Veterans...Get the hell in here now!

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Today in Military History:
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"The St Nazaire Raid or Operation Chariot was a British amphibious attack on the heavily defended Normandie dry dock at St Nazaire in German-occupied France during the Second World War. The operation was undertaken by the Royal Navy (RN) and British Commandos under the auspices of Combined Operations Headquarters on 28 March 1942. St Nazaire was targeted because the loss of its dry dock would force any large German warship in need of repairs, such as Tirpitz, sister ship of Bismarck, to return to home waters by running the gauntlet of the Home Fleet of the Royal Navy and other British forces, via the English Channel or the North Sea.

The obsolete destroyer HMS Campbeltown, accompanied by 18 smaller craft, crossed the English Channel to the Atlantic coast of France and was rammed into the Normandie dock gates. The ship had been packed with delayed-action explosives, well hidden within a steel and concrete case, that detonated later that day, putting the dock out of service until 1948.

A force of commandos landed to destroy machinery and other structures. German gunfire sank, set ablaze, or immobilized virtually all the small craft intended to transport the commandos back to England. The commandos fought their way through the town to escape overland but many surrendered when they ran out of ammunition or were surrounded by the Wehrmacht defending Saint-Nazaire.

Of the 612 men who undertook the raid, 228 returned to Britain, 169 were killed and 215 became prisoners of war. German casualties included over 360 dead, some of whom were killed after the raid when Campbeltown exploded. To recognise their bravery,
89 members of the raiding party were awarded decorations, including five Victoria Crosses, two Distinguished Service Orders, four Conspicuous Gallantry Medals, five Distinguished Conduct Medals, 17 Distinguished Service Crosses, 11 Military Crosses, 24 Distinguished Service Medals and 15 Military Medals. Four men were awarded the Croix de guerre by France After the war, St Nazaire was one of 38 battle honours awarded to the commandos. The operation has been called "the greatest raid of all" in British military circles."

 
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BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Today in Military History:
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"The Third Battle of Petersburg, also known as the Breakthrough at Petersburg or the Fall of Petersburg, was fought on April 2, 1865, south and southwest of Petersburg, Virginia, at the end of the 292-day Richmond–Petersburg Campaign (sometimes called the Siege of Petersburg) and in the beginning stage of the Appomattox Campaign near the conclusion of the American Civil War.

The Third Battle of Petersburg was costly to both sides in terms of casualties. The Confederacy lost approximately 4,250 soldiers (killed, wounded, and captured/missing), compared with 3,500 men lost for the Union.

The battle was also a death knell for the Army of Northern Virginia. Retreating from its entrenchments around Petersburg doomed the tired and hungry Confederate army to fall to the overwhelming federal forces it faced the next week.

Sixty men would receive the Medal of Honor for their actions in this battle. More than 15 medals were presented to soldiers who risked their lives to capture the Confederate unit flags and fully half of the rest were recognized for conspicuous gallantry as color bearer(s) . On April 6, 1865, fifty-six soldiers earn Medals of Honor at Deatonsville (Sailor’s Creek), VA. Among them on this day was 2d Lt. Thomas Custer who earned his second Medal of Honor, becoming the only Army man in the Civil War to receive two."


(The criteria for issuance of the MOH during the Civil War were different than later years and Congress set down guidelines in 1918 to clear away any inconsistencies of the legislation which had grown around the medal and to finalize rules for its award. 911 MOH’s were invalidated of the 2,625 that were issued during the US Civil War. Many of the Medal’s issuance’s were for picking up the fallen colors (Flag) and advancing or the capture of enemy colors. None of these Medals were invalidated as the Flag was an important and reverent rallying symbol for open field charging troops. Sharpshooters on both sides targeted Standard Bearers before officers. Battle fought Flags always command premium prices when they rarely appear at auction. bb)

 

Kgrim

Well-Known Member
no downside to this that I can see.
Every Veteran should fill out the Crown Royal package, and send our troops a little something from home, it's free, and only takes 2 minutes. Send them a note, and let them know that they are not forgotten. It could change their whole day, from shitty, to getting a care package from a stranger that just says thank you, means the world to a soldier deployed.
 

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Today in Military History:
What We Fought Against: Ohrdruf
On April 4, 1945, the US 4th Armored Division and 89th Infantry Division of the Third US Army came face to face with the horrors of Nazi brutality. The men discovered Ohrdruf, a Nazi labor camp and a subcamp of the Buchenwald system.



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Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, and Omar Bradley view charred prisoner remains that SS troops tried to destroy and corpses found scattered around the camp grounds, lying where they were killed prior to the camp’s evacuation.
"In November 1944, the Nazis established Ohrdruf south of Gotha, Germany. As a subcamp, Ohrdruf was located about 30 miles west of Buchenwald. Codenamed SIII, the Ohrdruf camp was established to supply forced labor to construct a route that would lead to a communications center in the basement of nearby Mühlberg Castle, located in the town of Ohrdruf. Prisoners were to connect the castle with a railway by digging tunnels through nearby mountains. The tunnels would also serve as an emergency shelter for the train that contained Hitler’s headquarters, the Führersonderzug, in the event of an evacuation from Berlin. Local civilians were hired to handle the dynamiting, while prisoners would come in behind to dig and pick up rocks. With poor working conditions and no protective gear offered, many prisoners suffered from serious injuries and often were killed in the process. The communications center, however, was never completed and the project was abandoned due to the advance of US troops.

By March 1945, the prisoner population in Ohrdruf reached 11,700. The prisoners included people of various nationalities—French, Belgian, German, Hungarian, Czech, Latvian, Italian, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, and Yugoslav. In addition, the camp housed prisoners who the Nazis judged as anti-social, plus homosexuals and Jews. In early April, with the oncoming advance of Allied forces, the SS evacuated almost all of the prisoners in a death march to Buchenwald. Many prisoners who were too weak or ill to partake in the march were summarily killed.

Ohrdruf was the first Nazi camp to be liberated by US forces. On April 12, a week after the camp’s liberation, Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, and Omar Bradley toured the site, led by a prisoner familiar with the camp. Numerous corpses were found scattered around the camp grounds, lying where they were killed prior to the camp’s evacuation. A burned out pyre was discovered with the charred remains of prisoners, proof of the SS’s hurried evacuation and attempt to cover their crimes. Evidence of torture was present, and prisoners demonstrated for the generals various torture methods used by the guards. In a shed, a pile of roughly 30 emaciated bodies were discovered, sprinkled with lime in an attempt to cover the smell. Patton, a man privy to the violent scenes of war, refused to enter this shed as the sights and smells in the camp had previously caused him to vomit against the side of a building. German citizens from the nearby town of Ohrdruf were forced to view the camp and bury the dead, a practice that was later repeated in other camp liberations. Following the tour, the mayor of Ohrdruf and his wife were discovered to have hung themselves in their home.

Following the generals’ visit to the camp, Eisenhower ordered all American units in the area and not engaged in frontline battle to be sent to Ohrdruf. He cabled General George C. Marshall, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C., requesting that members of Congress and journalists be sent to liberated camps to witness and document the horrific scenes US troops were uncovering. Additionally, the generals discovered the prisoner who acted as their guide during their visit to Ohrdruf was recognized by another prisoner as a former camp guard, and was beaten to death. Though Eisenhower said visiting Ohrdruf left him feeling sick from the overpowering sights, he acknowledged it put him “in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”

A group of prominent journalists, led by the dean of American publishers, Joseph Pulitzer, came to see the concentration camps. Pulitzer initially had “a suspicious frame of mind,” he wrote. He expected to find that many of “the terrible reports” printed in the United States were “exaggerations and largely propaganda.” But they were understatements, he reported.

Within days, Congressional delegations came to visit the concentration camps, accompanied by journalists and photographers. General Patton was so angry at what he found at Buchenwald that he ordered the Military Police to go to Weimar, four miles away, and bring back 1,000 civilians to see what their leaders had done, to witness what some human beings could do to others. The MP’s were so outraged they brought back 2,000. Some turned away. Some fainted. Even veteran, battle-scarred correspondents were struck dumb. In a legendary broadcast on April 15, Edward R. Murrow gave the American radio audience a stunning matter-of-fact description of Buchenwald, of the piles of dead bodies so emaciated that those shot through the head had barely bled, and of those children who still lived, tattooed with numbers, whose ribs showed through their thin shirts. “I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald,” Murrow asked listeners. “I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it; for most of it I have no words.” He added, “If I have offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I am not in the least sorry.”

The liberation of Ohrdruf opened the eyes of many Americans, soldiers and civilians, to the barbaric conditions innocent people faced under Nazism. American troops would move on to discover and liberate multiple camps, including Dora-Mittelbau, Dachau, Mauthausen, and Buchenwald. Elie Wiesel, author of Night, was imprisoned in Buchenwald at the time of the camp’s liberation. As more camps were uncovered by Allied forces, it became evident to the world that the Third Reich had committed unprecedented atrocities everywhere the regime had reigned. Following the discovery of Ohrdruf, Eisenhower stated simply but profoundly: “We are told the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, we know what he is fighting against.”"


The Congressional Investigation of Liberated Concentration Camps in 1945
 

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Today in Military History:

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DOVER, Del., April 6, 2009— For the first time since the Obama administration reversed an 18-year-old ban on news coverage of returning fallen soldiers, the military allowed media to cover the arrival tonight of an airman killed in Afghanistan.


The arrival of remains of Staff Sgt. Phillip A. Myers, a 30-year-old supporting Operation Enduring Freedom, at Dover Air Force Base at 11 p.m. today marked the first time that the transfer of any of the nearly 5,000 U.S. troops who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan was open to the media.

The transfer of the flag-draped casket was carried out with great dignity, for the seven family members present. One of the men present dabbed his eyes with a tissue. After a prayer was said by a chaplain, Maj. Klabens Noel, a carry team of eight airmen and women wearing battle dress uniforms with white gloves moved Myers' flag-draped casket from an Atlas Air 747 cargo jet to a waiting panel truck.

In the cool night, under a light breeze, the only noise was the hum of the jet's auxiliary power unit, until the quiet was pierced by the engine of the lift lowering the casket from the jet to the tarmac. The eight airmen and women carried the casket to a white panel truck, placed it inside, as the doors were slowly closed, the call went out for present arms. The saluting arms were then slowly lowered.

The entire transfer was very methodical and very dignified. About 40 members of the media were present, and throughout the transfer there were no flashes, no talking, though cameras clicked as casket went by.

In February, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates lifted the ban on media coverage of returning war dead, ending what some have called an era of censorship enforced by President George W. Bush. Under the new policy, Myers' family was given the option of whether to admit the media and they chose to let news media cover the dignified transfer.

Myers, from Hopewell, Va., died April 4 of wounds suffered from an improvised explosive device, the Air Force said in a statement. He was assigned to the 48th Civil Engineer Squadron, with the Royal Air Force Lakenheath, U.K., and in March 2008 received the Bronze Star for valor.

Since the casket ban was implemented by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, the policy has been hotly debated. To some, it kept ongoing conflict away from the public eye and disguised the cost of war. To others, it allowed the families of fallen soldiers to grieve in private. Neither President Bill Clinton nor President George W. Bush ever changed the policy, although an exception was made in 2000 after the terrorist attack on USS Cole. Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, more than 4,200 flag-draped war dead have arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Vice President Joe Biden has said the coffins are being "snuck back into the country" and called the policy shameful. Other Democrats have accused Bush of censorship. Gates overturned the ban after President Barack Obama requested that he review the policy. But the change was not without conditions. For example, media can photograph returning war dead at the Delaware military base only if the families of the fallen troops agree.

When he announced the reversal in February, Gates said decisions about such coverage "should be made by those most directly affected."

The change was welcomed by government transparency advocates, but despite the condition upholding the wishes of soldiers' families, some advocates for the relatives of the war dead did not support the new policy. After Gates' decision, three members of the Delaware congressional delegation, Democratic Sens. Tom Carper and Ted Kaufman and Republican Rep. Mike Castle, said in a joint statement that they backed the new policy, but emphasized that the needs of the familes must remain a top concern.

"We urge all of those involved to be respectful of the wishes of the families of these brave men and women," the statement read.
 

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Today in Military History:
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The Battle of Shiloh (also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing) was an early battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought April 6–7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. The Union Army of the Tennessee (Major General Ulysses S. Grant) had moved via the Tennessee River deep into Tennessee and was encamped principally at Pittsburg Landing on the west bank of the Tennessee River, where the Confederate Army of Mississippi (General Albert Sidney Johnston, P. G. T. Beauregard second-in-command) launched a surprise attack on Grant's army from its base in Corinth, Mississippi. Johnston was mortally wounded during the fighting; Beauregard took command of the army and decided against pressing the attack late in the evening. Overnight, Grant was reinforced by one of his divisions stationed farther north and was joined by three divisions from the Army of the Ohio (Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell). The Union forces began an unexpected counterattack the next morning which reversed the Confederate gains of the previous day.

On April 6, the first day of the battle, the Confederates struck with the intention of driving the Union defenders away from the river and into the swamps of Owl Creek to the west. Johnston hoped to defeat Grant's army before the anticipated arrival of Buell and the Army of the Ohio. The Confederate battle lines became confused during the fighting, and Grant's men instead fell back to the northeast, in the direction of Pittsburg Landing. A Union position on a slightly sunken road, nicknamed the "Hornet's Nest" and defended by the divisions of Brig. Gens. Benjamin Prentiss and William H. L. Wallace, provided time for the remainder of the Union line to stabilize under the protection of numerous artillery batteries. Wallace was mortally wounded when the position collapsed, while several regiments from the two divisions were eventually surrounded and surrendered. Johnston was shot in the leg and bled to death while leading an attack. Beauregard acknowledged how tired the army was from the day's exertions, and decided against assaulting the final Union position that night.

Tired but unfought and well-organized men from Buell's army and a division of Grant's army arrived in the evening of April 6 and helped turn the tide the next morning, when the Union commanders launched a counterattack along the entire line. Confederate forces were forced to retreat, ending their hopes of blocking the Union advance into northern Mississippi. Though victorious, the Union army had suffered heavier casualties than the Confederates, and Grant was heavily criticized in the media for being taken by surprise.

The Battle of Shiloh was the bloodiest engagement of the Civil War up to that point, with nearly twice as many casualties as the previous major battles of the war combined. Union casualties were 13,047 (1,754 killed, 8,408 wounded, and 2,885 missing); Grant's army bore the brunt of the fighting over the two days, with casualties of 1,513 killed, 6,601 wounded, and 2,830 missing or captured. Confederate casualties were 10,699 (1,728 killed, 8,012 wounded, and 959 missing or captured). The dead included the Confederate army's commander, Albert Sidney Johnston, as well as Brigadier General Adley H. Gladden. George W. Johnson, the head of Kentucky's shadow Confederate government, was also mortally wounded. The highest ranking Union general killed was W. H. L. Wallace.

The loss of life on both sides at Shiloh—which, ironically, means place of peace in Hebrew—was staggering. But there were other sad consequences of the battle as well. Johnston’s death was a damaging blow to Confederate morale, particularly for President Jefferson Davis, who held Johnston high in personal and professional esteem. After the war, Davis wrote, “When Sidney Johnston fell, it was the turning point of our fate; for we had no other hand to take up his work in the West.” With the Confederate loss, their best opportunity to retake the Mississippi Valley and achieve numerical superiority with the Union armies in the west disappeared, and the heavy losses suffered at Shiloh represented the start of an unwinnable war of attrition.

Grant, though victorious, was vilified in the press after being caught unprepared at Pittsburg Landing on April 6. Critics called for him to be dismissed, but Abraham Lincoln defended his general , declaring “I can’t spare this man, he fights.” Corinth fell to the Union by the end of May, allowing Grant to focus on gaining control of the Mississippi River.


 

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
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Air Force Tech. Sgt. Maurice Tooles, left, and Senior Airman Zamiyah Warner, both assigned to Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations, prepare an American flag at Dover Air Force Base, Del., March 30, 2022. Airmen assigned to the team work to make sure each flag draped over a casket of a fallen service member is immaculate. Photo By: Jason Minto, Air Force
 

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Today in Military History:
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In early 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy made a difficult decision: it would sacrifice the largest, most powerful battleships ever built to protect Okinawa, the gateway to Japan’s Home Islands. The decision sealed the fate of the battleship Yamato and its crew, but ironically did nothing to actually protect the island from Allied invasion.

The battleship Yamato was among the largest and most powerful battleships of all time. Yamato has reached nearly mythical status, a perfect example of Japan’s fascination with doomed, futile heroics. Built in 1937 at the Kure Naval Arsenal near Hiroshima, it was constructed in secrecy to avoid alarming the United States. Japan had recently withdrawn from the Washington Naval Treaty, which limited battleship tonnages, and was free to build them as large as it wanted.

And what ships it built. 839 feet at the waterline and weighing seventy thousand tons fully loaded, Yamato was the largest ship of the war, eclipsed only by postwar American aircraft carriers. It and its sister, Musashi, were armed with nine eighteen-inch naval guns, mounted in turrets of three; six 155-millimeter secondary naval guns; twenty-four five-inch guns; 162 twenty-five-millimeter antiaircraft guns; and four 13.2-millimeter heavy machine guns.

All of this firepower was meant to sink enemy battleships—more than one at a time if necessary. The extremely large number of antiaircraft guns, added during a refit, were meant to keep the ship afloat in the face of American air power until it could close within striking range of enemy ships.

Unfortunately for Yamato and its crew, it was obsolete by the time it was launched in 1941. The ability of fast aircraft carriers to engage enemy ships at the range of their embarked dive and torpedo bombers meant a carrier could attack a battleship at ranges of two hundred miles or more, long before it entered the range of a battleship’s guns. Battleships were “out-sticked,” to use a modern term.

By early 1945, Japan’s strategic situation was grim. Japanese conquests in the Pacific had been steadily rolled back since the Allied landings on Guadalcanal in August 1942. The Philippines, Solomons, Gilberts and Carolines had all been lost and the enemy was now literally at the gates. Okinawa, the largest island in the Ryukyu island chain was the last bastion before the Home Islands itself. The island was just 160 miles from the the mainland city of Kagoshima, coincidentally the birthplace of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

The invasion of Okinawa began on April 1, 1945. In response, the Japanese Navy activated Operation Ten-Go. Yamato, escorted by the cruiser Yahagi (commanded by the famous Tameichi Hara) and eight destroyers, would sail to Okinawa and disrupt the Allied invasion force. Yamato would then beach, becoming coastal artillery. It was a humiliating end for a battleship capable of twenty-seven knots, but the lack of fuel and other military resources made for truly desperate times.

Yamato and its task force, designated the Surface Special Attack Force, departed Tokuyama, Japan on April 6, proceeding due south to transit the Bungo Strait. American forces had already been alerted to the Ten-Go operation, thanks to cracked Japanese military codes, and two American submarines were waiting to intercept the flotilla. Yamato and its escorts were duly observed by the submarines, but the subs were unable attack due to the task force’s high rate of speed and zigzagging tactics. The sighting report was pushed up the chain of command.

Allied naval forces in and around Okinawa were the obvious target, and the massive fleet braced itself accordingly. Six older battleships from the Gunfire and Covering Support Group, or Task Force 54, under Rear Admiral Morton Deyo, prepared to defend the invasion force, but were pulled away in favor of an air attack.

At 0800 hours on April 7, 1945, scout planes from Admiral Mitscher’s Fast Carrier Force, or Task Force 58, located Yamato, still only halfway to Okinawa. Mitscher launched a massive strike force of 280 fighters, bombers and torpedo planes, and the fight was on.

For two hours, the Surface Special Attack Force was subjected to a merciless aerial bombardment. The air wings of eleven fleet carriers joined in the attack—so many planes were in the air above Yamato that the fear of midair collision was real. The naval aviators were in such a hurry to score the first hit on the allegedly unsinkable ship plans for a coordinated attack collapsed into a free-for-all. Yamato took two hits during this attack, two bombs and one torpedo, and air attacks claimed two escorting destroyers.

A second aerial armada consisting of one hundred aircraft pressed the attack. As the Yamato started to go down, U.S. naval aviators changed tactics. Noticing the ship was listing badly, one squadron changed its torpedo running depth from ten feet—where it would collide with the main armor belt—to twenty feet, where it would detonate against the exposed lower hull. Aboard Yamato, the listing eventually grew to more than twenty degrees, and the captain made the difficult decision to flood the starboard outer engine room, drowning three hundred men at their stations, in an attempt to trim out the ship.

Yamato had taken ten torpedo and seven bomb hits, and was hurting badly. Despite counterflooding, the ship continued to list, and once it reached thirty five degrees the order was given to abandon ship. The captain and many of the bridge crew tied themselves to their stations and went down with their ship, while the rest attempted to escape.

At 14:23, it happened. Yamato’s forward internal magazines detonated in a spectacular fireball. It was like a tactical nuclear weapon going off. Later, a navigation officer on one of Japan’s surviving destroyers calculated that the “pillar of fire reached a height of 2,000 meters, that the mushroom-shaped cloud rose to a height of 6,000 meters.” The flash from the explosion that was Yamato’s death knell was seen as far away as Kagoshima on the Japanese mainland. The explosion also reportedly destroyed several American airplanes observing the sinking.

When it was all over, the Surface Special Attack Force had been almost completely destroyed. Yamato, the cruiser Yahagi and three destroyers were sunk. Several other escorts had been seriously damaged. Gone with the great battleship were 2,498 of its 2,700-person crew.

The destruction of Yamato was inevitable even as far back as the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was clear that the age of the aircraft carrier had already superseded the battleship, but the insistence of battleship-minded general officers to cling to obsolete military technology undermined Japan’s conduct of the war and sent thousands of Japanese sailors needlessly to their deaths.

 

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
"Various narratives of the events that followed have emerged in closed social media groups and a since-deleted blog post. However, all of the narratives described the event as an intentional destruction of both aircraft. Army Times could not independently verify the details of the crash sequence or Bellew’s intentions."
 
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