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History, Europe

The popular conception of the struggle in the air over northern Europe during World War II is of squadrons of sleek fighters racing over the German heartland to protect contrailed streams of lumbering bombers stretching beyond sight.

Key point: Thanks to the introduction of better fighters and the use of aggressive, realistic offensive fighter doctrines, American airmen attained—not the air superiority they sought, but—total air supremacy over the whole of western Europe.

The popular conception of the struggle in the air over northern Europe during World War II is of squadrons of sleek fighters racing over the German heartland to protect contrailed streams of lumbering bombers stretching beyond sight. This is as it was during the second half of America’s air war against Germany, but it was as far from the truth as it is possible to get at the start of that great aerial crusade. It took until late 1943—nearly two years after the United States entered World War II—before the United Kingdom-based Eighth Air Force mounted strategically significant bombing missions against targets in occupied northern Europe. The fault for this lay partly in the availability and slow development of the equipment, but it is also a fact that the two men at the top of the Eighth Air Force command structure stubbornly clung to old and discredited theories that stunted the effectiveness of the strategic-bombing effort and cost thousands of their countrymen their freedom or their lives.


In the beginning, the fighter was a short-legged creature whose role of protecting the bombers was eclipsed by its role of guarding friendly territory and installations. The difference, which is crucial, was the product of technology—range and the power of aircraft engines—and intellect. Until late 1943, surprisingly late in the war, the use of the fighter as an offensive weapon was stunted by the defensive mind-set of the “pursuit” acolytes of the interwar decades.

The pursuit airplane had evolved over the fixed battlefields of Western Europe during World War I. Pursuit aircraft had been developed to prevent enemy reconnaissance airplanes from overflying friendly lines and to protect friendly observation airplanes from enemy pursuits while the observers overflew enemy lines. The pursuit was conceived as a tactical and a defensive weapon, and it was limited to these roles both by conception and by the technologies of the day.

The Army Air Corps

Between the world wars, the development of American pursuit aircraft was hobbled by budgetary restrictions that for many years slowed or obviated altogether the creation of new technologies or even methodical experimentation with new tactics. The U.S. Marine Corps did advance the use of the single-engine pursuit as a nascent close-support weapon to bolster the infantry, but the interests of various intra-Army constituencies prevented similar advances in what had come to be called the Army Air Corps. To the degree that it developed at all, the Air Corps saw increasingly heavy and longer ranged bombers in its future. And, as the limited available research-and-development dollars were expended on speedier bombers, the pursuits of the day were increasingly outranged and outrun.

Inevitably, American bombers of the late 1930s were designed to be “self-defending” because they could fly much farther and at least somewhat faster than could the pursuits of the day. The pursuits, which were being developed at a much slower pace, were relegated to a point-defense role—guarding cities, industrial targets, and air bases. When World War II began, the Air Corps—shortly to be renamed the Army Air Forces—was divided into two distinct combat arms, fighters and bombers. And, by virtue of the fighter’s stunted development, there appeared little chance that the two would spend much time working together.

As soon as the Army Air Corps was pulled into World War II it became focused on the defense of American coastal cities, several Caribbean islands, bases in Greenland and Iceland, and on the strategically indispensable Panama Canal. There were few airplanes of any type to devote to these defensive missions, and those that were deployed defensively also had to serve as on-the-job trainers for hundreds of the raw young pilots emerging from the Air Forces’ burgeoning flight schools.

Through the first half of 1942, all of the very few pilots and airplanes that could be spared from the defense of the U.S. coasts and sea lanes were rushed to defend Australia and the South Pacific. Dozens of precious airplanes and pilots were lost in the pathetic defense of Java, in the Netherlands East Indies, and many more were lost in the early defensive battles around Port Moresby, New Guinea, but Army Air Forces’ training commands were able to catch up with combat and training losses as well as with the heavy burden imposed by the formation of new fighter, bomber, and other-type groups. And better fighters with a higher probability of survival began to reach operational air groups.

Committing to American Air Power

Fortunately, the United States could afford to be a bit late off the mark in her war against Germany. German efforts in 1940 to bring Great Britain to her knees all had failed miserably and, by the end of 1941, the bulk of Germany’s air and land forces were mired in a frightful war of attrition deep inside Russia. The British had the situation in northern Europe reasonably well in hand, though they would have collapsed had not vast infusions of weapons and supplies from the United States sustained them. British forces in Egypt and Libya were teetering on the edge of defeat, but there was little the United States would be able to do for many months to influence the outcome—assuming the British held on that long.

So, while the Army Air Forces devoted the bulk of its limited expendable resources to defensive measures against Japan, new air groups were created, and new and better combat aircraft began rolling off newly created assembly lines. Finally, in the spring of 1942, it was decided in high Army Air Forces’ circles to commit American air power to northern Europe. At first, the commitment would be little more than a meager show of force masking an advanced combat-training program overseen by the Royal Air Force (RAF). Only later, when training bases and factories in the United States had caught up with the planning, would the U.S. Army Air Forces take on a strategic air campaign against the German industrial heartland.

Brigadier General Ira Eaker arrived in England on February 20, 1942 to establish the headquarters of the new VIII Bomber Command. He opened his headquarters at High Wycombe, England on February 23, 1942, but the VIII Bomber Command had no combat airplanes to its name; they would not be available for several months. Rather, it fell to Eaker to argue with his British hosts in favor of an independent role for the forthcoming Army Air Forces in Europe. The RAF and the British government wanted America’s commitment to the air war in Europe to be subordinate to or an adjunct of the British Theatre air war. The Americans, however, felt they deserved an independent role, and it was Eaker’s job to win the British over to this viewpoint.

The American notion was strongly bolstered—in argument, at least—by the fact that the Army Air Forces had developed over many years a theoretical strategic air doctrine that was quite different from the RAF’s experience-based strategic doctrine. The Americans favored and had equipped their bomber force to wage a precision daylight-bombing campaign against industrial targets hundreds of miles inside enemy territory. The RAF was the only other air force in the world that had developed long-range, four-engine, heavy bombers, but its doctrine—the result of bloody experiences early in the war—favored “area” bombing at night. Doctrinal arguments aside, the British victims of the Nazi Blitz of 1940-1941 were less squeamish than their American Allies about bombing German civilians. Besides, the RAF had few long-range heavy bombers to its name, and thus felt it needed to co-opt the promised infusion of American heavies.

For the time being, Eaker’s arguments with the RAF hierarchy were moot. There would be no American air-combat units in the United Kingdom for several months, and then there would not be enough of them to make a dent in Hitler’s Fortress Europa for many more months.

A Symbolic Commitment between Allies

The first VIII Bomber Command unit to arrive in England—on May 10, 1942—was the 97th Heavy Bombardment Group, which was equipped with Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress four-engine heavy bombers. This was a symbolic commitment, for the 97th had been activated in February 1942 and thus had not had time to be adequately trained to fly combat missions over heavily defended European targets. It would be months before the 97th saw any live action.

Around the time the 97th Heavy Bombardment Group became the first nominal combat unit to join Eaker’s VIII Bomber Command, Brig. Gen. Frank “Monk” Hunter arrived in England to establish the headquarters of his VIII Fighter Command, also at High Wycombe. Unlike Eaker, Hunter, a rather flamboyant World War I ace, quickly came to terms with British beliefs and aspirations regarding the employment of forthcoming American fighter groups. The RAF had opted for powerful, short-range, point-defense fighters that could defend friendly air bases and attack nearby enemy air bases, and its doctrine appeared to have proven itself during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. Hunter, who had spent most of his career arguing the point-defense case for the U.S. Army’s fighters, was eager to augment the British fighter plan.

On June 10, 1942 personnel of the U.S. Army Air Forces’ 31st Fighter Group arrived in England by ship. After being outfitted with British Spitfire fighters, the green American fighter group was to begin rigorous advanced combat training overseen by a number of the RAF’s leading Battle of Britain aces. As with the 97th Heavy Bombardment Group, the 31st Fighter Group was not expected to begin combat operations for several months.

On June 18, 1942 Maj. Gen. Carl Spaatz arrived in England to establish the headquarters of the Eighth Air Force at High Wycombe. Spaatz was one of the handful of Army Air Forces officers with the moral authority to win an independent role for American air units over the forceful arguments of Britain’s top military and political leaders. Leaving the training of pilots and aircrews to Eaker and Hunter, Spaatz set out on a political path to forge an independent role for American air units. It was Spaatz’s brief from his superiors to integrate and modulate the projected American daylight air offensive with—but not subordinate it to—Britain’s night-bombing effort.

The Army Air Forces’ first combat mission against a German-held target took place on July 4, 1942. Six American-manned RAF-owned Douglas A-20 light attack bombers accompanied six RAF-manned A-20s in an attack on several German airfields in the Netherlands. Two of the American A-20s were downed by flak, seven crewmen were killed and one was captured, two failed to reach the target, and a fifth A-20 was severely damaged. The U.S. Army Air Forces could not have asked for a less auspicious or more humiliating inauguration of what would become the greatest aerial offensive in the history of the world.

The very first U.S. Army Air Forces fighter mission over Occupied Europe took place on July 26, 1942. As part of their training syllabus, six 31st Fighter Group senior pilots joined an RAF fighter sweep to Gravelines, a French town on the English Channel. German fighters challenged the American and RAF Spitfires, and the 31st Fighter Group’s deputy commander was shot down and captured.

31st Fighter Group Joins the RAF for a “Big Show”

The 97th Heavy Bombardment Group had to wait until August 17, when a dozen B-17s, with General Eaker along as an observer, conducted an afternoon raid against railroad marshaling yards near Rouen, France, 35 miles from the English Channel. Escort for the bombers was provided by four RAF Spitfire squadrons. The results of the mission were negligible. One B-17 was damaged by a German fighter, but there were no losses and no injuries.

Two days later, on August 19, the entire 31st Fighter Group joined with the RAF for a “big show” across the Channel, the tragic invasion rehearsal at Dieppe. While completing four 12-plane missions over the beaches during the day, pilots from the 31st were officially awarded two confirmed and two probable air-to-air victories.

The 31st Fighter Group continued to fly fighter-sweep missions over coastal France, but it was awarded only one probable and no confirmed victories before it was withdrawn from combat operations in October to prepare for its upcoming role in the invasion of French Northwest Africa. Meanwhile, on September 12, 1942 the RAF’s three independent Eagle squadrons—fighter units composed entirely of American citizens who had enlisted in the Royal Air Force or Royal Canadian Air Force—were absorbed into the VIII Fighter Command as the new 4th Fighter Group.

Thanks to the withdrawal and diversion of other VIII Fighter Command groups for the North Africa Campaign, the 4th Fighter Group, which was outfitted with Spitfires, was the only operational American fighter unit in northern Europe until May 1943. Already endowed with experienced combat pilots, including a number of aces, from its RAF days, the 4th did about as well during its first six months of combat service as did RAF Spitfire units that took part in similar fighter-sweep missions. Between September 1942 and mid-April 1943, the 4th Fighter Group was awarded credit for 15 confirmed victories over France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

The essence of the U.S. Army Air Forces campaign over northern Europe between October 1942 and the spring of 1943 was that, for practical purposes, there was no air campaign. The diversion of most of the small Eighth Air Force—fighters and bombers—to North Africa left the VIII Bomber Command and the VIII Fighter Command virtually no assets with which to wage any sort of offensive battle.

”The 4th Fighter Group was as Predatory a Fighter Unit as Ever Fought in a War”

From October 1942 until May 1943, only the 4th Fighter Group remained operational in the United Kingdom. The handful of other fighter groups that had reached the British Isles by October 1942 had been diverted or, in the case of the 78th Fighter Group, stripped of its airplanes, which were needed as replacements by groups in North Africa. Between early October 1942 and the end of April 1943, 4th Fighter Group pilots accounted for just 16 German airplanes. (Between mid-March and April 8, the 4th was withdrawn from combat so it could transition from Spitfires to Republic P-47 Thunderbolts. The group’s first aerial victories in the P-47—and the P-47’s first victories, ever—were scored on April 15 over the Belgian coast.)

As was to emerge in time, the paucity of aerial victories—even the paucity of aerial encounters—had less to do with the scarcity of American-manned fighters than it did with American fighter tactics. The 4th Fighter Group was as predatory a fighter unit as ever fought in a war. In better times, with better tactics, it became one of America’s premier fighter units. But during the period it flew as the only American fighter unit in operation in northern Europe—and for several months beyond—it attained negligible results because it was hobbled by idiotic tactics.

The immediate culprit was Maj. Gen. Monk Hunter, the commander of the VIII Fighter Command, but it must be said that Hunter was a product of his training and, to a degree, poor technology. Both of these factors obliged him and his eager fighter pilots—Hunter was eager, too—to work apart, virtually in a separate war, from the Eighth Air Force’s other combat arm, the VIII Bomber Command. Indeed, the doctrines that defined bomber and fighter operations were so far apart as to obviate direct cooperation.

The bombers had been built and the bomber crews had been trained to attack enemy targets without protection from fighters. Even as late as 1942, non-German air strategists honestly believed that wars could be won by bomber campaigns alone. Since the mid-1930s, Americans who accepted this outlook had developed what they called the self-defending bomber. That innovation, however, had more to do with the fighter technology of the 1930s; fighters of the day possessed neither the range nor the speed required to protect modern bombers. Fighter technology improved, but by mid-1942 the concept of the self-defending bomber had taken on a life of its own. It was believed that Germany could be bombed into submission by long-range self-defending bombers that were capable of flying—without fighter escort—to industrial targets anywhere in western or even central Europe. There was no offensive role for fighters.

As with most self-fulfilling prophecies, fact came to match belief. In 1942, American heavy bombers (and their British counterparts) had the range to strike targets in distant Berlin and beyond. The British had attempted daylight raids against Berlin early in the war, but they had been trounced by German fighter and antiaircraft-gun defenses. So they had switched to night “area” raids, nominally against industrial targets but, in reality, against whomever or whatever their bombs happened to strike.

Terror Bombings

The U.S. Army Air Forces, on the other hand, had developed qualms against “terror” bombings. And besides, America’s leading bomber enthusiasts believed strongly in the efficacy of both their precision daylight-bombing doctrine and their self-defending heavy bombers. Moreover, American fighters of the day, though powerful and powerfully armed, still lacked the range to accompany the bombers all the way to the nearest point in Germany and back.

Denied a role in escorting bombers to distant targets, and blinded by an outmoded and actually quite silly doctrine he had helped develop in the 1930s, Monk Hunter opted to send his meager fighter assets on “fighter sweeps” over those areas of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands that were within the meager operational range of the one fighter type that was then in his hands—the immensely heavy (7 ton) and short-ranged Republic P-47 Thunderbolt.

It must be said that it was not Hunter’s fault that he had inadequate airplanes (forget that there was only one group flying!), and he was not alone in his misperception of the role of fighters in World War II. The VIII Fighter Command’s failure to make a dent in the German fighter force—fewer than 20 confirmed victories in seven months—also goes to the role to which the Army Air Forces both aspired and had been relegated by 1942.

The key to every decision Allied commanders made in 1942 and 1943 was the projected invasion of France. At first, when the United States entered the war, it was hoped that the invasion would take place in mid-1943. By the late summer of 1942, however, the North Africa Campaign—and a huge number of other factors—made it clear that D-day was going to be delayed until mid-1944. As the first symbolic raids and sweeps were undertaken over northwestern Europe by Eighth Air Force fighter and bomber units in mid-1942, there were two full years to achieve preinvasion goals from the air. North Africa threw the margin into a cocked hat. If luck held, it would be mid-1943 before the strategic-bombing campaign could be resumed, and then only one year would be left for cracking the vast array of German objectives that would have to be overcome before the invasion could safely commence.

The primary role of American and British air power in Europe from mid-1942 until the invasion was to be the defeat of the Luftwaffe. Operation Pointblank, the specific plan by which the Allies were to accomplish this feat, was promulgated in May 1943 following acceptance of the common goal by the RAF and the U.S. Army Air Forces. The defeat of the Luftwaffe was of primary concern to the Allies because, at heart, it was constituted as a tactical ground-cooperation air force; it had been developed in its entirety to support German Army ground operations. Its bombers, for example, were light or medium models, and its bomber crews were trained to support ground troops at close or medium range. The Luftwaffe had no long-range capability—no strategic capability whatsoever; its role was tactical and, at most, operational. (This is precisely why the Luftwaffe alone was unable to overcome the RAF as a strategic objective during the Blitz; it was too lightly built to undertake a purely strategic mission.) As a superb tactical air force, however, the Luftwaffe was an enormous potential threat to an invasion fleet or a fledgling toehold on the soil of France.

Operation: Pointblank

In order to assure a safe landing by tens of thousands of Allied soldiers from thousands of ships, two things had to happen in the air before the invasion began—or could begin. The Luftwaffe had to be whittled down in strength and it had to be pushed as far back from the English Channel and North Sea coasts as possible. By forcing German tactical and operational air units to operate at the extremity of their ranges and in the smallest possible numbers—and only by doing so—could the mid-1944 invasion foreseen in mid-1942 be reasonably assured of success?

The goal of Operation Pointblank was to be accomplished in two ways: first, by simply shooting down German airplanes wherever they could be induced to fight and, second, by destroying Germany’s ability to build airplanes. To accomplish the latter, the destruction of the German aircraft industry and related targets, the British and Americans opened the Combined Bomber Offensive. The RAF would undertake night “area” bombing attacks against the German aircraft industry and the U.S. Army Air Forces would undertake daylight precision-bombing attacks against the same or similar targets.

Conceptually, the simultaneous Anglo-American program of aggressive (but, alas, short-range) fighter sweeps over the French, Belgian, and Dutch coasts was aimed at engaging the Luftwaffe fighter wings in a battle of attrition that over time would destroy the bulk of whatever reduced numbers of fighters the shattered German aircraft industry managed to produce. Further, by destroying German fighters, the Allies hoped to induce the German aircraft industry to switch over from the production of tactical bombers to the increased production of replacement fighters, which were less likely to hurt the invasion forces.

Sadly, while American fighters were being assiduously avoided by the crack Luftwaffe fighter units within their meager range, the “self-defending” daylight heavy-bomber groups charged with attacking strategic targets deeper inside France, the Netherlands, and northwestern Germany were being butchered. While the German fighters were sidestepping needless and avoidable attrition simply by ignoring the American fighter sweeps, the bombers were locked in a one-sided form of attrition that did not bode well for their survival.

American Fighters Down 7 German Airplanes

Beginning in April 1943, the 4th Fighter Group’s new P-47 Thunderbolts were joined over the Channel and North Sea coasts by the Thunderbolts of the 78th Fighter Group—and another P-47 unit, the 56th Fighter Group, was in training in England. Despite the doubling of assets, the results remained abysmal. Meanwhile, losses of American heavy bombers continued to rise. Major General Ira Eaker, who had replaced Spaatz as Eighth Air Force commander when the latter went to North Africa, continued to champion the self-defending bomber, but he also alibied that there were not yet enough heavies available in northern Europe to make the strategy efficacious. However, in April 1943, after scores and then hundreds of unescorted “self-defending” bombers had fallen and thousands of American airmen had been killed or captured, Eaker finally did ask Monk Hunter to provide fighters for escort duty to the extremity of their range—going into the Continent (penetration), and coming out (withdrawal). The bombers would be on their own a good part of the way, but some protection at the margins apparently was deemed to be better than none at all. From May 4 onward, nearly all VIII Fighter Command sorties were devoted to escorting the bombers.

Seven German airplanes were downed by American fighters over northern Europe in May 1943, and 18 fell in June (seven in one day, June 22). Action during the first three weeks of July was sluggish, but an extremely aggressive new commander, Maj. Gen. Frederick Anderson, had just taken over the VIII Bomber Command on July 1, and he needed some time to make his aggressive new policies bite. On July 24, Anderson’s VIII Bomber Command opened “Blitz Week” with the first of hopefully daily appearances over Germany. Weather shut down bomber operations on one of seven consecutive planned mission days, but the other six days saw strikes aggregating just over a thousand bomber sorties against 15 targets all over northern and western Germany. Claims by bomber gunners were, as always, extravagant—330 victory credits were awarded—but there is no doubting that the German fighter forces were worn down somewhat, at least operationally, by the unrelenting appearances by the bombers.

The American escort fighters put in fewer claims by far, but the fact that their claims were closer to reality made them startling in their own right. In July 1943, American fighter combat produced 38 victory credits, of which 33—nine and 24, respectively—were scored during just two Blitz Week missions. Not coincidentally, the two missions in question were not only bomber-escort missions—they were the first nominally long-range bomber-escort missions ever flown by Eighth Air Force fighters.

On July 28, 1943 the 4th Fighter Group significantly increased the range of its P-47 fighters in an experiment with auxiliary fuel tanks. In so doing, its pilots took the Germans by surprise by flying much deeper into enemy territory than they ever had before. Nine German fighters were downed in what for the Germans was an unexpected melee around the American heavy-bomber stream. Two days later, on July 30, all three P-47 groups were able to use for the first time what the pilots referred to as “bathtub” belly tanks. The 115-gallon tanks—which were designed for use in long-distance ferry flights—were not pressurized, and they gave the pilots a lot of problems, but they did add 150 to 200 miles to each Thunderbolt’s operational range. Until then, the heavy fighter could barely reach Antwerp. With the tanks, the P-47s could make it well into the Netherlands. Thus, on July 30, when the target was the Focke-Wulf assembly plant in Kassel, Germany, more than two hundred VIII Bomber Command B-17s and B-24s took part in a mission that was covered to the greatest depth ever by friendly fighters.

An Incredible 24 Confirmed Victories in 1 Day

On the watershed July 30 mission, the 56th Fighter Group gave the bombers penetration support, the 78th Fighter Group provided early withdrawal support, and the 4th Fighter Group provided late withdrawal support. That meant that the 78th Fighter Group’s P-47s would be with the bombers quite soon after the heavies came off the target. The overall tactical plan was simple—protect the bombers and drive away the German fighters. The surprised German pilots either attempted to ignore the P-47s as they drove their fighters into the bomber stream, or they were sucked into dogfights at the expense of attacking their primary targets, the bombers.

There it was—24 confirmed victories in one day, on a single mission. The tactics and technology had changed, and American fighters had knocked down as many German airplanes in one mission as they had been able to in dozens of fighter-sweep and even escort missions in the preceding two months. In a short time, the large numbers of sturdy, reliable, streamlined, auxiliary fuel tanks that were shipped to or manufactured in England forever changed the tenor of the daytime air war in Europe. Indeed, the routine commitment of American long-range fighter escorts in mid-1943 changed the substance of war in the air as profoundly as the routine use of flimsy reconnaissance aircraft had transformed ground warfare in 1915.

The Germans knew there was no profit in attacking American fighters for the sake of engaging in dogfights that could go either way once they were joined. Fighters, per se, were no danger to the Third Reich. Bombers were. Bombers were a threat to everything—home, loved ones, and German morale and equanimity. American bombers, if they were allowed to get through to their targets, were an especial danger to the Luftwaffe itself, for they had shown a propensity to concentrate on the German industries from which German fighters and bombers emerged—ball bearings, machine tools, and airplane factories themselves. German fighters would never attack American or British fighters unless there was an overwhelming opportunity to win. But bombers had to be attacked, no matter where or when they appeared over Germany or her satellites. And, so, if the American fighter enthusiasts wanted to destroy the Luftwaffe at least in part through a strategy of attrition, they had to tie their fortunes to those of the bombers. To do that, better or much-improved fighters needed to emerge from the American industrial behemoth, better escort tactics needed to evolve, and better operational ranges needed to be achieved by the fighters.

The VIII Fighter Command’s three P-47 groups were credited with 58 German airplanes in August 1943, all of them during bomber-escort duty. In stark contrast, the American P-47s flew 373 fighter-sweep sorties over France on August 15 and did not see a single German airplane. Despite the numbers and mounting pressure from his superiors in Washington to adopt changes, Hunter continued to argue vehemently in favor of his discredited fighter-sweep tactic. In this, Hunter continued to be supported by the Eighth Air Force commander, Eaker, who remained a strong supporter in his own right of the self-defending bomber.

The ‘Aggressive’ William Kepner

Eaker was very close personally to the Army Air Forces chief, General Henry “Hap” Arnold, so his job was secure. But, though Hunter was also an old friend of Arnold’s, he had become an annoying relic. Hunter was replaced as head of the VIII Fighter Command on August 29 by Maj. Gen. William Kepner. A fighter pilot’s fighter pilot, Kepner was, in a word, aggressive. Moreover, his outlook was in full accord with the reality of the air war over northern Europe. He simply wanted to do whatever worked.

The VIII Fighter Command’s tally continued to rise, but the early escort tactic—stay with the bombers—quickly became ossified. Eaker eventually became an escort advocate, but next he refused the counsel of his escort commanders. As the range of their airplanes increased—especially after the introduction of the long-range Lockheed P-38 Lightning in late 1943 and the development of the North American P-51 Mustang—the fighter men thought they should range ahead of the bombers to break up Luftwaffe fighter formations before the bombers were molested—in other words, to go over to the offensive. Eaker, however, gave in to the wishes of his seriously demoralized bomber men, who wanted to see their escorts close up—an effective but nonetheless defensive mind-set. As a result, the fighters remained only marginally effective, and bombers and their crews continued to fall in record numbers.

At length, despite Eaker’s obstructionism, the Eighth Air Force forced the Luftwaffe to abandon its forward bases and defend the German heartland. This fit the preinvasion plan—move the German fighters far back from the invasion beaches—but the highly concentrated German defensive fighter effort (heavily augmented by improved antiaircraft protection) downed yet a higher percentage of bombers even while providing more fruitful hunting for the American fighters. The deadly spiral persisted until, at last, Eaker was replaced on January 6, 1944 by Maj. Gen. James Doolittle, who was brought in from the Mediterranean.

Doolittle and the new theater air commander, the redoubtable Carl Spaatz, immediately gave the Eighth Air Force fighters their offensive head. Thereafter, aggressive roving (“freelancing”) American fighters often dispersed the German fighters before the American bombers arrived on the scene. It was Bill Kepner and Fred Anderson, working together under Doolittle and Spaatz, who finally broke the back of the German fighter force, the one by shooting it down over Germany and the other by making a shambles of the German industrial base, especially the aircraft industry.

American Air Supremacy

The strategic air campaign leading up to the invasion was long and bloody. In the end, there was only one fair way to measure the success of Operation Pointblank and its many related phases and strategies: How much opposition was the Luftwaffe able to muster over the beaches and invasion fleet when Normandy was invaded on D-day, June 6, 1944?

On D-day itself two German fighters appeared over the invasion beaches. Two. No German fighters rose to challenge the hundreds of fighter-escorted transport aircraft that dropped three airborne divisions behind the Normandy beaches, and no German fighters or bombers—not one—attacked the invasion armada or landing force. On June 6, 26 German airplanes—fighters and light bombers—were destroyed over France by U.S. Army Air Forces fighters, but none of these came within sight of the Normandy coast. The Luftwaffe never meaningfully contested the invasion or any of the subsequent Allied land campaigns in Europe. By the time the invasion began, American bomber losses had dropped to negligible proportions, and the Luftwaffe had been virtually driven from the skies over its own homeland.

From mid-1944, thanks to the introduction of better fighters and the use of aggressive, realistic offensive fighter doctrines, American airmen attained—not the air superiority they sought, but—total air supremacy over the whole of western Europe.

This article originally appeared on the Warfare History Network. Originally Published April 16, 2019.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Trevor Filseth

Stimulus Payments,

Polling has indicated that four in ten Americans’ wages are lower now than they were in 2019, underlining the idea that the economic recovery is still far from over.

In March 2020, after Covid-19 lockdowns caused thousands of businesses to close their doors, Stephanie Bonin, a Colorado restaurant owner, started a Change.org petition calling for recurring stimulus checks. Bonin’s suggestion, echoing proposals made by legislators on Capitol Hill, was a recurring payment of $2,000 per month to all American adults throughout the pandemic.

The proposal in question had been advocated before—around the same time, it was put forward by Humanity Forward, a universal basic income (UBI) advocacy group, and it is difficult to tell who came up with the idea first. However, the petition quickly gained outsized attention as millions of people signed; its current tally sits at 2.45 million signatures—gaining roughly 50,000 in the past week alone. If the current trend continues, the petition will pass 2.5 million signatures next week.

The petition has been peripheral to the actual stimulus debate in Washington. However, while it probably has not affected any policy decisions, it has exposed a deep undercurrent of support for further stimulus payments. Nor is it the only place that this support has become apparent. According to one survey, 90 percent of Americans believed that the stimulus check gave them a noticeable economic benefit. In a separate Data for Progress poll, 65 percent expressed their support for another stimulus measure.

The moral case for another stimulus check is clear-cut. The U.S. unemployment rate is still at roughly 6 percent, far higher than its pre-pandemic level. Polling has indicated that four in ten Americans’ wages are lower now than they were in 2019, underlining the idea that the economic recovery is still far from over.

For these reasons, the stimulus payments are popular. More than sixty members of the House of Representatives, and more than twenty senators, have indicated their support for a fourth stimulus payment, although there is disagreement on what form such payment would take. The issue of recurring stimulus checks, in particular, has been taken up by progressive Democrats, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

However, eighty out of five hundred and thirty-five is not a majority, and both Republicans and moderate Democrats have opposed the extra spending that a stimulus bill would entail. So, in all but words, has President Joe Biden, who has scrupulously avoided addressing the stimulus issue, pushing instead for a more traditional bipartisan infrastructure bill. While a second, larger spending bill is also in the works, it does not contain a stimulus, either. Barring an extreme event—such as a deadlier strain of Covid-19, forcing Americans back into their homes—another stimulus payment seems very unlikely.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for The National Interest.

Image: Reuters.

Wes Martin

Armenia, Iran, South Caucasus

Were the Nakhchivan corridor to run through Iran, it hands Tehran still yet more leverage and integration into the global economy.

With the exception of tragedy, trains rarely stir the international media. But when a new rail-line could hand one of America’s greatest threats renewed clout in a region currently closed to it, that should change. Particularly when that country has a new hardline leadership on the cusp of power.

Formerly a hanging judge, Iranian president-elect Ebrahim Raisi will be the least trustworthy of his recent predecessors. More ruthless and zealous in his revolutionary Islamist conviction, the distinguishing feature of his career was his role in a “death commission” that oversaw the secret executions of 30,000 thousand political prisoners in 1988. But though struggling under the weight of sanctions and isolation, Iran and its new leadership may soon be thrown a lifeline in the South Caucasus. Perhaps bizarrely, Armenia may inadvertently cast it to them. With renewed influence with Yerevan, America must prevent this at all costs.

Some geographical and historical context is necessary. Last autumn, Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a conflict over a region called Nagorno-Karabakh. The result was a return of internationally recognized lands to Azerbaijan that had been occupied since the two nations went to war as the USSR collapsed. Another consequence of their ceasefire agreement was the re-opening of transit routes between and within one another’s countries.

This is of grave importance to both Armenia and Azerbaijan. For Yerevan, its thirty-year occupation had left it isolated and reliant on Russia, with neighboring Azerbaijani Turkish borders closed to it. For Baku, it means the reopening of a transit line that runs twenty-six miles across Armenia’s southern border with Iran, reconnecting Azerbaijan with its long-isolated exclave Nakhchivan. However, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan—until recently in the midst of a post-conflict crisis election—has said he will never entertain the idea of the Nakhchivan corridor, in spite of its explicit mention in the ceasefire agreement.

Few realize there could be an alternate rail line south of the border, through Iran, that mirrors the one envisaged in the ceasefire agreement. This would weaken Armenia’s hand in post-conflict negotiations; it should be cause to exercise caution.

Re-establishing direct connection is of great symbolic importance to Azerbaijanis, and therefore figures highly in any geostrategic calculation. Traveling to or from Nakhchivan currently entails a lengthy circumvention through Iran on poor roads—or freighting through Georgia and Turkey to the enclave. Up until now, the most logical line was to run it where it once was; and was assumed possible with the resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute.

But this calculation is changing due to Armenia’s intransigence. Within some circles in Baku, it is leading to consideration of this alternate Iranian route. Not only would this cut Armenia out of the future regional economy but it would hand Tehran renewed influence where it had recently been lacking.

Last autumn’s conflict blindsided Iran’s leadership in a region it believes is part of its domain. Russia and Turkey, allied respectively to Armenia and Azerbaijan, emerged as the key external power brokers. Tehran, waking up, has been touring the region post-war to re-establish its presence. The rail line will be that fix.

Regional connectivity, long stymied by the dispute, is the key to prosperity in the South Caucasus. Handing a critical role within that infrastructure to a malign actor to obstruct at will—or at least threaten to—delivers them undue leverage. For a regime known to move against rational economic incentives, this bodes ill. But if it is Azerbaijan’s only feasible option, Baku will take it.

Then there are the wider ramifications. The South Caucasus sits along the so-called middle corridor for freight between the Asia-Pacific and Europe. Infrastructure on both sides of the continents is ready to be connected. The final Azerbaijan-Nakhchivan jigsaw piece, whether it runs through Armenia or Iran, would form the fastest link. Were it to run through Iran, it hands Tehran still yet more leverage and integration into the global economy.

That is why America must impress upon Armenia to step up—for its own economic future and regional security. After being initially side-lined in the conflict’s resolution, Washington has recently managed to broker the first diplomatic breakthrough since the cessation of hostilities: Azerbaijan released fifteen Armenian detainees and, in return, Yerevan handed over maps detailing mines it had laid in one of the seven districts Azerbaijan reclaimed during the conflict.

But more importantly, the Biden administration has broken with precedent and officially recognized the Armenian genocide—much to Turkey’s ire. It risked worsening relations with a NATO ally to do something for Armenia from which Washington would gain nothing. Armenia will therefore listen.

In theory, Pashinyan shouldn’t take too much convincing: the corridor is after all in Armenia’s interest. Despite losing the conflict, he has touted the links now possible as a transformational opportunity. Hopefully, his previous denial of the Nakhchivan corridor was to mitigate against electoral attacks from an opposition crying traitor. With his election victory secured, he now has a mandate to make perceived concessions for Armenia’s future good.

Still, with the specter of Iranian influence possible through potential miscalculation, Washington would do well to remind him why the Nakhchivan corridor is in his interest. 

Colonel (Retired) Wes Martin has served in law enforcement positions around the world and holds an MBA in International Politics and Business.

Image: Reuters.

Trevor Filseth

economy, Americas

One of the IRS’s stated priorities has been to ensure that government assistance programs, including stimulus checks and the newly increased Child Tax Credit, are made available to all Americans who qualify for them.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The agency announced Wednesday that it has partnered with civil society organizations, including churches, community organizations, and nonprofits to assist people with filing their taxes in twelve major cities. The assistance programs will be conducted over two weekends, from June 25–26 and again from July 9–10.

The years 2020 and 2021 have been unusual years for the Internal Revenue Service. During the coronavirus pandemic, millions of Americans lost their jobs, thousands of businesses were closed. The IRS, like all government agencies, was forced into remote work, complicating its ability to process tax returns submitted in the spring and summer of 2020. In addition to its normal duties, the agency was also tasked early on with sending hundreds of millions of stimulus checks out to American families—a task it largely succeeded at, albeit with some minor missteps. 

One of the IRS’s stated priorities has been to ensure that government assistance programs, including stimulus checks and the newly increased Child Tax Credit, are made available to all Americans who qualify for them. A primary issue of concern has been “non-filers,” Americans who, usually because they do not make enough income to be taxed on it, do not file their tax returns. Due to the fact that these Americans’ stimulus and Child Tax Credit payments are tied to tax returns —which are used to determine who is eligible based on income, as well as to determine what address to send the payments to—non-filers are often difficult for the IRS to send payments to. This is an especially significant problem because non-filers, by virtue of their lack of income, are in the most urgent need of assistance. 

To reach non-filers, the IRS has launched a number of programs. The agency’s website has an online portal assisting non-filing Americans to claim the Child Tax Credit, as well as the $1,400 (or possibly the earlier $1,200 or $600) stimulus checks. The credit’s advance payments will begin on July 15, imparting a sense of urgency to the IRS’s outreach. 

In addition to this, the agency announced Wednesday that it has partnered with civil society organizations, including churches, community organizations, and nonprofits to assist people with filing their taxes in twelve major cities. The assistance programs will be conducted over two weekends, from June 25–26 and again from July 9–10. The IRS has advertised the events on its website, and provided guidelines for what attendees should bring to each session—encouraging attendees to bring their Social Security information for themselves and their children, mailing and email addresses, and, if signing up for direct deposit, bank account information.

The events will be held in Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Miami, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Phoenix, and Washington, DC. 

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest. This article first appeared earlier this year.

Image: Reuters.

Warfare History Network

History, Europe

The Mark 1 Boys initially fired a .55-caliber (13.9x99mm) steel-cored AP (armor-piercing) projectile with a muzzle velocity of around 2,500 feet per second, which was changed to a lighter bullet with a velocity of 2,900 feet per second in the Mark 2 load.

Key point: The ATR wasn't the best, but it did an important job during the early stages of the war.

When the first tanks appeared in World War I, they were relatively lightly armored and protected the crews only against small-arms fire. In addition, much of the armor was riveted. Projectiles striking the exterior of the armor could pop off rivet heads or flake armor from the internal surfaces, creating fragments that would fly around the vehicle interior, causing injuries or death. In fact, British tank crews had to wear protective goggles and chain-mail masks to guard against fragments made by bullets striking close to their open vision slits.

The Imperial German Army’s first attempt to give the infantry a man-portable antitank weapon resulted in the company Waffenfabrik Mauser AG creating and manufacturing the first antitank rifle in 1917. This was the Mauser Tank-Gewehr Model 1918, essentially a standard Mauser bolt-action rifle on steroids, firing a huge 13.2mm round and equipped with a bipod. A very unpleasant brute to fire, the T-Gewehr’s most impressive feat was that it was being fielded to frontline infantry within nine months of the tank’s first appearance on the battlefield.

Setting the Stage for the Boys ATR

The Mauser set the stage and ushered in the age of the antitank rifle, or ATR. Most major combatants, with the notable exception of the United States, fielded these weapons during the interwar years and through the beginning of World War II. Countries such as Finland, Switzerland, and Japan went the big-bore route, utilizing 20mm weapons. The Germans and Poles used 7.92mm weapons firing steel- or tungsten-cored small projectiles at incredibly high velocities. To the tanks of the 1930s, these weapons were a potent threat. By 1942, they were hopelessly outclassed.

The British Mark 1, Mark 1*, and Mark 2 Boys Anti-tank rifles were typical of the breed. Originally to be dubbed the Stanchion Rifle, instead the weapon received its name from the designer, Captain H.C. Boys, the Assistant Superintendent of Design for the British Small Arms Committee. Captain Boys died only a few days before his weapon was adopted into British military service in 1937, and the antitank rifle was renamed in his honor. It was often misspelled as Boyes.

An Ox of a Rifle

The Boys had a three-foot-long barrel, was 631/2 inches long overall, and weighed 36 pounds. This particular weapon was a repeater, a bolt-action that was fed by a five-shot detachable box magazine mounted atop the weapon in a fashion similar to the famous Bren light machine gun. Empty cartridge cases were ejected from the bottom of the action rather than the top. Just the loaded magazine weighed some 2.6 pounds, and weight does not endear any weapon to the infantryman.

The Mark 1 Boys initially fired a .55-caliber (13.9x99mm) steel-cored AP (armor-piercing) projectile with a muzzle velocity of around 2,500 feet per second, which was changed to a lighter bullet with a velocity of 2,900 feet per second in the Mark 2 load. Later, an even more effective tungsten-cored APCR (armor-piercing composite rigid) was developed, which boasted a muzzle velocity of well in excess of 3,000 feet per second. This load proved capable of penetrating 20mm of armor plate at 300 yards.

“Charlie the Bastard”

The early production Boys Mark 1 had the circular muzzle brake, which vented gases in all directions. Fired from an otherwise good low-profile position, the rifle regularly kicked up a blast of dust and debris that could give the operator’s position away. Later designs featured a flat harmonica-style muzzle brake, which vented all gases to the sides to correct this problem and had the added benefit of being easier to manufacture.

The harmonica-shaped (Mark 1*) muzzle brake or “recoil reducer” helped tame the weapon’s massive kick. In addition, the barrel itself recoiled an inch against a heavy shock absorber mounted in the butt. The improved later version of the .55-caliber Boys Mark 1* not only had the flat muzzle brake, but also simpler fixed sights and a Bren gun bipod to simplify its manufacture. The butt plate itself was heavily padded with rubber. A front bipod and rear grip were also fitted. Still, recoil was quite significant, causing Australian troops who were issued the Boys to nickname it “Charlie the Bastard.”

First Action in Finland

The first combat action for the Boys was actually with Finnish forces during the 1939-1940 Winter War against the Soviet Red Army. Great Britain sent 200 examples of the Boys to Finland. In the hands of the Finns, the Boys reportedly proved adequately effective against the early Soviet tank designs. Tanks such as the T-26 and BT-5 had thin armor and a distressing tendency to catch fire easily. The Finns were impressed enough with the Boys to later purchase another 200 of the weapons from the Germans, who had captured many of them during the campaign of spring 1941 that ended with the evacuation of Allied troops at Dunkirk. The Germans renamed them Panzerbuchse Boyes.

Later, the very first German tanks of World War II to be destroyed by British ground forces fell to a Boys. The 1st/5th Leicesters, who had been sent to aid in the defense of Norway after the German invasion of the neutral country, made a stand at the village of Tretten. Platoon Sergeant Major John Sheppard was commanding a small subunit guarding the right flank of a British position when he noticed German tanks approaching on the far side of the Laagen River. Taking up the unit’s .55-caliber Boys, which he had never used before, Sheppard assumed a steady prone position and proceeded to precisely and methodically smack each tank with three AP rounds, knocking out two of them and making the rest back off out of sight.

“A Terrifying Weapon”

The success of the Boys, or lack thereof, was also noted during the German invasion of France in May 1940. Despite the fact that the vast majority of the German tanks in use at the time were small, lightly armored Mark I and Mark II panzers, the former originally intended as nothing more than a training vehicle, the Boys was not a decisive factor in the infantry’s defense against armor.

Sergeant Edward Doe of the Kings Royal Rifle Corps was not impressed by the Boys: “The Germans had brought the tanks in and they were blasting … I actually fired the Boys anti-tank rifle for the first time in my life—a terrifying weapon. To even fire, you had to hang onto it like grim death because it would dislocate your shoulder if you didn’t. I fired at a tank coming over the bridge that wasn’t blown—and I couldn’t miss it from about 50 yards away. An officer was right beside me, and I saw this hit the tank and all it had done was to just about knock the paintwork off. It made a noise like a ping-pong ball. The officer who was beside me said to me, ‘Leave the blasted thing there, Doe—get the hell out of it.’”

Sergeant William J. Gilchrist of the Irish Guards had considerably better luck with the Boys. A later report confirmed, “France/Belgium 1940: Boulogne 23rd May 1940. Sgt. Gilchrist was in personal charge of an Anti-Tank Rifle which protected the rear of the Battalion during its withdrawal into Boulogne on the 23rd May. For two hours this NCO, with a few men, succeeded in holding their post at a street corner, thus enabling the remainder of the Battalion to move on unmolested. Although under extremely heavy machine-gun fire he showed the greatest contempt of danger and continued to keep his anti-tank gun in action. He was instrumental in hitting and setting on fire an enemy tank, thus blocking a street down which the enemy were trying to move. Later in the action he himself was wounded but refused to leave his Anti-Tank Rifle until it, and the Bren guns supporting it, became jammed through over firing. Throughout the whole action Sgt Gilchrist showed courage and bravery of a very high order and set the finest example to the remainder of his Platoon.”

65,000 Manufactured During the Course of the War

After losing so much war material at Dunkirk and facing the possibility of a German amphibious invasion, the British were desperate to reequip their armed forces in the shortest time possible. New and improved weapon designs were neglected for the moment; industry concentrated on pouring out as many current weapons from existing assembly lines as possible. Thus, obsolete and obsolescent designs such as the Boys and the 2-pounder antitank gun continued to be produced in great numbers despite their disappointing performance. Approximately 65,000 Boys weapons were manufactured during the war.

The Boys was quickly rendered ineffective as an antitank weapon by rapid improvements in German tank armor. In North Africa, however, it still proved somewhat effective against lighter vehicles and some Italian tanks, such as the Fiat light tanks and the thin-skinned machine-gun-armed Carro Veloce L3/35 tankettes. In one single engagement in the desert, the 7th Hussars knocked out five of these CV tankettes in rapid order with their Boys antitank rifles.

In the North African campaigns the Boys also found use against bunkers, machine-gun nests, and against infantry at long range. In the stony Western Desert, where the ground was often too hard to yield up good foxholes, infantrymen were forced to make fighting positions of piled stones known as sangers. The impact of the large .55-caliber bullets striking these sangers often produced casualties among enemy infantrymen from splinters and rock fragments. This trick was used again to engage German paratroopers fighting amid the rubble of Monte Cassino during the Italian campaign.

“Noted For its Uselessness”

As in Western Europe, the ordinary Commonwealth desert infantryman did not give the Boys rave reviews as an antitank weapon, as attested by one Australian account. “The Italians counterattacked with nine tanks and hundreds of infantrymen. Private O.Z. Neall knocked out three Italian tanks with his Boyes anti-tank rifle, a feat that astounded everyone —the Boyes rifle was noted for its uselessness.”

The British Universal or Bren Gun Carrier was a small, fully tracked, open-topped light armored vehicle that was mass produced during World War II and used by Commonwealth forces on all fronts. A total of some 113,000 of these carriers was manufactured, and they can be likened to an armored, tracked equivalent of the American jeep. In addition to the Bren gun, early models were also armed with a Boys ATR to provide some limited anti-armor defense.

In addition to the Universal Carrier, the Boys antitank rifle was also frequently used to supplement the machine-gun armament of numerous other light armored vehicles. These included the Morris CS9 Light Armored Car and Morris Light Reconnaissance Car, the Lanchester 4×2 and 6×4 armored cars, the Humber Light Reconnaissance Car, and the World War I-vintage Rolls Royce Armored Cars. As the war progressed, some attempts were made to improve the Boys. The Mark 2 was a shortened, lightweight version intended for use with airborne troops, but it was just as ballistically ineffective as its predecessors, and the recoil was even more brutal than the full-size model. A taper (or squeeze) bore barrel was tried to increase muzzle velocity in the same manner that the Littlejohn Adapter tried to extend the useful life of the 2-pounder gun, and experiments were also conducted with the .55-caliber cartridge casing necked down to fire a .303 bullet at extremely high velocity. However, by that time the Boys was already being retired.

Replaced by the PIAT

With the advent of improved infantry antitank weapons utilizing the very effective high- explosive shaped charge warhead, the Boys quickly disappeared. In English and Commonwealth service it was replaced by the PIAT, Projector Infantry Anti-Tank. Essentially a spring-loaded spigot mortar, the PIAT was also rather despised by its users owing to its nasty spring recoil and short range, but its powerful warhead could penetrate some four inches of tank armor.

Although the Boys antitank rifle rapidly became obsolete during World War II, it served its purpose as a stopgap defense against marauding Axis armor.

Originally Published in 2018.

This article by Bob Cashner originally appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Flickr.

Warfare History Network

History, Asia

The M60 was used in every conceivable role for a machine gun.

Key point: The M-60 is iconic because it was a very good weapon that all knew to beware of.

The time was early 1967, the place a crowded square over a body of water on a narrow bridge in downtown Saigon. A 19-year-old American Army gun jeep commander in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade stood at his post in the rear of the vehicle. Both he and the driver wore .45-caliber pistols and carried M16 rifles. Besides the pistols and rifles, the Americans also had an M79 grenade launcher on the floorboards of the jeep, covered with heavy sandbags in case the vehicle hit a Vietcong landmine.

The jeep’s principal weaponry that day was the deadly United States Army standard-issue M60 machine gun, which—like the M14 rifle—fired the basic NATO round of 7.62mm ammunition. With the exception of the 1911-introduced .45, the other three weapons had been brought into the NATO arsenal at about the same time, in the early 1960s. The reason was simple, to ensure that all NATO armies were armed with the same weaponry and ammunition for ease of common supply in case a land war erupted in Europe with the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Albania.

Surrounded by a Sea of Swarming Humanity

Instead of Warsaw Pact soldiers, however, American weapons that day were being employed against two Communist armies on the other side of the world in Southeast Asia: the North Vietnamese Regular Army and the South Vietnamese civilian guerrilla forces, the Vietcong. As combat military policemen, the Americans in the jeep had been assigned to road convoy duty, getting infantry into and out of the field under fire. The young lieutenant was somewhat alarmed to be surrounded by a sea of swarming humanity, their intentions unknown. On the other hand, he knew that he was armed with one of the best machine guns in the world, mounted on a cast-iron swivel just under his right armpit. If he and his men had to fight their way out, they were ready. As it happened, they were in luck; the Vietnamese allowed them to pass unharmed.

The M60 machine gun was what the military called a “crew-served weapon,” requiring a team of three soldiers to transport, load, and fire it. It was capable of several types of fire: grazing, plunging, flanking, oblique, and enfilading. Aside from vehicular-mounted fire, it could be fired from the shoulder (kneeling and standing) and from a prone position as well. Its available ammunition consisted of ball (for use against light materials and personnel and for range training); armor-piercing (for use against lightly armored targets); tracer (for observation of fire, incendiary effects, signaling, and training); dummy (for use during mechanical training); and blanks (for use during training when simulated fire was desired; a blank firing attachment was required to fire this ammunition).

WWII Origins

In any modality, the M60 machine gun was a fearsome weapon of great potency. Like other weapons in the American military inventory, the M60 general purpose machine gun (GPMG) began its evolution at the end of World War II. The Allies had been impressed with the flexibility provided by the German GPMGs, and the American M60 incorporated a modified feed mechanism based on that of the German MG42, with the operating mechanism of the FG42 assault rifle. The initial version of the M60 was officially adopted by the U.S. Army in 1957.

Eventually, the M60 would go on to replace both the Browning light and heavy machine guns in the American arsenal, with its initial prototype being the T44. Its feed mechanism was bettered with two more variants until the T161 was produced and was introduced into the U.S. armory as the M60 GPMG. It could be used in both a bipod configuration for rapidly advancing infantry on the move or for defense when mounted on a M112 tripod as a heavy machine gun.

Some Drawbacks to the Design

The M60 was 42 inches long and weighed a little over 23 pounds. It was gas operated, with a 50-round link belt of 7.62mm ammunition and a muzzle velocity of 2,800 feet per second. Its maximum effective range was 1,200 yards with the bipod and an additional 329 feet when the tripod was added. Optimal operating range was about 3,900 feet. Moving away from the recoil mechanism of the Browning machine guns, the M60 was designed as a gas-operated weapon. As the first round traveled down the barrel, it pushed gas into the gas cylinder through a hole in the bore. The pressure in the cylinder then forced a piston down the chamber, moving back the bolt and chambering the next round into place. The cycle could be repeated for as long as the trigger was depressed.

With no gas regulator on the gun, however, there were drawbacks to the mechanism. Accumulated dirt or dust could slow down the piston and result in the M60 jamming or “running away”—continuing to fire even when the finger was removed from the trigger. This could prove unnerving during the heat of battle, when the assistant M60 gunner would be forced to hold onto the ammunition belt manually to stop it from feeding. One distinctive feature of the M60 was the chromium-plated barrel and satellite liners for the first six inches along the muzzle from the chamber. The nonferrous lining considerably increased the lifespan of each barrel although there were complaints that the barrel was heavy.

Used in Every Conceivable Role in Vietnam

The M60 was used in every conceivable role for a machine gun: mounted on trucks, jeeps, armored personnel carriers, and other vehicles; on tripods inside fortifications; on aircraft and boats. The M60 saw its widest use with American infantry forces on the ground in Vietnam. An infantry machine-gun section officially consisted of three soldiers: the gunner, the assistant gunner, and the ammunition carrier. In practice, all members of a patrol carried extra machine-gun ammunition, which was passed up to the gun crew when needed. American infantrymen carried belts of ammunition draped around their bodies. This was the easiest way to carry the heavy load, and it left the soldiers’ hands free to use other weapons.

The most common complaint about the M60 was that it was heavy, particularly when humping through the Southeast Asian jungle. It was also prone to jamming, especially when dirty. The safety was awkward to operate and worked opposite the M16 rifle, requiring an upward movement of the thumb to free the safety and make the gun ready to fire. Fired cartridges could also become torn and required extra time to remove an empty case—a less than ideal situation in combat. Marine units in particular resisted using the M60, preferring their longtime BARs.

100 Rounds Per Minute

The weapon had a sustained rate of fire of 100 rounds per minute, with a recommended barrel change every 10 minutes. It could also rapid fire at a rate of 200 rounds per minute with two or three seconds between bursts and a barrel change recommended every two minutes, and at the cyclic rate of approximately 550 rounds per minute, with a barrel change every single minute. The M60 had a bandolier capacity of 100 rounds, with a tracer round burnout of approximately 3,300 feet.

The M60 operator’s manual recommended that soldiers not open ammunition containers until the ammunition was to be used, noting that ammunition removed from the airtight containers, particularly in damp climates, was likely to corrode. The manual further directed: “Do not expose the ammunition to the direct rays of the sun. If the powder is hot, excessive heat may be developed when the gun is fired. Do not oil or grease ammunition. Dust and other abrasives collecting on oiled or greased ammunition will damage the operating parts of the gun, and oil on cartridges will produce excessive chamber pressure.”

Some Short-Lived Variants

Variants of the M60 included the short-lived M60B, which was designed to be fired by hand from helicopters. The B model had no bipod and featured a different rear stock than the regular model; it retained its pistol grips. The M60C lacked pistol grips, but its main difference was the electronic control system and hydraulic swivel system, which allowed it to be fired from cockpits on OH-13 Sioux, OH-23 Raven, UH-1B Huey, and Ov-10 Bronco helicopters.

This article by Christopher Miskimon originally appeared on Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Warfare History Network

Security, Asia

Twelve years of unabated Japanese military triumph came to an end during a period of only 90 days.

Key Point: Japanese aggression and territorial expansion had been justified as a crusade to rid Asia of European and American colonialism.

Since 1931, Japan’s army had asserted control over territory on the continent of Asia, brushing aside Chinese resistance, condemnation and political pressure from other nations, and most recently, the Allied military. Further, Japan had gained control over a vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, creating an outer ring of defenses extending thousands of miles from the home islands.

Japanese aggression and territorial expansion had been justified as a crusade to rid Asia of European and American colonialism. Their slogan “Asia for the Asians” actually meant “Asia for Japan.” Years of conquest led to the creation of the so-called “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” a weak attempt to legitimize Japan’s preeminent position in the region.

As the Japanese government debated the future of relations with the United States, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto warned that the prospect of a protracted war would surely end in defeat for his country. Yamamoto had visited the United States. He had served as a naval liaison officer and even attended Harvard University, studying English and petroleum management. He had seen firsthand the industrial might of America and warned that the only hope Japan had for ultimate victory would be to strike at Pearl Harbor, crippling the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and following that up with a string of rapid victories.

Yamamoto prophesied that in the wake of Pearl Harbor he would run wild in the Pacific for six months. After that, he made no guarantees. That prophecy proved eerily accurate. Following great victories in Burma and the fall of Singapore and Hong Kong, the terrific blow to Allied morale with the sinking of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse, the seizure of the Philippines, the capture of thousands of American soldiers on Corregidor, and the Bataan Death March, Yamamoto was poised to seize Port Moresby at the tip of the island of New Guinea. From there, he would threaten Australia.

Yamamoto’s Prophecy was Eerily Accurate, Almost to the Day

During the first week of May 1942, however, the Japanese endured their initial setback as the Port Moresby invasion force was obliged to retreat following the Battle of the Coral Sea. A month later, Yamamoto again went on the offensive, this time with Midway Atoll as his objective. The capture of Midway would provide a staging area for a potential invasion of Hawaii, just 1,100 miles to the southwest.

During the first week of June, the complicated Japanese plan of attack unraveled. At Midway, the loss of four aircraft carriers and hundreds of combat aircraft compelled the Japanese to relinquish the initiative. From that time on, the Imperial forces would be fighting a defensive war. Yamamoto’s prediction was accurate almost to the day.

During the first week of August, American troops splashed ashore on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomons. Their task was to capture the island, particularly its unfinished airfield, from which the Japanese had hoped to provide aircover for operations in the Southwest Pacific. The Guadalcanal campaign was the first offensive land action by U.S. soldiers during the War in the Pacific. The loss of the island after six months of bloody struggle sealed the fate of Japan.

Halted at the Coral Sea, soundly defeated at Midway, and confronted at Guadalcanal, the Japanese were astonished that their timetable of conquest could be upset so thoroughly and so quickly. Yamamoto did not live to see the final defeat of his nation. In April 1943, two months after the loss of Guadalcanal, his bomber was ambushed by a flight of American fighter planes and sent crashing into the jungle on the island of New Britain.

Twelve years of unabated Japanese military triumph came to an end during a period of only 90 days. The island road to Tokyo was long and costly for the Allies; however, from the summer of 1942 forward, the outcome was never in doubt.

Originally Published December 11, 2018.

This article originally appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro d’été 2021 de Politique étrangère (n° 2/2021). Florian Vidal, chercheur au Centre Russie/NEI de l’Ifri, propose une analyse de l’ouvrage de Jean-Sylvestre Mongrenier, Le monde vu de Moscou. Dictionnaire géopolitique de la Russie et de l’Eurasie postsoviétiques (PUF, 2020, 680 pages).

Jean-Sylvestre Mongrenier, géopolitologue et spécialiste de la Russie, nous présente ici un ouvrage qui, sous la forme d’un dictionnaire, rassemble les clés de lecture de la vision du monde selon le point de vue russe. Empruntant la forme d’un guide de référence, l’auteur détaille toutes les notions qui entourent la politique étrangère du pays et les concepts géopolitiques mis en œuvre.

Ce dictionnaire, bien fourni, ne se lit pas de façon linéaire : comme tout guide, il se parcourt selon les besoins et les curiosités du lecteur. L’introduction constitue néanmoins l’étape incontournable qui donne au lecteur les bases du démarrage. Les propos liminaires de l’auteur remettent en perspective les récents développements diplomatiques russes : tensions avec l’Occident, rapprochement avec la Chine, retour au Moyen-Orient depuis l’intervention en Syrie, place de l’Ukraine dans l’identité géopolitique russe… Avec le renouvellement géopolitique de la Russie au xxie siècle, l’auteur met en abîme les débats ouverts dans l’élite du pays sur l’orientation stratégique à adopter.

Par ses multiples entrées de lecture et ses renvois, l’ouvrage nous rapelle certains fondamentaux – eurasisme, heartland, panslavisme –, mais aussi la découverte de personnes, d’organismes et de lieux incontournables, qui pèsent dans les bases géopolitiques contemporaines de Moscou. L’itinérance suivra le seul intérêt du lecteur. À la fin de chaque entrée, l’auteur renvoie le lecteur aux thèmes associés, ce qui incite à une lecture personnalisée et assez libre.

On relèvera que les différents thèmes abordés sont de longueurs inégales : l’entrée miagkaïa sila – pouvoir doux – est définie sur deux lignes, tandis que celle sur la Lettonie s’étend sur plus de quatre pages. De la définition d’un concept à la compréhension de l’importance d’un pays, cet ouvrage recense tous les paramètres influençant la diplomatie et la stratégie russes à l’international. Ainsi la lettre « r » passe-t‑elle en revue les relations diplomatiques entre la Russie et de nombreux pays à travers le monde. L’entrée Russie/Éthiopie, par exemple, rappelle les liens noués entre les deux pays pendant la guerre froide. À présent, Moscou assume cet héritage et s’appuie sur les liens humains comme la formation d’étudiants pour maintenir une action diplomatique solide sur ce pays de la Corne de l’Afrique. L’auteur aborde aussi des lieux déterminants, comme le laboratoire Vektor, centre de recherche pour la virologie et la bactériologie, fondé à l’époque soviétique, situé dans la région de Novossibirsk en Sibérie, et qui héberge une souche de la variole.

On regrettera seulement que l’ouvrage ait fait le choix d’une organisation alphabétique simplifiée, sans appliquer de filtre thématique, et donc valoriser la richesse du contenu. L’effort de l’auteur qui n’omet aucun détail dans la description des dynamiques à l’œuvre doit pourtant être loué. En offrant un consistant outil intellectuel, ce livre constitue un manuel de géopolitique indispensable pour les étudiants et tous ceux qui travaillent sur l’espace eurasiatique.

Florian Vidal

>> S’abonner à Politique étrangère <<

Kyle Mizokami

Nuclear Weapons, Americas

The service developed many schemes over the span of 30 years to modernize the most powerful American battleships ever built.

Here's What You Need to Know: These ideas were dead in the water.

In the early 1980s, four Iowa-class fast battleships originally built during World War II—Iowa, Missouri, New Jersey and Wisconsin—were taken out of mothballs and returned to active duty.

Nearly 900 feet long and displacing close to 60,000 tons, the battlewagons could fire a nine-gun broadside sending 18 tons of steel and explosives hurtling towards their targets.

The battleships were modernized to include cruise missiles, ship-killing missiles and Phalanx point-defense guns. Returned to the fleet, the ships saw action off the coasts of Lebanon and Iraq. At the end of the Cold War the battleships were retired again. All were slated to become museums.

Few knew, however, that returning the battleships to service in the ’80s had been only part of the plan. The second, more ambitious phase was a radical redesign of the massive warships that would have combined the attributes of battleships and aircraft carriers.

The resulting ship, a “battlecarrier,” was merely one of many schemes over the span of 30 years to modernize the most powerful American battleships ever built. The various proposals—all of them nixed—had the World War II-era ships carrying hundreds of U.S. Marines or launching Harrier jump jets or even firing atomic projectiles.

A Hole in the Navy:

Before World War II, planners had assumed that the big-gun ships would win wars by duking it out with enemy vessels of the same kind. Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway dispelled that notion, as the flexibility and long-range striking power of aircraft carriers proved superior to battleships’ broadsides.

The battlewagons were relegated to a secondary role in the fleet, shelling shore defenses ahead of landings by the Army and Marines. And after the war, the Navy shed most of its heavy cruisers and battleships while retaining its aircraft carriers. The rush to embrace missiles further reduced the influence of the big-gun vessels, and the era of the battleship appeared to be over for good.

For the U.S. Marine Corps, this was a worrying trend. The seaborne invasion of Inchon during the Korean War showed that the age of amphibious assaults was not yet over. Military planners liked aircraft for their flexibility, but from the Marines’ perspective a ship that could sit off a coastline and bombard it with heavy guns for hours on end was vital.

There was a solution. The four Iowa-class battleships, in mothballs since World War II, were briefly reactivated during the Korean War to provide gunfire support for U.N. forces—and retired again after the war was over.

For some Navy planners, battleships were back in vogue. There were frequent attempts to return the battlewagons to service.

Nuclear Battleship:

In 1958, the Navy proposed overhauling the Iowa-class ships by removing all of the 16-inch guns and replacing them with anti-aircraft and anti-submarine missiles.

The new “guided missile battleships” would also carry four Regulus II cruise missiles, each of which could flatten a city a thousand miles distant with a nuclear warhead more than 100 times as powerful as the bomb used on Hiroshima.

The result would have certainly been the most powerful battleship ever, but the concept was riddled with inefficiencies. Under the proposal, 2,000 sailors would have had to sail into hostile waters in an expensive, 900-foot vessel to attack just four targets with nuclear weapons. An Air Force bomber could attack as many targets, at a greater range, with fewer than a dozen crew.

And at $1.5 billion in today’s dollars, the conversion would have been expensive.

At the same time, the Navy had put in orders for submarines to carry Polaris ballistic missiles. The proposed missile submarines could attack targets more than twice as far away as the Regulus II-armed battleship could, while carrying four times as many missiles and spending most of their time underwater avoiding detection.

The nuclear battleship concept was dead in the water.

Amphibious Battleship:

In 1961 a new proposal would have utilized the Iowa-class battleships to increase the navy’s troop-carrying capability. The rear turret and its three 16-inch guns would have been removed. In its place would be a hangar and a flight deck capable of carrying 30 helicopters.

The ship would also haul 14 landing craft to bring tanks and vehicles ashore. Accommodations for 1,800 Marines would be added.

Each of the amphibious Iowas would have been a one-ship expeditionary force.

Capable of laying down its own fire support with the remaining six 16-inch guns and deploying a battalion-sized Marine amphibious unit by air and sea, the ship would have been a hive of activity.

But it would still be expensive to convert and operate, and the Navy had many surplus aircraft carriers that could more cheaply be converted to amphibious platforms. Three such older carriers were modified, and the Iowa-class again stayed in mothballs.

Battlecarrier:

The cost of the Vietnam War put a temporary hold on talk of reviving the Iowas in some new form. One of the battleships, New Jersey, was briefly reactivated to serve in Vietnam.

In the early 1980s, the Reagan Administration began an ambitious shipbuilding program. It was decided to yet again bring back the four Iowas. In phase one, the ships were modernized with the addition of Tomahawk land attack missiles, Harpoon anti-ship missiles and Phalanx defense guns. By the mid-1980s, all four had returned to duty.

There was a phase two that was never executed, and it was more interesting.

This phase again involved removing the rear 16-inch gun turret. In its place would be built an overhanging flight deck and two forward-facing ski jumps that would hurl Marine Corps Harrier jump jets into the air. The ship would carry up to 20 Harriers, as well as a hangar and an aircraft elevator.

And that’s not all. Nestled between the two ski jumps would be a large field of missile silos, each holding Standard anti-aircraft or Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles.

The firepower of the battleships—and their destructive range—would have increased substantially. Trading one turret for 20 Harrier jets was a pretty good deal. Add the Tomahawks and their ability to strike with precision at a thousand miles and the improvements looked even better. The resulting warship would have equaled the firepower of a Nimitz-class supercarrier.

But as before, the Iowas’ inherent inefficiencies worked against them. With a crew of nearly 2,000 each, the ships’ high personnel costs made them prohibitively expensive to run in an all-volunteer navy. Harrier jets could already be carried by the Tarawa-class landing ships, and missile silos were proliferating across the fleet.

The Navy came to the conclusion that if the country was going to get its money’s worth from the four battleships, the vessels had to concentrate on their unique abilities: firing massive artillery shells at the enemy.

That meant keeping all three main gun turrets. The cool conversion schemes would have to stay just that, schemes.

Future Battlewagon:

Today the naval gunfire argument rages on. Even in the age of drones and precision warfare there are still occasional calls to bring the heavily manned, imprecise Iowa class back to service. There’s a certain romance to battleships, and having four Iowas sitting around in good condition has beguiled naval enthusiasts and planners for more than 60 years with schemes to bring them back.

The Zumwalt-class destroyers will go a long way towards providing battleship-quality naval gunfire support for the Marines. Minimally manned, relatively small, stealthy and precise, the Zumwalts are the antithesis of the Iowas, but functionally their successors.

Although each Zumwalt can only provide the explosive mass of a single one of an Iowa’s 16-inch guns, the newer ship can fire its smaller shells with GPS-aided precision up to 83 miles away, versus 20 miles for an Iowa.

Should the Zumwalt design be successful, the torch of the battleship could finally be transferred to them, and the Iowas can finally slumber in peace as museums, safe from the schemes of those who would revive them.

This article appeared earlier in 2019.

Image: U.S. Navy / Wikimedia Commons

Warfare History Network

Security, Americas

The week of May 4-10, 1942, saw the loss of 300,000 deadweight tons of Allied shipping to German U-boats, loss rates that were twice new ship launches.

Key Point: Hughes settled on a design gross weight of 400,000 pounds.

The Time magazine article was titled “It Flies!” It was a note of triumph and vindication, but also an epitaph, of an aircraft that was five years in the making—the “Spruce Goose,” a plane that should not have existed. Many things were against it, even, to a certain degree, its creator.

The week of May 4-10, 1942, saw the loss of 300,000 deadweight tons of Allied shipping to German U-boats, loss rates that were twice new ship launches. Imaginative use of America’s industrial and technological strengths to deal with such problems was the mission of the War Production Board’s planning committee.

On May 22, F.H. Hoge, Jr., a member of the committee, proposed the use of extremely large flying boats, pointing out that current aircraft on transoceanic flights devoted 38 percent of their takeoff weight to fuel and oil, but that a 300,000-pound plane would use only 20 percent, and, that since flying boats did not require landing gear, an additional 15 percent in aircraft weight would be saved.

But it was the industrialist Henry J. Kaiser who saw the opportunity. He approached such problems with big schemes, limitless energy, and a genius for organization and improvisation. He had moved from constructing mammoth hydroelectric dams, such as the Hoover and Grand Coulee, to shipbuilding in 1941.

Faced with the terrible loss of shipping that was threatening the Allies, Kaiser suggested two possible solutions. One was to convert some of his shipyards to the mass production of giant seaplanes. The other was to mass produce antisubmarine aircraft carriers on Liberty Ship hulls. In the latter case, Kaiser facilities would produce some 70 escort carriers during the war.

But in the summer of 1942, after the Germans sank 681 Allied ships in the first seven months of the year, the idea of flying boats captured the nation’s imagination. In July, Kaiser outlined plans for flying boats of 200 to 500 tons and launched a publicity and lobbying campaign telling the press that he envisioned a fleet of 5,000 flying boats.

He followed with a proposal to the Army and Navy. And, though they considered it impractical, they knew that the public and some members of Congress believed otherwise. The Aircraft Division of the War Production Board was asked to review Kaiser’s proposal.

Merrill C. Meigs, deputy director of the board’s Aircraft Division, told Kaiser that it took more than four years to develop a new aircraft, but Kaiser was undaunted. Regarding possible resource requirements, Kaiser said he would build a steel foundry and educate and develop technicians and engineers in support of his proposal.

Meigs then set up a committee of aircraft manufacturers to hear Kaiser’s plans. But the manufacturers were not enthusiastic about the possible entry of another aircraft company into their industry. Donald Douglas, head of Douglas Aircraft, advised that to prepare a preliminary design for a 200-ton aircraft would require at least 100,000 engineering hours.

During July and August, Kaiser made two proposals—mass production of the Martin Mars flying boat and the design and development of the 200-ton flying boat––both taken under consideration by the War Production Board, headed by Donald Nelson. The Mars, first flown in June 1942, was a four-engine, 200-foot wingspan, 75,000-pound aircraft capable of carrying a 32,000-pound payload, or 133 troops, over a range of 5,000 miles. But Nelson was concerned about the possible impact on existing programs by manufacturers working at full capacity.

Kaiser then approached the well-known aviator, Howard Hughes, with a pitch to jointly develop the large flying boat. Though aware of the problems in designing a new aircraft, Hughes was intrigued with the possibility of coming up with the world’s largest airplane, especially after being told that the Douglas, Martin, and Northrup aircraft companies all thought that it couldn’t be done.

By August 22, 1942, after several weeks of discussion, a handshake agreement was reached—Hughes would design the plane and Kaiser would build it. Subsequently, a written contract between Hughes and Kaiser called for the design and construction of 500 aircraft.

The Gigantic Spruce Goose

On September 17, Kaiser-Hughes received authorization to proceed with design engineering and construction of three prototype flying boats. Among the conditions imposed were that all construction would use a minimum of any critical or strategic materials, that no engineers or technicians working for manufacturers already engaged in the war effort could be employed without the permission of their employers, that they could spend no more than $18 million, and that the program would be limited to 24 months. But the Kaiser-Hughes partnership soon dissolved and Hughes proceeded alone. During the first seven months of the project, Hughes acted as general manager. Kaiser, unsuccessful in his attempt at combining forces with Hughes, had nothing more to do with the project except to help out with providing a few personnel.

Design presented several challenges— such a plane would require an overhang wingspan 50 percent greater than the Martin Mars, which would present new torsional, wing flutter, vibration, deflection, and control problems never before tested.

Seven aircraft configurations were drawn up, including twin-hull and single-hull designs with four to eight engines. Hughes settled on a design gross weight of 400,000 pounds. This number was reached based on creating the largest aircraft possible using eight of the largest engines then under development. Eight was considered the maximum number of engines that seemed practical.

In the final design, the HK-1, as it was called, would be built mostly of wood, its elevators and rudder fabric covered. It was referred to as the “Flying Lumberyard” by critics, while Hughes detested the other nickname, “Spruce Goose.” To him she was “The Flying Boat,” though one story was that Hughes’s nickname for the plane was the “Jesus Christ,” since those were the first words out of the mouths of individuals when Hughes took them into the hangar where the plane was being built.

The giant airplane was made mostly of birch, not spruce, with a wingspan of 320 feet, a vertical fin of 85 feet, and a weight of 300,000 pounds. It was designed to carry 120,000 pounds of cargo, or 750 combat-ready troops, or two Sherman tanks. Its eight massive engines, with 17-foot propellers, generated over 3,000 horsepower each. It was to have a range of 3,000 miles at a speed of approximately 200 mph.

The Project That Wouldn’t Die

During the design phase, Hughes was rarely seen by other members of the team. He was a night owl, had a penchant for secrecy, and was involved in multiple simultaneous projects, as well as a reluctance to delegate authority. Key decisions were delayed for days in some cases because of problems contacting Hughes. Even as the project began to fall behind schedule, Hughes refused to relinquish control. He continued to be involved in the smallest of details but then would disappear for weeks.

Despite Hughes’s management style, some progress was made during 1943 on the aircraft’s design, but major problems resulted from combining wood construction with the plane’s giant size. Elaborate and costly jigs had to be devised and new glues and gluing processes developed. Development of new tools, materials, and methods was by trial and error, consuming time, material, and money.

Years later Hughes partially blamed delays on the requirement that he build the plane of nonstrategic materials; however, government records indicate that Hughes was given the option of switching to metal, but declined. Given the progress that had been made in pioneering innovative methods in wood construction, and Hughes’s attraction to the smooth finish of the Duramold plywood used, he was reluctant to change materials. Hughes was meticulous regarding materials, workmanship, and appearance.

Numerous elements lined up against the project. In October 1943 the Aircraft Production Board proposed cancelling the contract because it offered no useful contribution to the war effort. In early 1944 it was determined that successful development of the Mars flying boat would make the HK-1 unnecessary. In March 1944 the Cargo Plane Committee of the War Production Board was of the opinion that a change in the character of the war had abated a need for a giant cargo aircraft.

The War Production Board dispatched Grover Loening, seaplane designer and consultant to the board, to evaluate the plane’s design. But his report called the plane’s design amazing and the most remarkable flying boat he had ever seen.

On March 17, Hughes advised the board against stopping construction,saying, “If we are going to keep abreast of development in aviation, then we must reconcile ourselves to the necessity of building bigger and bigger airplanes.”

Despite the many efforts to kill the project, highly placed administration officials renewed it, though the plan was reduced to one plane.

At the same time that the HK-1 was under development, Hughes was also active in pushing development of the Lockheed Constellation—a postwar, four-engine transport and civilian airliner.

The First and Last Flight of the Spruce Goose

The project continued into 1947, when a Senate committee began investigating Hughes for defense contract irregularities. Hughes was called before the Senate War Investigating Committee in the late summer of 1947. During testimony Hughes stated, “The Hercules was a monumental undertaking. It is the largest aircraft ever built. It is over five stories tall with a wingspan longer than a football field. That’s more than a city block. Now, I put the sweat of my life into this thing. I have my reputation all rolled up in it and I have stated several times that if it’s a failure, I’ll probably leave this country and never come back. And I mean it.”

During a break in the Senate hearings, Hughes returned to California to run taxi tests on the renamed H-4 Hercules. On November 2, 1947, the taxi tests began with Hughes at the controls. His crew included Dave Grant as co-pilot, two flight engineers, Don Smith and Joe Petrali, 16 mechanics, and two other flight crewmen. In addition, the H-4 carried seven invited guests from the press and seven industry representatives.

After the first two taxi runs, Hughes made a third and surprised all the onlookers and crew as the Hercules lifted off, remaining airborne at 70 feet off the water at a speed of 135 miles per hour for around a mile. Having proven to his detractors that the aircraft was flight worthy, Hughes felt vindicated in the development of the aircraft and receipt of the government’s $18 million funding.

But the flight was not without concerns. Harry Kaiser, engine man, went down to the cargo deck after touchdown and saw the tail twisting around. Bill Noggle, hydraulic mechanic, posted in the tail, reported, “It’s about ready to leave us.”

After landing, Hughes was asked if he had expected to get the plane airborne. “Exactly,” said Hughes. “I like to make surprises.” Carl Babberger, Hughes’s chief aerodynamicist, stated, “All the factors were present for take-off—a high head wind, the 15-degree flap setting, and a light load. It probably got airborne before he expected it to, but on the other hand it wouldn’t surprise me that being under fire from Senator [Ralph Owen] Brewster, he was prepared to gamble. If it took off, fine. If it didn’t, fine.”

Several months after the test, through a spokesman, Hughes wanted it understood that the Hercules was only a research aircraft. That it would never be used in competition with military or commercial planes, but would help to deal with the problems of large aircraft—that the Hercules would point the way for big planes.

After the test a full-time crew of 300 workers, all sworn to secrecy, maintained the aircraft in flying condition in a huge, $1.75 million, climate-controlled hangar. A million dollars a year was spent maintaining the plane, as the engines were cycled and flight controls exercised weekly. Many modifications were designed and installed. For several years the crew expected that it would fly again as several more test flights were scheduled, then cancelled.

There was a great deal of speculation about why the aircraft was never flown again. Some said Hughes was afraid to, but his closest associates denied this.

The aircraft did have its weaknesses. According to one of Hughes’s mechanics, “Maybe one of the reasons why they didn’t fly it [again] was there was a little fluctuation in the tail, and maybe it wasn’t beefed up enough to suit him.”

But there was also no reason to continue the project because the need for big seaplanes had evaporated, especially an aircraft made of wood.

Even before the flight Hughes admitted that the plane was too large to be economical. However, claiming there were still research lessons to be learned, he stubbornly kept the work going. But he was distracted by other ventures and increasingly reclusive. After Hughes’s death on April 5, 1976, the plane was put on exhibit at Long Beach, California. In 1977, the U.S. Navy considered test flights with the H-4 as part of its research into low-altitude transoceanic flight, but never carried out the tests. The plane was moved from Long Beach to the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, southwest of Portland, in 1992.

Perhaps the key reason Hughes continued maintenance of the plane was that he saw it as his greatest aviation achievement. Despite being a short flight, the one and only flight of the Hercules may have been Hughes’s finest hour.

Originally Published December 31, 2018.

This article originally appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Flickr.

Michael Peck

History, Americas

American troops helped to support their European allies across the Atlantic, but what would have happend had those troops been forced to stay in America to fight an invading army from the south?

Here's What You Need to Remember: The focal point of global events in 1918 was France and Belgium, not Mexico or Texas. Russia, gripped by Bolshevik revolution, had pulled out of the war by 1918, leaving Germany free to transfer fifty divisions from the Eastern to the Western Front. In spring 1918, the Germans launched a massive offensive in France that nearly won the war.

It was one hundred years ago when Mexico almost invaded the United States.

In January 1917, German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann dispatched a coded telegram to Heinrich von Eckardt, the German ambassador to Mexico. With Germany locked in bloody stalemate with the Allies in France, and Britain’s naval blockade strangling the German economy, Kaiser Wilhelm’s government was about to make a fateful decision: declare unrestricted submarine warfare, which would allow U-boats to sink merchant ships on sight.

That also meant sinking the ships of neutral powers, most especially the United States, which would likely respond by declaring war on Germany. But Zimmermann had instructions for his ambassador: “We make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.”

This was the famous Zimmermann Telegram. Decoded by the British, who passed it on to  the Americans, it became a justification—along with unrestricted submarine warfare—for the U.S. declaration of war on Germany in April 1917.

In the end, Mexico turned down the proposal. But what if Mexico had declared war on the United States?

In fact, Mexican president Venustiano Carranza did order his government to study the German offer, according to Friedrich Katz, in his book The Secret War in Mexico. Carranza’s decision wasn’t surprising. In Mexican eyes, the United States had illegally seized one-third of Mexico’s territory during the 1847 Mexican-American War, including what are now the states of California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. In 1916, a U.S. Army expeditionary force had entered Mexico in pursuit of the notorious revolutionary Pancho Villa, who had raided American territory.

However, when Mexican officials studied the proposal, they concluded that Germany would never be able to ship sufficient munitions (especially given the inevitable American blockade), and that annexing three U.S. states would lead to permanent conflict with America. Ironically, given the current furor over Mexican illegal immigrants in the United States, the Mexican government worried in 1917 that adding millions of Americans to Mexico’s population would mean that Mexicans couldn’t be sure “whether we had annexed them or they had annexed us.”

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As Katz, an Austrian refugee from Hitler who became one of Mexico’s most important historians, put it: “All these reports show that Carranza did not want to rush into war with the United States, and certainly not on the basis of a German offer of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. But it can also be surmised from these indications that he wanted to keep Germany in reserve for the eventuality, which Carranza considered a probable one, of an American attack on the Mexican oil fields.”

So what if Carranza had decided to ally with Germany and attack the United States, either to recover lost territory or to preempt a feared American seizure of Mexican oil? In 1917, the Mexican army numbered perhaps sixty-five thousand to one hundred thousand soldiers. In 1914, the U.S. Army had just ninety-eight thousand men. By the end of 1918, it had swelled to four million, of which two million had been sent to France. America also had tanks and aircraft (provided by the British and French while American industry geared up for war), a huge navy and plenty of money.

Short of Kaiser Wilhelm’s spike-helmeted legions storming New York and Baltimore, there was no way Mexico could seized the southwestern United States. Yet this didn’t matter to Germany. What Mexico could do was tie down American troops and equipment that otherwise would have been sent to Europe. Not that many U.S. troops would have been needed to stop a Mexican invasion, though recent history warns that many, many troops would have been needed to occupy Mexico. But a second Mexican-American war could easily have triggered a disproportionate response, as the American public demanded that the troops stay home and defend the nation.

And that’s where history might have changed. The focal point of global events in 1918 was France and Belgium, not Mexico or Texas. Russia, gripped by Bolshevik revolution, had pulled out of the war by 1918, leaving Germany free to transfer fifty divisions from the Eastern to the Western Front. In spring 1918, the Germans launched a massive offensive in France that nearly won the war.

What helped revive the exhausted British and French armies were the divisions of fresh Yank troops streaming off the transport ships and into the trenches. If those troops had stayed in America, it is possible that World War I might have ended later than it did, or perhaps even in a compromise peace instead of a German defeat.

Fortunately, none of this happened. In the end, the Zimmermann Telegram did accomplish something: it hastened Germany’s downfall.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

This article first appeared in 2017, the 100th anniversary of the Zimmerman Telegram. It is being reposed due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

James Holmes

Naval Warfare, Global

Hint: none of them are really modern.

Here's What You Need to Know: Topping the list are naval actions that decided the fates of civilizations, empires, or great nations. This is decisiveness of the first order.

Ranking battles by their importance has been a bloodsport among military historians as long as there have been military historians. Creasy's classic Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World (1851) set the standard for the genre.

But what makes a battle decisive? And what makes one such test of arms more important than another?

Defining the term too loosely produces howlers like a recent US News catalogue of decisive battles of the American Civil War. By the US News count, 45 engagements qualified as decisive during that four-year struggle alone. Zounds!

The term must be defined less cavalierly than that to be meaningful. If every battle is decisive, no battle is. That's one reason I always ask students whether some legendary triumph—a Trafalgar, or a Tsushima Strait—was decisive, or just dramatic, or just featured the star power of a Nelson or Togo.

Even the masters of strategy, however, appear ambivalent about what constitutes decisive victory. Carl von Clausewitz supplies a working definition, describing a decisive engagement as one that leads directly to peace. This implies an action carrying not just tactical but strategic and political import. Such an encounter impels the vanquished to accept the victor's terms at the bargaining table, whether because he's no longer capable of fighting on, believes he stands little chance of turning the tables and winning, or estimates that victory will prove unaffordable. A decisive battle, in this expansive interpretation, is the chief determinant of a war's outcome.

So far, so good. But how direct must direct be for a battle to earn the lofty status of decisive? Must peace talks take place immediately following the clash of arms that precipitates them? Can a settlement come weeks or months afterward, so long as the cause/effect relationship is clear? What's the time horizon?

The great Carl is silent on such matters. It's possible he's too casual about them. Combat, methinks, can be decisive while achieving more modest goals than winning a war outright. To see how, interpret the word literally: something decisive decides something. (Admittedly, this is probably how the US News team got in trouble. Every action decides something in a tactical sense, no matter how mundane or inconsequential. If nothing else, it determines who holds the field of battle at day's end, or reveals that the fighting stalemated. This says little about its larger meaning, if any.) Armed clashes can yield decisive results on different levels of war. A tactical encounter could decide the outcome of a campaign or the fate of a combat theater without leading directly to peace. Right?

In short, it appears wise to define a decisive victory more three-dimensionally than Clausewitz does, namely as a trial of arms that lets a belligerent accomplish some positive or negative aim beyond mere tactical results. Winning the war would still qualify, obviously, but the broader view would allow historians to rate a Battle of Trafalgar as decisive.

Fought in 1805, Trafalgar scarcely brought about final peace with Napoleonic France. That took another decade of apocalyptic warfare. But it did settle whether the French could invade the British Isles and, through amphibious conquest, crush the offshore threat to French supremacy. The heroics of Nelson, Collingwood, and their shipmates decided the outcome of Napoleon's scheme while enabling Great Britain to persevere with the struggle. Trafalgar, then, directly accomplished the negative goal of keeping French legions from invading Britain. That must qualify as decisive in the operational sense.

Speaking of pugilism on the briny main, here's another wrinkle in this debate. Clausewitz says next to nothing about maritime conflict. Water barely exists in his writings. Fin de siecle historian Sir Julian Corbett, the best in the business of sea-power theory, doubts naval warfare is ever decisive by itself, except perhaps through gradual exhaustion. Close or distant blockades, however, grind down not just the enemy but your allies and your own businessfolk who rely on seaborne trade. They impose costs on everyone.

Like Clausewitz, Corbett thus seems skeptical about the decisiveness of any single engagement. Sure, a dominant seafaring state can and must make the sea a barrier to invasion and other direct assaults on its homeland. That's the Trafalgar model. At its bottom, though, maritime strategy is the art of determining the relations between the army and navy in a plan of war. It's ultimately about shaping affairs on land, which, after all, is where people live. But how do you rank a purely naval engagement on the high seas against an army/navy operation that unfolds at the interface between land and sea?

Tough question. So there's a lot to ponder in the seemingly simple question, what is decisive? To rank naval battles against one another, let's assign a pecking order among degrees of decisiveness. Derring-do, tactical artistry, or gee-whiz technology are not among the criteria. Nor are lopsided tactical results enough to lift an encounter into the upper echelon. That's why the Battle of Tsushima, which left wreckage from the Russian Baltic Fleet littering the Yellow Sea floor in 1905, doesn't make my list.

Topping my list are naval actions that decided the fates of civilizations, empires, or great nations. This is decisiveness of the first order. Such encounters stand in a category apart. Next come engagements that reversed the momentum in a conflict of world-historical importance. They set the endgame in motion, even if a long time elapsed between the battle and the peace settlement it helped set in motion. Direct needn't mean fast. And if battles meeting one of those standards don't exhaust the field—read on to find out—last come tests of arms that settled the outcome in a particular theater of war, helping set the stage for eventual victorious peace.

So, this leaves us with a rough hierarchy of sea fights. The more fateful and enduring a battle's ramifications, the higher it stands on the list. All of which is a roundabout way of getting to my Top Five Naval Battles in World History. In order from least to most important:

5. Lepanto (1571). The Battle of Lepanto stemmed the westward spread of Ottoman power across the Mediterranean Sea. With papal sanction, the Holy League, a consortium of Catholic seafaring states, assembled a navy to engage the main Ottoman fleet in the Gulf of Corinth, off western Greece. Lepanto was the last major all-galley naval engagement in the Mediterranean. The League put its advantages in gunnery and ship types—notably the galleass, an outsized galley bearing heavy armament—to good use against the Turkish fleet, which disgorged far less weight of shot. The Ottomans lost the bulk of their vessels to enemy action. More importantly, they lost experienced crews. They found that regenerating human capital isn't as easy as fitting out wooden men-of-war. Shipwrights soon built new hulls, letting the Turkish navy reassert its supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean for a period. By 1580, however, the new navy was left to rot at its moorings. Galley warfare assured permanent European, not Ottoman, command of the middle sea. That's a decisive result by any measure.

4. Battle of Yamen (1279). Sometimes dubbed “China’s Trafalgar,” this clash between the Mongol Yuan Dynasty and the beleaguered Southern Song determined who would rule China for nearly a century. It was far more decisive than Horatio Nelson’s masterwork. Over one thousand warships crewed by tens of thousands of men took part in the engagement. Yuan commanders deployed deception and bold tactics to overcome at least a 10:1 mismatch in numbers. Most important, Yamen claimed the life of the Song emperor, clearing the way for Kublai Khan’s dynasty to take charge of Asia's central kingdom. The results of Yamen thus reverberated throughout Asia for decades afterward.

3. Quiberon Bay (1759). The year 1759 has been called a year of miracles for Great Britain. Land and naval operations determined whether Britain or France would emerge triumphant in North America. British troops under Wolfe subdued Montcalm's defenders at Quebec and Montreal, sealing the fate of New France. France stood little chance of recouping its fortunes because Admiral Sir Edward Hawke's Royal Navy fleet ventured into Quiberon Bay that November—in a westerly gale, no less—and put paid to the French fleet in its home waters. Having wrested away command of Atlantic shipping lanes, Britain could bar access to the Americas. Lesson: to score decisive victories, hire commanders with fighting names like Wolfe and Hawke. British exploits settled the destiny of a continent while setting a pattern for North American politics that persists to this day.

2. Spanish Armada (1588). This was the duke of Medina Sidonia's purportedly invincible fleet, ordered by Spain's King Philip II to cross the Channel and land in England. There Spanish forces would unseat England's Queen Elizabeth I. By installing a friendly regime, the expeditionary force would terminate English support for the Dutch revolt roiling the Spanish Netherlands while ending English privateering against Spanish shipping. The Catholic Philip sought and obtained papal approval for the enterprise against the Protestant Elizabeth. Weather, however, conspired with English seamanship and gunnery tactics to condemn the expedition. The Spanish host was unable to land. Instead Medina Sidonia found himself compelled to circumnavigate the British Isles under foul conditions to reach home port. The failed cross-Channel crusade heartened the English crown. Had the Armada replaced a Protestant with a Catholic monarch, it's conceivable that the British Empire never would have been founded—and certainly not in the form it actually took. How would Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean history have unfolded then? The implications of that question boggle the mind—and qualify the Armada's defeat as decisive in the largest sense.

1. Salamis (480 B.C.). Taken in tandem with its immediate precursors, the sea battle of Artemisium and the land battle at Thermopylae, the Battle of Salamis was part of a joint campaign that would gladden Corbett's heart. Themistocles, the founder of the Athenian navy, led an outnumbered, outmanned allied fleet against King Xerxes' Persian armada. Artemisium kept Persian sea forces from linking up with the colossal horde that had crossed the Hellespont and was lumbering overland through Greece, with the ultimate goal of conquering Europe. Themistocles' fleet then retired to the waters off Salamis Island to defend the Athenian populace, which had abandoned its city to the Persians. Guile and artful tactics let the allies overcome Persian numbers in this narrow sea. If not for Spartan and Athenian audacity, at sea as on shore, Xerxes may have throttled Western civilization in its infancy. Fending off the Great King's onslaught entitles Salamis to enduring fame. It was the most decisive naval battle in history.

Needless to say, drawing up a list like this one is tough. Many worthy candidates ended up on the cutting-room floor. China's Ming Dynasty was born through inland naval warfare, at the Battle of Lake Poyang (1363). The Battle of the Virginia Capes (1781) doomed Lord Cornwallis' army at Yorktown and assured American independence. The naval battles at Guadalcanal (1942-1943) reversed the tide of war in the Pacific, while the Battle of the Philippine Sea (1944) doomed Japanese naval aviation—paving the way for history's last major fleet engagement, at Leyte Gulf later that year. None, however, compares to the top five for world-historic significance.

Lastly, it's fun and enlightening to speculate about the dogs that didn't bark. About, that is, the naval engagements of immense consequence that could have, and perhaps should have, yet never did take place. For instance, the U.S. Navy just celebrated the bicentennial of the Battle of Lake Erie. Despite the dismal results of the War of 1812, small-scale engagements such as Lake Erie and the Battle of New Orleans impressed the British leadership with the United States' latent military and naval strength. Trivial-seeming U.S. victories implanted the idea among British statesmen that a conciliatory policy toward Washington was more prudent than trying to outmatch a republic predestined for primacy in North America and its marine environs.

Why the rise of America didn't produce a cataclysmic naval war with the supreme sea power of the day is worth mulling over. But that, as they say, is a story for another day.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and author of “Visualize Chinese Sea Power,” in the current issue of the Naval Institute Proceedings. The views voiced here are his alone.

This article first appeared in October 2013.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

David Axe

History, Americas

She was an expert of disguise named Emma Edmonds.

Here's What You Need to Know: Edmonds wanted revenge on the Confederacy.

In 1862, Confederate authorities captured a Union spy in Richmond, Virginia and executed him. The agent’s death created a job opening in the secret service of the United States—one that the unlikeliest candidate ultimately filled.

The Union’s new spy was a woman and an expert of disguise named Emma Edmonds. In the spring of 1862 she infiltrated Confederate lines by dyeing her skin black with silver nitrate, donning a wig and posing as a male slave.

Edmonds was Canadian. Born in 1841, in 1861 she enlisted in a Michigan infantry unit while disguised as a man. The secret woman soldier was on the front lines around Fortress Monroe, on the Virginia coast, when she learned of the spy’s execution in Richmond.

She applied to fill the agent’s position—a gambit she recounted in her bestselling 1864 memoir Unsexed, or the Female Soldier. Historian Philip Van Doren Stern included a chapter from Unsexed in his 1959 book Secret Missions of the Civil War.

Edmonds had an ulterior motive in wanting to be a spy. During the fighting around Fort Monroe, Confederate sharpshooters had killed a Union lieutenant named James Vesey. Edmonds was “obviously in love” with Vesey, Stern wrote.

She wanted revenge. And to get it, she would pretend to be a male slave and enter Confederate territory.

First, she had to prove to Union spymasters that she was loyal … and could use a firearm. She attended her interview in her “normal” disguise as a man. “My views were freely given, my object briefly stated, and I had passed trial one,” Edmonds wrote.

Next, she demonstrated her prowess with a weapon. “I sustained my character in a manner worthy of a veteran,” she crowed.

Federal spymasters gave her three days to prepare for her first mission into Confederate-held Virginia. “I purchased a suit of contraband clothing, real plantation style, and then I went to a barber and had my hair sheared close to my head.”

With silver nitrate she dyed her “head, face, neck, hands and arms” black. To test her disguise, she approached a Union postmaster who knew her as a white man.

Edmonds asked the postman to bring her a wig from Washington. The postman did not recognize the apparent black man standing before him and demanded to know what the whig was for.

“No matter, that’s my order,” Edmonds recalled saying. The postmaster agreed to fetch it. Edmonds was confident her disguise would work. Pocketing a revolver, she slipped through the Union picket outside Fortress Monroe and strolled into Confederate lands.

After a cold, sleepless night, Edmonds encountered a group of slaves carrying coffee and supplies to rebel pickets. She fell in with the slaves and wound up as part of a work party building fortifications for the Confederate army.

For two days no one saw through her disguise. While working, Edmonds noted the positions of the Confederate artillery. She sketched a map of the rebel defenses and slipped into her shoe for safekeeping.

On the third day, one of the slaves in Edmonds’ work party looked at her curiously. “I’ll be darned if that fella ain’t turning white,” the man commented. Catching a glimpse of herself in a mirror, Edmonds realized with horror that her silver nitrate skin dye was wearing off. She hurriedly reapplied her disguise.

Returning to Confederate positions, Edmonds observed rebel soldiers gathering around a civilian man. She recognized the man’s voice—he was a peddler who also frequented the Union Fort Monroe.

“There he was, giving the rebels a full description of our camp and forces,” Edmonds recalled. The peddler boasted that he had tipped off rebel snipers to Vesey’s position. “They lost a splendid officer through my means,” the peddler said.

Finally, Edmonds could have vengeance, by warning the Union of the peddler’s betrayal. “I thanked God for that information,” the spy wrote. Handed a rifle and commanded to stand guard, Edmonds instead seized the opportunity to slip away into the forest … and return to her own army.

David Axe served as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad.

This article first appeared in March 2020.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Caleb Larson

Artificial Intelligence,

The artificial intelligence piloting program is rapidly gaining experience and could fly alongside manned pilots in the not-so-distant future.

The artificial intelligence pilot is steadily gaining experience and expanding the number of drones it can fly.

The United States Air Force successfully conducted an unmanned test flight of a General Atomics Avenger drone—controlled not by a pilot on the ground, but rather by the Skyborg autonomy core system. The flight came several months after the Skyborg technology flew a Kratos UTAP-22 Mako drone, and marked the second kind of aircraft that the autonomous piloting program is able to fly.

“This type of operational experimentation enables the Air Force to raise the bar on new capabilities, made possible by emerging technologies,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Dale White explained in an Air Force press release about the recent flight. “And this flight is a key milestone in achieving that goal.”

The Air Force Skyborg effort is in essence a complex artificial intelligence system that hopes to eventually allow low-cost, unmanned aerial platforms to fly in tandem with manned fighters. Having an autonomous, intelligent plane in the air alongside other Air Force platforms is of obvious benefit: by flying ahead of manned airplanes, unmanned and expendable airframes can be placed in high-risk airspace to fly scout and reconnaissance sorties to evaluate potential threats—or even, in theory, to pull the trigger on enemy aircraft or ground installations.

The Skyborg program however would like to take unmanned flight a step further. Rather than flying just one or several autonomous airplanes, the Air Force hopes that Skyborg could enable larger swarms of unmanned aircraft to fly in coordinated teams rather than just solo multiplying their combat effectiveness.

The General Atomics Avenger drone is one  of the company’s most advanced—and though company material on the drone does not state it explicitly—is thought to incorporate some radar-mitigating stealth features into its airframe. The Avenger utilizes a serpentine air intake duct intended to hide the engine's compressor blades from enemy radar and reduce potential radar return. In addition, the Avenger’s fuselage appears to be contoured in a stealthy fashion, and incorporates rectangular exhaust nozzles which are useful for preserving rearward stealth.

Air Force material on Skyborg is careful to state that Skyborg-flown unmanned systems would compliment rather than replace manned pilots, but will “provide them [pilots] with key data to support rapid, informed decisions.” In this way, Skyborg could “provide manned teammates with greater situational awareness and survivability during combat missions.”

“Flying the Skyborg ACS on platforms from two different manufacturers demonstrates the portability of the Government-owned autonomy core, unlocking future multi-mission capabilities for the Joint Force,” Maj. Gen. Heather Pringle, Commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory as the Skyborg Technology Executive Officer explained.

So while the Air Force Skyborg autonomy core system is still in its infancy, the artificial intelligence piloting program is rapidly gaining experience, and could fly alongside manned pilots in the not-so-distant future.

Caleb Larson is a defense writer with the National Interest. He holds a Master of Public Policy and covers U.S. and Russian security, European defense issues, and German politics and culture.

Trevor Filseth

Child Tax Credit,

Traditionally, the Child Tax Credit has been a rebate on a family’s taxes, deducted from their final balance when the family files their taxes in April. In previous years, the payment has been $2000 per child per year. However, as part of his COVID-19 relief plan, President Biden increased the payments.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The parents’ spending choices illuminate one of the strongest arguments in favor of a larger Child Tax Credit: parents tend to spend their credit money in ways that cause the money to return quickly to the economy, stimulating it and creating more total added value.

One of Biden’s most significant accomplishments from his first 100 days in office was the passage of the March 2021 American Rescue Plan Act. The $1.9 trillion legislation provided for, among other programs, the third round of stimulus payments, which sent out $1400 to all eligible American adults and their dependents. The payments were credited with keeping roughly 16 million American adults out of poverty, and according to one survey, roughly 90 percent of Americans saw a noticeable financial benefit after receiving theirs.

Biden has attempted to replicate the success of the stimulus checks through his expansion of the Child Tax Credit, enacted under the same plan. Traditionally, the Child Tax Credit has been a rebate on a family’s taxes, deducted from their final balance when the family files their taxes in April. In previous years, the payment has been $2000 per child per year. However, as part of his COVID-19 relief plan, President Biden increased the payments to $3000 per year – with an extra $600 per year for children under the age of six, who are typically more expensive for families to pay for. The objective of the measure is to offset some of the costs of raising children, as parents have struggled financially during the pandemic.

The American Rescue Plan Act also called for the novel measure of sending out half of the tax credit payments in advance throughout the year. The first one is scheduled to be mailed on July 15 by the IRS. Observers have therefore compared the Child Tax Credit payments to small, monthly stimulus checks, targeted towards families. (The upper-income limit for the full credit is $75,000 per year for single parents or $150,000 per year for couples. In a perfect world, this would weed out parents who do not need the money, although in practice this means-testing does not always work.)

A simple fact often lost in the discussion, has been the human element and the needs of individual parents. Parents interviewed by USA Today were asked what they intended to spend the extra cash on; their responses were mostly mundane items, such as grocery bills, rent, and car repairs, although some parents expressed interest in recreational activities such as vacationing that they had gone without for the duration of the pandemic.

The parents’ spending choices illuminate one of the strongest arguments in favor of a larger Child Tax Credit: parents tend to spend their credit money in ways that cause the money to return quickly to the economy, stimulating it and creating more total added value. The objective of any “stimulus” payment is to increase cash flow, and one of the concerns that stimulus opponents had was that the money given out was not actually being immediately spent. For parents receiving the advance payments of the tax credit, however, this does not seem to be a problem.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for The National Interest.

Image: Flickr

Warfare History Network

Security,

Outside of England, at least 46 nations adopted the SMLE in its various guises, according to one estimate.

Key Point: Outside of England, at least 46 nations adopted the SMLE in its various guises, according to one estimate. India and Pakistan continue to use thousands of SMLEs, though they are no longer frontline weapons. Some Afghan fighters prefer the Lee-Enfield for its superior range compared to the AK-47.

(This first appeared several months ago.)

A small party of about 40 German soldiers had infiltrated the Australian lines around the besieged town of Tobruk, Libya, during the night of April 13, 1941. They began setting up a half dozen machine guns, several mortars, and even a pair of small infantry guns laboriously dragged through the desert sands. It was a foothold the Germans could use to expand into the perimeter and capture the town. They began firing at the nearest Australian unit, B Company of the 2-17 Infantry Battalion. The Aussies replied with rifles and machine guns, but it was tough going. A party consisting of Lieutenant Austin  Mackell and five privates, along with Corporal John Hurst Edmondson, decided to mount a counterattack to drive the Germans back.

The men clutched their bayoneted Lee-Enfield Rifles tightly and moved into the darkness, attacking the enemy fiercely despite the machinegun fire thrown at them. Edmondson was hit twice but continued on, killing one enemy with his bayonet. Nearby, Mackell fought as well, but soon he was in dire need of help. His bayonet broke and the stock of his Lee-Enfield was shattered while fighting the Germans, at least three of whom were now attacking the young officer. Edmondson waded into the fray without hesitation, shooting or bayoneting all of them with his rifle. During the action he was mortally wounded. His comrades, saved by his actions, carried him back to their own lines, where he died four hours later. The Germans were defeated and the line was restored. Edmondson’s feat of bravery was the talk of Tobruk afterward and he would be the first Australian to be awarded the Victoria Cross in World War II.

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The Lee-Enfield rifle is one of the most widely used bolt-action military rifles in the world, surpassed only by the Model 1898 Mauser and its derivatives in sheer numbers. Entering service at the dawn of the 20th century, it is still seeing active use well into the present century. It is the iconic rifle of the British Empire and it is still seen everywhere the Empire went, from Europe to remote regions in Africa and Asia. Soldiers in Afghanistan today are still being fired upon with the same Lee- Enfields British troops carried over the top in World War I.

The Lee-Enfield had its origins in the late 19th century, when repeating rifles firing full-powered cartridges were coming to the fore. Its direct predecessor was the Lee-Metford, a similar bolt-action design that brought the British military a state-of-the-art weapon comparable to the latest Mausers. The rifle used a magazine and bolt system developed by American inventor James Lee. Approximately 13,000 were built in 1889 and distributed to the army for field testing. A gradual series of product improvements led to an upgraded model being standardized in 1892, but the rifle still suffered from a few weaknesses such as barrel wear and

poor sights. After testing, further refinements were made to the weapon, resulting in the Lee-Enfield Mark I in 1895. The name combined James Lee’s design with the Royal Small Arms Factory’s location at Enfield Lock, Middlesex. Thus the name of the famous rifle was established, even though further refinement continued over the following decade.

The standardization of the Lee-Enfield into its most long-serving form took a number of years and is a reflection of the state of rifle development in the early 20th century. At the time there was considerable discussion about the use of rifles versus carbines, the rifle being a full-length weapon with a barrel length of 30 inches or more for use by infantry. Carbines were intended for cavalry use and had shorter barrels for more convenient use on horseback, with lengths of 16 inches to 22 inches being common. Full-length rifles had the advantage of greater accuracy at long ranges. Most designs of the period had sights graduated for distances of 2,000 yards or more, but some critics felt that was too far for any sort of accurate fire and recommended a shorter rifle, which would save production material and lighten the soldier’s burden. Opponents of this view felt the rifle could be effective at long distances using volley fire and loathed any decrease in accuracy.

Eventually the argument for a shorter rifle prevailed, particularly as even a shorter rifle’s barrel was still capable of greater accuracy than the average conscript could achieve. In this era many armies were slowly transitioning to large forces of conscripts who would transition into the reserves for long periods after a few years of active service. Although Great Britain’s army was still a relatively small professional force optimized for securing a far-flung empire, it still took the new lessons to heart and set about perfecting its rifle design.

The result was the Short Magazine Lee- Enfield No. 1 Mk. III, standardized in 1907 and often abbreviated as the SMLE. The soldiers who carried it soon modified this acronym into the nickname “Smelly,” which bore no relation to their opinion of the weapon. As adopted, the rifle weighed just under 8 3⁄4 pounds with a barrel length of 25.2 inches. It had a detachable magazine that held 10 cartridges of .303-caliber ammunition, though in practice the magazine was most often reloaded using stripper clips rather than swapped out for a new one. A magazine cut-off device could be used to block the firer from loading fresh rounds from the magazine. This was thought to allow a more controlled rate of fire by making the shooter load a single cartridge at a time. The contents of the magazine could then be saved for heavy combat requiring a higher rate of fire or when ordered by a superior.

The Lee-Enfield’s sights were graduated to more than 1,000 yards. Originally, an unusual long-range sight was also added to the left side of the rifle’s stock for use in extended-distance volley firing. During World War I this volley sight, along with the magazine cut-off, would be deleted to simplify production. The bolt action was simple; in practice the user would chamber a fresh round by rotating the bolt handle upward and then drawing the bolt backward. This would eject a fired cartridge case. Pushing the bolt forward strips a new cartridge out of the magazine and pushes it into the chamber. Pushing the bolt handle down locks the bolt into place so the rifle can be fired. Critics state that the bolt design of the Lee-Enfield is weaker than the German Mauser’s. Although there is some truth in the assertion, it only comes into play with extremely high-powered cartridges such as those used to hunt large game. In practice, using standard military ammunition, the SMLE’s bolt is strong enough to handle the load.

Upon entering service, the Lee-Enfield went through a round of criticism, not unusual for a new weapon in any age. Shooting was a serious sport in England at the time and pundits criticized the Lee-Enfield for problems with accuracy, recoil, and weight. As expected, some took issue with the shorter barrel, claiming it was responsible for the accuracy issues. Most of the complaints came from expert riflemen, armorers, and similar experts. The average soldier seemed to have few such qualms, however, and the weapon soon gained an increasingly good reputation among them. For service use, it was robust, reliable, and effective. Its bolt action was quick and smooth, allowing a soldier to make fast followup shots. Its 10-shot magazine had twice the capacity of its contemporaries, enabling small units to lay down an impressive rate of fire and keep it up longer.

The first major test for the design came with World War I in August 1914. The British Army was small at the time, about 247,000 strong and fully half that number went to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force. Shooting skills had been emphasized after marksmanship problems were noted during the Boer War over a decade earlier, so the average English soldier was highly skilled with a rifle. It was not unusual for a soldier to achieve 25 aimed shots or more per minute. This came in handy during the first months of the war, when armies on the Western Front still maneuvered into battle, before the stalemate of the trenches trapped men below ground for four long years.

Private Frank Richards of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers used the Lee-Enfield in the First Battle of Ypres in the autumn of 1914. His unit was advancing by platoons across open fields when they took rifle fire from a wooded area 600 yards ahead. The platoon went into a prone firing position and opened fire with their Lee- Enfields. Soon a group of Germans began advancing toward the British, who poured fire into them. Richards recalled “We had our rifles resting on the bank … and it was impossible to miss at that distance. We had downed half a dozen men before they realized what was happening; then they commenced to jump back into the trench … but we bowled them over like rabbits…. We had expended our magazines, which held ten rounds—there wasn’t a live enemy to be seen and the whole affair had lasted half a minute.”

In the German Army the First Ypres became known as the “Massacre of the Innocents” due to the 25,000 student volunteers who fell to British musketry during the fighting. The amount of fire British units could produce was so heavy German General Alexander von Kluck reportedly believed his opponents were armed completely with machine guns. In fact, British battalions had only two apiece and were often short even that paltry number. Casualties were made worse by the close order troops often used when advancing early in the war.

By 1915 the days of mobile columns were over and the armies settled into trench systems that extended hundreds of miles. British casualties were heavy, which diluted the army’s overall skill level as quickly trained replacements took over for the now lost regulars. Still, a few skilled marksmen remained, appearing from their trenches to take snap-shots at the enemy before ducking back down. A Canadian, Private Henry Norwest, was famed for his quick-shooting skills. He was a Metis Indian who was noted for his ability to rise, aim, fire, and reload before aiming and firing again in less than two seconds. Over time he is known to have killed at least 115 enemy troops before a sniper felled him in August 1918. Such shooting became harder as more German snipers were equipped with telescopic sights for their weapons. The SMLE saw its own sniper version as well, known as the No. 1 W (T).

Conditions in the trenches were hard on rifles and the SMLE was no exception. Mud could clog the action or the barrel. As a countermeasure, soldiers would plug the barrel with a cork or place a sock over the muzzle. A canvas breech cover was produced that could be clipped over the bolt and receiver to protect it from dirt and the elements. Keeping a weapon clean was a true challenge in the filthy conditions of trench warfare; soldiers could be charged with an offense for having a rusty or dirty rifle so maintenance took an even larger part of an infantryman’s time. The Lee-Enfield was a quality weapon with close tolerances in manufacturing, so extra care had to be taken, but if care was given the rifle stayed in action. Rifles with worn-out barrels were used to launch rifle grenades.

The disadvantage of having such a well-made weapon came on the production end. Only 108,000 rifles were made annually before the war began, not enough to equip the British Empire’s forces once the war was underway. Great increases were made once the conflict started; for example, from August to December 1914 approximately 120,000 SMLEs left the production line. This still was not enough so older Lee-Metfords were used for training and other designs were adopted as substitute standard weapons, in particular the P-14 Enfield made in the United States and called the No.3 Mark I in British service. Rifles were even ordered from as far away as Japan. SMLE production continued to increase. In 1917 more than 1.2 million rifles left the factory and more than 1 million in 1918.

After the war the SMLE again became the standard for the army with the substitute designs being placed in storage. While development between the wars did occur in semi-automatic weapons and new cartridges, scarcity of funds and abundance of rifles and leftover ammunition meant the Lee-Enfield served on in the hands of Imperial troops around the world. The biggest advancement was in redesigning the rifle to simplify production in the event of another war. The barrel was made slightly heavier to improve accuracy, and the sights were reconfigured and the muzzle was changed so that the barrel protruded slightly and was fitted with a new spike bayonet instead of the long blade-type from the previous conflict.

The improved SMLE was designated the No. 4 Mark I. It was approved for service just as World War II began. Initially, many soldiers did not take to the new rifle, preferring their old No.1 Mark IIIs. Despite this, more than 4.2 million No.4s were made by the end of World War II. Only about 10 percent of them were made at Enfield while the rest were made at the various factories set up around the Empire to increase production. The Australians continued to make the older Mark at their Lithgow Arsenal, having never adopted the No. 4. The Ishapore Rifle Factory in India also turned out the No. 1. The newer Mark was made in Canada at the Long Branch Factory near Toronto and in the United States by the Savage Arms Company. The American-produced rifles were stamped “U.S. Property” to help justify their distribution through the Lend-Lease program. The SMLE had truly become a worldwide rifle.

Most of the combatants started World War II using rifles very similar to those they used to fight the previous conflict, and often they were the same designs. A few semiautomatic rifles made their appearance early in the fighting, such as the American M1 and Soviet SVT-40. As the war continued, other nations, such as Germany, put forth their own new designs, including the first true assault rifle, the STG- 44. Nevertheless, most of the war’s riflemen still carried bolt-action weapons and the SMLE still outshone them all. The days of volley fire and rows of men in trenches were gone, but the Lee- Enfield’s smooth action and 10-round magazine still allowed Commonwealth soldiers to put out effective fire.

The SMLE No. 4 was also used to create variants, including a sniper model, the No.4 (T). It was a respectable long-range shooter, with good accuracy well past 600 yards. More than 24,000 were made and the design survived in British service into the 1970s and beyond. Two soldiers of the Cambridge Regiment, named Arthur and Packham, used their sniper SMLEs while hunting for a German sniper who had shot a British officer. For three days they stalked their opponent with no luck. But near the end of the third day Arthur spotted a wisp of smoke rising from some cover. The enemy marksman was having a cigarette. While Arthur spotted, Packham slowly slipped his rifle through their camouflage net. He took careful aim but could not get a good shot at the German. Now they knew the sniper’s hiding place, so they returned before dawn the next day and got ready. Shortly after 6 AM a German appeared. Just his head and shoulders were silhouetted in an opening in the vegetation. It was enough. Packham fired and was rewarded with a view of the enemy sniper’s rifle flying into the air as he collapsed.

The other major variant was the No. 5 Mk. 1, popularly known as the Jungle Carbine. It had a shorter barrel with a flash hider and cut down stock. It was lighter and handier but its recoil was harsh, which made it unpopular with the troops. Most were issued to troops in the Far East though the British 6th Airborne used them in Europe at the war’s end.

After the war ended the British Army retired the remaining No. 1s and retained the No.4 as its primary rifle. While the service experimented with a replacement, its soldiers took the SMLE into action again in Korea. In April 1951 the Gloucestershire Regiment’s 1st Battalion had to defend Hill 235 against several days of determined attacks by Chinese troops. Their Vickers machine guns ripped apart the enemy formations while the riflemen fired their SMLEs until the rifles were too hot to hold any longer. When that happened they picked up cool weapons from the dead and wounded. Sometimes a single bullet would fell two of three Chinese, so tightly packed together were the attacking regiments. The British eventually had to withdraw but they left behind some 10,000 enemy casualties.

Outside of England, at least 46 nations adopted the SMLE in its various guises, according to one estimate. India and Pakistan continue to use thousands of SMLEs, though they are no longer frontline weapons. Some Afghan fighters prefer the Lee-Enfield for its superior range compared to the AK-47. They still show up across the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Even the Canadians still give them to rural northern militiamen known as the Canadian Rangers.

The British Empire created a rifle that has endured for more than a century. It is said the sun never set on the British Empire. Unlike the days of empire, the sun still has not set on the life of the SMLE for soldiers still carry it into combat in Asia and Africa. It shows no sign of disappearing anytime soon.

This article by Lee Miskimon originally appeared on Warfare History Network.

Image: Flickr. 

Warfare History Network

Security,

As the Allied offensive continued into Germany itself, the chemical mortar battalions moved forward.

Key Point: While the mortar units were a valuable asset, they were not without their problems.

In the last days of March 1945, a soldier named Carl Getzel sat on a hill outside the city of Aschaffenburg and watched as it was slowly destroyed. The young private was part of the American 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Division. His unit was tasked to take this town but it had been hard going; the German troops inside the city were putting up a determined defense.

At echelons far above Carl, the decision was made to bombard the city. Artillery and air strikes pounded the once-beautiful town, but from his vantage he saw the a third, little known weapon wreak its own havoc. Not far behind him sat Company C, 2nd Chemical Mortar Battalion, equipped with the M2 4.2-inch mortar. Bombs from the mortars flew overhead to land in the city. As he watched, the projectiles crashed into buildings, bringing several down. It was an awesome display of firepower; Company C would fire 1,519 rounds of ammunition into Aschaffenburg during the last three days of March alone.

The Making of the Chemical Mortar

Although this account describes the 4.2-inch mortar (commonly nicknamed the “four-deuce”) as a close support weapon for frontline troops, the weapon was originally conceived for delivering poison gas and smoke munitions. Development of the M2 began after World War I as an attempt to improve the British-designed Stokes-Brandt 4-inch mortar. Since the intent was to utilize the new mortar solely for chemical weapons (smoke being considered a chemical weapon of sorts), the weapon came under the control of the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Service. That branch wanted a weapon that had a longer range and was more mobile than the Stokes design. In addition, it wanted a weapon that had the normal advantages of a mortar: high rate of fire, the ability to deliver firepower quickly and to go into action in a short time.

Mortars are smaller and lighter than cannon of comparable caliber and fire at a high angle, their rounds arcing high into the air and coming down at a nearly vertical angle to the ground. This enables mortars to fire at targets in defilade, hidden behind objects such as buildings or hills that would mask artillery fire. Mortar ammunition, technically called “bombs,” is not subjected to the same pressures as artillery shells so it can be made with thinner walls and of cheaper metals, enabling it to carry higher payloads of explosives or chemicals. The primary disadvantage of a mortar is its relatively short range.

Initial experiments conducted after World War I used leftover Stokes weapons and munitions, but these trials resulted in the improved 4.2-inch model’s appearance by 1924, under the tutelage of Captain Lewis McBride. Like many of the weapons destined to play a part in World War II, the M2 suffered from the curtailed defense budgets of the 1920s and 1930s. Only a few of the mortars were produced, and they remained largely experimental with trials continuing essentially up to the war’s beginning.

One set of experiments beginning in 1934 involved creating a high-explosive round despite the M2 being earmarked as a chemical weapon delivery system. While no one at the time wanted to give up the M2’s primary role of launching gas and smoke, it would prove a fortuitous decision, making it a true dual-purpose weapon when war arrived years later.

Despite this extensive testing and planning, the four-deuce almost did not survive to see combat. In 1935, the War Department stopped all production of the weapon and later designated

the smaller 81mm mortar as standard issue for chemical battalions. The 81mm was an excellent light weapon for the infantry, but for the chemical branch it was considered much less capable. It was not until war clouds were looming close that the 4.2-inch was resurrected after a meeting between General George C. Marshall, Army chief of staff, and the commander of the Chemical Branch.

The M2’s potential as a close support weapon was obvious, and the chemical branch immediately began campaigning to adopt the high-explosive ammunition; while smoke munitions were of obvious use, the war thus far had seen no use of poison gas. It would be a waste of resources to relegate the mortar to screening missions only, and soldiers in the Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) saw it as a way to increase the role their branch would play in the war.

This would not be the last bureaucratic stumbling block for the M2. When the CWS presented the case for the mortar to the Army ground forces, it recommended the Field Artillery Board test the weapon first. Should the artillery approve the M2, it would be used as a substitute for the 105mm howitzer in theaters where that weapon was not in use.

Since there were few places the 105 did not go, it would be the death knell for the mortar. The services of Supply Branch supported the CWS, citing the mortar’s higher firepower, lighter weight, and lower manpower requirements for crews as reasons to adopt it alongside cannon. In the end, opposition simply died out, and high-explosive ammunition for the M2 was approved on March 19, 1943. The four-deuce was going to war.

The mortar that had been the center of such controversy had a caliber of 4.2 inches or 107mm. It was a conventional design in that it was muzzle loaded; the crew dropped rounds into the tube from the muzzle. The bomb would slide down the barrel, and its end would strike a firing pin that would detonate the propellant, sending the round back up the tube and on its way.

Unlike most mortars, the M2 had a rifled barrel to impart a spin to its projectile, increasing accuracy. The weapon was composed of three parts—the 175 pound baseplate that sat on the ground and absorbed the recoil of firing, a barrel 40.1 inches long, and the standard. This piece is connected to the baseplate by two connecting rods and has a single vertical piece that houses the elevating mechanism. The mortar is also equipped with an optical sight that lines up on aiming stakes similar to artillery. The entire assembly weighs 330 pounds.

The weapon could traverse seven degrees to the left or right, and elevation was between 45 and 60 degrees. Up to 20 rounds per minute could be fired for short periods, though this was often exceeded in combat. Minimum range was 600 yards. Maximum range, initially just over 2,000 yards, was improved by war’s end to 4,500 yards, again commonly exceeded in action. High-explosive bombs weighed in at about 25 pounds, while smoke rounds were heavier at 32 pounds. In practice the weapons were often called “chemical mortars” since they were only used by the CWS.

The early chemical mortar units varied in size from company to regiment. Standardization was soon introduced with the battalion as the standard unit, though a few separate companies did see service in the Pacific theater. Battalions had four companies, each with two platoons. A platoon was further divided into two sections, each with three mortars, totaling 12 weapons per company and 48 per battalion. By mid-1942, six battalions existed: the 2nd, 3rd, and 81st through 84th. Four more were created by mid-1943, the 85th through 88th.

Combat Debut in Italy

The baptism of fire for the M2 came with the invasion of Sicily, Operation Husky. Four battalions—2nd, 3rd, 83rd, and 84th—were chosen to go ashore. There were two weaknesses. Only two companies of the 3rd Battalion had received amphibious training, and only the 2nd had conducted training alongside infantry units. Time limitations before the landing meant little work could be done to correct the problems.

Nevertheless, the mortar units went ashore and quickly proved their worth. When the Rangers fought at Gela, the 83rd supported them, helping repulse enemy tank and infantry attacks. The 2nd Battalion finished off a disabled German armored vehicle that was firing on American troops, firing eight rounds that all landed in an area only 15 yards in diameter with one round going right into the open top of the vehicle. The mortarmen also laid large smokescreens to screen friendly movements, in one case keeping the screen up for nearly 14 hours. Unit commanders were generally very positive about the effectiveness of the chemical mortar support, smoke, and high explosive, one even calling it “the most effective single weapon used in support of infantry.”

Still, as with any weapon new to combat use, some shortcomings were noted. Users wanted a longer range. At this point the M5A1 propellant gave a maximum range of 3,200 yards (the 4,500-yard M6 propellant was not yet available). The sight was also criticized as having too small a traverse and lacking illumination for night firing. Using typical G.I. ingenuity, Americans adapted captured Italian 81mm mortar sights, which proved to be a better piece of equipment.

After Sicily, chemical mortar battalions went on to serve at Salerno, Anzio, and throughout the Italian campaign. One battalion, the 83rd, became known as the “Artillery of the Rangers,” beginning its relationship with Colonel William Darby’s Ranger force at Gela on Sicily. The Rangers had no organic heavy weapons, and the M2’s firepower was a welcome addition. During the first two weeks of the Salerno campaign, C and D Companies alone fired more than 14,000 rounds. When the Rangers seized Chuinzi Pass and Mount Saint Angelo, they faced heavy counterattacks from German forces. The fighting became so desperate that mortarmen had to take their place on the line as infantry. Many targets were engaged up to 2,000 yards beyond the four-deuce’s range. The strain of such hard usage caused large numbers of breakages in mortar parts.

Still, the mission was accomplished and Colonel Darby later said the mortar battalion was instrumental in the success. In November, when the Rangers were fighting on the Winter Line, Company B supported them against a German counterattack with over 3,700 rounds. So many rounds were fired so quickly that one of the firing pins in an M2 fused from the heat. In return, German counterbattery fire destroyed two of the company’s ammunition dumps, sending more than 1,000 mortar bombs up in smoke.

When the Rangers went to Anzio in January 1944, the 83rd was still with them. Two companies, A and B, went ashore in the second wave, carried by DUKW amphibious vehicles. Their first fire mission was against an enemy 88mm gun that was shelling the beachhead, and fire from Company B drove it away. Darby ordered the mortars that had already landed to simply start firing in the direction of the Germans, saying, “I want the bastards to know I have something heavy, so they will start digging in. That will give me a chance to maneuver.”

As the Rangers moved inland, the mortarmen went with them although the soft ground played havoc with the weapons themselves, causing more breakages. When Darby’s Rangers made their ill-fated attack upon Cisterna, their “personal artillery” fired for them, trying in vain to cover their withdrawal from the Germans, who had encircled the embattled Americans. Only a handful of Darby’s men avoided death or capture.

While the mortar units were not likewise trapped, tragedy did strike them when the LST (landing ship, tank) carrying Companies C and D to Anzio struck a mine and sank. Even worse, many of the survivors were picked up by another vessel that itself struck a mine and sank with no survivors. The sad episode cost the lives of 293 soldiers; both companies were returned to Naples for replacements and reorganization before joining their battalion at Anzio in April.

The 84th Battalion also landed at Anzio and did its share, firing both high-explosive and smoke missions during the dreadful slugging match that became the battle for the beachhead. It fired over 50,000 rounds during the fighting through May 1944. Other chemical mortar units saw similar action throughout the Italian campaign, including the 2nd Chemical Mortar Battalion that took part in the fighting around Monte Cassino.

The M2 in Western Europe

When American forces landed in Western Europe, chemical mortars, having proven their worth, went with them. There was a shortage of trained units available, however, so only four battalions—the 81st, 86th, 87th and 92nd—were in theater for the Normandy invasion. The 81st landed on Omaha Beach with the 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions, while the 87th landed at Utah Beach with the 4th Division.

Once off the beaches, the mortarmen found themselves in the bocage country, fighting hedgerow to hedgerow with their comrades in the infantry. Casualties were heavy among the forward observer parties, and unit officers each took turns in that role. The chaotic nature of hedgerow fighting often meant the mortar crews had to fight as infantry and defend themselves when German troops infiltrated American positions or when the confusion of battle simply left a gap in the line.

When Operation Cobra, the Allied breakout from Normandy, began, Companies A and B of the 92nd were firing missions to support the 30th Division, itself poised to advance. A massive bombardment by Allied bombers took place to further soften German defenses. In a tragic miscalculation, some of the bombers dropped their payloads over American lines. Both mortar companies were hit with over 200 bombs falling in their battalion area. Beyond the 28 casualties the mortarmen suffered, General Lesley McNair, the Army ground forces commander, had come to France to observe the offensive and was in a position in front of A Company. He, too, fell to the errant barrage.

On August 15, 1944, Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France, began. Two chemical mortar companies were selected to undergo glider training and land with the airborne forces taking part in the assault. These were D Company of the 83rd Battalion and A Company of the 2nd. They landed on the afternoon of D-day near Leluc, France. The next morning they fired concentrations against the town of Le Muy and supported the paratroopers during their missions afterward, Company A remaining with the airborne troops until mid-September.

As the Allied offensive continued into Germany itself, the chemical mortar battalions moved forward. At Aachen the 92nd fired an intense barrage to break up German wire barriers and then began a rolling barrage a mere 150 yards ahead of advancing infantry. When Third Army launched its assault on the fortress city of Metz, the M2’s fire proved ineffective against concrete bastions, but its ability to lay smoke provided much needed concealment during the frustrating and difficult attacks. Chemical mortar battalions served right up to the end of the fighting in Europe.

Problems With the M2

While the mortar units were a valuable asset, they were not without their problems. As the war continued, finding replacements for dead and wounded mortarmen became critical. Many new officers lacked thorough training, and enlisted men were scraped up wherever they could be found. Even when properly trained soldiers arrived, the replacement system often sent them anywhere but where they were most needed.

Another problem was the reliability of the M2 itself. Parts such as elevating screws and springs were breaking far too often, leaving units short of weapons. The screws seemed to be breaking because units were firing their mortars beyond maximum range, putting the weapons into unusual firing positions or using additional propellant. The springs, however, were criticized as being poorly made. If the spring did not work right, it placed added stress on all the other components of the weapon. Spare parts quickly became scarce.

The baseplate was also subjected to scrutiny, and an improved model, larger and heavier than the original, was produced in theater at a steel mill in Belgium. Another partial solution was to attach additional maintenance personnel to the battalions.

A third issue to arise was with the ammunition. Bombs were exploding either in the tubes or just after exiting upon firing. Suspect ammunition was impounded, but the problem continued to occur. Faulty fuses were the culprit, and artillery fuses were substituted.

The M2 in the Pacific

In the Pacific, the 82nd Chemical Mortar Battalion first saw action in New Georgia in September 1943. It went on to fight at Bougainville, where captured Japanese documents stressed to their own artillery to concentrate fire on mortar units whenever possible.

More mortar battalions and companies saw action in the Philippines. The weapons were even used to seal cave entrances, entombing Japanese defenders who refused to surrender. Similar to Europe, problems were encountered with the fuses, especially in the wet, humid conditions of the Pacific. At times ammunition shortages were the biggest handicap.

An innovative use of the M2 was as a fire support weapon for amphibious landings. This gave troops assaulting beaches a weapon to fill the gap between the time shore bombardment stopped and artillery was in place ashore. Mounted on LCIs (landing craft, infantry), the chemical mortars first saw action at Peleliu. The LCIs each mounted three mortars that fired forward over the bow. They would accompany the assault waves toward shore, firing preplanned bombardment on the beach and inland just ahead of the troops. Their fire proved so effective that the original group of four LCI(M)s (the M standing for mortar) was expanded to 60 boats by the end of the war. Many of these took part in the invasions of the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.

Though originally intended to fire only gas and smoke rounds, the four-deuce proved itself a valuable close-support weapon with the firepower of an artillery piece. It was so useful that a succeeding design, the M30, served the U.S. Army into the 1990s in the battalion mortar platoons of armored and mechanized units before being replaced by a 120mm weapon. The M2 helped prove the utility of the large- caliber mortar.

Originally Published December 31, 2018.

This article originally appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons. 

Caleb Larson

Iran, Middle East

Much of Iran’s ground (and air!) equipment is quite old, and some of it a strange combination of Russian main guns and other parts mated hulls the guns were never intended for.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Raad-1 is a classic example of Iranian weapon platforms—a strange mixture of legacy equipment repackaged and spun as “Iranian.”

The Iranian arms industry is a mashup of vintage American systems, legacy Soviet equipment, and a smattering of Chinese and North Korean imports. Much of Iran’s ground (and air!) equipment is quite old, and some of it a strange combination of Russian main guns and other parts mated hulls the guns were never intended for. The Raad-1 is just such a system.

The Raad-1 is a mixture of Soviet and domestic Iranian equipment. For a turret, the Raad-1 has a 2S1 Gvozdika turret mated to an Iranian Boragh armored personnel carrier hull. Though the exact specifications of the Raad-1 are hard to determine with certainty, a good estimate of its capabilities can be inferred by looking at what is known about the domestic hull and foreign turret.

2S1 Gvozdika

The Gvozdika is a 122 millimeter self-propelled howitzer that was originally fielded in the early 1970s. Interestingly for a self-propelled howitzer, it’s amphibious. The Gvozdika had decent range for its time, firing a standard high-explosive projectile 15+ kilometers, or over 9 miles. This range could be extended with rocket-assisted projectiles out to nearly 30 kilometers, or 13+ miles.

Boragh

Now things get confusing. The Boragh is believed by some to be an improved Iranian version of the Chinese Type 86 APC—which is itself a copy of the Soviet BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle. In addition to this convoluted pedigree, the Boragh may even use road wheels from the American M113 APC. It’s thoroughly confusing.

There are several Boragh variants that differ slightly, but generally fall into an anti-tank role, anti-aircraft, armored personnel carrier, or a mortar carrier. As I previously wrote, the anti-tank capability is ensured by the Toophan missile, a high-quality reverse-engineered copy of the American TOW missile.

The Boragh is equipped with a diesel engine that has a respectable 330 horsepower output, giving it good on and off-road capabilities. It has enough internal volume to carry 8 fully equipped troops in addition to three crew members.

Raad-1

The Raad-1 fuses these two very different technologies into one platform that apparently works. The crew of four (loader, gunner, driver, and commander) have access to the interior via the rear. Modest rolled steel armor protects the crew, though only from small arms and artillery shell splinters.

The Raad-1’s engine is housed in the front of the hull, giving the crew a slightly better amount of protection than if they rode in a forward configuration. The turret is mated to the hull near the rear, above the crew compartment. 

Judging by the Gvozdika, the Raad-1 probably has a similar maximum firing range of 15-plus kilometers or so, though the Raad-1 may suffer from reduced range and mobility, thanks to insufficiently wide tracks that may sink in soft or loose soil.

Either way, the Raad-1 is a classic example of Iranian weapon platforms—a strange mixture of legacy equipment repackaged and spun as “Iranian.”

Caleb Larson holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy. He lives in Berlin and writes on U.S. and Russian foreign and defense policy, German politics, and culture. This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image, Reuters.

Warfare History Network

World War II, Americas

After about two minutes of machine-gun and cannon fire, men began popping out of hatches and jumping into the sea.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The intelligence materials taken from U-505 allowed Allied Naval Intelligence to read U-boat signals as fast as the Germans themselves, which helped them in their already successful war against Admiral Dönitz and his submarine fleet. All the elaborate grids and tables the Kriegsmarine had been using to track Allied shipping were now used against the U-boats.

“Frenchy to Blue Jay—I have a possible sound contact,” squawked from USS Guadalcanal’s bridge intercom at 1110 hours. It meant that “Frenchy,” codename for the Destroyer Escort USS Chatelain, had located something during a sonar sweep.

But Captain Daniel V. Gallery, commander of the escort carrier Guadalcanal (BlueJay) was not going to get excited, at least not yet. The sound contact could be a whale, a layer of cold water, or any number of other things. On the other hand, a “possible” was always treated like the real thing until found out to be otherwise.

“Left full rudder,” Captain Gallery ordered. “Engines ahead full speed.” He also sent two other destroyer escorts (DE) in to assist Chatelain, put two of Guadalcanal’s Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters over the sound contact, and “got the hell out of there at top speed.” Gallery knew that an aircraft carrier, even a small escort carrier, would only be in the way if the contact turned out to be a U-boat. “A carrier smack on the scene of a sound contact is like an old lady in the middle of a bar room brawl!” he once remarked. “She’d better move fast and leave room for the boys who have work to do.”

Captain Gallery knew about these things from experience. On his last cruise, Gallery and his hunter-killer group had sunk two U-boats, U-68 and U-515, within the space of 12 hours. He was well versed on how German submarine commanders behaved. This trip had begun on May 15, 1944, when Gallery departed Norfolk, Virginia, aboard Guadalcanal with five destroyer escorts: Chatelain, Pillsbury, Pope, Flaherty, and Jenks. His orders were to take his U-boat hunting group, officially known as Task Group 22.3, out into the Atlantic to look for more enemy submarines.

This time, though, Captain Gallery had something different in mind. During the last cruise, U-515 surfaced right in the middle of the task group. The escorting destroyer escorts hit the U-boat with every caliber gun they had, from five-inch to .50-caliber machine guns, before the boat sank. This gave Gallery an idea. “Suppose we hadn’t been so bloody minded about sinking her,” he thought. Before leaving Norfolk, Gallery assembled the captains of all the escort ships in his group and told them that they would try to capture a submarine, if possible, on this cruise.

If a U-boat came to the surface, as U-515 had done, everyone was to assume that the captain had come up to save the lives of the crew. Instead of sinking it, the destroyer escorts would open up with .50-caliber machine guns. This would keep the crew away from the U-boat’s deck guns and would also “encourage them to get the hell off that U-boat.” After the crew had abandoned the submarine, a boarding party would be sent over to disarm any booby traps, close all scuttling valves, do everything possible to keep the boat afloat, and rig it for towing back to the United States.

From the expression on their faces, Captain Gallery could see that some of the destroyer escort captains thought he must be crazy. Everyone present kept their mouths shut. They all organized boarding parties as ordered and waited to see what might happen.

Throughout the month of May, the possibility of capturing a U-boat remained a moot point. Captain Gallery’s hunter-killer group looked for submarines in the vicinity of the Cape Verde Islands, but could not find a thing. The results were “unproductive,” Gallery wrote with disgust in his report. Naval Intelligence sent word that a submarine was within 300 miles of the group, and Guadalcanal picked up radio transmissions on the U-boat frequency, but there had been no contacts. By May 30, the ships were all nearing the safe limit of their fuel. Gallery had no choice but to leave the area and head for Casablanca to refuel.

The task group started for Casablanca but kept a lookout for submarines along with way. On the night of June 2, radar contacts were reported about 50 miles east of the group’s position. Encouraged by these reports, Captain Gallery decided to spend another day on the search, even though it meant stretching his fuel.

When the Chatelain reported a possible sound contact at 1110 hours on June 4, Gallery gave the order to investigate the contact. As Guadalcanal left the area, Pillsbury and Jenks rushed over to help Chatelain. Chatelain’s captain fired a salvo of 20 hedgehogs, small, forward-firing depth bombs, and missed the target—if there was a target. At 1116 hours, all doubts ended abruptly. The pilots of the two Wildcat fighters positively identified a submarine running below the surface and advised Chatelain to reverse course toward it. The fighter pilots also fired bursts of machine-gun fire to indicate the submarine’s position.

The captain of the Chatelain followed the pilot’s advice and, aided by the machine-gun fire of the two planes, fired a full pattern of shallow-set depth charges. From the bridge of his flagship, Captain Gallery felt the deck underneath him rock as the depth charges exploded and a dozen geysers sprouted into the air. A minute later, after the explosions subsided, one of the fighter pilots shouted, “You’ve struck oil, Frenchy, sub is surfacing!” As personnel from every ship in the group looked on, the U-boat broke the surface 700 yards from Chatelain. Captain Gallery could see white water pouring from the submarine’s deck and conning tower. He had his quarry.

The reaction of the destroyer escorts was to start shooting as soon as soon as the boat came up. No one knew for certain whether the U-boat captain had come up to surrender or to fire a spread of torpedoes. Gunners aboard Chatelain, Pillsbury, and Jenks opened fire with a murderous barrage of .50-caliber machine-gun fire along with 20mm and 40mm shells. Larger caliber guns also began shooting but missed their target. The circling Wildcats came down to strafe.

"I Want to Capture That Bastard if Possible."

Shortly after coming to the surface, the U-boat began to circle to the right, making it look as though she was maneuvering to bring her torpedo tubes to bear. After about two minutes of machine-gun and cannon fire, men began popping out of hatches and jumping into the sea. It was obvious that the submarine had no intention of fighting it out with the group and was getting ready to surrender. Captain Gallery did not want the gunners to sink his prize. He broadcast to the escort ships, “I want to capture that bastard if possible.”

The submarine that Captain Gallery’s task group brought to the surface was U-505, commanded by 40-year-old Oberleutnant Harald Lange. U-505 was a Type IX-C submarine, commissioned at Hamburg on August 26, 1941. It was also the unluckiest boat in the Atlantic force. In fact, U-505 was the Typhoid Mary of Admiral Karl Dönitz’s entire U-boat fleet. Since its commissioning day, the submarine seemed to have developed the knack for having things go wrong.

Actually, U-505’s career had begun on a bright note. In November 1942, just after setting out on her first war patrol, she sank a 7,200-ton British freighter, and she eventually sank a total of eight Allied ships during her operational lifetime. Just two days after sinking her first freighter, however, she attacked another ship with four torpedoes—all four missed and her target got away. This was only the beginning of her bad luck. On the afternoon of November 10, she was depth-bombed by twin-engined aircraft and badly damaged. The captain managed to bring her back to France, but U-505spent the next seven months in the repair dock.

Her luck did not improve during her second cruise. Under the command of 24-year-old Peter Zschech, U-505 left Lorient on June 30, 1943, but had come out of the repair dock too soon and was not yet ready for the open sea, forcing a return to Lorient.

Captain Zschech set sail once again on July 3, but three days later the submarine was attacked by three British destroyers off Cape Finisterre. U-505 survived the attack but once again returned to Lorient for major repairs. Her next attempt at a war patrol came in September 1943, when U-505departed Lorient for the Atlantic shipping lanes. Two days out, one of her diesels locked up. The crew managed to repair the engine, but the main trim pump broke down three days later. Because no spare parts were on board for the pump, Captain Zschech had no choice but to return to Lorient on September 30.

The next cruise was probably the worst of all. With Captain Zschech on board, U-505 sailed for the Caribbean in October 1943. On October 9, the submarine was detected by unidentified Allied warships and attacked with depth charges. During the depth charge barrage, Zschech committed suicide with a handgun. The strain of the attack and the frustration of his failure as captain of U-505 had finally taken their toll. The executive officer assumed command and, as his first duty, buried Zschech at sea. U-505 returned to Lorient on November 7, damaged and without a commanding officer.

Oberleutnant Lange was assigned as U-505’s captain in December. U-boat command hoped that an older and steadier commander might help settle the crew after Captain Zschech’s suicide. Shortly after leaving port, the submarine picked up survivors from a German torpedo boat, T-25, and returned to France. Although this patrol was not nearly the fiasco of the previous cruise, it was still another aborted start. The crew was becoming highly frustrated with aborted war patrols, depth charges, and repair docks.

Captain Lange did not take U-505 to sea again until March 16, 1944. He patrolled the western coast of Africa for Allied shipping but never even spotted a single ship. “The hex is still with us,” a crewman complained. Actually, U-505’s failure to find Allied shipping had nothing to do with luck, bad or otherwise. Allied naval intelligence had been tracking the submarine through her radio transmissions and had diverted all shipping away from her.

At the end of May, Lange decided to return to Lorient—yet another unsuccessful patrol. The boat was low on fuel, the crew was frustrated and in low spirits, and nothing at all had been accomplished in nearly two and a half months. Lange did not know it, but Allied codebreakers were fully aware that he was returning to France and also had a good idea of the course he was taking. Intelligence passed this information along to Captain Gallery and his hunter-killer group. It was U-505 that Guadalcanal was picking up on the U-boat radio frequency.

Captain Lange had no idea that his boat was in danger until the morning of June 4, when the noise bearings of Gallery’s approaching destroyer escorts were picked up. He brought the submarine up to periscope depth and saw what he identified as three “destroyers,” along with another ship that might be an aircraft carrier. Although he ordered an immediate crash dive, the U-boat was convulsed by five explosions before it had the chance to reach a safe depth.

“Water broke in,” Lange reported. “Light and all electrical machinery went off and the rudders jammed.” The Chatelain’s depth charge salvo had found its target. “Not knowing the whole damage or why they continued bombing me,” Lange curiously noted in his report, as though he thought that shooting at his U-boat was bad sportsmanship, “I gave the order to bring the boat to the surface by [com]pressed air.”

As soon as the boat surfaced, Captain Lange was up on the bridge. He saw four U.S. Navy vessels around him, “shooting at my boat with calibre and anti-aircraft [.50-caliber machine gun and 40mm cannon.]” The nearest destroyer escort hit the conning tower, wounding Lange in his legs and also killing his chief officer. Lange ordered a turn to starboard, swinging away from the enemy and giving the American gunners less of a target to shoot at. He also ordered the boat scuttled.

At 1126 hours, 16 minutes after the first possible sound contact, Captain Gallery ordered the task group to cease fire. Immediately afterward, he sent an order over his flagship’s intercom that had not been heard on an American warship since the War of 1812: “Away all boarding parties!”

The first ship to react was the Pillsbury. Her boarding party, led by Lieutenant (j.g.) Albert David, climbed into the ship’s whaleboat and started off for the German submarine, which was still circling to starboard at five or six knots. The event reminded Captain Gallery of a scene from Moby Dick, with a boarding party chasing a U-boat instead of harpooners chasing a whale. It did not take very long for the crew to cut inside the submarine’s circle, overtake the boat, and jump on deck.

Now that they were actually on board the submarine, Lieutenant David and two other men had to take control of it. The only German they saw was dead, lying face down alongside the conning tower hatch. With David in the lead, the three men climbed through the hatch, went down the ladder, and jumped into the control room. No one was absolutely certain if any Germans were still on board or not. Luckily for the small boarding party, the compartment was deserted and silent. The only sounds came from the machinery that kept the U-boat moving in its slow circle.

Even if the Boat Sank, Saving the Enigma Machines Would Have Made Everything the Group had Done Well Worth the Effort.

It seemed as though the boat was about to sink. The submarine was about 10 degrees down by the stern and seemed to be settling deeper with each passing minute. So, the three men concentrated on saving the secret code books and the boat’s Enigma enciphering machines. They grabbed every secret document they could get their hands on and passed them up through the hatch and onto the bridge. Even if the boat sank, just saving the Enigma machines and the code books would have made everything the group had done so far well worth the effort.

Captain Gallery, however, was not satisfied with just the secret books and code machines. He wanted to save the submarine as well. Because Guadalcanal was no longer in danger from a torpedo attack, Gallery brought the carrier close enough to the U-boat to send a whaleboat with a 10-man boarding party to help David and his men. A wave sent Guadalcanal’s whaleboat crashing onto U-505’s forward deck, which thoroughly frightened the three men aboard the submarine. They had no idea that another boarding party had been sent.

The leader of the 10-man party was Commander Earl Trosino, an engineering officer and an expert on ships’ pipes and fittings. Before the war, Commander Trosino had been a chief engineer aboard Sun Oil (Sunoco) tankers. Although he had never been aboard a submarine, Trosino managed to solve a major problem within the first few minutes. An open seacock was allowing tons of water to pour into the U-boat, adding to the difficulty of keeping her afloat. Its cover was found nearby and was simply screwed back into place.

When Lieutenant David and his men began looking for booby traps, they found 13 demolition charges and disarmed them. Trosino made certain that all the valves were closed and did his best to keep the boat from sinking. He sent word to Captain Gallery that the U-boat would sink unless it was towed.

The captain of the Pillsbury attempted to come alongside the still-circling German submarine, pass a salvage pump over, and take the boat in tow. During the maneuver, one of the submarine’s diving planes punched a hole in the Pillsbury’s hull, flooding her engine room and forcing the ship to retire and repair the damage. After Pillsbury left the scene, Guadalcanal took over. Commander Trosino and his men attached their end of Guadalcanal’s cable to U-505’s bow, and the carrier began to pull.

On the evening of June 4, Captain Gallery set out for Dakar, the nearest friendly port, with U-505 in tow. He had to leave the damaged Pillsbury behind, with the Pope standing by. Captain Gallery had two problems to worry about. He was informed that the fuel situation was now critical. The task group could not have reached Casablanca even if Gallery wanted to. There was not enough fuel to make the trip.

The second problem was that U-505’s rudders were still turned to starboard. Commander Trosino reported that he had put the rudder amidships, but he had only succeeded in moving the boat’s electric rudder indicator. The indicator showed that the rudders were amidships, but they were actually still hard right. The only possible way of moving them was to use the boat’s manual steering mechanism, which was situated in the after torpedo room. Since the boat was already well down by the stern, adding the weight of a couple of men in that compartment would only make a bad situation worse. Also, Trosino reported that the aft torpedo room was flooded and that its hatch was booby-trapped.

Gallery said that he had been itching to get aboard the U-boat. The booby-trapped hatch gave him the excuse he needed. He was an ordnance school graduate and “knew as much about fuses and circuitry as anyone on board.” So, he designated himself officer in charge of booby traps and, along with Commander Trosino and four helpers, took a boat over to U-505 to investigate.

As he made his way into the submarine through the conning tower hatch, which was almost awash, Gallery began to have second thoughts about leaving Guadalcanal. The air stunk, the boat seemed on the verge of sinking by the stern, and the trip “through the control room, diesel engine room and after motor room seemed endless,” he recalled.

Finally, the party arrived at the hatch leading to the aft torpedo room. Trosino shone his light on an open fuse box and said, “There she is, Cap’n.” This was the booby trap. By the look of the box and all the wires coming out of it, it seemed to be a very cleverly devised demolition charge. To open the hatch to the torpedo room, the fuse box first had to be closed. Closing the lid might possibly close a circuit to an explosive device, which would destroy the U-boat and everyone in it.

Gallery did not believe such a connection would be made. He took a close look at the wiring and could not find anything suspicious. It seemed to him that the crew had abandoned the submarine too quickly—before they had the chance to set any charges. He thought the fuse box was harmless. As everyone held their breath, he slowly closed the cover. Nothing happened.

As soon as they opened the hatch to the torpedo room, the four men discovered that the compartment was dry. Commander Trosino had been wrong about that as well. The men entered the compartment, manhandled the steering gear to put the rudders amidships, and left as quickly as possible. The trip back to the control room was an uphill walk. As he climbed back to the bridge, Captain Gallery thought, “The fresh salt air sure smelt [sic] mighty sweet.”

Now that the U-boat was no longer turning to starboard, the next step was to pump the boat dry and bring her up to an even keel. “Junior,” as Guadalcanal’s crew now called U-505, was still half submerged, which made the boat a lot more difficult to tow. In fact, the sea was actually breaking over the conning tower hatch. When Gallery climbed through the hatch into the control room, he had to close the hatch behind him to keep from flooding the compartment.

Trosino had an idea for re-charging the U-boat’s storage batteries, even though Gallery would not let him run the diesel engines. Gallery was afraid that someone would turn the wrong valve and sink the boat. Trosino disconnected the clutch on the diesels and requested that Gallery tow the U-boat at 10 knots—quite a high speed for a tow. The forward speed turned the submarine’s propellers, which also turned the armatures of the electric motors, which, in turn, charged the batteries. With the batteries fully charged, there was enough electric current to run the boat’s pumps. The boat was pumped dry and brought up to full surface trim. U-505 was finally out of danger.

During the night, CINCLANT (Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Fleet) sent orders to Captain Gallery. He was not to attempt taking U-505 to Dakar. Although Dakar was the nearest port, it was also full of German spies who would report the U-boat capture to Berlin. Instead, he was to take his prize to Bermuda. To assist with the long trip, the fleet tug Abnaki and the oiler Kennebeck were diverted from an Africa-bound convoy to join Gallery’s task group.

Admiral King Threatened to Have Gallery Court-Martialed for Bringing U-505 in as a Prize.

Gallery rendezvoused with the two ships in the mid-Atlantic. Ships of the group refueled from Kennebeck, while Abnaki took over towing duties from Guadalcanal. On June 9, the group formed a screen around Abnaki and U-505 and headed for Bermuda, still 2,500 miles away.

All prisoners from U-505 were safely aboard Guadalcanal; 59 German sailors out of a complement of 60, including officers and Captain Lange. Gallery decided to visit Lange in the carrier’s sick bay. He described the German captain as “a big, angular man of about 35,” who looked more like a preacher than a U-boat skipper. Lange’s leg wounds had been treated, and he was sitting up in his bunk. Gallery introduced himself as the captain of the ship and told Lange, “We have your U-boat in tow.”

Lange blinked at Gallery and shouted, “No!” Because of his wounds, he had spent all of his time below decks after being rescued, and refused to believe that his orders to scuttle the submarine had not been carried out. He would not accept the fact that U-505 was still afloat and had been captured until Gallery sent a crew member over to the U-boat to retrieve family pictures from Lange’s cabin.

Seeing his personal photographs convinced him. He told Gallery in perfect English, “I will be punished for this.” After the war, Lange wrote Gallery a letter informing him that he had landed a good job on the Hamburg docks. Apparently, his gloomy prediction did not come true.

While the remaining ships of Guadalcanal’s group escorted the Abnaki and U-505 to Bermuda, the Jenks had been sent ahead at maximum speed with the U-boat’s Enigma machines and 10 sacks of code books and secret documents, which weighed about 1,100 pounds. When news of the U-boat’s capture reached Washington, it was greeted with anything but elation. The main fear was that German intelligence would find out that one of their submarines had fallen into Allied hands and that they would immediately change all the Enigma codes. If that happened, all Allied codebreakers would be plunged into darkness for many weeks. Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, the bad-tempered chief of naval operations, was furious with Captain Gallery for jeopardizing Allied naval intelligence and their control of Enigma. He threatened to have Gallery court-martialed for bringing U-505 in as a prize.

Fortunately, no word ever reached German intelligence. Gallery told all hands attached to the task group that nothing must be said about what happened during the cruise, and amazingly the men did as they were told. The public did not find out about U-505 until after the war. Also, the Allied landings at Normandy on June 6, 1944, two days after the submarine was captured, pushed most other thoughts out of the minds of German intelligence. Berlin officially listed U-505 as sunk and made only routine changes in the naval codes.

The intelligence materials taken from U-505 allowed Allied Naval Intelligence to read U-boat signals as fast as the Germans themselves, which helped them in their already successful war against Admiral Dönitz and his submarine fleet. All the elaborate grids and tables the Kriegsmarine had been using to track Allied shipping were now used against the U-boats. Far from being the disaster feared by Admiral King, Gallery’s decision to take U-505 intact turned out to be an enormous advantage for Allied codebreakers.

On June 19, 1944, just over two weeks after Lieutenant David and his crew made their way into U-505’s control room, Gallery’s task group arrived in Bermuda. A huge U.S. flag flew above a much smaller German naval ensign on the U-boat’s flagstaff. The 59 prisoners were turned over to the commandant of the naval base. They were, in turn, kept in an isolated camp until the war ended. Absolutely no chances were being taken that might jeopardize the secrecy of U-505’s capture, including mixing the submarine’s crew with other German prisoners.

The U-boat was also turned over to the base commander, who issued a receipt: “One Nazi U-boat, U-505, complete with spare parts.” When the boat was inspected, a 14th demolition charge was found—in place and still very much alive.

For his part in the operation, Lieutenant Albert David was awarded the Medal of Honor. The two men who went down the U-boat’s conning tower hatch with him, Radioman Stenley E. Wdowiak and Torpedoman Arthur W. Kinspel, were given the Navy Cross. Captain Gallery did not receive a decoration, although he did get the Distinguished Service Medal for his work in antisubmarine warfare.

Gallery took very little credit for the success of the operation. He attributed it to thorough planning, helped along by a lot of good luck. As an afterthought, he added, “Maybe our daily morning prayers had something to do with it.”

David Alan Johnson has written extensively on World War II for more than 20 years. His book The Battle of Britain: The American Factor was well received in both the United Kingdom and the United States. He is currently working on a book about Anglo-American relations since Colonial times.

This article by David Alan Johnson originally appeared on the Warfare History Network. This piece was originally featured in 2016 and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikipedia.