The National Interest

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History, Europe

In their first combat experience, a handful of American soldiers accomplished its objective and held against powerful German counter-attacks.

Here's What You Need to Know: In November 1944, an American infantry division underwent its baptism of fire in the worst conditions imaginable and acquitted itself with honor beyond anyone’s expectation. The final outcome of the campaign, however, was determined by the heroic action of only 100 men who found themselves in a hopeless situation and simply would not give up.

The men of the 84th Division—the Railsplitters—were, to use the GIs’ own language, “green as grass,” fresh off the boat from the States, and they were not going to a quiet sector to get combat experience on the cheap. Their first combat mission was to assault and reduce the Geilenkirchen Salient, a chunk of the German Siegfried Line that featured dragon’s teeth, minefields, and layer after layer of concrete pillboxes surrounded by trenches, foxholes, and barbed wire, which Lt. Gen. Brian Horrocks, commander of British XXX Corps, described as the most formidable fortifications on the entire German front.

Operation Clipper

If the GIs had been expecting their first sight of Germany to be picturesque, they were disappointed. The area around Geilenkirchen, the flood plain of the Wurm and Roer Rivers, was depressingly drab, worn, and ugly. Nondescript shabby little villages and gray industrial towns dotted a landscape unbroken by any terrain features likely to catch the eye. There were a few scattered woods and orchards, but the ground was mostly cabbage and sugar beet fields now turned to sticky brown mud by the autumn rains.

The flood plain boasted no major hills or ridges, but a series of rises on the south bank of the Wurm gradually joined to form a low plateau farther to the northeast. The low hills and rises were not obstacles to movement but did provide excellent observation posts for German artillery. Everything had an abandoned, desolate feel, made more pronounced by the absence of civilians. Most had been evacuated by the Germans before the fighting began.

There was another thing—the 84th Division would not be going into action under U.S. command. Its first offensive would be fought under British XXX Corps. Geilenkirchen was at the far northern end of the U.S. 9th Army’s area of responsibility and the far southern end of the British 2nd Army’s. The Wurm River formed the rough boundary line between U.S. General Omar Bradley’s 12th Army Group and British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s 21st. Despite that, cooperation between General William Simpson of the 9th Army and Horrocks of XXX Corps was good. Geilenkirchen needed taking, but XXX Corps did not have the strength on the ground to take it. So Simpson loaned Horrocks a U.S. division to get the job done. The operation would be called Clipper.

The Geilenkirchen Salient was a tough proposition—impressive fortifications, and deep—seven miles deep, all the way back to the Roer River with interlocking fields of fire and few covered routes of approach. Asking a green American division to tackle this as its first assignment was asking a lot. The fact that Simpson and Horrocks were willing to do so spoke volumes about their confidence in the ability of the U.S. training system to turn out combat-ready divisions capable of hitting the ground running. When it came to the Railsplitters of the 84th Division, they were right.

The plan for Operation Clipper was simple. Most good ones are. On November 18, the British 43rd Wessex Division would drive in the northern side of the salient, and the U.S. 334th Infantry Regiment, 84th Division would drive in the south, leaving Geilenkirchen exposed and cut off. The 333rd Infantry would then hit Geilenkirchen itself the next day.

Attack on the Geilenkirchen Salient

The 334th attacked on the morning of the 18th with two battalions up, the key attack being by the 1st Battalion on the right through a heavily mined orchard and entrenched rail embankment, then two clusters of concrete pillboxes, and finally across 2,000 yards of open fields to seize the fortified village of Prummern. The attack bogged down almost at once under artillery and small arms fire at the rail embankment, but the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Lloyd H. Gomes, moved up and led the forward rifle companies and platoons himself.

This got the attack moving again, and it rolled forward, overwhelming all German resistance. The battalion paused to reorganize before attacking Prummern and then swept in and cleared the village house by house. The regiment’s 2nd Battalion made similar progress on its left, but against lighter resistance.

Casualties in the two attacking battalions were moderate, 10 killed and 180 wounded, but by the end of the day the 334th had destroyed a battalion of the defending 183rd Volksgrenadier Division, inflicting 450 casualties, of which 330 were prisoners. Among the dazed German POWs was a veteran officer, stunned by what had happened. “We knew we were facing new troops and expected it to be easy,” he said, “but these men fight better than any troops I saw in Africa, Russia and France.”

The next day, the 333rd attacked and cleared Geilenkirchen with light casualties, and another battalion of the 183rd Volksgrenadiers was kaput. In the early morning hours of the same day, however, a new enemy appeared near Prummern—the veteran 9th Panzer Division. On the 19th it launched a counterattack, with the 1st Battalion, 10th Panzergrenadier Regiment and six tanks of the 2nd Battalion, 33rd Panzer Regiment, and retook much of the town.

The 1st Battalion, 333rd Infantry still held the surrounding orchards, and regimental committed its reserve battalion along with the M4 Sherman tanks of the attached British Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry. There followed several days of tough back-and-forth fighting for Prummern and the wooded hill behind it—dubbed Mahogany Hill—but Prummern was secure by the 20th and Mahogany Hill by the 22nd.

Stalled by Rain and by Panzer

The division pressed forward to the northeast, closing on the villages of Muellendorf and Beeck, but the advance slowed to a crawl, in part because the Germans threw in more troops to halt the division. Both the 15th Panzergrenadier Division and elite 10th SS Panzer Division “Frundsberg,” fresh from its fight at Arnhem during Operation Market-Garden, were committed to stop the Railsplitters and absorbed the remnants of the 183rd Volksgrenadier Division.

The SS division, which began entering the lines on November 23, relieved the battered 9th Panzer Division, which was pulled back to refit for the upcoming Ardennes Offensive. Neither German division was up to full strength, but they were on the defensive, held excellent positions, and had strong cadres of seasoned veterans.
And then there was the mud.

It rained almost every day that long November—a cold, steady rain, sometimes mixed with sleet. The floodplains of the Wurm and Roer were usually wet this time of year, but in November 1944 the region received over twice as much rain as the average, and it became a vast sea of mud. Roads were axle-deep canals of mud. Foxholes dug in the low-lying beet fields became waterlogged, and soldiers slept on the ground beside them instead of in the water. Some foxholes filled up to the very top, and to keep under cover when shells hit nearby, riflemen had to hold their breath and duck their heads under water.

Weapons became coated with mud and jammed. Trench foot reached epidemic proportions. Tracked vehicles could not leave the roads, wheeled vehicles often could not move even on the roads. Hot chow was a distant memory. Men fought and died for high ground just to get out of the mud. By November 28, the advance ground to a halt. It was time to try something different.

Item and King Forward, Love in Reserve

All of the advances of the 84th Division to date had been made by only two of its three infantry regiments. The third regiment, the 335th, had been detached to support another U.S. division farther south. Now it rejoined the Railsplitters and was available to get things moving again.

The main front had stalled in the face of strong German positions in Muellendorf and Beeck, and on Schlachen Hill. In addition, there was a fortified backstop position on Toad Hill and in the village of Lindern—held by the 1st Battalion, 21st SS Panzergrenadier Regiment,10th SS Panzer Division, giving the entire position depth. The attacks by the 84th Division’s main body, however, had drawn the bulk of the German troops into this position, and its left, or southeastern, flank was open, covered only by miles of muddy fields and a long antitank ditch. Behind the antitank ditch was the town of Lindern, and it sat astride the main German supply route. If the Railsplitters could get a firm hold on Lindern, the rest of the position would fall easily. Getting a hold on Lindern would be the job of the 335th Infantry.

The original plan was for the regiment to throw all three battalions at Lindern, one behind the other, but that was reduced to a two-battalion attack when the regiment’s 2nd Battalion was switched west for an attack on Toad Hill. Then 1st Battalion was held back as a reserve, and the Lindern attack came down to a single infantry battalion.

Major Robert W. Wallace’s 3rd Battalion, 335th Infantry would attack with two companies, Item and King, forward and one, Love, in reserve. They would make a long approach march at night and jump off before dawn. The approach march was from the southwest and would require a gentle left turn to make a head-on approach to the target. Navigating at night and in extended assault formation would be tricky, so a landmark was picked out. As the troops reached the north-south highway from Gereonsweiler to Lindern, they would wheel left and advance along its axis, with the highway becoming the boundary between the two assault companies. If they became disoriented, they could orient at first light on a tall church steeple in Lindern, or the brickyard on the southwest side of town.

After the wheel, the assault companies would cross the antitank ditch and press forward, ignoring any pockets of resistance, until they had crossed the railroad behind Lindern. They would dig in on the far side and await the inevitable German counterattacks. The reserve company would follow them and clear Lindern of any pockets of resistance and then reinforce them. The regiment’s 1st Battalion in reserve would be available for additional strength as needed.

The attack was also to be supported by the 40th Tank Battalion, which was now attached to the division, but the tanks would not go in with the first wave. Surprise was believed to be more important, and so the tanks would wait for word from the infantry as to when they should advance. In order to communicate with the tanks, each of the leading rifle companies was given one heavy SCR 509 radio in addition to two SCR 300 backpack radios for communication with battalion and regiment. The SCR 509, with its longer range, was only barely man-portable, and in fact was carried in two loads: one man carried the radio itself, and the other the heavy battery pack that powered it, with a power cable connecting them.

“A Phi Beta Kappa of Soldiering”

Company K, which played such a remarkable role in the coming battle, was an unlikely candidate for the history books. It had not yet been in serious combat, but had already lost half of its officers—including its commander—in a jeep accident nine days earlier. First Lieutenant Leonard Carpenter, its unpopular executive officer, seen by the men as stuffy and distant, had assumed command, and three of the four platoon leaders were replacement officers who had arrived in the last few days. They hardly knew their men’s names, let alone strengths and weaknesses. Morale was shaky, and the men had little confidence in their company commander or new platoon leaders.

Most rifle companies have one or two key noncommissioned officers to whom others look for leadership. In King Company, that man was Technical Sergeant George O. Prewitt, the platoon sergeant for 1st Platoon. One of his comrades remembered him as “a football hillbilly out of North Carolina with little learning, [but] he was a Phi Beta Kappa of soldiering.” Almost alone among the soldiers of King Company, Prewitt accepted and worked with Lieutenant Carpenter, the new company commander, without reservation. Perhaps he saw something in Carpenter the other men had not yet noticed, but soon would.

The Attack 0630, 29 November

At 6:30 am, still pitch black on November 29, both assault companies crossed the line of departure in the same formation, two rifle platoons up, one in reserve, and the weapons platoon split up to give support to the rifle companies. Each platoon advanced with two squads up and one back, and Staff Sergeant Jeff Parker, who led King Company’s third squad of 1st Platoon, recalled, “We went out in a column of twos. The columns were about 25 yards apart with three yards between men because it was still dark and we wanted to stay pretty close.”

King Company attacked with Lieutenant Pozyck’s 3rd Platoon on the left, Lieutenant Romersberger’s 1st Platoon on the right, and Lieutenant Smith’s 2nd Platoon in support. Lieutenant Lockard’s 4th (weapons) Platoon gave up one 60mm mortar squad to each of the three rifle platoons, and its two .30-caliber light machine gun squads to 3rd Platoon on the battalion’s open left flank. Lockard, with his weapons platoon headquarters party and the company’s spare SCR 300 radio, brought up the rear behind 2nd Platoon. Each man carried only the essentials: rifle, gas mask, three chocolate D-ration bars, one canteen of water, and two bandoliers of ammunition. The men left their overshoes behind. Speed meant more than keeping dry.

Lieutenant Carpenter and his small command group advanced with the two lead platoons. A rear company command group, led by the executive officer, Lieutenant Johns, and the company first sergeant, Julius Phagan, moved with the supporting platoon. Carpenter was up front to ensure that the lead platoons got their navigation right and pushed on, regardless of what they ran into. Johns and Phagan would do the same for the support elements.

Shortly after they crossed the line of departure, several German flares erupted in the night sky, illuminating King Company. Every man froze in place, as trained to do. As the flares drifted down on their parachutes and burned out, every man waited for the tearing sound of German MG-42 machine guns, but there was no German fire. They had not been spotted. As soon as the light flickered out, the advance resumed.

“They Can’t Hit You if They Can’t See You”

The plan started going wrong as soon as the attacking companies came to the “highway” to Lindern at 6:45. It was actually no more than a narrow dirt road. Fortunately, the men of King Company’s 1st Platoon recognized it immediately as their landmark and alerted Carpenter, who ran over to 3rd Platoon to tell them to wheel. King Company’s two assault platoons came on line with the road to their right and headed toward Lindern.

They crossed the antitank ditch with difficulty. It was partly flooded, and the soft banks collapsed in sheets of mud as the men tried to climb out, but 1st Platoon and most of 3rd stayed together as units. Then they encountered flanking fire from German machine guns, and a few mortar rounds landed among the soldiers of 3rd Platoon but, remarkably, caused no casualties. The troops went to ground, but Lieutenants Carpenter and Romersberger and several NCOs encouraged the men to crawl out from under the tracers of the blind grazing fire and keep advancing.

First Platoon’s Sergeant George Prewitt recalled, “There were four machine guns firing at us. I began to yank the men up, and I kicked one in the ass. Sergeant Matuska did the same.”

“They can’t hit you if they can’t see you,” Lieutenant Carpenter shouted over and over, and the men followed him forward.

About this time, a German round clipped off the antenna of the SCR 300 radio carried by Private Paul North, Carpenter’s radio man. A runner was sent back to 4th (weapons) Platoon to get the spare antenna from the company’s other SCR 300, but the advance continued.

Three Platoons and No Radio

The two assault platoons sprinted forward and in moments were in Lindern, the outlines of the buildings growing visible as the sun rose. At first Carpenter was unsure they were in the right place, there was no church steeple visible anywhere, but then he caught sight of the brickyard and knew they were on the objective. Contrary to the pre-attack briefing, Lindern was one of the only towns in the area that did not have a standing church steeple, a mistake that would cost the battalion dearly in the next hour.

The assault platoons ran through Lindern, firing from the hip and throwing grenades at any sign of resistance, but never slowing up. They came out on the far side and sprinted across the open ground to the 20-foot-deep rail cut. Carpenter later reported, “We hit the railroad north side of Lindern. We went down a bank about 20 feet high and ran up the other side. We saw some long buildings that looked like barracks and turned out to be a German rest camp. Some men threw grenades into the buildings. Nothing happened. Fifty yards in front of the barracks we found a fence. There we started digging in—two-man foxholes. We stopped there because we knew we were going to dig in 50-100 yards the other side of Lindern. A long, sloping hill was in front of us. We dug in on the reverse slope of a very slight rise in the ground, the crest of which was 250 yards in front of us.”

The 84th Division’s history describes the rail line as sitting on top of a 20-foot-tall embankment, and the U.S. Army’s official history, The Siegfried Line Campaign, also refers to the rail embankment. The eyewitness accounts from King Company, however, make it clear the railroad ran through a deep cut, not along the top of an embankment. Carpenter specifically mentions sliding down into the cut, then scrambling up the other side, while another soldier talks of tanks coming into the area across a highway overpass—not through an underpass tunnel. Equally telling, however, King Company continued to take scattered small arms fire from Lindern throughout the day, which would have been unlikely if there was a 20-foot-tall earthen berm between them and the enemy.

King Company began digging in at 7:45. Lieutenant Carpenter remembered someone had asked the time. Now there was nothing to do but report their success and wait for the rest of the company to show up. Unfortunately, it was going to be difficult to contact battalion headquarters that day.

German small arms fire had taken off the antenna of the company’s forward SCR 300 radio, and the antenna of the big SCR 509 had been damaged as well. The heavy two-part radio had been abandoned at the base of the rail embankment so the two-man team could keep up with the advance. A runner had been sent back for a spare SCR 300 antenna, but he never returned and, as the sun rose, there was no sign of the rest of the company.

Carpenter conferred with Item Company to his right, and discovered a full company was not present there either—only 35 men of its 3rd Platoon, and a five-man mortar squad, all under Lieutenant Creswell Garlington. They did not have a working radio.

Carpenter had only 60 of his own men under his direct command, the four men of his forward company command group, 32 men of 1st Platoon under Lieutenant Romersberger and Technical Sergeant Prewitt, the 1st Platoon’s attached 60mm mortar squad with six men, but only 18 men from Lieutenant Pozyck’s 3rd Platoon.

Separated and Under Friendly Fire

Romersberger and Pozyck were both new replacements. Romersberger, even though he had been with the company only four days, had already displayed excellent leadership under fire during the advance and would continue to play a key role in the company’s survival. Less is recorded of Pozyck’s contribution, except for a report by one of his NCOs that a piece of shrapnel “went right through Lt. Pozyck’s helmet,” perhaps leaving him temporarily stunned or disoriented. It is more likely Pozyck’s contributions were tangible and considerable, but simply never written down. Pozyck received one of the first Bronze Stars for the action afterward and was soon promoted to first lieutenant.

The only senior NCO who had made it forward was George Prewitt. Carpenter co-located his foxhole with Pruitt, who effectively became the company first sergeant for the balance of the action.

Pozyck’s 3rd Platoon had a harder time moving forward than 1st Platoon, as it had been closer to the enfilading fire of the German machine guns on the left and had lost time engaging them. The artillery prep on the brickyard, through which they had to advance, had been late and so had delayed them another five minutes. The follow-on rifle squad remained pinned down near the antitank ditch for too long. When the sun rose they were still in the open in front of Lindern and the now alert SS defenders and were forced to surrender.

The left wing of 3rd Platoon’s forward echelon, over 20 men, including the light machine gun section attached from weapons platoon, 3rd Platoon’s attached 60mm mortar squad, one complete rifle squad and four men from another, became separated from the rest of the company around 7:30 and crossed the railroad farther to the left. Although the company’s main body could see them, they were too far away for Carpenter to control, and it is unclear who actually stepped up and assumed command of this group.

They started to dig in on a low hill, but then were hit by U.S. artillery fire, including white phosphorus rounds, and pulled back into an apple orchard. At about 9 or 10 am, they were hit again by friendly artillery fire. Two men were killed and at least one wounded, and they withdrew across the rail line, carrying their wounded but leaving behind one light machine gun and the mortar. Shortly after noon the 18 or 20 survivors, of whom six were wounded, encountered a dug-in German infantry force that took them prisoner. Carpenter later sent runners over to the abandoned position in the apple orchard and recovered the light machine gun.

But what had happened to the rest of King and Item Companies?

The rear element of King Company, 2nd Platoon, the rear headquarters party, and the weapons platoon headquarters failed to keep closed up behind the lead platoons and lost contact in the dark. When they crossed the Lindern road, the officers did not recognize it as such, perhaps being confused by the reference to a “highway.” The 2nd Platoon’s senior NCO realized the mistake but was unable to convince his platoon leader of the error. The group was being led by Lieutenant Johns, the company executive officer. The company first sergeant was also with this group and had been ordered by Carpenter to maintain contact between the assault platoons and the follow-on echelon,; he failed to do so. The group continued north, well off its intended path, until it encountered entrenched German infantry, was pinned down by fire in the open, and forced to surrender at daybreak.

Nearly the same thing happened to the bulk of Item Company. It had farther to go than King Company (being on the outer arc of the wheeling maneuver), and had navigation problems of its own. Not only was there confusion at the road crossing, but the church steeple in a village to the north, combined with the absence of a steeple in Lindern, further slowed and misdirected the advance. Most of Item was caught in the open fields around Lindern at daybreak and either driven back or forced to surrender.

By 8 am, the two assault companies of 3rd Battalion, 335th Infantry had effectively ceased to exist. There were only 100 men on the far side of the rail embankment, and they had no means of communicating their position to the rear. From the point of view of battalion headquarters, they had marched into the darkness and vanished in a storm of small arms and mortar fire.

“Hold Our Ground at All Cost”

As Love Company, the battalion follow-on echelon, tried to move forward to clear Lindern it was pinned down by heavy fire short of the line of the antitank ditch and forced to dig in. Elements of the 21st SS Panzergrenadiers in the entrenchments in front of Lindern were alert, full of fight, and not going anywhere. German artillery fire on the area forward of Lindern was accurate and intense. As far as 335th Regiment could tell, the attack had been a total disaster and both rifle companies had been wiped out.

For the men under Carpenter’s command, the first real action after crossing the rail line came on King Company’s left. About 20 minutes after they began digging in, three German medium tanks appeared on the road from Lindern, crossing the railroad at the single overpass in the area, and driving north almost through 3rd Platoon’s position. Private First Class Morton Reuben remembered, “I grabbed a bazooka round and put it in Wolfenberger’s bazooka. He fired and hit the middle of the tank but it bounced off…. The second round hit a tree and tore it up. The tanks passed out of sight.”

Bazooka and small arms fire, while causing no visible damage, had nevertheless encouraged the tanks to leave the area, which is not surprising since they had no close infantry support and could not know how weak the U.S. position was.

Between 9 and 10 am, the company began taking friendly artillery fire on the far left. This would eventually drive the isolated left wing of 3rd Platoon back. At about the same time, however, three different German tanks appeared from the north. Carpenter remembers them as Tigers, and the U.S. official history concurs. The majority of “Tiger tank” reports turned out to be Panthers or Panzer IVs, but elements of the 506th Schwere Panzer Abteilung (Heavy Tank Battalion) were in the area and were certainly committed against Lindern in the following days, so it is not improbable that three Tigers were present that morning. King Company had already identified the first group of three tanks as “mediums,” so they knew the difference, and they would get a very close look at these new ones.

Two of the German Tigers halted about 300 yards away while the third continued to advance directly into the American position. There were several German-held pillboxes about 500 yards away in the same direction, and Carpenter could also see four more German tanks moving about 800 yards away. That made 10 German tanks sighted in quick succession, but the most immediate problem was the lead tank moving into 3rd Platoon’s positions on the left.

Even though 1st Platoon still had a few bazooka rounds left, the U.S. infantry was nearly defenseless against heavy armor, and Carpenter had to make a quick decision: should they remain in place and risk getting overrun, or should they try to infiltrate back to their own lines through Lindern? He took a moment to confer with his senior NCO, Technical Sergeant Prewitt, “and we decided to hold our ground at all costs.”

Holding, but Cut Off

And they did hold—in part because of the cool-headed marksmanship of 3rd Platoon’s Private Robert Nordli. He told the story a few days later without dramatics, as if it was just another day at the office. “The tank came up to our front right in our lines. The tank commander stood up from the turret to observe. We moved back about 100 yards to get a better defilade position as the tanks came up. Unfortunately we had run out of bazooka ammunition. I hit the tank commander with an M1. He slumped over. The tank continued past us into Lindern for about another 100 yards, then backed up and returned to the vicinity of the pillbox.”

The death of the commander of the leading German tank—probably the platoon leader—deprived the German armor of leadership at a critical time and caused the tanks to pull off to a safer distance. Nevertheless, it now appeared the Germans were alert to the presence of the Americans in their rear. More German infantry began assembling around the pillboxes, and tanks moved back and forth along the road to the front.

One hundred infantry with a handful of 60mm mortar rounds and two or three bazooka rockets could not possibly hold out against the force assembling unless they got help, and getting help meant getting word back to battalion or regiment. Carpenter sent a party of four volunteers back to retrieve the abandoned SCR 509 radio set, but, although they recovered it and got it working, its antenna was sufficiently damaged that it could only receive faintly and not transmit.

The only other option was to send runners to try to get through. The odds of success did not seem high. In Carpenter’s deceptively casual words, “We knew there were Germans in and around Lindern in back of us because we were always getting fire from our rear.” Four soldiers volunteered anyway. They did not make it. One was killed and the other three captured.

“Like Hannibal Crossing the Alps”

By 1 pm, the situation was clearly desperate, but suddenly one of King Company’s men had an inspiration. After working with the two disabled radios for several hours, Carpenter’s radio man, Private Paul North, realized one antenna is pretty much like any other.

The company still had several small SCR 536 “handy talkies,” although they did not have the range to carry back to battalion. North, however, unscrewed an antenna from a 536 set, tied it to a fence post to get maximum elevation, and jury-rigged a connection to the big SCR 509 using a length of signal corps telephone wire. At about 1 pm, Private James Calhoun of Love Company, the battalion reserve, heard his own SCR 509 come to life. The message was from King Company, and it was, “We made a Touchdown at 0745.” Touchdown was the coded signal for King Company on its objective.

Two companies of M4 Shermans of the 40th Tank Battalion had been waiting to advance in support of the infantry but had never gotten word there was actually infantry left to support. As soon as the radio message was relayed to the commander of 40th Tank Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel John Brown, he ordered his Company A to “forget about bad roads, mine obstacles, and infantry support and get out to Lindern.”

The tanks moved forward, passing south of Lindern, but lost one Sherman to German fire and stalled short of the rail cut. Lieutenant Romersberger of 1st Platoon and his runner, Private Howerton, volunteered to go back, find the tanks, and guide them to King Company’s positions. Although Howerton is officially credited with volunteering, he does not remember doing so and believes Romersberger volunteered, and he simply accompanied him as his runner. Howerton had developed enormous respect for his new platoon leader during the hours of the Lindern battle, and in his own words, “I would have followed him anywhere.”

The two men found six of the Shermans buttoned up on the outskirts of the village and had a hard time getting their attention. The field phones on the back decks were not working, and so Romersberger and Howerton were reduced to banging on the side of the hulls with their rifle butts. “If there had been any German snipers nearby we would have most certainly drawn their fire,” Howerton recalled years later, “but nothing happened. Eventually we roused the tank commander, crawled on his tank and rode back through Lindern like Hannibal crossing the Alps.”

A High Price for Lindern

At 2 pm, the six tanks crossed the overpass and deployed in support of King Company. The sense of elation among Carpenter’s men was indescribable. One of the soldiers in King Company later remembered, “When we saw those tanks, we figured the whole German Army couldn’t drive us out of there.”

The fight was far from over, but from that point on the Railsplitters definitely had the upper hand and did not let it go. Throughout the night of November 29, Love Company, all of 1st Battalion, and most of the 40th Tank Battalion moved forward, cleared Lindern, and formed a perimeter defense. No counterattacks came that evening, but German shelling became heavy.

On the evening of the 30th, and again on the night of December 1, the Germans launched a series of strong counterattacks using battle groups formed from 10th SS Panzer Division and 506th Schwere Panzer Abteilung, as well as the 9th Panzer Division, hastily pulled back out of its rest and refit encampment. It was too little, too late, however. The 335th had paid a very high price for Lindern, and no one was ready to give it up. Within days the main German position began to crumble and the balance of the Railsplitters moved forward and secured the plateau overlooking the Wurm and Roer Rivers. After a week or so to rest and reorganize, the Railsplitters would conduct an assault crossing of the Roer.

That, at least, was the plan, and the Railsplitters would indeed force the Roer River against tough German resistance, but they would not get around to it until the end of February 1945. Days before they were to hit the Roer in December, Hitler’s Ardennes offensive, popularly known as the Battle of the Bulge, kicked off, and the 84th Division was shifted south. It played a key role in blunting the German northern offensive arm in the Ardennes.

What was important now was that the Railsplitters had taken everything four German divisions could throw at them, advanced through the strongest fixed defenses the Germans had anywhere, in the worst physical conditions imaginable, and triumphed. And in the end it was not numbers or firepower that made the difference; it was the courage and determination of just 100 infantrymen at Lindern.

After the Battle

After it was pulled out of the line, King Company received enough replacements to bring it close to full strength for the Ardennes. It needed quite a few. Of the 174 officers and enlisted men of King Company who crossed the line of departure at 6:30 am, November 29, 1944, a total of 88 men were killed, wounded, or captured, almost exactly half the company’s strength. The influx of new men, however, did not change the essential character of the company. No matter how hard things got in the Bulge, the solid cadre of “Lindern men” always held the company together and kept it going.

There were some new officers. George Prewitt moved up to command a platoon, receiving his field commission on December 19. He refused to let any of his men salute him or call him sir, though. He still worked for a living.

There were medals, as well. A total of 21 Bronze Stars were awarded to King Company men for the action at Lindern. Lieutenants Romersberger and Pozyck both received the medal, as did Sergeants Prewitt, Matuska, and Humphrey. So did Private Robert Nordli, who stopped a Tiger tank with an M1. Two of the Bronze Stars were awarded posthumously.

Another posthumous Bronze Star went to First Lieutenant Garlington, who had brought forward the only platoon of Item Company to get through. He made it through the initial advance, and showed both courage and initiative in his actions covering King’s right flank, but he was mortally wounded by German artillery fire the following day. Garlington was a graduate of The Citadel, had in fact been the class valedictorian, and great things were expected of him. He did not have long to make good on those expectations, but he made the most of the time he had.

First Lieutenant Leonard Reed Carpenter, the man who led King Company forward and held them together all through that long day, was awarded the Silver Star. He continued to lead King Company during the Bulge, the assault crossing of the Roer, and on into Germany, right up through March 1945, when he was rotated out for 30 days of R&R. The war ended before he returned. Some of the men felt the R&R saved his life; he continued to lead from the front, and, by March, many felt his luck had about run out.

They were wrong, however, and it was not the first time they had been wrong about him. A junior merchandizing executive before the war, a white-gloved, spit-and-polish martinet of an executive officer in stateside training, Carpenter had emerged as a calm, courageous, and resourceful leader in the crucible of combat. There had been a time when no one in the company—except perhaps George Prewitt—would have thought it possible.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Flickr

David Axe

Security, Middle East

An enemy possessing 79 of the world’s most fearsome interceptors.

Key point: They can still do some serious damage--even if they are really old. 

On April 9, 1972, Iraq and the Soviet Union signed an historic agreement. The USSR committed to arming the Arab republic with the latest weaponry. In return for sending Baghdad guns, tanks and jet fighters, Moscow got just one thing — influence … in a region that held most of the world’s accessible oil.

In neighboring Iran, news of Iraq’s alliance with the Soviets exploded like a bomb. Ethnically Persian and predominately Shia, Iran was — and still is — a bitter rival of Iraq’s Sunni Arab establishment, which during the 1970s dominated the country’s politics.

In Tehran, King Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi — the “shah” — moved quickly to counter Baghdad’s move. First he set loose an army of secret police in a desperate and bloody bid to quell internal dissent. And then he reached out to the United States.

The shah wanted weapons. And not just any weapons. Himself a former military pilot, the king wanted the latest and best U.S.-made warplanes, with which the Iranian air force might dominate the Persian Gulf and even patrol as far away as the Indian Ocean.

The Iranian leader’s appetite for planes was notorious. “He’ll buy anything that flies,” one American official said of the shah. But Pahlavi was especially keen to acquire a fighter that could fly fast enough and shoot far enough to confront Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat recon planes that had been flying over Iran at 60,000 feet and Mach 3.

The administration of U.S. president Richard Nixon was all too eager to grant the shah’s wish in exchange for Iran’s help balancing a rising Soviet Union. Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger visited Tehran in May 1972 — and promptly offered the shah a “blank check.” Any weapons the king wanted and could pay for, he would get — regardless of the Pentagon’s own reservations and the State Department’s stringent export policies.

That’s how, starting in the mid-1970s, Iran became the only country besides the United States to operate arguably the most powerful interceptor jet ever built — the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, a swing-wing carrier fighter packing a sophisticated radar and long-range AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missiles.

It’s fair to say American policymakers quickly regretted giving Iran the F-14s. In February 1979, Islamic hardliners rose up against the shah’s police state, kidnapping 52 Americans at the U.S. embassy in Tehran and ushering the return of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Islamic Revolution transformed Iran from an American ally to one of the United States’ most vociferous enemies.

An enemy possessing 79 of the world’s most fearsome interceptors.

For the next five decades, the United States would do everything in its power — short of war — to ground the ayatollah’s Tomcats. But the Americans failed. Through a combination of engineering ingenuity and audacious espionage, Iran kept its F-14s in working order — and even improved them. The swing-wing fighters took to the air in several conflicts and even occasionally confronted American planes.

Today Iran’s 40 or so surviving F-14s remain some of the best fighters in the Middle East. And since the U.S. Navy retired its last Tomcats in 2006, the ayatollah’s Tomcats are the only active Tomcats left in the world.

The F-14 was a product of failure. In the 1960s, the Pentagon hoped to replace thousands of fighters in the U.S. Air Force and Navy with a single design capable of ground attack and air-to-air combat. The result was the General Dynamics F-111 — a two-person, twin-engine marvel of high technology that, in time, became an excellent long-range bomber in Air Force service.

But as a naval fighter, the F-111 was a disaster. Complex, underpowered and difficult to maintain, the Navy’s F-111B version — which General Dynamics built in cooperation with carrier-fighter specialist Grumman — was also a widowmaker. Of the seven F-111B prototypes that the consortium built starting in 1964, three crashed.

In 1968, the Defense Department halted work on the F-111B. Scrambling for a replacement, Grumman took the swing-wing concept, TF-30 engines, AWG-9 radar and long-range AIM-54 missile from the F-111B design and packed them into a smaller, lighter, simpler airframe.

Voila — the F-14. The first prototype took off on its inaugural flight in December 1970. The U.S. fleet got its first Tomcats two years later. Grumman ultimately built 712 F-14s.

In 1974, the shah ordered 80 of the fighters plus spare parts and 284 Phoenix missiles at a cost of $2 billion. Seventy-nine of the Tomcats arrived before the Islamic Revolution forced the shah into exile in Egypt and compelled the United States to impose an arms embargo. The U.S. Navy eventually scooped up the 80th plane for one of its test squadrons.

The U.S. State Department oversaw the F-14 transfer and, in its eternal wisdom, delegated most of the work to the Air Force. But the F-14 was a Navy plane and only the Navy had pilots qualified to fly the machine. The sailing branch seconded Tomcat crews to the flying branch, but only after extensive security checks lasting six months — and not without some culture clash.

The Navy pilots picked up the brand-new Tomcats at the Grumman factory in Long Island, New York and flew them three at a time to Iran. “Few pilots in their careers ever have the opportunity to fly an airplane that ‘smells’ exactly as a new car, and still has cellophane covering the cushions of the ejection seat,” one F-14 flier wrote years later. “Well, I had that amazing experience.”

“Although my F-14 was ‘factory fresh,’ it had an Iranian specified camouflage paint scheme. And while it did have U.S. military markings, as I found out later, those markings would be ingeniously and quickly changed upon arrival in Iran. The U.S. paint easily disappeared when a certain solution was applied, thus exposing the Iranian air force markings underneath.”

The journey to Iran involved two legs — from Long Island to Torrejon, Spain, and then onward to Iran’s Isfahan air base, with Air Force KC-135 aerial tankers constantly attending to the F-14s.

It was a complex and, for the pilots, uncomfortable undertaking. “We needed to be ‘topped-off’ with fuel for most of the seven-hour flight in case we had to divert to an emergency field,” the ferry pilot wrote.

“This meant at least six in-flight refueling events for each leg, despite some weather conditions — and the KC-135’s difficult, Rube Goldberg type of refueling hose to accommodate Navy aircraft.”

Air Force planes refuel in mid-air via a probe extending from the tanker into the receiving plane’s fuselage — the tanker crew does most of the work. Navy aircraft have their own probes and refuel by maneuvering the probe into a basket dangling from the tanker’s underwing fuel pods. The receiving pilot does the work — an arrangement consistent with the incredibly high demands the Navy traditionally places on its combat pilots.

To make the KC-135s compatible with the F-14s, the Air Force awkwardly fitted a basket to the tankers’ probes. The improvised contraption tended to whip around in the air, threatening to smash the Tomcats’ canopies every time they refueled.

Keeping gassed up wasn’t the only source of stress for the Tomcat ferry crews. “People often wonder, and it is rarely discussed — how did you relieve yourself, strapped into an ejection seat and immobile for seven-plus hours?” the pilot wrote.

The Navy offered the fliers diapers, but some refused to wear them. “I personally held it for seven hours … as I had planned and for which I had prepared by remaining dehydrated. Hey, I’m a fighter pilot.”

“However, upon arrival in Torrejon, I could barely salute the welcoming Air Force colonel,” the pilot continued. “Bending over and doubled-up under pressure, I feverishly ran to the nearest ‘head’ to relieve myself — for seemingly and refreshingly forever, before I could then return to properly meet, greet and properly salute the receiving Air Force colonel.”

While the U.S. Air Force and Navy worked together to deliver Iran’s F-14s, the State Department arranged for Iranian aviators and maintenance technicians to get training on the Tomcats and their complex systems. Some of the Iranians attended classes in the United States, others received instruction from American contractors in Iran. By 1979, the Americans had trained 120 pilots and backseat radar intercept officers.

The shah’s Tomcat squadrons were coming to life. But the Iranian king wasn’t entirely happy with his acquisition. In late 1975, the shah complained to the U.S. embassy in Tehran that Grumman had paid agents in Iran $24 million to facilitate the F-14 sale. The shah considered the payments bribes — and wanted Grumman to take the money back.

“Shah views with bitter scorn corrupt practices of agents for U.S. companies and ineffective [U.S. government] efforts to deal with problem,” the embassy reported back to Washington in January 1976. The shah was so angry that he threatened to halt payments to Grumman. Washington reminded Tehran that failure to pay would amount to breach of contract.

“The dispute over agents fees was poisoning U.S.-Iranian relations,” American diplomats in Tehran warned. Amid the diplomatic tension, Tehran put its Tomcats to good use performing the mission for which Iran originally wanted them — deterring the Soviet Union’s MiG-25 spy planes. In August 1977, Iranian F-14 crews shot down a BQM-34E target drone flying at 50,000 feet. “The Soviets took the hint and Foxbat over flights promptly ended,” Iranian air force major Farhad Nassirkhani wrote.

Tehran’s spat with Grumman continued, but a year and a half later the Islamic Revolution intervened and rendered the issue moot. Revolutionaries took the streets. Violence broke out. On Jan. 16, 1979, the shah fled.

Twenty-seven of Iran’s freshly-minted F-14 fliers fled, too. On their own way out of the country, American technicians working for Hughes, the company that manufactured the Phoenix missile, sabotaged 16 of the deadly missiles — or tried to, at least. Engineers loyal to the ayatollah eventually repaired the damaged munitions.

Agents of Iran’s new Islamic regime suspected the remaining F-14 crews of harboring pro-shah and pro-American sentiments. Police arrested at least one F-14 pilot at gunpoint at his home, finally releasing him months later when the regime realized it actually needed trained aircrews if it ever hoped to make use of all those brand-new F-14s lined up on the tarmac at Khatami air base.

By September 1980, Iran and Iraq were at war. Baghdad’s own MiG-25 fighters and recon planes could dash into Iranian airspace unmolested by Tehran’s much slower and lower-flying F-4 and F-5 fighters. Over the course of the eight-year war, MiG-25s shot down more than a dozen Iranian aircraft, including a priceless EC-130 electronic warfare plane. Iraqi pilot Col. Mohommed Rayyan alone claimed eight kills in his MiG-25.

Only the F-14 could challenge the MiG-25.

When war broke out, just 77 Tomcats were left — two had crashed. With crews and maintainers scattered and Tehran cut off from Grumman, Hughes and the U.S. Air Force and Navy, most of the Iranian F-14s were inoperable. The ayatollah’s air force managed to assemble 60 loyal pilots and 24 back-seat radar operators. By stripping parts from grounded Tomcats, technicians were able to get a dozen F-14s in fighting shape.

They immediately flew into action. At first, the Tomcats acted as early-warning and battle-management platforms while less sophisticated planes did the actual fighting. “The planes have not been used in combat,” The New York Times reported in December 1981. “Rather they have stood off from the battle and been used as control aircraft, with their advanced radar and electronics guiding other planes to their targets or warning the pilots of Iraqi aircraft attacks.”

The fighting escalated and drew the F-14s into battle. In eight years of combat, Iran’s Tomcat crews claimed some 200 aerial victories against Iraqi planes, 64 of which the Iranian air force was able to confirm. One F-14 pilot named Jalil Zandi reportedly claimed a staggering 11 air-to-air victories, making him by far Iran’s deadliest fighter pilot of the war.

“The Iraqi high command had ordered all its pilots not to engage with F-14 and do not get close if [an] F-14 is known to be operating in the area,” Nassirkhani wrote. “Usually the presence of Tomcats was enough to scare the enemy and send the Iraqi fighters back.”

At first, the F-14s were armed only with their internal 20-millimeter cannons and the long-range Phoenix missiles. American contractors had not had time to integrate medium-range Sparrow and short-range Sidewinder missiles.

Normal tactics called for F-14 crews to fire Phoenixes at their targets from a hundred miles away or farther, but with no alternative armament Iranian aviators relied on the heavy AIM-54s for close-in fighting, as well — once even hitting an Iraqi plane from just 12 miles away, according to Iranian reporter Babak Taghvaee.

Eight F-14s fell in combat during the war with Iraq — one accidentally shot down by an Iranian F-4; three struck by Baghdad’s Mirage F.1 fighters; one hit by an Iraqi MiG-21; and two falling victim to unknown attackers.

The eighth Tomcat that Tehran lost during the Iran-Iraq war reportedly wound up in Iraq when its crew defected. Taghvaee claimed that U.S. Special Operations Forces infiltrated “deep inside Iraqi territory” in order to destroy the abandoned F-14 and “prevent it falling into Soviet hands.”

Iranian Tomcats intercepted Iraqi MiG-25s on several occasions. But only one Iranian flier succeeded in downing any of the Mach-3 MiGs. In September 1982 and again in December, Shahram Rostani struck MiG-25s with Phoenix missiles.

Combat ops were hard on Iran’s F-14 force. A lack of spare parts compounded the maintenance woes. After the revolution, the United States had frozen Iranian assets, embargoed Iranian trade and imposed other economic sanctions. The United Nations and many U.S. allies followed suit, cutting off Tehran from global supply chains.

In 1981 an Iranian trade agent wrote to the London office of F-14-builder Grumman asking to acquire parts for Iran’s Tomcats. Citing the new sanctions, Washington declined to grant Grumman a license to sell the components. “It is the present policy of the United States government not to permit Grumman or any other defense contractor to obtain a license to provide Iran with these materials,” the Navy told The New York Times.

By 1984, just 15 or so of the twin-engine fighters were flightworthy, according to Nassirkhani. Technicians kept the 15 jets in good repair mainly by taking parts from the roughly 50 F-14s that couldn’t fly.

Starting in 1981, Iranian Aircraft Industries began performing overhauls and upgrades on the F-14s as part of the Tehran’s effort to make the country militarily self-sufficient. The upgrades finally added Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles to the Tomcats. The self-sufficiency program had help from Iranian agents working abroad — and at great risk to themselves — to divert spare parts for the F-14s and other weapon systems.

America begrudgingly helped, too — albeit briefly. In negotiating to free American hostages that an Iran-backed militant group was holding in Lebanon, the administration of Pres. Ronald Reagan agreed to transfer to Tehran badly-needed military equipment, reportedly including Phoenix missiles and bomb racks. Iranian engineers added the bomb racks to four of the F-14s as early as 1985, transforming the Tomcats into heavy ground-attack planes. Years later, the U.S. Navy would modify its own F-14s in the same way.

Rostani flew the “Bombcat’s” first ground-attack mission in 1985, targeting an Iraqi field headquarters … but missing. Frustrated technicians boosted the Bombcat’s weapons load-out with a whopping, custom-made 7,000-pound bomb — one of the biggest freefall munitions ever. As Iranian commander-in-chief Gen. Abbas Babaei observed from near the front line, an F-14 lobbed the massive bomb.

The estimated time on target passed … but nothing happened. Babaei was getting ready to return to his jeep when a powerful blast shook the ground. The bomb had missed, but its psychological effect on Iraqi troops was surely profound.

By the war’s end in 1988, 34 of the 68 surviving F-14s were airworthy. But just two of the Persian Tomcats had working radars. And Iran had expended all of its original consignment of Phoenixes. More Phoenixes reportedly arrived as part of the hostages-for-arms deal with the United States, and in the post-war years Iranian Aircraft Industries experimented with “new” weaponry for the F-14 — including modified Hawk surface-to-air missiles that the shah had bought from the United States as well as Soviet-supplied R-73 missiles.

The experiments added flexibility to the F-14 force, but it was the spare parts that kept the Tomcats in working condition — and the Iranian air force quickly burned through the spares it obtained from the hostage deal. Tehran established self-sufficiency programs — not just in the air force, but across the nation’s economy — in an effort to satisfy material needs that foreign companies had once met.

In many sectors, the self-sufficiency initiative worked. Besides producing all its own oil, Iran has declared itself autonomous in agriculture, steel production, electricity generation and civil aviation. “Well before the advent of abundant oil wealth, Iranians have tended to see their country as a unique nation amply endowed with natural resources that could take care of itself without outside assistance,” said Rudi Matthee, a history professor at the University of Delaware.

But Iranian companies struggled to produce all the specialized parts that the Tomcat requires. In the late 1990s, the air force considered simply buying new planes to replace the F-14s, but China was the only country that would sell fighters to Iran. In 1997 and 1998, Iranian pilots evaluated China’s F-8 … and rejected it. Even deprived of spares and mostly grounded, the F-14s were superior to the Chinese planes in the eyes of Iran’s air force.

Tehran turned to the black market, paying huge sums to shady middlemen to sneak F-14 parts into Iran. American authorities became aware of the illicit trade as early as 1998. In March of that year, federal agents arrested Iranian-born Parviz Lavi at his home in Long Island, charging him with violating U.S. export law by attempting to buy up spare parts for the F-14’s TF-30 engine and ship them to Iran via The Netherlands. Lavi got five years in prison plus a $125,000 fine.

The arrests came in a steady drumbeat. In 1998, an aircraft parts vendor in San Diego told U.S. customs officials that Multicore Ltd. in California had requested price information for air intake seals used only on the F-14. Agents arrested Multicore’s Saeed Homayouni, a naturalized Canadian from Iran, and Yew Leng Fung, a Malaysian citizen.

“Bank records subpoenaed by the Customs Service showed that Multicore Ltd. had made 399 payments totaling $2.26 million to military parts brokers since 1995 and had received deposits of $2.21 million,” The Washington Post reported. The company shipped parts mostly through Singapore.

The feds began investigating 18 companies that had supplied airplane components to Multicore.

 

In September 2003, U.S. authorities nabbed Iranian Serzhik Avasappian in a South Florida hotel as part of a sting operation. Agents had shown Avasappian several F-14 parts worth $800,000 and arrested him after he offered to buy the components.

“While these components may appear relatively innocuous to the untrained eye, they are tightly controlled for good reason,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement interim agent Jesus Torres said in a statement. “In the wrong hands, they pose a potential threat to Americans at home and abroad.”

Even with U.S. authorities tamping down on the illicit trade in F-14 parts, Iran persisted. After shutting down Multicore, the feds confiscated the firm’s Tomcat components and sent them to the Defense Department’s surplus-parts office. In 2005, a company — allegedly Iranian — bought the very same parts from the military.

The parts war escalated after the U.S. Navy retired its last F-14s in 2006, leaving Iran as the type’s only operator. In 2007, U.S. agents even seized four intact ex-U.S. Navy F-14s in California — three at museums and one belonging to a producer on the military-themed T.V. show JAG — charging that the F-14s had not been properly stripped of useful parts that could wind up in Iranian hands.

The U.S. Congress was furious at the Pentagon for its lax handling of the F-14-parts problem. Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, described it as “a huge breakdown, an absolute, huge breakdown.” Lawmakers passed a bill specifically banning any trade in Tomcat components to Iran or any other entity, and then-president George W. Bush signed the law in 2008.

A minor tragedy unfolded as the military paid contractors to dismantle, crush and shred many of the approximately 150 retired F-14s. Scores of old F-14s — properly “demilitarized” — are still on display in museums across the United States. But none remain at the famous airplane “boneyard” in Arizona, where the Pentagon stores retired planes just in case it needs them again.

Even so, the underground trade in Tomcat parts continues, with shady companies scouring the planet for leftover components. In early 2014, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security investigated Israeli arms dealers that it said had twice tried to send F-14 spares to Iran.

And it’s not for no reason that Tehran would keep trying to supply its Tomcats. In recent years the United States has stepped up its efforts to spy on Iran, deploying drone aircraft including the secretive, stealthy RQ-170 to the Middle East apparently to surveil Iranian nuclear facilities. An RQ-170 crashed in Iranian territory in 2011.

Tomcats have led the effort to intercept these drones. In the early 2000s, the Iranian air force stationed an F-14 squadron in Bushehr, the site of Iran’s first nuclear reactor. That squadron eventually disbanded as its Tomcats fell into disrepair, but other F-14 squadrons maintained vigil over Bushehr and two other atomic facilities as U.S. spy flights continued to probe the sites, trying to glean intelligence on Iran’s nuclear efforts.

And that’s when things got weird. F-14 crews protecting the facilities reported seeing increasingly sophisticated and bizarre drones, according to Taghvaee. “The CIA’s intelligence drones displayed astonishing flight characteristics, including an ability to fly outside the atmosphere, attain a maximum cruise speed of Mach 10 and a minimum speed of zero, with the ability to hover over the target.”

“Finally,” Taghvaee added, “the drones used powerful [electronic countermeasures] that could jam enemy radars using very high levels of magnetic energy.” In November 2004 one F-14 crew intercepted a suspected CIA drone over the nuke facility at Arak. As the aviators tried to lock onto the drone with their Tomcat’s AWG-9 radar, they “saw that the radar scope was disrupted.” The drone lit its green afterburner and escaped.

To be clear, it’s highly unlikely the CIA possesses hypersonic space-capable drones with radar-killing magnetic ray weapons. The point is that Tehran is protective, even paranoid, when it comes to its nuclear sites — and yet entrusts their defense mainly to the 40-year-old F-14s.

Whether it’s producing parts itself or acquiring them abroad, Iran is clearly succeeding in its efforts to supply its F-14 squadrons. In October 2013, Taghvaee estimated that more than 40 of Tehran’s surviving F-14s were in flyable condition, possibly the highest number since the mid-1970s. Iran has begun upgrading the Tomcats with new radar components, radios, navigation systems and wiring while also adding compatibility with R-73 and Hawk missiles.

Five decades in, Iran’s F-14s are only getting better and better. And more and more important to the Persian state’s defense.

David Axe was a defense reporter for the National Interest.

This article was first published several years ago. 

Image: Wikipedia.

Warfare History Network

History, Americas

The Douglas C-47 was a workhorse of air transport during the war.

Here's What You Need to Know: Even though, technically at least, it was not a combat airplane, the performance of the Douglas C-47 transport led General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower to label it as one of the most important weapons of World War II.

It carried no armament and was not designed to drop bombs, but the C-47 and other variations of the Douglas DC-3 twin-engine airliner quickly proved their worth both on and off the battlefield as they became a familiar sight all over the world. Eisenhower was not exaggerating with his accolade. The C-47 became crucial to the conduct of the war in at least three theaters and proved beneficial to military operations around the world in roles that varied from limited to indispensable. By the end of the war, the Army had purchased more than 10,000 of the Douglas twin-engine transports in several variants.

From the DC-3 to the C-47

The C-47 is the most commonly known military designation for the airplane that revolutionized the civilian air transportation industry in the 1930s. Douglas Aircraft Company’s DC-3 was a follow-on to the DC-2, the first modern American-built transport aircraft. By the outbreak of war in 1939, the DC-3 had proven to be a safe, reliable transport capable of operating from short, relatively unimproved airstrips. Although it had not been designed with military needs in mind, the DC-3 was the natural choice to be the first widely produced Allied military transport aircraft.

The Army purchased a number of DC-2s, giving them the military designation of C-39; the bomber derivative was the B-18. When the DC-3 came out, the Army ordered several built to military specifications and designated them as C-47s. The bomber version was designated as the B-23, but it was not much of a bomber, so the Air Corps converted most of them for transport use, including for dropping paratroops, and called them C-67s.

When the Army began experimenting with airborne forces, it turned to the 50th Transport Wing, which had been established at Wright Field under the Air Corps Maintenance Command, for the use of its C-39s and C-47s to drop the fledgling airborne troops. Activated on January 14, 1941, as the parent unit for the Air Corps transport squadrons, the wing transported more cargo during the first half of 1941 than the entire U.S. civilian airline industry. The new airborne mission placed a heavy additional burden on the wing, so the Army placed orders for more transports and began training crews to fly them.

The original DC-3 was designed to carry 21 passengers, although increased engine performance on later models allowed 28. Other designations were given to production DC-3s that were taken over by the military but lacked the reinforced cargo floor and other amenities of the basic C-47. When the Army decided to develop the airborne mission, it contracted for a number of DC-3s specially configured to carry troops, with bucket seats and a door designed for paratrooper exit, and called it the C-53 Sky Trooper. Shackles were attached under the fuselage of the C-53s to carry parapacks, special bundles that could be filled with items too large to be carried by individual troops during a parachute assault.

In addition to dropping paratroopers, C-53s were also used for supply drops and as glider tugs. Although thousands of C-53s were produced, as the war continued the C-47 designation became generic. A later modification with larger engines and a redesigned tail was designated as the C-117. Various versions of the Douglas transport would see service with Army, Navy, and Marine transport squadrons as well as in the air forces of most of the Allied nations.

Building Allied Air Transport Wings

Several Douglas transports entered service in North Africa in 1941 when the U.S. Army Ferrying Command contracted with Pan American Airways to provide air transportation for British forces fighting Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. The British had ordered their own Douglas transports, and the Royal Air Force (RAF) gave them a new name—Dakota. The Pan American DC-3s were sent to Africa to fill the gap until the RAF had received its own Dakotas and established air transport squadrons. The first British transports were DC-3s requisitioned from the airlines since the U.S. Army lacked the numbers to provide airplanes from its own stock.

The first Douglas transports to see operational duty were a trio of C-53s that arrived in Australia aboard ship in February. They joined an ad hoc group of transport aircraft and obsolete combat planes in the newly created Far East Air Forces Air Transport Command and went to work hauling cargo and personnel around Australia and northward to New Guinea—and even as far north as the southern Philippines, which were still in Allied hands. A reorganization of U.S. Army air transportation in June 1942 resulted in the redesignation of the air transport units as troop carriers, while a new Air Transport Command was created from the Army Ferry Command.

In early 1942, the Australia-based transports supported combat operations in the defense of Java. Until the American surrender of the Philippines, transports operated into airstrips on Mindanao, the southernmost of the Philippine islands, where American forces remained until their surrender in May 1942. A few weeks later, the transports proved their worth as the lifeline for Australian troops battling Japanese forces advancing southward toward Port Moresby over the rugged Kokoda Track in the Owen Stanley Range of Papua, New Guinea. The rough terrain ruled out resupply by truck, and the distances involved required hundreds of human porters. Air transportation allowed timely resupply as the transports landed on rude jungle strips when possible, and air-dropped ammunition and rations when no suitable landing strip lay close enough to the troops. A lack of suitable airdrop containers and parachutes led to the adaptation of cardboard ice cream containers packed with straw to deliver packets of ammunition and foodstuffs. The Australian infantrymen began referring to the transports of the 21st and 22nd Troop Carrier Squadrons as “Biscuit Bombers.”

The Troop Airlift Concept Takes Off

When Lieutenant General George C. Kenney arrived in Australia in mid-1942 to assume the role of chief of staff for air under General Douglas MacArthur, he brought many ideas with him, including the concept of using the airplane to move troops into battle and keep them supplied. An opportunity to prove his theories arose in September when MacArthur decided to move the U.S. 32nd Infantry Division northward to New Guinea. Kenney persuaded MacArthur to let him move a regiment by air; the event came off so well that he got permission to move a second regiment. The two regiments were in place in Port Moresby several days before the rest of the division arrived by ship.

Allied successes in New Guinea—thanks largely to the efforts of Kenney’s Fifth Air Force—raised the value of Kenney’s stock in Washington considerably. Part of the payoff for earlier successes was the assignment of an airborne regiment to the Southwest Pacific Area of Operations, and its arrival allowed Kenney to mount the attack on Nadzab he had been planning for several months. The 54th Troop Carrier Wing C-47s dropped the troops without a hitch, and the airfield was in Allied hands within a matter of minutes. MacArthur used the new installation to mount a two-pronged attack on Lae that led to the destruction of Japanese efforts in New Guinea.

The early successes of the C-47s and other transports in New Guinea led to the development of tactics built around the use of air transport to airlift troops into battle and also to move air units forward. Air evacuation of casualties made its debut in New Guinea during the battle for Buna. Young female flight nurses were assigned to troop carrier squadrons to care for wounded men who were brought from the forward airfields. Regularly scheduled air evacuation flights were established between Port Moresby and rear area hospitals in Australia. The success of air evacuation in the Southwest Pacific led to it becoming part of the troop carrier mission throughout the world. Thanks to the use of the airplane to move the seriously wounded, the combat death rate was drastically reduced.

The dependable C-47s and C-53s soldiered on, racking up hundreds, then thousands of hours in combat operations. One of the C-53s that had arrived in Australia in early 1942 had amassed more than 10,000 hours by 1944. The efforts of the troop carrier C-47 crews did not go unappreciated by the senior officers in their chain of command. General Kenney recognized the efforts of his troop carriers and said so in dispatches to the War Department in Washington, D.C. In one request for additional troop carrier pilots, Kenney told General Henry “Hap” Arnold, chief of the U.S. Army Air Forces, that the life expectancy of his C-47 crew members was less than that of the P-39 fighter pilots in his command.

The Hump Airlift

In the spring and summer of 1942, while the two troop carrier squadrons in New Guinea were making their mark, developing air transportation efforts in the China-Burma-India Theater began another chapter in the story of the Douglas transport. In early 1942, a small contingent of Pan American DC-3s was sent to India to airlift fuel and oil to Chinese bases in preparation for the arrival of the North American B-25 Mitchell bombers of the Doolittle mission against the Japanese home islands.

The civilian contingent was soon joined by a squadron of Army C-47s that arrived in India as part of Colonel Caleb Haynes’s AQUILA project that was intended to serve as the nucleus of a heavy bomber effort against Japan from Chinese bases. A Japanese offensive in China in retaliation for the Doolittle mission deprived the Allies of the planned bomber bases, and the Army and civilian C-47/DC-3 crews soon found themselves in the middle of the battle for Burma. When it became apparent that the Japanese had gained the upper hand, the transports were put to work evacuating Allied troops.

Although combat operations in defense of India were requiring most of Tenth Air Force’s efforts, it was imperative that supplies get to China, where the American Volunteer Group, popularly known as the Flying Tigers, was doing a good job of harassing the Japanese. Fortunately, there was another air transport organization in the theater. Before the war Pan American Airways had contracted with the Chinese government to operate a national airline. The China National Airways Corporation (CNAC) operated a fleet of DC-3s with civilian crews, mostly Americans.

Tenth Air Force contracted with CNAC to airlift supplies to China, beginning what came to be known as the Hump Airlift. Throughout 1942, DC-3s and C-47s operated the airlift, but the massive amounts of material requiring airlift dictated the use of larger airplanes with greater payloads. In late 1942 the airlift of supplies to China was taken over by the newly created Air Transport Command (ATC). ATC began the airlift with C-47s but switched to larger Curtiss C-46s and Consolidated C-87s, the cargo version of the B-24 Liberator bomber, as they became available.

Although the C-47 was replaced within the ATC airlift to China, the Douglas transports continued to play a major role. One of the conditions of the transfer of the China Air Ferry to the ATC was that Tenth Air Force would receive a troop carrier group equipped with C-47s. Additional Douglas transports came in the form of Royal Air Force Dakotas.

Many Roles in Many Theaters

Air transport would be a feature of new tactics worked out by the eccentric British Brigadier Orde Wingate, the commander of a special force made up of British and Commonwealth troops known as Chindits. In the spring of 1944, Wingate’s special force invaded Burma from the air. The entire Tenth Air Force effort was directed toward supporting the operation, which consisted of a glider assault onto landing zones in Burma that would be used as forward bases supported by troop carrier C-47s. The three C-47 squadrons of Tenth Air Force had been joined by a fourth squadron that came to India as part of Colonel Philip Cochran’s air commando group, and had been further augmented by the temporary assignment of the 64th Troop Carrier Group from the Mediterranean.

The air commando C-47s were assigned to glider towing duty while the troop carrier command transports airlifted men and equipment into the hastily prepared landing zones. One troop carrier squadron was assigned to support the American provisional force under Brig. Gen. Frank Merrill, who walked into Burma in the north. Once again the C-47 proved its worth as the twin-engine transports operated into airstrips that had been constructed with small bulldozers and graders that had been landed by glider.

The role of the C-47 in Europe was initially primarily logistical. In the summer of 1942, the 51st Troop Carrier Wing and its three groups moved to England as part of the Eighth Air Force. Throughout the summer the wing’s C-47s and C-53s supported the newly arrived bomber and fighter groups. Planning for the invasion of North Africa called for the wing to transfer to Africa. Several squadrons of C-47s left England carrying the paratroopers of the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment, the first American paratroop unit to see combat.

There were a handful of limited airborne operations in North Africa, but the transport mission became support of air and ground combat units, particularly after the battle moved away from the coast. Military planners had not taken the troop carrier transports into consideration, but their presence proved highly beneficial as they were used to airlift bombs and supplies for combat squadrons to airfields in the desert and to support motorized columns. Troop carriers in North Africa borrowed a page from the Southwest Pacific as they began evacuating casualties from forward areas to rear area hospitals.

In European Combat Operations

Plans for Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, called for the use of paratroops and glider-borne forces. The airborne operations did not go well, thanks in part to high winds that blew the formations off course. Jittery antiaircraft gunners on ships offshore took the approaching C-47 formation under fire and shot down quite a few transports. Dozens of paratroopers fell into the sea and were drowned. Many gliders cut loose too early and failed to make the beaches, leaving their occupants to the same fate as the paratroopers who fell into the sea.

In spite of the numerous problems, the few paratroopers and glider troops who managed to arrive in one piece caused so much confusion among the German and Italian defenders that airborne operations were planned for future invasions. There was one paratroop drop in Italy when General Mark Clark decided to reinforce the beachhead at Salerno. Once Allied air units were established in Italy, the C-47s assumed a new mission, the resupply of partisans in Yugoslavia.

Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, included the massive use of American and British airborne forces. The D-Day airdrops have become famous and are perhaps the one World War II event most associated with C-47s. Unfortunately, the drops did not go well, while dozens of C-47s were shot down and hundreds were damaged by intense German fire. Once the beachhead had been established, landing strips were constructed for C-47s arriving on the continent from England.

The American breakout from the beaches in early August saw the C-47s in an important new role as they were called upon to support the rapidly moving armored columns of General George Patton’s Third Army. Patton came to depend on the C-47s and other transports to bring in fuel for his tanks and trucks, and when they were taken away his rapid advance ground to a halt.

The Troop Carrier Command was dedicated to the support of the First Allied Airborne Army when it was established in early August, and its squadrons were taken off combat operations to train for Operation Market-Garden, the upcoming airborne invasion of Holland. An additional 100 C-47s were taken off Air Transport Command domestic operations in the United States and sent to England to beef up the Service Command transport forces.

The drops in Holland saw the C-47 crews earn the respect of the paratroopers. While previous airborne operations had often been characterized by confusion, the drops in Holland were well organized and the crews were motivated to risk their own lives to ensure that the troops were dropped on target. Paratroopers returned from Holland to tell of courageous C-47 pilots were able to hold their course in burning airplanes so their troops could jump, and then went to fiery deaths as their stricken craft crashed. Troop Carrier Command C-47s, supplemented by B-24s detached from Eighth Air Force, kept the troops in Holland supplied until ground links were opened.

During the Battle of the Bulge paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division were sent to hold the town of Bastogne, where they soon found themselves surrounded by a determined enemy and cut off from all means of ground resupply. Terrible winter weather, with low clouds, fog, drizzle, and snow, prevented the C-47s from delivering supplies by air for several days. As their supplies dwindled, the Screaming Eagles held on. Finally, on December 23 the skies cleared and parachutes blossomed over Bastogne as C-47 crews braved German fire to deliver their loads of ammunition, rations, and medical supplies. By evening, 101st artillery crews were firing shells that had just been dropped in. The Bastogne relief was perhaps the C-47’s finest hour.

The Goony Bird Behind the Front

While the airborne operations in the European theater, the Hump Airlift, and the New Guinea missions were their most important, the Douglas transports were a familiar sight all over the world. Army C-47s supported combat operations in the Aleutians, while the Navy and Marine Corps established transport squadrons for duty in the islands of the Central Pacific with their own C-47s, which were given the naval designation of R4D. It was probably the Navy and Marine crews who gave the DC-3 its most famous name—Gooney Bird. Nature’s gooney birds are a species of albatross that are unique to Midway atoll, where sailors and Marines had been entertained by the ungainly creatures long before Midway became famous in mid-1942.

By 1943 the U.S. military was active all over the world as ferry and transport routes were developed over which young, inexperienced crews delivered bombers, fighters, and transports to combat squadrons overseas. Engine trouble, bad weather, and enemy action led to the loss of aircraft and crews who went down in the ocean or over hostile terrain. The Air Transport Command developed its own search and rescue units to look for downed airmen, and C-47s were equipped for the role. Some C-47s were equipped with skis to allow landings close to downed airmen in Arctic terrain. The C-47C was equipped with giant Edo floats to allow water landings. Tests were even conducted with a glider version of the C-47, when an early model was converted to become the XCG-17.

On May 5, 1945, the 10,000th DC-3 was delivered to the United States Army Air Forces; all but 500 were built after Pearl Harbor. By the end of 1944, all the DC-3s that had been procured from the airlines for military use had been returned. The airlines also benefited from the military production, as hundreds of C-47s and C-53s became surplus to the military’s needs and were released for civilian purchase.

Immediately after the war, the C-47s were instrumental in airlifting supplies to areas that had been devastated by the conflict and providing support for occupying forces. Unlike most other U.S. military aircraft of World War II, the C-47 remained in active military service during both the Korean and Vietnam conflicts.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Stephen Silver

Technology, Americas

The film, which premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival and will reach theaters and VOD this Friday, takes much of its inspiration from another popular film, the 1999 science-fiction hit The Matrix.

Back in 2012, filmmaker Rodney Ascher directed a documentary called Room 237, which was a deep dive into Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 classic The Shining. The film consisted entirely of the voices of people with unconventional, out-there theories about The Shining.

These ranged from the idea that Kubrick made the movie as a confession that he had taken part in faking the moon landing in 1969, and conjecture about how the film was a hidden allegory about either the Holocaust or the genocide of American Indians. One participant obsessed about the layout of the movie’s Overlook Hotel, while another argued that a post on the wall in the movie of a skier was actually a Minotaur (it looked to me like a skier.)  A whole other movie, the 2016 comedy Moonwalkers, was based around the conceit that the CIA had really enlisted Kubrick to stage a moon landing, in case the real one didn’t work out.

The theories presented in Room 237 were almost entirely unconvincing—as fan theories turn out to be, about 95 percent of the time—but that wasn’t really the point. It was such a fascinating deep dive that I proposed at the time that it be adapted into a TV series, with bonkers theories about a different classic movie each week. Room 237 is one of those movies that should only ever be watched late at night.

In between the director made a documentary about sleep paralysis called The Nightmare. And now, nearly a decade later, Ascher has returned with another documentary, called A Glitch in The Matrix. The film, which premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival and will reach theaters and VOD this Friday, takes much of its inspiration from another popular film, the Wachowskis’ 1999 science-fiction hit The Matrix.

But rather than applying the Room 237 formula to The Matrix, Ascher’s film takes another angle: He interviews those who believe that the real world has begun to resemble The Matrix, and that we are, in fact, living in a simulation.

No, this film isn’t about The Matrix’s concepts of the “red pill” and “blue pill,” and all of the unpleasant connotations that have become attached to that. Instead, it shares a handful of regular people sharing their views on the simulation hypothesis, interspersed with footage from the film, as well as an old lecture by the famed novelist Philip Dick, in which he claimed late in life to have been imported with special knowledge of the universe’s true nature. There are even some quotes from various well-known tech people, led by Elon Musk, indicating that they themselves believe the simulation theories.

After all, references to “the simulation” have only gained further purchase by world events in the couple of decades since The Matrix was released, from the pandemic to strange weather events to the Donald Trump presidency.

The idea that reality isn’t really reality, and that at some point the real world was replaced by a fake one, is an argument that takes some pretty heavy lifting to make convincingly. A Glitch in the Matrix does not come close to doing so. 

Indeed, it must be said that much of what’s uttered in this film is complete nonsense, which doesn’t come close to making the case that we are, in fact, living in a simulation. That was, of course, also the case with Ascher’s Shining movie. But the difference is that in a full movie of what strongly resembles stoned dorm room philosophizing, the musings are very rarely particularly interesting. 

Another huge mistake the movie makes is that rather than keep those theorizing off-screen the way he did in Room 237, Ascher gives them animated avatars. This is just a ridiculous, failed conceit, mostly because it’s hard to take anything anyone has to say seriously when they look like an alien in a Buzz Lightyear costume. It doesn’t help that most of these peoples’ theories basically amount to “I saw a weird, unlikely thing happen once.” 

As for the Dick speech, which was delivered at a science fiction convention in France in 1977, it’s certainly more intriguing than most of what the other interviewees have to say.

But the lecture, in which Dick lays out how he believed he was given special knowledge about the universe after undergoing dental surgery, is more notable for having predicted the plot of The Matrix two decades in advance than anything having to do with an actual simulation existing. We already knew Dick was great at anticipating where popular science fiction imagination was heading, considering how many of his works were adapted for the movies and TV (Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, Blade Runner, Total Recall, and more), mostly years after his death.

But the film’s worst decision, by far, is when it hands over the floor for about ten minutes to Joshua Cooke, a man convicted of 2003 of murdering his own parents when he was under the delusion that The Matrix was real. The film has Cooke describe the murders in slow, mechanical detail, and not only does it come across as crass and exploitative, but it doesn’t really have much to do with what this movie is about. 

There’s going to be another movie in the Matrix franchise later this year, as part of the Warner Brothers/HBO Max streaming day-and-date strategy. And when it arrives, we’re likely to see more arguments about the simulation hypothesis. But those trying to make the case for such theories will have to do better than A Glitch in the Matrix did. 

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for the National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters

David Axe

Security, World

With INF dead, the world’s nuclear balance is in flux.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The United States probably would have to agree to broad limitations on its own weaponry in order to bring China to the table. But the Trump administration consistently has wanted fewer, not more, restrictions on its weapons.

The U.S. military on Aug. 18, 2019, successfully tested a ground-launched, intermediate-range, nuclear-capable cruise missile.

It’s exactly the kind of missile that the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, or INF, had banned before the administration of U.S. president Donald Trump in early August 2019 formally withdrew from the treaty.

With INF dead, the world’s nuclear balance is in flux. In the near term at least, it’s clear that the United States and Russia intend to deploy shorter-range nukes. It seems unlikely that a new treaty will halt these deployments.

The flight test of America’s new “conventionally-configured, ground-launched cruise missile” took place at San Nicolas Island in California, the Pentagon announced.

“The test missile exited its ground mobile launcher and accurately impacted its target after more than 500 kilometers [310 miles] of flight,” the Defense Department stated.  “Data collected and lessons learned from this test will inform [the Defense Department's] development of future intermediate-range capabilities.”

The missile appears to be a version of the Tomahawk cruise missile, which U.S. forces also deploy in sea- and air-launched versions.

The U.S. military previously deployed a ground-launched Tomahawk from 1983 to 1991. The missile type boasted nuclear warhead and a 1,600-mile range. INF compelled the Americans and Russians respectively to withdraw 400 and 1,500 ground-launched nuclear missiles with a range between 310 and 3,400 miles.

Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin doomed INF and heralded the return of quick-striking intermediate missiles.

The first sign that the 1987 agreement was in trouble came in 2011, when the administration of then-U.S. president Barack Obama warned that new, intermediate-range nuclear-armed cruise missile—under development in Russia since 2008—could violate the terms of the treaty.

The U.S. State Department in 2013 first raised the issue with the Kremlin. Later the same year, the White House formally announced that Russia was in violation of the treaty.

The Americans were responsible for their own provocations. In 2015 the Pentagon began installing missile defenses in Romania. The non-nuclear SM-3 missile-interceptors are designed to hit ballistic missiles launched by Iran at the United States, and are not capable of stopping intermediate-range nukes launched from Europe.

But the Russians viewed the SM-3s as a threat and cited them as an indication that the Americans were developing their own intermediate-range weapons. Sometime in 2017 the Russian military finally deployed its new intermediate-range missile, the SSC-8, at a site along Russia’s western frontier.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration advanced plans for a host of new nukes, including smaller “tactical” atomic weapons that the White House might be more willing to use than larger, more powerful strategic weapons.

The Trump administration also cited China as a rationale for canceling INF, as Beijing was never party to the 1987 treaty.

Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review, released in early 2018, codified U.S. rearmament plans, effectively mirroring Russia’s own new atomic deployments. INF’s demise freed both countries to develop and field a class of weapons that for decades have been absent from Europe.

“The new policies only increase the chances of blundering into a nuclear war,” commented Bruce Blair, a Princeton University nuclear scholar.

The United States could negotiate a new treaty to replace INF, Trump said in his February 2019 state-of-the-union address. And that treaty could include China, Trump claimed.

That's unlikely to happen, explained Gregory Kulacki, a nuclear expert with the Massachusetts-based Union of Concerned Scientists.

The United States probably would have to agree to broad limitations on its own weaponry in order to bring China to the table. But the Trump administration consistently has wanted fewer, not more, restrictions on its weapons.

"Decades ago the United States entered into a treaty with Russia in which we agreed to limit and reduce our missile capabilities," Trump said in his speech. "While we followed the agreement to the letter, Russia repeatedly violated its terms. That is why I announced that the United States is officially withdrawing.""Perhaps we can negotiate a different agreement, adding China and others," Trump added, "or perhaps we can't --- in which case, we will outspend and out-innovate all others by far."

The problem for China isn't nuclear weapons, rather non-nuclear ones. "China has a small number of nuclear-armed ground-based intermediate-range missiles that would fall under the original INF treaty limits," Kulacki wrote. "But it also has a much larger number of conventionally-armed missiles in this class that seem to be the major concern of U.S. advocates of withdrawing from the treaty."

“Figuring out how to negotiate an expanded INF treaty that would require China to dismantle them would introduce a number of new and difficult issues to resolve, but it could also lead to some very productive conversations on how to build trust and preserve the peace in East Asia,” Kulacki added.

“Sadly, I suspect U.S. advocates of killing the INF treaty have no intention to talk to China about joining it.”

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 first appeared in 2019 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

David Axe

Security, Europe

As it transforms, the Russian navy by most metrics is falling behind the U.S. and Chinese navies.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Perhaps most tellingly, the U.S. fleet can carry around 12,000 offensive missiles. Chinese ships in total can carry 5,200 missiles. Russia’s fleet, despite upgrades like those to Smerch, packs no more than 3,300. And that number could fall as more large, old warships decommission and smaller ships take their place.

The Russian navy on Aug. 14, 2019 completed a key test of an upgraded missile corvette. The trial underscores the evolution of the Russian fleet from a force dominated by a few large vessels to one with a larger number of smaller ships.

The upgraded missile corvette Smerch conducted a live-fire exercise in the Sea of Japan, Russia’s state-run news agency TASS reported, citing the press office of Russia’s Pacific fleet.

"Today, in accordance with the plan of shipbuilders’ trials, the modernized small missile ship Smerch has held a series of missile firings against a naval and an air target," the press office told TASS.

Smerch, a Nanuchka III-class corvette, displaces around 500 tons of water. Smerch launched in 1984.

After recent upgrades, Smerch boasts 30-millimeter and 76-millimeter guns, a battery of small surface-to-air missiles and Uran anti-ship missiles, which are equivalent to the U.S. Navy’s own Harpoon anti-ship missile.

Smerch is one of around 150 corvettes, patrol boats and mine-warfare ships in the Russian fleet. Each displaces just a few thousand or few hundred tons of water. The Russian navy operates fewer than 30 large, oceangoing frigates, destroyers and cruisers.

The U.S. Navy by contrast operates just a couple dozen small surface combatants and more than 100 large ones. The American and Russian fleets are opposites, each reflecting their country’s strategy, history, industry and geography.

The U.S. fleet, backed by a powerful, high-tech industry, favors large ships for their ability to deploy long distances in support of an interventionist foreign policy.

The Russian fleet, on the other hand, relies on outdated shipyards that reliably can produce only small vessels. Fortunately for Moscow, smaller ships are appropriate for Russia’s strategic focus on destabilizing, and occasionally invading, rivals just a short distance away along its own periphery.

The Russian navy’s transformation into a small-ship fleet has been accelerating. More large ships are decommissioning and smaller vessels -- both new and upgraded -- are taking their place, reshaping what was once a major global force into a new kind of regional fleet.

In April 2019 the Kremlin decided to dismantle rather than revamp two Cold War-vintage Kirov-class battlecruisers. Moscow likewise considered scrapping its sole aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov rather than pay for maintenance and upgrades.

The accidental sinking of the PD-50 drydock in October 2018 weighed on the decision. PD-50 was the only drydock in northern Russia that could accommodate Kuznetsov. The Kremlin in mid-2019 signaled it will attempt to repair the aging carrier after combining two smaller drydocks to accommodate the vessel.

The new ships Russia is acquiring generally are missile corvettes displacing no more than 5,000 tons of water. An American destroyer, by contrast, displaces 9,000 tons.

The Kremlin bought just four new warships in 2018, all corvettes. While small, these vessels pack serious firepower. In recent years, corvettes from the Caspian Sea fleet have fired long-range Kalibr cruise missiles at targets in Syria -- all without ever leaving Russian waters.

But the numbers are telling. As it transforms, the Russian navy by most metrics is falling behind the U.S. and Chinese navies. In 2019 the Russian fleet has 360 ships, according to U.S. Navy commander Keith Patton, writing for the Center for International Maritime Security. The Chinese fleet, by contrast, possesses 624 warships.

The American fleet at the same time has just 333 “battle force” ships. But the American ships on average are much bigger than Chinese and Russian ships are. The U.S. fleet in total displaces 4.6 million tons of water. The Chinese fleet displaces 1.8 million tons. The Russian fleet displaces just 1.2 million tons.

Perhaps most tellingly, the U.S. fleet can carry around 12,000 offensive missiles. Chinese ships in total can carry 5,200 missiles. Russia’s fleet, despite upgrades like those to Smerch, packs no more than 3,300. And that number could fall as more large, old warships decommission and smaller ships take their place.

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 first appeared in 2019 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

David Axe

Security, Asia

China steadily is building up the forces it could deploy in an attempted invasion of Taiwan.

Here's What You Need to Remember: A sudden Chinese attack quickly could wipe out U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific region and block the United States from intervening in a regional war. That’s the startling conclusion of an August 2019 report from the United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney.

China steadily is building up the forces it could deploy in an attempted invasion of Taiwan. The Chinese navy is acquiring aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships while the Chinese army and marine corps add modern fighting vehicles and the air force trains for intensive air-to-air combat.

But in crossing the Taiwan Strait, a Chinese invasion fleet would face not only Taiwanese forces, but probably Americans forces, as well. The United States is obligated by law to assist in Taiwan’s defense. A U.S. Air Force wing commander in August 2019 revealed one form U.S. intervention could take.

Bombers. Dropping mines. Lots of them.

The commandant of the Air Force’s Weapons School, part of the 57th Wing at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, recently visited Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, home to the 2nd Bomb Wing, the U.S. air arm’s biggest bomber unit with nearly 30 B-52Hs on its rolls.

“I told him to go eat some fried alligator,” 57th Wing commander  Brig. Gen. Robert Novotny wrote on Facebook. “Instead he went dropping sea mines out of a B-52 Stratofortress!” Novotny posted several photos depicting one of the 1960s-vintage B-52s hauling a whopping 15 Quickstrike air-dropped sea mines. Six externally and nine internally.

Quickstrike mines are not new. “The Quickstrike family includes 500-, 1,000-, and 2,000-pound class types, known as the Mk. 62, Mk. 63 and Mk. 64, respectively,” reporter Joseph Trevithick explained at The War Zone in late 2018.

“These [are] converted from Mk. 80-series high-explosive bombs and feature a fuzing system that detonates the weapon when it detects an appropriate acoustic, seismic or pressure signatures from a passing vessel. A fourth type, Mk. 65, is another 2,000-pound-class Quickstrike mine, but is based on an actual, purpose-built mine casing rather than an existing bomb.”

As the Pentagon pivots back to great-power conflict, the mines are enjoying a renaissance of sorts. And upgrades. Trevithick detailed the efforts.

For more than four years now, the Navy has been pursuing two related upgrade programs, known as Quickstrike-J and Quickstrike-ER, for the Mk. 80-series members of the Quickstrike family. The first of these simply combines the mine with a GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance package, while the latter adds a pop-out wing kit.

These are game-changing upgrades that allow aircraft to precisely employ the mines from any altitude and, in the case of the -ER types, loft them at targets up to 40 miles away. This speeds up the process of laying the minefields overall and dramatically reduces the vulnerability to the aircraft carrying the weapons, which would otherwise have to fly low-and-slow to perform the mission.

The Air Force operates more than 70 B-52s and, in the event of war, could deploy dozens of the huge planes to the Asia-Pacific region or fly them from the United States for missions over the Pacific war zone.

It’s not hard to imagine formations of B-52s quickly laying hundreds or even thousands of mines.

Of course, the bombers, if forward-deployed, themselves would be targets. China could target America’s main Pacific outposts -- in particular, the bomber base at Guam -- with ballistic and cruise missiles.

A sudden Chinese attack quickly could wipe out U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific region and block the United States from intervening in a regional war. That’s the startling conclusion of an August 2019 report from the United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney.

“America’s defense strategy in the Indo-Pacific is in the throes of an unprecedented crisis,” the study’s authors Ashley Townshend, Brendan Thomas-Noone and Matilda Steward

warned. “America no longer enjoys military primacy in the Indo-Pacific and its capacity to uphold a favorable balance of power is increasingly uncertain.”

Dispersing B-52s across a wider area could help to protect them from attack. It’s not for no reason that the Air Force in recent years has begun sending B-52s to the Australian air base in Darwin.

David Axe serves as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels  War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad. This first appeared in 2019 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

David Axe

Security, Asia

The U.S. military plans to begin rotating F-35 stealth fighters into South Korea starting in a few years.

Here's What You Need to Remember: In 2018 the Trump administration suspended Vigilant Ace as a concession to North Korea, hoping that Pyongyang, in turn, would suspend its nuclear-weapons program. North Korea has continued to develop its nukes.

The U.S. military plans to begin rotating F-35 stealth fighters into South Korea starting in a few years, a South Korean newspaper reported back in 2019.

The American planes would join a growing fleet of South Korean F-35s. The U.S. Air Force is already practicing employing the F-35s in a war with North Korea.

“U.S. Forces Korea is expected to deploy state-of-the-art F-35A stealth fighter jets at major air bases here in place of the current bread-and-butter F-16s,” The Chosunilbo reported. “A South Korean government spokesman on [Sept. 1, 2019] said they will be deployed from early 2020s.”

The U.S. Air Force maintains around 60 F-16s in three squadrons -- plus a squadron of around 20 A-10 attack jets -- at two Korean air bases. The Air Force also keeps two F-16 squadrons in Japan.

The South Korean air force plans to deploy 40 F-35As in 2021. South Korea reportedly also plans to buy vertical-landing F-35Bs to embark on at least one new, large assault ship.

The planned F-35 deployment should come as no surprise. F-35s slowly are replacing F-16s in U.S. Air Force squadrons and eventually could replace A-10s, as well. By the 2030s the F-35 could be the most numerous fighter type in the Air Force inventory.

American F-35 units have begun practicing one key tactic for operations on the Korean Peninsula. On Nov. 19, 2018, two Air Force wings in Utah launched 35 F-35 stealth fighters in a short span of time.

The November 2018 group-takeoff, which the air force calls an "elephant walk," involved F-35As from the 388th and 419th Fighter Wings at Hill Air Force Base. The active-duty 388th and reserve 419th train air force F-35 pilots.

The 388th's 34th Fighter Squadron, whose F-35s have the latest Block 3F software, also has a front-line role. In late 2017, it became the first Air Force F-35 unit to deploy overseas, to Japan.

At the time of the elephant walk—the first for the F-35—the Utah wings possessed around 40 F-35s. The wings are on track to receive a combined 72 F-35s by 2019.

The Hill stealth fighters took off one at a time in roughly 30-second intervals. In just a few minutes, the wings launched as many F-35 sorties as they normally do in a full day of routine training.

"Exercising with multiple squadrons of F-35s can demonstrate our ability to defeat potential adversaries wherever they may arise," Maj. Caleb Guthmann, the 34th Fighter Squadron's assistant director of operations, said in a statement.

Elephant walks significantly contribute to the readiness of American and allied squadrons in South Korea and nearby countries.

In the event of war with North Korea, U.S. and allied forces plan to quickly target the roughly 13,000 artillery pieces that Pyongyang has massed along the Korean demilitarized zone. In the early hours of a war, that artillery likely would bombard Seoul, which lies just 25 miles south of the DMZ

An air campaign targeting North Korea would require 2,000 sorties per day, U.S. military officials told Air Force magazine. The F-16s and A-10s in South Korea and Japan—and any F-35s that deployed in time for the first day of fighting—likely would be the first to hit North Korean artillery. And they'd have to launch fast to save lives in Seoul.

There is a reason that the 7th Air Force in South Korea and Japan have organized more elephant walks than most air force commands have done. "The threat here on the peninsula is very real, and countering that threat needs to be in the forefront of our minds," Col. William D. Betts, then-commander of the 51st Fighter Wing in South Korea, said in 2017.

The U.S. Air Force organized elephant walks in South Korea in 2016 and 2017 but not in 2018.

In 2018 the Trump administration suspended Vigilant Ace as a concession to North Korea, hoping that Pyongyang, in turn, would suspend its nuclear-weapons program. North Korea has continued to develop its nukes.

David Axe serves as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels  War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad. This first appeared in 2019 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Ahmed Charai

Politics, Americas

Joe Biden’s election comes at a unique moment for America and an inflection point around the world.

Within his country, President Joe Biden represents the countervailing response to the insurgent, anti-establishment forces unleashed and led by Donald Trump. On the one hand, those forces brought hitherto marginalized problems to the fore. They exposed the opioid epidemic for the national tragedy it has become, requiring national solidarity with the victims and a national strategy to save them. They brought a more frank and open conversation about the tradeoffs of different immigration policies, however strident and painful the discourse became. On the other hand, the Trump approach injected stridency and pain into the discourse and tainted the discussion with the former president’s own flippancy toward the burdens and requirements of democratic governance. This latter tendency culminated in the assault on the Capitol, fueled by President Trump’s inability or unwillingness to accept the results of the election. Without question, January 6 was a stain on this nation that views itself, and is still viewed by many others, as a standard-bearer of democracy.

This unique moment for the United States highlights Biden’s unique virtues as an uniter. A presidential campaign he defined by the nation’s longing for unity should not give way to an administration of vindictiveness and score-settling.  

Trump won nearly 75 million votes, more than any candidate in history save Biden himself. Governing the United States without them would be all but impossible. Many of Trump’s supporters have legitimate grievances with coastal elites and globalization policies: an approach to trade that enriched some at the expense of many; an immigration policy that accelerated the decline of America’s industrial base.

Meanwhile, viewed from outside the United States, Trump’s personality may be unique, but his brand of politics is not. Many Western countries—and some non-Western ones too—have experienced a populist surge sharing many of the same characteristics. In some cases, such as Poland, they are parties of the Right. In others, notably Greece, they are offshoots of the Left. Their Middle Eastern equivalents—consider Tunisian Islamist and president of Congress Rached Ghannouchi or Turkish neo-imperialist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan—defy Western rubrics or easy categorization.

Foreign policy failures, above all America’s decades-long entanglements in Iraq and Afghanistan, were crucial to the rise of this populism. Their legacy makes it all the more crucial for Biden to find his footing on foreign policy. 

In this area, as in so many others, Trump proved to be a disruptive force. He withdrew from multilateral agreements, openly feuded with allies, and disparaged the role of civil service at home and abroad. Yet for all that, his administration enjoyed certain notable successes that Biden would be wise to build on. Principally, against decades of convention and all expectations, five Arab states have not only signed treaties with Israel but also taken meaningful steps toward sustained people-to-people engagement with the Israeli people, heralding the possibility of genuine, warm peace. This welcome trend, a departure from generations of boycotting and exclusion, owes its launch to the inventive leadership of the United Arab Emirates and its consolidation to the centuries-old Kingdom of Morocco, bound to the Jewish world through ties of blood.

Which brings us to Joe Biden’s foreign policy speech. In a clear, ringing voice, Biden announced that “America is back” and “diplomacy is back,“ and made several commitments. He affirmed that the defense of democracy and human rights are bedrock principles of American foreign policy. He adopted the time-honored view that foreign policy is at its most effective when America’s alliances are at their strongest. He embraced the principle that consistency and reliability are valuable ends in and of themselves. These points are at once banal and heartening. America’s many friends abroad welcome a renewed U.S. commitment to alliances and service as a steadfast guarantor of an international liberal order. 

But where American policymakers find conflict between these principles and the major foreign policy decisions of the prior administration, they will also encounter a dilemma. A reflexive reversal of the gamut of Trump precedents risks undermining those very alliances. It would raise precisely the same doubts about American credibility and consistency that Biden’s team so often—and rightly—critiqued about the Trump administration.

And the need for American leadership has never been greater. Covid-19 presents a unique challenge and, as American development of not one but three unique vaccines illustrates, a unique reflection of the country’s tradition as a beacon of hope. Chinese expansionism and authoritarian brutality—ongoing atrocities against the Uighurs come to mind—present an escalating threat.

I hope and trust that the Biden administration will renew and restore the essential role the United States plays for its allies, from Europe to the Middle East to the reaches of Asia. Rarely have a man and a moment been better matched.

Ahmed Charai is a Moroccan publisher and an Atlantic Council Board Director. He is also an international counselor of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member of the Advisory Board of The Center for the National Interest in Washington and Board of Trustees in Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

Image: Reuters.

David Saveliev

Russia, Europe

The Navalny protests have failed and Putin is expelling western diplomats who he says joined them.

MOSCOW—As the Kremlin expels Western diplomats, Alexei Navalny’s team is calling protesters off the streets—and admitting its defeat against a Kremlin that learned the lessons of neighboring Belarus. After a call by Navalny’s team, thousands thronged the streets of Moscow last Saturday. As the protesters marched through downtown Moscow, bypassing cars began blasting “We Want a Change”—a song synonymous with the ongoing Belarusian protests and the protest movements that brought down the USSR. The mood was cheerful. Suddenly, scores of riot police appeared out of the night. It took them minutes to encircle the core of the protest--about an hour to pound the protesters up and detain them. The Moscow protest was dead several hours after its inception. Like many other demonstrators, Ruslan Dvorovsky, a middle-aged city councilman was driving in his car among the protesters who flooded Moscow roads. He told me: “Navalny’s sentence is a sentence for all of us.” Two days after the fiasco, Navalny’s second in command, Leonid Volkov, sealed the sentence, by announcing that there will be no more protests in the immediate future.

The 2021 Russian protests were markedly different from the Navalny protests in 2019 and 2017. They were grimmer. The usual Navalny protester is young, pro-Western, creative, and peaceful. They protested with imaginative bright posters and ironic symbols: one such symbol of the 2017 protests was a bright yellow rubber duckie. But this time the mood changed. There were few posters and few smiles. Those who got out on the streets understood the brutality of the possible response: over the years Russian laws changed to allow for harsher sentences and larger fines for protesting. A fifteen-year-old protester, identified as Kostya for safety reasons, told me “I am not afraid. I can tolerate this no longer.” He, like other young Russians, was born after Putin’s ascent to power and has never seen a “Russia Without Putin”—an extremely popular slogan among protesters.

The first protest after Navalny’s arrest simmered with protester violence unseen in Russia since the 1990s. A car with FSB license plates was attacked and the driver was injured, an anti-Navalny demonstrator was brutally beaten, some protesters fought the riot police, and so on. Met with excessive brutality from the Russian security services, protesters didn’t waver and stayed on the streets until late at night. A potential full-on violent protest akin to the Euromaidan in Ukraine or the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States was in the air. A twenty-seven-year-old anarchist protester, who asked to identify as Ivan out of safety concerns, told me that “there were those who wanted blood...they weren’t the majority, but there were none of them before [on earlier Moscow protests in 2017 and 2019].”

However, Navalny organisers blew the opportunity for a real uprising and were ultimately unsuccessful in managing a peaceful protest. Navalny Telegram channels kept spreading the protest thin, calling upon the demonstrators to move around their cities, especially in Moscow, thus breaking up the huge groups of people and making them easy prey to the motorized riot police. Instead of following the example of the Euromaidan or Tahrir Square or Gezi Park, they were seemingly inspired by the constantly moving marches of Belarus. Indeed, many organizers like to draw inspiration from the western neighbor. Still, Minsk protests mobilized 10 percent of the population, while on the 23rd, Navalny adherents could only attract 0.25 percent of Muscovites, according to Artyom Shraibman, a scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

The second big protest proved even more disastrous. A record number of people, over 5,000, were detained, and the protesters were unable to hold any ground whatsoever. In Moscow, the rallying point was changed at least five times during the march that didn’t help the protest’s logistics. I was in Moscow's march that day and saw the visible confusion around me. I myself received a few blows while reporting. Just like in Belarus, the regime was unimpressed with the peaceful protests. No concessions were made, officials ignored the protests and pro-regime media cheered the repressions on. There is every indication that the Kremlin learned from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s example.

Why were the Russian and Belarusian protests unsuccessful in shattering their regimes? It’s because getting people onto the streets is only the first step. Timothy Garton Ash, a professor at the University of Oxford who studied civil resistance in Eastern Europe since the collapse of communism, notes that authoritarian regimes learned two things from revolutions of the past: “ruthlessness and a skill set for managing [protests]”. Garton Ash also pointed out that  “[a regime] can actually live with people letting off steam on the streets for quite some time...as long as it doesn’t become politically threatening.” Garton Ash argues that for a peaceful protest to be successful, it needs “a clear opposition strategy around achievable goals… simply saying ‘Russia Without Putin’ is not a strategy.”

Why were the protests relatively small, once the size of the Russian population is taken into account? Some view Navalny as a symbol rather than a politician. For Alexey Vasilyev, a famous photographer from the Russian region of Sakha, Navalny is simply a symbol that’s “too big to be ignored.” Many don’t even like Navalny—a young labor organizer who asked to be identified as Jakir, out of fear for his safety, said: “We think that we need to democratize our economy, take our factories out of the oligarchs' hands. This is our principal difference.”

Navalny backers faced one of the most sophisticated modern autocracies. Russian security services often simply outnumbered protesters. They are armed with the best equipment—especially in Moscow—and are motivated by relatively high wages. Major cities are also equipped with sophisticated facial recognition and surveillance systems completely under the security apparatus’ control. 

Navalny’s team is promising a rematch in the spring, but many are skeptical. Jakir, who was organizing during both Belarusian and Russian protests, told me that it is “doubtful whether a wave like this will rise in the spring.” Navalny’s team is hoping for an international pressure campaign on the Kremlin. However, Moscow seems emboldened, as it has announced the expulsion of diplomats from Germany, Sweden, and Poland who it says attended Navalny protests. For now, the Putin regime appears to have the upper hand.

David Saveliev is a journalist and a graduate student at the University of Oxford’s Russia and East European studies program. He specializes in protests and revolutionary politics.

Image: Reuters.

Warfare History Network

History, Europe

Anders told his soldiers, “We shall fight the Germans without respite because we all know that without defeating Germany there will be no Poland.”

Here's What You Need to Know: General Wladyslaw Anders led free Polish forces in their fight against the Nazis.

“They had lost their country but kept their honor,” future British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan said of General Wladyslaw Anders and the Polish II Corps, men in the strange position of trying to win the liberation of their homeland by fighting in Italy.

It is hard to imagine any other general of World War II having a more personally tragic odyssey than Anders: witnessing the devastation of his country, nightmarish captivity at the hands of the Soviet secret police, a trek to freedom across central Asia and the Middle East, and glory on the battlefield of Monte Cassino ending in a lifelong, bitter exile.

A Soldier in the Polish Army

Born in 1892 when Poland was still part of the Russian Empire, Anders deserted from the czarist cavalry during World War I to fight for independence in the Polish Legion of Jozef Pilsudski on the German side. Anders also fought under Pilsudski to defeat the Russian invasion of 1920, but then against Pilsidski when he overthrew the government in May 1926 and established a dictatorship. Pilsudski did not hold it against Anders, who was allowed to stay in the Army. When Pilsudski met him at a reception four years later and saw that Anders was still a colonel, he made a point of promoting him to brigadier general.

Anders was in command of a cavalry brigade just 13 miles from the border with Germany on September 1, 1939. During the opening minutes of World War II, he watched helplessly as Luftwaffe squadrons passed overhead on their way south to destroy the Polish Air Force on the ground and bomb the Polish capital of Warsaw.

In the chaos that followed, Anders had to waste precious days inching along roads jammed to a standstill with panicked refugees and disorganized soldiers under constant air attack while he was trying to reach a new command and then, almost immediately, another. He finally led a surprise counterattack near Warsaw, taking 1,000 German prisoners, before it fell apart because of communication failures.

Compounding the nightmare, on the 17th day of the German invasion, the Soviet Union “flung herself like a hyena,” in Anders’s words, on Poland as part of Stalin’s pact with Hitler. Trying to evacuate his men to Hungary, Anders was wounded for the eighth time in his military career and was captured by the Soviets.

Anders’ Army of Captives

“We are now good friends of the Germans, and together we will fight international capitalism,” the Red Army officer driving Anders away told him. A two-year ordeal with little hope then began for Anders—rat- and bedbug- infested cells, a slice of bread a day, beatings, endless rounds of interrogations, dysentery, and scurvy. In March 1940, he was placed in solitary confinement in Moscow’s dreaded Lubyanka Prison as a prisoner “of special interest to the Central Office of the NKVD.”

A Lubyanka guard seized Anders’s religious medal of the Virgin Mary and crushed it underfoot, saying, “Let us see if this harlot can be of any help to you in a Soviet prison!” When Anders did receive miraculous intervention, the inspiration was more satanic than divine.

Suddenly, on August 4, 1941, Anders was pulled from his cell and marched to the warden’s office. Squinting repeatedly in the unaccustomed light, he faced a bespectacled official who said simply, “Who am I addressing?” asked Anders. “I am Beria,” came the response.

Instead of the customary bullet to the brain he often meted out, the feared NKVD chief Lavrenty Beria informed an astonished Anders that he was to be the commander of a new Polish army composed of Poles imprisoned in the Soviet Union. In prison uniform and barefoot, Anders was then driven out of the Lubyanka in Beria’s own limousine and installed in a four-room luxury apartment with cook, maid, and ample stocks of caviar and vodka. Hitler had attacked the Soviet Union, and Stalin was desperately seeking allies anywhere he could find them—even the London-based Polish government in exile headed by Prime Minister Wladyslaw Sikorski.

Anders had to first determine just how many men he would have to fight with: “I tried to assess the real figure of Polish citizens deported in 1939-1941, but it was extremely difficult to do so. I questioned the Soviet authorities. Eventually I was directed to Fiedotov, an NKVD general who was in charge of this matter, and I had a few conversations with him. He told me in a most confidential manner that the number of Poles deported to Russia amounted to 450,000.… After many months of research and inquiries among our people, who were pouring from thousands of prisons and concentration camps spread out all over Russia, we were able to put the number at 1,500,000 to 1,600,000 people.” Behind those shocking figures were the horror stories of Soviet confinement—only 170 survivors of 20,000 at one slave mine, 3,000 to a man dying at another.

Tens of thousands of Poles, civilians including women and thousands of orphans as well as soldiers, trekked hundreds of miles to Anders’s camps along the Volga River. Several hundred started out from a camp above the Arctic Circle, and the only one who did not die on the 3,000-mile journey did expire the day after he arrived.

The Poles were emaciated, lice-ridden, and diseased but still proud, as Anders found at his first review. “For the first time in my life, and I hope for the last, I took the salute of a march-past of soldiers without boots,” he recalled. “They had insisted on it. They wanted to show the Bolsheviks that even in their bare feet, and ill and wounded as many of them were, they could still bear themselves like soldiers on their first march toward Poland.”

But, ominously, of the 17,000 Polish officers known to have fallen into Soviet hands, only 2,000, including just two of 14 generals, turned up. With Sikorski, Anders met Stalin on December 3, 1941, to press him on their whereabouts.

“They must have escaped,” answered Stalin. “Where could they have escaped to?” asked Anders. “Well, to Manchuria,” was Stalin’s feeble response. In fact, over 4,000 had been massacred by the Russians and were at that moment buried in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, awaiting discovery by the Germans in 1943. These would be the only ones ever accounted for.

“One of the Great Fighting Forces of the War”

The Soviets reneged on their promises and delivered only half the food and medicine that Anders requested. Through the autumn and winter of 1941, the Poles lived in nothing more than canvas tents while dysentery, malaria, typhus, and hepatitis spread.

In the spring, the Soviets began demanding that Anders start sending troops west to the front. Knowing that in their still-weakened state such an order would lead to useless slaughter, Anders instead secured permission in April 1942 to ship 74,000 troops by rail 1,200 miles south to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Some 41,000 civilians followed.

An appalled Polish officer remarked, “A vast tide of human beings … were now flowing into the starving districts of Uzbekistan, to surge round an army organization which was itself undernourished and decimated by disease.”

In August 1942, Anders moved his people further on their exodus, to Krasnovodsk, Turkmenia. From there, he shipped them across the Caspian Sea to the port of Bandar Pahlavi, Iran. The civilians were sent east to camps outside Tehran while Anders and his troops continued west first to Iraq, then Palestine. There he began building his troops with other Poles already fighting in the Middle East in what was to become the 125,000-man Polish II Corps. Historian John Keegan called this storied unit “one of the great fighting formations of the war,” and its future would include international renown for assaults against Monte Cassino in May 1944.

Anders said, “We shall fight the Germans without respite because we all know that without defeating Germany there will be no Poland.”

Assault on Monte Cassino

The ruined abbey atop Monte Cassino was the key to the German Gustav Line, blocking the Allied approach to Rome. Attacks by French, American, New Zealander, then Indian troops had failed to take it. When General Oliver Leese, the commander of the British Eighth Army, proposed that the Poles try next, Anders later wrote: “It was a great moment for me.… I realized that the cost in lives must be heavy, but I realized too the importance of the capture of Monte Cassino to the Allied cause, and most of all to that of Poland, for it would answer once and for all the Soviet lie that the Poles did not want to fight the Germans. Victory would give new courage to the resistance movement in Poland and would cover Polish arms with glory. After a moment’s reflection I answered that I would undertake the task.”

In his order to attack, Anders declared, “We have long awaited the moment for revenge and retribution over our hereditary enemy.”

The Poles fought their way in a veritable shooting gallery of foxholes, pillboxes, bunkers, mines, wire, and devastating interlocking fields of fire defended by ferocious German paratroopers. “I noticed that the Germans very wisely stayed under cover at all times, whereas our men would suddenly stand up to hurl defiance at the enemy. They paid dearly for these and similar acts of bravado,” a Polish officer said.

During the first attack, the Poles took Hill 593, then defended it through four counterattacks until only one officer and eight men were left. They fought their way to the top of Phantom Ridge but could not reach the end of the heights. One Polish soldier described the relentless German shelling: “The explosions sounded like an enormous giant clearing his throat.” Polish phone lines were cut and most of the radio operators killed, making it almost impossible to relay commands and direct counterbattery fire.

“It soon became clear that it was easier to capture some objectives than to hold them,” Anders concluded. He broke off the first attack.

Leese found Anders in his trailer uncharacteristically disheveled and distraught. “What do we do now?” he asked Leese. “Stay where you are, but hang on to what you have. Don’t lose that whatever happens,” responded Leese. “But we must attack again,” said Anders.

“May Your Hearts be Those of Lions”

The Poles did attack again just two days later, with Anders telling his troops: “May your hearts be those of lions.” Cooks, drivers, and staff personnel were thrown in to fill the depleted ranks. The Poles took and this time held Hill 593 and Phantom Ridge.

On the second afternoon, Anders’s headquarters intercepted a German radio message to the defenders in Monte Cassino to evacuate at midnight. The Gustav Line was crumbling, and the abbey was facing encirclement. Anders immediately barreled in a jeep to his division commanders to tell them: “You must hold through tonight. Send patrols to keep up spirits at all the posts. Order your men to stay where they are at all costs.”

The next morning, the Poles cautiously inched up to the monastery to find it had been abandoned. At 10:20 am, May 18, 1944, the Polish flag flew atop Monte Cassino.

Anders described the battlefield: “Corpses of Polish and German soldiers, sometimes entangled in a deadly embrace, lay everywhere, and the air was full of the stench of rotting bodies.… Crater after crater pitted the sides of the hills, and scattered over them were fragments of uniforms and tin helmets, Tommy guns, Spandaus, Schmeissers and hand grenades. Of the monastery itself there remained only an enormous heap of ruin and rubble, with here and there some broken columns.… Priceless works of art, sculpture, pictures, and books lay in the dust and broken plaster.” The capture of Monte Cassino cost the Poles 860 killed and 3,000 wounded.

Monte Cassino earned Anders and the Poles international acclaim. He was awarded the Legion of Merit, the highest American decoration available to a foreigner, in a ceremony, appropriately enough, below Mussolini’s balcony in Rome.

Chief of the British Imperial General Staff, Viscount Alanbrooke, said, “The series of offensives carried out from Cassino onwards would hardly have been possible” without the Poles.

But as they fought north, one Polish soldier said what they all believed: “On the one hand, I was happy that I could bring freedom to these people who were welcoming me at that moment. But on the other hand, I was disappointed that this was not a Polish street that I was walking on, that I wasn’t bringing freedom to my people and my nation, that this was not the fulfillment of our dreams.”

Anders himself said, “We trust that our great Allies and friends—Great Britain and the U.S. —will assist us to make Poland rise again free and independent.” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met Anders in Italy and assured him: “I and my friend President Roosevelt will never abandon Poland. Put your trust in us.”

However, according to historian Matthew Parker in Monte Cassino: The Hardest Fought Battle of World War II, “much of the rest of [Anders’s] account of the war records the progressive abandonment of the Polish cause by the Allies.”

Betrayal at Yalta

Anders advised against the Warsaw Uprising, accurately predicting the Soviets would stand back and watch the Germans annihilate the Polish Resistance for them. He tried to warn the naïve prime minister of the government in exile, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk (Sikorski had been killed in a plane crash in 1943), about Soviet intentions toward Poland but found “our conversation led to no understanding between us.”

The Yalta Conference, which took place between Allied leaders as the defeat of Nazi Germany approached, was the near breaking point for Anders. Poland was to be left a satellite of the Soviet Union. Thirty of Anders’s men committed suicide, and he requested that his corps be withdrawn from the fighting.

At a stormy meeting in London, Churchill now raged, “You can take away your division! We shall do without them!”

Anders coolly replied, “That is not what you said during the last few years.”

In the end, Anders ordered his men to continue fighting. Harold Macmillan, then British government liaison with the Allied forces in Italy, feared Anders’s men “will disintegrate into a rabble of refugees,” but later admitted, “I had underestimated the marvelous dignity and devotion of Anders and his comrades. They fought with distinction, in the front of the attack, in the last battles.”

The Poles ended the war by capturing Bologna, with Anders receiving the division flag of the German paratroopers who had fought them at Monte Cassino.

Defying Communism in Exile

It would be the last moment of triumph in Anders’s life. He became commander in chief of all Polish forces in the West; then, working out of a small London office, he ran the organization to resettle ex-Polish servicemen abroad. Stripped of his citizenship by the Polish Communists, the very mention of his name outlawed in Poland, Anders to his dying day, in 1970, never forgave Britain and the United States for what he considered the betrayal of his country.

General Wladyslaw Anders was buried with his comrades in the Polish cemetery at Monte Cassino, where an inscription reads:

We Polish soldiers
For our freedom and yours
Have given our souls to God
Our bodies to the soil of Italy
And our hearts to Poland.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Maya Carlin

Iraq, Middle East

The restructuring of alliances in the Middle East does not bode well for Tehran’s regional agenda. 

On February 1, Iraqi President Barham Salih joined the secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Baghdad to discuss joint economic, security, and regional concerns. Secretary-General Nayef Falah al-Hajraf confirmed the GCC’s pledge to support Iraq in its fight against terrorism and its commitment to achieving political stability and sovereignty. Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi also met with the GCC leader and ]outlined the necessity for Baghdad to work with its Gulf neighbors to “combat terrorism and the ongoing campaign to pursue its remnants.”

These remarks follow a pair of suicide bombings that tore through a crowded marketplace in Baghdad on January 21. The blasts killed over thirty people and injured dozens of others, rattling a city that had not experienced a large-scale suicide bombing in more than two years. The resurgence of Islamic State (ISIS) activity reflects Iraq’s current instability. In recent years, Iraq has grappled with economic collapse, political corruption, sectarian conflict, and the spread of coronavirus. Additionally, Iraq’s disordered security forces, muddled by the presence of Iranian-backed militias, have paved the way for the return of extremist attacks.

Iraq has also suffered an unreliable power supply in recent years, contributing to public protests and frustration that the government cannot provide this basic necessity. By 2019, between 30 to 40 percent of Iraq’s energy was acquired from Iranian electricity and natural gas sources. In the last year, Tehran has taken advantage of Iraq’s dependency on various occasions, including slashing its exports in December 2020 from nearly 50 million to 5 million cubic meters.

In addition to combatting terrorism, the GCC-Iraq meeting on February 1 outlined power supply sharing proposals that would help Baghdad obtain a more stable energy source from the Gulf. This is not the first time Iraq and the GCC have worked on strengthening relations. In 2019, Baghdad signed an agreement with the GCC to construct a power line from Kuwait that would import 500 megawatts of electricity.

The signing of the GCC solidarity pact in early January boosted the prospects for power-sharing. The cooperative agreement, brokered by the United States and Kuwait, ended Riyadh’s three-year-long blockade of Doha. This newly unified Gulf front can provide Iraq with the regional allies and energy security it desperately needs. In this week’s meeting in Baghdad, Secretary-General al-Hajraf updated Iraqi officials on progress with the power line first discussed in 2019.   

In response to this power-sharing proposal, Iranian-backed groups in Iraq protested Iraqi officials to halt any further collaboration. One militia alleged the GCC is “aiming to destroy what remains of the Iraqi economic security and perpetuate a state of instability in Iraq.” In reality, Tehran’s encroachment on Baghdad’s political, economic, and security spheres is the real roadblock to Iraqi sovereignty.  

The restructuring of Gulf relations with Iraq reflects the consequential shifts the Middle East has experienced in recent months. In 2020, Israel normalized relations with four of its Arab neighbors (UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco) in the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords. Similar to the catalyst driving the Gulf solidarity pact, Israel and its neighbors prioritize the same security concern—Iran. As new these regional alliances unfold, Tehran’s spheres of influence will be tested.  

Maya Carlin is an analyst at the Center for Security Policy in Washington D.C. and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel.

Image: Reuters.

Kris Osborn

F-15EX, Americas

The answer is both yes and no, depending on how much the warplane’s radar cross section has been improved.

There are several much lesser-recognized variables regarding the significance of the upgraded Air Force’s F-15EX jet fighter’s first flight. Alongside the highly visible discussion regarding its more affordable cost and upgraded fourth-generation technologies, there is speculation that the F-15EX could actually be a little stealthy.

Interesting question, as much is being said about how the new, higher-tech aircraft is still a fourth-generation fighter in a global universe of fifth-generation aircraft. Yet to what extent do some of the upgrades potentially push the envelope beyond what is thought of as fourth-generation? Yes, it is a 1980s aircraft, yet not only does it contain quantum-like improvements in computing, sensing and weaponry, but the fuselage itself has been adjusted as well. Naturally its construction, configuration, coating and external shape do not resemble the stealthy exterior of an F-22 or F-35, and it does not appear to have an internal weapons bay, yet the shape of F-15EX does seem to have a few stealth-like attributes.

For instance, my colleague at The National Interest, Mark Episkopos, pointed out in a recent essay that the F-15EX does have conformal fuel tanks, something which not only adds fuel to extend mission dwell time but also smooths out the fuselage into a flatter, more horizontal and therefore slightly stealthier shape. Also, while Boeing developers do explain that the outer mold line of the new F-15EX variant is similar to the legacy aircraft, it does incorporate some modifications intended to strengthen the wing and fuselage.

While not as flat, sloped or rounded as a fifth-generation plane, and most likely not built with a mind to seams, bolts and other attachments specific to procedures needed to construct a stealth aircraft, its fuselage does look somewhat rounded and horizontal. Moreover, one could certainly make the case that it does slightly resemble a stealthy F-22 in some respects with its double engine exhaust and body shape. At the same time, the F-15EX does have a protruding cockpit, much like the original variants, as well as some sharp edges, likely to generate a stronger radar return signal.

The kind of effort with the F-15EX is not fully unprecedented, in the sense that the Navy has spent the last several years working with Boeing to integrate a handful of upgrades, enhancements and service-life extensions for the F/A-18 Super Hornet. Several years ago, the Navy and Boeing added new cockpit technology, new software technology called Magic Carpet to improve carrier landings, infra-red search and track targeting technology and, sure enough, conformal fuel tanks as well. While the Navy hesitated when it came to using the word “stealth” yet clearly the conformal fuel tanks do lower the radar signature for sure, as well as bring other advantages such as extended mission time. Also, perhaps of equal or even greater significance, previous Navy efforts with the F/A-18 also included engineering smoothly-shaped external weapons pods for ordnance carriage in a clear effort to reduce the sharp contours and radar signal return resulting from hanging pointed weapons off of weapons pylons under the wings. The effort was not so much to believe a stealthy F/A-18 had come to life, but rather to try to find ways to help lower the radar cross section and prepare the aircraft for a newer, more advanced and high-tech threat environment.

Yet another much discussed advantage to the F-15EX, which certainly bears upon survivability, is its sizable weapons carrying capacity. For example, the F-15EX is now operational with a cutting-edge weapon called Stormbreaker, a long-range, all-weather precision guided bomb able to track and destroy moving targets at ranges out to 40km. The bomb, slated to also fire from the F-35 and other platforms, is able to use a first of its kind tri-mode seeker using infrared, millimeter wave and semi-active laser targeting.

Kris Osborn is the Defense Editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Image: Reuters.

Kris Osborn

Security, Americas

The day is fast approaching when stealth fighter jets, maneuvering in the sky faster than the speed of sound, can incinerate enemy aircraft or even ground targets with long-range, high power precision laser weapons.

The day is fast approaching when stealth fighter jets, maneuvering in the sky faster than the speed of sound, can incinerate enemy aircraft or even ground targets with long-range, high power precision laser weapons.

Ground tests and laboratory demonstrations have been underway for many years now at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico to assess, test and refine emerging laser weapons applications, with a mind to bringing the weapons to the air within just the next few years.

In order to bring the prospect of fighter jet-fired laser weapons closer to reality, the Air Force Research Laboratory recently conducted a massive wargame simulation intended to replicate and analyze the details and performance parameters associated with airborne laser use.

The wargame, conducted by the Air Force’s Directed Energy Utility Concept Experiment, combined F-16 pilots with F-15E weapons system officers to evaluate directed energy applications for air warfare.

“We engaged the warfighters in several battlefield scenarios. They gave us some excellent assessments, identifying where there is potential military utility of directed energy weapons,” Teresa LeGalley, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Wargaming and Simulation Lead, said in an AFRL essay.

Air-fired lasers have been showing promise for many years now, as scientists, engineers and weapons developers continue to make progress addressing the many challenges associated with integrating power laser technologies onto fighter jet airframes. The principle challenge, developers explain, is simply getting and integrating an application of mobile, expeditionary power in a small, yet powerful enough technical configuration to succeed in arming fighters with lasers. Not only do the laser weapons need to operate within a smaller form factor to reduce weight and drag on a fighter jet, but they need to be powerful enough to achieve an intended combat effect. Also, thermal management is fundamental to laser weapons application, as they need to be properly cooled so as not to overheat the other electronics on an aircraft or disrupt other aspects of flight.

Given the mobile power challenges, one strategy being explored by the Air Force is to first deploy laser weapons on larger planes such as cargo aircraft, as they are better able to accommodate the transportable power requirements as well as the size, weight and cooling dynamics. Should the applications be miniaturized without losing effectiveness, scaling or combat power, then they can migrate onto smaller, faster fighter jets.

What will this do for combat? Given that the weapons travel at the speed of light, fighter jet laser weapons will be much faster than air-to-air missiles and therefore able to attack more quickly. Laser weapons can also perform various kinds of optical surveillance and are scalable, meaning a laser weapon could be set to completely destroy or merely stun and disable an enemy aircraft.

There is yet another interesting dynamic associated with lasers, as they may help increase the stealth properties of an aircraft, or at least help decrease any kind of detectable radar cross section, should they be used in place of easily detectable sharp weapons hanging on external pylons.

Kris Osborn is the Defense Editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Image: Reuters.

Kris Osborn

China Missile, Asia

But how good is their system and how does it compare to U.S. missile defense?

Having successfully shot satellites out of the sky with Anti-Satellite weapons more than ten years ago, China is likely to surprise nobody with its ability to fire land-based interceptors into space to knock out intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in flight.

The People’s Liberation Army recently fired off an interceptor into space as part of a midcourse Anti-Ballistic Missile technical test which succeeded in taking out a target over Chinese territory, development which a Chinese newspaper said demonstrated the growing maturity of the technology.

Despite the announcement of this intercept test, stated in the Chinese government-backed Global Times, very little may be known about the actual condition of China’s midcourse missile defense technology. Indeed, many wonder whether it could in any way parallel the emerging new U.S. Ground Based Strategic Deterrent.

A single intercept of an ICBM in space, as the Chinese military reportedly accomplished, says very little about the sophistication and potential effectiveness of its missile defenses. Land-fired interceptors, such as the U.S. Ground-Based Interceptor, have existed for many years and repeatedly demonstrated an ability to knock out ICBM-type targets in testing. However, the best measure of modern missile defense, it would seem, might be an interceptor’s guidance and sensor systems as those are the technologies which will enable an interceptor to discern actual missiles from decoys and track threats closely to the point of intercept. Attacking ICBMs often travel with decoys intended to specifically throw-off, jam, or confuse targeting sensors so interceptors have a much harder time actually hitting the missile, therefore increasing the chances it will continue on to its target.

The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency is, for example, currently engineering a new generation of highly-sensitive interceptor missiles, called Next-Generation Interceptors, equipped with advanced discrimination sensors for improved targeting. It therefore might make sense to view the Chinese missile defense test as an effort to match or rival U.S. advances in the area of ICBM defense.

The Chinese paper did make the significant point that indeed it is the midcourse phase of flight which often provides the best opportunity for intercept, as it is often the longest. An ICBM can typically travel through space for about twenty minutes or so, between its ascent or boost phase and its high speed descent, or terminal phase.

“It’s technically easy to intercept a ballistic missile in the boost phase, because the missile is still close to the ground and accelerating, but it is difficult to get close to the launch site which is usually deep in hostile territory; in terminal phase, the interception is challenging because the speed of the diving missile is very high,” the Global Times writes.

Kris Osborn is the Defense Editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Image: Reuters.

Warfare History Network

History, Americas

Hemingway the novelist got the story he wanted, even if Hemingway the sub chaser failed to net his prey.

Here's What You Need to Know: Author Ernest Hemingway tracked German U-boats aboard his yacht in the Caribbean.

“We are going to have Christ’s own bitter time to win it, if, when, and ever,” commented Ernest Hemingway to his friend and editor, Charles Scribner, at the start of World War II. A celebrated author, Hemingway considered the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor reprehensible, at one point asserting that Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox should have been relieved of duty, while ranking Army and Navy commanders at Oahu deserved to be shot. Hemingway was nothing if not opinionated.

But the man who penned such well-received novels as A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls could wield a sword too, in this instance, his yacht, the Pilar. In 1942 and 1943 Hemingway, supplied with an assortment of machine guns, bazookas, and grenades courtesy of the United States government, patrolled the Caribbean Sea. If all went well, Hemingway hoped to lure a German U-boat close to Pilar, before disabling or sinking it with a fusillade of firepower. The marauding German submarines had roamed the Caribbean and sunk thousands of tons of Allied shipping. Hemingway intended to make the hunters the hunted. It was a daring, perhaps foolhardy, plan, in keeping with Hemingway’s own outsized personality.

A Writer Goes to Sea

Ernest Hemingway began life far from the sea in America’s heartland. Born in affluent Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899, Hemingway learned to hunt and fish in the Upper Midwest, his sailing restricted to small freshwater craft. In World War I Hemingway served in an American Red Cross unit on the Italian front, suffered injury from artillery shell fragments, and earned medals from the Italian government. Literary prominence came while he lived in France in the 1920s, with the publication of In Our Time, a collection of short stories, and even more with The Sun Also Rises, a novel about American expatriates in France and Spain. Hemingway’s relocation to Key West, Florida, in 1928 introduced him to the Gulf Stream waters of the Caribbean, a venue that would figure prominently in his later fiction and mark the landsman’s transformation into a sailor.

The Pilar provided the impetus. Hemingway purchased the cabin cruiser from the Wheeler Shipyard in Brooklyn, New York, in 1934 for $7,500. Named after Our Lady of the Pilar at Zarogoza in Spain as well as his second wife, Pauline, the ship arrived by rail in Miami that spring. The black hull built of American oak had a green roof and mahogany cockpit; it was 38 feet long with an 11-foot beam and a draft of three feet, two inches. Powered by a 75-horsepower Chrysler engine and a 40-horsepower Lycorying engine for trolling, the Pilar could reach a top speed of 16 knots and cruise to a range of 500 miles.

Hemingway customized Pilar by lowering the transom 12 inches to pull in fish and increasing the number of gas tanks. Sailing Pilar to Key West, he inspected the controls and checked the engines and was thoroughly pleased. The “boat is marvelous,” he wrote a friend. As his son, Gregory, remarked, Pilar ranked among the great loves of Hemingway’s life, just behind his children, wives, and cats.

The six-bunk vessel hosted numerous sports fishing parties, and the New York Times reported on the author and his guests. Writers and nonwriters, men and women could see the proud skipper show off his skills. Fishing occasionally became a blood sport. Once, while gaffing a shark in 1935, the gaff broke, striking Hemingway on the hand holding his pistol, which had been intended to dispatch the shark. Instead, the bullets bounced off the brass railing and through Hemingway’s two calves, necessitating medical attention. A few days later Hemingway got his revenge. Sharks that descended upon a huge tuna caught by Hemingway started thrashing in blood-stained water, machine-gunned by an angry Hemingway. Pilar would become, in the words of a Hemingway biographer, a “kind of floating whore house and rum factory as well as a fishing boat.”

Pilar’s owner sought adventure, especially sports fishing, and was eager to try his luck. Anything from sailfish to marlin to tuna attracted Hemingway. From Key West it was a short hop to Bimini and Cuba, where even bigger fish swam. The run between Key West and Cuba took roughly four hours, and the trip provided Hemingway material for To Have and Have Not, a tale of a rum runner. The sea now colored his prose.

Hemingway’s “Crook Factory”

Hemingway relocated to Cuba by 1939. The following year he purchased Finca Vigia, a villa outside Havana that he had previously rented, and watched the world situation deteriorate. Having already covered the Spanish Civil War, at times exceeding his role as a wartime journalist by bearing arms, Hemingway seemingly relished risks. In war-torn China, assaulted by the invading Japanese, Hemingway passed along information in 1941 to the United States government, reporting to an Army Intelligence team in Manila. In May, the Office of Naval Intelligence debriefed Hemingway, and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau heard his report.

The U.S. entry into World War II prompted Hemingway to oversee an ad hoc intelligence operation in Havana in 1942, convinced that Falangists (Spanish Fascists) residing in Cuba represented a potential fifth column. The Finca’s guest house became the headquarters of Hemingway’s counterintelligence unit, the “crook factory” as he termed it, designed to keep tabs on suspects. The American ambassador, Spruille Braden, appreciative of Hemingway’s efforts, asserted that he “built up an excellent organization and did an A-one job.” Hemingway’s third wife, Martha Gellhorn, was less convinced, critical of the crook factory’s noisy nighttime parties and heavy drinking at the Finca. It seemed a strange way to conduct spying.

Going After a Big Fish

Offshore in the Caribbean Sea, U-boats were making even greater noise in a rich hunting ground that offered an array of pickings. Such cities as Galveston, New Orleans, and Houston, all of them major oil ports, attracted German naval interest. Aruba was the site of the biggest oil refinery in the world, a prime source of diesel, aviation fuel, kerosene, gasoline, and fuel oil, all of them vital to the Allied war effort.

On February 16, 1942, U-boats descended on Aruba, sinking tankers and shelling the refinery. Merchant ships carrying bauxite—a critical component for aluminum production—from British and Dutch Guiana provided other tempting targets. Sub attacks in 1942 at the height of the German Caribbean campaign sank 263 ships, exceeding total losses on the North Atlantic convoy route.

In Cuba, a restless Hemingway decided to equip Pilar as a sub chaser. Fascinated by the exploits of Q-ships, disguised to deceive U-boats into surfacing and then attack them during World War I, Hemingway saw possibilities of a U-boat capture by Pilar. British mariners in the Great War had disguised and armed civilian vessels, luring U-boats by outright deceit before pouncing with quickly uncovered weaponry. A camouflaged Pilar posing as a fishing boat, while in reality armed to the teeth, could continue the tradition of naval deception.

The fact that U-boats sometimes surfaced to confiscate fish and water from civilian vessels gave the venture a thin veneer of plausibility. Once a U-boat was crippled, Hemingway could radio for naval assistance, finish the job, and perhaps secure valuable German codebooks.

Other motivations may have influenced Hemingway, too. Journalists back home wondered about his contribution, or perceived lack thereof, to the war effort. A man wounded in World War I who also bore arms during the Spanish Civil War appeared strangely inactive. Nor was Hemingway able to publicize his crook factory activities beyond a few intimates. Intelligence work ashore was lonely, often bereft of notice. By definition, if not always in reality, Hemingway’s operation had to be kept quiet, at least to the press.

Yet the author eventually grew bored. Hemingway found typing reports tedious work. Where was the danger in such activity? Capturing a U-boat offered more excitement. It could even be trumpeted in a blaze of publicity loud enough to silence any critics. If not, Hemingway would still have the satisfaction of an independent command aboard his beloved Pilar.

A “Doubting Thomason”

Hemingway approached Ambassador Braden to help equip Pilar. According to Braden, Hemingway said, “I can really have myself a party provided you will get me a bazooka to punch holes in the side of a submarine, machine guns to mow down the people on the deck, and hand grenades to lob down the conning tower.”

Braden could not say no. Hemingway was, after all, a famous American author. If Hemingway acquired hard-to-get rationed gasoline, naval equipment, guns, and supplies, it could all be chalked up to the war effort. Besides, Secretary Knox had asked East Coast yachtsmen to employ their vessels against the German Navy. Should not Hemingway be permitted to play his own role?

Pilar’s wooden structure, too fragile to mount the .50-caliber machine guns Hemingway wanted, left the crew with light machine guns. Bazookas and grenades carefully hidden below deck complemented the arsenal. Hemingway recruited Cubans, Spaniards, and Americans, including for a time his two young sons, Patrick and Gregory, along with a Marine sergeant, Don Saxon, sent by the government to work the radio. Critics were airily swept aside. When the chief of naval intelligence for Central America, U.S. Marine Colonel John W. Thomason, certain that no German submarine would venture near Pilar, urged Hemingway to modify his plan, the famous author dismissed him as a “doubting Thomason.”

Searching for U-boats

So how would Hemingway proceed? The first task was to reconnoiter and patrol the sea-lanes in the Caribbean near Cuba, noting any surfaced U-boat and reporting it to the Navy. Listening to German naval chatter on the radio might give Pilar’s crew other clues to the enemy’s activities. Pilar could also venture into isolated cays, searching for German munitions and armaments, or perhaps discover caches of food and water placed there by Axis sympathizers. Naturally, the coup de grace, the capture of a German submarine, remained foremost in Hemingway’s thoughts. Several years after the war, he confidently informed his friend A.E. Hotchner, “A U-boat not on alert could have been taken by our plan of attack.”

His enthusiasm was unshakable.

To facilitate the sub attack, the Pilar carried atop its flying bridge a specially made bomb. The coffin-shaped explosive had handles enabling two strong men to toss it into the U-boat’s conning tower, presumably after gunfire had mowed down German crewmen on deck. It would certainly be a tricky operation. The submarine tower would be slightly higher than Pilar’s bridge, and the bomb barely small enough to fit down the narrow conning tower hatch. Once thrown, the explosive might well miss the hatch, sending fragments toward Hemingway and his crew, a point that a concerned Martha Gellhorn tried to impress upon her stubborn husband.

In 1942, Hemingway took short cruises, returning to Havana at night to deliver his reports. By 1943, he extended his range from a base camp on Cayo Confites, a flat sandy isle with a few palm trees where Hemingway anchored Pilar. Supplies of fuel, food, water, ice, and alcohol would be obtained from a naval facility. Daily patrols involved monitoring sea-lanes, spotting vessels, exploring tiny islands and cays, and watching for anything unusual. When exploring shallow waters, care had to be taken to avoid harming Pilar’s hull. Running aground might also leave them easy prey for the enemy.

A Fruitless Mission

Actual results proved spotty. For instance, in December 1942, Pilar observed a Spanish vessel, the freighter Marques de Comillas, which appeared to have a smaller ship, possibly a submarine, in tow. Hemingway tried to follow the sub before it faded from sight, having radioed naval authorities about the suspicious transaction. In Havana, the ship was stopped, the crew and passengers questioned by FBI agents. No one admitted seeing a sub. Listening to U-boat chatter via radio became an exercise in futility. No one spoke fluent German, making the task all the more difficult.

Nevertheless, Gregory Hemingway, Ernest’s youngest son, retained fond memories of life aboard Pilar. That Hemingway employed his sons in the operation says something about his parenting skills. At least one biographer, Kenneth Lynn, has suggested that Hemingway’s sub chasing more resembled a lark than a serious naval patrol. Still, from 11-year-old Gregory’s perspective the enterprise was a high seas adventure. Armed men took position in the stern and the bow, while he, the youngest member of a multinational crew, held a rifle.

Escapades ashore furnished additional excitement. At one point, while searching caves for German supplies, a crewman ordered Gregory and his older brother Patrick through a narrow passage. Gregory was at first overjoyed and later dejected to find that a few bottles of German beer had not been abandoned by a U-boat crew. It was likely that American tourists had tossed them away.

Gregory Hemingway’s sea adventure reached a climax near the end of his holiday. Pilar had actually sighted a U-boat 1,000 yards away.

“Battle stations,” roared his father.

The crew scrambled into position, with brother Patrick holding a .303 Lee-Enfield rifle and Gregory clutching his mother’s old gun, a Mannlicher Schoenauer rifle. Crewmen unmoored the bomb from the flying bridge. However, the U-boat sped away uninterested in the disguised fishing boat. The angry crew hurled insults at the Germans. As for the phlegmatic Papa Hemingway, young Gregory distinctly remembered his mocking speech about the episode, capped by telling his son to fix him a gin and tonic.

“The Ethylic Department”

Gellhorn developed a different perspective about her husband’s adventure. She was a seasoned journalist who fell in love with Hemingway during the Spanish Civil War. Dangerous assignments rarely fazed her. Sheer foolishness was something else. She had cautioned Hemingway about the plan’s shortcomings to no avail. Having seen the deterioration of Hemingway’s crook-factory spy ring, Gellhorn’s skepticism of the sub-chasing scheme mounted. She eventually concluded that Hemingway’s adventure was an excuse to drink at sea and hurl grenades at buoys.

Hemingway never shared his third wife’s opinion. To him, the Pilar patrols were serious business.

He informed Martha in early 1943: “I have so much to tell but have gotten so used to writing letters that will be censored that I have lost ability to put anything down.”

Even so, certain issues, namely alcohol, appeared noteworthy enough to mention. Drinking remained a popular Hemingway pastime, and two open shelves down in Pilar’s cabin, referred to by Hemingway as “The Ethylic Department,” housed his liquor supply. His shipmates drank freely when alcohol was available, but their skipper modestly made do with three and sometimes only two and a half drinks per day. He hoped to inspire Sergeant Saxon, their hard-drinking radio man, to cut back. Getting Saxon down to four drinks a day, instead of his usual 20, was a significant victory.

Too little booze could still rattle the normally hard-drinking author. By the summer of 1943, Hemingway complained to Martha that going without gin for a week and wine for six days was a wartime sacrifice. In response, he resorted to rum. When stirred with grapefruit juice, lime, and ice, he informed Martha, it made a decent cocktail, but a seven-day trip with only rum cocktails constituted a hardship.

Hemingway’s crew felt the strain as well. Two of them muttered about the absence of spirits, according to young Gregory, threatening to seize the helm and turn the ship to the nearest bar. No mutiny occurred.

By July 1943, the U-boat war in the Caribbean Sea was winding down. A coded message ordered Pilar home. The men were worn, and the boat was in bad shape. Pilar’s drive shaft had to be realigned, and the engine gaskets and rings needed replacing. Although Hemingway took a repaired Pilar out for short cruises in the autumn, his role as a sub chaser was effectively over. Perhaps it was just as well. A growing sense of frustration gnawed at him.

In his only known letter written aboard Pilar at sea, Hemingway informed a friend on June 30, 1943: “I would have written you Old Mike many times but there is nothing that I know or that could be of interest that I can write. Been that way for a year or more and working like a bastard all the time. Wish I could see you though and that we could have a few drinks and talk things over.”

Wartime censorship no doubt kept Hemingway from revealing Pilar’s covert mission, but the author’s disgruntled tone was plain enough.

Did Hemingway’s Sub-Chasing Scheme Really Have a Reasonable Chance of Success?

The answer appears to be no. From the start, Pilar was overmatched; her crew, however determined, relied upon light machine guns, grenades, and bazookas, while German U-boats typically had an 88mm deck gun complemented by lighter weapons. Some U-boats carried 105mm deck guns. A single shell from either of these would have destroyed Pilar.

In addition, most U-boats stayed submerged during the day, surfacing to charge their batteries at night when Pilar was in port. Pilar lacked sonar and radar, useful implements for submarine warfare, making Hemingway’s plan more of a long shot. He gambled that Pilar would attract a passing sub’s curiosity, a slender straw of hope in the overall balance of Caribbean warfare.

Contemporaries remained divided over Hemingway’s sub chasing. The only Cuban to capture a U-boat off his country’s waters openly scoffed at the author’s plan. Captain Mario Raminez Delgado dubbed Hemingway “a playboy who hunted submarines off the Cuban coast as a whim.”

Raminez Delgado at least had action to back up his statement, Hemingway had none.

Yet, Hemingway had monitored the sea-lanes and sent in reports, much as any conscientious navy man might do, expending considerable time and effort. His contribution, if more well intentioned than substantive, convinced Ambassador Braden that the service rendered was important. In Hemingway’s own mind, he had gathered valuable naval intelligence, with Pilar paying the price in hard usage and repairs.

We do know what Ernest Hemingway would have preferred. As a novelist whose personal experience colored his art, he mentally filed away the sub hunt experience in hopes of reproducing in print his World War II sea adventure. In his novel Islands in the Stream, published after his death, Hemingway’s main character, Thomas Hudson, is an artist turned sub chaser patrolling the Caribbean. Word of a German crew escaped off a destroyed U-boat sends Hudson and his men in in pursuit. The two forces meet, leaving Hudson injured and dying, but the Germans have been killed.

Hemingway the novelist got the story he wanted, even if Hemingway the sub chaser failed to net his prey.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Ethen Kim Lieser

Health, Americas

The survey further revealed that the $1,400 direct payments to Americans are more popular than the overall proposal itself—with 78 percent of respondents supporting the stimulus checks, while 18 percent opposing them.

As Democrats move forward with President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue bill despite Republican calls to pare back the legislation, a new poll has found that more than two-thirds, or 68 percent, of Americans support the proposal, while only 24 percent oppose the measure.

The Quinnipiac University poll, taken from last Thursday to Monday, surveyed 1,075 adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

The survey further revealed that the $1,400 direct payments to Americans are more popular than the overall proposal itself—with 78 percent of respondents supporting the stimulus checks, while 18 percent opposing them.

A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll also saw similar results: “The majority of Biden’s proposals garner at least twice as much support as opposition,” the study said. “Nearly half are favored by more than 60 percent of Americans.”

The poll also discovered that 61 percent of respondents favor Biden’s push for a $15 per hour federal minimum wage.

On Wednesday, Biden, responding to Republican pressure, told House Democrats that he would be open to limiting eligibility for the direct payments, but he added that he would not cut the overall amount.

A group of Republican senators, who are wary of the size and scope of the direct payments after Congress approved a $900 billion bill in December, has already offered the president a $618 billion plan.

The Republicans’ pushback comes after a recent study that has suggested that not giving out any sort of payment to households making more than $75,000 a year would be the most economically prudent.

The analysis, conducted by nonpartisan, nonprofit Opportunity Insights, showed that families earning under about $75,000 generally spend the money quickly. But for households earning more than $78,000 (and singles earning more than $50,000), they are likely to spend just $45 of a $600 stimulus check over the first month. Scaled up to $1,400 payments, that would mean only $105 would be spent.

“Targeting the next round of stimulus payments toward lower-income households would save substantial resources that could be used to support other programs, with minimal impact on economic activity,” the study’s authors wrote.  

The research also revealed that the total price tag to send out another round of checks to couples earning more than $75,000 and singles earning more than $50,000 would be $200 billion—of which $15 billion, or 7.5 percent, would be spent.

Others have brought up the idea of using stimulus checks as pay incentives to get Americans vaccinated so that the country reaches herd immunity more quickly. For example, Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio) recently admitted that he would be willing to green-light $1,400 stimulus checks to people who receive the shot.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Minneapolis-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.  

Image: Reuters

John Austerman

military, Americas

Waiting to act on AI integration into our weapons systems puts us behind the technological curve required to effectively compete with our foes.

Finding an effective balance between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) in defense systems will be the sticking point for any policy promoting the distancing from “humans in the loop.” Within this balance, we must accept some deviations when considering concepts such as the kill chain. How would a progression of policy look within a defense application? Addressing the political, technological, and legal boundaries of AI integration would allow the benefits of AI, notably speed, to be incorporated into the kill chain. Recently, former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter stated “We all accept that bad things can happen with machinery. What we don’t accept is when it happens amorally.” Certainly, humans will retain the override ability and accountability without exception. Leaders will be forever bound by the actions of AI guided weapon systems, perhaps no differently than they would be responsible for the actions of a service member in combat and upholding ethical standards of which the AI has yet to grasp.

The future of weapon systems will include AI guiding the selection of targets, information gathering and processing, and ultimately, delivering force as necessary. Domination on the battlefield will not be in traditional means, rather conflicts dominated by AI with competing algorithms. The normalcy of a human-dominated decisionmaking process does provide allowances for AI within the process, however, not in a meaningful way. At no point does artificial intelligence play a significant role in making actual decisions towards the determination of lethal actions. Clearly, the capability and technology supporting integration have far surpassed the tolerance of our elected officials. We must build confidence with them and the general public with a couple of fundamental steps.

First, information gathering and processing can be controlled primarily by the AI with little to no friction from officials. This integration, although not significant by way of added capability in a research and development (R&D) perspective, will aid in building confidence and can be completed quickly. Developing elementary protocols for the AI to follow for individual systems such as turrets, easy at first then slowly increasing in difficulty, would allow the progression of technology from an R&D standpoint while incrementally building confidence and trust. The inclusion of recognition software into the weapon system would allow specific target selections, be it civilians or terrorists, of which could be presented, prioritized, and then given to the commander for action. Once functioning within a set of defined perimeters confidently, you can increase the number of systems for overlapping coverage. A human can be at the intersection of all the data via a command center supervising these systems with a battlement management system; effectively being a human “on” the loop with the ability to stop any engagements as required or limiting AI roles based on individual or mission tolerance.

This process must not be encapsulated solely within an R&D environment. Rather, transparency to the public and elected officials alike, must know and be accepting. Yes, these steps seem elementary, however, they are not being done. Focus has been concentrated on capability development without a similar concern for associated policy development when both must progress together. Small concrete steps with sound policy and oversight are crucial. Without such an understanding, decisionmakers cannot in their conscience approve, rather defaulting to the safe and easy answer, “no.” Waiting to act on AI integration into our weapons systems puts us behind the technological curve required to effectively compete with our foes. It would be foolish to believe our adversaries and their R&D programs are being held up on AI integration due to moral and public support requirements; the Chinese call it “intelligentized” war and have invested heavily. Having humans “on” the loop during successful testing and fielding will be the bridge to additional AI authorities and public support necessary for the United States to continue to develop these technologies as future warfare will dictate.

John Austerman is an experienced advisor to senior military and civilian leaders focusing on armaments policy primarily within research and development. Experience with 50+ countries and the Levant to include hostile-fire areas and war zones.

Image: Reuters.

Warfare History Network

History, Europe

German paratroopers fought stubborn defenders during operations against Denmark and Norway.

Here's What You Need to Know: German airborne operations had important psychological consequences on Allied forces.

The Polish Campaign in 1939 demonstrated the awesome effectiveness of aircraft as weapons platforms for close ground support. Along with flexible control of tactical operations, it became part of the concept popularly referred to as blitzkrieg. The effectiveness of this doctrine was again demonstrated by the German military during the Norwegian campaign in 1940.

This campaign also demonstrated the usefulness of aircraft as vehicles for transporting supplies and reinforcements. The Luftwaffe made a significant contribution to the reinforcement and supply effort by successfully carrying out the largest air transport operation in history up to that time. Largely due to the efforts of the Luftwaffe, for more than two months the Germans were able to hold on to an increasingly precarious beachhead in and around Narvik over the great distances that separated those forces from the other beachheads.

The Germans were also pioneers in the use of airborne troops and initially planned to use paratroopers in the Polish campaign; however, German success was so quick and crushing that they were not used in air assault roles. The invasion of Denmark and Norway in 1940, codenamed Weserübung, Exercise Weser, saw the first use of the vertical envelopment concept to seize airfields and key objectives far behind enemy lines. The assault on Sola Airfield and the airborne operation against Dombås were the first contested airborne operations in history. These early operations revealed problems familiar to present-day planners and executors of such operations.

The German Drop into Scandinavia

The German parachute forces in 1940 were organized into the 7th Air Division under Luftwaffe command. The division—organized along the lines of an infantry division—was commanded by Maj. Gen. Kurt Student, but it did not reach full strength until 1941. In April 1940, it consisted of two regiments, each having only one battalion.

The 1st Regiment was commanded by Colonel Bruno Bräuer. The 1st Battalion, commanded by Captain Erich Walther, constituted the airborne assault force for the invasion of Denmark and Norway. One of four companies was employed to seize airfields and bridges in Denmark, while the other three companies were used in the invasion of Norway.

Company 4, commanded by Captain Walther Gericke, had two primary missions in Denmark. One platoon of 36 troops, commanded by 1st Lieutenant Eckleben, parachuted directly onto the two airfields at Aalborg (Aalborg East and West) at 7:15 am on April 9 from three Junkers Ju-52s and secured them without resistance for the landing of an infantry battalion. The paratroopers also seized the bridge over Limfjord north of Aalborg without opposition.

The mission of the rest of Company 4 was to capture the 3,200-meter Storstrøm Bridge connecting Falster Island with Seeland Island and hold it until the arrival of Group Buck, led by Colonel Buck, commander of the 305th Infantry Regiment. The bridge consisted of two spans. The longest span by far was the one from Falster to a small island called Masnedö. A much shorter span connected Masnedö to Seeland. There was an old fort on Masnedö that the Germans believed was active and needed to be captured in order to secure the bridge.

Company 4 was scheduled to make its parachute assault on Masnedö at 6:15 am from nine Ju-52s, capture the fort, and secure both bridge spans. The assault was delayed 20 minutes due to weather conditions, but the paratroopers quickly captured the fort, which was not manned. Simultaneous with the arrival of the paratroopers, engineers from Group Buck were landed on Falster from ships and secured the bridge between Falster and Masnedö. The paratroopers, meeting no resistance, proceeded to secure the second span between Masnedö and Seeland.

Unexpected Difficulties

The German assault units for the attack on Norway consisted of six task forces. Task Force 5, to be landed by ship, had the mission of capturing Oslo and the Norwegian government early on the morning of April 9. The Germans believed that this would lead to a Norwegian surrender and a peaceful occupation of the country. This plan was frustrated when Task Force 5 met unexpected resistance as it approached the capital’s last line of defense, the Oscarborg fortress complex. The task force’s flagship, the brand new heavy cruiser Blücher, was sunk by gunfire and torpedoes and about 1,000 sailors and soldiers were killed.

The Germans also planned to capture Fornebu Airport southwest of Oslo by parachuting two airborne companies directly on the airfield. The 1st and 2nd Companies of the 1st Parachute Regiment, commanded respectively by 1st Lieutenant Herbert Schmidt and Captain Kurt Gröschke, were carried in 29 Ju-52s. The plan called for these troops to seize the airfield quickly, allowing German transport aircraft to land two infantry battalions and an engineer company from the 324th Infantry Regiment.

The German airdrop at Fornebu was cancelled when the aircraft carrying the paratroopers encountered heavy fog over the drop zone. Most aircraft turned around and landed at Aalborg, captured by the Germans that morning. One aircraft crashed into the ocean, and 12 paratroopers from Company 1 were lost along with the plane’s crew. Three planes carrying paratroopers did not return to Aalborg but joined the transport aircraft that later landed at Fornebu. The paratroopers at Aalborg were brought to Norway on April 13.

The landing of transport aircraft at Fornebu was predicated on German paratroopers having secured the airfield. Through a communications failure or a misunderstanding of orders, some of the transport aircraft continued on to Fornebu after the airdrop was cancelled, and they landed along with a squadron of German Messerschmitt 110 fighters, the protective force for the airdrop. The Messerschmitts did not have sufficient fuel to return to either Germany or Denmark.

The German planes landed despite heavy Norwegian fire, which resulted in two German aircraft destroyed and five severely damaged. This was in addition to five shot down or forced to make emergency landings as a result of aerial fights with seven Norwegian Gloster Gladiator fighters stationed at Fornebu. The number of Germans killed is not given, but the Norwegians were forced to withdraw at 8:30 am when they exhausted their ammunition. The Germans quickly took control of the airfield and signaled for subsequent waves to land. Oslo was surrendered to the Germans at 2 pm.

Sola Airfield: A Primary Strategic Objective

Stavanger is the fourth-largest city in Norway, and Sola Airfield, about 10 kilometers southwest of the city, was the best airfield in the country in 1940. Sola was a primary strategic objective since it was critical for air operations against naval forces in the North Sea and was located only 300 miles from Scapa Flow, Great Britain’s most important naval base.

The German plan called for the seizure of Sola Airfield by Company 3, 1st Parachute Regiment, on the morning of April 9. The company was commanded by 1st Lieutenant Freiherr Heinz Henning von Brandis. The paratroopers would be dropped directly on the airfield from 12 Ju-52s. These aircraft along with the Ju-88 bombers and Me-110s were on a one-way mission since they did not have sufficient fuel to return to Germany or Denmark. Follow-up forces, consisting of the regimental staff and two battalions of the 193rd Infantry Regiment commanded by Colonel Karl von Beeren, were to air-land as soon as the airfield was in German hands. The Norwegian Army depot at Madlamoen, three miles from Stavanger, was to be occupied as soon as Sola was secured.

The 1st Battalion, 2nd Norwegian Infantry Regiment was located at Madlamoen. It had arrived there on March 29, after less than three months training in eastern Norway. The battalion was assigned to Colonel G. Spørck, commander of the 8th Norwegian Infantry Regiment.

Sola Airfield was alerted to the possibility of a German attack around noon on April 8. However, the battalion at Madlamoen was not alerted until 1:30 am on April 9. One infantry platoon and one heavy weapons platoon from this battalion, a total of 64 men, were at Sola on April 9. The heavier defensive weapons consisted of four infantry machine guns and six machine guns used in an air defense role.

An Army bomber squadron of eight aircraft was stationed at Sola. This squadron was in the process of moving to eastern Norway to be replaced at Sola by a reconnaissance squadron. The exchange had already started with the departure of the ground crews. Because of these transfers, there were 10 Norwegian aircraft at Sola on April 9.

Construction of concrete bunkers at Sola had begun, but only one was completed by the day of the invasion. Most of the Norwegian troops from the two platoons were in open positions at the north end of the field near the hangars and administrative buildings. The completed bunker on the eastern side of the field was occupied with one antiaircraft machine gun. Three antiaircraft machine guns were located at the northwest corner of the airfield and two at the southeast corner, all in uncovered positions.

The Assault on Sola

The German assault on Sola Airfield began with dive-bomber attacks intended to eliminate Norwegian resistance while minimizing damage to facilities. Eight Ju-88s appeared just as nine Norwegian aircraft were in the process of taking off for eastern Norway. German reports that most Norwegian aircraft were destroyed are inaccurate. One aircraft was hit and unable to take off while another was damaged on takeoff and forced to make an emergency landing. The remaining seven aircraft arrived safely in eastern Norway.

The Norwegian machine guns opened an intense fire against the German planes, but the small-caliber rounds had no effect on the Ju-88s. The water-cooled Norwegian machine guns overheated, causing the guns to jam to the point where only single rounds could be fired. The heavy German bombing and strafing and the inability to inflict any damage on the German planes were morale breakers for the two Norwegian platoons, which withdrew rather hastily.

The second phase of the attack began with the arrival of a formation of 10 Ju-52s. There had been 12, but one returned to Germany while another landed in Denmark. Approximately 110 paratroopers exited the aircraft at low altitude, between 200 and 250 feet. Most landed in an area covered by the machine gun in the only completed concrete bunker.

The lone machine gunner, Private Gallus Johansen, made up for his comrades’ lack of determination. The Germans who landed within the field of fire of the Norwegian machine gun were rather helpless and had difficulty finding cover and retrieving the weapons canisters that landed on the airfield. Until they could retrieve the canisters, they were armed with only pistols and grenades. A substantial number of Germans were killed or wounded.

The German losses were between 10 and 40, according to Norwegian reports. The German casualty reports also vary greatly from a low of three killed and eight wounded to 18 killed and about 30 wounded.

It did not take the paratroopers who landed outside Johansen’s field of fire long to work their way behind the bunker and throw hand grenades through its firing aperture. Johansen was wounded and captured after the Germans used explosives to open the bunker door. The airfield was under German control by 9 am. The Norwegian losses were a few lightly wounded and 40 prisoners, mostly air corps personnel.

Colonel Spørck decided not to move the battalion at Madlamoen against Sola because it was his only active unit and he wanted to preserve it as a covering force for the mobilization of the 8th Infantry Regiment. With total German air dominance, this was probably the best decision. The battalion at Madlamoen moved eastward to avoid entrapment on the Stavanger Peninsula. The evacuation of the base was completed before the Germans arrived at 11 am.

Meanwhile, the third phase of the German operation, air-landing part of the 193rd Infantry Regiment, started shortly after 9 am. Approximately 200 aircraft brought in two battalions in the course of the day. Stavanger was occupied by the German troops without resistance during the afternoon.

Führungschaos

The critical situation in Norway and the slow progress of the drive from Oslo brought on a crisis in the German high command. The German troops in the various beachheads were isolated because Weserübung had failed to achieve its most important objective—a Norwegian surrender. Rumors of planned Allied landings at Åndalsnes and Namsos reached the Germans beginning on April 13.

Hitler’s primary military advisers, General Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht—Armed Forces High Command), and Maj. Gen. Alfred Jodl, chief of Operations at OKW, received a full preview of Hitler’s sometimes irrational behavior when confronted with bad news later in the war.

The word führungschaos (leadership chaos) in Jodl’s diary gives an apt description of the tension and excitement at the highest echelons. Jodl wrote in his diary, “We are again confronted with complete chaos in the command system. Hitler insists on issuing orders on every detail; any coordinated effort within the existing military command structure is impossible.”

Arguments erupted between Hitler and Keitel, Jodl, and Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, the commander of the German Navy. The disagreements between Hitler and Keitel became so heated on April 19 that Keitel walked out of the meeting. Hitler wanted Raeder to use two large ocean liners to bring a division to Trondheim. Raeder told Hitler that the whole German Navy would be required to escort the two liners and that the result would likely be the loss of the Navy, the liners, and the division. Hitler relented but insisted on the use of all means to quickly open a land route between Oslo and Trondheim.

The Germans established an air bridge between Oslo and Trondheim starting on April 14. In addition to much-needed supplies, the airlift brought one engineer and five infantry battalions to Trondheim by April 20.

To further speed the link up between their separated forces, the Germans launched an airborne operation in the Norwegian rear at Dombås. This was an important road and railroad junction, where the railroad and roads from Oslo to Trondheim intersect with those leading west to Åndalsnes. While the primary goal of the operation about 225 kilometers behind Norwegian lines at the southern end of Lake Mjøsa was to prevent Allied forces from reaching the southern front, it would also serve as a blocking position for any Allied attempt against Trondheim.

The airborne operation was launched on April 14. It was executed in all haste, without adequate intelligence—aerial reconnaissance could not be carried out because of bad weather—no time for planning, and inadequate forces. When it appeared that the airborne operation against Dombås might be cancelled because of bad weather, General Karl Kitzinger, commander of Air Region Norway as of April 15, sent his chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Wilhelm Süssmann, to the airport to ensure the operation—ordered by Hitler through the OKW—was carried out.

Fifteen German aircraft carried the reinforced Company 1, 1st Parachute Regiment (185 men). The company commander, 1st Lieutenant Herbert Schmidt, had the only map for the Dombås area. He used it to brief his five platoon leaders before the operation.

Landing in Dombås

Dombås is located in the mountains at an elevation of about 2,100 feet, but the surrounding mountains are much higher. The German paratroopers had no winter or camouflage clothing. The soldiers had provisions for only three days, and ammunition was limited to what could be carried. Each aircraft carried four weapon canisters that were dropped separately. These contained a large number of automatic weapons, including 22 MG-34 machine guns. Some of these canisters could not be located in the darkness after the drop.

The element of surprise was lost when the German aircraft stayed below the clouds and followed the railway on their flight to Dombås. They soon received antiaircraft fire from Norwegian forces, and one aircraft, carrying part of the communications platoon, was damaged by antiaircraft fire and forced to make an emergency landing near Lillehammer. All survived the crash, but the Germans opened fire on approaching Norwegian troops. One German was killed and three wounded in the exchange that followed. Thirteen Germans were captured.

The German aircraft had difficulties finding suitable drop zones in the Dombås area since there were only a few breaks in the cloud cover and they were receiving heavy fire from Norwegian forces. Furthermore, the aircraft had to return quickly to Oslo because of low fuel levels and approaching darkness. According to Norwegian sources, the drops took place shortly after 6 pm, while some German sources say they took place from 7:45 until after 10 pm.

The paratroopers were dropped in different locations over a 30-kilometer area around Dombås, from Lora about 25 kilometers west of Dombås to Folkstua eight kilometers to its northeast. Not a single platoon was able to assemble all its personnel.

Lieutenant Schmidt and the 12 paratroopers in his aircraft jumped into an area six kilometers south of Dombås, along the rail line and road, and some of the weapons canisters could not be located after the drop.

The aircraft carrying the 1st Platoon under Lieutenant Becker dropped its paratroopers in the Folkstua area eight kilometers northeast of Dombås. One trooper was killed as he became entangled in power lines, and six were badly injured as the high winds dragged them along the ground. Some of the weapons containers could not be found. The wounded were left at a local farm.

First Lieutenant Ernst Mössinger’s 2nd Platoon was dropped near the Lie farm about three kilometers south of Dombås. One paratrooper was killed on landing. One Ju-52 from Mössinger’s platoon was shot down, with four killed and three wounded. Some paratroopers managed to jump southeast of Dombås before the aircraft crashed. Most of those who jumped before the crash were wounded in action with Norwegian forces and surrendered on April 15. Lieutenant Mössinger was able to assemble about two-thirds of his platoon and link up with Lieutenant Schmidt.

The 3rd Platoon, under Sergeant Bobrowski, landed on Hill 1173 on the eastern outskirts of Dombås. Seven paratroopers mistakenly exited the aircraft too early, over the town of Dombås. Two were killed in fighting with Norwegian forces and the rest were captured. Bobrowski’s platoon encountered Norwegian forces four kilometers south of Dombås, and two paratroopers were killed. The remainder of the platoon linked up with Lieutenant Schmidt on April 15.

The 4th Platoon, under Feldwebel Alexander Uhlig, overshot the target area and landed about two kilometers southeast of Lora along the Dombås-Åndalsnes rail line. Uhlig started moving his men in the direction of Dombås.

The communications platoon of 24 men landed near Hill 1578 about 12 kilometers southwest of Dombås. One paratrooper exited the aircraft too early. He reached Dombås, covered his uniform with civilian clothes, and managed to avoid capture until April 29. The rest of the platoon dug into the snow for the night.

“Stupidity”

The return of the German aircraft developed into a catastrophe. Only five of the 15 aircraft made it back to Oslo. Two landed at Værnes Airfield near Trondheim. The rest were shot down or forced to make emergency landings as they ran out of fuel. One aircraft made an emergency landing in Sweden.

The Germans had the misfortune of landing near the location of the Norwegian 2nd Battalion, 11th Infantry Regiment. The Norwegians had moved this unit to Dombås on April 13 to take part in the planned Allied operation against Trondheim. The isolated groups of German paratroopers, with no maps and in over six feet of snow, soon found themselves under attack by superior forces.

Lieutenant Schmidt tried to reach Dombås on April 14 in a commandeered vehicle but ran into two truckloads of Norwegians from the 11th Infantry. The Germans attacked, forcing the Norwegian troops to retreat. However, Lieutenant Schmidt and one paratrooper were seriously wounded and another was captured. The move against Dombås was abandoned. The wounded paratroopers eventually died.

The Germans entrenched themselves on two farms, Ulekleiv and Hagevoll, in excellent positions that dominated the surrounding landscape. Lieutenant Schmidt’s group grew to 63 when the men from Bobrowski’s 3rd Platoon joined them on April 15. Although suffering from a severe stomach wound, Schmidt did not relinquish command.

The German airdrop near Dombås worried the Norwegian authorities since members of the government and the royal family were located nearby and the gold reserve of the Norwegian Central Bank was being evacuated by train from Lillehammer to Åndalsnes. Intelligence was scarce, and the Norwegians had only the vaguest idea of the size and location of the German force.

General Otto Ruge, commander of the Norwegian Army, was critical of the disorganized and piecemeal actions by his troops. He wrote that the first force sent against the Germans allowed itself to be ambushed and that a second attempt by larger forces on April 15 repeated the “stupidity.”

Buying Time

Two platoons of Norwegian troops, commanded by Captain Eilif Austlid, were involved in security operations for members of the government. This force was ambushed by Schmidt’s men, and two Norwegians were killed. Captain Austlid personally led a counterattack that reached to within a few meters of the German positions. He and four of his soldiers were killed, and the counterattack failed. Twenty-eight Norwegians were captured. During the day the German paratroopers cut the rail and telephone lines.

The Norwegians renewed their attacks on April 16 with one company of the 5th Infantry Regiment from the south while a company from the 11th Infantry Regiment, supported by mortars, attacked from the north. There was a break in the fighting when the Germans sent a prisoner they had captured the previous day to the Norwegian lines under a flag of truce. Lieutenant Schmidt, through the returned soldier, informed the Norwegians that their fire endangered the lives of Norwegian prisoners that the Germans had in their positions, and he demanded that the Norwegians surrender.

The response by the Norwegian commander was to send a German sergeant they had captured to Schmidt’s position with a demand that the Germans surrender.

Lieutenant Schmidt had an ulterior motive for entering into these pointless negotiations. He had concluded that the position he occupied had become untenable, and he tried to gain time to move his men to new positions during the night. The German disengagement benefited from a sudden blizzard that, along with the darkness, concealed their movements. The Germans attacked and drove back the force opposing them in the north, then disengaged and withdrew south toward Dovre. The withdrawing Germans encountered a platoon-sized Norwegian security force at a bridge but drove it back in a sharp night attack.

Other Norwegian forces meanwhile continued to mop up German paratroopers who had not managed to join Schmidt. Lieutenant Becker’s platoon approached Dombås from the northeast and ran into units of the 11th Infantry Regiment. One paratrooper died in the ensuing fight, and the rest surrendered.

Sergeant Uhlig’s 4th Platoon tried to reach Dombås from the west. One paratrooper was killed in an engagement with Norwegian troops. Uhlig decided that he had no option but to surrender his 22 men near Kolstad on April 16. One day earlier, Lieutenant Gerhold’s communications platoon had descended the northern slope of the mountains on which they had landed, intending to reach the Dombås-Åndalsnes road and approach Dombås from the west. They were soon surrounded by Norwegian troops, and 23 were captured near the Bottheim railroad station about nine kilometers from Dombås.

Surrounded Without Support

The main German force sought new positions at daybreak on April 17, settling on the small Lindse farm about 800 meters from the main road and less than 300 meters from the railroad. The stone barn on the farm became the main German position. The Norwegians believed that most of the Germans were still at Ulekleiv, and they continued to send reinforcements to that area. The 1st Battalion, 11th Infantry Regiment was replaced by the 2nd Battalion of the same regiment. A 40mm antiaircraft gun was also brought in.

The Norwegians realized at the end of the day that the whole German force had withdrawn to new positions. The fact that Norwegian forces were ambushed on the morning of April 17 by the Germans at Lindse provided the final proof that the Germans had escaped the encirclement at Ulekleiv. Major Kjøs and part of the vanguard of the Norwegians caught in the ambush were captured, and other Norwegian forces withdrew to Dover.

By morning of April 18, the Germans were again surrounded in their new positions with the 1st Battalion, 11th Infantry Regiment to the north and the reinforced Company 1 of the 5th Infantry Regiment to the south. The Norwegians also used the antiaircraft gun against the German positions. They began their attack early on April 18, and the situation soon became desperate for the Germans.

The only relief received by the paratroopers arrived on April 18, when a Ju-52 dropped badly needed supplies. The supply containers were dropped without parachutes, and 90 percent became unusable.

Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring, commander of the Luftwaffe, refused to send reinforcements despite urgent requests. Still hoping for an early link-up with the forces in Trondheim, General Nickolas von Falkenhorst, German commander in Norway, planned a second airborne operation on April 16 to bypass the Norwegian defenses in the Lake Mjøsa area. The operation was cancelled after the Luftwaffe declined to participate because of “technical difficulties.”

The German paratroopers at Lindse were completely surrounded by the morning of April 19. The Norwegians had also obtained reinforcements in the form of a howitzer mounted on a flatbed rail car and operated by a crew of British Royal Marines. The German ammunition supply was running low, and Schmidt sent his second in command, Lieutenant Ernst Mössinger (he also commanded the 2nd Platoon) to negotiate an acceptable surrender. The Norwegian commander, Major Arne Sunde, demanded an unconditional surrender, and the Germans complied at 11:30 am on April 19.

Consequences of the Operation

Forty-five Germans became Norwegian prisoners, among them six severely wounded. The wounded were sent to a Norwegian hospital in Ålesund, while those who were not wounded, including others mopped up by Norwegian forces, were sent to a prisoner-of-war camp near the city of Kristiansund. The prisoners were freed by German forces on May 6, and many later participated in operations at Narvik under the command of Lieutenant Mössinger.

The exact number of German casualties in the operation is not known but it is believed to include 23 killed (including pilots), 25 badly wounded, and 14 missing. Norwegian losses are placed at 20 killed and about 20 wounded.

The German airborne operation at Dombås, although a failure, had important psychological consequences. Norwegian and Allied commanders tied up badly needed forces in anticipation of similar threats in other areas. The operation also had repercussions at the highest level of the German armed forces. Court-martial charges were brought against General Süssmann for having allowed the badly prepared operation to proceed in weather conditions unsuitable for airborne operations. The charges were dropped in June 1940, probably due to Göring’s intervention.

Securing Narvik

Narvik is located 210 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, and the distance to Oslo is approximately 1,450 kilometers. Narvik is an excellent ice-free port, and Swedish iron ore was shipped through this town when the Baltic Sea was frozen.

The Germans did not plan to use airborne forces at Narvik. The city was well beyond the range of all but specialized German aircraft until they could secure suitable airfields in central Norway. Furthermore, the Germans believed they would meet only token resistance. When this assumption failed to materialize, Maj. Gen. Eduard Dietl and his 2,000 troops from the 3rd Mountain Division found themselves isolated about 600 kilometers from the nearest friendly forces in Trondheim.

The Germans captured Narvik and the nearby military depot on April 9, but were unable to secure Bardufoss Airfield because of stiffening resistance from rapidly mobilizing Norwegian units that went on the offensive within two weeks of the landing. The British were also bringing forces into the region.

The Germans made a concerted effort to supply the Narvik forces starting within a few days of the landing. These were primarily by long-range aircraft, seaplanes, and aircraft with modified fuel capacity. Eleven Ju-52s landed on a frozen Hartvig Lake on the evening of April 13 with a battery of mountain artillery from Berlin. Three aircraft were damaged while landing, and one was destroyed by Norwegian aircraft. The remaining Ju-52s froze into the ice, and all, except one, were unable to take off and were eventually captured by the Norwegians. After this ill-fated experience on the lake, the Germans turned to airdrops and the use of seaplanes.

Germany received permission from Sweden to send supplies and personnel to General Dietl through Sweden on April 17 and 18, provided they were of “a humanitarian nature.” It is estimated that the provisions received by this route in April were sufficient to sustain 4,000 troops for three months. Some military personnel apparently disguised as Red Cross workers were also brought in. The Germans were not permitted to transport weapons, ammunitions, or reinforcements through Sweden.

Despite organizing the 2,100 sailors from the crews of destroyers sunk by the British in recent naval actions into infantry units, reinforcements became the most critical problem after Norwegian forces drove the Germans from the high mountain plateau on May 22. The front was near collapse, pressure was mounting, the line of retreat was threatened, and the trickle of reinforcements was not sufficient to replace losses or turn the tide of battle.

Reinforcing the Narvik Pocket

With his forces near collapse, Dietl needed additional troops to shore up the front and give some of his mountain troops a chance to rest. General Falkenhorst had no further airborne forces and asked OKW on May 15 for one parachute battalion. He argued persuasively that the valiant efforts by the troops in Lieutenant General Valentin Feurstein’s 2nd Mountain Division, driving north from Trondheim, would be in vain if Narvik could not be held until they arrived.

Falkenhorst’s request produced results. Hitler ordered the rest of the 1st Battalion, 1st Parachute Regiment, under Captain Walther, to Narvik. This force had participated in the operations in Holland on May 10. It was anticipated that this unit should start arriving in Narvik within a week or 10 days.

In the meantime, Falkenhorst’s command had carried out expedited and abbreviated parachute training for some of the mountain troops. The first group of these—65 men from Company 2, 137th Mountain Infantry Regiment—parachuted into the Bjørnefjell area adjacent to the Swedish border where Dietl’s headquarters was located on May 23. The Germans expected 10 percent casualties in the operation, but only two soldiers sustained minor injuries. Another drop of mountain troops was made the following day—this time involving 55 troops from Company 1 of the 137th. Fifty-four troops from Company 1, 137th arrived by parachute on May 25, as did 44 troops from Company 2, 138th Regiment. These were rushed to Narvik before May 28 when an Allied and Norwegian amphibious assault captured that city.

The remainder of the 1st Battalion, 1st Parachute Regiment began arriving on May 26, when 81 men parachuted into the Bjørnefjell area. Inclement weather delayed the next lift until May 28 when 46 paratroopers were dropped. Another 134 arrived on May 29, and the remaining 46 were deployed on June 2. Although 599 troops arrived in the Narvik area between May 23 and June 2, Dietl concluded that he needed another 1,500 to 2,000 men to replace losses and hold out.

The airdrop of weapons and ammunition for the Germans at Narvik was not without mishap. The airdrop of 15 captured Polish antitank guns was unsuccessful as all weapons became unserviceable. About 30 percent of the infantry weapons that were airdropped were badly damaged and unusable. A slightly lower percentage of the ammunition parachuted into the Narvik pocket was damaged to the point where it was useless.

The OKW was searching frantically at the end of May and early June for ways to bring Dietl the reinforcements he needed to hold out until General Feurstein arrived from the south. Dietl was promised—as soon as the weather permitted—two parachute battalions, about 1,800 men and practically the whole German airborne force, and another 1,000 mountain troops who were to be given a quick parachute course.

Norwegian Armistice

In early June, OKW planned a new operation to bring relief to the Narvik pocket. This involved landing a strong force about 90 miles north of Narvik at the same time as paratroopers captured Bardufoss Airfield. The plan included the transport of about 6,000 troops and a dozen tanks to Lyngefjord aboard the fast ocean liners Bremen and Europa.

Raeder pointed out to Hitler that the operation could not be launched before June 20, too late to help Dietl, and he suggested that it would be quicker and easier for the Luftwaffe to seize Bardufoss with a parachute and glider force and then bring in troops by transports. Hitler decided that both operations, Lyngefjord and Bardufoss, were to be carried out simultaneously.

The final Norwegian offensive against Dietl was under way at the end of May, but support from Allied forces was not forthcoming because of their decision to evacuate Norway on May 24. The evacuation from Dunkirk was under way, and it was decided that all available forces were needed to defend Great Britain. The news was kept from the Norwegians for security reasons.

Any chance of forcing a German surrender or driving Dietl’s forces into internment in Sweden came to an end on June 1, when the Norwegians were informed about the British evacuation. Requests from the Norwegians for a postponement of the evacuation or air support and supplies for Norwegian forces to continue their offensive were denied. In the end, the Norwegian government opted for exile. An armistice with the Germans was concluded on June 10.

Aftermath of the Norwegian Operations

Colonel Bruno Oswald Bräuer was promoted to major general in 1942, and he commanded the 9th Airborne Division in 1945. He relinquished his command for medical reasons in April of that year. Bräuer was captured by the British and extradited to Greece where he was tried for crimes dealing with the deportation of Jews. He was executed by firing squad in Athens on May 20, 1947.

Captain Erich Walther participated in the airborne operations in Holland between the initial invasion of Denmark and Norway and his later involvement at Narvik. Walther rose rapidly in rank and ended the war as a major general. He was captured by the Soviets in May 1945 and died in a POW camp in 1947.

Captain Kurt Gröschke rose to the rank of colonel and was the commander of the 15th Parachute Regiment in 1945. He was captured by the British and released in 1946.

First Lieutenant von Brandis and his company participated in the airborne operation against the Dordrecht bridges in Holland on May 10, 1940. The company was decimated in heavy fighting, and Lieutenant von Brandis was killed.

Dombås holds the unfortunate distinction of being the place where the first U.S. military casualty of World War II, Captain Robert M. Losey of the Army Air Corps who served on the defense attaché’s staff in Helsinki, Finlnd, lost his life. Losey had been ordered to Norway to assist in the evacuation of the embassy staff and other U.S. citizens. He was killed by a bomb fragment on April 21, 1940. Hermann Göring sent a letter of regrets and condolences to the commander of the U.S. Army Air Corps, Major General Henry H. Arnold, a few days after the incident. The citizens of Dombås erected a memorial to Captain Losey in 1987.

First Lieutenant Herbert Schmidt recovered from his wounds and wrote a book about the Dombås operation in 1941, Die Fallschirmjäger von Dombas. Schmidt was killed by the French Resistance in 1944.

Major General Wilhelm Süssmann commanded the 7th Air Division during the invasion of Crete in 1941. He was killed when the glider in which he was riding crashed.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Peter Suciu

Economics, Americas

Well, cheaper, anyways.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The aircraft’s maker, Lockheed Martin, has also done its part to bring the sustainability cost per flying hour down by some 40 percent—meaning that the F-35 costs less to fly per hour, which is notable as the hours flown each year are set to increase.

On the one hand, the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter is the arguably the most lethal and versatile aircraft of the modern era. Three unique variants have been produced so that the aircraft can fit the needs of the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and United States Marine Corps. It is an agile aircraft that has radar-jamming abilities, supersonic speed and stealth capabilities. It has been widely adopted by American allies and partners and could remain in service well into the 2070s.

On the other hand it is the most expensive military platform to date and by the end of the program could cost $1.5 trillion dollars. To put that in perspective, as of August 31, the federal debt held by the public was $20.83 trillion.

From another perspective, that $1.5 trillion figure would be for the life of the aircraft, which is expected to be from now until the 2070s and could account for 3,000 or more aircraft.

Last month, Congress took another look at the costs of the F-35 during an oversight and accountability hearing, and in the spotlight was the Joint Strike Fighter's logistical IT system. According to DefenseNews, the Department of Defense (DoD) Office of the Inspector General had reported earlier this year that millions of additional dollars were spent in the form of labor hours by military personnel to manually track the plane's spare parts as the electronic logistical one continued to have problems.

Software upgrades could be on the way.

Earlier this month it was announced that the Tech Refresh 3 program for the fifth-generation stealth fighter will include an upgrade of the jet's core processor and memory as well as replacement of its Panoramic Cockpit Display. Other “improvements” will include a radar upgrade along with some hardware tweaks to the hardware for the weapons-handling.

Maturing Aircraft Means Lower Costs 

As Steven P. Bucci, visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, noted in his story for Defense News, the DoD has been able to leverage its buying power and that has driven down the cost of each F-35A to around $80 million a full year earlier than planned. That means the fifth-generation F-35 now costs less than the F-15EX, a less capable but still significantly updated fourth-generation aircraft, which costs around $88 million each.

Moreover, the aircraft’s maker, Lockheed Martin, has also done its part to bring the sustainability cost per flying hour down by some 40 percent—meaning that the F-35 costs less to fly per hour, which is notable as the hours flown each year are set to increase.

Yet, it isn't all good news for the F-35 and Lockheed Martin. Last month the UK announced that it could reduce its order of the advanced stealth aircraft by half. The aircraft has also become a sticking point in the Middle East peace process as Israel has expressed concerns over the United Arab Emirates plans to acquire the F-35.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Flickr.