OUR SUPERFORTS BOMB CITIES IN JAPAN; AMERICAN FORCES LANDING IN MARIANAS (6/16/44)

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 and the occasional radio broadcast 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 .)
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Selections from West Point Atlas for the Second World War
Normandy, 1944: The Capture of Cherbourg and Operations, 13-30 June 1944
The Marianas Islands: Saipan 1944 – Assault on Saipan, 15 June-10 July 1944
The Western Pacific, New Guinea and the Philippine Islands: Allied Advances to the Marianas, Biak and Noemfoor, 22 April-24 July 1944, and Japanese Kon and “A” Go Operations 30 May-19 June 1944
Northern Italy 1944: Allied Advance to Gothic Line, 5 June-25 August and Gains 29 August-31 December
China, 1941: Operation Ichigo, April-December 1944 and Situation 31 December
China-Burma, 1941: Third Burma Campaign – Slim’s Offensive, June 1944-March 1945

The Nimitz Graybook

B-29’s Make Debut (Shalett) – 2-3
Air Attack on Korea Reported by Tokyo – 3
Tokyo Tries to Belittle Raid; Claims Two Superfortresses – 3-4
Invasion and Other War News Summarized – 4
Saipan is Stormed (Horne) – 5-6
Nazi Roads in Peril (Middleton) – 6-8
7,000 Planes Bomb France and Reich (Anderson) – 8
The ‘Most Modern Battle’ Fought near Caen is Highly Destructive (McMillan) – 9
Allied Tide in Italy Engulfs Orvieto – 10
Red Army Expands Wedge in Finland – 11
Hungarian Envoy Bids for Freedom (by Herbert L. Matthews) – 12
Turkish Foreign Minister Quits; Policy on Reich Ships Tightened – 12
The Texts of the Day’s Communiques on the Fighting in Various War Zones – 13-15
Stunning Blows Strike Foe in Pacific Arena (page 1 map) – 15

http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1944/jun44/16jun44.htm#

Allies advancing in Italy
Friday, June 16, 1944 www.onwar.com

In Italy... British 8th Army forces continue to advance. The 10th Corps captures Spoleto and penetrates to Spoligno. Forces of the US 5th Army take Grosseto.

On the Western Front... The forces of British 21st Army Group continue to advance along the entire front. Elements of the US 1st Army, advancing westward, cross the Douvre River and capture St. Saveur in the Cotentin Peninsula. British King George VI visits the troops in Normandy.

In the Mariana Islands... US battleships, under the command of Admiral Ainsworth, shell Guam. The invasion of the island is deferred, however, because of the approach of the Japanese fleet. On Saipan, the elements of US 5th Amphibious Corps link the two beachheads by capturing Charan Karoa and Afetna Point. There is substantial use of artillery by the Japanese and American counter battery fire in addition to the infantry combat.

In the Philippine Sea... Admiral Clark leads two groups of US carrier forces raiding Iwo Jima, Chichi Jima and Haha Jima. The Japanese fleets link up and refuel. US patrols make two sightings.

http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/thismonth/16.htm

June 16th, 1944 (FRIDAY)

UNITED KINGDOM: The USAAF’s Eighth Air Force in England flies two missions.

Mission 416: 370 bombers, including 22 Pathfinders are dispatched to four airfields and four CROSSBOW (V-weapon) supply sites in France; one B-17 is lost:

1. Of 146 B-17 Flying Fortresses, 38 bomb Laon/Athies Airfield, 38 hit Juvincourt Airfield, 18 hit railroad targets of opportunity and 17 hit Laon/Couvron Airfield; one B-17 is lost.

Personal Memory: Our first (and only) abort.

This was to be our 16th mission and our target was to be the airdrome at Juvincourt, France where the Aredo Jet was being tested. We were looking forward to another Milk Run to add to our growing collection. We were to form up over Molesworth at 25,000 feet in order to avoid traffic from other fields. This was to be our bombing altitude also, but as we climbed over the field in our “Buzz Blonde” we found that we could only get to 23,000 feet due to a lack of manifold pressure on engine number 3. We could only get 20 inches while the norm was 29 inches. We made several attempts to repair the engine by changing the amplifiers. We ran the turbo up to number 10 and turned the turbo screw full on. None of this worked and we had to abort and return to the field. There is an investigation every time a plane aborts or gets lost, but the engineering section confirmed that the abort was justified due to a burned out waste gate motor on number 3 engine. Also found was a sheared bolt on number 4 mixture control. This alone might have caused us to abort had we been unable to lean out the fuel at altitude thereby using extra fuel. The ground crew got busy making repairs for the next mission. What I had assumed would be a milk run today resulted in flak damage to fourteen of our planes and one wounded crewman.They had to make an emergency landing at Northampstead to quickly get aid. You never know what might be in store! Later when we finally went to this same target it was anything but a milk run! Score: Milk Runs: 11, Others 4, Providence (?) 1 (Dick Johnson)

2. 224 B-24 Liberators are dispatched to bomb airfields and CROSSBOW sites; B-24s attacking V-weapon supply sites are: 48 hit Renescure, 44 hit Sautrecourt, 43 hit Domleger and 21 hit Beauvoir; airfields attacked are: 17 hit Beauvais/Tille, 17 hit Authe and 12 hit St Andre de L’Eure.

VIII Fighter Command missions for the day are:

1. 165 P-38s, 88 P-47 Thunderbolts and 172 P-51 Mustangs escort the bombers above, they claim 1-0-0 Luftwaffe aircraft; no losses.

2. 70 P-51s perform a sweep against stalled trains between Angouleme and Poitiers, dropping external fuel tanks on them and firing the tanks by strafing; the same tactics are used on trains in the marshalling yard at Saint-Pierre-d’Ecideuil; heavy damage is inflicted on both targets, including heavy troop casualties.

3. 50 P-38s and 75 P-47s make fighter-bomber attacks on troops in the Arras-St Pol area; at St-Pol-sur-Ternoise a large number of railroad cars are burned by oil and phosphorus bombs and strafing attacks; other marshalling yards, a power station, railroad station, trains, barges, tanks, trucks, gun emplacements, AA tower and an armored vehicle are attacked; A total of about 400 railroad cars are attacked and about half of them set on fire. In general the fighter attacks are highly effective; three P-38s are lost.

Mission 417: Ten B-17s drop leaflets in France during the evening.

FRANCE: US forces cross the River Douvre in Normandy.

King George VI of Great Britain visits troops in Normandy.

In order to secure favourable defensive positions the 101st conducted a few small actions. This continued on June 17. They were the last real combat for the division in Normandy. For the next two weeks until relieved by the 83rd Infantry Division the 101st held strong defensive positions to the south and southwest of Carentan. See Rendezvous with Destiny by Rapport and Northwood, pages 221-224, 247 (Jay Stone)

Bad weather prevents bomber operations by the USAAF’s Ninth Air Force based in England; 500+ fighters strafe and bomb rail lines, bridges and highway traffic on the Cherbourg Peninsula.

GERMANY: U-2324 launched.

ITALY, Umbria: The British X Corps liberate Spoleto, Italy.

The USAAF’s Fifteenth Air Force in Italy dispatches almost 600 bombers to attack targets in Austria and Czechoslovakia; B-17s attack the Kragan and Florisdorf oil refineries around Vienna; B-24s bomb the industrial area at Bratislava, Czechoslovakia and the Lobau and Schwechat oil refineries and Winterhafen oil depot in the Vienna area. Between 200 and 250 fighters attack the formations and 15 USAAF aircraft are shot down; the bombers and escorting fighters claim 70 aircraft destroyed.

FINLAND: Commander of the Isthmus Troops Lt. Gen. Karl Oesch gives orders for the III and IV Corps to withdraw to the third Finnish line of defence (VKT-line) while delaying the enemy.

Marshal Mannerheim orders the Olonets Group (Lt. Gen. Paavo Talvela) on the Olonets Isthmus (between lakes Ladoga and Onega) and the II Corps (Maj. Gen. Einar Mäkinen) on the Maaselkä Isthmus (between Lake Onega and White Sea) to start withdrawing back towards the 1939 border. The situation on the Karelian Isthmus is critical, and the troops are needed there.

Gen. Talvela’s Olonets Group is relatively strong, although it has already lost units to reinforce the defenders in Karelia. It consists of Maj. Gen. Antero Svensson’s V Corps (Maj. Gen. Kaarlo Heiskanen’s 11th Division and Maj. Gen. Selim Isaksson’s 7th Division) and Maj. Gen. Aarne Blick’s VI Corps (Maj. Gen. Kustaa Tapola’s 5th Division, Maj. Gen. Antti Kääriäinen’s 8th Division and the 15th Brigade). Gen. Talvela has already lost his reserves (the 17th Division and 20th Brigade) to the Karelian Isthmus, and now the V Corps HQ and 11th Division are also transferred there. The Onega Group will start its withdrawal tomorrow at 10 pm.

German supplies start again flowing to Finland. To strengthen the Finnish AT-defences, more than 10,000 Panzerfausts are transported by motor torpedo boats and aircraft. Luftwaffe units and Sturmgeschütz-Brigade 303 together with the 122th Infantry Division are on their way. Naturally the German help is conditional - on 12 June Hitler had decided that “as long as the Finns fight, help will be given, but as soon as they start negotiating [peace with the Soviet Union], all supplies will be terminated”.

Six Finnish VMV Patrol boats surprise four enemy G-5 type motor torpedo boats at Halli. One of them is sunk and another captured.

PACIFIC OCEAN: US Fifth Fleet battleships under the command of Admiral Ainsworth shell Guam.

Marines advance on Saipan taking Chaan Karoa and Point Afetna. This links the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions. The 165th Infantry Regiment and three Field Artillery Battalions of the 27th Infantry Division landed on Saipan. The 165th (the old New York Fighting 69th Regiment of American Civil War fame), was tasked with sweeping the southern shore of Saipan and taking Aslito Airfield.

Carrier-based aircraft from the USN’s Task Groups 58.1 and 58.4 again mount attacks on Iwo Jima, in the Volcano Islands, and Chichi Jima and Haha Jima, in the Bonin Islands, during the afternoon. Targets include airfields, fuel supplies and barracks. Two F6F Hellcats and their pilots are lost. After the attacks, both task groups retire to the Mariana Islands.

In response to the sighting of the IJN’s First Mobile Fleet sailing from the Philippines towards the Mariana Islands by a U.S. submarine, Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, commander Fifth Fleet, orders that the antiaircraft screens around USN carriers be augmented by drawing additional cruisers and destroyers from fire-support and shore-bombardment groups. The entire burden of ground-support missions and on-call air-support is shifted from the fast carriers of Task Force 58 to the escort aircraft carriers of the Fifth Fleet.

Carrier-based aircraft of Task Groups 58.2 and 58.3 attempt to neutralize all of the airfields on Guam and Tinian. The airmen maintain that big guns should also be used against these targets but their suggestions are ignored.

A TBM Avenger from an escort aircraft carrier drops heavy weapons to a USMC infantry battalion on Saipan but the aircraft is too low and many weapons are damaged or destroyed.

CANADA: Corvette HMCS Asbestos commissioned. (Asbestos is named after a town in Quebec north of Sherbrooke. Asbestos gets its name from one of the largest deposits of asbestos in the world.) (Dave Hornford and Dave Shirlaw)

Tel(SO) Donald Warner Oberson RCNVR awarded Mention in Dispatches.

U.S.A.:

CINCPAC COMMUNIQUÉ NO. 51, Chichi Jima, and Haha Jima in the Bonin Islands and Iwo Jima in the Volcano Islands were attacked by carrier aircraft on June 14 (West Longitude Date). Thirty-three enemy fighters which attempted to intercept our forces at Chichi Jima were shot down. Four multi-engined seaplanes were damaged at Chichi Jima At Iwo Jima two airborne enemy aircraft were probably destroyed and 14 were destroyed on the ground.

One medium cargo ship was sunk by bombing at Chichi Jima, and four small cargo ships and six small craft were damaged. A medium transport, discovered underway near the Bonins, was heavily damaged by aircraft and later sunk by one of our destroyers. One hundred and twelve survivors were rescued and made prisoners of war.

Ground installations, including barracks, airfields, and fuel tanks were bombed by our aircraft.

Our losses were four aircraft and five flight personnel.

CINCPAC COMMUNIQUÉ NO. 52, United States assault troops are engaged in bitter fighting against defend-ing forces on Saipan Island. On June 14 (West Longitude Date) and during the night of June 14-15 our troops were withdrawn a short distance toward the beach in some sectors in the face of intense mortar and artillery fire. Positions were consolidated and during the night our Naval forces carried out a heavy bombardment of enemy strong points.

On the morning of June 15 enemy resistance in the strongly held sector north of Charan Kanoa was broken. At midday a major element of our forces commenced an attack which advanced our line nearly one half mile in the southern sector of the island. Lesser advances were made in other sectors.

Our assumption that Saipan Island would be strongly held because of its strategic location in the Japanese defensive system has been proven correct. Preliminary estimates indicate there are upwards of two divisions of enemy troops defending Saipan. (Denis Peck)
Destroyer USS Hyman commissioned.

Minesweeper USS Pirate commissioned.

Coast Guard-manned Army vessel FS-256 was commissioned at New York with LT C. E. Thorsen, USCGR as her first commanding officer. On 17 July 1944 she departed New York for the Southwest Pacific. She was assigned to and operated in the Southwest Pacific area. LTJG K. F. Erickson, USCGR succeeded Thorsen on 3 October 1945. The ship was decommissioned 14 October 1945.

ATLANTIC OCEAN: The unescorted Columbine was torpedoed and sunk by U-198 25 miles NW of Cape Castle, South West Africa. The master, 19 crewmembers and six passengers were lost.

U-804 attacked by a Norwegian 333 Sqn Mosquito. 8 men were wounded but the boat was not seriously damaged. 2 of the air crew were saved by U-1000 on 18 June and taken to Norway for questioning.

B-29 ping! If I remember right more money was spent on the development of the B-29 than the Manhattan Project. The B-29 had some revolutionary technology including pressurized cabins, and remote controlled analog computer assisted gun positions.

Chichi Jima is where Bush was shot down, wasn’t it? Also the battle which was the subject of the book Flyboys.

I might have the wrong place.

June 16 , 1944:

"Residents of the Jewish ghetto at Lódz, Poland, are notified of 'voluntary registration for labor outside the ghetto.'
In truth, there is no work but only death at the Chelmno, Poland, extermination camp, where the Germans plan to murder 3,000 Jews a week for three weeks.
"In France, Jewish historian Marc Bloch, a leader of the resistance group Francs-Tireurs et Partisans, is executed by German troops.
"German forces begin to pull back from the Douve River. "

"Sylvester Stadler commanded the SS regiment Der Führer, which murdered 634 people, including Jews, in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane.
They were assembled in the town's church and then butchered.
The massacre was in retaliation for the shooting of an SS officer by the Resistance."

"These 38 schoolgirls were among the 634 victims murdered by the SS regiment Der Führer on June 10, 1944, at Oradour-sur-Glane, France.
The Nazis usually killed women and children in their reprisals, believing that would make a more effective impression upon the Resistance."

An Ernie Pyle column today, telling it like it was:

The Horrible Waste of War

IU Archives

Pyle and Captain Lonnie Thompson at the Anzio Beachhead in Italy.

NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 16, 1944 – I took a walk along the historic coast of Normandy in the country of France.

It was a lovely day for strolling along the seashore. Men were sleeping on the sand, some of them sleeping forever. Men were floating in the water, but they didn’t know they were in the water, for they were dead.

The water was full of squishy little jellyfish about the size of your hand. Millions of them. In the center each of them had a green design exactly like a four-leaf clover. The good-luck emblem. Sure. Hell yes.

I walked for a mile and a half along the water’s edge of our many-miled invasion beach. You wanted to walk slowly, for the detail on that beach was infinite.

The wreckage was vast and startling. The awful waste and destruction of war, even aside from the loss of human life, has always been one of its outstanding features to those who are in it. Anything and everything is expendable. And we did expend on our beachhead in Normandy during those first few hours.

*

For a mile out from the beach there were scores of tanks and trucks and boats that you could no longer see, for they were at the bottom of the water – swamped by overloading, or hit by shells, or sunk by mines. Most of their crews were lost.

You could see trucks tipped half over and swamped. You could see partly sunken barges, and the angled-up corners of jeeps, and small landing craft half submerged. And at low tide you could still see those vicious six-pronged iron snares that helped snag and wreck them.

On the beach itself, high and dry, were all kinds of wrecked vehicles. There were tanks that had only just made the beach before being knocked out. There were jeeps that had been burned to a dull gray. There were big derricks on caterpillar treads that didn’t quite make it. There were half-tracks carrying office equipment that had been made into a shambles by a single shell hit, their interiors still holding their useless equipage of smashed typewriters, telephones, office files.

There were LCT’s turned completely upside down, and lying on their backs, and how they got that way I don’t know. There were boats stacked on top of each other, their sides caved in, their suspension doors knocked off.

In this shoreline museum of carnage there were abandoned rolls of barbed wire and smashed bulldozers and big stacks of thrown-away lifebelts and piles of shells still waiting to be moved.

In the water floated empty life rafts and soldiers’ packs and ration boxes, and mysterious oranges.

On the beach lay snarled rolls of telephone wire and big rolls of steel matting and stacks of broken, rusting rifles.

On the beach lay, expended, sufficient men and mechanism for a small war. They were gone forever now. And yet we could afford it.

We could afford it because we were on, we had our toehold, and behind us there were such enormous replacements for this wreckage on the beach that you could hardly conceive of their sum total. Men and equipment were flowing from England in such a gigantic stream that it made the waste on the beachhead seem like nothing at all, really nothing at all.

*

A few hundred yards back on the beach is a high bluff. Up there we had a tent hospital, and a barbed-wire enclosure for prisoners of war. From up there you could see far up and down the beach, in a spectacular crow’s-nest view, and far out to sea.

And standing out there on the water beyond all this wreckage was the greatest armada man has ever seen. You simply could not believe the gigantic collection of ships that lay out there waiting to unload.

Looking from the bluff, it lay thick and clear to the far horizon of the sea and beyond, and it spread out to the sides and was miles wide. Its utter enormity would move the hardest man.

As I stood up there I noticed a group of freshly taken German prisoners standing nearby. They had not yet been put in the prison cage. They were just standing there, a couple of doughboys leisurely guarding them with tommy guns.

The prisoners too were looking out to sea – the same bit of sea that for months and years had been so safely empty before their gaze. Now they stood staring almost as if in a trance.

They didn’t say a word to each other. They didn’t need to. The expression on their faces was something forever unforgettable. In it was the final horrified acceptance of their doom.

If only all Germans could have had the rich experience of standing on the bluff and looking out across the water and seeing what their compatriots saw.

The Nazis usually killed women and children in their reprisals, believing that would make a more effective impression upon the Resistance."

I'm not sure that is accurate. Most of the cases of reprisals that I'm familiar with targeted men.

Most of the cases of reprisals that I'm familiar with targeted men.

True, but this is 2nd SS Panzer "Das Reich," a unit with a long history of fighting in the east. I suspect when they came to the west they brought with them a tradition of "men, women, children...whatever...."

Keep in mind, it was an SS unit at Malmedy. And the fighting between American paratroopers and SS units was described as "especially bitter," which I take to mean "no prisoners."

Yes, Chichi Jima was where Bush 41 was shot down off the coast. He was lucky and was picked up by a submarine.

IIRC, the Japanese murdered every pilot that reached Chichi Jima, some by beheading. I believe they even ate one body.

The book Flyboys tells the tale and is an excellent read.