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15418 results in Military history

Page 322 of 771

  • 8 - The war in Europe in 1943: strategic bombing and the land war

  • Phillips Payson O'Brien, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    How the War Was Won
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    12 February 2015, pp 266-315

  • Summary

    On the morning of August 17, 1943, a clear and sunny day with superb visibility, the 100th Bombardment Group of the USAAF's 8th Air Force, 4th Air Division took off from the United Kingdom to attack the Messerschmitt aircraft works in Regensburg, Germany. They were commanded by one of the more driven officers in the American air force, a fast-rising colonel named Curtis LeMay. This was a much more dangerous mission than any that the pilots in the unit had tried before. Raids by the 8th Air Force had previously been aimed mostly at German U-boat facilities on the coast, many in France – raids for which they could receive fighter escort for their entire time in the air.

    In this raid, however, the twenty-one B-17s of the 100th Bombardment Group were placed “lowest and last,” flying at 17,000 feet at the absolute end of the 4th Air Division's bomber stream as it headed deep into Germany. Regensburg was located in southeast Germany, approximately halfway between Nuremberg and Munich. Until the 100th reached the skies over Holland, they met no opposition. Finally, at 10.17 in the morning, when the B-17s reached the Dutch town of Woensdrecht, they encountered German flak. Ten minutes later, whilst nearing the German border, the first Luftwaffe fighters appeared, two FW-190s, which attacked the unit from straight ahead.

  • Introduction

  • Phillips Payson O'Brien, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    How the War Was Won
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    12 February 2015, pp 1-16
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  • Summary

    There were no decisive battles in World War II. This might seem a strange thing to say as the war is usually viewed through the prism of its famous engagements. As this book was being completed, the seventieth anniversaries of El Alamein, Stalingrad, Kursk and Midway have been remembered. It has led to a great deal of reflection on this pivotal period of the war. Each battle is usually discussed with superlatives which invariably include how it changed the course of the war or was responsible for leading the Allies to victory.

    El Alamein, the famous tank battle in the Egyptian desert in October and November 1942, between Bernard Montgomery's British 8th Army and Erwin Rommel's Afrika Corps, is most remembered in the United Kingdom and parts of what was the British Empire. The destruction of most of Rommel's panzers, which started the German retreat from North Africa that would culminate in the surrender of a large German force in Tunisia in May 1943, is depicted as a crucial marker heralding German defeat. In the words of Winston Churchill, it may not have represented the beginning of the end, but it was “the end of the beginning.” Later he would say that before El Alamein the British never had a victory, and after they never had a defeat.

Page 322 of 771