World War II from #AtoZChallenge – Z is for Zero

Well it is the last day of the 2015 A to Z Challenge.  What a month.  26 posts about World War II and others in between and I enjoyed bringing each and everyone to my readers.  If you discovered my blog during the challenge, I am so happy you came.  Did you miss any?  There is a menu at the top of my blog. I hope you’ll come back when the challenge is over.  Here is what I offer up to my readers every week:

Thursday – This Week in World War II.  If you liked my posts during the challenge, I write at least one each week about the war and it will be an event that occurred during the same week on the calendar but between 1939 and 1945.  You may also be interested in my separate blog about my father, the US Navy and the great Aircraft Carrier, the USS Hornet (CV-12).  There is a menu at the top for this other blog or you can access it by a link below my father’s photograph on the left panel.

Saturday – The World’s Outstanding Women (WOW).  You may have read some of these during the challenge.  Each week I select a woman who made a difference in our world.  Some are still living and some are not but each is an outstanding women.  Can’t wait, I have written many of these posts and I have a page dedicated in a menu at the top of my blog.

Every other day of the week, come back to read posts about events that occurred on the date in history.  I also have from time to time, flash fiction, short stories and poetry.

 

WORLD WAR II FROM A TO Z

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The Mitsubishi A6M Zero was a long-range fighter aircraft, manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1940 to 1945. The A6M was designated as the Mitsubishi Navy Type 0 Carrier Fighter or the Mitsubishi A6M Rei-sen. The A6M was usually referred to by its pilots as the “Reisen” (zero fighter), “0” being the last digit of the Imperial year 2600 (1940) when it entered service with the Imperial Navy. The official Allied reporting name was “Zeke”, although the use of the name “Zero” was later commonly adopted by the Allies as well.

When it was introduced early in World War II, the Zero was considered the most capable carrier-based fighter in the world, combining excellent maneuverability and very long range. In early combat operations, the Zero gained a legendary reputation as a dogfighter, achieving the outstanding kill ratio of 12 to 1, but by mid-1942 a combination of new tactics and the introduction of better equipment enabled the Allied pilots to engage the Zero on generally equal terms.

The Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service (“IJNAS”) also frequently used the type as a land-based fighter. By 1943, inherent design weaknesses and the failure to develop more powerful aircraft engines meant that the Zero became less effective against newer enemy fighters, which possessed greater firepower, armor, and speed, and approached the Zero’s maneuverability. Although the Mitsubishi A6M was outdated by 1944, design delays and production difficulties of newer Japanese aircraft types meant that it continued to serve in a front line role until the end of the war. During the final years of the War in the Pacific, the Zero was also adapted for use in kamikaze operations. (See my post K is for Kamikaze) During the course of the war, Japan produced more Zeros than any other model of combat aircraft.  The Zero also plays a role in a flashfiction story I wrote, Flash in the Pan – Surfboard.

World War II from #AtoZChallenge – Y is for Y-Stations

WORLD WAR II FROM A TO Z

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Y-stations were British Signals Intelligence collection sites initially established during World War I and later used during World War II. These sites were operated by a range of agencies including the Army, Navy and RAF plus the Foreign Office (MI6 and MI5), General Post Office and Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company receiving stations ashore and afloat.

Y stations Equipment

The “Y” stations tended to be of two types, Interception and Direction Finding. Sometimes both functions were operated at the same site with the direction finding (D/F) hut being a few hundred meters away from the main interception building because of the need to minimize interference. These sites collected radio traffic which was then either analyzed locally or if encrypted passed for processing initially to Admiralty Room 40 in London and during World War II to the Government Code and Cypher School established at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire.

In World War II a large house called “Arkley View” on the outskirts of Barnet (now part of the London Borough of Barnet) acted as a data collection center at which traffic was collated and passed to Bletchley Park, it also acted as a “Y” station.

Arkley View 1943

Many amateur (“ham”) radio operators supported the work of the “Y” stations, being enrolled as “Voluntary Interceptors”. Much of the traffic intercepted by the “Y” stations was recorded by hand and sent to Bletchley on paper by motorcycle couriers or, later, by teleprinter over post office land lines.

A motorcycle despatch rider delivers a message to the signals office of 1st Border Regiment at Orchies, France, 13 October 1939. A motorcycle despatch rider delivers a message to the signals office of 1st Border Regiment at Orchies, 13 October 1939.

In addition to wireless interception, specially constructed “Y” stations also undertook direction finding on enemy wireless transmissions. This became particularly important in World War II’s Battle of the Atlantic where locating U-boats became a critical issue. Admiral Dönitz told his commanders that they could not be located if they limited their wireless transmissions to under 30 seconds, but skilled D/F operators were able to locate the origin of their signals in as little as 6 seconds.

The design of land-based D/F stations preferred by the Allies in World War II was the U-Adcock system, which consisted of a small, central operators’ hut surrounded by four 10 m high vertical aerial poles usually placed at the four compass points. Aerial feeders ran underground and came up in the centre of the hut and were connected to a direction finding goniometer and a wireless receiver that allowed the bearing of the signal source to be measured. In the UK some operators were located in an underground metal tank. These stations were usually located in remote places, often in the middle of farmers’ fields. Traces of World War II D/F stations can be seen as circles in the fields surrounding the village of Goonhavern in Cornwall.

 

 

 

Sunday Photo Fiction Challenge – An #AtoZChallenge Extra – A Soldier’s Horse

Submitted for Sunday Photo Fiction

The Assignment: The idea of Photo Fiction is write a story of around 100-200 words (which is also called Flash Fiction) based on a photo as a prompt. In this particular photo fiction, the story must be based on the photo below. You can read stories posted by others or add you story by clicking on the link above.

Today I write a story to also fit in with my theme for the A to Z April Challenge which is World War II from A to Z.  My story is fiction; however a little bit of history was the basis for my story.  After you read my story, I hope you’ll stay to read about the history.

Credit: Al Forbes

A Soldier’s Horse

“I came to say goodnight Sheba,” said Lieutenant Parker.

Sheba whinnied and nudged the Lieutenant’s hand.

“Tomorrow all our training, that includes you, will finally be put to task.”

Sheba looked into her master’s eyes and whinnied.

“The 26^th Cavalry Regiment has received its orders and tomorrow the Philippine Scouts ride against the Japanese who occupy Luzon. We’ll need to have each others back.”

Lieutenant Parker gave Sheba an apple. Whenever he could, he brought her an extra treat. Sheba has been by his side from before the war and he hoped they’d spend many more years together.

“Well I need to get some rest. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep but I have to try.”

Lieutenant Parker rubbed Sheba along her mane and left the stables.

The next morning as dawn was breaking, the Philippine Scouts of the 26^th Cavalry Regiment mounted their horses and went to battle. They successfully repelled a unit of Japanese tanks in Binalonan, Philippines, held the ground for the Allied armies’ retreat to Bataan and charged in the town of Morong.

Late in the day as the sun was setting, Sheba looked around the battlefield. She no longer had a rider. Lieutenant Parker would come with treats no more

___________________

The United States, the Second World War and Horses

The United States economy between the first and second world war quickly got rid of the obsolete horse: national horse stocks were reduced from 25 million in 1920 to 14 million in 1940. Nonetheless, the United States military was among the last nations to accept armored warfare and mechanize its troops.  By the 1940s cavalry units were gradually reformed into Armored Corps. Another novelty introduced at this time, the Bantam 4×4 car soon became known as the jeep and replaced the horse itself. Debates over the integration of armor and horse units continued through 1941 but the failure of these attempts “to marry horse with armor” was evident even to casual civilian observers. The office of Chief of Cavalry was eliminated in March 1942, and the newly formed ground forces began mechanization of the remaining horse units. 

The only significant engagement of American horsemen in World War II was the defensive action of the Philippine Scouts (26th Cavalry Regiment). The Scouts challenged the Japanese invaders of Luzon, holding off two armored and two infantry regiments during the invasion of the Philippines. They repelled a unit of tanks in Binalonan and successfully held ground for the Allied armies’ retreat to Bataan.  This charge occurred at the town of Morong on 16 January 1942. Following this, due to a shortage of food, their mounts were butchered and the regiment was converted two squadrons, one a motorized rifle squadron, the other a mechanized squadron utilizing the remaining scout cars and Bren carriers.

In Europe, the American forces fielded only a few cavalry and supply units during the war. George S. Patton lamented their lack in North Africa and wrote that “had we possessed an American cavalry division with pack artillery in Tunisia and in Sicily, not a German would have escaped.”

You can read all about the use of horses in the Second World War including information about different countries HERE.

World War II from #AtoZChallenge – X is for XX System

 

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WORLD WAR II FROM A TO Z

The XX System or Double-Cross System was a World War II anti-espionage and deception operation of the British Security Service, a civilian organization usually referred to by its cover title MI5. Nazi agents in Britain – real and false – were captured, turned themselves in or simply announced themselves and were then used by the British to broadcast mainly disinformation to their Nazi controllers. Its operations were overseen by the Twenty Committee under the chairmanship of John Cecil Masterman; the name of the committee comes from the number 20 in Roman numerals: “XX” (i.e. double crosses).

Major (later Sir) John Cecil Masterman, chairman of the Twenty Committee

The policy of MI5 during the war was initially to use the system for counter-espionage. It was only later that its potential for deception purposes was realized. Agents from both of the German intelligence services, the Abwehr and Sicherheitsdienst (SD), were apprehended. Many of the agents who reached British shores turned themselves in to the authorities. Still others were apprehended when they made elementary mistakes during their operations.

Garbo, a British double agent who I wrote about previously http://ift.tt/1JxmNLV

In addition, some were false agents who had tricked the Germans into believing they would spy for them if they helped them reach England (e.g., Treasure, Fido). Later agents were instructed to contact agents in place who, unknown to the Abwehr, were already controlled by the British. The Abwehr and SD sent agents over by a number of means including parachute drops, submarine and travel via neutral countries. The last route was most commonly used, with agents often impersonating refugees. After the war it was discovered that all the agents Germany sent to Britain had given themselves up or had been captured with the possible exception of one who committed suicide.

The double agent Dusko Popov, given the codename “Tricycle” by MI5, was a womaniser and gambler, with a taste for champagne and sports cars. James Bond may have been based, at least partly, on Popov. Ian Fleming knew Popov and followed him in Portugal, witnessing an event in the Estoril Casino where Popov placed a bet of $40,000 ($634,842 in 2014 dollars) in order to cause a rival to withdraw from a baccarat table: Fleming used this episode as the basis for Casino Royale.

The British put their double-agent network to work in support of Operation Fortitude, a plan to deceive the Germans about the location of the invasion of France. Allowing one of the double agents to claim to have stolen documents describing the closely guarded invasion plans might have aroused suspicion. Instead, agents were allowed to report minutiae such as insignia on soldiers’ uniforms and unit markings on vehicles. The observations in the south-central areas largely gave accurate information about the units located there: the actual invasion forces. Reports from southwest England indicated few troop sightings, when in reality many units were housed there. Reports from the southeast depicted the real and the notional Operation Quicksilver forces. Any military planner would know that to mount a massive invasion of Europe from England, Allied units had to be staged around the country, with those that would land first nearest to the invasion point. German intelligence used the agent reports to construct an order of battle for the Allied forces that placed the center of gravity of the invasion force opposite Pas de Calais, the point on the French coast closest to England and therefore a likely invasion site. The deception was so effective that the Germans kept 15 reserve divisions near Calais even after the invasion had begun at Normandy, lest it prove to be a diversion from the main invasion at Calais.

Nathalie “Lily” Sergueiew was a female double agent who worked for MI5 during WW2 under the codename “Treasure”. She played a significant role in deceiving the Germans about the location of the D-Day landings. She is seen here with her Abwehr case officer, Major Emil Kliemann.

The Allies were willing to risk exposing the Double Cross network to achieve the needed surprise for the Normandy invasion. However, early battle reports of insignia on Allied units that the German armies encountered only confirmed the information the double agents had sent, increasing the Germans’ trust in their network. Some of the double agents were informed in radio messages from Germany after the invasion that they had been awarded the Iron Cross.

The following video is 1 of 5 parts of Timewatch The Spies that Fooled Hitler World War II.  I have only embedded the first but all are available on YouTube.

World War II from #AtoZChallenge – W is for Women in the Armed Services

WORLD WAR II FROM A TO Z

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Women all over the world contributed to their country’s effort in the Second World War.  Many of these women served in the armed services. To write about them all or even just those for the Allied Powers would be a very large under taking. Today I write about American women in the armed services but rest assured, the Americans were just one part.

During World War II, approximately 400,000 U.S. women served with the armed forces and more than 460 — some sources say the figure is closer to 543 — lost their lives as a result of the war, including 16 from enemy fire. However, the U.S. decided not to use women in combat because public opinion would not tolerate it. Women became officially recognized as a permanent part of the U.S. armed forces after the war, with the passing of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of 1948.

The Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of 1948, signed into law by President Harry Truman on June 12, 1948, gave women permanent status in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corp.

More than 60,000 Army nurses (all military nurses were women at the time) served stateside and overseas during World War II. They were kept far from combat but 67 were captured by the Japanese in the Philippines in 1942 and were held as POWs for over two and a half years. One Army flight nurse was aboard an aircraft that was shot down behind enemy lines in Germany in 1944. She was held as a POW for four months. In 1943 Dr. Margaret Craighill became the first female doctor to become a commissioned officer in the United States Army Medical Corps.

Lt. Col. Margaret D. Craighill, M.C.

The Army established the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in 1942. WAACs served overseas in North Africa in 1942. The WAAC, however, never accomplished its goal of making available to “the national defense the knowledge, skill, and special training of the women of the nation.” In 1942, Charity Adams (Earley) became the first African-American female commissioned officer in the WAAC. The WAAC was converted to the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) in 1943, and recognized as an official part of the regular army.   I follow a blog called My Aunt the WAC.  It  is interesting to read a personal story of a WAC.

More than 150,000 women served as WACs during the war, and thousands were sent to the European and Pacific theaters; in 1944 WACs landed in Normandy after D-Day and served in Australia, New Guinea, and the Philippines in the Pacific. In 1945 the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion (the only all African-American, all-female battalion during World War II) worked in England and France, making them the first black female battalion to travel overseas.

Major Charity Adams Earley and battalion

The battalion was commanded by MAJ Charity Adams Earley, and was composed of 30 officers and 800 enlisted women. WWII black recruitment was limited to 10 percent for the WAAC/WAC—matching the percentage of African-Americans in the US population at the time. For the most part, Army policy reflected segregation policy. Enlisted basic training was segregated for training, living and dining. At enlisted specialists schools and officer training living quarters were segregated but training and dining were integrated. A total of 6,520 African-American women served during the war.

Asian-American women first entered military service during World War II. The Women’s Army Corps (WAC) recruited 50 Japanese-American and Chinese-American women and sent them to the Military Intelligence Service Language School at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, for training as military translators. Of these women, 21 were assigned to the Pacific Military Intelligence Research Section at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. There they worked with captured Japanese documents, extracting information pertaining to military plans, as well as political and economic information that impacted Japan’s ability to conduct the war. Other WAC translators were assigned jobs helping the US Army interface with our Chinese allies. In 1943, the Women’s Army Corps recruited a unit of Chinese-American women to serve with the Army Air Forces as “Air WACs.” The Army lowered the height and weight requirements for the women of this particular unit, referred to as the “Madame Chiang Kai-Shek Air WAC unit.”

The first two women to enlist in the unit were Hazel (Toy) Nakashima and Jit Wong, both of California. Air WACs served in a large variety of jobs, including aerial photo interpretation, air traffic control, and weather forecasting. Susan Ahn Cuddy became the first Asian-American woman to join the U.S. Navy in 1942.

More than 14,000 Navy nurses served stateside, overseas on hospital ships and as flight nurses during the war.

Five Navy nurses were captured by the Japanese on the island of Guam and held as POWs for five months before being exchanged. A second group of eleven Navy nurses were captured in the Philippines and held for 37 months. (During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, some Filipino-American women smuggled food and medicine to American prisoners of war (POWs) and carried information on Japanese deployments to Filipino and American forces working to sabotage the Japanese Army. The Navy also recruited women into its Navy Women’s Reserve, called Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), starting in 1942.

Women entered the Hospital Corps in World War II as WAVES.

Before the war was over, 84,000 WAVES filled shore billets in a large variety of jobs in communications, intelligence, supply, medicine, and administration. The Navy refused to accept Japanese-American women throughout World War II. USS Higbee (DD-806), a GEARING-class destroyer, was the first warship named for a woman to take part in combat operation. Lenah S. Higbee, the ship’s namesake, was the Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps from 1911 until 1922.

Marine Corps Women’s Reserve

The Marine Corps created the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve in 1943. That year, the first female officer of the United States Marine Corps was commissioned; the first detachment of female marines was sent to Hawaii for duty in 1945. The first director of the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve was Mrs. Ruth Cheney Streeter from Morristown, New Jersey.

Ruth Cheney Streeter

Captain Anne Lentz was its first commissioned officer and Private Lucille McClarren its first enlisted woman; both joined in 1943. Marine women served stateside as clerks, cooks, mechanics, drivers, and in a variety of other positions. By the end of World War II, 85% of the enlisted personnel assigned to Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps were women.

Coast Guard SPARS

In 1941 the first civilian women were hired by the Coast Guard to serve in secretarial and clerical positions. In 1942 the Coast Guard established their Women’s Reserve known as the SPARs (after the motto Semper Paratus – Always Ready). YN3 Dorothy Tuttle became the first SPAR enlistee when she enlisted in the Coast Guard Women’s Reserve on 7 December 1942.

LCDR (later CAPT) Dorothy Stratton

LCDR Dorothy Stratton transferred from the Navy to serve as the director of the SPARs. The first five African-American women entered the SPARs in 1945: Olivia Hooker, D. Winifred Byrd, Julia Mosley, Yvonne Cumberbatch, and Aileen Cooke. Also in 1945, SPAR Marjorie Bell Stewart was awarded the Silver Lifesaving Medal by CAPT Dorothy Stratton, becoming the first SPAR to receive the award. SPARs were assigned stateside and served as storekeepers, clerks, photographers, pharmacist’s mates, cooks, and in numerous other jobs during World War II. More than 11,000 SPARs served during World War II.

In 1943, the US Public Health Service established the Cadet Nurse Corps which trained some 125,000 women for possible military service.

In all, 350,000 American women served in the U.S. military during World War II and 16 were killed in action. World War II also marked racial milestones for women in the military such as Carmen Contreras-Bozak, who became the first Hispanic to join the WAC, serving in Algiers under General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Minnie Spotted-Wolf, the first Native American woman to enlist in the United States Marines.

The World’s Outstanding Women (WOW): #AtoZChallenge Women of the Manhattan Project

 

Today is the A to Z Challenge’s last Sunday break for the month but since I usually post every day or just about, I thought I’d write one of my normal Saturday segments.

Throughout history women have made their mark in a wide variety of ways.  In WOW, I usually highlight one of these remarkable women and write about their life from birth to the grave.  Last week I wrote about the American women codebreakers.  Today I write about the women of science involved with the Manhattan Project.

Women of the Atomic Age

The Manhattan Project was a research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs during World War II. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada.

The Manhattan Project incorporated at least 300 military and civilian women. WACs and wives of scientists were often assigned to clerical and service jobs. But women with advanced technical training served in important research positions.

Elda “Andy” Anderson was a co-developer of the atomic bomb.  She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in atomic spectroscopy.She held a teaching position at Downer’s College at Milwaukee.The Cyclotron group at Los Alamos persuadedher to take a leave of absence fromher teaching duties and move west.She worked on studies of the fission process, including measurements of such basic parameters as the number of neutrons produced per fission and the time delay, if any, before the emission of neutrons.  She was 50 years old and with white hair seemed a senior citizen compared to the majority of younger scientists at Los Alamos. She is remembered as living by herself in the dormitory and working mostly at night clad in jeans and a plaid shirt. She was also the first person to prepare a sample of nearly pure uranium-235. After the war, Elda returned to her teaching position at Downer’s College, but was then recruited by the Oak Ridge Laboratory, where she was placed in charge of health education and training. As a nuclear physicist, she played an important part in shaping the emerging discipline of health physics.

Leona Harriet Woods (August 9, 1919 – November 10, 1986), later known as Leona Woods Marshall and Leona Woods Marshall Libby, was an American physicist who helped build the first nuclear reactor and the first atomic bomb. By 1942, when she was finishing writing up her thesis, she was the youngest and last of Mulliken’s pre-war students, and was working alone because all her fellow students had become involved with war work. She met Herbert Anderson, who was working for Enrico Fermi. Anderson discovered that Woods was adept with vacuum technology from her research, and as soon as her PhD was finished, he hired her to work with the boron trifluoride detectors used to measure neutron flux.

Fermi’s group constructed a nuclear reactor known as Chicago Pile-1 under the stands of Stagg Field, the University’s abandoned football stadium. Walter Zinn did not want a woman involved in the dirty work of placing the graphite blocks, but Woods had plenty of work to do with the detectors and thermocouples, and used a small stack of graphite of her own to measure the effects of a radium-beryllium source on manganese foil to obtain a measure of the neutron cross section in order to calibrate the detectors. Woods was the only woman present when the reactor went critical, asking Fermi “When do we become scared?”

In this 1946 photo of the Chicago pile team, Woods is the only woman, fourth from the left in the middle row.

Asked many years later about how she felt about her involvement in the Manhattan Project, she said:

I think everyone was terrified that we were wrong (in our way of developing the bomb) and the Germans were ahead of us. That was a persistent and ever-present fear, fed, of course, by the fact that our leaders knew those people in Germany. They went to school with them. Our leaders were terrified, and that terror fed to us. If the Germans had got it before we did, I don’t know what would have happened to the world. Something different. Germany led in the field of physics. In every respect, at the time war set in, when Hitler lowered the boom. It was a very frightening time.

I certainly do recall how I felt when the atomic bombs were used. My brother-in-law was captain of the first minesweeper scheduled into Sasebo Harbor. My brother was a Marine, with a flame thrower on Okinawa. I’m sure these people would not have lasted in an invasion. It was pretty clear the war would continue, with half a million of our fighting men dead not to say how many Japanese. You know and I know that General (Curtis) LeMay firebombed Tokyo and nobody even mentions the slaughter that happened then. They think Nagasaki and Hiroshima were something compared to the firebombing.

THEY’RE WRONG!

I have no regrets. I think we did right, and we couldn’t have done it differently. Yeah. I know it has been suggested the second bomb, Nagasaki, was not necessary. The guys who cry on shoulders, when you are in a war, to the death, I don’t think you stand around and ask, “Is it right?”

Chien-Shiung Wu (May 31, 1912 – February 16, 1997) was a Chinese American experimental physicist who made significant contributions in the research of radioactivity. Wu worked on the Manhattan Project, where she helped develop the process for separating uranium metal into the uranium-235 and uranium-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion. She is best known for conducting the Wu experiment, which contradicted the law of conservation of parity. This discovery earned the 1957 Nobel Prize in physics for her colleagues Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang, and also earned Wu the inaugural Wolf Prize in Physics in 1978. Her expertise in experimental physics evoked comparisons to Marie Curie, and her many honorary nicknames include “the First Lady of Physics”, “the Chinese Madame Curie”, and the “Queen of Nuclear Research”.

In March 1944, Wu joined the Manhattan Project’s Substitute Alloy Materials (SAM) Laboratories at Columbia University. The role of the SAM Laboratories, headed by Harold Urey, was to support the Manhattan Project’s gaseous diffusion (K-25) program for uranium enrichment. Wu worked alongside James Rainwater in a group led by William W. Havens, Jr., whose specific task was to develop radiation detector instrumentation.

There were other women involved at all levels of the Manhattan project.  I found this website that is dedicated to preserving the history of the Manhattan Project.  You can read about and listen to oral histories in the Voices of the Manhattan Project.

 

World War II from #AtoZChallenge – V is for V-Mail

WORLD WAR II FROM A TO Z

Poster from World War II promoting the use of V-mail

This subject was one that I really looked forward to writing during the A to Z Challenge.  When I first heard about V-Mail I was amazed at the logistics of the mail operation during the war.

U.S. Troops Surrounded by Holiday Mail During WWII by Smithsonian Institution, via Flickr

V-mail, short for Victory Mail, was a hybrid mail process used during the Second World War in America as the primary and secure method to correspond with soldiers stationed abroad. To reduce the cost of transferring an original letter through the military postal system, a V-mail letter would be censored, copied to film, and printed back to paper upon arrival at its destination. The V-mail process is based on the earlier British Airgraph process.

V-mail correspondence was on small letter sheets, 17.8 cm by 23.2 cm (7 by 9 1/8 in.), that would go through mail censors before being photographed and transported as thumbnail-sized image in negative microfilm. Upon arrival to their destination, the negatives would be blown up to 60% of their original size 10.7 cm by 13.2 cm (4 ¼ in. by 5 3/16 in.) and printed.

Relative sizes of each step in the V-Mail process. Left to right: pre-printed letter sheet, 16 mm microfilm, photographic reprint of original letter.

According to the National Postal Museum, “V-mail ensured that thousands of tons of shipping space could be reserved for war materials. The 37 mail bags required to carry 150,000 one-page letters could be replaced by a single mail sack. The weight of that same amount of mail was reduced dramatically from 2,575 pounds to a mere 45.” This saved considerable weight and bulk in a time in which both were hard to manage in a combat zone.

Credit: National Archives
One sack of V-Mail film equaled 37 bags of ordinary letters.

In addition to postal censorship, V-mail also deterred espionage communications by foiling the use of invisible ink, microdots, and microprinting, none of which would be reproduced in a photocopy.

 

World War II from #AtoZChallenge – U is for U-Boat

WORLD WAR II FROM A TO Z

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U-995 Type VIIC at the Laboe Naval Memorial

U-boat is the anglicised version of the German word U-Boot, a shortening of Unterseeboot, literally “undersea boat”.   Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare role (commerce raiding), enforcing a naval blockade against enemy shipping. The primary targets of the U-boat campaigns in both wars were the merchant convoys bringing supplies from Canada, the British Empire, and the United States to the islands of the United Kingdom and (during the Second World War) to the Soviet Union and the Allied territories in the Mediterranean.

A convoy and its life-giving cargo–ever vulnerable to attack

During World War II, U-boat warfare was the major component of the Battle of the Atlantic, which lasted the duration of the war. Germany had the largest submarine fleet in World War II, since the Treaty of Versailles had limited the surface navy of Germany to six battleships (of less than 10,000 tons each), six cruisers and 12 destroyers. Hmm I guess Hitler found himself a loophole by going undersea.

A German U-Boat at sea, with crewmen perched on the sub’s tower, scanning the horizon for targets.

In the early stages of the war, the U-boats were extremely effective in destroying Allied shipping, initially in the mid-Atlantic up until 1942 when the tides changed, where there was a large gap in air cover. There was an extensive trade in war supplies and food across the Atlantic, which was critical for Britain’s survival. This continuous action became known as the Battle of the Atlantic, as the British developed technical defences such as ASDIC and radar, and the German U-boats responded by hunting in what were called “wolfpacks” where multiple submarines would stay close together, making it easier for them to sink a specific target.

From packed submarine nests such as this one, U-boat wolf packs ventured forth into Allied sea lanes to terrorize merchant convoys.

Later, when the United States entered the war, the U-boats ranged from the Atlantic coast of the United States and Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Arctic to the west and southern African coasts and even as far east as Penang. The U.S. military engaged in various tactics against German incursions in the Americas; these included military surveillance of foreign nations in Latin America, particularly in the Caribbean, in order to deter any local governments from supplying German U-boats.

CG22165A Crewmen from the Spencer (WPG-36) picking up survivors from a Nazi U-boat just before it sank. Photo courtesy of NARA.

CG22164A Spencer (WPG-36) German prisoners from a sunken U-boat in the North Atlantic enjoying the food on the Spencer.Photo courtesy of NARA.

Because speed and range were severely limited underwater while running on battery power, U-boats were required to spend most of their time surfaced running on Diesel engines, diving only when attacked or for rare daytime torpedo strikes. The more ship-like hull design reflects the fact that these were primarily surface vessels which had the ability to submerge when necessary. This contrasts with the cylindrical profile of modern nuclear submarines, which are more hydrodynamic underwater (where they spend the majority of their time) but less stable on the surface. Indeed, while U-boats were faster on the surface than submerged, the opposite is generally true of modern subs. The most common U-boat attack during the early years of the war was conducted on the surface and at night. This period, before the Allied forces developed truly effective antisubmarine warfare (ASW) tactics, which included convoys, was referred to by German submariners as “die glückliche Zeit” or “the happy time.”

The U-boats’ main weapon was the torpedo, though mines and deck guns (while surfaced) were also used. By the end of the war, almost 3,000 Allied ships (175 warships; 2,825 merchant ships) were sunk by U-boat torpedoes.