WWII Points To Ponder

[Jim O]

There was really no cover-up however. Just hungry media trying to stir up lies many years later. See Operation Tiger.

Allied commanders were not only concerned about the loss of life and two LSTs -- which left not a single LST as a reserve for D-Day -- but also about the possibility that the Germans had taken prisoners who might be forced to reveal secrets about the upcoming invasion. Ten officers aboard the LSTs had been closely involved in the invasion planning and knew the assigned beaches in France; there was no rest until those 10 could be accounted for: all of them drowned.

A subsequent official investigation revealed two factors that may have contributed to the tragedy -- a lack of escort vessels and an error in radio frequencies.

Although there were a number of British picket ships stationed off the south coast, including some facing Cherbourg, only two vessels were assigned to accompany the convoy -- a corvette and a World War I-era destroyer. Damaged in a collision, the destroyer put into port, and a replacement vessel came to the scene too late.

Because of a typographical error in orders, the U.S. LSTs were on a radio frequency different from the corvette and the British naval headquarters ashore. When one of the picket ships spotted German torpedo boats soon after midnight, a report quickly reached the British corvette but not the LSTs. Assuming the U.S. vessels had received the same report, the commander of the corvette made no effort to raise them.

Whether an absence of either or both of those factors would have had any effect on the tragic events that followed would be impossible to say -- but probably not. The tragedy off Slapton Sands was simply one of those cruel happenstances of war.

Meanwhile, orders went out imposing the strictest secrecy on all who knew or might learn of the tragedy, including doctors and nurses who treated the survivors. There was no point in letting the enemy know what he had accomplished, least of all in affording any clue that might link Slapton Sands to Utah Beach.

Nobody ever lifted that order of secrecy, for by the time D-Day had passed, the units subject to the order had scattered. Quite obviously, in any case, the order no longer had any legitimacy particularly after Gen. Eisenhower's Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, in July 1944 issued a press release telling of the tragedy. Notice of it was printed, among other places, in the soldier newspaper, Stars & Stripes.

With the end of the war, the tragedy off Slapton Sands -- like many another wartime events involving high loss of life, such as the sinking of a Belgian ship off Cherbourg on Christmas Eve, 1944, in which more than 800 American soldiers died--received little attention. There were nevertheless references to the tragedy in at least three books published soon after the war, including a fairly detailed account by Capt. Harry C. Butcher (Gen. Eisenhower's former naval aide) in My Three Years With Eisenhower (1946).

The story was also covered in two of the U.S. Army's unclassified official histories: Cross-Channel Attack (1951) by Gordon A. Harrison and Logistical Support of the Armies Volume I (1953) by Roland G. Ruppenthal. It was also related in one of the official U.S. Navy histories, The Invasion of France and Germany (1957) by Samuel Eliot Morrison.

In 1954, 10 years after D-Day, U.S. Army authorities unveiled a monument at Slapton Sands honoring the people of the farms, villages and towns of the region "who generously left their homes and their lands to provide a battle practice area for the successful assault in Normandy in June 1944." During the course of the ceremony, the U.S. commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Gen. Alfred M. Guenther, told of the tragedy that befell Exercise Tiger.

All the while, a detailed and unclassified account of the tragedy rested in the National Archives. It had been prepared soon after the end of the war by the European Theater Historical Section.

For anybody who took even a short time to investigate, there clearly had been no cover-up other than the brief veil of secrecy raised to avoid compromise of D-Day. Yet, in at least one case -- WJLA-TV in Washington -- the news staff pursued its accusations of cover-up even after being informed by the Army's Public Affairs Office well before the first program aired about the various publications including the official histories that had told of the tragedy.

[cyberia]

The highest ranking American killed was Lt. Gen. Lesley McNair, who died as a result of friendly fire by the US Army Air Corps.

[cyberia]

No fewer than 84 German Generals were executed by Hitler.

[cyberia]

At the time of Pearl Harbor, the top US Navy command was called CINCUS (pronounced “sink us”)

The shoulder patch of the US Army’s 45th Infantry division was the swastika.

Hitler’s private train was named “Amerika”.

For obvious reasons, all three of these were changed once war broke out.

[Geek44]

Originally Posted by MAGNA

Oops. Makes you wonder what proportion of casualties are due to friendly fire / accidents in other landings.

I believe that during WW2, among US forces the percentage was around 4%. By Vietnam it had jumped to 14% (I find this less credible for some reason). Just something I read 'somewhere'.

[Jim O]

Originally Posted by cyberia

The shoulder patch of the US Army’s 45th Infantry division was the swastika.

Although I have seen it both ways, the following came from a site owned by a veteran of the 45th:

45thSwastika.jpg

Evidently, as is well known, the swastika was popular in many cultures. In some Native American lore, the swastika this way was a sign of good luck whereas the reverse, the Nazi version, was a symbol of bad luck. The 45th was actually an activated division of the Oklahoma National Guard. Oklahoma has a large percentage (perhaps the largest percentage) of Native Americans in the US, and as such so did the 45th. That's why a swastika was chosen. After the Nazis started using it, the symbol was changed to a thunderbird, also a Native American symbol.

patch.jpg

Source: Lt Robert M. Barnhart, autobiography

Originally Posted by Geek44

I believe that during WW2, among US forces the percentage was around 4%. By Vietnam it had jumped to 14% (I find this less credible for some reason). Just something I read 'somewhere'.

"Fragging" was talked about a lot during and after Vietnam, but how much of it actually occurred I don't know. And I don't know if that was counted/estimated in the friendly fire statistics.

[cyberia]

Germany lost 40-45% of their aircraft during World War 2 to accidents.

[McCoy]

All but a few of the P-51 aces durin' WWII that was shot down was victims of ground fire.

[cyberia]

It was a common practice on fighter planes to load every 5th round with a tracer to aid in aiming.

It was later discovered this was a mistake on a number of levels:

Tracer rounds had different ballistics so (at long range) if your tracers were hitting the target, 80% of your rounds were missing.

Worse yet, the tracers instantly told your enemy he was under fire and from which direction.

To make matters ever worse, the practice of loading a string of tracers at the end of the belt to tell you that you were out of ammo was a sure sign to enemy planes you were vulnerable.

Units that stopped using tracers saw their success rate nearly double and their loss rate go down a third.

[Horch]

Originally Posted by cyberia

At the time of Pearl Harbor, the top US Navy command was called CINCUS (pronounced “sink us”)

The shoulder patch of the US Army’s 45th Infantry division was the swastika.

Hitler’s private train was named “Amerika”.

For obvious reasons, all three of these were changed once war broke out.

In WW1, the Lafayette Escadrille had the Swastika on their rudder. It was on the head dress of an American Indian.