The National Interest

Kris Osborn

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These small drones would help squads keep track of the location of enemy units during combat.

Under heavy enemy small arms fire, seeking cover behind walls and under rocks, dismounted, infantry units are often at a loss to know enemy positions and movements. Many enemy maneuvers are inside buildings, hidden by mountainous terrain or otherwise obscured from view by overhead drones and aerial surveillance. Closing with an enemy in the close-in-fight, often called Close Quarter Battle (CQB), requires an ability to adjust in seconds to unanticipated enemy actions, developments which in many cases are almost impossible to predict. 

Having an organic, individually operated forward mini-drone, however, might enable infantry to look on the other side of a ridge, see into the next room in a building or simply offer that “unblinking eye” in otherwise inaccessible areas. 

This tactical reality is exactly why the U.S. Army is now fast-tracking larger numbers of a tiny three-pound drones to, as Army documents explain it, “provide the squad with an organic ‘quick look.’”

It’s called the Soldier Borne Sensor (SBS), a tiny mini-drone intended to give soldiers on the move a quick look around a corner, eyes into a building or over-the-ridge glance at enemy positions, providing an unprecedented tactical advantage. 

“At a total system weight of less than three pounds, SBS minimizes the transport burdens placed on the squad while providing situational awareness to one kilometer with fifteen minutes of endurance,” the Army’s Small Unmanned Aircraft System Strategy states.

The small platform consists of a hand-held mini-helicopter-like drone and a small soldier-held viewing screen engineered to work in tandem with one another to offer “forward eyes” to individual soldiers on-the-move. The Army is now in the process of acquiring thousands of these SBS systems, following several years of development. One such system bought by the Army is the Black Hornet Personal Reconnaissance System made by FLIR. 

The 2020 SUAS Strategy document, written by the Army’s “Maneuver Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate,” delineates the strategic and tactical intent for the mini-drone system, explaining that it can give “scout squads” under enemy fire in a platoon a unique ability to “surveil danger areas.” 

“SBS enables infantry squads to surveil target areas, develop a scheme of maneuver, and enhance survivability in and out of enemy contact. This system facilitates decision-making, protects the force, and enables movement and maneuver at the tactical edge of the battlefield,” the strategy says. 

The Army’s ultimate goal, according to a 2018 service report, is to “field one SBS to nearly every squad in the Army, which includes more than 7,000 sqauds.” 

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, Europe

With victory at Stalingrad close at hand, the Soviets launched Operation Gallop to liberate the Lower Don Basin.

As Adolf Hitler’s vaunted Sixth Army lay in its death throes in the ruins of Stalingrad, German forces to the west of the city faced their own kind of hell. The inner ring of the Russians’ iron grip at Stalingrad was tasked with the total destruction of German and other Axis troops within the city, but Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin wanted more. In conjunction with the Soviet High Command (STAVKA), Stalin set forth an ambitious plan designed to liberate the Don Basin from Kursk in the north to the Sea of Azov in the south, bringing the vital agricultural and mineral-rich area once more under Russian control.

Operation Gallop: Striking the Southern Flank

Germany’s allied armies were a shambles. The Hungarian Second Army and the Italian Eighth Army, positioned along the upper Don River, were shattered by General Filipp Ivanovich Golikov’s Voronezh Front, causing a yawning gap south of the German Second Army, which was assigned to defend the Voronezh area.

Farther south, General Nikolai Fyodorovich Vatutin’s South West Front, despite heavy opposition, moved toward Voroshilovgrad and Starobelsk. In the Caucasus and along the Donets River, the German troops of Heeresgruppe A (Army Group A) were in a race to the death to escape being trapped by advancing armies of the Trans-Caucasus and the Stalingrad Fronts.

In mid-January, Stalin and STAVKA saw a very distinct possibility of forcing the entire southern flank of the German Army in the east to collapse. With a victory at Stalingrad all but assured, Soviet military planners developed operations aimed at pushing the Germans back to the Dniepr River. The more optimistic planners, including Stalin, hoped for an even bigger push.

A two-pronged attack was finally approved. Operation Skachok (Gallop) would use Vatutin’s South West Front to clear the southern Don Basin of the enemy and push him back to the Dniepr. On Vatutin’s right flank, Golikov’s Voronezh Front was ordered to take Kharkov and then follow the retreating Germans as far west as possible in an operation called Zvezda (Star).

The German Army in Disarray

The German forces facing Vatutin had been ground down by weeks of fighting and retreat. Lt. Gen. Fedor Mikhailovich Kharitonov’s Sixth Army and Lt. Gen. Vasilii I. Kuznetsov’s First Guards Army were fast approaching the Aydar River in the Starobelsk area, while the Third Guards Army under Lt. Gen. Dmitri Danilovich Lelyushenko was threatening to cross the Donets River west of Voroshilovgrad. South of Lelyushenko, Lt. Gen. Ivan Timofeevich Schlemin’s Fifth Tank Army was also moving toward the eastern bank of the Donets.

Vatutin also had a combined arms group commanded by Lt. Gen. Markian Mikhailovich Popov, which contained nearly half of the South West Front’s armor. In total, Vatutin had more than 500 tanks and about 325,000 men to fulfill his mission.

Facing the South West Front was a hodgepodge of German units in the process of trying to regain some kind of defensive line and command control. About 160,000 men and 100 tanks from several decimated divisions struggled to pull themselves into some kind of cohesive force to meet the advancing Soviet forces.

The First Panzer Army, commanded by General Eberhard von Mackensen, was just arriving from a grueling retreat from the Caucasus. It had about 40 combat-ready tanks and an estimated 40,000 troops. Army Abteilung Hollidt was a conglomeration of infantry and panzer division remnants. Commanded by General Karl Hollidt, the unit had about 100,000 men and 60 tanks. Another 20,000 troops came from various support and garrison units.

General Nikolai Fyodorovich Vatutin: A Gifted Strategist

Aware of the enemy disorganization facing him, Vatutin planned his actions accordingly. Born in 1901, Vatutin joined the Red Army in 1920. He saw service during the Russian Civil War and then attended the Frunze Academy, graduating in 1929. Furthering his career, Vatutin attended and graduated from the General Staff Academy and served on the General Staff from 1937-1940. During the Battle for Moscow, he distinguished himself as chief of staff of the Northwestern Front, and in 1942 he was named commander of the South West Front.

Vatutin was considered a gifted strategist, and his opinions were highly valued. He was enthusiastic about the possibility of liberating the Lower Don Basin and destroying the German units defending it, and STAVKA gave him great latitude in forming his plan of attack, which he worked out with his army commanders and staff.

The main blow was to come from the First Guards and Third Guards Armies, which would take Stalino and then Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. This action, supported by Group Popov and the Fifth Tank Army, would trap most of the German units on the Donets River Line south of Kharkov. Divisions of the Southern Front, on Vatutin’s left flank, would cooperate by advancing along the Sea of Azov to Rostov and beyond.

In theory, the plan was a good one. Intelligence reports indicated that the Germans were in a state of near panic. Other reports stated that enemy troops were hastily withdrawing from the entire area, which gave Vatutin the view that his operation was a means to crush a beaten and demoralized foe.

Strengthening Heeresgruppe Süd

The Soviet assessments were wrong to a large degree. Although the Germans were disorganized, commanders were working together to retain a viable fighting force. German supply lines were much closer since the retreat from the Stalingrad sector, and the ability to form ad hoc units around regimental and divisional cadre was succeeding.

There was also another major factor working for the Germans. Field Marshal Erich von Manstein was in command of the area slated for the Soviet offensive. Architect of the 1940 Ardennes strike against France and the conqueror of Sevastopol in 1942, von Manstein was regarded as having one of the best strategic and tactical minds in the Wehrmacht.

Although the divisions of his Heeresgruppe (Army Group) Don, which became Heeresgruppe Süd (South) in mid-February, were battered, the German commander was already planning a response for what he correctly assumed to be a major Soviet attack in the Don Basin. He knew the Red Army supply lines had greatly lengthened as his own decreased, making it difficult for Soviet armor to receive proper fuel and ammunition replenishment. He also knew that although the Russians had superiority in manpower and equipment their reserves were lacking in numbers for a prolonged attack and breakthrough.

Von Manstein was also lucky in another regard. While the debacle at Stalingrad was still being played out, he had managed to talk Hitler into allowing most of the German forces in the Caucasus to withdraw before being cut off. By the end of January, many of those units, including the First Panzer Army, were regrouping in the Don Basin. The Fourth Panzer Army, commanded by Col. Gen. Hermann Hoth, was also in the process of getting out of the Soviet trap.

As he pressed the issue of the vulnerability of the entire southern sector of the Eastern Front, von Manstein persuaded the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht–German Armed Forces High Command) to release six divisions and two infantry brigades from Western Europe and send them to Heeresgruppe Süd. Among the divisions released were three superbly equipped SS divisions, which had been resting and refitting after the hard-fought 1942 campaign.

The Soviet Offensive Begins

On February 1, 1943, Golikov’s Voronezh Front began its attack to liberate Kharkov. Excellent progress was made during the first days of the offensive, with General Ivan Danilovich Chernyakowskii’s 60th Army taking Kursk on February 8. As Kursk fell, Golikov’s 40th and 69th Armies, along with the Third Tank Army, advanced on Kharkov, slamming their way through the undermanned defenses of the German Second Army.

Two days before Golikov’s offensive began, Vatutin launched Operation Gallop. On January 29, Kuznetsov’s First Guards Army crossed the Aydar River and hit General Gustav Schmidt’s 19th Panzer Division in the Kabanye–Kromennaya area along the Dnester River. Reeling under a series of hammer blows, the Germans were forced to retreat under a constant barrage of Soviet artillery.

On Kuznetsov’s right flank, Kharitonov’s Sixth Army, after crossing the Aydar, smashed into elements of Colonel Herbert Michaelis’s 298th Infantry Division. With the bulk of the 298th dug in along the Krasnaya River, the forward elements of the division were brushed aside by the advancing Soviets.

Pursuing the retreating Germans, Kharitonov’s 15th Rifle Corps made it to the Krasnaya before being stopped by the 298th’s makeshift defenses on the western bank. Under heavy fire, the 350th Rifle Division forced crossings north and south of Kupyansk and established bridgeheads on the German side of the river, but further progress was retarded until reinforcements arrived on the scene.

January 30 found the First Guards Army crossing the Krasnaya near the town of Krasny Liman. Pleased with the progress of his assault troops, Vatutin ordered Group Popov to advance and form up at the juncture of the First Guards and Sixth Armies in order to exploit any major breaches in the German line.

For the next few days, Vatutin continued to receive good news from the front. His planning of Gallop seemed to be validated as reports came from the First Guards Army stating that Kremennaya had fallen, the 19th Panzer Division was retreating toward Lisichansk to the south, and that Krasny Liman was also taken.

In the Sixth Army sector, Kharitonov finally crossed the Krasnaya River after the 298th Infantry Division, fearing encirclement by advancing units of the Sixth Army and the Voronezh Front’s Third Tank Army, abandoned its positions on the eastern bank. From February 2-5, the 298th fought through Soviet units already in its rear before finally reaching a new defensive line around Chuguyev on the Northern Donets River.

Sixth Army units also forced General Georg Postel’s 320th Infantry Division to retreat from the Krasnaya. While the Sixth Rifle Division attempted to surround Postel’s division, the 267th Rifle Division and 106th Rifle Brigade drove on to Izyum, which would fall on February 5.

Sensing victory, Vatutin sent in Group Popov to act as the vanguard of the Soviet attack. A counterattack by some of the First Panzer Army’s XL Panzer Corps, commanded by General Sigfrid Henrici, halted Popov’s advance in several areas. Other elements of Henrici’s corps struck the First Guards Army around Slavyansk, forcing Kuznetsov to halt his attack. Farther south, Lelyushenko’s Third Guards Army had now crossed the Donets River near Voroshilovgrad and was engaged in breaking through the defenses of Army Abteilung Hollidt.

Preventing a Soviet Breakthrough

The battle around Slavyansk was pivotal for the Germans trying to stop Vatutin’s push westward. As long as the town was in von Manstein’s hands, Vatutin would have to extend his forces to bypass it, lengthening his supply lines and offering his flanks to German counterattacks.

By February 4, Vatutin found himself facing an increasingly stubborn opponent. Elements of Henrici’s XL Panzer Corps were clinging to Slavyansk, fending off the First Guards Army with vicious counterattacks. Kuznetzov threw more units into the battle for the town, but Henrici’s men held firm.

About 55 kilometers east of Slavyansk, the First Guards Army’s Sixth Guards Rifle Corps, commanded by General Ivan Prokofevich Alferov, was embroiled in a savage fight for control of Lisichansk. General Maximilian Fretter-Pico’s XXX Army Corps was charged with the defense of the sectors north and south of the town.

General Karl Casper’s 335th Infantry Division, newly arrived from France, was one of the divisions tasked with defending the area south of Lisichansk near the town of Krymskoye. Alferov’s 44th Guards Rifle Division gained a small bridgehead on the western bank of the Donets and fought off repeated counterattacks by the 335th. Seeing that further assaults were a waste of manpower, Casper ordered his men to cordon off the bridgehead, hoping that reinforcements would be sent to break the Soviet line.

At Lisichansk, Alferov’s 78th Rifle Division tried an end run. The 78th crossed the Northern Donets at several points, but once again German forces moved in to seal them off. For the moment, it was a stalemate.

Frustrated, Vatutin threw the 41st Guards Rifle Division into the Lisichansk battle. Defended by Schmidt’s 19th Panzer, the Soviets had to clear the town street by bloody street. Aided by elements of the 78th Guards and 44th Guards Rifle Divisions, the Russians finally forced Schmidt’s men out of the town to positions in the southwest. The Sixth Guards Rifle Corps followed fast on their heels, but Schmidt was able to work his units like a boxer, bobbing, weaving, and shifting constantly to frustrate any further breakthrough.

Negotiating a Retreat with Hitler

On February 6, Hitler called von Manstein to his headquarters at Zaporozhye. The German leader was surprisingly docile, almost apologetic, as he opened the conversation by taking full responsibility for the Stalingrad disaster. Von Manstein was taken aback by the statement because Hitler never blamed himself for any of the misfortunes suffered by the German Army.

With the surprising admission out of the way, the two men turned to the situation at hand. Von Manstein was blunt as he began explaining the position of his Army Group. He told Hitler that under no circumstances could the area between the Don and the Donets be held with the existing forces available.

“The only question is whether, in trying to hang on to the whole basin, we want to not only lose the area but also Heeresgruppe Don,” he said. “We will also eventually lose Heeresgruppe A. The alternative is to abandon part of the Basin at the right moment to avert the catastrophe threatening to overtake us.”

According to von Manstein, Hitler remained “utterly composed” during the ensuing conversation. Continuing, he told Hitler that trying to hold the entire Basin would allow the Soviets to send strong enough forces to slice through the thinly held German line and envelop the entire southern wing of the Eastern Front. Therefore, he proposed using the First Panzer Army and the Fourth Panzer Army, which were facing General Andrei Ivanovich Yeremenko’s Southern Front, to form a strike force to intercept the forces that Vatutin undoubtedly already had in mind for his continued advance.

Moving the Fourth Panzer Army back from the Lower Don would mean giving up the area between the Lower Don and the Mius River to the armies of Yeremenko’s Southern Front, but it would also shorten the German line. To protect the southern flank, Army Abteilung Hollidt would also have to withdraw to the Mius. It was a risky plan, but the alternative meant almost certain disaster.

When von Manstein finished, it was Hitler’s turn. The Führer could find no flaws in the plan, but his aversion to giving up ground to the enemy was still paramount. He argued that every foot of land cost the Russians men and materials—much more than it cost the Germans. There were also political considerations, such as the effect such a withdrawal would have on Turkey, which was watching developments in Southern Russia very carefully.

Hitler promised reinforcements, cajoled, and used his famous charm and eloquence to convince von Manstein to remain on the Don, but von Manstein would not budge. The impasse went on most of the afternoon, but then Hitler suddenly gave in. Finally having the Führer’s blessing, von Manstein hurriedly flew back to his Stalino headquarters to begin issuing orders for the retreat.

A Fighting Withdrawal

Unless an early thaw suddenly hit the area, armored and mechanized units scheduled to pull back would have little problem reaching the Mius ahead of the Soviets. The infantry units of the Fourth Panzer Army and Army Abteilung Hollidt were a different matter. Vulnerable to Russian armored and mechanized forces, the retreating infantry would have to leave a rear guard to conduct a fighting withdrawal while main elements of the division remained on guard against Soviet ambushes and armored raids.

The Soviets were by no means idle as the Germans prepared to withdraw to the shorter Mius Line. The South Front’s 44th Army took the city of Azov-on-the-Don. Around Salvyansk, where fighting was still raging, Red Army units also took the town of Kramatorsk, some 15 kilometers south of the city.

The following day, February 8, Kharitonov’s Sixth Army liberated Andreyevka on the eastern bank of the Northern Donets, about 50 miles southeast of Kharkov. The Soviet commander then turned his forces northeast to strike at Zmiyev, which was on the river’s western bank. If Kharitonov could take the town and hold it, the way would be open for an attack on Kharkov from the south.

Kharitonov’s spearhead ran headlong into the 2nd Regiment of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) Panzergrenadier Division commanded by SS Standartenführer (Colonel) Theodore Wisch. Wisch’s 1st Battalion, under SS Sturmbannführer (Major) Hugo Kraas, gave the advancing Russians a bloody nose at a small village northeast of Zmiyev. Supported by assault guns, Kraas’s men counterattacked, driving the Soviets back.

Late morning found the Russians launching wave after wave of infantry against the village, but the SS held firm. The Soviets then proceeded to attack up and down the line of Wisch’s regiment. Supported by assault guns, some panzer companies, engineers, and a flak unit, Wisch successfully held his positions while causing heavy casualties to the Soviet 111th Rifle Division.

Holding Slavyansk

Meanwhile, the battle for Slavyansk continued unabated. General Hans Freiherr von Funck’s 7th Panzer Division was charged with holding the town. The division was down to only 35 serviceable tanks as it fought to defend Slavyansk against units of General Nikolai Aleksandrovich Gagen’s 4th Guards Rifle Corps.

Born in 1895, Gagen was a tough no-nonsense commander who had fought in the brutal battles in the winter of 1941-1942 along the Volkhov River. He was determined to drive the Germans out of the town at whatever the cost. Gagen’s 195th Rifle Division had been roughly handled by the 7th Panzer as it tried to fight its way into the eastern part of the town. The Soviet general threw in the 57th Guards Rifle Division in an attempt to take the town from the north and west, but the Germans continued to hold, counterattacking when the situation required it.

Overhead, Red Air Force bombers and ground attack aircraft roamed the skies over the embattled town. German flak batteries tried to drive them away, but the Soviet pilots pressed on, dropping their deadly cargo on von Funck’s position. Red Army artillery also kept up a deadly fire, but the German panzergrenadiers and the engineers of the division were still able to hold the Russians at bay.

Holding Slavyansk helped give other units of the First Panzer Army a chance in their move westward. More of Henrici’s XL Panzer Corps was already arriving in the area to bolster the 7th Panzer. Although General Hermann Balck’s 11th Panzer Division had little more than a dozen tanks, it was a welcome sight to the men of von Funck’s command. Colonel Gerhard Grassman’s 333rd Infantry Division was in similar shape, having been savaged in earlier actions.

Both sides realized the value of the area between Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, where the German defenses ran along the Krivoy Torets River. If the Soviets could force the Germans from their tenuous positions, Vatutin could use Group Popov’s forces to make a deep thrust to the southwest, which would basically cut off the First and Fourth Panzer Armies from the rest of von Manstein’s Heeresgruppe. Accordingly, Vatutin pushed more artillery units into the area to give his troops an added punch.

Henrici’s XL Panzer Corps, weak as it was, defended the area with great skill. Coordinated attacks by the 4th Guards Tank Corps, 3rd Tank Corps, and the 4th Guards Rifle Corps were repulsed again and again. Balck’s 11th Panzer brazenly counterattacked Soviet armor with its few remaining tanks, leaving several T-34s blazing furiously on the battlefield, while the 7th Panzer fended off combined armored-infantry attacks, leaving hundreds of Red Army soldiers dead in the snow.

Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich-Carl von Steinkeller, commanding the 7th Panzer’s 7th Panzergrenadier Regiment, was in the thick of the fighting. Keeping on the move, von Steinkeller went from company to company urging his men to hold firm. An artillery observer followed him, ready to call in fire as the situation demanded. He would later receive the Knight’s Cross, in part for his actions during the battle.

Popov’s 4th Guards Tank Corps, commanded by Pavel Pavlovich Poluboyarov, succeeded in crossing the Krivoy Torets, threatening the rear of the 7th Panzer Division. Henrici immediately ordered Balck’s 11th Panzer Division, supported by a regiment from the 333rd Infantry Division, to counterattack. The Germans were met with the blazing guns of Poluboyarov’s tanks in front and from dug-in antitank weapons firing from the eastern bank of the Krivoy Torets.

Despite the Soviet fire, Balck and his infantry support were able to push the 4th Guards back along the river valley. Russian infantry accompanying Poluboyarov’s tanks panicked and fled, forcing the armor to fend for itself. German sources indicate that 45 Russian tanks were destroyed during the fighting—a significant loss that could only partially be made good by the reinforcements that were trickling in after a grueling journey over extended supply roads.

Vatutin, fed up with the inability of his forces to take Slavyansk and the positions along the Krivoy Torets, reshuffled his units for an all-out assault. Kuznetsov’s First Guards Army was ordered to coordinate with Popov for the attack, while Red Air Force units were given orders to support the operation at all costs.

Underestimating the German Position

The westward movement of German units, as per von Manstein’s plan, had given Vatutin, Golikov, and STAVKA a false sense of optimism. Hitler never conceded territory—every Russian commander knew that. He had shown it by letting his army freeze at the gates of Moscow and the stubborn refusal to retreat from Stalingrad only reinforced that view.

To the Russian mind the retreat of Heeresgruppe Don from the eastern Don Basin could only be viewed as a somewhat panicked rout. The stubborn resistance around Slavyansk was seen as a desperate attempt to save the fleeing German divisions from being overwhelmed by troops of the South West Front and the South Front, and it was assumed that once the Krivoy Torets line was taken the enemy would collapse.

To crack the German defenses Vatutin ordered the First Guards Army to shift south toward the Krasnoarmeiskoya sector, about 60 kilometers southwest of Slavyansk, to threaten the enemy rear. While that move was taking place, the 35th Guards Rifle Division of Gagen’s 4th Guards Rifle Corps forced units of the 333rd Infantry Division out of Lozovaya, a key rail center and supply dump located about 120 kilometers west of Slavyansk. Although the 35th Guards did not press their attack further, taking the town created a dangerous new bulge in the already extended and increasingly confusing lines of battle.

Part of Vatutin’s plan was to use Popov’s 4th Guards Tank and 3rd Tank Corps to smash their way into Slavyansk, paving the way for the 18th and 10th Tank Corps to strike southwest toward Artemovsk. With Slavyansk secured, the 4th Guards Tank and 3rd Tank Corps were to advance to link up with the First Guards Army at Krasnoarmeiskoye. Together, the two tank corps and units of the First Guards Army would then move southeast to Stalino to trap German units retreating from the eastern Don Basin.

As Vatutin prepared his operation, he received new orders from STAVKA. Golikov’s forces were making good progress toward Kharkov and, lulled by the belief that the Germans were indeed in the midst of a massive disorganized withdrawal to the Dniepr, Moscow saw a new chance to bag several enemy divisions in an even bigger pocket than Vatutin had planned.

Vatutin was therefore given the task of setting up blocking forces to prevent an enemy withdrawal to Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk. At the same time, he was ordered to advance southwest to cut off German and Axis forces in the Crimea. The STAVKA plan was overly ambitious by a wide margin, considering that the South West Front had already been in combat for more than two weeks and had received little in the way of supplies or reinforcements.

With Kharitonov’s Sixth Guards Army already supporting Golikov’s drive on Kharkov, it would again fall to Kuznetsov and Popov, along with Lelyushenko’s Third Guards Army, to accomplish this new mission. The First Guards Army would have the dual tasks of taking Slavyansk with Alferov’s Sixth Guards Rifle Corps while other units continued on a westward drive toward Zaporozhye. While this was occurring, Group Popov would make a lightning strike to Krasnoarmeiskoye, taking the town’s rail center and threatening the German rear.

Both Kuznetsov and Popov had voiced doubts about Vatutin’s earlier proposal. Their units had been manhandled by the Germans, and losses in men and equipment had still not been made good. The two Soviet generals had even graver doubts about the new plan. Supplying their forces as they moved south and west would be a nightmare with the existing supply line, which was already stretched to the limit.

Popov, in making his dash to the south, would have a total of about 180 tanks spread between his four tank corps. He had enough fuel for one refueling and ammunition for two resupplies. The infantry units in his command were in even worse shape. Despite STAVKA’s assertions that the Germans were on the run, the field commanders had a more cautious view of the situation.

Vatutin brushed aside his commanders’ doubts. These were orders from Moscow and had to be obeyed. The consequences of disobedience were well known, and no Soviet general in his right mind would think about going against the Kremlin at this stage of the war.

A Bold Penetration

Poluboyarov’s 4th Guards Tank Corps was chosen to spearhead the new attack. In the early hours of February 11, the Soviet armor began its 85 kilometer charge to Krasnoarmeiskoye. Led by the 14th Guards Tank Brigade, Polubarov’s forces cut through the German defenses and moved quickly down the one good road in the area. Following fast on the heels of the 14th were the 3rd Guards Mechanized Brigade, the 7th Ski Brigade, the 9th Guards Tank Brigade, and other corps units.

The deep thrust caught the Germans off guard, and by mid-morning the 14th Guards Tank Brigade had taken Krasnoarmeiskoye. With the town secured, the victorious Soviet troops helped themselves to the supplies left in a supply dump by the retreating enemy. The loot, especially the fuel and rations, was a welcome sight to the exhausted Russians.

Another important benefit, not readily apparent to the troops at the scene, was the severing of a vital German supply and communications line. With the capture of Krasnoarmeiskoye, the important Dnepropetrovsk-Mariupol rail line was rendered useless, leaving units of the First Panzer Army and Army Abteilung Hollidt in dire straits.

Group Popov’s dramatic march to Krasnoarmeiskoye threw German plans for defending the western Don Basin into disorder. The defense of Slavyansk was now in jeopardy due to the Soviet units to the south and west of the position. Von Mackensen was also in the midst of planning an attack to recapture Kramatorsk, but that too had to be put on hold in light of Popov’s success.

“Contain the Popov Tank Group”

Realizing the precarious position of the German troops holding the river lines to the east of Krasnoarmeiskoye, von Mackensen called upon the 5th SS Panzergrenadier Division Wiking. Commanded by SS Gruppenführer (Major General) Felix Steiner, the Wiking was a multinational division made up of Germans, Norwegians, Danes, Swiss, Finns, Walloons, and Estonians. It had just arrived in the Don Basin after an arduous retreat from the Caucasus, and its troops were exhausted.

As elements of the division were just passing through Stalino, Steiner received the following message: “PanzerArmy H.Q. to Division Wiking Urgent! Powerful enemy forces, Popov Tank Group, across the Donets near Izyum advancing southward toward Krasnoarmeiskoye. Wiking Division to immediately turn to the west. Attack toward Krasnoarmeiskoye. Contain the Popov Tank Group. (signed) von Mackensen”

Steiner immediately ordered his division to halt. His original orders were to head north from Stalino to the Konstantinovka area, and the advance units of his Germania Regiment were already headed in that direction. With his chief of staff, Steiner hastily issued new orders. Artillery was regrouped, and the Nordland Regiment was ordered to take the lead in the new westward advance while Germania turned its units around. The division’s Westland Regiment was also readied to join in the mad race to stop the Soviets.

With Nordland’s reconnaissance platoon leading the way, the regiment hastened toward Krasnoarmeiskoye. By the end of the day, the advance guard under SS Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Wolfgang Joerchel had overpowered weak Russian forward positions and taken Hill 180, which overlooked the entire Krasnoarmeiskoye sector. Joerchel quickly sent for other battalions of the regiment, which deployed south and west of the town to contain any further Soviet expansion in those directions.

Much of Group Popov was spread out along the road from Kramatorsk to Krasnoarmeiskoye in defensive positions. Von Mackensen realized that Wiking did not have the capability to contain and destroy the Red Army units along the entire length of the road, so he issued new orders to other divisions of his command.

The occupation of Slavyansk was still of utmost importance. Shuffling his forces, von Mackensen ordered two regiments of the 333rd Infantry Division to make a forced march toward Krasnoarmeiskoye. As the weary infantry slogged toward its new goal, the 7th Panzer and 11th Panzer, which were fighting in the areas around Slavyansk and east of the Krivoy Torets River, were ordered to turn their units westward. The 3rd Panzer Division was ordered to extend its line to take over the defensive positions of the two departing divisions. Von Mackensen planned to use the two divisions to strike at Group Popov’s extended supply line while Wiking and the two regiments of the 333rd kept up the pressure at Krasnoarmeiskoye.

The movements of the German divisions to their assembly areas were surprisingly fast, and the attack on the supply line began in the early hours of February 12. Soviet defense positions had been set up in each village along the supply road from Kramatorsk, and several strong antitank companies had been brought forward to reinforce the village bastions.

“Assistance urgently required. Long live Stalin!”

At Krasnoarmeiskoye Steiner planned to use the Germania to flank the town from the west. Supported by the two regiments of the 333rd, Germania was ordered to take the village of Grischino, northwest of the town. While the other Wiking regiments assaulted Krasnoarmeiskoye from the south, elements of von Funck’s 7th Panzer would attack from the east and secure the town’s northern flank.

Polubayarov, knowing his precarious position, had kept the units of his 4th Guards Tank Corps on high alert. Each subordinate commander was told to be ready for a German counterattack, and orders were given down to company level to fortify lines of approach that could be used by the enemy. Each soldier was to make the Germans pay for every meter of land, every house, and every hill that the Red Army had recently liberated on its valiant march to Krasmoarmeiskoye.

SS Standartenführer (Colonel) Jürgen Wagner commanded the Germania Regiment. His men stormed forward into a withering fire from the Soviet positions as they began the assault. Rifle and machine gun bullets slapped around them like angry bees, while tank and antitank shells tore into their ranks. Grenadiers fell, their blood turning the churned up snow a bright crimson, but Wagner continued to urge his men to attack.

The artillery commander of the Wiking, SS Oberführer (Senior Colonel) Herbert-Otto Gille, deftly moved his artillery battalions closer to support the attacks on Krasnoarmeiskoye and Grischino. Supported by flak units, Gille’s artillery smashed one Soviet position after another, giving the Germans a chance to rush forward.

Wagner swung his regiment around Grischino and finally broke into the northern edge of the town. At the South West Front headquarters a frantic radio message, which must have been garbled in transmission, was received from the Russian commander defending Grischino. “Have been attacked by 5 SS Panzer Divisions, can only hold out with difficulty. Assistance urgently required. Long live Stalin!”

Once inside the town, Wagner’s men found themselves bogged down in house-to-house fighting. It was the same for the other Wiking regiments at Krasnoarmeiskoye. In the close fighting, Gille’s artillery was of little use. The lines were too close, and the Soviets used every house as a strongpoint. For the time being the battle for both towns was a stalemate.

The 88s of Rovny

North of Krasnoaremiskoye elements of the 7th and 11th Panzer Divisions drove westward in a forced march. The Germans ran headlong into the 10th Tank Corps and the 41st Guards Rifle Division. Heavy defensive fire from the Russians forced the panzers to slow and finally stop their attack. Seeing that the Soviets could not be broken, the divisions turned toward Kramatorsk to prepare for a new attack on that town.

At Grischino and Krasnoarmeiskoye the battle continued unabated. Wiking had now been joined by the two regiments of the 333rd, and Gille’s artillery was hammering the Russian rear areas. In addition, the Soviets were now running short of supplies.

Although Henrici’s XL Panzer Corps had its various units involved in several actions stretching from Kramatorsk to Krasnoarmeiskoye, he still had the opportunity to disrupt the supply line to the 4th Guards Tank Corps. Armored reconnaissance companies fought running battles with Soviet supply columns trying to make their way south, and the roads were soon littered with flaming trucks. The hit-and-run tactics of the Germans struck as the Russians were spread out in single file and usually ended with the destruction of most of the supplies.

Poluboyarov, growing desperate, ordered the 9th Independent Guards Tank Brigade to try and breach the closing ring around Krasnoarmeiskoye. The 9th hit the Westland Regiment north of Krasnoarmeiskoye near the village of Rovny. More than a dozen tanks with mounted infantry pierced the German line and made a push toward the center of the village.

The regimental commander, SS Sturmbannführer Erwin Reichel, had just taken over after SS Sturmbannführer Harry Polewacz was killed in combat. Reichel ordered a battery of 88mm guns supported by Panzergrenadiers into the center of Rovny as the Soviets approached. When the Russians reached the interior of the village, the 88s destroyed almost all of the tanks. The stunned Russian survivors fled, leaving 12 blazing hulks and dozens of dead behind.

“Throw Everything in”

Vatutin was not about to give up on Group Popov. Gathering all available reserves, the Soviet general sent them to reinforce the spearhead at Krasnoarmeiskoye. When word was received that Russian reinforcements were headed south, new orders were sent to the scattered German forces of the First Panzer Army. The Wiking and the 11th Panzer Division were told to halt their attacks on February 14 and attempt to pin down the Russian forces at Krasnoarmeiskoye and Kramatorsk. Meanwhile, the battle to hold the Slavyansk area would continue. Von Mackensen also ordered Henrici to use whatever resources necessary to keep pressure on the supply columns following the reinforcements heading toward Poluboyarov’s 4th Guards Tank Corps.

Henrici angrily replied to the order, “What am I supposed to use? My men are stretched to the limit already.”

“Just do it,” von Mackensen replied. “Throw everything in. I don’t care how you do it—just get it done!”

While things were strained in the First Panzer Army, the situation around Kharkov was at a critical stage. By February 10, Golikov’s 40th and 69th Armies were battling on the outskirts of the city, with the recently arrived II SS Panzer Corps putting up fierce resistance. Bitter fighting raged for the next five days, and Hitler personally intervened, ordering the corps commander, SS Obergruppenführer (Lieutenant General) Paul Hausser, to hold the city at all costs.

Infuriated at what amounted to a death sentence for his men, Hausser disregarded the order and pulled his SS divisions out of Kharkov, forcing other defending German units to disengage as well. On February 16, Golikov reported to Moscow that Kharkov was once again in Soviet hands.

A Quartermaster’s Nightmare

Logistically, both sides were facing a quartermaster’s nightmare and both the German and Soviet commanders were in dire straits. With Kharkov gone and the Russians occupying Grischino and Krasnoarmeiskoye, the only supply line open to the First Panzer Army and Army Abteilung Hollidt was the railway that ran through Zaporozhye. The task of supplying German units by this route was hampered by the fact that a main bridge spanning the Dniepr River, destroyed during the 1941 Soviet retreat, had not yet reopened. Supplies had to be unloaded from trains and reloaded to trucks and wagons before making their way farther eastward.

Group Popov was in a similar situation. Reinforcements were trickling in to the 4th Guards Tank Corps but supplies were a different matter. Von Mackensen’s orders to Henrici were being carried out by ad hoc units and units taken away from their parent regiments. Although the Soviet armored columns came under some fire as they strove to reach Krasnoarmeiskoye, the supply formations continued to bear the brunt of the German attacks.

Some good news came to Vatutin on February 16 when the rest of the 7th Panzer Division, finally ordered to give up its defense of Slavyansk, pulled out and headed toward Krasnoarmeiskoye. Units of the First Guards Army finally were able to occupy the entire town, but the victorious Soviets were in no condition to pursue the 7th. The 3rd Panzer Division quickly lengthened its lines to cover the 7th as it raced southwest to join elements of the division already engaging Gagen’s 4th Tank Corps.

Von Manstein’s Plan to Take Kharkov

On February 17, Hitler flew to meet von Manstein at Zaporozhye. Not one to mince words, von Manstein laid out the situation as follows: “Army Abteilung Hollidt had just occupied the Mius River Line, followed closely by the South Front. For the time being, the line could be effectively defended.”

The First Panzer Army had halted the Soviets at Grischino and Krasmoarmeiskoye, but the issue there had still not been decided. Von Mackensen’s panzer army was also still involved in heavy fighting at Kramotorsk, Lisichansk, and the Slavyansk area, with the issue in all three sectors still in doubt. The forces retreating from Kharkov, now gathered under Army Abteilung Kempf, were withdrawing southwest toward Poltava and the Mozh River.

At first, Hitler refused to believe the seriousness of the situation. Already furious at the loss of Stalingrad, and then Kharkov, he could not believe that the Soviets still had the men and equipment to carry out another operation that could threaten the entire southern wing of his eastern armies. Von Manstein let him rant for a while before submitting a plan to save his threatened Heeresgruppe.

Von Manstein played his hand masterfully, laying out his formula to retake Kharkov. At the mention of recapturing the city, Hitler immediately calmed down and began to listen intently.

Kharkov could only be taken if the southern flank of the Heeresgruppe was secure, so von Manstein proposed consolidating Hausser’s SS Panzer Corps into one striking force, taking it away from the Kharkov sector and sending it southeast toward Pavlograd. This action would prevent any further Russian advance on Dnepropetrovsk.

At the same time, Col. Gen. Hermann Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army, which had made the bitter retreat from the Caucasus, would concentrate its units west of Zaporozhye. Together, the two forces would strike the elements of the First Guards Army and the Sixth Army that were advancing toward the vital Dniepr crossings while the First Panzer Army would once again take on Group Popov.

Throughout his briefing, von Manstein continuously played on the premise that the one condition necessary to retake Kharkov was the survival of the First Panzer Army and Army Abteilung Hollidt. When the Soviet threat in the southern Don Basin was eliminated, the Kharkov operation could begin.

Hitler Concedes Operational Control to Von Manstein

Although Hitler was swayed by von Manstein’s argument, he was not totally convinced of the plan. The following day, February 18, he again met with von Manstein to discuss the operation. Von Manstein was essentially calling for freedom to maneuver without micromanagement from Hitler or Berlin.

In another heated exchange, Hitler once again voiced his opinion that, although the number of Soviet units facing von Manstein looked impressive on paper, they were really burned-out shells of what were once divisions and brigades. Although he was partially correct, the armies that had taken Stalingrad were already on the move and the threat of the South Front bursting through Army Abteilung Hollidt’s Mius River line would more than overpower the existing German forces in the southern Don Basin.

In the midst of the meeting, von Manstein received reports that units of the First Guards Army had taken Pavlograd and Novomosskovsk, bringing the Soviets to within 20 kilometers of Dnepropetrovsk. Army Abteilung Hollidt also reported several small enemy penetrations along its Mius River defenses. The report also indicated that the Russians were consolidating around Kharkov while sending spearheads farther westward.

A report from Krasnoarmeiskoye indicated that the newly arrived elements of the 7th Panzer Division were trying to break the 4th Guards Tank Corps. Overcoming fierce resistance from the 14th Guards Tank Brigade, units of the 7th succeeded in taking the town center before being stopped by a Russian counterattack. On the western side of the town the Wiking Division ran headlong into defenses set up by the 12th Guards Tank Brigade and was immediately stalled by heavy defensive fire.

Von Manstein used these developments to hammer home his ideas for destroying the Soviet incursion in the Don Basin. He pointed out that once the muddy season arrived operations at the front would grind to a halt and the Russians could use their rail lines to resupply and reinforce their divisions holding positions deep inside the German lines.

With their men and materiél built up once more, the southern German forces would be in even greater danger of being pinned against the Sea of Azov, and Kharkov would be virtually untouchable. The next day, Hitler suddenly gave von Manstein what amounted to a carte blanche for operations in southern Russia and then climbed aboard his transport plane and left.

Krasnoarmeiskoye Falls to the Germans

The German field marshal wasted no time in implementing his plan. Krasnoarmeiskoye was hit hard by the 333rd Infantry Division and the Wiking Division, while the 7th Panzer Division swung north of the town. Poluboyarov’s units in the town were now caught in a vise that could only be loosened by attacks from the outside. Popov had already ordered his 3rd Tank Corps to relieve the embattled forces in the town as quickly as possible, but that attempt was soon thwarted.

While the 3rd Tank Corps was racing south, Balck’s 11th Panzer Division moved into blocking positions south of Kramatorsk near the village of Gavrilovka. As the 3rd Tank Corps sped toward Krasnoarmeiskoye its flank was shattered by a full-scale attack from Balck’s division. Burning Soviet tanks littered the landscape as the Russians desperately tried to regroup to meet the attack, but Balck’s men had already achieved their objective of halting the rescue attempt.

By the end of the day, Krasmoarmeiskoye was all but in German hands, Grischino had fallen, and Poluboyarov’s 4th Guards Tank Corps was nothing more than a skeleton of a unit with almost all of its tanks destroyed. Leaving the 333rd to mop up Poluboyarov’s corps, von Manstein ordered the Wiking to join the 7th Panzer and head north toward the leading elements of Group Popov’s 10th Tank Corps, which had moved into defensive positions around the town of Dobropolye.

February 20 was the final day for the Russian forces inside Krasnoarmeiskoye. Down to only 12 tanks, the Soviets could do little against the pressure brought to bear by the 333rd. In small groups, some of the Red Army soldiers were able to break through gaps in the German line and head north toward the 13th Guards Tank Brigade, which was guarding the area around Barvenkovo.

STAVKA’s Strategic Stubbornness

STAVKA’s plan was falling apart, but no one seemed to want to face that reality. Krasnoarmeiskoye was once again in German hands, and the First Panzer Army was hammering away at the Soviet units stretched out on the road south of Kramatorsk. In the north, von Manstein had sent Hausser’s SS Panzer Corps to link up with General Otto von Knobelsdorff’s XLVIII Panzer Corps, which was part of the Fourth Panzer Army. Together, the two corps struck the Sixth Army near Krasnograd.

In the air, Field Marshal Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen’s Luftflotte 4 hit the Soviets with about 1,000 sorties that precluded any attempt by the Russians to form a coherent defense. The increasingly frantic calls from his commanders prompted Popov to ask Vatutin for permission to withdraw his forces. The request was forcefully denied.

Despite the troubling news coming from the Don Basin, Stalin and his general staff still believed they were on the verge of a great victory. New intelligence reports concerning German concentrations were ignored by STAVKA, which was still in a state of euphoria after the victory at Stalingrad. The unrealistic goals set for the Don Basin offensive were part of that euphoria, and it was now costing the Red Army dearly.

By February 21, it was clear to the Germans that the Soviets had been caught flat footed. Fretter Pico’s XXX Army Corps moved toward Stalino, while von Knobelsdorff’s XLVIII and General Friedrich Kirchner’s LVII Panzer Corps advanced on Pavlograd and Lozovaya. Soviet forces around Pavlograd were also under pressure from the II SS Panzer Corps, Corps Raus, and elements of the Fourth Panzer Army. As long as Army Abteilung Hollidt vigorously defended the Mius River line, Vatutin’s forces were going to be in a great deal of trouble.

On February 22, oblivious to the real situation, STAVKA ordered Kharitonov’s Sixth Army and the Voronezh Front’s Third Tank Army even farther westward. They were met head on by the full power of Hausser’s panzers, which smashed Khartinov’s center and right wing. Despite the pounding he was taking, Kharitonov ordered his mobile reserves into the battle in a futile attempt to follow the orders from Moscow.

Meanwhile, Group Popov was reeling under the attacks from Henrici’s XL Panzer Corps. Desperate for supplies, the Russians no longer had the fuel and ammunition to hold out against the German armored and infantry units. Air supply was tried by the Red Air Force, but von Richthofen’s fighters shot the transport aircraft out of the sky at an alarming rate.

Khartinov’s Sixth Army was in no better shape. His 25th Tank Corps, which had been ordered to advance in front of the main army, was stretched out almost 100 kilometers to the west when the Germans struck. On February 23, Khartinov was hit on both flanks by the 2nd SS Panzergrenadier Division Das Reich and the Sixth Panzer Division. Pounded by the Luftwaffe as well, the 25th Tank Corps disintegrated, its surviving personnel abandoning their equipment and fleeing toward the northeast.

By now, even STAVKA started to notice that something was going very wrong. Reports coming from Popov and Kharitonov painted a picture of panic among their troops, and their commanders begged for something to be done before they were all annihilated.

With his Sixth Army almost in ruins, Vatutin sent a rifle corps from the First Guards Army to support Kharitonov. To the north, Golikov, sensing the impending danger to his left flank, ordered his 69th and Third Tank Armies to swing southward to add to that support, but it was already too late to stop the German momentum.

A Bloody Red Defeat

On February 24, von Manstein sent the II SS Panzer Corps toward Pavlograd. The attack rolled over the 1st Guards Tank Corps and the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps, which had been sent to defend the town. They were Vatutin’s last reserves. After a sharp battle, SS forces occupied the town and went on to pursue the fleeing Russians, who had left most of their equipment behind.

Now fully aware of the consequences of the German attacks, Vatutin ordered the Sixth Army to take a defensive posture. The sad truth was that Khartinov had little resources left with which to defend his sector. With Hausser’s divisions surging forward, most of the Sixth Army was already in full flight.

During the next two days the units of the First Panzer and Fourth Panzer Armies retook much of the land lost in the early days of February. By February 27, Group Popov had all but been destroyed and the Sixth Army was on the verge of disintegration. The First Guards Army had also suffered heavily under continued German attacks.

It was now painfully clear to Moscow that Operation Gallop was finished. Orders were sent to the remnants of the Sixth Army and the First Guards Army to withdraw and set up new lines on the Northern Donets River. Any thoughts of renewing the attack in the near future were shattered in the first days of March, when the II SS Panzer Corps essentially destroyed the Third Tank Army.

The combination of Soviet ambition and von Manstein’s brilliant handling of the battle culminated in a bloody defeat for the Red Army. The stage was now set for one of von Manstein’s greatest accomplishments—the recapture of Kharkov—which would take place in mid-March.

That achievement has largely overshadowed the desperate February struggle for the Lower Don Basin. However, without the defeat of the Red Army on the Donets-Dniepr battlefield, the German reoccupation of Kharkov would probably never have been possible.

Pat McTaggart is an expert on World War II on the Eastern Front and has contributed numerous articles on the subject to WWII History. He resides in Elkader, Iowa.

This article first appeared at the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikipedia.

Warfare History Network

History, Europe

One of the greatest art treasures of Imperial Russia disappeared with the Nazis and has yet to be found.

In September 1941, during the siege of Leningrad, as the Soviets then called St. Petersburg, Nazi troops overran the Tsarskoye Selo Palace, the former summer residence of the czars in the suburban town of Pushkin. Inside the palace, these German troops discovered something that must have seemed otherworldly to them after they had spent the past 10 weeks marching and fighting in the dust and heat of the Russian summer.

It was a Baroque chamber made completely of amber and decorated with large mirrors and amber carvings of cupids and family crests, nymphs, and monograms. Called, fittingly enough, the Amber Room, the chamber had been created in Prussia in the early 16th century and was later given to Russia’s Czar Peter the Great. In its two and a half centuries of existence it had become famous throughout Europe and had been called, among other things, the “Eighth Wonder of the World” and “one of the world’s most extraordinary works of art.” Its estimated value today is more than $180 million.

The Nazis carefully dismantled the chamber, packed it in crates, and shipped it to Königsberg Castle in eastern Germany, the ancient seat of the Teutonic Knights and the heart of their medieval amber trade. There Erich Koch, head of the Nazi Party in East Prussia, had the room reassembled and advertised it as a “German possession, now at last restored to its rightful owners.” In 1945, however, as Germany’s war was ending with the Allies squeezing the Nazis from the east and west, the room was once again dismantled, packed in 24 crates, and stacked in the courtyard of the castle. From there it disappeared, and it has not been seen since.

Amber is fossilized tree resin that is about 44 million years old. Up to 90 percent of the world’s supply is mined along the southern shore of the Baltic Sea.

For millennia, resin had flowed from coniferous trees and settled on the forest floor in Eastern Europe. Then as the Earth’s plates moved and ice sheets formed and melted, the area became flooded and the Baltic Sea formed. From early times, bits and pieces of amber, which has been called the “gold of the North,” were torn from the sea floor and washed ashore to be picked up and treasured. It has been found most often on the east coast of the Baltic Sea from the current site of Danzig in Germany north to Estonia.

Eventually an amber trade grew, and mining operations, first by men wielding large nets, were developed. Often these net wielders were slaves in the employ of the Teutonic Knights, an order that grew rich on amber. By the 13th century, the knights controlled the trade and had centered their amber commerce at the newly built Königsberg Castle on the Pregel River. By the 16th century, however, with the Protestant Reformation sweeping Europe, the Teutonic Knights renounced their Catholicism, becoming Lutherans and forming the Teutonic order’s Prussian territories into the Duchy of Prussia as a Polish fief. Eventually Prussia gained independence from any feudal obligations, and in 1701 Elector Frederick III was crowned as Frederick I, the first King of Prussia.

Frederick married his second wife, Sophie Charlotte, a great granddaughter of England’s James I, in 1684, and she invested most of her time and effort in artistic pursuits, one of which was to make the Prussian capital of Berlin shine. In 1696, when Frederick was still Elector, she asked the sculptor Andreas Schluter to work on the interior redesign of the royal palace. Schluter began searching in the palace’s storage cellars and found a number of chests filled with amber. He later claimed it was the largest collection of amber he had ever seen in one place.

After discovering the amber in the palace’s cellars, Schluter conceived the idea of using it to create an entire room made of the precious substance. He developed a design for such a room, a complete chamber decorated floor to ceiling with amber panels backed with gold leaf and covered with mirrors, polished mosaics, carvings of nymphs, cupids, and angels, coats of arms, monograms, and inlays, some so small the observer needed to use a magnifying glass to view them. He hired the Danish carver Gottfried Wolfram and put him to work developing the Amber Room. Over the next several years, Wolfram evolved a method of bonding amber slivers into larger pieces and created some 46 massive amber panels, a dozen of them 12 feet high.

In 1705, however, Sophie Charlotte died, and Schluter fell out of favor. He was banished from court, and the carver Wolfram was fired.  In 1713, Frederick I died and was succeeded on the throne by his son, Frederick William I, a no-nonsense man much more interested in building a strong Prussian army than he was in tinkering with amber panels.

The unfinished Amber Room remained at the Berlin City Palace until 1716, when Russia’s Peter the Great entered the tale.

That year Peter visited the court of Frederick William and talked of the unfinished Amber Room. Peter had always been an admirer of the gold of the north, and Frederick, uninterested in the amber anyway, gave the amber panels Wolfam had assembled and carved to Peter as a gift.

The amber panels were carefully disassembled, packed in crates, and loaded on eight carts that slowly moved their precious cargo to Peter’s summer palace in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg. When the panels arrived, some pieces were broken and others were missing.

Besides the broken and missing pieces, no one could seem to figure out how the remaining panels should fit together, and no instructions from the banished Danish carver who had created the panels or the Prussian sculptor who had conceived them could be found.

The amber was stored in the palace and languished there for almost 20 years after Peter’s death in 1725.

In 1743, however, Empress Elizabeth ascended the Russian throne, and one of her first acts was to have the amber transferred to her new winter palace on the River Neva where the Italian sculptor Alexander Martelli was put in charge of assembling the panels and installing them in a large hall at the palace. Somehow, Martelli solved the puzzle of assembling the chamber.

Elizabeth was still dissatisfied and had the room moved three more times and embellished with additional mirrors and amber mirror frames. Eventually the chamber covered more than 55 square meters, or 188.4 square feet, and contained over six tons of amber. In 1755, however, it was again moved, this time to the palace of Elizabeth’s favorite niece, Catherine, at Tsarskoye Selo. Catherine, who came from the amber mining region on the Baltic Sea, ascended the Russian throne herself in 1767 and eventually became known to history as Catherine the Great.

Czarina Catherine added another 900 pounds of amber to the room, replacing some sections with large windows. She also commissioned four stone mosaics corresponding to the senses of sight, taste, touch, and hearing. Visitors to the completed chamber said it “came alive” in candlelight.

The Amber Room remained in splendor until shortly after June 22, 1941, when 99 German divisions, including 14 panzer divisions and 10 motorized divisions, stormed into the Soviet Union along a front from the Baltic to the Black Sea. For a month, the Nazi blitzkrieg was unstoppable, and in the north the army group under Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb moved closer to its objective, the Soviet Union’s second city of Leningrad.

By mid-August, German troops were approaching the city, their artillery and aircraft attacking it. By the end of the month, the battle for Leningrad had become a siege.

A Soviet counterattack in January 1942 failed to break the siege, and the fighting continued until January 1943 when Soviet forces executed a plan to open a land corridor to the besieged city. After six days of heavy fighting, the corridor was established with German forces cleared from the southern shore of Lake Ladoga for several miles, but it was not until a year later that the Germans were driven 50 miles from the city and the siege was considered broken.

By then, however, it was too late for the Tsarskoye Selo palace and the Amber Room.

Tsarkoye Selo, translated as “Czar’s Village,” is part of the town of Pushkin situated 24 miles south of Leningrad’s center. In September 1941, during the early stages of the siege, German forces overran Pushkin and plundered a number of Soviet and Russian national monuments there. Among them was the czarist place that Catherine the Great had built in the 18th century. Pushkin remained in German hands until its liberation by the Red Army on January 24, 1944.

As the Germans approached Pushkin and Leningrad in 1941, the Soviets took steps to save as many of the treasures housed in the cities as possible, including the Amber Room. The curators of the chamber first tried to disassemble the room’s panels, but over the years the amber had dried and become brittle. As attempts to remove it were undertaken, the fragile amber began to crumble. Rather than moving it and subjecting the amber to further damage, a false room was constructed inside the amber room’s walls in an attempt to hide it. Some sources assert that the amber was simply covered by wallpaper.

When the Germans occupied Tsarskoye Selo, probably already aware of the famous chamber and its location, they discovered the Amber Room and were able to disassemble it under the supervision of a pair of experts. The amber panels, mirrors, cherubs, and nymphs were carefully packed. On October 14, 1941, Rittmeister Graf Solms-Laubach, who was in charge of the disassembly and packing, ordered the 27 crates shipped to Königsberg for display in the town’s castle.

The Amber Room, he concluded, was going home.

The chamber was carefully reassembled at Königsberg and became another trophy of the Third Reich’s military prowess. On November 13, 1941, the newspaper Königsberger Allgemeine Zeitung reported on the opening of an exhibition of part of room at the castle.

By the end of 1943, however, Königsberg was coming under increasingly frequent Soviet bombing attacks. The room was again disassembled, and the crates were stored in the castle’s cellar. In January 1945, as the war continued turning against Germany, Koch received instructions to load the amber panels into 24 strongboxes and prepare them for shipment.

“As soon as this is done,” Koch wrote, “I shall evacuate the panels to Wechselburg, near Rochlitz in Saxony.”

It is known that the packing was completed on January 15, 1945, and that the crates were piled in the courtyard of the castle. But the trail ends there. The crates are believed to have never arrived in Wechselburg, and whether they even left Königsberg is unclear, although some eyewitnesses have reported seeing them stacked at a railroad station.

Over the years a number of extensive searches, including several by the Soviet Union, have proved fruitless. In 1997, a piece of the room was found. An Italian stone mosaic known to have been part of the room turned up in western Germany. It was owned by the family of a soldier who had helped pack the Amber Room at Königsberg in January 1945, and this soldier’s souvenir sheds some light on the fate of the Amber Room. In 1998, two separate teams also claimed to have found the Amber Room, one in a German silver mine and the other in a lake in Lithuania, but neither was able to produce the room itself.

As recently as 2008, another alleged discovery of the Amber Room was announced. Radar scans were reported to have detected a large amount of metal believed to be too dense for copper in an abandoned copper mine in Deutschneudorf, Saxony. Some observers, including Hans-Peter Haustein, mayor of Deutschneudorf, claimed the mine was the burial site of the Amber Room.

Another theory put forth is that the amber was taken from the castle’s courtyard in early 1945 and again hidden in its cellars. It was then destroyed when the castle was heavily bombed by the Royal Air Force. This theory is supported by the conclusions of two studies made by British investigative journalists Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy and by Soviet investigators. Both studies concluded that the Amber Room was most likely destroyed when Königsberg Castle was burned shortly after its surrender.

Another theory suggests that the room lies with other Nazi-plundered treasure at the bottom of 350-foot-deep Lake Toplitz in the Austrian Alps, where senior German officers are known to have retreated as the Allies advanced through Germany. It has been claimed that these officers transported large boxes by truck and horse-drawn carriage to the edge of the lake and sank them.

Other investigators have speculated that the Amber Room was hidden 2,000 feet below ground in a salt mine near Gottingen, Germany, that has since been flooded. Supporting this last theory is a coded message sent to Berlin in January 1945. It reads, “Amber Room, operation completed, object is stored in B. Sch. W.V.” This message may refer to the B shaft of a mine near Gottingen known as Wittekind Vollpriehausen.

After the war, a full reconstruction of the Amber Room was created at Tsarskoye Selo based on 86 black and white photographs taken of various fragments of the room. The project was begun in 1979, and by 2003 the work was largely completed. Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder dedicated the room at a celebration of the 300-year anniversary of the city of St. Petersburg. A miniature model of the room, made of original East Prussian amber, has also been constructed and is on display at Kleinmachnow, Germany.

The fate of the original Amber Room, however, remains one of the great mysteries of World War II.

Chuck Lyons has contributed to WWII History on a variety of topics. He resides in Rochester, New York.

This article first appeared at the Warfare History Network.

Image: 

Warfare History Network

History, Europe

The Junkers Ju-52 was versatile enough to meet the Luftwaffe’s ever-shifting transport missions.

Shortly before dawn on May 20, 1941, a flight of 500 transport planes took off from seven airstrips on mainland Greece. As they climbed upward, the tri-motor aircraft emerged from reddish-orange clouds of dust into blue sky. The dust clouds were generated by the propeller wash from hundreds of engines sitting on unpaved runways as the planes prepared for takeoff. Inside each aircraft, a dozen German paratroopers sat hunched on canvas benches sweating profusely inside their heavy uniforms. Each one welcomed the cool air that swept through the cabins once the aircraft were aloft.

The planes lumbered in tightly packed formations at low altitude over the pale blue waters of the Aegean Sea toward their objective. Once they crossed the coast of enemy-held Crete, they were greeted by a storm of flak that rocked the planes as if they were trees in the wind. Ignoring the turbulence, the veteran paratroopers stood up, shuffled toward the cargo door, and flung themselves spread eagle toward the ground below. Once the flight crews had delivered their human cargo to its destination, they turned their aircraft back toward the mainland to load the next wave. Operation Mercury, the largest airborne invasion the world had yet seen, was without doubt the finest hour of the Junkers Ju-52 transport, known to its crews as “Tante Ju,” or Auntie Junkers.

The Ju-52: A Commercial Aircraft

The Ju-52 was originally envisioned as a commercial venture in 1925 by Deutsche Lufthansa. The concept moved from paper to production when the project was turned over to Junkers in 1928. Its chief designer, Ernst Zindel, oversaw work on two concepts. One was a single-engine freight aircraft (Ju-52/1m) and the other was a three-engine commercial passenger plane (Ju-52/3m) built to carry 17 passengers.

The first single-engine Ju-52 made its maiden flight on October 13, 1930. It was followed six months later by the three-engine version’s maiden flight in April 1931. After just a few years in service, production of the single-engine version came to an abrupt halt in 1934, but the three-engine version, which offered better safety and considerably more power, captured the interest of Lufthansa as well as international customers that used the aircraft for both passenger and freight purposes.

The Ju-52/3m had a wing span of 29.5 meters and measured 18.9 meters from nose to tail. The all-metal plane (80/20 magnesium/ aluminum) was easily recognized not only by its three-engine configuration but also by a box-like, corrugated fuselage that gave it an almost unfinished appearance.

Deutsche Lufthansa began flying the Ju-52/3m on heavily traveled commercial routes, such as Berlin to London and Berlin to Rome in late 1932. Twenty-five countries throughout Europe and North and South America purchased the aircraft for commercial use during the 1930s. For 13 years from 1932 to 1945, the Junkers German factories produced Ju-52 variants. It was during its first few years in operation that the Ju-52 earned the endearing nicknames “Tante Ju” and “Eisen Annie” (Iron Annie) because of its reliability and performance that resulted in few forced landings and the need for minimal repair work.

Militarizing the Ju-52

When Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany in 1933, the future German dictator instructed the Air Ministry to put a plan into action to build a 1,000-plane air force. He did this despite the fact that Germany was prohibited from having any military aircraft through the Treaty of Versailles. Rather than develop an entirely new transport aircraft, the ministry ordered the conversion of a large number of existing aircraft from civilian to military use.

Minimal alteration was required. The Ju-52/3m freight version had a hatch in the roof for loading by crane, a large cargo door on the starboard side just behind the wing, and a door for passengers on the port side. A new hole was cut into the roof to accommodate a dorsal machine gun, and the interior was reconfigured for different missions.

The Ju-52/3m began its military service as a bomber during the Spanish Civil War. During the blitzkrieg period of World War II from 1939 to 1941 it served in a support role by delivering paratroopers to their targets, towing gliders carrying assault troops, and transferring air landing troops to captured airfields. After the invasion of Crete in May 1941, the airplane was used primarily for delivering fuel, ammunition, and supplies to troops in forward areas or isolated pockets and evacuating wounded.

A military version of Eisen Annie, designated the Ju-52/3mg3e was ready for service in 1934. While a version designated the Ju-52/3m Sa3 was already operating for the Reichswehr in the role of personnel transport, cargo carrier, and pilot trainer, the g3e was intended as an interim bomber before more sophisticated bombers were available in 1936. The military version was powered by three 660hp BMW 132A radial engines and armed with dorsal and ventral 7.92 MG 15 machine guns, the latter of which was affixed to the aircraft’s underside with a retractable dustbin attachment. When fully loaded, whether with troops or supplies, the aircraft had a top speed of 171 miles per hour and a cruising speed of about 120 miles per hour. The Ju-52/3m’s round-trip range carrying a 1,984-pound load was 720 miles. This range increased to 900 miles with a lighter load (992 pounds) or decreased to 450 miles with a heavier load (3,306 pounds).

The Ju-52/3m was equipped with robust landing gear that enabled it to take off and land on dirt or grass strips as short as 400 meters that other aircraft could not use. What is more, the metal structure could withstand considerable punishment, which enabled the crews to complete their missions and limp back to safety when damaged.

First Combat in Spain

Shortly after the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, Hitler sent 20 Ju-52/3ms in September to support Nationalist General Francisco Franco in his struggle against the Republican forces on the Iberian peninsula. During the conflict, Eisen Annie served in a dual role of troop transport and interim bomber. Two years before, the Reichswehr (the Luftwaffe was not reconstituted until 1935) had requested that the Junkers plant at Dessau convert the Ju-52/3m to a bomber configuration (the g3e), and Junkers engineers had installed vertical magazines in its lower cargo bay to accommodate 3,306 pounds of explosives. The makeshift bombers operated with crews of five handling the positions of pilot, co-pilot, radio operator, dorsal gunner, and bombardier/ventral gunner.

Early in the conflict, the Ju-52/3ms played a key role in transporting 13,900 Moorish troops and their heavy weapons to Spain. Lt. Col. Rudolf Moreau established the first official bomber squadron numbering 10 Ju-52/3mg3es in November 1936 to support the Nationalist ground forces. During the course of the conflict, the Moreau squadron dropped more than 6,000 tons of bombs on enemy positions and enemy-held territory. However, the Ju-52/3m’s bomber days were numbered not only because of its lack of speed and maneuverability but because it could not accommodate the horizontal bomb racks that were being installed on newer medium-range bombers in production. As the fighter threat grew more severe in the following months, the Ju-52/3mg3e’s were replaced with more advanced bombers, such as the Dornier Do-17 and the Heinkel He-111. While the Spanish Civil War raged on into its third year, the Ju-52/3ms functioning as bombers were converted back to transports.

Paratroopers in the North: Ju-52s in Operation Weserübung

The invasion of Denmark and Norway on April 9, 1940, known as Operation Weserübung, heralded the use of Ju-52/3ms to deliver paratroopers and air landing forces to the battlefield. During Weserübung, the transports performed a number of key roles, including dropping paratroopers, ferrying air landing troops to captured airfields, and delivering heavy weapons and supplies to paratroopers and other ground forces.

Weserübung involved the first paratrooper attacks in military history. On the first day of the invasion, the paratroopers seized the Vordingborg Bridge linking Copenhagen with its ferry terminal and two airfields at Aalborg in Denmark. The Ju-52/3ms also dropped paratroopers at three key airfields in southern Norway at the cities of Oslo, Stavanger, and Kristiansand.

As the battle progressed over the following days, the Ju-52/3ms played a crucial role delivering weapons and supplies to the German troops fighting Allied forces at the North Sea port of Narvik. A particularly daring mission involved the ferrying of a fully equipped mountain battery to a frozen lake 15 miles north of Narvik with little chance of their returning due to the extreme conditions. The planes took off from Hamburg, refueled at Oslo, and proceeded to their destination. They remained on the frozen lake until they sank in the spring thaw. The lost planes, however, were only a small part of the Ju-52/3m losses incurred during the overall operation. The Luftwaffe counted about 150 transports destroyed or damaged beyond repair by the end of the affair. It was a taste of the heavy losses to come in campaigns ahead.

The Ju-52/3m had various types of landing gear to adapt to both snow and water. During the fighting in Norway, wheeled landing gear was replaced with floats to enable the planes to land in that country’s numerous fjords. Similarly, skis replaced wheels when the Ju-52s had to land in the vast expanses of Russia during the cold months, whether at the front line or in rear areas. In addition, the service crews eventually removed the tear-shaped wheel covers from most planes serving on the Eastern Front when they discovered that mud collected quickly inside them.

Other modifications were made to accommodate paratroopers and to provide better protection against enemy fighter aircraft that attacked the Ju-52/3ms like sharks feeding on fish. The Ju-52 g4f included a reinforced cargo compartment floor, side, and loading doors. It could carry 12 to 13 fully equipped paratroopers and up to 18 air landing troops. In 1941, these planes were upgunned when the dorsal 7.9mm MG 15 was replaced with the 13mm MG 131. While the heavier gun afforded protection against attacks from the rear, the aircraft remained vulnerable to frontal attacks. For this reason, an additional MG 15 was installed in the roof of the cockpit and manned by the radioman. By this time the ventral dustbin had become impractical and was removed from many of the transports.

167 Aircraft Destroyed

The Ju-52 also was employed as a minesweeper. At the start of the war, German scientists discovered that mines laid by British aircraft along German-held coastline could be detonated by a magnetic field. Thus, the Ju-52 g4f was outfitted with an enormous horizontal ring on the underside and wings. An electrical charge was fed into the aluminum ring by a battery. Since the mines were equipped with delayed fuses of seven seconds, the mines detonated about 200 to 300 meters behind the aircraft flying at low level. The minesweeper version was first deployed in 1940 along the Dutch coast and saw its greatest use along the coastline of occupied France.

The Junkers engineers designed two improved versions of the Ju-52 that were intended as replacements for the original design but never made it to full production. The Ju-252 had three Jumo 211 engines, was armed with the MG 131 dorsal gun placed directly behind the cockpit, and had nearly three times the load-carrying capacity of the Ju-52. It did not have the Ju-52’s corrugated exterior, and it came equipped with a hydraulic rear loading ramp to make loading and unloading of weapons and equipment easier. After its maiden voyage in October 1941, roughly 15 were completed. The following year production began on the Ju-352. This variation was constructed of alternate materials, due to a shortage of metal, and featured three BMW-Bramo engines. The 352 made its maiden flight on October 1, 1943.

Following Weserübung, the Ju-52s had little time to be repaired and reoutfitted before they were delivering paratroopers to key objectives in Belgium and Holland the following month. About 430 Ju-52s participated in the operation. A group of 40 were assigned to tow DFS 230 gliders carrying assault troops who captured the Belgian fortress of Eben Emael, while the remaining 390 carried paratroopers and air landing troops to seize bridges and other objectives in Fortress Holland where the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam were located. The heavy attrition among the Luftwaffe’s Ju-52 fleet continued in the Western Campaign with 167 of the aircraft involved destroyed.

Ju-52s in the Mediterranean Theater

An even larger, more significant airborne invasion took place almost exactly one year later. After the fall of mainland Greece, Hitler launched Operation Mercury to capture the island of Crete and deny the Allies the use of its three airfields. More than 500 Ju-52/3ms dropped the four parachute regiments of the 7th Air Division onto the island and also ferried the 5th Mountain Division to Maleme airfield, which was captured on the second day. It was the first battle conducted entirely by paratroops and air landing forces.

During the first day’s assault, the Ju-52/3ms not only towed 75 gliders carrying the 7th Division’s elite assault regiment but also delivered three regiments in two waves to seven separate objectives on the island’s north coast. It was a costly battle in lives and equipment, with the Luftwaffe losing 271 of the 502 Ju-52/3m aircraft assigned to the operation. The thin-skinned fuselages and wings proved vulnerable to heavy antiaircraft fire from British and Commonwealth forces in strong positions. As a result of this experience and subsequent experiences on the Eastern Front, engineers made the air frames of a number of Ju-52s bulletproof to protect the flight crews.

More than 50 Ju-52/3ms had been deployed in December 1940 to Foggia, Italy, to support Italian operations in Albania and North Africa. They transported 1,665 Italian soldiers to Albania and evacuated more than 8,730 wounded Italians back to Italy over the next five months until Greece fell in April. Three months later, General Erwin Rommel arrived in North Africa at the port of Tripoli, Libya, with his Afrika Korps. Ju-52s were an integral part of supply operations from the time Rommel landed until the Germans evacuated the last of their forces from Tunisia in May 1943.

After United States forces invaded Morocco and Algeria in November 1942, U.S. fighters regularly intercepted Ju-52s engaged in the evacuation of forces from North Africa to Sicily. In a stunning aerial battle on April 5, 1943, U.S. Lockheed P-38 Lightnings jumped an armada of more than 50 Ju-52s in the early morning off the western coast of Sicily. The U.S. fighters shot 14 out of the sky and damaged 65 parked on Sicilian airstrips. Another Allied victory occurred on April 18 when U.S. fighter aircraft pounced on an armada of 65 Ju-52s moving men and materiél and shot down 24 planes. Nevertheless, the Ju-52s left behind an impressive legacy, having flown 8,388 soldiers and ferried 5,040 tons of supplies to North Africa to support Rommel’s campaigns.

Keeping the Eastern Front Supplied

The Junkers factories increased production of Ju-52/3ms from 388 in 1940 to 502 and 503 in 1941 and 1942, respectively. The increased production was necessary to literally feed the hungry stomachs of Germans soldiers on the Eastern Front. Five of the six air transport groups were shifted to occupied territories in the East to support troops operating hundreds of miles from the German frontier where partisans frequently disrupted supply lines and retreating Soviet forces practiced a scorched earth policy.

When their blitzkrieg ground to a halt a short distance from Moscow during the winter of 1941, large numbers of Germans were cut off in subsequent Soviet counterattacks. The only way they could receive supplies was by Ju-52s either landing on airstrips inside the pockets or dropping supplies from the air. The largest pocket resulting from the Soviet winter offensive of 1941-1942 resulted in the creation of the Demyansk pocket where nearly 100,000 German soldiers were surrounded by the Soviet Eleventh and Thirty-Fourth Armies. The forces trapped inside the Demyansk cauldron required about 300 tons of supplies per day. About 75 Ju-52s flew 33,000 sorties into the pocket, which existed from February 8 to April 21, 1942.

While the Ju-52s rose to the occasion in those situations, they would not be able to meet the impossible demands of supplying the German Sixth Army when it was surrounded at Stalingrad by four Soviet army groups in mid-November 1942. The success at Demyansk made Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring and others believe it would be possible to supply the troops until they could be relieved. The daily requirement was 600 tons, which was twice that of the Demyansk pocket. This would require 300 Ju-52s. Even though all air transport resources on the Eastern Front were brought to bear, the number could not be mustered, and the actual number available steadily declined through battle losses. The greatest amount of supplies ever delivered on a given day was 289 tons, while the average was around 90 tons.

When the last airfield (Pitomnik) inside the pocket fell to the Soviets in mid-January 1943, the transports resorted to dropping supplies from the air. By the time the Sixth Army surrendered on February 2, the Luftwaffe had lost the equivalent of 266 Ju-52s in a futile effort to supply the beleaguered forces.

Like the breadwinner who is devoted to feeding his family, the Ju-52 would supply troops with food and ammunition in other major pockets until the end of the war, including the Crimean peninsula in 1944-1945, Budapest, and Breslau. Of the 2,822 Ju-52/3ms produced from 1939 to 1944, only 190 were left in service when Berlin fell on May 7.

Although the Ju-52/3m was clearly inferior in terms of flight speed and payload to the U.S. Douglas DC-3 Dakota/C-47 Skytrain, it has earned accolades from military aviation experts for its versatile performance during the war. There is little doubt that it will be associated for a long time with both the highs and lows of the Third Reich in World War II.

Vienna, Virginia, freelance writer William Welsh has written articles on conflicts from the Middle Ages to World War II. He is also a regular contributor to Sovereign Media’s Military Heritage magazine.

This article first appeared at the Warfare History Network.

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Stephen Silver

Technland,

Working from home thanks to COVID-19? Need more out of your internet? This could be the answer if you have Xfinity. 

Comcast this week announced the arrival of a new version of the XFi Pod mesh Wi-Fi extender, for its Xfinity Internet customers. The new Pod offers speeds up to twice as fast as those of the first generation, Comcast said. The original XFi Pod product was released in 2018.

In a frequency-asked questions page on an Xfinity website, are described as "devices that can be paired with a compatible xFi Gateway to create a mesh WiFi network in your home. Pods help eliminate areas where WiFi coverage drops or is weak, also known as 'dead spots.'They provide extended, more consistent WiFi coverage throughout your entire home." They're meant for people with homes or areas of those houses where, for whatever reason, signals aren't very strong.

“As families spend more time at home and the number of connected devices continues to rise, connectivity across the entire home is more important than ever,”  Dana Strong, President, Xfinity Consumer Services, said in the announcement.

“In fact, since March 2020, we have seen the demand for Pods double as families and individuals are retrofitting their homes into offices, movie theaters, doctor's offices, and more, by doing all of those activities online instead of outside of the home.”

The announcement also touts Xfinity customers' access to the Comcast-owned streaming service Peacock, which launched earlier this year. And with the number of Comcast cable subscribers dropping and the number of Internet subscribers continuing to grow, the new product is targeted specifically to " Xfinity Internet-only customers [who] can also easily access their favorite streaming services and manage their connected home devices right on the TV with Xfinity Flex."

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts spoke last month at a Goldman Sachs investor conference, and addressed the continuing shift towards Internet-only customers.

“One of the big pivots of Comcast the last decade is to really follow our customers’ needs and try to anticipate them and be a company that meets them. So in video with some customers who want it all,” Roberts said at the event. “And other customers want to just be streaming. That may be because of financial reasons, habits, age, you name it . . . so video is very much part of our strategy and the DNA of the company.”

The new version of the XFi Pod is available in a single pack for $119 or in a two-pack for $199. Comcast says a single XFi Pod is recommended for 1-2 story homes with 3-4 bedrooms that need more connectivity, while the two-pack is recommended for "5+ bedrooms and thick walls that can cause interference, like metal, concrete, and brick."

 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: Comcast. 

Warfare History Network

History, Europe

America’s unsung aerial hero.

The P-39 Airacobra was a bit like Rodney Dangerfield—it “couldn’t get no respect,” especially from those who never piloted the “Flying Cannon” built by the Buffalo, New York-based Bell Aircraft Corp.

But those who flew the P-39 came to love it and its idiosyncrasies. When flown properly, the plane—built around its fearsome 37mm nose-centered cannon—could knock anything out of the sky, cause calloused, flak-tossing antiaircraft crews to scamper for the ditches, and reign havoc over fortified enemy command and control positions with its four .50-caliber machine guns blazing away in later versions of the craft.

At the same time, the plane was considered underpowered with its 1,200 horsepower Allison V-1710 engine, although it could do 376 miles per hour at 15,000 feet. Also, it lacked a supercharger that limited its effectiveness above 17,000 feet. Worse, the P-39 had a reputation for tumbling out of control when operated by inexperienced pilots.

“Nothing could touch a P-39 used below 15,000-feet” contended American Air Ace Lt. Col. William A. Shomo who flew P-39s, P-40s, F-6Ds, and a P-51D in WWII. He wouldn’t have hesitated to have even taken on the vaunted P-38 at lower altitudes because of the extreme maneuverability of the “Flying Cannon.” And it could tangle successfully with a Japanese Zero, he argued, if the American pilot kept his airspeed at 300 miles per hour or better so the enemy “couldn’t turn inside you.”

The Americans in the field experimented with the aircraft throughout the war to continually gain an edge and some additional speed, eventually stripping off a chunk of belly armor under the seat that weighed some 750 pounds. With those modifications, the P-39 could “fly like a bumble bee,” asserted Shomo. He and his men especially liked the stinging power of the plane’s 37mm cannon that could, if necessary, fire off some 30 rounds in 12 seconds. The hefty warhead had a definite arching trajectory, but one could eventually learn to “drop the shell right into someone’s shirt pocket as he walked along the beach,” said the ace.

Shomo and his men used the cannon effectively, especially against Japanese barge traffic that ran supplies from ships to shore installations. They would wait for the barges to get loaded up and head to shore with 75 fully armed troops or with food for 6,000 troops before they would pounce. A well-placed cannon shell at the base of the steering column would blow out the bottom of the barge, explode the fuel tanks near the steering column, and the whole vessel would be gone within ten seconds.

Both the Americans and others who used the P-39 were dismissive of rumblings about the jamming problems of the 37mm cannon. They found that proper maintenance was the key, along with utilizing the mechanical pistol-grip charging system to eject an occasional jammed shell and shove in the next shell. Most models of the craft carried 30 cannon rounds, so “our biggest problem,” Shomo said, “was running out of ammunition before we ran out of targets!”

The P-39 was literally built around its nose-centered cannon. That made it easy to aim, but also necessitated moving the engine behind the pilot to make room for the cannon in the one-man fighter. The arrangement gave the pilot superb visibility out the plane’s comparatively narrow nose and via the plane’s distinctive car-type doors on either side of the cockpit.

A few pilots, though, found it a bit disconcerting that the engine’s quickly-spinning, ten-foot long power shaft ran directly under their seat and near their “personal vitals” before emerging up front to link up with the propeller.

The plane saw action with the Americans in the South Pacific, the Aleutians, the Panama Canal Zone, Europe, and elsewhere. The British and Free French also put it to good use.

But it was the Soviets—engaged in the long and bloody life-or-death struggle with Nazi Germany—that adopted, adapted, and came to love the plane perhaps more than anyone else. It provided the Russians with the “push-back” that helped turn the tide in the Soviets’ “Great Patriotic War.” The hardy plane, constructed to withstand the recoil of its cannon and the stress caused by its long twisting power shaft, proved up to the challenge of the Russian winters and German defenses.

The first Airacobras arrived by ship in northern Soviet ports in late December 1941 or early January 1942 from Great Britain after the British had largely rejected the plane after testing it against their own Spitfires and Hurricanes as well as a captured Messerschmitt Bf-109E. The Soviets, desperate to delay and destroy the fast-moving invaders, quickly embraced the limited numbers of the early model P-39 with its smaller 20mm Hispano-Suiza cannon, four Browning .303-caliber machine guns, and two Browning .50-caliber machine guns.

World War II was fought with intense veracity worldwide, but rarely with more savagery than on the Eastern Front as the Red Bear first recoiled from the fierce German onslaught before regrouping and roaring back. The Soviets eventually lost more than 26 million people in that gigantic struggle that raged for four years across thousands of square miles.

The intensity of the struggle was such that a Soviet combat aircraft lasted, on average, only three months, and a Russian tank faired only slightly better. In the desperate winter of 1941-1942, Soviet forces lost one-sixth of their aircraft and one-tenth of their armored equipment every week!

The continuing flow of Lend-Lease materiel and improved tactics were crucial. The Soviets had to learn to make every bullet, tank and airplane count. They realized that the P-39 could be a potential game changer and they played to the plane’s strength in ground-attacks against the invaders, largely using it below 17,000 feet in a never-ending effort to keep the Luftwaffe away from Soviet ground forces and key installations.

Depending on the source cited, eventually anywhere from 4,423 to 4,750 P-39s were transferred to the Soviet Union, so that nation received roughly half of the 9,585 Airacobras built. And the P-39 comprised approximately one-third of all the Lend-Lease planes received by that nation. Most of those sent to the USSR came by ship to Iran and then flown by ferry pilots to Soviet bases, or flown directly from the factory to Fairbanks, Alaska, where Soviet ferry pilots flew them to the Soviet-German front.

The Soviets received several models of the P-39, although most were Q-models with the Allison engine, the 37mm cannon, and four .50-caliber machine guns—two located in the upper nose and two wing-mounted. At Soviet request, the wing-mounted machine guns were later deleted.

A number of Westerners have mistakenly said the Soviets used the P-39, with its powerful 37mm cannon, as a flying tank buster. While some German tanks may have been struck on occasion by the cannon, the craft was used to its best advantage to clear the skies, silence artillery and antiaircraft batteries, and disrupt German supply lines and land-based command centers. In simple fact, the Soviet P-39s were not supplied with armor-piercing 37mm ammunition, and the standard-issue high-explosive round was not capable of knocking out armored targets.

The pilot had a bit of a learning curve with the plane. Ejecting from the craft could be tricky, especially in a left spin that could lead to the pilot being struck by the tail assembly. A large number of glazing screws were used in the cockpit canopy and these were covered by rubber caps that dried out and fell off, exposing sharp threads that proved dangerous in tight aerial maneuvers or in ejecting from the plane.

To help prevent the center of gravity from shifting during firing, cannon casings and the links of the body-encased machine guns were collected in the lower front fuselage and emptied upon landing. The machine guns in the wings were heated by hoses from the plane’s radiator to prevent freezing in the cold Russian winters. The plane’s radio and navigational equipment were also appreciated by the pilots, permitting operations at night and in poor weather conditions.

The Soviet pilots fell in love with the fast, maneuverable, and well-armed P-39 that many found to be equal—or nearly equal—in speed to the German Bf109 and FW-190 fighters. Those enemy fighters could often be destroyed, the Soviets learned, with two or three short machine-gun bursts, while the strike of a single cannon shell could destroy or disable a German fighter or bomber.

The Soviets, on occasion, resorted to one technique that rattled their German adversaries to the core: using the sturdy-built P-39 to deliberately ram an enemy plane to bring it down. This was occasionally used to protect a fellow flier and to demoralize the German aviators in the process.

As the war progressed and the Soviets gained more air time and fighting experience, the pilots developed improved tactics. Key to that process was Captain Aleksandr Pokryshkin, who was to score 65 confirmed kills (including six shared) in the war and later go on to become Marshall of Aviation for the Soviet Union. He developed what he called a “Formula of Terror,” based on altitude, speed, maneuver, and fire.

Pokryshkin also developed what he called a “bookshelf” of pairs of fighters deployed toward the sun, one pair above another in upwards of four tiers. He also advocated taking the fight to the enemy by attacking Luftwaffe bombers over German-controlled territory before they had time to link up with their fighter coverage. Often, he found, the startled German bombers fled after dropping their bombs aimlessly over German troops rather than over Red Army positions.

Pokryshkin strongly advocated another method that the Germans found unnerving: he and his men would attack and destroy the lead bomber in each approaching echelon, either through “Eagle Strikes” from above or in deadly guns-blazing, head-on attacks. In the resulting confusion, the enemy would often flee in panic, randomly dropping their bombs in the process.

He also developed a technique whereby the Airacobra pilots would fly at a high speed into a combat zone slightly above the specified mission altitude only to slowly decrease altitude to gain momentum before climbing back up to altitude and then repeating the procedure. That way the P-39 would often be able to pounce on the enemy from on high with an “Eagle Strike.”

The Airacobra’s cannon and machine guns had separate firing triggers with the cannon fired with the thumb button on the top of the stick and the machine guns operated with the index finger on the front of the stick. Pokryshkin convinced his engineering crew to wire the cannon switch to the machine gun switch for a one-time experiment. His massed fire quickly blew a German bomber from the air. Soon all the P-39s in the squadron were firing with substantially increased firepower from a single trigger squeeze.

The Germans, for their part, also proved innovative in the use of their aircraft. As the war progressed, the Soviets encountered two Luftwaffe planes joined together to form one craft the Germans called the Mistel, or mistletoe. With assistance from a ground vectoring station, a P-39 pilot came across the Ju-88 bomber with a Bf-109 fighter attached to its upper fuselage with long struts.  The engines of both German planes were spinning on the double-decker craft that the Soviets would later call a karaktitsa or cuttlefish.

The Airacobra pilot attacked, and both enemy planes fell burning to the forest below. Soviets on the ground reported that the Ju-88 exploded with the force of a 1,000-kilogram aviation bomb, creating a crater 10 yards in diameter and some five yards deep. Pine trees in a radius of some 220 yards from the crater were bent over and burned, and pieces of the German plane were found up to 2,200 yards from the crater.

Soviet pilots were advised that future attacks on Mistels should be undertaken with the notion of taking out the Messerschmitt pilot, rather than risking detonating the explosives in the Ju-88 with machine-gun and cannon fire. Once the fighter pilot was taken out, the Soviets learned that the Ju-88 bomber could be left to fly on and crash on its own.

Perhaps two of the more interesting units to use the Airacobra were Squadrons 10 and 12 of the Co-Belligerent Air Force, comprised of Italian pilots from the liberated portions of Italy. They cooperated with the Balkan Air Force on a number of missions against German forces in Yugoslavia during the war, and the Italians continued flying the P-39 until 1950.

The Airacobra was appreciated by those who flew the rugged workhorse, and disliked by many who never flew the craft that was first designed as a pursuit craft in 1936, well before the war. One noted observer said it’s “a pursuit fighter that was either born too early, or asked to stay on the front line and fight too long” on some necessary missions for which it was simply not designed.

Had it been given time to develop, provided with a turbocharger and later perhaps a Rolls Royce Merlin engine such as the P-51 Mustang, it might be given the respect that today is heaped on successor planes like the P-51. But it was the Airacobra’s low-level ground support capabilities, its solid firepower, rugged airframe, excellent low-level flying characteristics, and substantial numbers that gave the United States and its allies the time urgently needed to design and build the flashier and more power Mustangs and Lightnings that most people now associate with the winning of WWII.

“It was a great airplane, and its presence in New Guinea deterred the Japanese from landing in Australia, I can guarantee that,” asserts Colonel Charles Falletta, who totaled 16 aerial victories during the war, including six while flying P-39s over New Guinea. Most of the “rumors about the P-39 were from pilots who never flew the airplane,” contends Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager. “It’s hearsay,” he concludes.

Yeager put in some 500 hours in the P-39 and once had to bail out over Casper, Wyoming, when a flight test of a new stainless steel prop went bad. The well-respected Yeager, who later became the first man to break the sound barrier, notes that “most pilots learn when they pin on their wings and go out and get in a fighter, especially, that one of the things you don’t do, you don’t believe anything anybody tells you about an airplane.”

A number of Airacobras have been saved, restored, and are on display today. By a quirk of fate, Lt. Col. Shomo’s P-39 was recovered in the early 1970s, restored, and is now at the Naval and Servicemen’s Park along the waterfront in Buffalo, New York. Another P-39, recovered from a lake in Russia, is now displayed at the airport in Niagara Falls, New York.

This article first appeared at the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikipedia.

Kris Osborn

Security, Americas

Swarms of mini-drones could be operated from a stealth fighter jet and used for a wide variety of missions. The ultimate combination? 

Mini-drones can blanket an area with surveillance, test or overwhelm enemy radar and conduct missions while operated by B-21 stealth bomber or F-35 stealth fighter jet crews in a cockpit. Such small drones could even themselves become explosives to attack and disable air defenses, presenting yet another reason why many in the Air Force are calling for a large increase in the service’s mini-drone fleet. 

Medium and small recoverable drones are in particular demand, given the tactical advantages they can increasingly introduce into modern combat. A new policy paper from The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies called “Understanding the Skyborg and Low-Cost Attritable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” suggests that the Air Force needs to acquire large numbers of A/R UAVs, develop the concepts of operation needed to support their tactical employment, and develop the logistical infrastructure necessary to sustain them. 

The potential combat uses for these kinds of drones have few limits, as they can both support combat as well as engage in direct fires when operated by humans performing command and control. The Air Force’s significant “loyal wingman” concept, under development for several years now, lends itself to these kinds of platforms. 

The tactical approach, wherein manned air platforms operate multiple drones from the cockpit in the air, is already coming to fruition through programs such as the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Valkyrie drone. Without needing to send data through a ground control station, emerging technology reduces latency and increases tactical advantages by enabling pilots themselves to operate forward drones conducting surveillance, jamming enemy platforms and even firing weapons. 

Also of great tactical significance, the study makes the point that A/R UAVs can operate in forward, high-risk locations more easily by virtue of not needing a runway or fixed infrastructure to operate. 

“The greatest combat value might be achieved by using them for non-kinetic missions such as electromagnetic warfare, persistent C2ISR, as part of kill meshes, and other operations that multiply effects,” the study explains. 

The concept, according to the Mitchell paper, is to supplement and support emerging, high-end manned platforms. 

“Instead of replacing manned aircraft, the greatest combat value will result from determining how to best combine the operations of A/R UAVs that have some advanced survivability design features with 5th generation F-35As, B-21s, and other manned and unmanned aircraft,” the study writes. 

While aircraft-launched drones, such as the Perdix launched from the flare chaff of an F-16, have been successfully tested for quite some time, the newest challenge has been making air-recoverable drones possible as well, such as those demonstrated successfully in DARPA’s Gremlins program. 

The Mitchell study also makes a point to emphasize the often discussed issue of modularity, essentially referring to efforts to engineer an upgradable, common-standards based technical infrastructure enabling rapid adjustments to new threats and mission possibilities. 

“A/R UAV modularity also has operational implications—it may be possible to change an A/R UAVs modular mission systems between sorties, allowing commanders to quickly recompose their forces to meet evolving mission needs,” the study 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, Asia

Commodore Dewey steamed out of Hong Kong for the Philippines, fully prepared to meet the Spanish at the Battle of Manila Bay.

Key Point: Never before had an entire fleet been wiped out without the loss of a ship—or a single man—on the part of an attacking force.

The United States Navy investigation into the February 15, 1898, sinking of the battleship Maine was a difficult undertaking. The nation’s press had been inciting the American people with war hysteria headlines. It was almost impossible for the naval officers conducting the inquiry not to be influenced by public opinion, the enormity of the tragedy, and a thirst for revenge.

There were only two possibilities for the loss of the Maine. Either the ship had been destroyed by an accidental internal explosion or by a deliberate act of sabotage. If it was an accident, then the commanding officer, Captain Charles Sigsbee, was required to explain how it occurred on a ship for which he was responsible. But if the act had been carried out by Spanish authorities, dissident Spaniards, or Cuban insurgents, then Spain was to blame.

The assistant secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, was convinced that the fault lay with the Spanish. He was positive that the explosion was no accident, and that the Maine was a victim of “dirty treachery.” Thus, comments supporting the accident theory were a particular worry to Roosevelt; he was a constant advocate of a strong Navy, and Republican congressional leaders had stated that “the [Maine] disaster proved the United States must stop building battleships.”

Teddy Roosevelt countered by saying that this reaction was weak and cowardly. He argued that “battleships were delicate instruments, and even the most advanced naval powers had accidents—they were as inevitable as losses in war. The men who live aboard these ships recognize and accept the hazard. The nation which they defend cannot do less. The loss of the Maine was the price the country must pay to assume its role as a great power.”

Unleashing the Fox in the Chicken House

On the afternoon of February 25, Secretary of the Navy John Long departed his office early, thereby leaving Roosevelt “in charge”—the fox was loose in the chicken house. The assistant secretary began to issue fleet orders as fast as the telegrapher could handle them. A general alert was sent to all ships, stations, and fleet commanders throughout the world ordering them to have their ships fueled and ready to leave port immediately.

Even before the Maine disaster, Commodore George Dewey had sailed with his flagship, the cruiser Olympia, from Nagasaki, Japan, to Hong Kong, closer to the Spanish-held Philippines. But the rest of Dewey’s squadron was still at Nagasaki.

Roosevelt changed that in a hurry. He telegraphed Dewey: “Order your squadron, except the Monocacy, to join you at Hong Kong. In event of declaration of war against Spain, your duty will be to see that Spanish ships do not leave the Asiatic coast, and then begin offensive operations in the Philippine Islands.” When Secretary Long returned to his office, he was surprised and upset at the actions Roosevelt had taken. But the orders to Commodore Dewey were not rescinded.

On Friday, March 25, the final report on the cause of the Maine disaster was delivered to the White House. The following Monday, President McKinley announced to the world that the Maine had been destroyed by a mine. This was the news that the American public had been waiting to hear. The nation’s press called for war, and the cry, “Remember the Maine” quickly healed the festering wounds of the recent Civil War.

The American people became united in a common cause. Only “war” could satisfy their hunger for revenge—the flames of which were fanned by the rival newspapers of Hearst and Pulitzer. Brewing in the wind was a newspaper circulation war in the States, and a shooting war on the high seas.

The loss of the Maine was not the only issue provoking a nationalistic spirit in the United States. The issue of Spanish misrule in Cuba had acquired an importance equal to that of who was to blame for the destruction of the battleship.

President McKinley’s Secretary of State, William R. Day, declared that Spain must accept responsibility for the loss of the Maine. This was not all; Spain should make reparations to the United States, and also grant Cuba her independence. The president, on the other hand, strove for neutrality and sought concessions from Spain in order to satisfy America’s lust for war. But “flag-waving” Congressmen demanded retribution, and continually exerted pressure on McKinley to act militarily against the Spanish.

Declaring War with Spain

Secretary of War Russell A. Alger told the president that Congress was hell-bent for revenge and would declare war in spite of McKinley’s pleas for calmness and cool heads. The war hawks finally prevailed. On April 19, Congress passed a resolution demanding that Spain relinquish her authority and government in Cuba—and McKinley was authorized to use the armed forces to effectuate the decree. Except for a formal declaration, the United States was at war with Spain.

Within a few days, President McKinley ordered a naval blockade of Cuban ports, and a call went out for 125,000 Army volunteers. Then, on April 25, Congress passed a joint resolution that a state of war existed between the two countries.

George Dewey had entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1854, aged 17. He was just beginning his Navy career at the time of the Civil War, and participated in the capture of New Orleans—serving as a lieutenant aboard the USS Mississippi. When Commodore Dewey was assigned to the Asiatic Squadron in January 1898, he was already 60 years old and looking forward to retirement.

On Friday, April 22, Dewey’s fleet was riding at anchor in the British port of Hong Kong. Navy Secretary Long cabled the commodore that the United States had begun a blockade of Cuban ports, but that war had not yet been officially announced. Later that afternoon, the cruiser Baltimore (dispatched by Roosevelt) arrived from Honolulu loaded with powder and ammunition for Dewey’s flotilla. On April 24, because of British neutrality regulations, the American Asiatic Squadron was ordered to leave Hong Kong. While Dewey’s ships steamed out from the British port, military bands on English vessels played the “Star Spangled Banner,” their crews cheering the American sailors.

Commodore Dewey anchored his fleet about 30 miles down the Chinese coast at Mirs Bay and awaited further instructions. During the weeks that Dewey was in Hong Kong, his days were spent in consultation with the various ship captains under his command. All possibilities and eventualities of conflict with the enemy were discussed. He called upon his men to express their opinions freely, and all ideas were given careful consideration. Also while the American squadron was anchored at Hong Kong, Spanish agents played a cat-and-mouse game with Dewey. The Spaniards continually spread rumors concerning the mining of channels surrounding the island of Corregidor and portions of Manila.

America’s Uncomfortable Analysis

Because of all the misinformation he was receiving, Dewey had established his own spy network. He had assigned his aide, Ensign F.B. Upham, to pose as a civilian interested in the sea and ships. Upham would interview crews attached to vessels arriving from Manila. Additional important data was obtained from an American businessman living in Hong Kong who made frequent trips to the Philippines and reported his observations to the commodore. Surprisingly, actual U.S. Naval intelligence was so lacking that Dewey was forced to buy charts of the Philippine Islands at a Hong Kong store.

After as many facts as they could gather were in and sorted out, the final picture they pieced together was not comforting. Approximately 20 Spanish naval vessels were in the Manila area, though most of these were gunboats and small torpedo craft. The largest ships were two cruisers, the Reina Cristina and Castilla.

Actually, it was the Spanish coastal defenses that worried Dewey the most. The island of Corregidor divided the entrance of Manila Bay into two channels. The north passage, between Corregidor and the Bataan peninsula was called Boca Chica and was only two miles wide. The southern channel, Boca Grande, was five miles wide. Strong fortifications mounting high- power German-made Krupp guns had been constructed on the island and mainland. Both channels had been mined by the Spanish. The narrow passage was the shallower of the two, and potentially more dangerous. Dewey was of the opinion that mining the deep channel at Boca Grande would be a much more difficult undertaking, and he doubted the Spanish could have accomplished the feat successfully. Other information relayed to the American fleet reported heavily armed fortresses at Cavite and Manila itself.

Another disturbing problem confronting Dewey was the knowledge that no reinforcements, nor assistance of any kind, had been dispatched by Navy Secretary Long to support the Asiatic Squadron. There was also the realization that in case the battle was not decisive and his fleet was forced to retire from the action, there was no place to go if any of his ships needed repair. Neutrality laws worked against the Americans in all Asian ports—and the United States was 8,000 miles away. Thus, by steaming to Manila, Dewey was burning all his bridges behind him. He had to be victorious. If the mission failed, the likely result was hopeless retreat and eventual annihilation of his squadron.

“You Must Capture Vessels or Destroy”

While battle plans were being formulated, crew members of the American flotilla were not taking life easy. The sailors trained continually in target practice, fire drills, and all possible conditions of actual combat. On Tuesday, April 26, Dewey was notified that war had begun and received his sailing orders: “War has commenced between the United States and Spain. Proceed at once to the Philippine Islands, and initiate operations against the Spanish fleet. You must capture vessels or destroy. Use utmost endeavors.”

A reporter for the New York Journal, John Barrett, witnessed the American ships leaving the Chinese coast. He wrote: “When Dewey’s squad- ron sailed out from Mirs Bay, it reminded me of thoroughbred race horses, trained to the minute by an expert, who not only knew his animals, but also his competition, and the conditions of the race.” Nevertheless the United States Asiatic Fleet did not include a single battleship. The flotilla was composed of four cruisers, the Olympia, Baltimore, Boston, , and Raleigh; two gunboats, the Concord and Petrel; and the revenue cutter McCulloch. Dewey’s flagship, the Olympia, was commanded by Captain Charles V. Gridley.

The armament of the American vessels ranged from 8-inch to 5-inch guns, plus many smaller caliber weapons. The combined tonnage of the cruisers was only slightly more than that of the battleship Iowa.

Before leaving Hong Kong, Dewey had asked for and received permission to purchase two British cargo ships—the Nanshan and the Zafiro. The merchantmen were loaded with 10,000 tons of coal for the task force and manned by English crews. Three newspaper correspondents sailed with the American fleet. Aboard the McCulloch were Edwin Harden of the New York World and John McCutch- eon of the Chicago Record. Joseph Stickney of the New York Herald had a ringside seat on the bridge of the Olympia,.

Hong Kong was 600 miles from Manila, and there was plenty of time for the men in Dewey’s squadron to worry and wonder what was in store for them. Moreover, they could be anxious about an ambush; more than a thousand islands were scattered throughout the Philippine archipelago, and Spanish warships could be hiding anywhere

During the voyage, individual ship captains kept their men razor-sharp, with constant gun drills and signal exercises. General quarters was called at any hour of the day or night. On Friday evening, April 29, the fleet was ordered darkened, except for small stern lights that were barely visible. On Saturday morning, the island of Luzon was sighted. Fires were kindled under each boiler, and black smoke poured from every stack. The vessels were a bedlam of activity. Splinter nettings were spread and hoses run between decks—ready to instantly drown any fires caused by bursting shells. Ammunition hoists were checked, magazines opened, and every strip of bunting except the signal flags was packed away. Wooden stanchions, rails, and other movable items were stowed below to prevent shrapnel fragments from slashing the men topside in case of an enemy hit.

The Spanish Fleet Possessed a Distinct Numerical Advantage

Wooden lifeboats were lowered and towed behind the McCulloch. All spars and ladders that could not be stowed below decks were swung over the sides of the ships. Unnecessary rigging was taken down, and wire stays attached to the masts were firmly lashed with ropes, so that if shot away, the masts would not crash to the deck and interfere with the operation of the guns. The captain of every ship in Dewey’s squadron informed his crew that the Spanish fleet was larger than the American squadron, and that considering the mined channels and forts that had to be traversed, the enemy had a distinct advantage.

Before he sailed from Mirs Bay, Dewey learned that Spanish Admiral Patricio Montojo had ordered his warships to Subic Bay, about 30 miles north of Corregidor, and was prepared to battle the Americans from an excellent defensive position. The vessels under Montojo’s command were the cruisers Reina Cristina and Castilla and the gunboats Isla de Cuba, Isla de Luzon, Don Juan de Austria, and the Don Antonio de Ulloa. Several smaller ships included four torpedo boats.

Subic Bay was an ideal defensive setup. The entrance was about two miles wide, and halfway up the bay was Grande Island, commanding both sides of the passage. But unknown to Dewey, when Admiral Montojo’s fleet reached Subic Bay, he discovered that only five mines had been placed and that four cannon, supposedly mounted on the island, were instead lying on the beach. Visibly upset, Montojo turned his fleet around and headed for Manila. The Spanish admiral anchored his warships on both sides of the Cavite fortress, where the vessels could be protected by large land-based guns. Montojo was familiar with the harbor area, and was aware that the Americans would be compelled to maneuver in strange waters—and with inaccurate Spanish charts.

Dewey halted his squadron outside Subic Bay and sent the Boston, Baltimore, and Concord ahead as pickets to scout the inlet. The vessels returned in the afternoon and reported they found only a few small sloops and schooners. Dewey also received news that Montojo had left Subic Bay earlier that morning.

All ship captains were immediately summoned to the Olympia, for a conference. Dewey told the officers he intended to enter Manila Bay that evening—regardless of the mines and forts. The Commodore felt confident the Spaniards would not expect such a move, and that they could be taken by surprise. Then the American squadron sneaked along the Philippine coast at four knots so as not to reach the Manila Bay entrance before nightfall.

Battle Stations!

The ships’ crews went to their battle-eve supper at 7 o’clock, and about two hours later, battle ports were closed. A spirit of tense excitement permeated the hot, muggy night. The only light visible was a tiny stern signal, enclosed in a box so it could only be seen by ships directly in the wake of the slow-moving vessels.

The Olympia, led the column, followed by the Baltimore, Boston, Raleigh, Concord, and Petrel. The McCulloch and the coal ships were stationed a mile astern. The sky was overcast but the moon occasionally peeked between the clouds, silhouetting the invading fleet. Off to port, the coast of Bataan could be seen in the distance. Dewey realized that the enemy could be watching their approach and preparing their fortress guns for a heavy barrage. At 10 o’clock, the men were sent to their battle stations—not by the usual bugle call, but by word of mouth. Dewey timed his arrival with precision. It was almost midnight when the Corregidor Island foglight flashed ahead. The American squadron passed into the Boca Grande channel and approached Corregidor abeam to port. Every binocular and gun was trained on the fortress as Dewey’s fleet turned north into Manila Bay.

Suddenly the McCulloch’s smokestack belched a bright flash of flame. Soot from the soft coal she was burning had ignited inside the stack owing to the intense heat of her furnace. The fire glowed for a few minutes, leaving the cutter a perfect target for the enemy’s big guns. But the Spaniards had evidently been taken by surprise. Their weapons were not fully manned, and it took time to ready the batteries for action.

It was not until Dewey’s fleet cleared Corregidor that the Spanish opened fire. The flash from a cannon erupted on the mainland, and a shell ripped across the water, splashing in front of the Olympia,. The Raleigh answered the challenge, followed by 8-inch salvos from the Boston. Direct hits were scored on the enemy’s position, silencing their guns.

Even though the American squadron had been discovered, Spaniards in the forts at the bay’s entrance could not directly tell their comrades farther up the bay what was happening; there was no telegraphic communication between them and the city of Manila. Dewey was only 20 miles from Manila, but decided not to arrive until daylight. He signaled his ships to proceed in double column at a speed of four knots. He also ordered the McCulloch to lead the cargo vessels up to a position where they would be protected by the cruisers and less exposed to a sudden attack. All gun crews were directed to try to get some sleep. The men lay down on the decks near their battle stations. Each ship was in a state of readiness. Every gun was loaded, and ammunition hoists were filled with shells. Officers on watch continually moved about, inspecting every station over and over again. Conversations were conducted in whispers so as not to disturb the sleeping men.

At 5 o’clock Sunday morning, May 1, the dim outline of Manila loomed through the haze on the horizon. A few minutes later, the city’s waterfront could be seen. In a moment, a lookout aboard the Olympia, sighted the outline of ships about five miles south. Lieutenant C.G. Calkins, using his binoculars, brought Sangley Point and Cavite into sharp focus. He could see a line of gray and white vessels stretching eastward from the point, the flame-colored flags of Spain hanging listlessly from their masts. Dewey’s squadron, with bright-hued signal flags whipping in the air, looked every bit like ships on parade as they headed for their date with destiny.

Battle Commences

John McCutcheon described the opening of the battle: “At ten minutes after five, the American fleet was off Cavite, and the brightness of the day revealed the enemy’s position. Spanish began firing immediately at a range of four miles. At the sound of the first shot, the Olympia, swung to starboard, and headed straight for the Spaniards. The flagship was followed by the Baltimore, Raleigh, Petrel, Concord, and Boston.”

Aboard the advancing American vessels, gunners, stripped of all clothing except their trousers, waited impatiently for the order to commence firing. Dewey had given strict instructions for his ships to hold their fire until an effective range had been reached—he could not afford to waste powder and shells. The McCulloch and coal ships remained back in the bay, their crews lining the decks to watch the spectacle. Commodore Dewey and Lieutenant Calkins stood on the forward bridge of the Olympia, while Captain Gridley’s post was in the conning tower.

With Dewey’s flagship in the lead, the silent fleet steamed steadily forward. Enemy shells kicked up the water around the squadron, but each vessel maneuvered directly behind the Olympia, with absolute precision and in perfect order.

As the American flotilla drew closer to Cavite, shells from the Spanish fort and anchored warships churned the bay into a frothy foam. Suddenly two large geysers of water shot into the air as the Spaniards exploded a couple of mines in front of Dewey’s advancing column. But the American ships stayed on course, closing the distance between themselves and the smoking Spanish cannon. When each range was called, the gunners aboard the Olympia, lowered their sight-bars.

The flagship continued for another mile, with shots splashing on all sides. The tension among the crew was almost unbearable. As soon as the Olympia, was three miles from Cavite, Dewey ordered the cruiser’s port 5-inch battery turned toward the enemy. Seconds later, a shell burst above the flagship. A boatswain’s mate at one of the aft guns shouted “Remember the Maine!” and every man on deck echoed the cry.

“You may fire when ready, Gridley!”

Dewey checked with his gunnery officer. The range was perfect. The commodore then glanced at his watch. It was exactly 5:40. He looked up at the conning tower and called out, “You may fire when ready, Gridley!”

Dewey had barely finished giving the order when the Olympia, sent a broadside of shells crashing into Fort Cavite. The signal for attack brought every squadron gun into action. A hailstorm of steel from rapid-fire weapons pounded the Spanish fleet, while large-caliber shells concentrated on the fortress. The enemy’s return fire increased. Splashing projectiles hurled a deluge of water across the Olympia,’s deck, thoroughly dowsing the gun crews. Clouds of dense smoke enveloped the Spanish and American vessels. The terrific onslaught by Dewey’s fleet continued as it steamed past the enemy fortifications.

When the port batteries of the American ships would no longer bear on the Spaniards, Dewey’s column swung about and cut loose with their starboard guns. One sailor remarked, “It was a tremendous, roaring procession—a scene of awful magnificence!” Two enemy shells ripped the Baltimore. One missile passed clear through the cruiser without exploding. The other tore across the main deck, wrecking a 6-inch gun and wounding eight men.

The Boston was also blasted. A projectile struck her port quarter. A fire broke out, but it was quickly extinguished. Time-fuse shells continually exploded above the American fleet, scattering steel fragments in all directions. Joseph Stickney was on the Olympia,’s bridge during the conflict and described the battle: “One projectile headed straight for the forward bridge, but exploded less than a hundred feet away. Shrapnel sliced the rigging over the heads of Commander Lamberton and myself. Another shell, about as large as a flatiron, gouged a hole in the deck a few feet below the Commodore.”

Tons of Spanish shells fell about the American squadron, whose salvation was the poor marksmanship of the enemy. Most of their shots were too high and roared into the bay beyond. After passing the enemy’s line for the second time, the Olympia,’s column swung around again on a closer tack, giving the port guns a second chance at the Spaniards. The Cavite shoreline was a veritable inferno of flames and the pandemonium was indescribable. Suddenly the Americans spotted the Reina Cristina steaming out to meet the Olympia,. Dewey ordered his ships to concentrate their fire on the reckless enemy vessel. Rapid-fire shells riddled the side of the Spaniard, and gunfire swept her decks. An 8-inch projectile struck the enemy cruiser in the stern, plowing completely through the ship and blowing up its forward magazine.

Dewey’s fleet had just finished its fifth circle of the enemy’s position, when Gridley reported that there were only 15 rounds per gun for the Olympia,’s 5-inch battery. Not wishing to alarm the crew, the commodore ordered his squadron to withdraw for “breakfast.” While the battle-weary fleet steamed north, beyond the range of Spanish guns, clearing smoke near Cavite revealed the wreckage of the fort and fires burning on several enemy vessels.

How Morale on the Olympia Plummeted

Once safely out in the bay, Dewey summoned his ship captains to the Olympia,. Remaining ammunition was checked and powder and shells redistributed where necessary. During this unorthodox pause in the action, Stickney wrote the following: “We had been fighting a determined and courageous enemy for almost three hours, without noticeably diminishing their volume of fire. So far as we could see, there was no indication that the Spaniards were less able to defend themselves than they had been at the beginning of the engagement.

“We knew the Spanish had an ample supply of ammunition, so there was no hope of exhausting their fighting power by a battle lasting twice as long. If we should run short of powder and shell, we might possibly become the hunted instead of the hunter. The gloom on the bridge of the Olympia, was thicker than a London fog in November. We had all been disappointed by results of our gunfire. For some reason, the shells seemed to go too high or too low. The same had been the case with the Spaniards. On our final circle, we were within 2,500 yards of the enemy. At that distance, and in a smooth sea, we should have had a large percentage of hits. However, as near as we could judge, we had not crippled the foe to any great extent.”

While his ravenous sailors ate a hearty meal, Commodore Dewey scouted the enemy position with his binoculars. Heavy smoke obscured Cavite, but he still could make out the tall masts and flags of Spanish ships. Occasionally the sound of exploding ammunition could also be heard in the distance. After a three-hour respite, Dewey again formed his battle line for attack. This time the Baltimore was in the lead.

As the American fleet approached Cavite, the sound of church bells in downtown Manila floated peacefully across the bay. Curious spectators could be seen crowding the rooftops of the city. They appeared to be preparing to watch a pageant or play.

Dewey’s squadron and the big guns of Cavite opened fire at the same time. Only one Spanish vessel slipped her moorings and came out fighting. The captain of the Antonio de Ulloa nailed her flag to the mast and engaged the American cruisers in a one-sided firefight. Within a few minutes, the Spanish vessel went down with all hands.

Spotting the White Flag of Surrender

Recognizing the futility of continuing the conflict, Admiral Montojo issued his last order to his fleet officers: “Scuttle and abandon your ships!” The admiral then escaped to Manila in a small boat.

About 12:30, a white flag of surrender was seen flying over Fort Cavite, and Dewey anchored his squadron near Manila.

Three enemy ships had been sunk by Dewey’s squadron. Eight Spanish vessels had been set afire and scuttled by their crews. A total of 381 Spaniards were killed during the fierce battle. While aboard the American fleet, only eight men were wounded. Amazingly, not one member of Dewey’s squadron was killed in action.

After the conflict, Commodore Dewey declared: “This battle was won in Hong Kong Harbor. My captains and staff officers working with me, planned out the fight with reference to all contingencies, and we were fully prepared for exactly what happened. Although I recognized the alternatives from reports that reached me—that the Spanish might meet me at Subic Bay, or possibly near Corregidor, I made up my mind that the battle would be fought right here that very morning, at the same hour, and with nearly the same position of opposing ships. That is why and how, at break of day, we formed in perfect line, opened fire, and kept our position without mistake or interruption until the enemy ships were destroyed.”

Dewey’s engagement was unsurpassed in the naval history of that time. Never before had an entire fleet been wiped out without the loss of a ship—or a single man—on the part of an attacking force. Commodore Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay is still one of the most romantic and decisive in world history.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Warfare History Network

History, Asia

Its destroyers and other warships being too large, the U.S. Navy developed the Swift Boat to patrol coastal areas and rivers during the Vietnam War.

Key Point: The first Swift Boats reached Vietnam in October 1965.

In addition to standard aircraft carrier and warship patrol operations in the open sea, naval action during the Vietnam War developed a character of its own. While the U.S. Navy maintained responsibility for more traditional functions, the interior waterways of Vietnam became an area of operations that required a different approach.

Since the early 20-century, the patrol workhorse of the U.S. Navy had been the destroyer, which rose to prominence during the two world wars. Destroyers provided perimeter security for formations of surface ships, anti-submarine and antiaircraft defenses, and search-and-rescue duties among others. These warships rendered invaluable service; however, during the Vietnam War the ocean-going vessels were unsuited for operations along the deltas, coastal areas, and rivers of the country.

A Holdover From World War II

The American Fletcher-class Navy destroyer was a weapon of World War II. Armed with main batteries of five-inch guns, 40mm Bofors antiaircraft weapons, 20mm cannon, torpedoes, and an array of machine guns and automatic weapons, these were formidable warships, and a number of them remained in service through both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. These destroyers displaced 2,500 tons fully loaded, were more than 375 feet long, and their draft exceeded 17 feet.

Clearly, a smaller warship was needed to navigate the confines of Vietnam’s coastal areas and to patrol the waterways of the country’s interior. By 1965, the Navy recognized the need for such craft, and the primary weapon of the so-called “Brown Water Navy” was born. The Patrol Craft Fast (PCF) became commonly known as the Swift Boat and was the most prominent of the Navy’s riverine patrol craft during the Vietnam War.

On February 1, 1965, an extensive naval staff study titled Naval Craft Requirements in a Counter Insurgency Environment was published. It concluded that the requirements of patrol, combat, and interdiction of communist troop and supply movement along the rivers of Vietnam presented unique challenges. Further, the document specified the basic capabilities of a new type of riverine craft to fulfill the brown water role. Among these were superb reliability, a non-wooden hull, speed of up to 25 knots, the capability to sustain operations during patrols of up to 500 miles, quiet running, shallow draft, and armament capable of limited offensive operations.

The Swift Boat

The Swift Boats were 50 feet long and constructed of welded aluminum hulls. With a beam of about 13 feet and a draft of roughly five feet, they were well suited for narrow spaces. Their General Motors 12V71 Detroit Diesel engines provided 480 horsepower with a range of 750 nautical miles at a speed of 10 knots and 320 nautical miles at 21 knots. The Swift Boats were initially armed with twin-mounted .50-caliber Browning machine guns in a turret atop the pilothouse, another .50-caliber in an over-under configuration, and an 81mm mortar. The standard crew was six, including a skipper, boatswain, radar and radio operator, engineer, and two gunners.

The first Swift Boats reached Vietnam in October 1965, and about 100 of the Mark I and Mark II variants were ordered by the Navy through 1967. Another 33 of the slightly larger Mark III boats were delivered to Vietnam between 1969 and 1972.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: USMC Archives / Flickr

Warfare History Network

History, Asia

World War II experiences led to more shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons such as the RPG and the M72 LAW, both widely used in the Vietnam War.

Key Point: The one-shot disposable LAW made its debut with the U.S. military in 1963 and remains in limited use.

Among the most effective and feared weapons of the communist North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong insurgency during the Vietnam War was the rocket-propelled grenade, commonly known as the RPG. These were simple weapons originally designed and manufactured in the Soviet Union. The RPG-2 and the follow-on RPG-7 were perhaps the best-known types of these weapons that entered service in Vietnam. During the conflict, these RPG types were known as the B-40 and B-41.

A shoulder-fired anti-armor weapon, the RPG traces its roots to the latter years of World War II as the Soviets developed and tested its predecessor, the PG-70. The RPG-2 entered service in 1949 and was mass produced in the Soviet Union, both for use by the Red Army and for the export market. The weapon was also produced under license in other countries. The simplicity of the RPG-2 and its light weight of just under 10 pounds were attributes that made it ideal for squad level anti-tank operations.

The basic RPG consists of a 40mm tube and fires a high explosive anti-tank grenade such as the Soviet PG-2. Although it may be operated by a single soldier, it has most often been deployed with a two-man team. Firing involves the simple steps of cocking with the thumb, aiming, and then pulling the trigger. Once the grenade exits the tube, six stabilizer fins deploy, and the grenade is accurate up to about 160 yards with a maximum range of nearly 220 yards.

During the Vietnam War, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces regularly encountered the RPG. Particularly effective against the high-silhouetted M113 armored personnel carrier, as well as against tanks and low-flying helicopters and other aircraft, the RPG developed a formidable reputation and remains common around the world.

The LAW Enters Combat in 1963

The United States military of the Vietnam era deployed its own version of the infantry squad level shoulder fired anti-tank weapon. Like the RPG, the M72 LAW (Light Anti-Tank Weapon) traces its lineage to the World War II era. The LAW was influenced first by the German panzerfaust and then the American M1 bazooka. The one-shot disposable LAW made its debut with the U.S. military in 1963 and remains in limited use.

The 66mm weapon consists of a high explosive anti-tank rocket or grenade placed inside a pair of tubes, one fitting within the other. In preparation for firing, the inner tube telescopes to the rear, and the operator acquires the target and pulls the trigger. The LAW weighs only 5.5 pounds, and its effective range is similar to that of the RPG at more than 150 yards and a maximum range of 220 yards. The projectile has been documented to penetrate nearly 10 inches of armor.

In Vietnam the LAW was once recalled due to malfunctions resulting in the warhead exploding while the rocket was in flight. It was reissued after safety modifications were completed. More recently, the LAW has been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan where its light weight and low cost have made it ideal for urban combat or instances when enemy vehicles are encountered.

Since the Vietnam War, the LAW has been in service with the armed forces of more than 30 countries, including Israel, Egypt, Australia, South Korea, and Great Britain.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Chris Bauch, Brendon Phillips, Dillon Thomas Browne, Madhur Anand

Coronavirus, The Americas

For students attending in person, there are many questions to consider: How important is the cleaning and disinfecting of surfaces? Which age of students should use masks, and when? What is the best approach to cohorting? How large should class sizes be? Here's the math. 

Formulating school and childcare centre reopening plans in North America this fall has been a daunting task, as both the pandemic and our scientific knowledge of COVID-19 continue to unfold quickly.

For students attending in person, there are many questions to consider: How important is the cleaning and disinfecting of surfaces? Which age of students should use masks, and when? What is the best approach to cohorting? How large should class sizes be?

Knowledge of how COVID-19 spreads has improved since the pandemic started, but as reopening plans were being developed, we recognized a need to investigate outbreak scenarios in schools and childcare centres. With our combined background in mathematical modelling, epidemiology, environmental sciences and childhood education, we tackled the question of class sizes.

We developed a mathematical model of outbreaks in homes and classrooms. The model made a very surprising prediction: as class sizes go up, the negative impacts of COVID-19 go up exponentially faster.

A granular approach

We opted for an “individual-based” model where distinct individuals (adults and children) are allowed to interact according to specified rules. This highly granular approach allows us to see the effects of social groupings and individual characteristics on personal outcomes like missed school days.

Using age and household size information obtained from Canadian census data, we constructed small populations with childhood education centres and associated households consisting of one or more adults and one or more children. Our model is essentially a simulated virtual world of schools and homes.

Children were allocated to classrooms randomly or by grouping siblings together. We considered childcare centre scenarios with student/educator ratios of 7:3, 8:2 and 15:2. We also considered primary school scenarios with student/educator ratios of 8:1, 15:1 and 30:1. Students could attend class every day or alternate between in-person instruction one week and online learning the next week.

Influencing factors

Then we ran our computer simulation of COVID-19 outbreaks in this setting. We assumed that when a symptomatic case of COVID-19 appears in a classroom that it would then be closed for 14 days.

But modelling the impact of class sizes on outbreaks is tricky.

Schools have been closed during much of the first wave and so — perhaps unsurprisingly — school-aged children did not account for a significant portion of cases during this period. In addition, children are more likely to be asymptomatic and therefore not reported as having COVID-19. A host of other factors could influence both the risk and size of outbreaks.

So how can we predict what outbreaks in schools might look like, given that schools have not been open in Ontario since March 2020? Since we don’t know all of the right input values to use, we took an approach of “uncertainty analysis,” a cornerstone of scientific inquiry — admitting that you do not know everything.

This approach meant that we would change the model inputs and study how those affect the predictions. For example, we distinguished between a “high transmission” assumption, where the virus can spread quickly, and a “low transmission” assumption, where the virus spread is being slowed by the use of masks, disinfection and physical distancing.

Triple whammy

Across all of the permutations used in our uncertainty analysis, we were surprised to find that when class size doubled, the number of cases and student-days lost to closure more than doubled. Student-days are calculated by multiplying the number of closure days by the number of students affected, and with each class size doubling, they went up by factors of two to five.

When we increased the transmission rate, it changed the total number of cases, but the relative number of cases or student-days lost to closure between the various class size scenarios did not change much: larger classes were always relatively worse than smaller classes, and by about the same factor of two to five.

We describe this as a “triple whammy.” First, when class sizes are larger, the chances are higher that one of the children will test positive. Second, when that child does test positive and the class is closed, closure of a larger class affects more children. Third, by the time the case is identified, the student might have been transmitting the virus for several days, or someone else in the class may have been asymptomatic and transmitting for many days. This third point is crucial — it is increasingly clear that SARS-CoV-2 can be spread by aerosol particles.

Other consequences

The worst scenario, by a wide margin, was the 30:1 ratio in the primary school setting. Switching to a 15:1 ratio with alternating weekly cohorts (15:1A) reduced the number of cases and student-days lost to closure by a factor of around four. And even though higher student/educator ratios allow more students to get in-person instruction, they also cause more disruptions due to more frequent need to close classrooms when a case is identified.

In addition, there are likely to be significant psychological, social and mental health consequences for parents and children when schools and childcare centres close. And since outbreaks can happen at any time, working parents may need to be pulled from their work with little or no advance notice.

Read more: How to help your child cope with the transition back to school during COVID-19

Moving forward

Schools and childcare centres have already reopened. Some districts have been allowed to go with a preferred model that permits smaller class sizes, and this is a step in the right direction.

There are also many examples of how school districts can reduce class size at minimal cost. For instance, kindergarten classes with two teachers could split into two groups, one of which uses the library, gym or spends more time outdoors in activities.

Read more: COVID-19 and schools reopening: Now is the time to embrace outdoor education

If widespread school closure occurs again this fall, we suggest that re-reopening plans pay close attention to the aspect of class size. While the risk of outbreaks will never be zero even with small classes, it would be prudent for class sizes to be lower, so these disruptions affect the fewest number of children and families possible. In the meantime, for parents and caregivers, the best thing to do is have honest and open conversations around how closures will look like in their family, including arrangements for work and child care.

The math tells us that school or classroom closures will be a reality for many school districts this fall.

Chris Bauch, Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo; Brendon Phillips, Ph.D. student, Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo; Dillon Thomas Browne, Assistant Professor, Psychology, University of Waterloo, and Madhur Anand, Professor & Director, Global Ecological Change & Sustainability Laboratory, University of Guelph

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

Rebecca Dumbell

Health, World

Unfortunately, this means that it might be more difficult for a person who naturally stores fat around their waist to maintain good health.

It’s well known that carrying extra fat around your waist can be harmful to your health, bringing greater risk of developing illnesses such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease. But a recent study found that, regardless of weight, people who carry more fat around their abdomen had a higher risk of dying sooner – in fact, there was an 11% increase in death during follow up with every extra 10cm of waist circumference.

The researchers included 72 studies in their review, which contained data on 2.5 million people. They then analysed the combined data on body shape measures, looking at waist-to-hip ratio, waist-to-thigh ratio, and waist and thigh circumference – in other words, all the areas where a person naturally stores fat.

Beside the finding on belly fat, the researchers also found that people who tend to store more fat on the hips and thighs – instead of their abdomen – had a lower risk of dying sooner, with each extra 5cm thigh circumference associated with an 18% reduced risk of death during the follow-up period (between 3-24 years, depending on the study). But why might this be the case? The answer has to do with the type of fat tissue we tend to store in certain areas of our body.

Body fat (known as adipose tissue) plays an important role in our physiology. Its main purpose is to take glucose from the blood and safely store this energy as lipid inside our fat cells, which our body uses later for fuel. Our fat cells also produce hormone signals that influence many body processes, including appetite. Adipose tissue is therefore important for good metabolic health.

But having too little adipose tissue can affect how well blood sugar levels are regulated in the body. Insulin regulates healthy blood sugar levels, telling fat cells to take up glucose from the blood and store it for later. Without enough adipose tissue (a condition known as lipodystrophy), this process can’t work properly – resulting in insulin resistance, which can lead to diabetes.

Although fat is important for good metabolic health, where we store it (and the kind of fat tissue it is) can have different health consequences. Research shows that people with the same height and weight, but who store their fat in different places have different risks of developing certain metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Visceral versus Subcutaneous

Body shape is influenced by where fat is stored in our body. For example, “apple shaped” people store more fat around their waist and are likely to store more fat deeper in the body surrounding their organs as visceral fat. “Pear shaped” people have larger thighs, and store more fat more evenly around their body just under the skin as subcutaneous fat.

These different fat depots have different physiological properties and express different genes. It’s thought that different visceral and subcutaneous fat depots develop from different precursor cells – cells that can become fat cells.

Visceral fat is considered more insulin resistant, and so carries a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. Body fat stored around the waist also releases more blood triglycerides in response to stress hormone signals compared to hip and thigh fat. High blood trigylceride levels are associated with greater risk of heart disease. This is partly why visceral fat is seen as as more harmful than subcutaneous fat.

On the other hand, hip and thigh subcutaneous fat can better take up these triglycerides from the blood and store them safely, preventing the body from incorrectly storing them in the muscles or liver, which can cause liver disease. Subcutaneous fat tissue can even develop specialised “beige” fat cells that are able to burn fat. For these reasons, subcutaneous fat is thought of as safer – even protective against metabolic disease.

It’s thought that in some people subcutaneous fat stores run out of storage space (or the ability to make new fat cells) sooner than in others. This means more fat will be stored in the less safe visceral depots. Visceral fat can cause inflammation, eventually leading to metabolic and cardiovascular disease. And if fat can no longer be stored in adipose tissue, eventually lipid can accumulate elsewhere – including the heart, muscles, and liver – which again can lead to disease.

As with height, your genes play a large part in weight and body shape. Large genetic studies have identified over 400 of the tiniest genome differences that might contribute to body-fat distribution. For example, people who have a mutation in the LRP5 gene carry more fat in their abdomen and less in their lower body. However, these tiny genetic differences are common in the population, affecting most of us in one way or another – and may explain why humans have such a range of different body shapes.

Unfortunately, this means that it might be more difficult for a person who naturally stores fat around their waist to maintain good health. But research also shows that weight loss can reduce visceral fat and improve metabolic health. So what is important to remember is that body shape is only a risk factor, and even with these differences you can still lower your risk of chronic disease if you maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Rebecca Dumbell, Lecturer, Nottingham Trent University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters.

Erin Duffy, Erin Trish, Loren Adler

Healthcare,

Too often after a hospital procedure or visit to an emergency room patients get hit with unexpected bills from out-of-network doctors they had no role in choosing. These include assistant surgeons, emergency room doctors and anesthesiologists.

Surprise medical billing is one of the most urgent topics in health care.

Too often after a hospital procedure or visit to an emergency room patients get hit with unexpected bills from out-of-network doctors they had no role in choosing. These include assistant surgeons, emergency room doctors and anesthesiologists.

Most research and media coverage focuses on how burdensome these bills are for the patients who receive them. As health economists and policy analysts, we think there is a broader impact of surprise billing that deserves to share the spotlight.

Evidence from our recent study suggests that everyone with commercial health insurance is paying higher premiums today because lawmakers allow the practice of surprise billing to persist. Fixing surprise billing won’t just help the patients being billed; it offers the potential to lower health insurance premiums for everyone.

No choice, no competition

Patients can typically choose their doctors before they get treated. For example, they might pick a primary care doctor or the hospital and surgeon for a planned procedure based on reputation and whether those providers are in their insurance network. Picking a doctor who is in their insurance provider’s network typically comes with lower costs for the patient.

When the system works well, a patient ends up with a provider they like at a price negotiated by their insurer.

But patients don’t always have the opportunity to make this informed choice. In an emergency, a patient accepts the ambulance that arrives on the scene and the physicians who treat them in the emergency room. For elective procedures, even though the patient chooses the hospital and lead surgeon, they do not choose the radiologists, pathologists and anesthesiologists who are integral to their care.

About one in five commercially insured patients treated at an in-network emergency room is seen by an out-of-network physician. In about one in 10 elective procedures at an in-network hospital with an in-network surgeon, the anesthesiologist, assistant surgeon or similar physician is out-of-network.

This is not the way a market typically works. In a functioning market, consumers can choose service providers based on quality and price.

At its core, market failure arises because this system allows the subset of hospital-based physicians whom patients don’t choose to negotiate with insurance companies independent of the hospital at which they practice. Therefore, ambulance companies, emergency facilities and hospital-based physicians can still receive a substantial volume of patients whether they are in- or out-of-network. They are assured a steady stream of patients, in part, by the nature of their work. They don’t need to join networks to get patients. And, as out-of-network providers, they can set their own prices.

If the insurer pays less than their full charges, the out-of-network provider can send the patient a surprise bill for the balance.

Using Medicare as a benchmark shows the markup

With this out-of-network option to submit surprise bills, these unique providers have a valuable alternative to joining networks. This gives them bargaining leverage when they negotiate with insurers, allowing them to negotiate higher prices than they otherwise could have.

As a result, these providers are out-of-network more often, set higher charges and have higher in-network prices than other types of providers who rely on being in-network to generate patient volume.

To gauge just how much higher prices are, researchers often use Medicare as a benchmark for comparison. Medicare does not negotiate with providers. It instead sets prices administratively in an attempt to reflect efficient costs.

The numbers are telling.

Radiologists, or those who view MRIs, CT scans and other diagnostic images, get paid roughly twice as much by commercial insurers as Medicare pays, on average, for in-network services.

Emergency room physicians receive in-network payments that are triple the Medicare reimbursement.

Anesthesiologists and pathologists receive in-network payments three and a half times the Medicare reimbursement.

The average payments for other specialties have an upper bound of around 150% of Medicare.

This suggests that the ability to submit surprise bills generates a substantial markup in negotiated prices paid by commercial insurers.

In addition to high in-network prices, we have observed in our research that insurance plans pay out-of-network providers full charges one-quarter of the time. This prevents patients from getting surprise bills, but it is costly for insurers.

It’s not just the patients getting these services who bear the inflated costs. Everyone enrolled in commercial insurance plans also pays. When insurers or employers pay providers high prices, those costs are passed on to enrollees through higher premiums.

A lot of insurer spending goes to services for which surprise billing is common

This might not be so important if these unique providers accounted for only a very small share of health care spending. But we found that is not the case.

In our recent study, we found that about 12% of insurers’ spending on medical care goes to providers who commonly issue surprise bills: anesthesiologists, radiologists, pathologists, emergency medicine physicians, emergency facilities and emergency ground ambulance services.

Eliminating the ability to submit surprise bills for these unique providers would reduce their ability to collect large out-of-network payments. This would bring their leverage in price negotiations with insurers in line with those of other specialties in which patients are able to choose their providers. In turn, less insurer spending would result in lower premiums.

Two possible fixes

We looked at two potential federal policy approaches to address how surprise billing might affect insurance premiums. In both approaches, we assume that surprise billing is banned, but the details of out-of-network payments are handled differently.

In the first approach, instead of charging what they wish, out-of-network providers would receive the average amount that insurers currently pay to similar in-network providers in the local area. This approach could reduce average payments for services where surprise billing is common by about 15%, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

A second approach would cap charges from out-of-network emergency facilities and lead hospital-based doctors to negotiate how much they get paid with the hospital. The hospital would negotiate payment with the insurer for this combined service.

Without the option to treat patients who did not choose them on an out-of-network basis, bargaining leverage for these unique providers should fall in line with specialties that cannot submit surprise bills. The precise impacts are difficult to predict, but we assume that prices shift to about half again the cost of Medicare – the high end of what these other specialties are paid.

This means savings for the health care consumer and the health care system in general, not just the people unfortunate enough to get a surprise bill.

We estimate that premiums would drop by US$67 per member-year – or 1.6% – under the first scenario. Under the second scenario, premiums would drop $212 per member-year, or 5.1%.

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Applied to the U.S. commercially insured population – about 177 million people – we estimate that these reductions would save $12 billion and $38 billion, respectively.

Our research suggests that a federal policy eliminating surprise medical bills would reduce premiums for everyone with commercial insurance, in addition to sparing individual patients from these burdensome bills.

Erin Duffy, Post-doctoral research fellow, University of Southern California; Erin Trish, Associate Director, Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics, University of Southern California, and Loren Adler, Associate Director, USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy, University of Southern California

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Nick Haslam

Coronavirus,

Over time, people have changed how they have responded to the threat of COVID-19. Google searches have shifted from the harm of the pandemic itself to ways of dealing with it, such as exercising and learning new skills.

The pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges. Many of us have lost work, gained carer responsibilities and grappled with social isolation. Experts have warned of a looming wave of mental illness as a result.

Research suggests they’re largely correct. Surveys in Australia, the UK and the USA point to rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal thinking substantially higher than in previous years.

But over time, people have changed how they have responded to the threat of COVID-19. Google searches have shifted from the harm of the pandemic itself to ways of dealing with it, such as exercising and learning new skills.

This pivot points to a new focus on coping with COVID-19.

Many ways of coping

Coping is the process of responding effectively to problems and challenges. To cope well is to respond to the threat in ways that minimise its damaging impact.

Coping can involve many different strategies and it’s likely you have your own preferred ones. These strategies can be classified in many ways, but a key distinction is between problem-focused and emotion-focused strategies.

What’s the difference?

Problem-focused coping involves actively engaging with the outside world. This might mean making action plans, seeking further information about a threat, or confronting an adversary.

Emotion-focused coping, in contrast, is directed inward, attempting to change how we respond emotionally to stressful events and conditions, rather than to change them at their source.

Effective emotion-focused strategies include meditation, humour and reappraising difficulties to find benefits.

Less effective emotion-focused strategies include seeking distractions, denial and substance use. Although these tactics may stave off distress in the short term, they neither address its causes nor prevent its longer term effects.

Which is best?

Neither of these coping strategies is intrinsically more or less effective than the other. Both can be effective for different kinds of challenges.

Problem-focused strategies are said to work best when we can control the problem.

However, when we face an immovable challenge, it can be better to adjust our response to it using emotion-focused strategies, rather than battling fruitlessly against it.

Coping strategies during the pandemic

Physical activity and experiencing nature can offer some protection from depression during the pandemic. One study even points to the benefits of birdwatching.

But there’s more evidence around coping strategies to avoid. Rising levels of substance use during the pandemic are associated with greater distress.

Eating too many snacks and accessing too much COVID-related media have also been linked to higher levels of stress and depression. So these should be consumed in moderation.

How can I tell if I’m not coping well?

We should be able to assess how well we are coping with the pandemic by judging how we’re going compared to our previous normal.

Think of yourself this time last year. Are you drinking more, sleeping poorly or experiencing fewer positive emotions and more negative emotions now?

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, then compared to your previous normal, your coping may not been as good as it could be. But before you judge your coping critically, it’s worth considering a few things.

Your coping is relative to your challenge

The pandemic may be shared, but its impacts have been unequal.

If you live alone, are a caregiver or have lost work, the pandemic has been a larger threat for you than for many others. If you’ve suffered more distress than others, or more than you did last year, it doesn’t mean you have coped less well — you may have just had more to cope with.

Read more: Your coping and resilience strategies might need to shift as the COVID-19 crisis continues

Negative emotions can be appropriate

Experiencing some anxiety in the face of a threat like COVID-19 is justified. Experiencing sadness at separation from loved ones under lockdown is also inevitable. Suffering does not mean maladjustment.

In fact, unpleasant emotions draw our attention to problems and motivate us to tackle them, rather than just being signs of mental fragility or not coping.

We should, of course, be vigilant for serious problems, such as thoughts of self-harm, but we should also avoid pathologising ordinary distress. Not all distress is a symptom of a mental health problem.

Read more: 7 mental health coping tips for life in the time of COVID-19

Coping isn’t just about emotions anyway

Coping isn’t all about how we feel. It’s also about action and finding a sense of meaning and purpose in life, despite our distress. Perhaps if we’ve sustained our relationships and done our jobs passably during the pandemic, we have coped well enough, even if we have sometimes been miserable.

Read more: 7 science-based strategies to cope with coronavirus anxiety

Coping with COVID-19 has been an uneven contest

Social distancing and lockdowns have left us with a reduced coping repertoire. Seeking emotional and practical support from others, also known as “social coping”, is made more difficult by pandemic restrictions. Without our usual supports, many of us have had to cope with one arm tied behind our backs.

So remember to cut yourself some slack. For most people, the pandemic has been a unique challenge. When judging how well we’ve coped we should practise self-compassion. Let’s not make things worse by criticising ourselves for failing to cope better.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

Warfare History Network

History, Europe

The Triple Alliance served the purposes of Kaiser Wilhelm II in his pursuit of a colonial empire and political and military influence for Germany.

Key Point: The agreement left room for clandestine dealings.

When Kaiser Wilhelm II acceded to the throne of the German Empire in 1888, the young nation was already an economic and military force with which to be reckoned on the European continent. During the previous three decades, Otto von Bismarck, first as Prime Minister of Prussia and then Chancellor of Germany, had presided over the unification of the country, the successful prosecution of multiple wars, and the establishment of a colonial empire, particularly on the continent of Africa.

Bismarck had also later worked to maintain an uneasy peace among the major European powers, negotiating settlements that avoided wars between Germany’s neighbors while protecting his nation’s own interests. In 1873, Bismarck spearheaded the formation of the League of Three Emperors with Austria-Hungary and Italy primarily for the purpose of isolating France, which remained hostile and might seek vengeance after its decisive defeat by the Prussians in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Although the League survived until 1890, Russia and Austria-Hungary were distrustful of one another as opportunities for expansion in the Balkans developed with the decline of the Ottoman Empire. At the same time, Russia became wary of the growing possibility of German hegemony in Europe and sought closer ties with France, which shared similar concerns.

Forming the Alliance

In May 1882, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy successfully concluded the Triple Alliance, which provided assurances between the nations in the event that one of them was attacked. However, there were some elements of the agreement that left room for clandestine dealings. On the face of it, the alliance purported that Germany and Austria-Hungary would assist Italy if that country were attacked by France without having provoked a French military move. Italy would side with Germany in the event that France opened hostilities against that country, and if Austria-Hungary went to war with Russia, Italy pledged to remain neutral. Five years later the Triple Alliance was renewed with the conclusion of additional assurances between the nations.

While young Wilhelm II had benefited directly from Bismarck’s efforts, he dismissed the “Iron Chancellor” in 1890, determined to pursue a more aggressive imperial posture. The Kaiser asserted that Germany would have its “place in the sun.” Bismarck died in 1898, amid the Kaiser’s overt efforts to build a German Navy that rivaled the supremacy of the British Royal Navy and establish German economic, industrial, and military domination in Europe.

A Flurry of Negotiations & Counter-Agreements

Although the Triple Alliance ostensibly represented a powerful coalition in Central Europe, five months after the agreement was renewed in November 1902, Italy successfully negotiated an understanding with France that each country would remain neutral if the other were attacked. The Triple Alliance was again renewed in 1907 and 1912, countering the Triple Entente between France, Great Britain, and Russia, each of which feared the growing might of the German nation and its obvious desire for territorial expansion.

The foremost of the flurry of agreements, treaties, and secret protocols that emerged among the major European powers prior to World War I, the Triple Alliance and Triple Entente significantly influenced the march toward global war in 1914. The Triple Alliance survived until the outbreak of the Great War, when Italy declined to enter the conflict on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Warfare History Network

History, Americas

The Clemson-class U.S. Navy destroyers were both speedy and heavily armed.

Key Point: Built too late for extensive combat service in World War I, the ships were approaching obsolescence by the advent of World War II.

The 50 ships transferred to Great Britain by executive action of President Roosevelt were all Clemson-class destroyers. There were 273 of these ships commissioned during 1917-1922. In general, they had an overall length of 314 feet, 5 inches; and a beam of 31 feet, 8 inches. Normal displacement was 1,190 tons, which produced a mean draft of 9 feet, 3 inches. The design speed was 35 knots, and their complement was six officers and 89 men. The ships were normally armed with four 4-inch guns and one 3-inch gun, plus twelve 21-inch torpedo tubes arranged in four triple mounts.

The Clemson-class carried hull numbers DD-69 through DD-347 inclusive. Despite the fact that World War I was concluded before construction on many of the destroyers was started, only hull numbers 200-205 were canceled. These destroyers, commonly referred to as “four-pipers,” were perhaps the archetypal American warships. Built too late for extensive combat service in World War I, they were approaching obsolescence by the advent of World War II; however, they played an important role in the latter conflict. One ship of the class, USS Reuben James, became the first American combat vessel sunk during hostilities between the United States and Germany when she was torpedoed by German submarine U-552 while escorting a British convoy on October 31, 1941, more than a month before the United States entered the war.

“Four-Piper”: The Ubiquitous Ship

Four-pipers were possibly the U.S. Navy’s most ubiquitous and colorful ships. Their presence in huge numbers during the 1920s virtually halted new American destroyer construction for 12 years. In addition, their existence as usable hulls practically forced the U.S. Navy to find alternative uses for them. Consequently, many were converted to destroyer minelayers, seaplane tenders, minesweepers, high-speed transports, radio-controlled target vessels, and even water barges. Several were sold and converted to civilian banana carriers. As combat ships, they served under the ensigns of the United States, Great Britain, Norway, Canada, and the Soviet Union. One captured four-piper, USS Stewart, even fought for Japan.

While the four-pipers were normally considered a homogeneous class of ships, that was not quite true. It should be recognized that the 273 completed destroyers were constructed in 11 different building yards, each of which made slight changes in the basic design to utilize the best local ship-construction practices. Three ships of the class were built with only three stacks, while many others in later life had one or two of the original four stacks removed. For this reason, “flush-decker” rather than “four-piper” is sometimes used to describe the class. Two of the ships had three, rather than the usual two, propeller shafts. Of the 273 four-pipers completed, only 20 were built in Navy yards, while 253 were constructed by civilian shipbuilders.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Andrew Latham

History, World

People are beginning to understand that the little changes COVID-19 has already ushered in or accelerated – telemedicine, remote work, social distancing, the death of the handshake, online shopping, the virtual disappearance of cash and so on – have begun to change their way of life. This is not the first time a pandemic has reshaped society. 

Before March of this year, few probably thought disease could be a significant driver of human history.

Not so anymore. People are beginning to understand that the little changes COVID-19 has already ushered in or accelerated – telemedicine, remote work, social distancing, the death of the handshake, online shopping, the virtual disappearance of cash and so on – have begun to change their way of life. They may not be sure whether these changes will outlive the pandemic. And they may be uncertain whether these changes are for good or ill.

Three previous plagues could yield some clues about the way COVID-19 might bend the arc of history. As I teach in my course “Plagues, Pandemics and Politics,” pandemics tend to shape human affairs in three ways.

First, they can profoundly alter a society’s fundamental worldview. Second, they can upend core economic structures. And, finally, they can sway power struggles among nations.

Sickness spurs the rise of the Christian West

The Antonine plague, and its twin, the Cyprian plague – both now widely thought to have been caused by a smallpox strain – ravaged the Roman Empire from A.D. 165 to 262. It’s been estimated that the combined pandemics’ mortality rate was anywhere from one-quarter to one-third of the empire’s population.

While staggering, the number of deaths tells only part of the story. This also triggered a profound transformation in the religious culture of the Roman Empire.

On the eve of the Antonine plague, the empire was pagan. The vast majority of the population worshipped multiple gods and spirits and believed that rivers, trees, fields and buildings each had their own spirit.

Christianity, a monotheistic religion that had little in common with paganism, had only 40,000 adherents, no more than 0.07% of the empire’s population.

Yet within a generation of the end of the Cyprian plague, Christianity had become the dominant religion in the empire.

How did these twin pandemics effect this profound religious transformation?

Rodney Stark, in his seminal work “The Rise of Christianity,” argues that these two pandemics made Christianity a much more attractive belief system.

While the disease was effectively incurable, rudimentary palliative care – the provision of food and water, for example – could spur recovery of those too weak to care for themselves. Motivated by Christian charity and an ethic of care for the sick – and enabled by the thick social and charitable networks around which the early church was organized – the empire’s Christian communities were willing and able to provide this sort of care.

Pagan Romans, on the other hand, opted instead either to flee outbreaks of the plague or to self-isolate in the hope of being spared infection.

This had two effects.

First, Christians survived the ravages of these plagues at higher rates than their pagan neighbors and developed higher levels of immunity more quickly. Seeing that many more of their Christian compatriots were surviving the plague – and attributing this either to divine favor or the benefits of the care being provided by Christians – many pagans were drawn to the Christian community and the belief system that underpinned it. At the same time, tending to sick pagans afforded Christians unprecedented opportunities to evangelize.

Second, Stark argues that, because these two plagues disproportionately affected young and pregnant women, the lower mortality rate among Christians translated into a higher birth rate.

The net effect of all this was that, in roughly the span of a century, an essentially pagan empire found itself well on its way to becoming a majority Christian one.

The plague of Justinian and the fall of Rome

The plague of Justinian, named after the Roman emperor who reigned from A.S. 527 to 565, arrived in the Roman Empire in A.D. 542 and didn’t disappear until A.D. 755. During its two centuries of recurrence, it killed an estimated 25% to 50% of the population – anywhere from 25 million to 100 million people.

This massive loss of lives crippled the economy, triggering a financial crisis that exhausted the state’s coffers and hobbled the empire’s once mighty military.

In the east, Rome’s principal geopolitical rival, Sassanid Persia, was also devastated by the plague and was therefore in no position to exploit the Roman Empire’s weakness. But the forces of the Islamic Rashidun Caliphate in Arabia – which had long been contained by the Romans and Sasanians – were largely unaffected by the plague. The reasons for this are not well understood, but they probably have to do with the caliphate’s relative isolation from major urban centers.

Caliph Abu Bakr didn’t let the opportunity go to waste. Seizing the moment, his forces swiftly conquered the entire Sasanian Empire while stripping the weakened Roman Empire of its territories in the Levant, the Caucasus, Egypt and North Africa.

Pre-pandemic, the Mediterranean world had been relatively unified by commerce, politics, religion and culture. What emerged was a fractured trio of civilizations jockeying for power and influence: an Islamic one in the eastern and southern Mediterranean basin; a Greek one in the northeastern Mediterranean; and a European one between the western Mediterranean and the North Sea.

This last civilization – what we now call medieval Europe – was defined by a new, distinctive economic system.

Before the plague, the European economy had been based on slavery. After the plague, the significantly diminished supply of slaves forced landowners to begin granting plots to nominally “free” laborers – serfs who worked the lord’s fields and, in return, received military protection and certain legal rights from the lord.

The seeds of feudalism were planted.

The Black Death of the Middle Ages

The Black Death broke out in Europe in 1347 and subsequently killed between one-third and one-half of the total European population of 80 million people. But it killed more than people. By the time the pandemic had burned out by the early 1350s, a distinctly modern world emerged – one defined by free labor, technological innovation and a growing middle class.

Before the Yersinia pestis bacterium arrived in 1347, Western Europe was a feudal society that was overpopulated. Labor was cheap, serfs had little bargaining power, social mobility was stymied and there was little incentive to increase productivity.

But the loss of so much life shook up an ossified society.

Labor shortages gave peasants more bargaining power. In the agrarian economy, they also encouraged the widespread adoption of new and existing technologies – the iron plow, the three-field crop rotation system and fertilization with manure, all of which significantly increased productivity. Beyond the countryside, it resulted in the invention of time and labor-saving devices such as the printing press, water pumps for draining mines and gunpowder weapons.

In turn, freedom from feudal obligations and a desire to move up the social ladder encouraged many peasants to move to towns and engage in crafts and trades. The more successful ones became wealthier and constituted a new middle class. They could now afford more of the luxury goods that could be obtained only from beyond Europe’s frontiers, and this stimulated both long-distance trade and the more efficient three-masted ships needed to engage in that trade.

The new middle class’s increasing wealth also stimulated patronage of the arts, science, literature and philosophy. The result was an explosion of cultural and intellectual creativity – what we now call the Renaissance.

Our present future

None of this is to argue that the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will have similarly earth-shattering outcomes. The mortality rate of COVID-19 is nothing like that of the plagues discussed above, and therefore the consequences may not be as seismic.

But there are some indications that they could be.

Will the bumbling efforts of the open societies of the West to come to grips with the virus shattering already-wavering faith in liberal democracy, creating a space for other ideologies to evolve and metastasize?

In a similar fashion, COVID-19 may be accelerating an already ongoing geopolitical shift in the balance of power between the U.S. and China. During the pandemic, China has taken the global lead in providing medical assistance to other countries as part of its “Health Silk Road” initiative. Some argue that the combination of America’s failure to lead and China’s relative success at picking up the slack may well be turbocharging China’s rise to a position of global leadership.

Finally, COVID-19 seems to be accelerating the unraveling of long-established patterns and practices of work, with repercussions that could affet the future of office towers, big cities and mass transit, to name just a few. The implications of this and related economic developments may prove as profoundly transformative as those triggered by the Black Death in 1347.

Ultimately, the longer-term consequences of this pandemic – like all previous pandemics – are simply unknowable to those who must endure them. But just as past plagues made the world we currently inhabit, so too will this plague likely remake the one populated by our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Andrew Latham, Professor of Political Science, Macalester College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Wikimedia

Matt Weidinger

Politics,

The new legislation could be considered on the House floor as soon as today. 

Late Monday, House Democrats released an updated version of the “Heroes Act,” the massive $3.4 trillion coronavirus relief bill that passed the House mostly along partisan lines in May but has languished since then. The new 2154-page legislative text is billed as a slimmed down version of the prior bill, and Capitol Hill sources suggest the new legislation could be considered on the House floor as soon as today. 

Despite its “slimmed down” billing, a review of the legislation’s unemployment provisions shows it calls for an expansion of several key unemployment benefits, including an extension of 13 more weeks of benefits (for a new total of up to 72 weeks of benefits) and an expansion of the eligibility criteria for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which has been subject to significant fraud and abuse.

Meanwhile, as the table below also displays, the legislation adds a new $125-per-week federal benefit for individuals with at least $5,000 in prior self-employment earnings, on top of the revived $600 per week federal bonus and other unemployment benefits. As under the May version of the legislation, the $600 bonus would be extended through January 2021 with a phase-out through March 2021 — except its revival would begin after September 5, when the intervening $300 per week federal Lost Wages Assistance program ceased supplementing other unemployment benefits.

Comparison of Unemployment Benefit Policies in Heroes Act I and II

  Policy     Heroes Act I (May 2020)   Heroes Act II (September 2020) Extension of $600 bonus Extends the federal $600 per week bonus from late July 2020 through January 2021, with a soft phase-out through March 2021. Same extension, except the revival of the $600 bonus begins after September 5, 2020 (that is, not during weeks when intervening $300-per-week federal Lost Wages Assistance benefits were payable).   Additional $125 benefit for “mixed earners” No provision. Adds a new $125-per-week federal “mixed-earner unemployment compensation” benefit (on top of the $600 bonus and other unemployment benefits) for individuals with at least $5,000 in prior self-employment earnings.   Disregard of $600 bonus Expands the current law disregard of the $600 bonus payments (which currently covers only Medicaid) to include “any Federal program or under any State or local program financed in whole or in part with Federal funds.”   Same, but adds that this change “shall take effect as if included in the enactment of the CARES Act,” suggesting unemployment benefit recipients may be able to file new claims for SNAP and other means-tested benefits back to March 2020.   More weeks of extended benefits Proposes a total of up to 59 weeks of all unemployment benefits (up to 26 weeks of UI, 13 of PEUC, and 20 of EB). Proposes a total of up to 72 weeks of all unemployment benefits (adding a new 13-week PEUC “extension” program).   PUA extension and eligibility expansion Extends PUA through January 2021 (i.e. a one-month straight extension). Same extension, but also expands eligibility for PUA, such as for adults whose children are in schools that are “partially reopened” or for whom “physical attendance at the school or facility presents an unacceptable health risk for the household.” Also allows the waiver of the repayment of PUA overpayments back to the program’s start, including if repayment “would be contrary to equity and good conscience.”   Extension of CARES Act benefits Extends PEUC plus federal financing of STC and the first week of UI benefits through January 2021 (i.e. a one-month straight extension).   Same as Heroes Act I. Other extensions Extends 100 percent federal funding of EB, interest-free treatment on federal loans, and federal assistance for reimbursable employers through June 2021 (i.e. a six-month straight extension).   Same as Heroes Act I. Report on claim backlogs No provision. Requires states to update the Department of Labor on backlogs of unemployment claims and develop a corrective action plan.  

Note: SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (commonly known as food stamps);

PEUC = federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, a program that currently provides 13 weeks of extended benefits to those exhausting state UI benefits;

PUA = federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program;

STC = Short-time compensation;

UI = state Unemployment Insurance program;

EB = Extended Benefits program.

This article first appeared on the AEIdeas blog, a publication of the American Enterprise Institute.

Image: Reuters.

Al Cross

Politics,

Trump exercises his power with what often seems like reckless audacity, but McConnell’s 36-year Senate tenure is built on his calculated audacity.

Unless Democrats win both the White House and the Senate in November, abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is about to finish his project of remaking the federal judiciary from top to bottom.

The impact of that achievement will outlive the 78-year-old Kentuckian, making it the biggest piece of his large legacy in Senate history.

This feat could hardly have been predicted when Senate Republicans elected McConnell their leader in 2006. For most of the 40-plus years I have watched McConnell, first as a reporter covering Kentucky politics and now as a journalism professor focused on rural issues, he seemed to have no great ambition or goals, other than gaining power and keeping it.

He always cared about the courts, though. In 1987, after Democrats defeated Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, McConnell warned that if a Democratic president “sends up somebody we don’t like” to a Republican-controlled Senate, the GOP would follow suit. He fulfilled that threat in 2016, refusing to confirm Merrick Garland, Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court.

Keeping that vacancy open helped elect Donald Trump. Two people could hardly be more different, but the taciturn McConnell and the voluble Trump have at least one thing in common: They want power.

Trump exercises his power with what often seems like reckless audacity, but McConnell’s 36-year Senate tenure is built on his calculated audacity.

McConnell’s political rise

It was audacious, back in 1977, to think that a wonky lawyer who had been disqualified from his only previous campaign for public office could defeat a popular two-term county executive in Louisville.

McConnell ran anyway.

It was audacious to think that a Republican could get the local labor council to endorse him in that race, but he got it, by leading the members to believe he would help them get collective bargaining for public employees.

McConnell won the race. He didn’t pursue collective bargaining.

Seven years later, it was audacious to think that an urbanite who wore loafers to dusty, gravelly county fairs and lacked a compelling personality could unseat a popular two-term Kentucky senator, especially when he trailed by 40 points in August, but McConnell won.

As soon as he won a second term in 1990, McConnell started climbing the Senate leadership ladder, facilitated in large measure by his willingness to be the point man on campaign finance issues, an area his colleagues feared. They reacted emotionally to this touchy issue; he studied it, owned it and moved higher in the leadership.

Business, not service

In politics, lack of emotion is usually a drawback. McConnell makes up for that by having command of the rules and the facts and a methodical attitude.

McConnell in 1992. Laura Patterson/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images

The recording on his home phone once said, “This is Mitch McConnell. You’ve reached my home. If this call is about business, please call my office.”

Business. Not something like “my service to you in the United States Senate,” but “business.”

This lack of emotion keeps McConnell disciplined. I am not the only person he has told, “The most important word in the English language is ‘focus,’ because if you don’t focus, you don’t get anything done.”

Last year, I spoke to the McConnell Scholars, the political-leadership program he started at the University of Louisville. One thank-you gift was a letter opener bearing two words: focus and humility. The first word was no surprise, because of McConnell’s well-known maxim; the second one intrigued me.

The director of the program, Gary Gregg, says adding “humility” was his idea. But it fits the founder. With his studied approach and careful reticence, McConnell is the opposite of bombast, and that surely helped him gain the Republican leader’s job and stay there. He has occasionally described his colleagues as prima donnas who look in the mirror and see a president, something he claims to have never done.

When the colleagues in your party caucus know you are focused on their interests and not your own, you can keep getting reelected leader, as McConnell has done without opposition every two years since 2006.

McConnell’s Supreme Court

McConnell’s caucus trusts him. When he saw Obama as an existential threat – someone who could bring back enough moderate Democrats to give the party a long-term governing majority – McConnell held the caucus together in opposition to Obamacare, and Republicans used that as an issue to rouse their base in the 2010 midterm election.

Meanwhile, McConnell was working on the federal judiciary. He and his colleagues slow-walked and filibustered Obama’s nominees, requiring “aye” votes from 60 of the 100 senators to confirm each one. The process consumed so much time that then-Majority Leader Harry Reid abolished the filibuster for nominations, except those to the Supreme Court.

That sped up the process, allowing Obama to appoint 323 judges, about as many as George W. Bush. But Republicans’ additional delaying tactics still left 105 vacancies for Trump to fill.

When Democrats weakened the filibuster, McConnell warned, “You’ll regret this. And you may regret it a lot sooner than you think.”

Seven years later, Democrats may concede that point. McConnell and Trump have put nearly 200 judges on the federal courts, making them all the more a white-male bastion of judicial conservatism.

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When Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016 and McConnell said the seat wouldn’t be filled until after the November election, it was another case of calculated audacity.

Sen. Chuck Schumer reminding McConnell of his ‘rule,’ September 2020. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Democrats cried foul, but they were powerless to reverse his decision because Republicans stuck with him.

Trump’s victory preserved the Senate Republican majority, which then did away with the Supreme Court exception, allowing McConnell and his colleagues to install by simple majority vote the sort of Supreme Court justices they wanted: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh – and, now, it seems almost certain, Amy Coney Barrett.

Al Cross, Director and Professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky, University of Kentucky

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Stewart Clem

Politics, The Americas

In 1963, James Baldwin wrote: “I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

When President Donald Trump talks about “patriots” – and he does, a lot – he probably doesn’t have in mind a fictional Black American sailor sitting in a cafe in Wales, listening to locals sing folks songs.

But in Ralph Ellison’s short story “In a Strange Country,” the protagonist, Mr. Parker, listens to Welsh songs that simultaneously express loyalty to the queen and defiance of England, and sees something of his own situation and conflicting feelings to the land of his birth. When the locals begin to sing “The Star Spangled Banner,” Mr. Parker finds himself singing along. Thousands of miles away from his homeland and fighting back tears, he sings his national anthem for the first time without irony.

It is a form of patriotism echoed by another Black American, this time the very nonfictional author and thinker James Baldwin. In 1963, Baldwin wrote: “I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

Trump sees patriotism differently. For him, it is unconditional. Even before coming to office, he was tweeting about the topic, on one occasion using the Mark Twain adage: “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”

More recently, he has bestowed the term on his supporters and sought to cast them as being more patriotic than Black Lives Matter protesters.

Pitting 1776 against 1619

In September, Trump announced plans for a “patriotic” and “pro-American” curriculum in American public schools.

In unveiling a proposed “1776 Commission” to ensure that “our youth will be taught to love America,” Trump was seemingly responding to The New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project. That project aims to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”

Trump appears to imply that loving America is incompatible with acknowledging that the U.S. has oppressed certain people and groups on its path to glory.

Deciphering the word ‘patriot’

As a moral theologian and someone who frequently engages the writings of medieval thinkers, I can’t help but notice that this understanding of patriotism is relatively novel. The concept that a “good” patriot unquestionably loves his country unconditionally is not in keeping with how it has been viewed throughout history.

The word “patriot” comes from the ancient Greek “patrios,” translated as “of one’s fathers.” As such, in the original meaning a patriot is someone who belongs to one’s fatherland. No judgment was made as to how that person should view the fatherland. This came later.

The medieval scholastics – a diverse group of thinkers including such luminaries as St. Bonaventure and St. Anselm of Canterbury – were known for reviving and developing ideas that originated in ancient Greek philosophy.

To belong to something, according to the scholastics, is not a mere observation of fact. It generates moral obligations, because we owe a debt to the things that give us life. As St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “The principles of our being and government are our parents and our country, which have given us birth and nourishment. Thus, a person is debtor chiefly to their parents and their country, after God.”

The virtue of piety

The scholastics had a name for this virtue: piety. The virtuous person honors and loves the things that have brought them into being, and this includes one’s homeland. “Piety,” St. Thomas writes, “is a declaration of the love we bear towards our parents and our country.”

While perceived wrongdoing may lead us to denounce the actions of our country’s government, such criticism is compatible with – and, indeed, necessitated by – the virtue of piety, according to the scholastic understanding of the virtue of justice.

What we can learn from the scholastics is that the heart of patriotism is not an unwavering commitment to the objective superiority of one’s country – rather, the heart of patriotism is love.

As such, we should study the shameful aspects of our nation’s past not only because it is fair and honest but also because it can can make us love our country more. In short, it can make us better patriots.

As the theologian and philospher G. K. Chesterton once quipped, “Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they loved her.”

A modern interpretation could be that an American patriot will always love America, but he or she may not always be pro-America.

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This is an interpretation that jars most with Americans on the political right. But there is also a lesson here for some Americans on the left that criticism of one’s own country should not spill out into contempt. Hatred or indifference toward one’s country is not a virtue, in the eyes of the scholastics.

So someone can be a “good American patriot” who ardently loves America while also lamenting its shortcomings – both past and present. If Trump’s proposed K-12 curriculum can maintain both of these virtues, then it would be truly patriotic. But if it leads to educators who insist that students be blindly pro-American, it would merely be propaganda.

Aquinas Institute of Theology is a member of the Association of Theological Schools.

The ATS is a funding partner of The Conversation US.

Stewart Clem, Assistant Professor of Moral Theology, Aquinas Institute of Theology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters