Second Summer

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "The Axis launch “Case Blue”, the summer offensive in the southern USSR with 100 divisions (50 German, 9 Italian, 27 Romanian, 13 Hungarian and 1 Slovak) supported by 1,600 aircraft. The main goals of the ambitious operation are to cut the Soviet supply line along the Volga River and to take the Caucasus oilfields."

 

" Close air support from the Luftwaffe also played an important role in this early success. It contained the Red Air Force, through air superiority operations, and provided interdiction through attacks on airfields and Soviet defense lines. At times, the German air arm acted as a spearhead rather than a support force, ranging on ahead of the tanks and infantry to disrupt and destroy defensive positions. As many as 100 German aircraft were concentrated on a single Soviet division in the path of the spearhead during this phase. General Kazakov, the Bryansk Front's chief of staff, noted the strength and effectiveness of the Axis aviation. Within 26 days, the Soviets lost 783 aircraft from the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 8th Air Armies, compared to a German total of 175."

 

 

 

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "Allied convoy PQ-17 was attacked by 24 He 111 aircraft of German Luftwaffe unit I./KG 26 about 60 miles north of Bear Island (Bjørnøya), Norway, fatally damaging US freighter Christopher Newport which would later be scuttled by a British submarine (3 were killed, 47 survived); at 1930 hours, another attack wave came upon the convoy, causing no damage; at 2020 hours, the convoy was attacked by 25 aircraft, sinking British freighter Navarino, sinking US freighter William Hooper (3 were killed, 55 survived), and damaging Soviet tanker Azerbaijan; at 2100 hours, believing that German battleships might be in the area, PQ-17 was ordered to scatter and the convoy escorts were withdrawn. Sailing in the opposite direction, QP-13 broke up to two convoys, one of which ran into a minefield; several ships struck mines and sank (British minesweeper HMS Niger (149 were killed), freighter Hybert, freighter Heffron, freighter Massmar (17 were killed), and Soviet passenger ship Rodina (several family members of Soviet diplomats were killed)), and several others were damaged (civilian commodore's ship American Robin, freighter Exterminator, and freighter John Randolph); HMS Hussar was able to lead the survivors out of the minefield."

 

 

 

"While the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army was moved to Voronezh, USSR to aid the city's defense, Adolf Hitler diverted the German 6th Army toward Stalingrad"

 

 

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "U-255 sinks American steamer Olopana. German bombers sink Panamanian freighter El Capitan. PQ-17 Convoy Commodore John Dowding gathers up 5 freighters, 3 minesweepers, 3 corvettes, 3 anti-submarine trawlers, and two auxiliary anti-aircraft ships to proceed in convoy through the Matochkin Strait to Archangelsk.

 

Ju-88 after dropping on a PQ-17 merchant"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Slovakian and German troops break through the defenses at Rostov-on-Don.

 

 

• Dissatisfied with the speed of advance in the Caucasus, OKW Chief Wilhelm Keitel fires Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock from command of Heersgruppe B, replacing him with Maximilian von Weichs. He tells Hitler that the Caucasus offensive needs to be reinforced with additional armor.

 

- Hitler in response issues Führer Directive No. 45, changing objectives for many units. 4. Panzerarmee (which is north of 6. Armee) is redirected south to join Heersgruppe A in conquering the Caucasus. This causes confusion and delay as 4. Panzerarmee crosses through 6. Armee, leaving their already stretched supplies lines in chaos.

 

- OKH Chief Franz Halder notes in his diary: that the “chronic tendency to underrate enemy capabilities is gradually assuming grotesque proportions and develops into a positive danger.”

 

KV-1 abandoned at Rostov

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago yesterday] "• Soviet Eleventh Army attacks the Demyansk salient, hoping to cut off the Axis units there.

 

• Large scale armored clashes occur around Rzhev as the Soviets commit VIII Tank Corps and II Guards Cavalry Corps to support the defending Soviet infantry forces.

 

• Soviet Leytenant Mikhail Baranov of the 183rd Fighter Aviation Regiment is leading a flight of three Yak-1 fighters escorting several Il-2 ground attack aircraft near Stalingrad. The formation runs into two dozen Ju-87s being escorted by a dozen Bf-109s. Baranov shoots down two Messerchmitts and one Stuka before running out of ammunition. He pursues a Bf-109 that is attacking a Sturmovik and chews off its tailfin with his propeller, downing it. Baranov makes a successful forced landing and will be decorated as a Hero of the Soviet Union.

 

Baranov next to his Yak in late 1942. He will be credited with 32 kills by the time of his death in a flying accident in 1943. His post-war confirmed score will be 21.

 

• 1. Panzerarmee takes Armavir in Krasnodar Krai."

[Vig]

Three Yaks!

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The Luftwaffe presses Ju-52 transports into service as bombers in order to send 600 aircraft to bomb Stalingrad with high explosives and incendiaries. Each aircraft makes three or four sorties over a 48 hour period.

 

Stalingrad under air attack August, 1942. The Soviets claim that 40,000 of the city’s 600,000 civilians are killed in the air attacks prior to the ground battle in the city.

 

• Having crossed the River Don, tanks of XIV Panzerkorps race 40 miles across the hard, flat ground and reach the River Volga at Erzovka, 10 miles North of Stalingrad. The depleted 87th Rifle Division is torn up and retreats while the 38th Rifle is surrounded. General Andrey Yeremenko blocks further advance with an NKVD Division and the remnants of two tank Corps (which have only fifty light tanks, the best of which are T-70s, between them)."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] • More than one hundred Soviet bombers (Petlyakov Pe-8, Ilyushin Il-4 and Yermolayev Yer-2s) mount the heaviest Soviet raid of the war on Berlin.

 

Yer-2. Seven Pe-8s attack Königsberg

 

• A report from OKW admits that the German offensive against the USSR is behind schedule and the Wehrmacht may not be able to win the war in 1942. Franz Halder, the head of OKH, the German Army High Command, states that Soviet resistance is stronger than anything seen in the West."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The Romanian Divizia 6 Cavalerie cuts off the last supply line for the Soviet Forty-seventh Army on the Taman Peninsula. Over the next few days the Azov Flotilla under Kounter-Admiral Sergey Gorshkov will evacuate the bulk of the army while under fire from air, artillery, and small craft attacks.

 

Black Sea convoy under attack.

 

- During the actions German Schnellboot S-27 is sunk by her own torpedo.

 

•  The Romanian Divizias 5 and 9 Infanterie capture Anapa, one of the few remaining Soviet ports on the Black Sea.

 

• Hitler orders that upon the occupation of Stalingrad, the entire male population must be eliminated as they are uniformly communist.

 

• Soviet Second Reserve Army launches attacks on XIV Panzerkorps north of Stalingrad, while to the south XLVIII Panzerkorps advances and threatens to flank the Sixty-second and Sixty-fourth Armies"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today]"• Feeling it important that Frenchmen fight on all fronts, Charles De Gaulle creates the Groupe de Chasse Normandie to fly aircraft in the Soviet Union. Mechanics, pilots and hardware will travel by rail and air via Iran. They will train on the Yakovlev-1 and score their first aerial victory (over a Fw-190) in April 1943. The Groupe will transition to the Yak-3 and destroy 273 Axis aircraft by war’s end, earning the Russian sobriquet “Nieman”. Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel will decree that any French pilot captured be executed.

 

Yak-3 flown by Free French Groupe de Chasse Normandie-Nieman."

 

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Convoy QP-14 departs Arkhangelsk.

 

• Convoy PQ-18 is 150 miles Northwest of Bear Island. Sea Hurricanes from Avenger attack a shadowing BV-138 but their .303 machine guns have little effect. Ironically, the convoy is carrying cannon armed Hurricanes in crates. U-408 sinks Soviet steamer Stalingrad and American steamer Oliver Ellsworth. Luftwaffe aircraft use a new anti-convoy tactic called the “Golden Comb”. Forty-three He-111 and Ju-88 torpedo aircraft fly in a single line abreast thirty metres apart while several Ju-88s attack with bombs. With more than eighty torpedoes coming at the convoy like the teeth of a comb, the commodore orders an emergency turn but the two starboard outer columns miss the signal and fail to comply.

 

 

Bomb exploding between destroyers Eskimo and Ashanti in PQ-18

 

- Eight ships are sunk by the massed torpedo attack. Five Heinkels are downed by AA fire and one by a Sea Hurricane.

 

Ammunition ship Mary Luckenbach blows up with loss of all hands after being torpedoed seen from HMS Avenger

 

- HMS Avenger is conducting continuous flight operations, cycling fighters and Swordfish into the air. The latter spot two more U-boats and force them to dive, spoiling their attacks.

Sea Hurricane taking off from HMS Avenger. The survival of the "baby flattop" is critical for the convoy.

 

- Nine He-115 floatplanes make a torpedo attack later in the day but it is broken up by a pair of Sea Hurricanes. One floatplane is shot down and the rest make drops from long range for no hits. In the evening, a dozen He-111s make another attack but three of them are downed by Sea Hurricanes, making no hits.

 

Heinkel-111 crashing close aboard after making a torpedo attack"

 

 

 

[cardboard_killer]

[40 years ago today] "• German aircraft sink the American 5,400 ton steamer Kentucky off the mouth of the Kola Inlet. After PQ-18 arrives, two more merchants will be sunk in harbor by air attack. All total, 13 ships are lost from PQ-18, but 28 will arrive safely. Furthermore, three U-boats had been destroyed, and forty German aircraft had been shot down.

 

 

• Soviet submarine S-13 sinks the Dutch 290 ton coaster Anna W with gunfire in the Gulf of Bothnia about 2 nautical miles off the coast of Finland.

 

• Il-4 bombers of Soviet Naval Aviation attack a coastal supply convoy in the Black Sea sinking a German Marinefährprahm F-533 and auxiliary minesweeper FZ-3.

 

• Soviet First Guards Army and Twenty-fourth Army attack at Kotluban 40 kilometers north of Stalingrad. Stuka dive bombers destroy 41 of the 106 Soviet tanks committed, while escorting fighters destroy 77 Soviet aircraft in the immediate area.

 

Ju-88s bombing Soviet airfield outside Stalingrad

 

• Fighting continues at Stalingrad with house-to-house and even room-to-room combat. One Soviet strongpoint is The Grain Elevator. It was built like a fortress with solid concrete walls. This becomes the site of a ferocious battle as a small group of men from the 13th Guards Division will hold out against successive attacks for three weeks. Today, a detachment from the 92nd Naval Rifle Brigade fight their way in to join them.  Eighteen of the marines make it, bringing machine guns and anti-tank rifles.

 

Stalingrad Grain Elevator"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Fierce fighting rages on at Stalingrad. The Soviets are increasingly pressed into a narrow band of defense along the Volga under heavy dive and level bombing attacks by Ju-87s and He-111s. Crossing of the Volga River in daylight is halted. 

 

Ju-87 over Stalingrad October 1942

 

• From General Vasily Chuikov’s 15 October diary:

 

0530 hours: Like yesterday, the enemy has started today with a reinforced artillery preparatory barrage on the front of Mokraja Metschetka-Red October district.

 

0800 hours: The enemy is attacking with tanks and infantry. The battle is raging on the entire front.

 

0930 hours: The attack of the enemy on the Stalingrad tractor works has been beaten off. At the courtyard of the works, ten fascist tanks are burning.

 

1000 hours: Tanks and infantry have overrun the 109th Guards Rifle Regiment of the 37th Division.

 

1130 hours: The left wing of the 524th Rifle Regiment of the 95th Rifle Division is overrun. About fifty tanks are rolling over the battle order of the regiment.

 

1150 hours: The enemy has taken the sport grounds of the Stalingrad tractor works. Our units that have been cut off fight on in the encirclement.

 

1200 hours: The commander of the 117th Rifle Regiment, Guards Major Andreyev, has been killed.

 

1220 hours: A radio message from a unit of the 416th Regiment from the hexagonal housing block: “Have been encircled, ammunition and water available, death before surrender!”

 

1230 hours: Dive-bombers attack the command post of General Scholudov, who is without radio communications in a neighboring bunker that has collapsed. We take over the communications to the units of this division.

 

1310 hours: Two bunkers in my army command post have collapsed. One officer is sticking in the mass of earth with his legs, but we can dig him out.

 

1320 hours: Through a pipe we have pumped air into the bunker of General Scholudov.

 

1440 hours: The telephone link with the units has gone down. We have switched to radio and mutual confirmation by signals officers.

 

1525 hours: The Army headquarters guard has entered combat.

 

1600 hours: The connection to the 114th Guards Regiment has been severed. Its situation is unknown.

 

1620 hours: Tanks have penetrated the grounds of the tractor factory. The enemy’s air force is overhead as before and is attacking us with bombs in low-level flights.

 

1635 hours: Regimental commander Lieutenant Colonel Ustinov requests that his command post be bombarded, as he is encircled by submachine gunners.

 

1700 hours: The signallers can write down only with difficulty the radio messages of the units that continue to fight on even though encircled.

 

2100 hours: Another radio message of the 37th Guards Division: “We’re still fighting.”