Sea tonight. Heavy opposition was expected when the landing craft hit the beaches. The US commander, Major-General John Lucas, was gloomy about the whole affair. “I feel like a lamb being led to the slaughter,” he wrote 13 days ago after a meeting with the supreme commander, General Alexander.
Yet there was no slaughter when the Allied army came ashore. Anzio is deserted, a ghost town; the inhabitants have been evacuated; there were no defenders. The German high command has been totally wrongfooted. As evening fell on Anzio tonight, nearly 50,000 men and 3,000 vehicles have landed with the loss of 13 men, mostly from mines. The road to Rome, 32 miles to the north, is open. Intelligence reports that there are few, if any, German defenders on the route.
But with the memory of the near-debacle at Salerno still fresh in his mind, Lucas is determined to build up his beach-head defences before venturing forth. He had calculated on a rugged defence, and has ordered his army to dig in to fight off counter-attacks.
Lucas’s commander, General Mark Clark, arrived here this evening with General Alexander. The British commander is all for pushing forward with strong mobile forces. Clark has advised Lucas not to “stick his neck out”. Winston Churchill, ever an enthusiast for this invasion, has cabled Alexander to say: “Am very glad you are pegging out claims rather than digging in.” Lucas has established his headquarters in an underground wine cellar and shows no sign of pegging out claims.
Minesweeper USS Portent mined and sunk off Anzio.
Rome: Allied aircraft drop millions of leaflets announcing that liberation is nigh.
PACIFIC: The US invasion fleet (”Galvanic” Assault Force”) sails for the Marshall Islands, opening Operation Flintlock, which aims at their capture.
Aboard the USS BUNKER HILL with Glen Boren: I tried to get to DD 588 but couldn’t get a boat headed that way..
Captain Ballentine, the Bunker Hill skipper announced that he had been promoted to Admiral and would be leaving in the near future.
Mid-afternoon our Intel Officer, Mark Adams looked me up and said that he had just got back from the Island and had something that he figured I would like to have and handed me a copy of the Naval Aviation News dated 1 Jan 1944 and lo and behold, there was my picture right in the center of the cover with a bunch of our pilots in the catwalk of the carrier that we had carrier qualified on, off the coast of California the summer before. Needless to say that I have been proud of that
The carrier that we qualified on was the USS Nassau, Sept, 15 - 18, 1943 off of San Diego.
U.S.A.:
Frigate USS Everett commissioned.
Minesweeper USS Prime launched.
Destroyer escort USS O’Toole commissioned.
Destroyer escorts USS Willard Keith and William C Lawe laid down.
Submarine USS Pipefish commissioned.
Minesweeper USS Saunter commissioned.
Destroyer escorts USS Thomas F Nickel, Robert Brazier and Lough launched.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: One crewmember from U-984 was washed overboard in the North Atlantic. [Maschinenobergefreiter Hermann Keller].
"Those who did not die from Nazi medical experimentation often carried the effects with them forever.
This woman, imprisoned during the war in the Ravensbrück, Germany, concentration camp, shows the results of an operation to remove the calf muscle of her right leg.
Part of a project led by Dr. Karl Gebhardt, the experimenters even amputated limbs of prisoners for the supposed benefit of injured soldiers.
Almost half of the 24 women who endured these particular experiments died."
Hanson Baldwin has an interesting piece on postwar military reform. Not many of the proposals were implemented but a new umbrella cabinet department was created, not the "Department of War" but the Department of Defense. The Air Force was separated from the Army. In the reforms, the Marine Corps was almost abolished as duplicative of the Army, but the Corps' many friends saved it.
This six-part series on post-war policy, beginning Jan. 18 and ending tomorrow, is the longest series we have seen from Baldwin. He covers subjects like the form of an international peacekeeping organization, the size of our peacetime military, the possibility of retaining selective service, merging the services into one body (no more separate army, navy, air force), and whatever he discusses tomorrow. One wartime disclosure he made is that no one in authority he talked to - and he seems to have many sources in Washington - believes the war will be over by 1945.
If you look at the rate the Russians are chewing up real estate, however, it's pretty easy to envision the end in Europe in 1945, despite our being bogged down in Italy.
My respect for Baldwin grows with every piece he writes. He was a little shaky at the beginning of the war, but not any more. He has excellent sources of information, and an uncanny ability to piece the information together and predict what will happen. Parker does just as good a job for the Russo-German war, considering he has to pierce the Soviets’ twin veils of secrecy and propaganda.
As for the war being over in 1944, only the greatest optimists think that. We have even landed in France, and despite the fact the Soviets have made huge gains, they still have a long way to go. Some of the more cynical GI’s in the Pacific are saying “Golden Gate in ‘48”
After the breakout from Normandy, people started getting overly optimistic about the end in Europe. The shock of the Bulge ended that.
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.