@@freebornjohn2687 Most likely some text-to-speech software. There's the occasional misreading that a human probably wouldn't make. At one point there's a reference to "Panzer eye" which seems peculiar until the next sentence refers to Panzer Two.
When the Allies could launch 1500 bomber tactical raids in support of the ground troops what was the point of continuing the war? Oh, the mad corporal.
I think this carpet bombing claimed the lives of about 111 allied soldiers, killed General Lesley McNair, and over 500 allied casualties as the bombs fell everywhere and sometimes anywhere. The allies tried to have the USAAF conduct an investigation as the issue was reported by the press. In reality the heavy bomber crews had never been trained nor utilized in close action frontline support like this. Yet they killed about 2,500 members of the panzer korps units staged in that area. It was a strategic carnage decision probably shortened the war by many months.
Not just the mad corporal. One man cannot make an entire country march towards its doom. There was willingness in all layers of German society to keep fighting. From frontline infantryman to Field Marshall and from factory worker to high Nazi official.
It’s amazing to hear this narrative in such a calm manner. It must have been a horrendous feeling falling back constantly, knowing that you cannot hold back the advancing enemy. It also reinforces the importance of air superiority.
I met Omar Bradley in 1981 at Fort Bliss, TX. He gave a talk and stated that he, hopefully, will be the last US general that had to fight when the enemy had air superority. He stopped in mid sentence and said, "Don't do this."
I have heard that prior to D-Day, it was the explicit plan to wear out the german Luftwaffe to gain total air superiority. So the bomber attacks were more bait to lure the german fighters into the air than to achieve real strategic bombing results (I will come back to that). The US "escort" fighters were given the allowance to go after the german fighters, even when that meant to leave the bombers unprotected. This achieved its purpose - but at the cost of a lot of bomber crew that might have been saved had the escorts resorted to shielding off enemy fighters One thing that is almost miraculous is that it took the allies until July 1944 to attack an absolute crucial key industry, german fuel production. Giant plants that could not be hidden and moved underground to convert coal into fuel. Way easier to hit with imprecise carpet bombing as e.g. the ball bearing industry, where you really have to directly hit the comparably tiny workshop in between all the civilian housing around it. . And within 3 months of bombing the german fuel production was down to 30%. And the germans were notoriously short of fuel anyhow. Just look at all the images there are of abandoned german tanks, or the lines of hundreds of Me 262 parked along the Salzburg Autobahn - without fuel. At the day of capitulation, it is said the total fuel reserves was down to 20,000 tons.
Air power is indeed the #1 priority for modern warfare. During Desert Storm, before the ground attack, the B52s pounded the entrenched Iraqis with such intensity that they were beat before the ground war started. The A10 destroyed 987 tanks, 926 artillery pieces, 1,355 combat vehicles, and shot down two helicopters. It could not have done that without air superiority. (The Bradley IFVs are thought to have destroyed as many enemy tanks as the Abrams.. Are tanks dead? The Marines think so (and when I was in the Marines 40 years ago, the commanders were already questioning the role of the tank due to the logistics required to keep them running and the growing sophistication of anti-armor weapons). I don't think they are "dead" but at the same time, I think they have a very limited application. If you have air superiority, a tank is just a target.
@@feedingravens I've read --after the war -- intelligence concluded the German electrical grid was the overlooked weak link in their wartime production.
This is the best recollection by a German officer describing the disintegration of the German Army in France I have ever run into, amazing, wonder if this guy knew how lucky he was. Great job.
Yes this flight through Belgium ending in Duren brings back a lot of memories from my Belgian family and later as the son of a Belgian NATO major even more. I still hear the stories from my mom (86) and dad (88) how the Germans had to flee with their tails between their legs as fast as possible, Lille, Namur, Montdidier, Compiegne, Liege, Reims. , Duren etc,etc are all towns I know since childhood. Regularly still seeing the monuments for deads and executed ones from the 2 wars….my family was very exalted when they were kicked out. Believe me. Great to hear one of them giving an accurate description because that’s the side of the story I hear the first time in 62 years. I myself was born in Cologne as the son of one of the occupying force after the war.
I’m not first but, I wanted to let @WorldWar2Stories how much I love these videos. I listen 🎧 to them before bed. I know that sounds strange 🤷🏼♀️ but, the narrator’s voice is soothing and the diaries are fascinating. Thank you 😊
My father was a tanker in the 60s. I thought that the tanks were invincible as a kid. These stories show just how my ideas were far from correct. RIP to all those lost in these beasts of war.😞
My father was in command of 3 tanks welsh guards armoured division spearheading the advance to Germxny from the beachhead. He was blown up twice captured but escaped twice. A real hero who survived for me to tell his story. Now in Ukrain we have another bloody european war facing an enemy that has no regard for the life of its own soldiers the same as Hitler. I thought my Father's war would be the last ....how wrong l was. 😢
@@Michael.Freeman I'm sorry to tell you there will always be war and there will always be insane leaders. Unfortunately, that's as human as love and pizza. 😞 My father was 11 when WW2 ended in Europe. Their treck from Yugoslawia ("Volksdeutsche", ethnic Germans, although Dad was born in East Prussia) was ever so close to being overrun by Russian tanks when they made it across the literal last bridge near Stuhlweißenburg in Hungary. The bridge was held open by two Tiger IIs (of sPz.Abt.503, as I found out) who killed a few spearheading Russian tanks. Engineers blew up the bridge right after the refugees had crossed. Imagine these Tiger II had instead shot up your dad in the West ... both of us wouldn't be here. Cheers mate !
The utter chaos. He was very determined, the effort to recover tanks, arrange repairs and fuel, and transport them is astonishing. Amazing that the Wehrmacht was still able to fight for further month's.
For years. This is only one small taste of North Africa, Italy, France, Russia, Germany itself, etc. They gave everything while being systematically being ground into hamburger. Pity the bravery was for what they were defending.
Not Wehrmacht.....Waffen SS Panzer Schwere Abteilung 101.....Kommandeur Obersturmbannfuhrer Heinz Von Westerhagen's younger brother SS Unterscharfuhrer Rolf Von Westerhagen's was in the 3rd battalion. And Ritterkreuz awarded winner SS Untersturmfuhrer Alfred Gunther was killed. To which this unit was heavily bombed by the RAF on this day
It was strictly forbidden for a Tiger to tow another Tiger. The engine just could not handle that strain to pulling 108 tons. Still crews did it as recovery vehicles were most usually not to be found. Many Tigers were abandoned due to non recovery.
@@andrewlerdard-dickson5201 Not Wermacht? Yes and no. The common misconception is that the German army was called the Wermacht. It was actually called the Heer. Wermacht referred to the German armed forces, including the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine, and the Heer. As for the SS, it is debatable if they can be called Wermacht since they were a politically autonomous organization that was under Wermacht operational control (sometimes).
The tank that took out 2 Tigers from 1000+ yards must have been a Sherman Firefly, interesting to know that German tank commanders were still unaware of that capability at this point.
@@catinthehat906 I suspect the 803rd Tank Destroyer was the killer of those Tigers. The 76 MM Armour piercing round punched out those Tigers and the 75MM gun on the Shermans had to close within 500 yards to do any damage. The Tank Destroyer has been given no credit by you history guys. Doubt you even heard of them.
@@alandavis9644 The QF 17-pounder on the Sherman Firefly was superior to the M7 gun on the M10 tank destroyer and there are many verified accounts of Fireflies knocking out Tigers and Panthers- which is why the Germans targeted them first. What seems incredible is that the American's didn't arm the Sherman with the QF 17 pounder in the first place.
@@alandavis9644 I would brush up on your WW2 history if I were you. Production of the Firefly started in January 1944 and, by 31 May, some 342 Sherman Fireflies had been delivered to the 21st Army Group for the D-Day landings. The Americans weren't the only ones fighting the Germans in Normandy.
In his 1944 book "Brave Men," Ernie Pyle describes witnessing seeing Allied carpet-bombing in Normandy, and also the aftermath. It amazed even him, and he had witnessed things like the invasion of Sicily.
At the same time that the bombs were raining out of the sky, the Navy was in full assault with their BIG, and not so big, guns. A full broadside from a battleship main gun battery would evaporate a small village or the top of a hill. A ton of steel and TNT hitting at 1000 feet per second wouldn't even have to blow up to level a house.
These are very instructive stories by combat veterans, even better than the police cam videos which feature drivers escalating traffic stops into felony charges.
As one American general put it. "The reason we won in the end was because we had in tons what the Germans had in kilos." Logistics and supply wins wars. Tactics and bravery without those things in superior measure can only delays defeat.
Or as Yamamoto put it on his way to Pearl Harbour "We need to knock the Americans out of the war before they have time to put their huge industrial capacity on a war footing". Hence the need for a surprise attack, he knew they couldn't win against a USA that had time to prepare.
Love the USAF - I enlisted December 1969 until January 1974. Ask the Marines at Khe San if they loved the B 52's that kept the NVA from overrunning their perimeter.
B52s, you will think the trumpets have sounded. The end of time has struck when the bombs start falling on your head. I give you my respect. Best wishes to you.
@@philmullins136 Agreed... that is one thing David Drake noted in his stories that weren't hidden in Sci-Fi lingo: ArcLight missions were a thing of wonder, but best admired at a considerable distance. He wrote a lovely story "Arclight", it is in his collections " The Military Dimension " (1991), and re-issue " The Military Dimension II " (1995)
@@WhiteWolf65 They actually fcked up badly on one of the raids this guy described and due to differences in wind (at alt and on the ground) bombed their own dust cloud which wasn't unreasonable tactics during that period. Problem was the dust cloud was moving back to the Allied lines rather than the way they thought is was.
My uncle was a tanker in France. They were fighting in hedgerow country- massive old growing wooden walls. His buddies were in the forward tank, some 80 yards ahead downhill. They were approaching an intersection. The number two tank With my uncle saw that a Panzer had entered the hedgerow path that ran at right angles to my uncle's course. Apparently, the lead tank could not see their peril and continued towards the intersection with the aligned panzer just 200 yards distant. On foot, men tried the phone on the outside of the tank without results. They beat on the tank sides with their rifle butts to get the attention of the crew to stop them but to no effect. The lead tank rolled into that intersection and was immediately hit by the panzer lying in wait. The tank exploded and glowed as if red hot, cremating the tank grew, my uncle's friends, immediately. And people wondered why, after the war, he was sometimes not right in his head. Yet he married, raised a good family and lived till near 90. May he rest in peace.
@@twt000 lol...Very few WWII vets left. Many boomers, like me, had parents and uncles in that war. The time in the narrative was 78 years ago. I'm past 60. I'm talking about an uncle who was passed away 15 years back. There is no unusual math about this. You went to public school I assume? Lol
Despite all the chaos that was going on, the narrator still had to do paper work. He was such a great storyteller that I thought would be in for a not so exciting narrative. But as it turns out, my ears were glued to the events he narrated. I wish their were a continuation of the story.
Thank you so much for sharing this. It's fascinating to hear how things went on a day by day basis. Looking at a map while listening really gives you a sense of how things went badly so quickly.
35:00 During transport the wide tracks were usually stowed under the tank in 2 long rows. This may be an error in translation. Sometimes the wide tracks were rolled into coils and stacked vertically in front or behind the Tiger. In all the whole track swap took at least 5 hours to complete as additional wheel sets had to be removed when the Tiger was configured for rail transport. As Tiger crews said they were worked to death mechanically toiling with these machines.
@@michaelkenny8540 Late Tiger I did not either with the steel road wheels and the eliminating of those outer most road wheel sets. The planners should have thought out all of this but time was not on their side. Tiger crews really had a distaste for those interleaved road wheel set anyways as they caused many issues.
@@ericscottstevens Especially on the Eastern Front, in the freezing Russian winter. Mud and slush would get in there, and freeze overnight. It often had to be steamed out... with whatever source they could find.
@@WhiteWolf65 Which is utter nonsense, especially in summer 🙂 The common procedure in case of "urgency" with frozen road wheels was to start the engine, 1st gear in and and off you went. And it didn't matter if your Tiger, T-34 or Sherman was "frozen in". Tank engines and transmissions are strong enough to deal with that sh**. Anyway, you want to get rid of of a bit of that frozen stuff not to stress the system too much, and you don't want to carry a ton of frozen mud around, but you'd have to do that on any tank. Especially Shermans would sink a bit deeper in the mud before freezing. Starting said engine in the cold could be a different thing, but again, that's a problem for everyone to share, especially T-34 with a Diesel engine. I have to come across the first report to say: "1st platoon couldn't make it because they were frozen."
@@ottovonbismarck2443 Slab concrete, poured floors, footpaths etc is 20MPa compressive strength after 30 days cure. 15-25 Mpa requires little care to achieve but is not suitable for larger and self supporting structures. Near 0C ice turns to water under pressure and dislodges easily. Resistance increases greatly with colder temperature. At -10C coarse plain ice is 0.5Mpa, fine grain 0.7, sand mixed with ice 1MPa. At -20C, 3MPa, 5 MPa, 7 MPa. Not quite concrete but not negligible. Highly variable depending on ice grain and aggregate but could form hard to crack and dislodge chunks. Basically ice chunks can be like rocks at -20C, a temperature not uncommon in a russian winter. Steel can undergo cold embrittlement promoting brittle fracture and accelerating existing strain from -20C, even up to 0C for harder higher carbon steel. What is the weakest link in your power train and tracks grinding ice/sand slurry at -20C?
Another thing that has always boggled my mind is the logistics involved ....at any given time and no matter the number of people .....must have been crazy !!!
Starting to think the success or failure of different tanks wasnt the tanks themselfs but the quality of salvage and repair service as they keep getting taken out by perfectly repairable damage :P
Logistics, supplies for the army as a whole. As for the vehicles themselves, people often put too much focus on hard stats: what's its maximum speed on freshly laid asphalt? How thick is its armor at the thickest point? What boom boom stick is mounted in the turret? Ergonomics and crew training are overlooked. Some people call the T-34 the best tank of the war. In reality, no other tank model had as many of them knocked out as the T-34. Some think it invented sloping armor, even though medieval knights had sloping armor and even German panzers do feature some sloping armor too. Because of the sloping armor, the space inside the T-34 was very limited, making it harder to operate. It was so cramped the rate of fire suffered greatly. Early models featured no radio or intercom. The commander was expected to stick his head out of the turret and wave flags at other tanks to pass commands. And yes, plenty of German tanks were recovered, repaired and put back into action. At the opening phases of the war in the east that wasn't as much an option for the Soviets as the Germans pushed them eastward. But eventually, the Soviets too got good at recovery and repair.
1000 bombers in am 1000 bomber raid in afternoon. With 1000 British bombers in night The German population was breaking down as nobody could live like that
Very interesting to hear such a compelling account of the war. I can imagine many reflected that the war was futile by 41. Must have been very disconcerting to know you could be wiped out any second.
As a 'Cold War kid' I feel the need to add a bit here. That was also disconcerting. Knowing that you could be annihilated at any time with just 'Four Minutes' warning. Especially likely if you lived within the nuclear blast radius of a military base (which here in Britain is just about everywhere). But over the years we just learnt to live with the threat. But it must have been a lot more intense for this guy.
That was very interesting, I was trying to follow his movements on maps but it took ages to find the places from the pronunciations and I had no idea of the distances he may be covering. Perhaps it could have been provided in the video? Would have added a great deal to the commentary.
Station at Baden Solingen, 1984 to 1988 was second battalion P.P.C.LI. I was at both these places which are still operational by the way. good Training. grounds.
@@AnthonyOMulligan-yv9cg War was amazingly stupid. Crazy leaders of all nationalities depend on ill-informed men like him. The Vietnam war proved that.
@@AnthonyOMulligan-yv9cgHe performed very well, which is what he’d been trained to do even when faced with very difficult circumstances. This is what you would want from any military professional. I like to think of myself as a realist with a pretty good notion of human nature and while I think the world can be wonderful in its variety and beauty, I know, from my 75 years, that it is also a potentially dangerous world, owing to human folly. I’m not militaristic-minded by any means, although I grew up as a military brat and served 4 years in the USN. Yet, I know that it’s absolutely necessary that the U.S. continues to field a standing military that is highly trained and well supplied. And I would hope that our military is producing officers of the caliber of that German Tiger tanker.
It’s fascinating to hear these accounts of Operation Cobra. Here in the US all we hear about is how the attack was a snafu bc we bombed our own lines- we did that, and it was a snafu that could have been avoided- but we aren’t told about how it was vastly more devastating to the Germans, and how it was actually very successful. The Allies did break out of the hedgerows and proceeded to race across France.
My uncle flew a P-38 in Europe. He loved shooting and rocketing tanks. He more enjoyed strafing trains, as he liked the way that they would shoot out steam before disappearing in a huge boiler explosion.
My father was a POW of the Germans - he witnessed the effects of trains carrying POWs, strafed by American and Brit pilots - they tried to kill anything that moved - many times he had to take cover when being marched away from the front lines.
(@davidCox)When he returned home did he also enjoy torturing and dismembering animals? Verbally and physically abusing his family? Drowning small kittens in puddles? Constantly leaving toilet seats in the down position?… not washing his hands after using the bathroom and immediately shaking the hands of others? Sounds like a dangerous man to me.
Very Nice to follow a real Enemy Soldier's Journey at the END! just Imagine the Steam Roller of Allied Men and Materials ROLLING OVER while Rolling UP the Wehrmacht!!!
If you follow his journey on a map this guy basically toured the whole front back and forward paralell not retreating looking to recover 2 tanks. And this is only one guy trying to "hustle" his way with forgery of wehicle papers etc. It gives a much more improvised wiew rather than strict german dicipline.
The two tanks lost to frontal hits were probably shot by a "Firefly," - a Sherman, fitted with a British, 17lb gun. All allied tank units had some, but they were brand new in Normandy, which is why he had no idea what had hit them.
@@Tom_Cruise_Missile I do believe an M 10 with an M7 gun would piece the front plate of a Tiger. The 90mm armed M 36 would, but they were all further west, in the American Sector, of the front
@@paulbeesley8283 I believe there was a British variant of the m10. It was armed with the 17 pounder, and is known to have destroyed some big cats in Normandy.
I guess a bomb that explodes very near to people blows their body like a child blows a dandelion flower but in microseconds speed. All the muscle, bones, organs and body fluids are shredded by the high-hypersonic speed of gases and scattered. Google search states TNT has a detonation velocity of 6,940 meters per second.
The Allies in Normandy had Army Air Forces tactical forward air controllers, often riding on tanks, with radios tuned into the same radio frequencies as Allied fighter bombers. So these radio controlled fighter-bomber attacks were deadly accurate once camouflaged Wehrmacht tanks gave away their positions from firing. Allied tanks or artillery guns would fire colored smoke to mark enemy targets to help radio controllers guide Allied fighter-bombers accurately to their targets. Casualties for tank crews, supply troops and mechanics soared amongst the German Wehrmacht. Tanks are worthless without constant supplies of fuel, ammunition and mechanical spare parts including engines, road wheels and transmissions. RAF Typhoons with an assortment of rockets, cannon and/or three or four 500lbs bombs or napalm would pummel Wehrmacht tanks. P-47's with eight .50 caliber machine guns, rockets, or about 2,000 bomb load or napalm canisters were the American equivalent. These Allied fighter-bombers pulverized Wermacht armored columns. It became nearly impossible for the Germans to deploy armor during daylight hours without being massacred by Alllied fighter-bombers. Allied medium tactical bombers destroyed vital German bridges, supply dumps, transportation infrastructure and railhead infrastructure. These medium bombers caused heavy losses and delays of German motorized supply columns. It was not uncommon for nightime German supply column traffic jams to form around destroyed bridges as frantic exhausted repair crews tried to fix the wrecked bridges before dawn. These German motorized supply columns often couldn't disperse before daylight. Allied fighter-bombers destroyed these bunched up German truck columns. General Eisenhower also insisted upon his Transportation plan with heavy Allied bomber attacking French railways, transportation depots, road networks, supply dumps, air runways, river barges etc. to isolate Normany's landing areas from German main supply routes. Ike's Transportation Plan worked brilliantly proving decisive in the German Wehrmacht defeat at the Failaise-Argentan pocket battle in Normandy during August, 1944. Ike threatened to resign his command forcing reluctant American and British Air Force commanders of heavy bombers to support his Transportation Plan. It is safe to assume that Ike's Transportation Plan combined with the constant Allied tactical and operational bombing campaign shortened the war and saved countless lives of Allied infantry soldiers. The point I am trying to make here to everyone is that allegedly superior heavy Tiger or Panther tanks without fuel, spare parts, regular engine/transmission overhauls and fresh ammunition supplies are nothing but worthless scrap metal sitting on th side of the roadway. Some German tank fans and commentators have said that Alied fighter-bombers were inaccurate with low hit rates on German tanks. The German troops on the receiving end of Allied fighter-bomber attacks seem to have different ideas. It became a very heavy casualty causing event to move a German tank column during daylight hours even across a short stretch of field to a new place of hiding such as a grove of trees. Also, no one can live forever in a tank either. Tank crews had get out of their tanks regularly to perform constant maintenance on their heavy tanks. Hours of track maintenance, cleaning adjusting etc. must be performed on heavy tanks daily. German soldiers caught out in the open working on their tanks became casualties in near constant Allied fighter-bomber attacks. Constant Allied air attacks with rates of 1500 sorties per day or more in Normandy decimated trained Wehrmacht service troops, tank crews and highly trained mechanical troops necesary to keep armored units operational. The lessons here for military history students are quite clear. It is necessary to have air superiority with modern fighters along with integrated strong ground air defense systems in order to have maneuver warfare with armored units and mechanized infantry units. This lesson applies to Normandy in WW2 to Desert Storm in the 1991 Persian Gulf War where I served as a career soldier.
Interesting and informative. Excellent photography picture 📷 enabling viewers to better understand what the orator was describing. Class A research project!!! Special thanks to the veteran soldiers sharing their personal information/experiences. Making this documentary more authentic and possible. Fighting/perishing/surviving knowing certain death/debilitating wounds were often possible. Yet still advanced forward regardless of the consequences. True grit style determination to succeed. A totally disillusioned/worthless endeavor on the part of the German armies. Once again Berlin didn't seem to care about the predicaments of the German armies. Placing himmler in command??? A disaster waiting to happen. And it did placing the panzer tanks into a state of disillusioned state of disarray.
If the UK alone was able to keep the Germans in check for a year, they had zero chance when America joined the war. Invading Russia only sealed their doom.
Saving private Ryan and Band of Brothers was very well done. Not many movies out there that have good tank battles. The movie Bridge at Remagen was great though.
Got to say, if you read any history on the British and Canadians under Montgomery you would understand the loss of so many tanks to air attack was no surprise. Montgomery was an all arms General and use of the RAF and USAAF in a tactical manner was an established procedure. In the book Monty's Men, interviews with British soldiers described destroyed Tigers after bombing to the point that tigers had been flipped with their crews killed by concussion alone. The book was written by John Buckley.
In the whole of NWE 1944-45 there was but a single (One) Tiger overturned by bombing. The vast majority of flipped tanks (of any type) were pushed off the road by bulldozers.
The problem with that claim is that it has been thoroughly debunked. In post battle analysis both British and American inspectors found that the claims of allied air kills on German armour were pretty much fantasy. For instance between the 7th and 10th August, the 2nd Tactical Air Force of the 9th USAAF claimed to have destroyed 120-140 tanks, yet of the 46 Axis tanks lost, only 9 of them could be attributed to aircraft. Similarly in August 1944 the RAF claimed to have destroyed 135 tanks in the Goodwood area, but the British “Office of Research and Analysis” examined 300 Axis tanks and found that only 10 were actually hit and damaged by the Typhoon’s RP-3 rockets.
The Typhoon was our airborne tank. Bombs and rockets working every day. Pin point accuracy based in UK originally and then close to the front. The rockets had 60Lb warheads and where the equivalent of a cruiser broadside. Read the the Book the day of the Typhoon there should be a film about them. The pilots flying them where as tough as they get. Their fighting was through everything the enemy could throw at them.
Yes, very brave pilots too, far more aircraft were lost to ground fire than to enemy fighters. Despite that the Typhoons did very effective work in helping rout the Germans in France.
solid fuel rockets were not pinpoint many went off target,they show film of the ones that didn't.A P47 would carry an external belly fuel tank and one 500-lb bomb under each wing; many were also configured so that the plane could carry air-to-ground rockets, typically ten 5-in HVARs (high-velocity aircraft rockets). P47s on an armed reconnaissance mission would usually operate three flights, two armed with a mix of bombs and rockets, and the cover flight carrying only rockets. Over 80 percent of the bombs dropped by P47s during the European campaign were 500-lb weapons; less than 10 percent were 1,000-lb bombs, and the difference was made up by smaller 260-lb fragmentation bombs and napalm. While acknowledging the spectacular effects and destructiveness of rockets, the AAF considered bombs more effective for "road work" due to accuracy problems in firing the solid-fuel weapons.
@@bigwoody4704 Thank you for your worthy contribution. I hope you don't missunderstand me in as much as I would never wish to belittle the U S contribution to winning WW2. However there is a strong and irritating tendency among many U S historians and movies to give the impression the Americans won those wars while other nations contributed very little. Regrettably this applies to given U S histories generally. The war of 1812 being a good example of the 'hooray don't let facts spoil a good pro USA story'. My view is this misleading approach is unhelpful in as much as people can form very ill advised opinions which leaves unpleasant parts of history open to repeating its themselves. In a current wider perspective we see this today in the tales Palestinians, the Iran regime and Russia try to pass off including among their own people as real history, as factual. To return to the P-47's, they were formidable aircraft courageously flown, aptly named Thunderbolt.
@@gordonfrickers5592 no not at all it was good the Typhoon found a home. The Thunderbolt and Typhoon were heavier and better protected than the Spits,Mustangs, Hurricanes and Lightnings. They could take more ground fire and returned at a higher rate than the others. One thing that worked out for the P-47 it's tactical flexibility was enabled by its turbocharged Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp R-2800, two-row, 18-cylinder radial engine - was it was air cooled and could stay airborn longer than water cooled engines that received the same damage/punishment
Yeah we Americans learned REAL fast its a whole lot easier less risky and less bloody (for us) to destroy your enemies tanks vehicles fortified positions infantry etc with our overwhelming Artillery and air power than using our tanks and infantry especially once we had achieved air supremacy Once America got involved in the war neither Germany or Japan stood any chance of winning I mean we produced over 45k Shermin tanks and spare parts for 2x that many for God's sake that's over 5x more than Germanys entire production of Tiger 1's II''s and Panthers combined
Never forget the people who made the war materials back home and many minorities driving to and fro to deliver those war goods to the front lines.Many blacks drive the Red ball express trucks ,women piloted damaged planes to air fields so theyd be repaired.Salute to all our fighting men.
After the American failures at Salerno and Anzio, the Allies threw everything they had at the German armour coming from Calais to prevent it from reaching the American beaches before their amour was ashore.
The captured Tiger was Tiger 131. The Tiger in the narration was Tiger 311. Same digits, but rearranged in a different number. Tiger 131 was captured in North-Africa.
Not only did the bombs obliterated the Panzers, but also the US battleships lobbing in artillery shells into the region were menacing on D-Day. There's a picture in a WW II book I have that showed the scant remnants of a Panzer that took a direct hit from what could have been a 14 inch round from a US battleship. All shown in the picture were a few scrap pieces of metal, a couple of drive-wheels, and a length of tank tread.
This is remarkable account of history which unusually is not professed by the the victor of the war. The only thing that bothers me is the vast roll played by the Canadians, who wore the same uniforms (From a distance) to the British. But the account is thoroughly frank and apparently honest, from a contemporary combatant.
Reading this and about the war in Ukraine, I suspect that the supply chain required to keep armored units fighting is even MORE complicated now . . . and consequently vulnerable, especially when cheap drones can server as artillery spotters.
At Normandy the Allies could deploy 5,000 fighters and bombers against 200 German planes. Statistically, planes had a 4 percent chance of destroying a Tiger or Panther tank with bombs and missiles. However, after Normandy, many of the German tank crews were inexperienced and very young. Unlike Veteran tankers, they were afraid of such destruction of being cooked inside your tank turret, and they fled their tanks when being attacked. Hitler released half of his Panzer at Normandy, and did not release the other half stationed at Pas de Calais until a week later, which was too late. Credit the Allied double agent “Garbo” who convinced Hitler that Calais was where the real Invasion would happen, until a full week after D-Day.
The numbers of aircraft he speaks of is crazy. I wanna know what that many bombers looks like, though I know it was mostly night time. Who along with Rommel was in charge of Normandy. One wants armor kept back from the beaches miles inland, while the other (pretty sure Rommel) vehemently disagreed and felt it would be too late and the armor would fall victim to allied planes. So they ended up doing both,which meant neither has enough troops and tanks
It was a daytime operation. I talked with a witness, a forward artillery observer who later was an education professor at EWU. Troops were moved 2 miles from the front and still the shaking ground “felt like 4 huge men were shaking your bed.” He was missing his thumb. When he was back on the line he was in a hedge row with his hand on a sapling. A mortar round explosion cut threw the sapling and thumb. The shrapnel collapsing his lung caused much worse pain than that in his hand.
Rommel was definitely right, as usual. Neither strategy was going to work, but Rommel's atleast made sense in theory. If they were in close quarter combat on the beaches then it limits the naval guns and air support of the Allies.
@@donaldshotts4429he absolutely wasn't. Panzers only work in sufficient numbers. Therefore the Rommel plan to spread them out over the entire coast line would mean the Germans could have only used their panzers piecemeal. Aside from the.fact that they didn't know the Allies were going to land in Normandy. Having a mobile Panzer reserve further inland was the right decision but the Germans made the mistake of trying to contain the allied bridgehead from within the range of the big naval guns.
You are interested in massed bomber attacks so you may be interested to know about "Operation Clarion". On February 22 and 23 of 1945, Allied formations consisting of about 3,500 heavy bombers and 5,000 fighter/bomber aircraft rained hell all over Germany. By this date the Luftwaffe was grounded so machine guns were removed from allied fighters and they were adapted to carry bombs - this explains how the allies were able to deploy so many "fighter/bombers". The 15th and 8th US Air Forces together with the Royal Air Force Bomber Command, destroyed critical transportation systems at Bamberg, Stendal, Wurzburg, and many more cities. It was all part of Operation Clarion, a series of massive Allied bombing raids across Germany to cripple its communication networks, including rail stations, bridges, docks, and transport facilities. Operation Clarion took place on the 22nd of February 1945 and three months later the concentration camp prisoners were found sick and starving for want of food and medical supplies, but the Germans were blamed. Over the same three months American Mustang fighters roamed the countryside shooting up combine harvester machines to destroy the harvest and then blamed the Germans for the starving people in the camps. Operation Clarion in February 1945 was designed to starve Germans which also effected camp inmates. All the 'death camps' were in territory captured by Stalin but he was our ally so we are not permitted to ask what he did with all the million inmates in the concentration camps inmates he captured.
Lessons that can still be drawn from this engagement for the current war in Ukraine. 1) Tanks are mainly not killed in tank versus tank battles but by airpower, heavy artillery and by other means. 2) Russia still doesn't have air superiority, let alone air supremacy, resulting in the Ukrainian army being able to move reinforcements, supplies, personnel and new Western hardware to the frontlines at will. This was simply unthinkable and impossible for the German Wehrmacht during the Normandy campaign.
The Americans showed the Germans what "blitzkrieg" was all about. Artillery, bombers, P 47 fighters that were good escorts and superb ground attack weapons, P 51 fighter w/ unparalleled range, and much more.
8th parts of the German War effort was assigned to the Russian Front. ( Albert Speer ). And the Allies had " Ultra " , they knew Every move of German Forces. Pls be Humble.
Superior airpower is almost always a significant factor. I question the attack of Eastern Europe and the attempt to invade the British Isles. So much time, the Germans maybe could of worked on many of their projects. Only a thought, so many lost tankers and their panzer🤐
If they hadn't invaded Russia - - which posed no threat to them at the time, as evidenced by Stalin's total unpreparedness for Operation Barbarossa - - and spent a year or so regrouping and rearming after Dunkirk, they probably would have won the war. Hitler was, strategically, either very stupid, or simply crazy. He declared war on the US too after Pearl Harbor, exactly what FDR wanted.
If you go to the wiki page for 503rd Panzer division, it quite literally has a picture of the tank that was flipped upside down, at least its more then likely it.
I have a German Mauser with the Hiemsoth scope that was taken from the soldier killed during this bombing. I was offered $4,500 by a German collector 10 years ago. My grandsons will inherit it and many other collector weapons.
Yes it was quite disorganized when the falaise gap was closed..after the retreat.most units were refit in germany or holland. And at that point the allies advance slowed..germany was able to redeploy and halt the advance into germany for 6 months
A strange version of reality. The German Army in France was totally defeated in 12 weeks. It was destroyed. The Allied had a pre-invasion timetable and from August 1944 were well ahead of that schedule. They had expected victory in July 1945 and instead got it in May 1945. At no time did the Germans disrupt the 'master plan' for the invasion of France. I think you are confused because not every single Germans was killed and captured on June 7 1944.
@@Nick-yj4jk The Allies had a pre-Day timeline of how they expected to defeat Germany. The allowed 12 months to reach the Rhine. They got there in 3 months. That is a fantastic achievement. Germans fans have to invent bogus Allied 'slowness' in order to try and salvage the reputation of the beaten German Army .
@@kurtjammer9568 No one said the Allies won every single battle but they sure won the campaign and the war. Landings June 6th and by mid August the Germany Army in the west was totally routed and destroyed. Can you explain why the Allied timetable to reach the Rhine was 12 months but they got there in 3? How is being 9 months ahead of schedule in Sept 1944 'slow'. The date the Allies expected the war to end was July 1945 and that was exceeded as well. Anyway you look at it the Allied NWE Campaign was won ahead of the expected timetable. That is anything but 'slow'.
Well that is how the other half survived or died. The same roll of the dice, the same bureaucracy, the same egotists, but still the hero survives with his men.
Operation Goodwood. Enjoy!
Here is the playlist: ua-cam.com/play/PLyuEmb1VavZD50oW5hYHCzlU6FhXchzSL.html
Thanks for posting. Who is the narrator?
@@freebornjohn2687 Computer?
@@freebornjohn2687 Most likely some text-to-speech software. There's the occasional misreading that a human probably wouldn't make. At one point there's a reference to "Panzer eye" which seems peculiar until the next sentence refers to Panzer Two.
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All❤😅
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When the Allies could launch 1500 bomber tactical raids in support of the ground troops what was the point of continuing the war? Oh, the mad corporal.
I think this carpet bombing claimed the lives of about 111 allied soldiers, killed General Lesley McNair, and over 500 allied casualties as the bombs fell everywhere and sometimes anywhere. The allies tried to have the USAAF conduct an investigation as the issue was reported by the press. In reality the heavy bomber crews had never been trained nor utilized in close action frontline support like this. Yet they killed about 2,500 members of the panzer korps units staged in that area. It was a strategic carnage decision probably shortened the war by many months.
All or nothing.
@@ericscottstevensthey attacked across the front vs along it. Seemed to be repeating error, happened on Omaha June 6th, bombed too late.
@@tonyromano6220mine,the wall family motto.
Not just the mad corporal. One man cannot make an entire country march towards its doom. There was willingness in all layers of German society to keep fighting. From frontline infantryman to Field Marshall and from factory worker to high Nazi official.
Love listening to these going to sleep
Current situation.
Me to.
Same!
I couldn't believe it when I read your comment. Very good pace and content for helping me go to sleep.
Kinda hard when there’s an ad every 3 minutes, Jesus.
It’s amazing to hear this narrative in such a calm manner. It must have been a horrendous feeling falling back constantly, knowing that you cannot hold back the advancing enemy. It also reinforces the importance of air superiority.
Germany declared war on the U.S. They got what they asked for.
I met Omar Bradley in 1981 at Fort Bliss, TX. He gave a talk and stated that he, hopefully, will be the last US general that had to fight when the enemy had air superority. He stopped in mid sentence and said, "Don't do this."
I have heard that prior to D-Day, it was the explicit plan to wear out the german Luftwaffe to gain total air superiority.
So the bomber attacks were more bait to lure the german fighters into the air than to achieve real strategic bombing results (I will come back to that).
The US "escort" fighters were given the allowance to go after the german fighters, even when that meant to leave the bombers unprotected.
This achieved its purpose - but at the cost of a lot of bomber crew that might have been saved had the escorts resorted to shielding off enemy fighters
One thing that is almost miraculous is that it took the allies until July 1944 to attack an absolute crucial key industry, german fuel production.
Giant plants that could not be hidden and moved underground to convert coal into fuel. Way easier to hit with imprecise carpet bombing as e.g. the ball bearing industry, where you really have to directly hit the comparably tiny workshop in between all the civilian housing around it. .
And within 3 months of bombing the german fuel production was down to 30%. And the germans were notoriously short of fuel anyhow.
Just look at all the images there are of abandoned german tanks, or the lines of hundreds of Me 262 parked along the Salzburg Autobahn - without fuel.
At the day of capitulation, it is said the total fuel reserves was down to 20,000 tons.
Air power is indeed the #1 priority for modern warfare. During Desert Storm, before the ground attack, the B52s pounded the entrenched Iraqis with such intensity that they were beat before the ground war started. The A10 destroyed 987 tanks, 926 artillery pieces, 1,355 combat vehicles, and shot down two helicopters. It could not have done that without air superiority. (The Bradley IFVs are thought to have destroyed as many enemy tanks as the Abrams.. Are tanks dead? The Marines think so (and when I was in the Marines 40 years ago, the commanders were already questioning the role of the tank due to the logistics required to keep them running and the growing sophistication of anti-armor weapons). I don't think they are "dead" but at the same time, I think they have a very limited application. If you have air superiority, a tank is just a target.
@@feedingravens I've read --after the war -- intelligence concluded the German electrical grid was the overlooked weak link in their wartime production.
This is the best recollection by a German officer describing the disintegration of the German Army in France I have ever run into, amazing, wonder if this guy knew how lucky he was. Great job.
Read "Tigers in the Mud" by Otto Carius
One if the few. Not many survived this defeat.
Fantastic retelling of this incredible time in history. I always appreciate the "other side's" perspective from WW2
It is certainly nice to hear
from the soldiers and the
lower ranks of the officers.
Puts things in perspective.
These stories are utterly captivating. Thank you for uploading these!
Yes this flight through Belgium ending in Duren brings back a lot of memories from my Belgian family and later as the son of a Belgian NATO major even more.
I still hear the stories from my mom (86) and dad (88) how the Germans had to flee with their tails between their legs as fast as possible, Lille, Namur, Montdidier, Compiegne, Liege, Reims. , Duren etc,etc are all towns I know since childhood. Regularly still seeing the monuments for deads and executed ones from the 2 wars….my family was very exalted when they were kicked out. Believe me.
Great to hear one of them giving an accurate description because that’s the side of the story I hear the first time in 62 years. I myself was born in Cologne as the son of one of the occupying force after the war.
I’m not first but, I wanted to let @WorldWar2Stories how much I love these videos. I listen 🎧 to them before bed. I know that sounds strange 🤷🏼♀️ but, the narrator’s voice is soothing and the diaries are fascinating. Thank you 😊
My father was a tanker in the 60s. I thought that the tanks were invincible as a kid.
These stories show just how my ideas were far from correct.
RIP to all those lost in these beasts of war.😞
To put it into perspective: there weren't too many eye-witness reports from 16th LwFeld division which suffered the same bombardement.
As a kid you can’t imagine steel being damaged. It so crazy that something you can’t see is the most destructive force on Earth.
My time in the 3rd Armored Div in Germany in the '60s proved they are impressive but not invincible.
My father was in command of 3 tanks welsh guards armoured division spearheading the advance to Germxny from the beachhead. He was blown up twice captured but escaped twice. A real hero who survived for me to tell his story. Now in Ukrain we have another bloody european war facing an enemy that has no regard for the life of its own soldiers the same as Hitler. I thought my Father's war would be the last ....how wrong l was. 😢
@@Michael.Freeman I'm sorry to tell you there will always be war and there will always be insane leaders. Unfortunately, that's as human as love and pizza. 😞
My father was 11 when WW2 ended in Europe. Their treck from Yugoslawia ("Volksdeutsche", ethnic Germans, although Dad was born in East Prussia) was ever so close to being overrun by Russian tanks when they made it across the literal last bridge near Stuhlweißenburg in Hungary. The bridge was held open by two Tiger IIs (of sPz.Abt.503, as I found out) who killed a few spearheading Russian tanks. Engineers blew up the bridge right after the refugees had crossed.
Imagine these Tiger II had instead shot up your dad in the West ... both of us wouldn't be here. Cheers mate !
The utter chaos. He was very determined, the effort to recover tanks, arrange repairs and fuel, and transport them is astonishing. Amazing that the Wehrmacht was still able to fight for further month's.
For years. This is only one small taste of North Africa, Italy, France, Russia, Germany itself, etc. They gave everything while being systematically being ground into hamburger. Pity the bravery was for what they were defending.
Not Wehrmacht.....Waffen SS Panzer Schwere Abteilung 101.....Kommandeur Obersturmbannfuhrer Heinz Von Westerhagen's younger brother SS Unterscharfuhrer Rolf Von Westerhagen's was in the 3rd battalion.
And Ritterkreuz awarded winner SS Untersturmfuhrer Alfred Gunther was killed.
To which this unit was heavily bombed by the RAF on this day
Yes, amazing. But armies in both world wars were huge. The Germans were also fighting in the East and in Italy.
It was strictly forbidden for a Tiger to tow another Tiger. The engine just could not handle that strain to pulling 108 tons. Still crews did it as recovery vehicles were most usually not to be found. Many Tigers were abandoned due to non recovery.
@@andrewlerdard-dickson5201
Not Wermacht? Yes and no.
The common misconception is that the German army was called the Wermacht. It was actually called the Heer.
Wermacht referred to the German armed forces, including the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine, and the Heer.
As for the SS, it is debatable if they can be called Wermacht since they were a politically autonomous organization that was under Wermacht operational control (sometimes).
It's awesome to hear the personal story of what was on the other end of my old man's guns. He would have liked to hear this.
The tank that took out 2 Tigers from 1000+ yards must have been a Sherman Firefly, interesting to know that German tank commanders were still unaware of that capability at this point.
@@catinthehat906 I suspect the 803rd Tank Destroyer was the killer of those Tigers. The 76 MM Armour piercing round punched out those Tigers and the 75MM gun on the Shermans had to close within 500 yards to do any damage. The Tank Destroyer has been given no credit by you history guys. Doubt you even heard of them.
@@alandavis9644 The QF 17-pounder on the Sherman Firefly was superior to the M7 gun on the M10 tank destroyer and there are many verified accounts of Fireflies knocking out Tigers and Panthers- which is why the Germans targeted them first. What seems incredible is that the American's didn't arm the Sherman with the QF 17 pounder in the first place.
@@catinthehat906 All that you have mentioned came later on the western front. The were not available at Normandy.
@@alandavis9644 I would brush up on your WW2 history if I were you. Production of the Firefly started in January 1944 and, by 31 May, some 342 Sherman Fireflies had been delivered to the 21st Army Group for the D-Day landings. The Americans weren't the only ones fighting the Germans in Normandy.
In his 1944 book "Brave Men," Ernie Pyle describes witnessing seeing Allied carpet-bombing in Normandy, and also the aftermath. It amazed even him, and he had witnessed things like the invasion of Sicily.
At the same time that the bombs were raining out of the sky, the Navy was in full assault with their BIG, and not so big, guns. A full broadside from a battleship main gun battery would evaporate a small village or the top of a hill. A ton of steel and TNT hitting at 1000 feet per second wouldn't even have to blow up to level a house.
These are very instructive stories by combat veterans, even better than the police cam videos which feature drivers escalating traffic stops into felony charges.
As ex tank crew I found this recollection fantastically interesting many thanks
As one American general put it. "The reason we won in the end was because we had in tons what the Germans had in kilos." Logistics and supply wins wars. Tactics and bravery without those things in superior measure can only delays defeat.
And one he'll of a lot of Russian blood
Or as Yamamoto put it on his way to Pearl Harbour "We need to knock the Americans out of the war before they have time to put their huge industrial capacity on a war footing". Hence the need for a surprise attack, he knew they couldn't win against a USA that had time to prepare.
a german general said something like " we knocked out ten of their tanks for every 9 of ours... unfortunately they always had 11 tanks..." lol
You have to be able to make up losses. The Ruzzuns are being reminded of that truism today.
@@xisotopexthat was, to be fair, a huge exaggeration, especially in the west.
Love the USAF - I enlisted December 1969 until January 1974. Ask the Marines at Khe San if they loved the B 52's that kept the NVA from overrunning their perimeter.
B52s, you will think the trumpets have sounded. The end of time has struck when the bombs start falling on your head. I give you my respect. Best wishes to you.
@@philmullins136 Agreed... that is one thing David Drake noted in his stories that weren't hidden in Sci-Fi lingo: ArcLight missions were a thing of wonder, but best admired at a considerable distance. He wrote a lovely story "Arclight", it is in his collections " The Military Dimension " (1991), and re-issue " The Military Dimension II " (1995)
@@WhiteWolf65 They actually fcked up badly on one of the raids this guy described and due to differences in wind (at alt and on the ground) bombed their own dust cloud which wasn't unreasonable tactics during that period. Problem was the dust cloud was moving back to the Allied lines rather than the way they thought is was.
@@HarryJamesBooksinteresting, I forget how primitive navigation was in ww2.
@@tonyromano6220 As the RAF joke used to go: "hit the target? we're lucky if we hit the right country"
I love this narrator! Who is he? I've heard his audio book narrations before and loved it. Expressive and crystal clear to understand. Awesome!
It's computer synthesised. Probably the best synthesised voice I've ever heard but still jarring for me.
@@putrid.pYeah, still synthetic.
Fascinating account, small details that others never mention. I really enjoyed this. 👏🏻
Imagine how surprised he would have been to learn of Rommel’s actual situation.
What, that Rommel was epically overrated and ended up leaving with his tail between his legs?
Rommel was not over rated he was taken back to Germany to be murdered for trying to kill Trumps idle hitler. read a history book learn something!!!
This is a story of how effective air power can be, a powerful ground force can be obliterated if air defences are minimal ✌️❤️🇬🇧
Overwhelming would be more accurate than effective; compare the number of bombers to the number of tanks bombed.
Keep it coming. I'll listen, comment, and like everything you do with this
My uncle was a tanker in France. They were fighting in hedgerow country- massive old growing wooden walls. His buddies were in the forward tank, some 80 yards ahead downhill. They were approaching an intersection. The number two tank
With my uncle saw that a Panzer had entered the hedgerow path that ran at right angles to my uncle's course. Apparently, the lead tank could not see their peril and continued towards the intersection with the aligned panzer just 200 yards distant. On foot, men tried the phone on the outside of the tank without results. They beat on the tank sides with their rifle butts to get the attention of the crew to stop them but to no effect.
The lead tank rolled into that intersection and was immediately hit by the panzer lying in wait. The tank exploded and glowed as if red hot, cremating the tank grew, my uncle's friends, immediately.
And people wondered why, after the war, he was sometimes not right in his head. Yet he married, raised a good family and lived till near 90. May he rest in peace.
Uncle? Are you 100 years old?
@@twt000 Baby boomers had fathers and uncles in the war...do the math
@@aphilippinesadventure9184 The math makes them 100 years old. Maybe 90.
Plus, how many people just say that?
@@twt000 lol...Very few WWII vets left. Many boomers, like me, had parents and uncles in that war. The time in the narrative was 78 years ago. I'm past 60. I'm talking about an uncle who was passed away 15 years back. There is no unusual math about this. You went to public school I assume? Lol
@@aphilippinesadventure9184 So uncle was 40 plus years older? Still weird but possible I guess. WW2 vets are 100 years old now, most not around.
Despite all the chaos that was going on, the narrator still had to do paper work. He was such a great storyteller that I thought would be in for a not so exciting narrative. But as it turns out, my ears were glued to the events he narrated. I wish their were a continuation of the story.
Fantastic work 👍 1st class , great channel , well appreciated 🙏 thanks ,
Great narration
Thank you so much for sharing this. It's fascinating to hear how things went on a day by day basis. Looking at a map while listening really gives you a sense of how things went badly so quickly.
Amazing content! Thanks for sharing.
35:00 During transport the wide tracks were usually stowed under the tank in 2 long rows. This may be an error in translation. Sometimes the wide tracks were rolled into coils and stacked vertically in front or behind the Tiger. In all the whole track swap took at least 5 hours to complete as additional wheel sets had to be removed when the Tiger was configured for rail transport. As Tiger crews said they were worked to death mechanically toiling with these machines.
TII did not remove any road wheels.
@@michaelkenny8540 Late Tiger I did not either with the steel road wheels and the eliminating of those outer most road wheel sets. The planners should have thought out all of this but time was not on their side. Tiger crews really had a distaste for those interleaved road wheel set anyways as they caused many issues.
@@ericscottstevens Especially on the Eastern Front, in the freezing Russian winter. Mud and slush would get in there, and freeze overnight. It often had to be steamed out... with whatever source they could find.
@@WhiteWolf65 Which is utter nonsense, especially in summer 🙂 The common procedure in case of "urgency" with frozen road wheels was to start the engine, 1st gear in and and off you went. And it didn't matter if your Tiger, T-34 or Sherman was "frozen in". Tank engines and transmissions are strong enough to deal with that sh**. Anyway, you want to get rid of of a bit of that frozen stuff not to stress the system too much, and you don't want to carry a ton of frozen mud around, but you'd have to do that on any tank. Especially Shermans would sink a bit deeper in the mud before freezing. Starting said engine in the cold could be a different thing, but again, that's a problem for everyone to share, especially T-34 with a Diesel engine.
I have to come across the first report to say: "1st platoon couldn't make it because they were frozen."
@@ottovonbismarck2443 Slab concrete, poured floors, footpaths etc is 20MPa compressive strength after 30 days cure. 15-25 Mpa requires little care to achieve but is not suitable for larger and self supporting structures.
Near 0C ice turns to water under pressure and dislodges easily.
Resistance increases greatly with colder temperature.
At -10C coarse plain ice is 0.5Mpa, fine grain 0.7, sand mixed with ice 1MPa.
At -20C, 3MPa, 5 MPa, 7 MPa. Not quite concrete but not negligible.
Highly variable depending on ice grain and aggregate but could form hard to crack and dislodge chunks. Basically ice chunks can be like rocks at -20C, a temperature not uncommon in a russian winter.
Steel can undergo cold embrittlement promoting brittle fracture and accelerating existing strain from -20C, even up to 0C for harder higher carbon steel.
What is the weakest link in your power train and tracks grinding ice/sand slurry at -20C?
I love that you used a screen grab with me from the movie Iron Cross - if you ever need more just ask🙂
Another thing that has always boggled my mind is the logistics involved ....at any given time and no matter the number of people .....must have been crazy !!!
Starting to think the success or failure of different tanks wasnt the tanks themselfs but the quality of salvage and repair service as they keep getting taken out by perfectly repairable damage :P
That was where the real damage from rocket attacks and strafing occurred, not in actually hitting tanks.
Logistics, supplies for the army as a whole. As for the vehicles themselves, people often put too much focus on hard stats: what's its maximum speed on freshly laid asphalt? How thick is its armor at the thickest point? What boom boom stick is mounted in the turret? Ergonomics and crew training are overlooked. Some people call the T-34 the best tank of the war. In reality, no other tank model had as many of them knocked out as the T-34. Some think it invented sloping armor, even though medieval knights had sloping armor and even German panzers do feature some sloping armor too. Because of the sloping armor, the space inside the T-34 was very limited, making it harder to operate. It was so cramped the rate of fire suffered greatly. Early models featured no radio or intercom. The commander was expected to stick his head out of the turret and wave flags at other tanks to pass commands. And yes, plenty of German tanks were recovered, repaired and put back into action. At the opening phases of the war in the east that wasn't as much an option for the Soviets as the Germans pushed them eastward. But eventually, the Soviets too got good at recovery and repair.
1000 bombers in am 1000 bomber raid in afternoon. With 1000 British bombers in night The German population was breaking down as nobody could live like that
Very interesting to hear such a compelling account of the war. I can imagine many reflected that the war was futile by 41. Must have been very disconcerting to know you could be wiped out any second.
As a 'Cold War kid' I feel the need to add a bit here. That was also disconcerting. Knowing that you could be annihilated at any time with just 'Four Minutes' warning. Especially likely if you lived within the nuclear blast radius of a military base (which here in Britain is just about everywhere). But over the years we just learnt to live with the threat.
But it must have been a lot more intense for this guy.
I recommend reading "D-Day Through German Eyes" sometime. It's pretty eye-opening.
Interesting to hear the experience of large scale air attack from a German point of view in France ✌️❤️🇬🇧
Most interesting - thanks for posting
That was very interesting, I was trying to follow his movements on maps but it took ages to find the places from the pronunciations and I had no idea of the distances he may be covering. Perhaps it could have been provided in the video? Would have added a great deal to the commentary.
Station at Baden Solingen, 1984 to 1988 was second battalion P.P.C.LI. I was at both these places which are still operational by the way. good Training. grounds.
very professional audio tick good job
Thank you much.
😄🌏Very enjoyable STORY👍👍
This poor guy went through hell and back. This would make a great movie
A party????? That is absurd.
I read this book, Panzer ace. Great read. Thank you for bringing to audio
14:30 - Do we think he's describing being hit by a Firefly?
I keep reminding myself: They should never have been occupying France to begin with. There is no innocence in this man's words.
This guys dedication to continue fighting is amazing.
Amazingly Stoopid
@@AnthonyOMulligan-yv9cg War was amazingly stupid. Crazy leaders of all nationalities depend on ill-informed men like him. The Vietnam war proved that.
@@AnthonyOMulligan-yv9cgHe performed very well, which is what he’d been trained to do even when faced with very difficult circumstances. This is what you would want from any military professional. I like to think of myself as a realist with a pretty good notion of human nature and while I think the world can be wonderful in its variety and beauty, I know, from my 75 years, that it is also a potentially dangerous world, owing to human folly. I’m not militaristic-minded by any means, although I grew up as a military brat and served 4 years in the USN. Yet, I know that it’s absolutely necessary that the U.S. continues to field a standing military that is highly trained and well supplied. And I would hope that our military is producing officers of the caliber of that German Tiger tanker.
It’s fascinating to hear these accounts of Operation Cobra. Here in the US all we hear about is how the attack was a snafu bc we bombed our own lines- we did that, and it was a snafu that could have been avoided- but we aren’t told about how it was vastly more devastating to the Germans, and how it was actually very successful. The Allies did break out of the hedgerows and proceeded to race across France.
It is so interesting to hear from the side of the war
My uncle flew a P-38 in Europe. He loved shooting and rocketing tanks. He more enjoyed strafing trains, as he liked the way that they would shoot out steam before disappearing in a huge boiler explosion.
My father was a POW of the Germans - he witnessed the effects of trains carrying POWs, strafed by American and Brit pilots - they tried to kill anything that moved - many times he had to take cover when being marched away from the front lines.
@@OHUQTU Yep. If it moved on roads, rails or rivers during daylight, it was going to draw Allied fighter-bombers.
(@davidCox)When he returned home did he also enjoy torturing and dismembering animals? Verbally and physically abusing his family? Drowning small kittens in puddles? Constantly leaving toilet seats in the down position?… not washing his hands after using the bathroom and immediately shaking the hands of others?
Sounds like a dangerous man to me.
@@LJWalter78 Oh, no, not that sort of low key psychopathy......he was MUCH worse than that. He built a house in Orange Co. CA and became a REPUBLICAN!
@@kimweaver1252 Can you blame him? He had had enough of fighting the German socialists.
Very Nice to follow a real Enemy Soldier's Journey at the END! just Imagine the Steam Roller of Allied Men and Materials ROLLING OVER while Rolling UP the Wehrmacht!!!
If you follow his journey on a map this guy basically toured the whole front back and forward paralell not retreating looking to recover 2 tanks. And this is only one guy trying to "hustle" his way with forgery of wehicle papers etc. It gives a much more improvised wiew rather than strict german dicipline.
He was smart .
Very interesting, thank you
The two tanks lost to frontal hits were probably shot by a "Firefly," - a Sherman, fitted with a British, 17lb gun. All allied tank units had some, but they were brand new in Normandy, which is why he had no idea what had hit them.
Could've been tank destroyers. We had plenty with the 76mm that could waste a tiger.
@@Tom_Cruise_Missile I do believe an M 10 with an M7 gun would piece the front plate of a Tiger. The 90mm armed M 36 would, but they were all further west, in the American Sector, of the front
@@paulbeesley8283 I believe there was a British variant of the m10. It was armed with the 17 pounder, and is known to have destroyed some big cats in Normandy.
@@Tom_Cruise_Missile Ah, that would probably have done the trick.
Thank you for the info'.
@@paulbeesley8283 no problem! They're a very obscure vehicle, I don't blame you for not thinking about them.
Moral of the story: everything depended on maintaining air superiority. When Germany lost this, it lost the war.
Fantastic vid. Real facts from someone who was there Brilliant.
This story would be even better if you did a map overview of what’s happening.
I notice with air attack a lot of people simply disappear,vaporised by explosion,✌️❤️🇬🇧
Daddy was a paratrooper over there he told us boys he saw people disappear.
I guess a bomb that explodes very near to people blows their body like a child blows a dandelion flower but in microseconds speed. All the muscle, bones, organs and body fluids are shredded by the high-hypersonic speed of gases and scattered. Google search states TNT has a detonation velocity of 6,940 meters per second.
The Allies in Normandy had Army Air Forces tactical forward air controllers, often riding on tanks, with radios tuned into the same radio frequencies as Allied fighter bombers. So these radio controlled fighter-bomber attacks were deadly accurate once camouflaged Wehrmacht tanks gave away their positions from firing. Allied tanks or artillery guns would fire colored smoke to mark enemy targets to help radio controllers guide Allied fighter-bombers accurately to their targets. Casualties for tank crews, supply troops and mechanics soared amongst the German Wehrmacht. Tanks are worthless without constant supplies of fuel, ammunition and mechanical spare parts including engines, road wheels and transmissions. RAF Typhoons with an assortment of rockets, cannon and/or three or four 500lbs bombs or napalm would pummel Wehrmacht tanks. P-47's with eight .50 caliber machine guns, rockets, or about 2,000 bomb load or napalm canisters were the American equivalent. These Allied fighter-bombers pulverized Wermacht armored columns. It became nearly impossible for the Germans to deploy armor during daylight hours without being massacred by Alllied fighter-bombers.
Allied medium tactical bombers destroyed vital German bridges, supply dumps, transportation infrastructure and railhead infrastructure. These medium bombers caused heavy losses and delays of German motorized supply columns. It was not uncommon for nightime German supply column traffic jams to form around destroyed bridges as frantic exhausted repair crews tried to fix the wrecked bridges before dawn. These German motorized supply columns often couldn't disperse before daylight. Allied fighter-bombers destroyed these bunched up German truck columns. General Eisenhower also insisted upon his Transportation plan with heavy Allied bomber attacking French railways, transportation depots, road networks, supply dumps, air runways, river barges etc. to isolate Normany's landing areas from German main supply routes. Ike's Transportation Plan worked brilliantly proving decisive in the German Wehrmacht defeat at the Failaise-Argentan pocket battle in Normandy during August, 1944. Ike threatened to resign his command forcing reluctant American and British Air Force commanders of heavy bombers to support his Transportation Plan. It is safe to assume that Ike's Transportation Plan combined with the constant Allied tactical and operational bombing campaign shortened the war and saved countless lives of Allied infantry soldiers.
The point I am trying to make here to everyone is that allegedly superior heavy Tiger or Panther tanks without fuel, spare parts, regular engine/transmission overhauls and fresh ammunition supplies are nothing but worthless scrap metal sitting on th side of the roadway. Some German tank fans and commentators have said that Alied fighter-bombers were inaccurate with low hit rates on German tanks. The German troops on the receiving end of Allied fighter-bomber attacks seem to have different ideas. It became a very heavy casualty causing event to move a German tank column during daylight hours even across a short stretch of field to a new place of hiding such as a grove of trees. Also, no one can live forever in a tank either. Tank crews had get out of their tanks regularly to perform constant maintenance on their heavy tanks. Hours of track maintenance, cleaning adjusting etc. must be performed on heavy tanks daily. German soldiers caught out in the open working on their tanks became casualties in near constant Allied fighter-bomber attacks. Constant Allied air attacks with rates of 1500 sorties per day or more in Normandy decimated trained Wehrmacht service troops, tank crews and highly trained mechanical troops necesary to keep armored units operational. The lessons here for military history students are quite clear. It is necessary to have air superiority with modern fighters along with integrated strong ground air defense systems in order to have maneuver warfare with armored units and mechanized infantry units. This lesson applies to Normandy in WW2 to Desert Storm in the 1991 Persian Gulf War where I served as a career soldier.
We dont need thousand bomber raids now. We have JDAMs Thanks for the vid.
The is an amazing story ..
Thank u 💯💯💯
Amazing, hearing the events after D-Day from a German perspective.
Interesting and informative. Excellent photography picture 📷 enabling viewers to better understand what the orator was describing. Class A research project!!! Special thanks to the veteran soldiers sharing their personal information/experiences. Making this documentary more authentic and possible. Fighting/perishing/surviving knowing certain death/debilitating wounds were often possible. Yet still advanced forward regardless of the consequences. True grit style determination to succeed. A totally disillusioned/worthless endeavor on the part of the German armies. Once again Berlin didn't seem to care about the predicaments of the German armies. Placing himmler in command??? A disaster waiting to happen. And it did placing the panzer tanks into a state of disillusioned state of disarray.
Ya f with an industrial powerhouse ya pay the price. Doesn’t matter how tough you are. The volume will consume you 💥
If the UK alone was able to keep the Germans in check for a year, they had zero chance when America joined the war. Invading Russia only sealed their doom.
Hello, what is the source transcript? Von Rosen's book? memoir? Thanks for answer in advance - and of course, the video itself.
Yes his memoir
Saving private Ryan and Band of Brothers was very well done. Not many movies out there that have good tank battles. The movie Bridge at Remagen was great though.
It's Tino Von Struckman!!
Tremendous narrative! Unbelievable!
Got to say, if you read any history on the British and Canadians under Montgomery you would understand the loss of so many tanks to air attack was no surprise. Montgomery was an all arms General and use of the RAF and USAAF in a tactical manner was an established procedure. In the book Monty's Men, interviews with British soldiers described destroyed Tigers after bombing to the point that tigers had been flipped with their crews killed by concussion alone. The book was written by John Buckley.
In the whole of NWE 1944-45 there was but a single (One) Tiger overturned by bombing. The vast majority of flipped tanks (of any type) were pushed off the road by bulldozers.
The problem with that claim is that it has been thoroughly debunked. In post battle analysis both British and American inspectors found that the claims of allied air kills on German armour were pretty much fantasy. For instance between the 7th and 10th August, the 2nd Tactical Air Force of the 9th USAAF claimed to have destroyed 120-140 tanks, yet of the 46 Axis tanks lost, only 9 of them could be attributed to aircraft. Similarly in August 1944 the RAF claimed to have destroyed 135 tanks in the Goodwood area, but the British “Office of Research and Analysis” examined 300 Axis tanks and found that only 10 were actually hit and damaged by the Typhoon’s RP-3 rockets.
The Typhoon was our airborne tank. Bombs and rockets working every day. Pin point accuracy based in UK originally and then close to the front. The rockets had 60Lb warheads and where the equivalent of a cruiser broadside. Read the the Book the day of the Typhoon there should be a film about them. The pilots flying them where as tough as they get. Their fighting was through everything the enemy could throw at them.
Krauts call them "Jabus"
Yes, very brave pilots too, far more aircraft were lost to ground fire than to enemy fighters.
Despite that the Typhoons did very effective work in helping rout the Germans in France.
solid fuel rockets were not pinpoint many went off target,they show film of the ones that didn't.A P47 would carry an external belly fuel tank and one 500-lb bomb under each wing; many were also configured so that the plane could carry air-to-ground rockets, typically ten 5-in HVARs (high-velocity aircraft rockets). P47s on an armed reconnaissance mission would usually operate three flights, two armed with a mix of bombs and rockets, and the cover flight carrying only rockets. Over 80 percent of the bombs dropped by P47s during the European campaign were 500-lb weapons; less than 10 percent were 1,000-lb bombs, and the difference was made up by smaller 260-lb fragmentation bombs and napalm. While acknowledging the spectacular effects and destructiveness of rockets, the AAF considered bombs more effective for "road work" due to accuracy problems in firing the solid-fuel weapons.
@@bigwoody4704 Thank you for your worthy contribution. I hope you don't missunderstand me in as much as I would never wish to belittle the U S contribution to winning WW2. However there is a strong and irritating tendency among many U S historians and movies to give the impression the Americans won those wars while other nations contributed very little. Regrettably this applies to given U S histories generally. The war of 1812 being a good example of the 'hooray don't let facts spoil a good pro USA story'. My view is this misleading approach is unhelpful in as much as people can form very ill advised opinions which leaves unpleasant parts of history open to repeating its themselves. In a current wider perspective we see this today in the tales Palestinians, the Iran regime and Russia try to pass off including among their own people as real history, as factual. To return to the P-47's, they were formidable aircraft courageously flown, aptly named Thunderbolt.
@@gordonfrickers5592 no not at all it was good the Typhoon found a home. The Thunderbolt and Typhoon were heavier and better protected than the Spits,Mustangs, Hurricanes and Lightnings. They could take more ground fire and returned at a higher rate than the others. One thing that worked out for the P-47 it's tactical flexibility was enabled by its turbocharged Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp R-2800, two-row, 18-cylinder radial engine - was it was air cooled and could stay airborn longer than water cooled engines that received the same damage/punishment
Yeah we Americans learned REAL fast its a whole lot easier less risky and less bloody (for us) to destroy your enemies tanks vehicles fortified positions infantry etc with our overwhelming Artillery and air power than using our tanks and infantry especially once we had achieved air supremacy
Once America got involved in the war neither Germany or Japan stood any chance of winning I mean we produced over 45k Shermin tanks and spare parts for 2x that many for God's sake that's over 5x more than Germanys entire production of
Tiger 1's II''s and Panthers combined
The Germans had a saying: "One of our Panzers is worth ten Shermans. But they always bring eleven."
Never forget the people who made the war materials back home and many minorities driving to and fro to deliver those war goods to the front lines.Many blacks drive the Red ball express trucks ,women piloted damaged planes to air fields so theyd be repaired.Salute to all our fighting men.
Sherman jumbo.......
@@IanJohnGonzales
To the merchant seamen too,
and railroad workers as well
as farmers.
1st Again! ALLEGEDLY! Great video!
King Tiger meets King P-47 Thuderbolt.
Great war story by German veteran.
After the American failures at Salerno and Anzio, the Allies threw everything they had at the German armour coming from Calais to prevent it from reaching the American beaches before their amour was ashore.
Interesting picture of Tiger 131 the one that survived intact after the war. Now in the Royal tank museum
its not royal in any way.
The captured Tiger was Tiger 131. The Tiger in the narration was Tiger 311. Same digits, but rearranged in a different number. Tiger 131 was captured in North-Africa.
Not only did the bombs obliterated the Panzers, but also the US battleships lobbing in artillery shells into the region were menacing on D-Day.
There's a picture in a WW II book I have that showed the scant remnants of a Panzer that took a direct hit from what could have been a 14 inch round from a US battleship. All shown in the picture were a few scrap pieces of metal, a couple of drive-wheels, and a length of tank tread.
HMS Nelson engaged a group of Tigers in Normandy with her 16 inch guns
My heart goes out to all soldiers who fought in Western Europe (maybe not the SS though).
My heart goes out to some of them, but it's hard to find sympathy when you read their memoirs. They're far from sympathetic even in their own words!
New WW2 Stories drop let’s gooooooo😤😤😤😤😤
This is remarkable account of history which unusually is not professed by the the victor of the war. The only thing that bothers me is the vast roll played by the Canadians, who wore the same uniforms (From a distance) to the British. But the account is thoroughly frank and apparently honest, from a contemporary combatant.
They out did the brits and Americans in both wars
Two best allies Canadians Nepalese (gurkhas)
Reading this and about the war in Ukraine, I suspect that the supply chain required to keep armored units fighting is even MORE complicated now . . . and consequently vulnerable, especially when cheap drones can server as artillery spotters.
At Normandy the Allies could deploy 5,000 fighters and bombers against 200 German planes.
Statistically, planes had a 4 percent chance of destroying a Tiger or Panther tank with bombs and missiles. However, after Normandy, many of the German tank crews were inexperienced and very young. Unlike Veteran tankers, they were afraid of such destruction of being cooked inside your tank turret, and they fled their tanks when being attacked.
Hitler released half of his Panzer at Normandy, and did not release the other half stationed at Pas de Calais until a week later, which was too late. Credit the Allied double agent “Garbo” who convinced Hitler that Calais was where the real Invasion would happen, until a full week after D-Day.
This reminded me of the book All Quiet on the Western Front: both horrible and compelling at the same time. Bravo, WW2S!
The numbers of aircraft he speaks of is crazy. I wanna know what that many bombers looks like, though I know it was mostly night time. Who along with Rommel was in charge of Normandy. One wants armor kept back from the beaches miles inland, while the other (pretty sure Rommel) vehemently disagreed and felt it would be too late and the armor would fall victim to allied planes. So they ended up doing both,which meant neither has enough troops and tanks
It was a daytime operation. I talked with a witness, a forward artillery observer who later was an education professor at EWU. Troops were moved 2 miles from the front and still the shaking ground “felt like 4 huge men were shaking your bed.” He was missing his thumb. When he was back on the line he was in a hedge row with his hand on a sapling. A mortar round explosion cut threw the sapling and thumb. The shrapnel collapsing his lung caused much worse pain than that in his hand.
Rommel was definitely right, as usual. Neither strategy was going to work, but Rommel's atleast made sense in theory. If they were in close quarter combat on the beaches then it limits the naval guns and air support of the Allies.
@@donaldshotts4429he absolutely wasn't. Panzers only work in sufficient numbers. Therefore the Rommel plan to spread them out over the entire coast line would mean the Germans could have only used their panzers piecemeal. Aside from the.fact that they didn't know the Allies were going to land in Normandy. Having a mobile Panzer reserve further inland was the right decision but the Germans made the mistake of trying to contain the allied bridgehead from within the range of the big naval guns.
And Rommel was right.
You are interested in massed bomber attacks so you may be interested to know about "Operation Clarion".
On February 22 and 23 of 1945, Allied formations consisting of about 3,500 heavy bombers and 5,000 fighter/bomber aircraft rained hell all over Germany. By this date the Luftwaffe was grounded so machine guns were removed from allied fighters and they were adapted to carry bombs - this explains how the allies were able to deploy so many "fighter/bombers". The 15th and 8th US Air Forces together with the Royal Air Force Bomber Command, destroyed critical transportation systems at Bamberg, Stendal, Wurzburg, and many more cities. It was all part of Operation Clarion, a series of massive Allied bombing raids across Germany to cripple its communication networks, including rail stations, bridges, docks, and transport facilities.
Operation Clarion took place on the 22nd of February 1945 and three months later the concentration camp prisoners were found sick and starving for want of food and medical supplies, but the Germans were blamed. Over the same three months American Mustang fighters roamed the countryside shooting up combine harvester machines to destroy the harvest and then blamed the Germans for the starving people in the camps. Operation Clarion in February 1945 was designed to starve Germans which also effected camp inmates.
All the 'death camps' were in territory captured by Stalin but he was our ally so we are not permitted to ask what he did with all the million inmates in the concentration camps inmates he captured.
Lessons that can still be drawn from this engagement for the current war in Ukraine.
1) Tanks are mainly not killed in tank versus tank battles but by airpower, heavy artillery and by other means.
2) Russia still doesn't have air superiority, let alone air supremacy, resulting in the Ukrainian army being able to move reinforcements, supplies, personnel and new Western hardware to the frontlines at will. This was simply unthinkable and impossible for the German Wehrmacht during the Normandy campaign.
Stop embarassing yourself you dont have a clue.. "lessons" lol
Cringe
Stop getting your information from fake news. Ukraine lost the war. Russia has air superiority all over
Does anyone know the name of the officer-narrator, please?
Whose memoirs are these?
What an amazing history this is, pity for such an evil empire.
Áre You talking at the real evil
Communism.
@@mariom2424 The "real" evil...lol. Hitler and Stalin were both monsters, don't be an apologist for fascism.
Thanks
The Americans showed the Germans what "blitzkrieg" was all about. Artillery, bombers, P 47 fighters that were good escorts and superb ground attack weapons, P 51 fighter w/ unparalleled range, and much more.
The British dealt this blow to the writer of this memoir.
totally mechanized....no horses 😂
Don’t gloat too much. We were only fighting about 25% of the German forces.
8th parts of the German War effort was assigned to the Russian Front.
( Albert Speer ).
And the Allies had " Ultra " , they knew Every move of German Forces.
Pls be Humble.
The Thunder Bolts were intended as bomber escorts and Mustangs as ground support. In combat their roles were reversed due to their capabilities.
Superior airpower is almost always a significant factor. I question the attack of Eastern Europe and the attempt to invade the British Isles. So much time, the Germans maybe could of worked on many of their projects. Only a thought, so many lost tankers and their panzer🤐
If they hadn't invaded Russia - - which posed no threat to them at the time, as evidenced by Stalin's total unpreparedness for Operation Barbarossa - - and spent a year or so regrouping and rearming after Dunkirk, they probably would have won the war. Hitler was, strategically, either very stupid, or simply crazy. He declared war on the US too after Pearl Harbor, exactly what FDR wanted.
I love u guys
If you go to the wiki page for 503rd Panzer division, it quite literally has a picture of the tank that was flipped upside down, at least its more then likely it.
Well done The RAF. 10 out of 10...
I have a German Mauser with the Hiemsoth scope that was taken from the soldier killed during this bombing. I was offered $4,500 by a German collector 10 years ago. My grandsons will inherit it and many other collector weapons.
The narrator sounds like an A1 text to speech system.
Yes it was quite disorganized when the falaise gap was closed..after the retreat.most units were refit in germany or holland. And at that point the allies advance slowed..germany was able to redeploy and halt the advance into germany for 6 months
A strange version of reality. The German Army in France was totally defeated in 12 weeks. It was destroyed. The Allied had a pre-invasion timetable and from August 1944 were well ahead of that schedule. They had expected victory in July 1945 and instead got it in May 1945. At no time did the Germans disrupt the 'master plan' for the invasion of France. I think you are confused because not every single Germans was killed and captured on June 7 1944.
Nonsense. The allied advance slowed due to logistics and geography.
Read greatest defeat of us army..battle of hurtgen forest..
@@Nick-yj4jk The Allies had a pre-Day timeline of how they expected to defeat Germany. The allowed 12 months to reach the Rhine. They got there in 3 months. That is a fantastic achievement. Germans fans have to invent bogus Allied 'slowness' in order to try and salvage the reputation of the beaten German Army .
@@kurtjammer9568 No one said the Allies won every single battle but they sure won the campaign and the war. Landings June 6th and by mid August the Germany Army in the west was totally routed and destroyed. Can you explain why the Allied timetable to reach the Rhine was 12 months but they got there in 3? How is being 9 months ahead of schedule in Sept 1944 'slow'. The date the Allies expected the war to end was July 1945 and that was exceeded as well. Anyway you look at it the Allied NWE Campaign was won ahead of the expected timetable. That is anything but 'slow'.
Cool movie
Well that is how the other half survived or died. The same roll of the dice, the same bureaucracy, the same egotists, but still the hero survives with his men.