Posted on 04/12/2015 4:55:15 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945
Major General H.W. Blakeley, USA, Ret., 32d Infantry Division World War II
Stephen E. Ambrose, Band of Brothers
Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/3/12.htm
April 12th, 1945
DENMARK: 6 Eighth Air Force B-24s fly CARPETBAGGER missions in Denmark.
THE NETHERLANDS and GERMANY: US Eight Air Force Mission 944: During the night of 12/13 Apr, 9 of 10 B-24s drop leaflets.
GERMANY: The 9th US Army crosses the River Elbe at Magdeburg. Patton’s forces take Erfurt.
The men of the US 100th Infantry Division enter the city centre of Heilbronn after an amphibious assault crossing of the swift flowing Neckar river. This was achieved under constant observation and direct fire of dozens of guns emplaced on the hills surrounding the town to the east. (William L. Howard)
Occupied GERMANY: It was too much to take, even for America’s three toughest generals. As they toured the Ohrduf concentration camp today. Eisenhower and Bradley burst into tears. General Patton, the most battle-scarred of them all, was overcome by the sight and smell of the piled-up corpses; gagging at each fresh horror, in the end he simply bent down and vomited.
American troops are experiencing the same nausea. Yesterday they uncovered Buchenwald. One of Hitler’s older camps, opened to house his opponents in 1938, it soon became another site for race murder. In 1941, 1,200 Jewish prisoners from Buchenwald were among the first to be gassed experimentally in the search for an efficient method to effect the “final solution” to the “Jewish question.”
The GIs cannot believe their eyes. There are piles of unburied corpses, stacked higher than a man, at every turn. Inside the huts there are 20,000 skeletal slave labourers lying in bare wooden pigeonholes that stretch from floor to ceiling. When a soldier opens the door, the prisoners, too weak to move, turn their heads feebly. Their eyes, peering out over hollow cheeks, look mournful, confused and resigned. There is no joy in survival.
These pathetic scraps of humanity are some of occupied Europe’s leading intellectuals and politicians. They come from Hungary, Russia, Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium; there are even French deputies who opposed the Vichy government and anti-Franco Spaniards.
As the Americans approached the camp, the Nazis hurriedly evacuated all the Jewish inmates, many of whom only arrived a few months ago from Auschwitz or other camps to the east. Most of them are now at Flossenburg. Himmler is keeping them alive as potential bargaining counters in what he still hopes will be peace negotiations with the allies.
167 A-20s, A-26s and B-26s of the Ninth Air Force, escorted by 95 Eighth Air Force P-51s, attack the Hof rail bridge, Kempten ordnance depot, and Goppingen marshalling yard, plus a town area and a casual target of opportunity; 275+ planes abort because of weather; fighters escort the bombers, attack the town of Kothen, fly armed reconnaissance and sweeps over wide areas and support ground forces; fighters also support the US III, XVI, and XVIII Corps as they continue to reduce the Ruhr pocket, the 9th Armored Division on the Saale River near Werben and Bad Lauchstadt, the XX Corps from the Saale River N and S of Jena E across the Weisse Elster River, the VIII Corps along the Saale further S of Jena, the XII Corp SE of Coburg on the Hasslach River, the 2d Armored Division across the Elbe River near Randau S of Magdeburg, the 5th Armored Division on the W bank of the Elbe at Wittenberge, and the XVI Corps as it continues fighting in the Duisburg and Dortmund areas.
ITALY: The British 8th Army achieves 3 separate bridge heads over the River Santerno.
ITALY and AUSTRIA: The US Fifteenth Air Force dispatches 400+ B-17s and B-24s to hit communications in N Italy and S Austria, attacking railroad bridges at Padua, Ponte di Piave and Nervesa della Bataglia, Italy, and Sankt Veit an der Glan, Austria, an ammunition dump at Malcontenta, and supply dump at Peschiera del Garda, Italy; 124 P-51s provide escort. 123 P-38s bomb railroad bridges at Unzmarkt and Arnoldstein, Austria; 128 B-24s, with P-51 escort, sent against N Italian communications abort due to bad weather. 38 P-51s escort MATAF B-25s on raids in N Yugoslavia.
ITALY and YUGOSLAVIA: During the night of 11/12 Apr, US Twelfth Air Force A-20s and A-26s hit Po River crossings; medium bombers, restricted by low clouds, bomb approaches to the Maribor, Yugoslavia bridge, hit targets along the Brenner rail line, and support the British Eighth Army in the Argenta area; fighter-bombers attack NE Italian railroad lines, including fuel dumps and communications targets in the Po Valley.
BURMA: British IV Corps makes progress in the Sittang Valley.
L/Naik Islamud-Din, 9th Jat Regt., having already shown great gallantry on 24 March, threw himself on a grenade to save his comrades. (George Cross)
75 fighter-bombers of the US Tenth Air Force continue to pound targets in the C Burma battle area; troop concentrations, gun positions, supplies, vehicles, and general targets of opportunity are attacked along the battlefront, behind enemy lines, and along roads S of the bomb line; 369 air supply sorties are flown throughout the day.
CHINA and FRENCH INDOCHINA: 12 US Fourteenth Air Force B-24s supported by 14 P-51s, bomb the Wuchang railroad yards and airfield; 7 B-25s bomb the Hsuchang railroad yards, 3 hit Loning, 2 attack Likuanchiao, 2 bomb Tenghsien, and a single B-25 attack storage areas at Pingyao and Huaiching. 100+ fighter-bombers attack troops, horses, bridges, river shipping, trucks, and railroad targets at several locations in French Indochina and at points scattered over S and E China.
FORMOSA: Far East Air Force B-24s attack Tainan and bomb Okayama Airfield.
JAPAN: The US Twentieth Air Force flies four missions.
Mission 63: 94 B-29s, escorted by 90 P-51s, strike the Nakajima aircraft factory at Tokyo while 11 hit the secondary target, the Shizuoka engine plant; B-29s gunners claim 16 fighters downed. The P-51s claim 15-6-3 Japanese aircraft; 4 P-51s are lost.
Mission 64: 66 B-29s hit a chemical plant at Koriyama and 9 hit targets of opportunity.
Mission 65: 70 B-29s hit a second chemical plant at Koriyama and 6 hit targets of opportunity; 2 B-29s are lost.
Mission 66: During the night of 12/13 Apr, 5 B-29s mine Shimonoseki Strait.
VOLCANO ISLANDS: During the night of 12/13 Apr, 6 Iwo Jima-based fighters of the VII Fighter Command, operating singly at intervals, bomb and strafe targets on Kita, Chichi, Haha, and Ani Jima Islands.
On Okinawa the fighting continues, US forces make little progress against the Shuri Line.
Three Kamikaze attacks achieve some results against the radar picket ships.
The destroyer USS Mannert L. Abele (DD-733) is sunk by a Baka - she is the first US Navy ship to be sunk by that type of weapon; destroyer USS Stanley (DD-478) is damaged by a Baka; high speed minesweeper USS Jeffers (DMS-27) is damaged by a Baka and a kamikaze; kamikazes sink support landing craft LCS-33 and damage battleship USS Idaho (BB-42); battleship USS Tennessee (BB-43), destroyers USS Purdy (DD-734), USS Cassin Young (DD-793) and USS Zellars (DD-777) and destroyer escort USS Riddle (DE-185); , 27°17’N, 127°50’E; destroyer escorts Rall (DE-304), USS Walter C. Wann (DE-412), and USS Whitehurst (DE-634) and light minelayer USS Lindsey (DM-32); minesweeper Gladiator (AM-319) is also damaged by the near-miss of a kamikaze. Kamikazes also attack U.S. freighter SS Minot Victory, but Armed Guard gunners inflict sufficient damage on the suicider that it only strikes the ship a glancing blow and then disintegrates; there are no fatalities on board the merchantman among the 57-man merchant complement, the 27 Armed Guard sailors and 9 passengers.
The following is from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. Mannert L. Abele resumed radar picket duty 8 April, patrolling station No. 14 about 70 miles northwest of Okinawa, accompanied by two LSMRs. Midway through the afternoon watch on 12 April, Mannert L. Abele caught the full fury of the kamikazes. Three Vals attacked at 1346, but her lethal gunfire drove off two and set fire to the third which splashed after attempting to crash an LSMR. By 1400, between 15 and 25 additional planes “had come down from the North and the ship was completely surrounded.” Except for one light bomber which challenged and was damaged by the destroyer’s fire, the enemy kept outside her gun range for more than half an hour.
At about 1440 three Zekes broke orbit and closed to attack. Mannert L. Abele drove off one and splashed another about 4,000 yards out. Despite numerous hits from 5-inch bursts and antiaircraft fire, and spewing smoke and flame, the third kamikaze crashed the starboard side and penetrated the after engine room where it exploded.
Immediately, Mannert L. Abele began to lose headway. The downward force of the blast, which had wiped out the after engineering spaces, broke the destroyer’s keel abaft No. 2 stack. The bridge lost control and all guns and directors lost power.
A minute later, at about 1446, Mannert L. Abele took a second and fatal hit from a Baka bomb a piloted, rocket powered, glider bomb that struck the starboard waterline abreast the forward fire room. Its 2.600 pound warhead exploded, buckling the ship, and “cutting out all power lights, and communications.”
Almost immediately, Mannert L. Abele broke in two. her midship section obliterated. Her bow and stern sections sunk rapidly. As survivors clustered in the churning waters enemy planes bombed and strafed them.
However LSMR-189 and LSMR-I90, praised by Comdr. Parker as “worth their weight in gold as support vessels,” splashed two of the remaining attackers, repulsed further attacks, and rescued the survivors.
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: 24 Seventh Air Force B-24s, based on Angaur Island hit a personnel area at Kabacan on Mindanao Island. Far East Air Force operations include dispatching P-38s and A-20s to support ground troops on Cebu and Negros Islands. On Mindanao Island, B-24s bomb Sapakan, Kabacan and the Davao Bay areas and P-38s hit Cotabato and also Kabacan. On Luzon Island, B-24s, B-25s, A-20s, and fighter-bombers pound targets throughout the Cagayan Valley, blast defences at Balete Pass and in the Baguio area, and hit troops, communications targets, and defences at numerous points in SW and SE Luzon Island.
PACIFIC OCEAN: 5 Japanese ships are sunk at sea:
- Submarine USS Silversides (SS-236) sinks an auxiliary submarine chaser east of Tanega Jima south of Kyushu.
- British submarine HMS Stygian sinks an auxiliary minesweeper off the north coast of Bali.
- Mines sink the submarine HIJMS RO 64 off Kobe, Japan and a merchant cargo ship off Wakamatsu, Japan.
- A B-24 aircraft (service and nationality unspecified) sinks a merchant ship off Badjowe, Borneo.
TERRITORY OF ALASKA: ALEUTIAN ISLANDS: US Eleventh Air Force P-38s shoot down a Japanese paper bomb-balloon over Attu Island.
U.S.A.: Washington: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only American president ever elected four times, died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia, this afternoon while he was sitting for a portrait, his last words being ‘I have a terrific headache’ before dying in his bedroom. He was 63. The whole country is mourning the Democratic president who offered the United States a “New Deal” of expansionist policies to end the economic crisis of the 1930s and then led it out of isolationism towards victory in a world war.
Although a decline in the president’s health had been widely noticed in recent months, his death came as a shock to Washington. Around the world, some American soldiers and sailors refused to believe that he was dead.
His widow Eleanor said: “I am more sorry for the people of the country and of the world than I am for us.” The words of his constant adversary, the Republican Senator Robert Taft, were typical of the response in Congress. Taft called the late president “the greatest figure of our time”, removed “at the very climax of his career”. “We were fortunate,” said Harold Ickes, the secretary of the interior, “to have given to civilization the greatest leader in the history of our country.”
Harry S. Truman, the vice-president, was sworn in as the 33rd president of the United States at the White House this evening. “Boys,” the new president told reporters, “if you ever pray, pray for me now.” He said he felt as if “the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me”. Minutes after the swearing-in, the secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told Mr Truman that the United States has developed a new explosive “of incredible power”. Many here express worries about the former senator from Missouri’s lack of experience. But the speaker, Sam Rayburn, said: “Truman will not make a great, flashy president like Roosevelt, But, by God, he’ll make a good president, a sound president. He’s got the stuff in him.”
No HQ Twelfth Army Group situation map for April 12th. They must have run out of space to fill. :-)
70 years ago today FDR died.
http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/harry-trumans-long-day-on-april-12-1945/
Harry Truman’s Long Day on April 12, 1945
What kind of day was Thursday April 12, 1945 for Harry S. Truman?
The afternoon was gray outside, the light fading, as Vice President Harry S. Truman arrived close to 5:00 p.m. at the office of House Speaker Sam Rayburn, where the plan was to enjoy a bourbon and branch water after work. Someone told Truman that he should dial the White House phone number, NAtional 1414.
“Jesus Christ and Gen. Jackson!”
Truman apparently never got to sip the drink. He put down the phone, turned to Rayburn, and gasped, “Jesus Christ and Gen. Jackson!”
He’d been summoned. He apparently believed he’d been summoned to a rare meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, on no notice to boot, almost certainly for some kind of upbraiding.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vice President-elect Harry S. Truman, and Vice President Henry Wallace in a car returning to the Capitol from Union Station during a downpour, Nov. 10, 1944. Truman Library photo
At about 5:25 p.m., transported in a black Mercury sedan with a driver but no Secret Service detail, Truman arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He said later he was puzzled as to why he’d been called in. “I thought that maybe he wanted me to do some special piece of liaison work with the Congress,” Truman said, according to biographer David McCullough. Other historians believe Truman knew the truth from the moment he’d picked up the phone.
Unexpected News?
Ushered to the second floor of the White House, Truman was greeted by Eleanor Roosevelt and press secretary Steve Early.
“Harry, the president is dead,” said the woman who was no longer First Lady.
Roosevelt had died of a cerebral hemorrhage at his summer home in Warm Springs, Georgia. He had been chief executive for 13 years. Many Americans had no living memory of any other president.
“Harry, the president is dead.”
The challenges facing the new president may have been the greatest any ever confronted.
In Europe, Allied troops had reached the Rhine and the Elbe and Adolf Hitler‘s Third Reich was crumbling, but the war was not over. The United States’ relations with its British ally, Winston Churchill, were always being challenged and those with its Soviet ally, Josef Stalin, were worse than strained.
In the Pacific, the outcome of the war with Japan remained uncertain. In the greatest logistical achievement in history, the U.S. and its allies were preparing to shift more than a million men and all of their gear from Europe to the Pacific to prepare for the two-pronged amphibious invasion of Japan, scheduled to begin in November.
In the Pentagon, that sprawling new building to which the Navy had initially refused to move, rivalry between the Army and the Navy was kept somewhat in check by the needs of the war but was simmering beneath the surface. The Navy’s Adm. Ernest J. King was prickly and difficult, the Army’s Gen. George C. Marshall a quiet and competent source of strength who was more laid back.
In New Mexico, a team of scientists with total government support and unlimited resources were working on a super weapon Truman knew little or nothing about.
Cabinet Call
At 7:08 p.m., minutes after being sworn in – although it was Roosevelt’s death, not the ceremony, that made him president – Truman convened a cabinet meeting. It was all very preliminary. Afterward, Secretary of War Henry Stimson lingered for a private chat. Stimson wanted Truman “to know about an immense project that was under way – a project looking to the development of a new explosive of almost unbelievable destructive power.” Truman wrote in his memoirs that this left him puzzled. Apparently, he did not retain the significance of what Stimson was trying to tell him. In fact, Stimson perceived his reaction as a snub.
Two weeks later, the Secretary of War sent his new boss a very personal “Dear Mr. President” letter that began, “I think it is very important that I should have a talk with you as soon as possible on a high secret matter.” They met on April 25, 1945, and for the first time the new president received a detailed briefing on the development of the atomic bomb. Often overlooked by historians is the fact that Truman had gotten inklings of the project while in the Senate. It’s possible he initially brushed off Stimson not because he didn’t want to know but because he already knew.
Truman was far from a familiar face to most Americans. Almost none realized that, as an artillery battalion commander at the Meuse-Argonne, he was the first combat veteran to become president since the advent of modern war.
Truman later wrote that his first day in office was “full of surprises,” although he probably came to the job knowing more than many historians realize. He may have been little known, but his humility, his integrity, and his habit of occasionally cussing up a storm endeared him to all around him.
In his first few days in office, Truman delivered a radio address to the armed forces. He wanted those participating in the war to understand where he was coming from. He referred to the commander-in-chief, Roosevelt, having fallen, and then he drew upon experience:
“When I fought in France with the 35th Division, I saw good officers and men fall and be replaced … I know the strain, the mud, the misery, the utter weariness of the soldier in the field. And I know too his courage, his stamina, his faith in his comrades, his country and himself.”
“As a veteran of the First World War, I have seen death on the battlefield,” said Truman. “When I fought in France with the 35th Division, I saw good officers and men fall and be replaced … I know the strain, the mud, the misery, the utter weariness of the soldier in the field. And I know too his courage, his stamina, his faith in his comrades, his country and himself.”
Ahead of Truman lay Hiroshima, the Marshall Plan, the Cold War, the nuclear age, and Korea. From his very first day as chief executive, even his strongest detractors knew that the modest man from Missouri had something to offer. April 12, 1945 was a milestone for Harry S. Truman – and a beginning.
Harry S. Truman takes the oath of office at the White House after the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 12, 1945. From left to right: Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor; Henry Stimson, Secretary of War; Henry Wallace, Secretary of Commerce; Julius Krug, War Production Board Administrator; James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy; Claude Wickard, Secretary of Agriculture; Francis McNamee, Department Chairman, War Manpower Commission; Francis Biddle, Attorney General; Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury; Harry S. Truman; Edward Stettinius, Secretary of State; Bess Wallace Truman; Harlan Stone, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House; Fred Vinson, Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion; Rep. Joseph Martin, House Minority Leader; Rep. Robert Ramspeck, House Democratic Whip; Rep. John McCormack, House Majority Leader. Library of Congress photo by Abbie Rowe
This was dictated before the world fell in on me
LETTERS OF NOTE
The main body of this letter was dictated by then-Vice President of the United States Harry Truman on the morning of April 12th, 1945. In it, he tells sister-in-law May Wallace of his ever-increasing workload after just three months in a role for which he didn't actually campaign. Just hours after the letter was dictated, President Roosevelt passed away, and when a shocked Harry Truman eventually returned to sign the letter - at which point he also hand-wrote the postscript - he was President of the United States.
Transcript follows.
Transcript
OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT
WASHINGTON
April 12, 1945
Mrs. George P. Wallace
605 West Van Horn Road
Independence, Missouri
Dear May:
Certainly did appreciate your letter of the Ninth and so did the whole family.
I am sending young Perryman the picture which you suggested.
I imagine that Spott is getting fatter and fatter. I have gained nine pounds myself. What do you think of that? So Spot and I will be in the same class.
Glad you liked the Buffalo speech.
The situation here gets no better fast. It looks as if I have more to do than ever and less time to do it, but some way we get it done. If I don't get this letter dictated to you, I will never get it written.
Tell George and Frank and Natalie hello. Bess and Margaret and Mrs. Wallace all want to be remembered. They are all in good health and spirits.
Sincerely yours,
(Signed, 'Harry')
Harry S. Truman
This was dictated before the world fell in on me. But I've talked to you since and you know what a blow it was. But - I must meet it.
1945 Funeral of President Roosevelt
Newsreel footage
http://www.c-span.org/video/?325090-1/newsreel-1945-funeral-president-franklin-roosevelt
In this April 12, 1945 photo released by the U.S. National Archives, U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, accompanied by Gen. Omar N. Bradley, left, and Lt. George S. Patton, Jr., inspects art treasures stolen by Germans in a salt mine in Merkers,
Very interesting.
We recovered from the Great Depression and World War II, but in my considered opinion we still haven’t recovered from Franklin Delano and his policies.
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