Some Of The Key Yanks
General Henry H. Ar
nold, commanding gen
oral of Army Air Forces.
General Mark W. Clark
■led Fifth Army through
the Italian campaign.
General James H. Doo
little led the first bomb
ing raid on Tokyo;
Admiral William F. Hal
sey headed the famed
U. S. Third Fleet.
General George C. Ken
ney directed MacAr
thur's Pacific air orm.
General Omar N. Brad
ley led a group of four
armies in Germany.
General Jacob L. Devers
was an Army group
commander in Europe.
General Dwight D. Eis
enhower, commander
of the Allies in Europe.
General Courtney H.
Hodges headed the
American First Army.
Admiral Ernest J. King,
commander*in-chief of *
the American Aeet.
Mexico, torpedoing heavily-laden oil tankers and
merchantmen. They reached the St. Lawrence and
the mouth of the Mississippi; they stood off Aruba
and Trinidad and sent shells into oil refineries.
By April, it was estimated, they were sinking
ships faster than the Allies could build them. In
May and June the sinkings rose still higher. The
narrow lanes leading to Murmansk, Russia, were
strewn with wreckage.
Discovering the U-boats could stand off shore
and sight the silhouettes of coast-hugging ships
against the lights of cities, U. S. defense officials
ordered coastal brownouts at night. The Coast
Guard was given new sub-fighting vessels and sent
to search out “the rattlesnakes of the Atlantic.’
Aerial patrols were established. The British, in
creasing their bombing of the continent, struck re
peatedly at U-boat bases and submarine shipbuild
ing yards in Germany and France. In July the U
boats’ toll fell to half of that L. June, and dropped
lower still in August.
But the submarines kept sticking their peri
scopes up into waters where they could do great
damage. How to prevent them from doing so be
came one of the most urgent problems the Allies
had to solve.
RUSSIA'S DESPERATION
THE Russians began their first winter offensive
shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and
when the news was bad for the Allies in the Pa
cific it was good on the eastern front of Europe.
Within a week after the swastika went up oyer
Rostov in November, 1941, the Nazis were fleeing
the city. In the central sector, Red tank units
pushed through swirling snows to crack the Ger
man arc in front of Moscow. There the Wehrmacht
set up a system of "hedgehog” defenses consider
ably behind the line of its farthest advance, and
pulled some soldiers back for a needed rest. Those
who stayed to defend the gains suffered through
the coldest winter in 150 years. Advancing Soviet
troops found many frozen in the snow.
The Red offensive was spectacular—it freed one
fifth of the 500,000 square miles of territory the
invader had gobbled in his summer drive, and it
relieved the pressure on Moscow. But the Nazis
still encircled Leningrad and Sevastopol and by
April, when the Russian offensive stopped, they
were planning a tremendous drive to knock out
the foe completely.
The Allied picture brightened slightly in the Pa
cific in June with the Navy’s victory at Midway,
but by then it was generally bad elsewhere.
Hitler’s well-rested Panzer divisions—along with
some forces from Italy, Hungary, Slovakia and
Romania—began rolling in May with attacks on
Russia’s Kerch peninsula. The city of Kerch fell
May 23, and the Axis pushed against heavily-forti
fied Sevastopol. They blasted bunkers, gun em
placements and minefields for three weeks. But
when they stormed into the city itself on July 1
the Russians resisted almost to the last man.
Meanwhile the tide ran toward the Caucasus.
At best the Soviets could only delay it. At the end
of July the Nazis were back in Rostov. Then they
drove into Maikop at the end of the Caucasus great
oil region to find the Reds had filled the wells with
concrete before evacuating. By late August they
threatened the oil riches of Grozny and Baku. If
they could slice through the mountainous terrain
ahead and grab that oil, they could keep their war
machine runnirig indefinitely.
Nazi forces farther north were equally successful.
By August they won back all the territory lost
in the winter campaign, and far more, except in
the Moscow area. They were into the Don River
bend, moving toward Stalingrad with its great tank
and tractor plants.
Late in the month the Nazis opened a massive
dive bomber-tank assault against the city and began
penetrating the suburbs. Russian armed forces and
civilians fought back desperately. In September
furious street fighting began, from house to house,
virtually from brick to brick. Communiques talked
of gains in blocks, then in yards, then in houses.
But Russian women, the aged and children, fought
behind the rubble. The city’s plants continued to
deliver weapons. By mid-September the Nazis were
in the center of the city and claiming success.
If Stalingrad fell, the Nazis would be at the Volga.
The whole middle east would lie open. All Russia
west of the Urals would be threatened.
BRITAIN'S DESPERATION
WHEN the Soviets fell back under Hitler’s sum
mer blows Stalin called for a “Second Front”
from the Allies in the west. But Britain had her
own woes in Africa.
Since Italy’s entrance into the war, battle lines
had see-sawed back and forth across the conti
nent,. By 1942 the British had knocked the Italians
out of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, and
had penetrated Libya. That spring the Afrika Korpt
of wily Nazi Marshal Erwin Rommel, sent in to rein
force the Italians, was given supplies to try to pu<
the British out of Libya and drive to Suez.
Late in May Rommel jumped off from Tmimi, '
miles west of Tobruk, and in a tank battle, h
specialty, he knocked out 230 tanks of Gener
Ritchie’s Eighth Army. Then he began a furioi
race into Egypt, chalking up 50,000 British casua
ties. On July 1 he stopped at El Alamein, only '
miles from Alexandria and less than 200 from vit
Suez, and waited for more supplies.
In Europe, the British struck back with hard blov
by air. They began 1,000-plane raids in June t
Cologne and Essen, featuring two-ton “block bus
ing” bombs, and in many lesser-scale raids h
German industries and supply lines. In August th<
sent a ground force of 5,000 Canadians, with sm£
detachments of their own black-faced Commandc
American Rangers and DeGaulle’s Fighting Frenc
ashore on the beaches of Dieppe, France. The raic
ers destroyed some installations, suffered ove:
whelming losses. Of each three Canadians who wei
ashore, only one came back. On the credit side, tl
Allies learned many lessons that could be applie
to a full-scale invasion of the continent.
But air raids, no matter how heavy, and Con
mando landings, no matter how promising, we
mere excursions. The British knew that unless the
lines in Africa held before Suez, their hopes
victory would be set back for years, if not entirel
AMERICA'S DESPERATION
\lfHEN General MacArthur took over in soutl
’’ east Asia, all he found Down Under were
handful of planes, a few destroyers and cruisei
and just two Army divisions. Slowly men and sui
plies came from North America. Anzacs return*
from Africa, and the Australians were fully dete
mined to fight for every inch.
In July, the Japanese landed at Buna and Goi
on northern New Guinea, 100 miles from Po
Moresby—the springboard for a drive against Au
tralia. In late August they went over the top
the Owen Stanley mountains. In September th<
halted, 32 miles from Port Moresby, to await mo
supplies. It looked bad for Australia.
To protect ship routes from America, U. S. M;
lines under General Alexander A. Vandergri
pought their way ashore tiny Guadalcanal in tl
- omon Islands on August 7.
After their first shock the Nipponese fought bai
fanatically. On the second night' a cruiser ior
surprised an Allied squadron off Savo island a.
sank four cruisers. Enemy bombers started comil
regularly over the beachhead and Japanese wa
ships offshore made it perilous to bring in rei
forcements
The Yanks brought a small but dogged air for
onto captured Henderson airfield and began to I
Japanese landing attempts. But supplies were ru
ning low. The malaria-ridden Leathernecks found
increasingly difficult to hold off the fanatical foe
In September America still was hanging on
Guadalcanal. But any day the Japanese might si
the slender threads by which she held.
Those were the darkest days for the Allied natio
In the fall of 1942, it seemed entirely possil
that the Nazis would conquer Stalingrad and t
Caucasus, and swing north and south to cripi
Russia’s chances for a comeback within a deca
It seemed entirely possible that the lines bef(
Suez would crack and Hitler would have the ent
middle east within his grasp. It seemed entiri
possible that the Americans on Guadalcanal woi
be thrown back into the crocodile-infested sea, tl
the Nipponese would move on to Port Moresby ■>
then Australia. It seemed entirely possible t
Hirohito’s forces, driving from conquered Bun
would slash into discordant India and into
heart of Asia.
It seemed entirely possible that the Axis s(
would dominate the world.
THE PENDULUM BEGINS TO SWING
MacARTHUR hit back first. His men beat a Jai
nese landing force at Milne Bay, at N
Guinea’s tip On September 25, Australian foi
under his command moved up from Port Mores
By November 2 their cautious offensive had tat
two mountain ullages, Kagi and Kokodu. T
their big blow fell. Allied engineers blasted ro;
through the mountains and thousands of Americ
under General Robert L. Eichelbergef sped o
them. Air transports flown from Australia lam
more troops ahead. General George C. Kenney
Army air force units that chopped off enemy rc
forcements. Tanks and mortars blasted the ro
: advance.
In less than a month, the Australians we
ona. The Japanese, with tremendous fanatic
id endurance and a big bag of jungle ti i
iught fiercely for the village. On Decembei
iwever, it was in Allied hands. At Bun,
inks, using 13-ton tanks to blast a
edibly sturdy pill boxes, finally took the c1
unity on December 14. A month later MacArl