The Strategy & Tactics of World War II

Number 12

1940:
What IF germany went east?

Rearming the French,

The fall of France in 1940 wasn’t
the end for their armed forces

Germans stopped at Yelnia

The Red Army springs a trap on
the German invaders
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 The Strategy & Tactics of World War II

Number 12
Jun/Jul 2010

Features
6
6 1940, What If?
An Alternative German Strategy
The Germans considered launching Barbarossa a year earlier.
by Ty Bomba
16 Rearming the French
The Fall of France in 1940 wasn’t the end for their armed
forces. A new French military arose from the ashes.

by James Gordon
16
36 Battle for the Mediterranean:
Cape Matapan, March 1941
A confused night action decided the course of the naval war
Features

in the Mediterranean.

by David Higgins
46 Yelnia:
First Turning Point of the Eastern Front
The Red Army springs a trap on the German invaders.
36
by Kelly Bell
52 Yelnia: The German Perspective
The German high command generated its own chaos on the
road to Moscow.
by Eric Walters

46
4 #12

WaW 12 Issue.indd 4 4/14/10 2:57:39 PM

 columns
14 Design Corner
1940: What If?
Joseph Miranda

Publisher:
28 Game preview: Christopher Cummins
Invasion
Pearl Harbor Editor:
Ty Bomba

29 Observation Post Assistant Editor:

I Remember: Joseph Miranda
Kitty Perrault
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Jason Burnett, Eric Harvey
& David Turissini

Strategic Backwaters: Design • Graphics •

Vichy Martinique Layout:
Vern Liebl Callie Cummins &
Chris Cummins

Movers & Shakers: Map Graphics:

Bill Mauldin Meridian Mapping
Meg Thompson

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David Newport World at War (©2010) reserves all rights on

58 Media reviews
Game edition Rules
1940: What If?
by Ty Bomba
Next Issue
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 1940-42, What If?
An Alternative German Strategy
By Ty Bomba
Hitler and his commanders confer at an outdoor field headquarters in the spring of 1939.
A Strategic Choice
At the grand-strategic level, the flow of events of
1938-1941 are well known to students of World War II in
Europe, and went as follows. During the Munich Crisis,
the Anglo-French willingness to abandon Czechoslo-
vakia to the Germans had a decisive effect in Moscow.
That settlement convinced Stalin the Westerners were
willing to do practically anything to aim Hitler toward
the east and away from themselves. The Soviet dictator
therefore determined it would be better—in order to
ensure the success of his own long-promulgated maxim
the USSR should be the last power to enter the next big
war—to strike a deal with Berlin rather than with Paris
and London. Such a deal would reverse the direction
of German expansion, turning it back against the West.
That change would in turn allow Stalin to pick the most
fortuitous time—and the best side—for the entry into
the war by the USSR.
The resultant German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact
of August 1939 worked, at least at first, to do just that.
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union became partners
in the partition of eastern Europe, with the expectation
the new relationship could, and likely would, blossom
into a full-blown alliance in the years to follow. Hitler
6 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 6
then used the secure eastern flank that treaty gave him
to concentrate decisively against the West and overrun
it in the spring of 1940. Thereafter, however, he moved
as quickly as possible to again shift his forces east,
there to launch into his true and always central goal of
invading, defeating and colonizing Soviet Russia.
What’s not as well known as that sequence of events
is the fact, in the time between the Polish campaign
and the invasion of France, there was debate among
Germany’s high-level economic and military planners
concerning the wisdom of the turn west prior to once
and for all settling affairs with the USSR. That is—in
arguments that were summed up in a 6 November 1939
letter from Minister of Finance Schwerin von Krosigk
to Hermann Goering, as well as in a 19 February 1940
report from the Naval High Command Headquarters
titled “Critique of the War Situation”—strong and logi-
cal arguments were made for continuing to stand on the
defensive in the west while launching an attack into the
Soviet Union.
The first argument for refraining from moving west
was geo-strategic. That is, the seven neutral nations of
Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxem-
4/14/10 2:57:42 PM
 bourg, Switzerland and Italy, in effect, worked to form an
almost unassailable bulwark between the Anglo-French
militaries and Germany. That ‘political geography’
left the more law-abiding Allies only relatively nar-
row gaps—in the rugged Alsace-Lorraine region and
through the southeast corner of the North Sea—through
which they could attack Germany. It therefore seemed
an erroneous policy for Germany to embark on a plan
that would start by doing what the Allies wouldn’t do
themselves: disassemble that bulwark. The naval report
also pointed out it would create an unrecoverable global
public relations fiasco for Germany to begin a new war in
the west by violating any neutral nation’s sovereignty.
At the same time, not everyone in the German military
believed the Anglo-French could be decisively defeated.
They pointed out another such costly stalemate, as had
occurred on the Western Front from 1914 through 1917,
would be inescapably ruinous for Germany in general
and the Nazi regime in particular. Alternatively, if Ger-
many achieved a victorious military settlement against
the USSR (as it had achieved against Czarist Russia in
1917), while simply prolonging the “Phony War” in the
west, a favorable peace settlement might then be had
without recourse to further serious fighting. The final
conclusion of the naval report was, as long as Hitler
refrained from bringing Belgium and Holland into the
war, and also behaved so as to keep out the Americans,
there was no way Germany could lose.
Of course, Hitler rejected that alternative approach
and moved ahead to ultimate disaster for himself, his
regime and his nation. For the sake of better understand-
ing his reasoning in making that east/west choice, then,
the following is an examination of the potentials and
dangers inherent in the strategy he rejected for 1940:
an invasion of the Soviet Union while remaining on the
defensive in the west. Without doubt, any “Operation
Barbarossa” launched in 1940 would’ve looked far
different at all levels—from grand-strategic down to
tactical—than the 1941 invasion we know from history.
In general, though, we can identify the following major
variables.
Start Line
In 1939, Hitler hoped to bring Lithuania into the
war against Poland on his side. His bait was an offer
to return to Lithuania the area in northeast Poland that
had traditionally belonged to the smaller country and,
in fact, contained Lithuania’s historic capital city of
Vilnius. Lithuania remained neutral, however; so, as
punishment, Hitler instructed Joachim von Ribbentrop,
his foreign minister, to trade away that country—which
had been awarded to Germany in the original agreement
between Berlin and Moscow—in exchange for a further
slice of eastern Poland.
That revised territorial split was inked on 28 Septem-
ber 1939. It wasn’t acted on by the Soviets, however,
until 15 June 1940, when they occupied Lithuania with
WaW 12 Issue.indd 7
Hitler oversees the German victory parade in Warsaw on
5 October 1939.
a force of about 15 divisions while the vast bulk of the
German military was busy in the west. Thus, given
the presumed revised decision-chain here, we can see
Hitler certainly would’ve had time to change his mind
and ask for another revision of the territorial split. Of
course, we can’t know if such a turn-around would’ve
been enough to set off deal-breaking alarm bells in
the Kremlin. Given Stalin’s determination during that
period historically, however, to keep Hitler placated at
all costs, it seems most likely that had Hitler wanted
Lithuania he could’ve gotten it.
German forces starting their invasion of the USSR
from along Lithuania’s northern and eastern borders,
rather than along its southern and western borders as
occurred historically, would’ve gained a roughly 150-
mile head start toward their key targets of Leningrad and
Moscow. Historically the initial German drives toward
those two places stalled out at distances of about 90 miles
(Luga) and 180 miles (Yelniya), respectively. Simple
mathematics shows, then, launching from Lithuania
wouldn’t have been enough to guarantee Moscow’s fall
during the initial summer campaign; however, a first
lunge that got as close as 30 miles before having to pause
would certainly have improved the Germans’ chances
of subsequently shooting their way into the Kremlin.
Similarly, had Leningrad fallen to the initial German
rush, the invading forces that historically remained tied
up besieging that city until 1944 would’ve been freed
to move south to assist in the capture of Moscow.
Oil, the South & German Strategy
In 1940, the diplomatic arrangements that allowed
the Germans to operate against the USSR out of Hun-
gary and Romania the following year weren’t yet in
place. Further, of course, those arrangements only fell
into place as a result of the Germans’ victories over the
Anglo-French during 1940. That, in conjunction with
the fact the Germans in 1940 would’ve been invading
the USSR with a smaller force than they had available
World at War 7
4/14/10 2:57:45 PM
 historically in 1941, would’ve meant the earlier operation Romania as rescuing allies, could certainly—given a
would’ve had to have been smaller in scope geographi- Soviet invasion there in 1940 would inescapably have
cally. It’s hard to imagine a 1940 Barbarossa could’ve been a slow and cumbersome affair—have gotten to the
been extended south of the Pripyat Marshes, or that it oil before the Red Army.
could’ve consisted of more than two army groups (Army
Iron, the North & Allied Strategy
Groups North and Center) rather than the historic three
(adding Army Group South—more on this in the last Historically, during the first half of World War II
section). the Germans bought about 40 percent of their iron ore
from Sweden, which was mined in the far north of that
At the same time, though, Italy likely would’ve
country. During the winter months of each year, when
remained neutral given this change in German grand-
the northern portion of the Gulf of Bothnia froze, the
strategy. We can deduce that since we know Mussolini
iron ore bound for Germany was shipped overland to
historically held back from taking his country into the
ports in neutral Norway, primarily Narvik, from where
war because he feared geography left it more exposed
it was then transshipped to Germany via that Scandi-
to Anglo-French attack than was Germany. It was only
navian country’s territorial waters. That transshipment
in June 1940, as it became clear France was about to be
route thus represented for the Anglo-French a reachable
totally overrun by Hitler’s forces, that Rome declared
and crucial chokepoint on the German war economy.
war. With the Anglo-French alliance and military power
As a 1940 Barbarossa operation kicked off, then, they
left intact, that same fear would likely have kept Il Duce
might’ve been tempted to throw legality to the wind
quiescent as the Germans plunged into the east. That,
and occupy at least that one Norwegian port. Such a
in turn, would’ve meant no distracting Balkan or North
move would also have allowed them to claim to their
African campaigns to draw off German ground and air
new Soviet ally they were indeed moving to Moscow’s
power.
aid—and all without having to actually ignite the main
The Romanian situation might’ve proved difficult for front in Alsace-Lorraine with a costly and bloody ground
the Germans, in that the Soviets could’ve threatened the offensive.
critical Romanian oil fields at Ploesti from their South-
On the other hand, the seizure of Narvik by the
west Front in the Ukraine. That was a only threat, though,
Anglo-French wouldn’t have any effect on the flow of
not a certainty, and German reinforcements, entering
8 #12

WaW 12 Issue.indd 8 4/14/10 2:57:45 PM

 French Troops preparing to embark for Narvik in the spring of 1940.
Swedish iron ore to Germany until the next winter, when
Sweden’s northern ports froze and the switch had to be
made to the Norwegian route. Thus such a stratagem
would’ve seen the Anglo-French immediately drive
Norway into at least co-belligerency with Germany
for a possible payoff half-a-year later. I say “possible
payoff” because the Swedes might well have used that
time to build a rail line from their frozen north to warmer
points on their own south coast.
Having once seized Narvik, though, the Anglo-
French might then also have used it to forward-base
some portion of their strategic bomber forces in order to
directly attack the Swedish iron mines and ports. What
that would mean, of course, was Sweden would also
have become at least a co-belligerent of Germany. All
that, then, would merely have put Britain and France
at war with Norway and Sweden in return for an uncer-
tain benefit half a year later. Even more, given the still
undeveloped state of affairs in terms of the efficiency
of strategic bombing in 1940, it’s hard to believe any
force that could be committed to such an operation by
the Anglo-French would actually have worked to close
the Swedish mining and shipping operations.
Alternatively, or even at the same time, lying just
145 miles in front of the Anglo-French forward posi-
tions in northwest Europe—and across terrain more
well known to their militaries—lay the Ruhr, the ir-
replaceable nexus of the German war economy. An
WaW 12 Issue.indd 9
Anglo-French seizure of the Ruhr would not only aid
their new Soviet ally, it would effectively win the war,
and do it in such dramatic and sudden a way as to give
London and Paris the best seats at the resultant peace
conference (no doubt—it would’ve been hoped—after
Hitler was assassinated in a putsch or some such). The
difficulty, of course, would’ve come in crossing those
145 miles. In short, the Anglo-French armies in 1940
weren’t well prepared to conduct a major offensive, even
if its successful conclusion meant winning the war. As
Gerhard Weinberg, one of the prominent historians of
that era, summed it up:
In spite of the terrible experience of 1918, when the
absence of unity of command had almost led to the
defeat of the Western Allies, no effective, functioning,
Allied command structure existed in 1939-40. In fact,
the French had not even organized their own command
system so that it could work with minimal efficiency.
Even more, that same historian judged the British
high command of that period to be “chaotic and further
hampered by examples of that gross incompetence on
the part of British generals, which would continue to
bedevil the British Army, at least into the summer of
1942.”
Despite those limitations, however, if the Anglo-
French once determined to ignore international law
in regard to neutrals, a further logical step might have
World at War 9
4/14/10 2:57:46 PM
 German Order of Battle
10 May 1940
XXXXXX
OKH

XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX

B A C

XX XXX XX XX XX
1, 11, 4, 45, 60, 71,
208, 223,
HQ 1 Totenkopf,
87 94, 98
20
225
XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX
18 6 Kleist 4 12 16 1 7

XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX

10 9 19 5 3 7 30 25
XX XX 30, XX XX XX XX XX XX
207, 56, 1, 2, 79, 93,
251 3, 23 26, 68 555, 557
221 10 95
216
XX XXX XX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX
Gross
1 11 Deutschland 8 6 13 12 33
XX 14, XX XX XX XX XX
XXX XXX
8, 28, 75, 252,
26 19, 19 16, 24 15, 17 554, 556
267 258
31
XX XXX XX XXX XXX XXX XXX
254
256 4 6, 8 2 18 23 24
XX XX XX XX XX
XX
7, 18, XXX
12, 32, 5, 21, 34, 58, 257, 282,
22 35, 61 14 62 25 76 268
XXX XXX XX XXX XX
2, 13, 1
XXX XXX
39 27 29 15 40 37
XX XX XX
253, XX
9, 10, XX
6, 33, 36, XX
9 269 = SS 5, 7 215, 246
27 52, 73
XX XXX = Wehrmacht
Verfuhgungs 16
= Luftwaffe
XX XX
Leibstandarte 3,
Adolf Hitler 4 High Command Reserves
XXXX XXX XX XX XX XX
HQ 2, 9 HQ 2, 17, 31, 38,
42, 43, 44, 85 7 6 4 5,44, 46, 50, 57, 73, 81, 82, 83, 86, 88, 96, 164, 167, 168, 169, 197, 205, 212, 213, 217, 218, 221,
x8 x8 x 48 239, 270, 271, 273, 276, 277, 278, 280, 282, 290, 291, 293, 294, 299, 307, 309, 310, 317, 380

been to invade Belgium, and perhaps the Netherlands, can easily imagine him manfully calling for the BEF to
in order to get as broad a front as possible for the criti- make an amphibious invasion of northwest Germany,
cal drive on the Ruhr. It’s hard to imagine the Belgians at least until the first time someone in the opposition
would’ve resisted, but the Dutch no doubt would have mentioned the word “Gallipoli.”
done so. Of course, the political mess that would then Of course, not all would’ve been consternation and
have resulted—especially if it didn’t quickly produce confusion in the Allied camp. That is, while histori-
decision on the battlefield—would’ve made any Scan- cally the powerful French Communist Party agitated
dinavian blowback seem small in comparison. for peace talks and appeasement right up to the fall of
It’s also necessary to keep in mind Churchill didn’t Paris, that certainly wouldn’t have been the case under
become prime minister historically until the crisis of 10 these altered circumstances. With those in the Kremlin
May 1940 had erupted. Thus a move by Hitler to the screaming for help, all the Anglo-French ‘parties of the
east likely would’ve left Winston stranded—at least for left’ would no doubt have joined their national govern-
the time being—at the Admiralty. From that position we ments, calling for unity in a broad-based anti-Fascist
coalition of all progressive peoples, etc. That change
certainly could’ve worked to politically facilitate the
violations of the neutrals discussed above, but how
much immediate effect it would’ve had on military ef-
ficiency in the field, or on the planning efficiency of the
various Anglo-French military staffs (whose members
were decidedly anti-communist in their orientation),
isn’t certain, but most likely would’ve been minimal.
Resource Areas, Japan & the Far East
In the halls of power in Tokyo during the late 1930s,
as it became clear their war in China wasn’t going to
result in a victory any time soon, the Japanese leader-
ship began looking for ways to: 1) expand elsewhere,
outside China, so as to be able to secure the resources
Dutch infantry deploy to defend their nation’s border in 1940. They
they needed to maintain and grow their war economy;
would likely have resisted all who attempted to enter their country,
and 2) conduct that expansion in such a way as to also
Allied or German.
10 #12

WaW 12 Issue.indd 10 4/14/10 2:57:47 PM

 accomplish a geo-strategic flanking move on the ever
more strongly resisting Chinese. The debate quickly and
inescapably came down to two options: go north, into
Soviet Siberia; or go south, to loot the colonial empires
of the French, British and Dutch.
The signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact with Ger-
many in 1936 seemed to point to the northern solution
becoming the enterprise that would be launched. Of
course, Hitler’s diplomatic turnaround with the Soviets
in August 1939, coupled with the operational defeat
inflicted on the Japanese by the Red Army in a border
dispute in Mongolia (the Khalkhin Gol incident) that
same month, then sent Tokyo into a tailspin of crisis.
They didn’t emerge from that crisis until Germany’s
overrunning of France and the Low Countries, coupled
with achieving at least a military paralysis of the Brit-
ish, provided the new answer. It would be south after
all, in order to pick the suddenly low-hanging fruit of
those defeated nations’ colonies. Sadly for the Japanese,
though, that option also brought war with the US.
If Hitler had chosen the alternative strategy we’re
considering here, however, the northern option would’ve
been restored as viable for the Japanese. We can’t know
they would’ve taken it: the defeat of Khalkhin Gol still
loomed fresh in their minds. Warring on the Soviet
Union in 1940, however, certainly would’ve been a more
likely choice than it was a year later in 1941. By then,
those favoring the southern option had uninterruptedly
been in political ascendance too long to be dissuaded
or otherwise turned out of power.
Had the Japanese been given the option of making
such a switch in their approach to further expansion,
the entire course of the global war—not just the one in
Europe—would’ve been revolutionized. With no oil
embargo by the US against the Japanese—put in place
historically to punish the latter’s 1940 aggression into
Southeast Asia—and no resultant Pearl Harbor attack
to finally springboard the US into the war—it’s hard to
imagine all the strategic benefits to the Axis cause that
could’ve emerged.
Timoshenko
Marshal Semyon Konstantanovich Timoshenko
didn’t prove to be one of the best Soviet commanders
of World War II. He’d survived the purges of the late
1930s, though, because of his long and close friendship
with Stalin. Further, his understanding of classic strategy
and tactics, coupled with his dogged determination in
applying it, proved enough for him to turn around the
disastrous course of the Russo-Finnish War once he was
given command there in January 1940. That success in
turn led Stalin to appoint him the USSR’s commissar
of defense.
It was during his first meeting with Stalin after that
promotion, in March 1940, when Timoshenko made
what was unquestionably his greatest contribution to his
country’s survival in the coming war with the Germans.
WaW 12 Issue.indd 11
That is, he managed to convince Stalin
the ideological heat of the purges had to
be turned off within the Soviet armed
forces, or else those forces would
simply cease to be effective combat
organizations.
At that same meeting, Timoshenko
also convinced the Soviet dictator to
allow him to put in motion a broad
military reform program aimed at
vastly expanding, reorganizing and
modernizing those armed forces, so
that, when it came time to be the last
nation to enter the war, the army would
be ready to do so in an immediately
and decisively victorious fashion. The
plan was to have taken two years to The Red Army’s Marshal
complete. When the Germans invaded Semyon Timoshenko
the USSR historically in 1941, then, it – victor over Finland and
was only half way implemented. That likely the savior of the
half proved sufficient. entire Soviet Union.
A doctrine for the use of mechanized
combined arms had come to the forefront of Red Army
thinking in the early 1930s, but the purges, starting in
1937, eliminated the senior advocates of that doctrine,
and their like-minded juniors were swept up in later
arrests. The new men Stalin appointed were largely
traditional infantry and cavalry types, who wasted no
time in dissolving the mechanized corps. By early 1940
that retrograde reorganization was complete. What mat-
tered even more, though, was the concomitant, and by
then nearly complete, destruction of the officer corps
in those purges. That was still ongoing, down to the
regimental level, in late 1939 and early 1940.
Also consider the following. In the summer of 1940
the USSR fielded only a dozen armies, and each of them
had only the equivalent combat power of a large Western
corps. Further, the purge of the pro-mechanization fac-
tion had left all the thousands of Soviet tanks distributed
in ‘penny packets’ throughout the armies, while those
armies’ operations were completely infantry-centric and
tied to landline communications. It wasn’t that Soviet
doctrine for mobile warfare was a mess or confused,
as was the case with the Anglo-French that year; it was
simply non-existent.
By the time the Germans invaded historically, on 22
June 1941, the number of Soviet armies in the field had
been increased by 50 percent, with many more being
organized, along with 14 independent rifle corps (West-
ern division equivalents) deployed to further backstop
them. Enough radios were by then also on hand to al-
low for at least some wireless communications. More
importantly, there were by then two-dozen independent
tank corps spread among, rather than dissolved within,
the field armies. By all accounts, that expanded and
only partially modernized force performed abysmally
(in terms of combat efficiency) against the Germans in
World at War 11
4/14/10 2:57:48 PM

The Germans’ under-armed and under-armored main battle tank
during the war’s first period, the ultra-light Mark II Panzer.
that later year. They did well enough, though, to prevent
the collapse and conquest of the USSR. In contrast, in
June 1940, Timoshenko’s reform and expansion program
had hardly gotten off the ground.
The Germans
Of course, the German ground force of 1940 wasn’t
yet up to its 1941 peak size or level of performance;
however, neither was it in anything like the weak state
of the Red Army. On the contrary, it was demonstrably
good enough to not simply win against the Anglo-French
in that year, but to do so in a way that revolutionized
combat doctrine and almost won the war at that time.
Even so, there were two inescapable operational fac-
tors that would’ve rendered the Germans less potent in
1940.
First, the overall German tank mix in 1940 was much
lighter than it would be in 1941. That is, in the earlier
year about three-quarters of all German tanks were
obsolete Mark I and II models, which were armed only
with machineguns and light 20mm cannon, respectively.
In comparison, almost all Soviet tanks then already car-
ried at least 45mm guns. That would’ve meant, in the
tactical arena, every Soviet tank encountered would’ve
been able to knock out its German opponent, while only
the German Mark IIIs and IVs could’ve been counted
on to do the same against their targets.
Of course, historically in 1940 about the same pro-
portion of German tanks were just as badly outmatched,
in terms of armament and armor, by their Anglo-French
opponents as they would’ve been against Soviet ma-
chines that same year. German war-fighting doctrine
didn’t call for defeating the enemy through the use of
superior armored fighting vehicles—at least not when
12 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 12
gauged at the tank vs. tank level. They
won through superior operational and
tactical organization and deployment.
Those factors allowed them to conduct
their attacks at tempos with which their
opponents, in both the historic 1940 and
1941 campaigns, simply couldn’t keep
up. There’s no reason, then, to presume
that same superiority wouldn’t have
worked to produce the same tactical
and operational results in service of
this alternative strategy.
Second, as a result of their historic
1940 victories, the Germans were able
to capture from the militaries they
defeated, as well as confiscate from
those same nations’ civilian economies,
large numbers of motor vehicles of all
types. Without those captures and con-
fiscations, the overall level of German
motorization for a 1940 Barbarossa
would’ve been reduced by about a third from that of
1941. Thus, not only would the diplomatic agreements
that allowed for Army Group South in 1941 been miss-
ing; the Germans wouldn’t have been able to flesh out
and keep supplied such an additional large formation
in 1940 due to their lack of motorization.
To solve that problem, the Germans would’ve had
to execute an operation that likely stayed entirely north
of the Pripyet Marshes. That seeming negative might
then have worked in their favor though; since, lacking
the mass of their historic 1941 invasion force, they
would’ve had to have planned on winning in a different
way. That is, though historically by 1941 the blitzkrieg
doctrine was officially the centerpiece of German stra-
tegic thought, in practice it was applied only spottily
and conservatively.
The 1941 German plan, though originally written so
as to be couched in the terminology of blitzkrieg, actu-
ally came down—due to ongoing philosophic disputes
within their own high command—to trying to encircle
and then destroy the entire Red Army, as each new
increment of it was encountered in the rush east. Those
continuous operational distractions—executed at the
expense of the true blitzkrieg goals of psychologically
defeating the enemy by quickly breaking into his vital
rear areas—eventually wore down the invaders before
potentially decisive geo-strategic objectives (Moscow
and Leningrad) could be reached. As Gen. Franz Halder,
then the German Armed Forces High Command Chief
of Staff, correctly predicted on 21 August 1941:
4/14/10 2:57:51 PM
 The warlords of the West in 1940. Churchill and Chamberlain, on the right, stand with French leaders. German
strategy, altered as discussed in this article, would’ve likely seen Churchill kept standing in the background.
If striking at small [enemy troop] concentrations
becomes our sole objective, the campaign will resolve
itself into a series of minor successes that will advance
our front only by inches. Pursuing such a policy
eliminates all tactical risks and enables us gradually
to close the gaps in the fronts of the army groups, but
the result will be that we feed all our strength into a
front expanding in width at the sacrifice of depth, and
end up with positional warfare.
Invading with a smaller force in 1940—coupled with
the ever longer southern flank that would’ve resulted due
to Army Group’s South absence—would’ve allowed the
Germans no alternative other than to run a true blitzkrieg
operation at all levels. There could’ve been no debate
as to whether Moscow and Leningrad should be taken
or merely encircled and besieged—they were the keys
to a blitzkrieg victory, and there were no substitutes
possible for them. They had to be taken in the first
rush, or they’d never be taken at all. Of course, if they
were taken, and the Soviet regime and armed forces
then somehow still failed to collapse, an entirely new
crisis—and one much larger in scope than that which
confronted the Germans in front of those two cities in
the late autumn of 1941—would’ve engulfed them.
WaW 12 Issue.indd 13
Conclusion
From the above we can see that the factors in play,
had Hitler decided to go east in 1940 instead of in
1941, were multi-faceted and complex. We can’t know
for certain whether an alternative strategic decision in
1940 would’ve resulted in a better outcome to the war
for Germany. Given, though, that the strategy followed
historically by Hitler ended with his armed forces de-
stroyed, his nation’s territory overrun and occupied by
its enemies, and his political regime entirely discredited
and overthrown, it’s hard to imagine such a change
could’ve in any way ended up with a worse result for
him.
at
Sources
Catherwood, Christopher. Winston Churchill: The Flawed Genius of World War
II. New York: Berkley Pub. Group, 2009.
Glantz, David. M. Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War.
Lawrence, KS: Univ. of Kansas Press, 1998.
Nimmo, David. “Blitzkrieg, 1940: How and Why the Germans Won.” Command,
no. 42, March 1997, pp. 44-57.
Tarnstrom, Ronald L. Germany: The Wehrmacht Strikes, 1920-1942. Lindsborg,
KS: Trogen Books, 1989.
Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, 2nd
Edition. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005.
World at War 13
4/14/10 2:57:52 PM
 1940: What If?
By Joseph Miranda
One of the reasons for playing wargames is to
explore historical alternatives. One such alterna-
tive for World War II is what if in 1940 Hitler had
decided to turn east and invade the USSR instead of
launching his campaign that overran the west? This
possibility isn’t far out of historical reality. Hitler
always saw the vast resources and land spaces of
the east as the essential part of his imagined Greater
Reich, while he believed (until 1940) he could come
to some kind of accommodation with the Western
European powers.
An attack on the Soviet Union in 1940 would’ve
meant the Germans had to face a two front war.
That could’ve been disastrous for Germany, but
there are a couple factors mitigating against it, as
the game shows. One was that, with Belgium and
the Netherlands still neutral, the Germans would’ve
had a shorter front to hold in the west, another is the
relative balance of forces in the east.
Both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army
would’ve been weaker than they were when their
Design Corner
war began historically. The Germans had fewer pan-
zer divisions in 1940 than they had in 1941; how-
ever, the Soviets were in far worse shape than they
were a year later. The Red Army was at the start of
a major reorganization, and was still not recovered
from Stalin’s purges.
Another interesting element is the inclusion of
7th Flieger Corps in the German order of battle.
Historically, it was used successfully in the west in
1940, but got shot up in the air assault on Crete in
1941. As a result, the Germans conducted no major
airborne operations inside the USSR. The unit is
available in the game because, of course, there
has been no Crete operation in this timeline. It’s
fascinating to speculate what impact the German
airborne might’ve had in a campaign against the
USSR.
14 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 14
There is also a greatly altered situation on the
Western Front. The French and British armies are
behind the Maginot Line. Would they have launched
attacks across the Rhine? The game includes variable
Allied armored corps to allow for different outcomes
for their tank debate: should armor be concentrated to
conduct operations on its own or dispersed to support
the infantry? There is no way to know the outcome
had the Allies had more time to evaluate the lessons
of the German blitzkrieg; so in the game the decision
is modeled by using a random process.
Back on the Eastern Front, the Red Army was in
a state of flux. As the events of 1941 would dem-
onstrate, its own commanders didn’t have much of
an idea of its strengths and weaknesses. Units often
fell apart in the pressures of combat, but sometimes
fought doggedly and even launched counterattacks.
That’s shown by deploying Soviet units on their un-
tried side, flipping them face up to show their values
only after they have been committed to battle. Also
note Soviet units have only one “step” of strength;
that is, one increment of combat losses and they are
out. German and Allied units generally have two
steps, showing their greater resiliency. That means
while Soviet units may look strong, they will tend to
melt away under the pressure of sustained combat.
Many factors were simplified in the design, such
as logistics and airpower. They’re portrayed by
modeling their strategic-level effects. The idea is to
give players the “big picture” look at what could’ve
happened in 1940 had Hitler turned east.
4/14/10 2:57:52 PM
 1940: You Decide!
The conjectured departure from the historic
timeline that resulted in the design of this game
is assumed to have taken place in mid-September
1939. At that time, as his forces are completing
the conquest of Poland, Hitler receives a flash
of intuition. That is, he can’t help but notice the
strategic paralysis of the Anglo-French, who do
nothing to try to prevent the downfall of their
fast-disappearing eastern ally Poland. From
that he concludes it would be a waste of time to
redeploy the Wehrmacht to the western front in
1940. He tells his generals: “The time will never
be better to destroy the Bolshevik power than in
the coming year. We will continue to have noth-
ing to fear in the west. The British and French
simply do not want war; they are afraid of it.
Once we’ve taken Moscow, we’ll take Paris and
London by telephone.”
Accordingly, he also tells his foreign minister
to drop all negotiations aimed at revising the
original territorial split set out in the accords with
the USSR the previous month. Most importantly,
Lithuania, originally in the German “sphere of
interest,” is not traded for a further slice of Polish
territory.
All of which has resulted in this low-complex-
ity, strategic-level, alternative history wargame.
In it, two to four players can investigate the
possibilities inherent in a changed 1940 reality. The West Front map is scaled at
16 miles per hexagon. The Eastern Front map is scaled at 25 miles per hex. All
Soviet units are armies; all other forces in the game are corps. Each game turn
on both maps equals half a month.
This game can be played by two, three or four. If two play, one commands
the Germans, while the other commands both the Anglo-French and Soviets.
If played by three, one player commands the Germans, one player commands
the Anglo-French, and the third commands the Soviets. If four play, one player
commands the Germans on the west map; the second commands the Germans
on the east map; the third commands the Soviets, and the fourth commands the
Anglo-French. The rules contain some 17,000 words, which means experienced
players can finish a game in about four hours. Rules cover such things as: neutrals,
fog of war, airpower, 7th Flieger Corps, Soviet 1st Shock Army, fortifications, and
more.

To purchase the game that covers the battles featured in

this issue send your name and address along with:
$30 US Customers
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World at War 15

WaW 12 Issue.indd 15 4/14/10 2:57:53 PM

 Rearming the French
By James C. Gordon
Post-Armistice Situation
As part of the terms of their 1940 capitulation, the
French were allowed to reform a much reduced army
in metropolitan France (that is, in Europe, not including
French overseas colonies) of 100,000 men. That was, not
coincidentally, the same number of soldiers Germany
had been allowed to keep by the Treaty of Versailles
following World War I.
The Vichy army was organized in two corps without
heavy artillery, tanks or airplanes. The Vichy Army of
Africa deployed another 100,000 troops, in eight divi-
sions and some independent regiments, in their North
and West African colonies. They were supported by
an air force of 700 aircraft in 30 squadrons along with
another 15,000 men. Fewer than 50,000 colonial troops
garrisoned French Indochina in a constabulary role.
Many of those units were under-trained.
With its government and military under German
control, direct and indirect, it appeared France’s partici-
pation in World War II was over. The fate of a divided
and partially occupied France remained uncertain, as
did the future of its empire.
French military power thereafter began to see a
gradual revival along two separate but eventually con-
vergent courses. The 30,000 French soldiers who’d been
16 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 16
evacuated from Dunkirk reached Britain as demoralized
stragglers, but they rallied to become the foundation of
the Free French Army. In London, Brig. Gen. Charles
de Gaulle, an early advocate of mobile warfare, issued
a call for all Frenchmen to join him in the cause of
continued resistance against Germany. As a result, he
was soon stripped of his rank in absentia by the Vichy
government. That move, of course, didn’t stop him.
Meanwhile, the Vichy chief of staff, Gen. Maxime
Weygand, planned for the day when France would
re-mobilize by enlisting and training as many recruits
as possible. Stocks of weapons and ammunition were
moved from France to Africa and cached for later use.
By 1942, the Vichy army had secretly grown to 137,000,
in violation of the armistice terms. In West Africa an
additional 50,000 colonial troops were mobilized into
independent regiments, though they lacked training
and equipment. Armistice forces in Tunisia, Algeria
and Morocco remained nominally loyal to the Vichy
government, and they functioned primarily to police
the colonies, thus avoiding provoking full German oc-
cupation of France.
Another concern was the French Navy, which had
been the fourth largest fleet in the world before the war
broke out. Those ships had seen little action prior to the
4/14/10 2:57:54 PM
 Former allies: Royal Navy attacks the French fleet at anchor in North Africa.
armistice, and a total of 243 French vessels, including
the battleships Paris and Courbet, four destroyers
and the world’s largest submarine, were seized by the
British in various ports where they had sought refuge
before the armistice. The Merchant Marine, originally
nearly 3 million tons, had lost 271,000 tons in the fight-
ing; another 671,000 tons were in Britain, the United
States and Argentina; 257,000 tons had been seized by
the Germans, while about 1.65 million tons remained
under French control.
After the armistice, some of the most modern ships
in Europe rode at anchor in the ports at Toulon, Oran,
Casablanca, Dakar and British ports. Under command
of Adm. Jean-Francois Darlan, the French Navy pursued
a policy of neutral self-defense and continued to serve
the role of protecting and supplying France’s far-flung
colonial holdings.
The continued existence of that powerful French
fleet, neutralized but perhaps only temporarily so, was
a cause for great worry in Great Britain. The bulk of the
French Navy, including several powerful capital ships,
might fall into Axis hands and tip the balance of naval
power. The resultant combination of the German, Italian
and French fleets would have posed a grave threat to the
Royal Navy in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic,
threatening shipping lanes and possibly forcing major
surface engagements. The British therefore decided the
situation called for quick and aggressive action.
Neutrality in Action
On 3 July 1940, a Royal Navy force approached the
port at Mers-el-Kebir, Algeria, and sent an ultimatum to
WaW 12 Issue.indd 17
Adm. Marcel-Bruno Gensoul’s Force de Raid anchored
there. The choices offered him were to join his command
to the British immediately, sail to a neutral port and ac-
cept internment, or scuttle. Gensoul refused all options,
and the British launched a furious 16-minute air and
gunnery attack. The battleships Dunkerque, Bretagne
and Provence, the aircraft tender Commandant Peste,
and the destroyers Kersaint, Tigre, Lynx, Terrible, Volta,
and Mogador were all damaged. Only the battleship
Strasbourg managed to weigh anchor and escape to
Toulon.
In Alexandria, Egypt, Adm. Rene Godfroy faced a
similar situation as commander of Force X, with the
battleship Lorraine, the cruisers Duquesne, Suffren,
Tourville and Duguay-Trouin, the destroyers Basque,
Forbin and Fortune, and the submarine Protee. After
some deliberation, Godfroy preserved his command by
agreeing to remain in port and take no action.
On 8 July, a British carrier task force launched a tor-
pedo plane attack against the port of Dakar, Senegal, and
damaged the Richelieu enough to keep her from sailing.
Seizing the opportunity to take the offensive, a combined
British and Free French force was organized to capture
that strategic West African port by seaborne assault in
September. The operation was overly optimistic, and
the preliminary air attacks and naval gunfire support
accomplished little. A few hours later, the Allied inva-
sion boats were driven off by French naval and shore
battery fire.
Despite the setback at Dakar, de Gaulle soon achieved
tangible successes as leader of the Free French cause. In
World at War 17
4/14/10 2:57:55 PM
 18 #12

WaW 12 Issue.indd 18 4/14/10 2:58:01 PM

 the Equatorial African colonies sympathies ran strongly
for him. Cameroon and the Middle Congo joined the Free
French. Then the Royal Navy defeated a Vichy task force
heading for the Gabon coast, and Free French ground
forces operating from Brazzaville captured Libreville,
the capital of Gabon. With that, the first piece of French
colonial soil had been securely retaken from Vichy.
The Vichy Navy meanwhile continued to maneuver
around the terms of the armistice to remain operational
with 75,000 men. The majority of the ships remained in
Toulon. Adm. Darlan worked to keep his service free of
German influence, but he also gave full political support
to the Vichy government and the Germans. His strong
opposition to de Gaulle reinforced his image as a fascist
collaborator, and that situation remained one of several
rifts within the French leadership.
In the Far East, the French presence proved insuf-
ficient to prevent Japanese demands for entry into
Indochina. Tokyo sought access to Vietnamese harbors New allies: Free French troops in an American Jeep.
and bases as a means to threaten China on its southern
flank. The Vichy commander contemplated resistance, Shedding Blood
but he realized his colonial divisions were no match for Volunteers rallied to the Free French cause throughout the
the Japanese. By 1941, Japanese forces had fully oc- colonies. Many of the troops fought alongside the British in the
cupied French Indochina, and they would use its bases Middle Eastern campaign. Col. Jacques LeClerc’s motorized unit
as jumping off points for the invasions of Malaysia, the of 400 men, known as L Force or the LeClerc Column, journeyed
Dutch East Indies and Burma. north from Fort Lamy, Chad, across the Sahara Desert to join
British Eighth Army. Some Foreign Legionnaires participated in
Many Frenchmen assumed their country would
wresting Abyssinia from the Italians. In June 1941 a combined
eventually have an opportunity to rejoin the fight against
British and French force from Palestine gained control of Vichy
the Axis. Plans for the renovation of the Free French
Syria and Lebanon, in a campaign in which Frenchmen fought
Army began in March 1941, initially under the direc-
Frenchmen, including Foreign Legionnaires on both sides.
tion of a young staff officer, Capt. Andre Beaufre. His
efforts were soon taken over by Lt. Col. Louis Jousse. The 1st and 2nd Free French Brigades fought in the Western
The Jousse Program, developed between December Desert against Gen. Irwin Rommel as he led his Afrika Korps
1941 and June 1942, called for the mobilization of six toward Egypt. At Bir Hakeim, in May and June 1942, a mixed
infantry and two armored divisions once metropolitan brigade of 3,700 French Foreign Legionnaires, Marines and
France was able to rejoin the Allied war effort. colonial troops from West Africa and the South Pacific delayed
the German advance and covered the British retreat. By the time
After the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the US
into the war, the Americans developed an even more
ambitious plan for French re-mobilization, under the
direction of Brigadier Gen. Charles Mast. The “Mast
Plan” called for a French Army of eight infantry and two
armored divisions, along with service elements, to be
activated within a month after the Americans landed in
North Africa. It was assumed French forces there would
all join the Yanks after offering only token resistance
to an invasion there.
Those projected political and time frames for French
re-mobilization proved overly optimistic, but the plan-
ning effort illustrates the high priority the Allies placed
on that objective. The largest stumbling block was
equipment, which was still in short supply at that time
in the war. Fulfilling the Mast Plan would’ve required
the diversion of weapons and transport sufficient to
equip and move 12 American divisions.

Old foes greet: Petain and Hitler.

World at War 19

WaW 12 Issue.indd 19 4/14/10 2:58:03 PM

 the German advance was finally and fully stopped at El
Alamein, those two Free French brigades had received
enough new men to expanded into the 1st and 2nd Free
French Divisions. Five Free French squadrons also
flew with the Royal Air Force in North Africa during
the same period. By October 1942, there was a total of
35,000 trained Free French troops deployed under Allied
command in the North and East African theaters.
Events began moving more quickly when, on 8 No-
vember 1942, Operation Torch landed 83,000 American
and 26,000 British troops at several invasion sites along
the coastline of Morocco and Algeria. Vichy forces there
offered resistance, token in some areas but resolute
elsewhere. Rapid negotiations between the Americans
and Darlan led to a ceasefire after two days of intense
fighting; however, that settlement then led to a political
crisis when De Gaulle became incensed the Allies were
dealing with the fascist Darlan.
The Germans responded to the Allied invasion by
funneling more of their own troops into Tunisia begin-
ning on 9 November. Two days later, panzer columns
rolled into unoccupied metropolitan France. Vichy
troops delayed the Germans long enough to allow time
for the French fleet to escape from Toulon, but Darlan
never issued any order to sail. Instead, 155 French naval
vessels were scuttled in the harbor on 27 November, as
German forces approached, finally ending an ignomini-
ous chapter in the history of the French military.
Free French Spoken Here: Gen. Leclerc.
20 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 20
Politics of Free France
The revival of the Free French military was never
separated from the intense political feuding among the
key players. Before the war de Gaulle and Gen. Henri
Giraud (a man senior to de Gaulle) had disagreed on the
best use for armored forces. De Gaulle favored modern
armored divisions as independent units of maneuver
and shock, while Giraud saw tanks operating best in
the infantry support role. Giraud was captured in 1940
and spent two years in a German POW camp. In 1942
he made a daring escape that led him out of Germany
to unoccupied France and then to North Africa. He
eventually reached Gibraltar, where he met with Gen.
Dwight Eisenhower shortly before Operation Torch.
Giraud had supported Petain, but was also a leader
of the non-cooperation movement within Vichy and a
newly minted hero due to his escape. For the moment,
he seemed to be the future of the French military, and he
fully expected to be appointed commander of all Allied
forces for the campaign soon to be fought across the
littoral of northwest Africa. Instead, Eisenhower merely
offered him command of the French troops in Algeria,
Morocco and Tunisia. Giraud was disappointed, but de
Gaulle was resentful at being upstaged, if even for just a
moment. De Gaulle insisted he was the only legitimate
voice of Free France from the moment he’d issued his
18 June 1940 radio message.
The exact status of Darlan then also had to be de-
termined. After making his deal with the Allies, he’d
assumed political control as “High Commissioner for
French North and West Africa,” a move that further
enraged de Gaulle. Darlan’s formerly pro-German
sympathies had made him a target, however, and he
was assassinated by a young Frenchman on Christmas
Eve 1942. Giraud, by then commander-in-chief of the
army in Darlan’s provisional government, thus became
the new high commissioner. He immediately declared
he would raise a French Army of 300,000, with himself
in overall command.
The broader rearmament process, though certainly
zigzagging, had continued with the formation of the
Franco-American Joint Rearmament Committee on 16
December 1942. It included four French, four American
and one British member. The composition of the com-
mittee was an indication the Americans would assume
the main responsibility for further French remobilization,
training, organization and overall command. Over the
next 22 months, the committee centralized equipment
requests, developed programs, and coordinated lend-
lease activities as French remobilization progressed.
An initial proposal by Lt. Gen. Emile Bethouart
called for the quick formation of a French Army with
two infantry and one armored corps, totaling eight in-
fantry and three armored divisions plus support troops.
The 325 shiploads of supplies needed to equip so large
a force would, however, still have worked to delay the
movement of 270,000 American soldiers to the Mediter-
4/14/10 2:58:04 PM
 ranean theater; so that plan was abandoned.
Further negotiations took place at Anfa and Casa-
blanca in January 1943, and included Franklin Roosevelt,
Winston Churchill, de Gaulle and Giraud. Despite de
Gaulle’s continued opposition to Giraud, at least a sem-
blance of unity was created by the formation in Algiers
of the French Committee of National Liberation, with
the two generals as co-presidents. Giraud then proposed
a force of 10 motorized and three armored divisions,
along with 50 fighter and 30 light bomber squadrons and
attendant air transport units. The American counter-plan
offered 11 divisions and 450 aircraft.
Growing Pains
As the fighting continued in Tunisia, Gen. Alphonse
Juin, a former French commandant in North Africa, was
given command of a new French Expeditionary Force.
Units from the former Vichy Army of North Africa were
reformed into the Constantine March Division, the
Algerian March Division, the Moroccan March Divi-
sion, the Oran March Division and the Algerian Light
Mechanized Brigade. The “march division” designation
was used to indicate they were divisions with flexible
composition. The total force contained 40,000 and was
soon re-designated as XIX Corps.
In February 1943, a convoy brought 125,000 tons
of supplies from the US to outfit two French infantry
divisions, two armored regiments, along with three
tank destroyer, three recon and 12 anti-aircraft battal-
ions. By May the march divisions were renamed and
reorganized as the 2nd Moroccan Infantry Division, the
3rd Algerian and 4th Moroccan Mountain Divisions. All
three participated in the final offensive in Tunisia that
cleared the Axis from North Africa.
The remnants of the French Navy also rallied to the
Allied cause, adding 80 ships and 45,000 men drawn from
Atlantic, North African and West Indian ports, including
Force X, which still lingered in Alexandria after more
than two years of neutrality. Most French ships sailed
with the Royal Navy, participating in several important
operations including the invasions of Normandy and
southern France.
On land, North Africa was the proving ground for
the new French Army, and XIX Corps demonstrated
the eagerness of French soldiers to rejoin the fight after
two years of neutrality. The most recent French impera-
tive was to expand the army as quickly as possible to
five full-strength modern divisions (three infantry, one
mountain, and one armor), capable of assuming a larger
role in the Mediterranean campaign.
The forces under de Gaulle were joined with those
loyal to Giraud, finally ending the internal friction that
had divided the Free French into rival camps. De Gaulle
became the political leader and Giraud the commander-
in-chief of the Army. He immediately began lobbying
for the organization of seven infantry and four armor
divisions under a new “15 August Plan.” As before, the
WaW 12 Issue.indd 21
shortage in supply elements
and service technicians
delayed full mobilization,
which was scaled back to
350,000. The US high com-
mand wanted the French
to field a complete army,
including the extensive
“logistical tail” that was
customary within American
forces. The French argued
for emphasis on combat
units, with the Allies provid-
ing the necessary support
elements.
In July 1943 on Sicily,
the 4th Moroccan Tabor
Battalion of 1,000 men
fought well alongside Gen.
George Patton’s Seventh deGaulle steps forth.
Army. On 13 September 1943, Gen. Giraud commanded
the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division and the 2nd Moroc-
can Tabor Battalion in Operation Vesuvius, the recapture
of the island of Corsica. Free French forces were then
tantalizingly close to the French mainland; however,
Giraud had antagonized the Allies and de Gaulle by
withholding the details of his invasion plan and then
arming the communist resistance group on Corsica. He
was therefore removed as co-president in November
1943, and soon thereafter also lost his position as com-
mander-in-chief of Free French forces. He subsequently
refused the post of inspector general of the army, and
fully retired in 1944.
Soon after the Allied landing at Salerno in September
1943, the French II (Expeditionary) Corps was activated
as part of US Fifth Army. The French contribution to the
Italian campaign eventually numbered 105,000 men in
the 2nd Moroccan Division, the 3rd Algerian Division,
the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division, the 1st Motor-
ized Infantry Division (formerly the 1st Free French
Division), and the 1st, 3rd and 4th Moroccan Tabor Bat-
talions, along with various supply and air elements.
By August 1943 the Free French Air Force consisted
of eight squadrons: three of Spitfires, four of P-39s and
one of P-47s. In December, another two squadrons of
A-35s, one of B-26s, two of Hurricanes and three of
C-78s were added in North Africa, as well as two heavy
bomber, one light bomber, and three fighter squadrons
in Great Britain. Fourteen French squadrons took part
in the Italian campaign, and the revitalized French Air
Force eventually numbered 25 squadrons.
The Free French forces were officially renamed the
“Fighting French,” but many continued to use the former
name, particularly those who’d rallied to de Gaulle early
and resented the Vichy associations of their late-arriving
brethren.
French II Corps made a significant contribution to
World at War 21
4/14/10 2:58:04 PM
 Escape of the Jean-Bart
by Pierre Corbeil
On 19 June 1940, as the French government of Marshal
Petain was preparing to take that nation out of the war, the
battleship Jean-Bart escaped capture in the harbor of Saint-
Nazaire. The ship was built in that port and, according to the
Navy’s schedule, it was to leave there on 1 January 1941 to
steam to Brest to receive its armament.
The rapid success of the German invasion of 10 May 1940
posed the question whether it was possible to even save the
ship by sailing it out of Saint-Nazaire immediately. The Jean-
Bart’s captain, Pierre Ronarch (1892-1960), worked out with
the shipyard director the conditions that would make departure
possible. The required tides would begin in the second half of
June 1940, so a departure would be possible in that sense on
or about the 20th. Beyond that, a trench about a 1,000 meters
long, by 70 meters wide and 9 meters deep, would also need
to be dredged out of the estuary for the ship’s exit to be pos-
sible. The ship also required a minimum of power—the boiler
along with at least two turbines out of four—a sufficiency of
electric generators, and the means to control and navigate her.
The shipyard director agreed to the plan; however, the port
authority couldn’t promise a trench more than 50 meters wide
and 8.5 meters deep. Ronarch in turn agreed to that shrunken
seaway.
The ship’s crew and some 3,500 construction workers
pledged they wouldn’t allow the capture of the ship. Twelve-
hour work shifts became the norm, with some teams staying
at it around-the-clock. Improvisation and bailing-wire solu-
tions were common. The two massive propellers were only
installed on 6 and 7 June, and they were only connected to
the turbines on the 18th. Steering controls were tested for the
first time on 15 June. The electricians rush-wired and jury-
rigged the kilometers of cable required to control the ship,
and the steering and communication equipment were tested
on 18 June. Finally, the port authority engineer reported the
best he could do for the trench was 45 meters wide, which
was only 10 meters wider than the ship’s beam.
While those preparations were being hurried along, an
ad hoc combat team was prepared to hold off any possible
German assault. If it turned out the ship couldn’t be saved, it
The battleship that escaped: the Jean-Bart.
22 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 22
had to be sabotaged; so, while the workmen labored, others
stood by ready to destroy enough of that work to make the
ship unfit for the sea.
On 18 June, the eve of the planned departure, a supposed
German motorized column was spotted nearby at 2:30 p.m.
The ships colors were raised at 3:30 p.m. The column turned
out to be English at 4:00 p.m., while the second 380mm tur-
ret, which it had not been possible to fully install, was being
torched. At 5:00 p.m., the electric cable from the dock was
uncoupled, and the engineer who’d dug the trench was sent
ashore. At 6:30 p.m. the doors of the dry dock were opened,
and Jean-Bart was afloat. At that moment the electrical systems
failed, and ad hoc solutions had to be patched together so the
ventilation of the engine rooms could at least be maintained.
Since the electricity was down, the cables and anchors had
to be pulled in manually by capstan. At midnight the combat
team returned aboard.
The captain and his officers were dined aboard for the
first time at 7:30 p.m., which was traditionally an important
occasion for any new ship and its crew. At the same time the
dredgers reported the trench would be finished at 2:00 a.m.,
rather than at 1:00. During the evening the ship had to be
evened out, since there would be a minimum of water under
the keel. All non-essentials were left behind, so the ship would
be as high in the water as possible.
On 19 June at 2:30 a.m., Capt. Ronarch was on the bridge,
where everything seemed to be going wrong. The tugs that
would nudge the Jean-Bart through the trench were late, and
it hadn’t yet proved possible to get the engines working cor-
rectly. The tugs finally arrived at 3:30 a.m., and they slowly
pulled the ship out of its slip; however, it was difficult to
evaluate speed in the dark, so she ground into the mud. She
was pulled out, only to get stuck while being moved in the
opposite direction. Four more tugs were pressed into service,
and the ship was able to move again. By then it was 4:30 a.m.
and there was enough light for the ship’s steersmen to maintain
it precisely in the trench’s center, from which it successfully
emerged into the estuary channel.
In the Marine Nationale, the navy of France, tradition requires
that a capital ship should carry the name of great naval command-
ers. Thus there have been several ships named after Jean Bart
(1651-1702), one of the greatest corsairs and naval tacticians in
French history. The most powerful of those ships was laid down
in 1936 and remained in service until 1961.
Class & Type: Richelieu-class battleship
Displacement: 35,560 tons, 48,950 tons at full load
Length: 248 meters
Beam: 35 meters
Draught: 9.60 meters
Propulsion: four geared turbines, 150,000 hp
Speed: 32 knots (59 km/h)
Range: 7,671 nautical miles (14,207 km) at 20 knots (37 km/h);
3,181 nautical miles (5,891 km) at 30 knots (56 km/h)
Complement: 1,100
4/14/10 2:58:05 PM
 At that moment, three German bombers appeared. The
Jean-Bart was for all practical purposes a stationary target,
and the ammunition for the anti-aircraft guns had been lost
in transport, when the trucks carrying it had been strafed. At
4:45 a.m., just as a bomb exploded between the two forward
turrets, Capt. Ronarch ordered ahead at 50 turns a minute. He
was rewarded with the sound of the churn of the propellers at
the stern, and the great ship began to move through the channel
at 12 knots.
At 6:15 a.m. the Jean-Bart reached the open sea, where two
destroyers, the Hardi and the Mameluk, were waiting to escort
her to Casablanca. Two nearby British tugs sailed away when
informed the ship was sailing to Africa and not to England.
When out of range of German aircraft, two tankers, the Odet
and Tarn, approached to resupply oil and boiler water, but that
wasn’t the end of the technical troubles. The condensers began
working backward, dumping their precious water into the hold.
At 9:30 p.m. the starboard engine failed, so the ship’s speed
was reduced to six knots just as a submarine was reported to be
in the area. At the captain’s request, the workmen still aboard,
though they were dead tired, agreed to replace the dead turbine
with one of the unfinished engines that were aboard. Once that
was done, it was necessary to jury-rig an auxiliary boiler to
distill water to run the turbines. Finally, at 9:00 p.m. on 21 June
1940, the Jean-Bart anchored at Casablanca.
In the escape the 380mm guns of the rear turret had been
left behind, sabotaged so they couldn’t be installed on a German
ship. Despite the lack of proper installation, the Navy decided
to render the fore turret operational, which was completed in
April 1942. Capt. Barthes, who replaced Ronarch when he was
promoted and put in charge of the Casablanca naval base, then
requested permission from the German and Italian armistice
commissioners to test fire the guns. They were successfully
tested on 5 May 1942. With that, the American forces planning
their landing in French North Africa had to take the Jean-Bart
into account in terms of enemy forces available.
After the Torch landing, the French Navy asked the US for
permission to complete the ship, possibly by moving it to a yard
in America, or even by transforming it into an aircraft carrier,
but that permission was refused. The Jean-Bart was only finally
returned to Brest, then, on 29 August 1945. France urgently
needed four aircraft carriers, according to the government’s
naval planners; however, turning the ship into a carrier would’ve
cost 5 billion francs, and would’ve required five years, the same
as building from scratch. Alternatively, for a mere one billion
the Navy could get a “new” battleship worth eight billion. So
the traditionalists won out, and the ship was finally completed
as a battleship with added heavy anti-aircraft armament: 12
double 100mm and 14 double Bofors 57mm guns. It ran its
final shakedown on 16 January 1949, reaching 32 knots.
In the practical sense, the French Navy could’ve better
used more aircraft carriers, particularly in the Indochina War.
The Jean-Bart participated in only one action, the Suez land-
ing in November 1956, where its presence intimidated the
Egytian defenders and allowed the French Marines and the
Foreign Legion to land almost bloodlessly. The opponents of
finishing the battleship had argued, reasonably, that the naval
engagements of the Second World War had demonstrated the
uselessness of big gun ships in battle, but the Jean-Bart was a
legend because of its escape in 1940. Legends can’t be given
second-class treatment, and navies aren’t just about steel and
turrets: they are also made of tradition and memory.
WaW 12 Issue.indd 23
Operation Diadem, which captured Rome in June 1944.
The French forces were soon thereafter withdrawn from
the slogging campaign up the Italian peninsula to prepare
for the invasion of Southern France.
Liberation & Victory
Early in 1944 the 15 August Plan force was reduced
by one armored and two infantry divisions, leaving two
and five, respectively. Soon afterward that plan was
replaced altogether by the “23 January Plan,” which
authorized six infantry divisions (one as cadre), four
armor divisions (again, one as cadre), and 245 smaller
units, including commandos, shock troops and several
independent regiments. The 9th Colonial and 1st Armored
Divisions were activated before the Salerno invasion,
but hadn’t been deployed.
The Americans insisted French soldiers begin to
fill their own roster of logistical units for Operation
Anvil, the invasion of Southern France, even as they
continued to provide the bulk of the support elements
for the French field divisions. As preparation for Anvil,
the 9th Colonial Division, along with the 2nd Moroccan
Tabor, Commando and Shock Battalions (12,000 men
total) captured the island of Elba in June 1944.
Also prior to the Normandy invasion, the 2nd and
3rd French Parachute Regiments were incorporated
into the British Special Services Brigade, and the 2nd
French Armored Division (formerly the 2nd Free French
Division) was transported to Britain. Gen. LeClerc, a
supporter of de Gaulle from the beginning, preferred
not to fight alongside former Vichy army neutralists
and collaborators. Instead, then, his 2nd French Armored
Division joined the Americans in Normandy soon after
D-Day. French national morale received a major boost
when that same division helped liberate Paris as part
of Patton’s Third Army.
In August, the US Seventh Army launched Operation
Dragoon, the revised plan to invade Southern France.
The American 3rd, 36th and 45th Infantry Divisions of
VI Corps, along with some Rangers and paratroops,
formed the invasion force. They were soon followed
by French Army B, under command of Gen. Jean de
Lattre de Tassigny. Army B included I and II Corps,
which together contained most of the French forces then
available: 1st and 5th Armored Divisions, 1st Motorized
Infantry Division, 2nd Moroccan Division, 3rd Algerian
Division, 4th Moroccan Mountain Division, 9th Colonial
Division, 1st, 2nd and 3rd Moroccan Tabor Battalions,
the Commando Battalion, the Shock Battalion, along
with air and supply units, for a total of 200,000 men.
Within a month Army B was renamed as the 1st French
Army and was paired with the US 7th Army to form the
6th Army Group. First French Army absorbed all of
Army B and added 2nd Armored Division, 1st Infantry
Division, 10th Infantry Division, 14th Infantry Division
and 27th Alpine Division for a total of 300,000.
Men then began to rally to the colors from all over
metropolitan France, and soon there were over 500,000
World at War 23
4/14/10 2:58:05 PM
 troops available. In October 1944, plans were accord- Orders of Battle
ingly drawn up to expand the French Army to 25 divi-
sions by mid-1945 and to 36 divisions by the end of Vichy Army in Metropolitan France, 1940-42
that same year, along with the creation of 2nd French I Corps: 7th Division, 14th Division, 15th Division, 16th Divi-
Army. Even during the final months of the war, units sion
continued to be mobilized, including III and IV Corps II Corps: 9th Division, 12th Division, 13th Division, 17th
headquarters, 3rd Armored Division, 7th Algerian Divi- Division
sion, 8th Algerian Division, 10th Colonial Division, 19th Partially Mobilized: 1st Armored Division (1 light mechanized
Infantry Division, 25th Infantry Division, 36th Infantry brigade, 1 cavalry brigade, 1 artillery regiment)
Division, along with several cavalry and other separate
regiments. A total of 12 divisions were in the field by Vichy Infantry Division Organization:
the end of the war, a considerable force. 3 Infantry Regiments
Summing Up 3 Infantry Battalions
The resurrection of the French military after 1940 4 Infantry Companies
was at times a bitter struggle not unlike a civil war, as it 1 Mortar Company
pitted Gaullist patriots against former Vichy supporters. 1 Artillery Regiment
French sacrifices during World War II were heavy. There 3 Battalions (1 motorized)
were 211,000 French military dead, compared with the 3 Batteries (4 75mm)
293,000 American, 354,000 Commonwealth and 78,000 1 Recon Regiment
Italian. The figures for military wounded were 400,000
1 Cavalry Battalion
French, 590,000 American, 890,000 Commonwealth
2 Cavalry Squadrons
and 120,000 Italian.
1 Bicycle Battalion
French forces functioned well within the overall
2 Bicycle Companies
Allied force structure, despite the disagreements over
their organization, supply and deployment. Once fully 1 Mixed Battalion
mobilized and equipped, the revitalized French military 1 Armored Car Company
redeemed itself on battlefields from Africa to Italy, and 1 Bicycle Company
from France to Germany. 1 Pioneer Battalion
It must also be kept in mind a large proportion of 2 Pioneer Companies (1 motorized)
those “French” forces were actually men of color from 1 Engineer Battalion
the colonies. At one time that figure rose as high as 65 1 Signals company
percent of the total Free French manpower in uniform. 1 Transportation company
In fact, one reason LeClerc’s 2nd Armored Division was
chosen to spearhead the French Army’s reentry into Vichy Army of North Africa, 1940-42
metropolitan France was due to the fact it contained Tunisian Command: Tunisian Division (later reduced to
only about 25 percent black troops. a brigade)
XIX Military Command (Algeria): Constantine Divi-
sion, Algerian Division, Oran Division
at Moroccan Command: Fez Division, Meknes Division,
Marakesh Division, Casablanca Division
Plus some independent infantry and cavalry regiments
Sources
Army of North Africa Infantry Division Organization
Auphan, Paul & Jacques Mordal. The French Navy in World War II. An-
napolis, MD: US Naval Institute, 1959. 3 Infantry Regiments
Blimberg, Edward L. Tricolor Over the Sahara: The Desert Battles of the 1 Support Company (mortars)
Free French, 1940-1942. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. 3 Infantry Battalions
Koburger, Charles W., Jr. The Cyrano Fleet: France and its Navy, 1940- 4 Infantry Companies
1942. New York: Praeger, 1989.
1 Support Company (mortars, AT, AA)
Lattre de Tassigny, Jean Joseph Marie Gabriel de. The History of the French
First Army. London: Allen & Unwin,1952. 1 Artillery Regiment
Nafziger, George F. French Order of Battle in World War II 1939-1945. 3 Battalions
West Chester, OH: G.F. Nafziger, 1995. 3 Batteries (4 75mm)
Thomas, Martin. The French Empire at War, 1940-45. New York: St. 1 Recon Regiment
Martin’s Press, 1998.
2 Cavalry Battalions
Vigneras, Marcel. Rearming the French. The United States Army in World
War II. 2 Cavalry Squadrons
Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Dept. of the 1 Support Company (mortars, AT)
Army, 1957. 1 Pioneer Battalion
1 Signals troop
24 #12

WaW 12 Issue.indd 24 4/14/10 2:58:05 PM

 Vichy Army of Indochina, 1940-41 Free French Armored Division, 1943
Tonkin Division, Annam Division, Cochin-Cambodia Divi- Headquarters (later, 3 Combat Command HQ)
sion 3 Medium Tank Regiments
(Division composition varied widely: two to four infantry 1 Light Tank Regiment
regiments or brigades, for 11 to 25 battalions total, with
1 Infantry Regiment
some artillery and armored cars.)
3 Artillery Battalions
1 Anti-Aircraft Group
US Equipment Transferred to French Units, 1943-45
1 Engineer Battalion
85 Heavy Artillery Pieces
1 Signal Company
851 Light Artillery Pieces & Anti-tank Guns
3 Transportation Companies
758 Anti-Aircraft Guns
1 Service Company
1,504 Mortars
1 Maintenance Signal Group
10,731 Machineguns
1 Medical Battalion
20,856 Submachineguns
69,129 Rifles
French Warships Scuttled at Toulon, 11/27/42
90,983 Carbines
Battleships: Provence, Dunkerque, Strasbourg
651 Light Tanks
Cruisers: Colbert, Foch, Dupleix, Algerie, La Galissonniere
755 Medium Tanks
Light Cruisers: Jean de Vienne, Marseillaise
3,941 Other AFV
Super-Destroyers (2100-2900 tons): Guepard, Lion, Vauban,
27,176 Trucks
Valmy, Verdun, Lynx, Panthere, Tigre, Aigle, Gerfaut, Vau-
330 Medium & Light Bombers tour, Cassard, Kersaint, Tartu, Vauquelin, L’Indomptable,
723 Fighters Mogador, Volta
364 Other Aircraft Destroyers (1300-1700 tons): Bison, Sirocco, Trombe, Borde-
lais, Foudroyant, Le Mars, La Palme, Casque, Le Hardi,
Free French Infantry Division, 1943 Lansquenet, Mameluck
Headquarters Other: 20 submarines & numerous smaller vessels
3 Infantry Brigades Seaplane Tender: Commandant Teste
3 Infantry Battalions
1 AT Company French Warships that Rejoined the Allies, 1942 & Later
1 Cannon Company Battleships: Lorraine, Richelieu, Jean Bart
1 Cavalry Battalion Aircraft Carrier: Bearn
1 Artillery Regiment Cruisers: Duquesne, Tourville, Suffren, Jeanne d’Arc
3 Batteries 105mm Light Cruisers: Duguay Trouin, Lamotte Picquet, Emile Bertin,
Georges Leygues, Gloire, Montcalm
1 Battery 155mm
Super-Destroyers: Leopard, Le Triomphant, Milan, Le Fan-
1 Anti-Aircraft Group
tasque, Le Malin, Le Terrible
4 Batteries 40mm
Destroyers: Simoun, Tempete,
1 Engineer Battalion L’Alcyon, Basque, Forbin, Le
3 Engineer Companies Fortune, Mistral, Ouragan
1 Signal Battalion Other: 19 submarines & several
2 or 3 Motor Transport Companies dozen smaller vessels
1 Ordnance Group
1 Operation Service Group
1 Medical Battalion

World at War 25

WaW 12 Issue.indd 25 4/14/10 2:58:06 PM

 A Fast & Easy Playing Series of Card Games
Poland
This game depicts the German campaign against Poland in September, 1939. Historically,
it was a stunning victory but the blitzkrieg strategy was untested and Poland expected to hold
on long enough for other countries to intervene. In the game, the Germans strive to
force the Polish surrender quickly by capturing Polish cities including the Polish
capital, Warsaw. The Polish fight to defend their cities and stop the German advance.
Cards depict the combat forces, objectives, and events of the campaign. $23.00

D-Day
June 6, 1944, the day that decided the fate of World War II in Europe. Now you command
the Allied and Axis armies as each struggles to control the five key beaches along the
Normandy coastline. If the Allied troops seize the beaches, Germany is doomed. But
if the assault fails, Germany will have the time it needs to build its ultimate weapons.
You get to make vital command decisions that send troops into battle, assault enemy
positions, and create heroic sacrifices so others can advance to victory! $20.00

Midway
From June 4th to June 6th of 1942, a massive battle raged around
the tiny Pacific island of Midway that changed the course of World
War II. The victorious Imperial Japanese Navy was poised to capture
the airfield on the island of Midway and thus threaten Hawaii and the
United States. The only obstacle in their path was an outnumbered
US fleet itching for payback for Pearl Harbor. You get to command
the US and Japanese fleets and their squadrons of fighter planes,
torpedo bombers and dive bombers in this epic battle! $20.00

North Africa
Covering the great battles of Erwin Rommel from 1941 to 1943, as he fought his way back and forth
across the deserts of North Africa. LNA uses cards to represent the military units, supply convoys and
objectives of the historic campaign. To win, you must consider your units’ combat power and maneuver
options as well as their supply situation. The game features: the Afrika Korps, Tobruk, the Desert Rats,
Malta, anti-tank guns, resupply from Europe, minefields and more. LNA is based around a new combat
system that makes maneuver and planning as important as brute force. That approach is faithful to the
historic events, in which smaller forces were often able to defeat and rout larger ones by using better
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War on Terror
Fight the war on terror with America’s cutting edge weapon systems!
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PO Box 21598, Bakersfield CA 93390-1598 • (661) 587-9633 •fax 661/587-5031 • www.decisiongames.com

26 #12

WaW 12 Issue.indd 26 4/14/10 2:58:12 PM

 Back Issues Available
Complete list of
available issues
on our website
including
Strategy &
Tactics issues.

P.O. Box 21598

Bakersfield, CA 93390-1598
ph: (661) 587-9633 • Fax: (661) 587-5031
www.StrategyAndTacticsPress.com
World at War 27

WaW 12 Issue.indd 27 4/14/10 2:58:16 PM

 World at War No. 14:
Game Preview Invasion Pearl Harbor
The game in issue number 14, designed by Adrian
McGrath & Chris Smith, will be Invasion Pearl
Harbor: What If the Japanese Invaded? (IPH). It’s a
low-to-intermediate complexity, strategic/operational-
level, alternative history wargame of the campaign that
could’ve resulted had the Japanese decided to launch
an amphibious invasion of Oahu at the same time as
their historic air raid. The game is intended for two
players, one commanding the Japanese and the other
commanding the US forces. The system is focused so
as to present the ground-commanders’ views of the
campaign. Aero-naval operations—though certainly
important in play—are presented more abstractly
than would be the case in a design centered on those
aspects of the campaign.
Each hex on the 34x22 large-hex map equals
one mile (1.62 km) from side to opposite side. Each
game turn represents about four hours of daylight or
an entire night. Playing pieces (176 iconic counters)
represent ground units of approximately company
size, or individual aircraft carriers or battleships, or
enough aircraft sorties (about two to three dozen)
needed to affect battlefield events at this scale. The
rules contain a little less than 11,000 words. Two
28 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 28
experienced players can finish a match in less than four
hours.
The single counterfactual assumption underlying the
game is Adm. Yamamoto decided to back the plan he
scrapped historically in September 1941. That plan had
called for an amphibious invasion, conducted by about
two regiments, to land on Oahu at the same time as the
air attacks were begun. The further supposition then is,
the Japanese, once ashore, would’ve had no more than
about three days in which to achieve their now more
ambitious goal: either secure the whole island or at least
fight their way across enough of it—while thoroughly
wrecking facilities as they came to them—to ensure
the American recovery would be delayed as long as
possible. The three-day limit is due to the fact that, by
the end of that period, the Japanese carrier strike group
would had to have withdrawn and the ground force’s
initial load of combat supply would be used up.
Rules cover such things as: variable landing sites,
rough surf, carrier interventions, combat ground support,
interdiction, a Nisei uprising, Ford Island and Battleship
Row, night combat, banzai attacks and much more.
4/14/10 2:58:17 PM
 I Remember
Kitty Perrault
I was born in England in
1923, and grew up in the south
of the country near the Channel.
Because of where I lived, I expe-
rienced the realities of war almost
immediately upon the outbreak
of the fighting in 1939 and well
before I enlisted in the Women’s
Auxiliary Air Force. During the
first week the Germans bombed a
Royal Air Force airfield just a few
miles from my home, and some
of the bombs dropped on a nearby
town. I’m not sure if it was on
purpose or whether the bombers
simply missed their target, but the
result was the same: some 100
civilians were killed.
Bombing of nearby airfields
and towns became an almost
nightly occurrence, and you
almost got used to the sounds
of bombs exploding and bomb-
ers flying by overhead. At night,
blackouts were in effect. There
had been practice blackouts
earlier in the summer, but once
the war began it came into effect
for real. Homes, streetlights and
businesses were unlit after dark.
The headlights on cars had to be
dimmed as well.
All that made me realize how
real the war was, and that even
people on the home front would
fight it in it in their own way. I
was determined to do my duty
once I was old enough. My family
was a “regimental family;” my
father had served 26 years in the
Royal Artillery, so the military
ran in our blood. I enlisted in the
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
(WAAF) as a 17-year-old in 1941.
If I had wanted to, I could’ve
waited another year. It was only at
18-years-old single women were
WaW 12 Issue.indd 29
conscripted, either for auxiliary
service or the war industry work-
force, but I desperatly wanted to
join the air force and so enlisted a
year early at the youngest age the
WAAF would accept girls.
At the time, women weren’t
allowed to enlist in the regular
Royal Air Force. Instead, we
served alongside and supported
the air force as members of the
WAAF. From 1,700 members at
the outbreak of war, the WAAF
rose to a peak of 180,000 women
a few years later. We performed
numerous types of duty, includ-
ing meteorology, catering, clerical
work, mechanical work on aircraft
and trucks, driving transports,
chaffeuring officers, telegraph
and telephone operators, and
intelligence and codebreaking.
Some women manned barrage
balloons, and others worked radar
and served as plotters in air force
operations rooms. Because we
served on aerodromes, we faced
danger from German bombers just
the same as male groundcrews.
Some WAAFs died during the
war.
I served as a “Batwoman,”
then the term for a personal as-
sistant to an officer, at an aero-
drome where glider pilots were
trained. One of my main jobs was
to look after officers’ equipment
and clothing, to make sure their
equipment was polished and their
uniforms clean and pressed. Their
service uniforms had to be clean
for duty during the day, and their
dress uniforms had to be clean for
partying at night. It doesn’t sound
like exciting work, but military
appearance is important for mo-
rale, especially in British forces. I
considered it important work and
took pride in it.
My time in uniform taught me
self-sufficiency and caused me to
grow up quickly. Though it was
wartime, with rationing and air
raids that destroyed city blocks
and killed thousands, I considered
my time in the WAAF mostly
an enjoyable experience. I still
correspond with the girls I served
with; there was real camaraderie
among us, and we formed good
friendships. We did our bit.
I remained in uniform until
the end of the war in 1945, and in
January 1946 I moved to Canada
with my husband, who was a Ca-
nadian soldier. I was six months
pregnant at the time. Romances
between soldiers and British
girls were officially frowned on,
because it was thought to distract
the men from their duty and could
add administrative burdens, but it
happened a lot anyway. Not all of
them ended in marriage, but mine
did.
I’ve lived in Penetanguishene,
Ontario, ever since, raising three
children and working at a drug-
store and mental health center.
Even 60 years later, my wartime
service remains a highlight of my
life. I was proud of my time as a
WAAF, and am a member of the
Royal Canadian (veterans) Legion
today.
— by Kitty Perrault, as told to
Andrew Hind
World at War 29
4/14/10 2:58:17 PM
 Strategic Backwaters
Vichy Martinique
At the end of May 1940,
France appeared doomed to be
defeated by Germany. French
ground and air forces were being
harrowed and driven back into the
depths of metropolitan France,
and the bulk of the surviving
British forces had been forced to
evacuate under fire from Dunkirk.
For neutral America, it was a grim
time, a time that forced three stra-
tegic questions to the fore. First,
would there be a French govern-
ment after the defeat, and who
would lead it under what degree
of German control? Second, what
would happen to the relatively
unscathed French Navy? Last,
what would be the disposition of
the French colonial empire?
The Franco-German armi-
stice, the accession of the elderly
Marshall Phillipe Petain, and
relocation of the French capital to
Vichy answered the first question.
France would be a partially oc-
cupied state, much of the metro-
politan part German-occupied,
with a collaborating rump left
unoccupied; the colonies would
remain unoccupied and policed by
a much-reduced French military.
The disposition of the French
fleet was a different matter. The
French Navy was the fourth larg-
est in the world in 1940, mass-
ing some 524,000 tons. Most of
its ships had been designed and
built in the 1930s, thus they were
far more modern and potentially
powerful than matching classes
of British or American ships. For
instance, the brand new 35,000
ton Richelieu-class battleships
were easily the equal of the
American North Carolina-class,
which weren’t due to be launched
30 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 30
until late 1941. The new Dunker-
que-class battlecruisers were es-
sentially light battleships capable
of challenging any of the many
World War I-era US and British
battleships then still in service. In
sum, if the French fleet were com-
bined with the German and Italian
fleets, their combined tonnage and
effectiveness slightly exceeded
the British fleet in weight and
modernity.
Adm. Francois Darlan, head
of the French Navy and ac-
knowledged as the power behind
Petain, managed to renegotiate the
Franco-German armistice enough
to keep the French Navy out of
German hands. He then sent the
bulk of the fleet out of French
ports to colonial ports, such as
Mers-el Kebir, Dakar, Bizerte and
Fort-de-France.
Churchill feared the French
Navy would be used against the
British supply lines, yet he had
also hoped many French ships
would defect to the British to car-
ry on the war on the Allied side.
He was wrong on the first point
and disappointed on the second.
Even so, the continued existence
of powerful French naval vessels,
all subject to the uncertain whims
and future of the Vichy regime,
forced him to act. The tragedy
of Mers-el Kebir, when French
fleet elements there were severely
damaged, brought about another
French renegotiation of the armi-
stice with the Germans along with
what became an undeclared state
of war between France and Great
Britain.
Darlan was largely responsible
for that tragedy because, while
he’d tried to assure Britain the
fleet would sit out the war, he
also believed Germany would
ultimately win and the French
fleet was the only bargaining chip
Vichy had to assure itself a privi-
leged place in that New Order.
The third question America
wanted answered concerned the
disposition of French colonies,
specifically those in the Carib-
bean. The island of Martinique,
436 square miles (slightly smaller
than modern New York City),
with a population of approxi-
mately 55,000 (a catastrophic
eruption of Mt. Pelee in 1902 had
destroyed the city of St. Pierre,
killing almost 30,000 people),
particularly occupied the thoughts
of US military and political lead-
ers. Previously a vital link in the
Franco-British effort to patrol
the Caribbean and South Atlan-
tic against German U-boats and
surface raiders, it had a garrison
of 8,000 (several thousand being
Senegalese from French West
Africa), and a harbor capable of
supporting a sizable fleet. Even
more importantly, it was poten-
tially capable of being a U-boat
base. It was ideally located to
interdict the shipping routes of the
Caribbean as well as threaten the
Panama Canal.
At the time of the armistice,
three major French naval ships
were in port there, the 8,000 ton
cruiser Emile Bertin, the light
cruiser and fleet training ship
Jeanne d’Arc, and the 22,000 ton
aircraft transport Bearn. (The
Bearn had been decommissioned
in 1939 as an aircraft carrier,
having become too old, small and
obsolescent for active operations.
It was based on a Normandie-
4/14/10 2:58:18 PM
 class battleship hull that had been July 1940 to November 1940 for the monitoring of the French
converted in 1927). In addition, a using HMS Trinidad (a Fiji-class ships. None of that, however,
squadron of seaplanes of Esca- cruiser) and HMS Dunedin (a precluded US contingency plan-
drille 13S were based out of Fort- Danae-class light cruiser), but ning for a potential invasion and
de-France, and 23 Curtis Hawk that did nothing to ease American occupation of Martinique.
75A-4s had also managed to concerns. The Vichy repulse of The 1st US Marine Brigade
make it to Martinique. The Bearn British and Free French forces (formerly the 5th Marine Infantry
had arrived with 106 American- at Dakar in late September 1940 Regiment (Reinforced) at Guan-
made aircraft, which were off caused further unease. The US, tanamo Bay, Cuba, before it was
loaded and essentially allowed after negotiation of the destroyer- expanded), was assigned as the
to deteriorate until mid-1942. for-bases-swap with Great Britain, initial landing force, to be fol-
(Some of those planes were Curtis stationed two squadrons of B-18 lowed by a task force drawn from
75As, along with a consignment “Bolo” bombers (combat version the US Army 1st Infantry Division,
of Brewster Buffaloes that had of the DC-2 commercial transport major elements of which were
originally been destined for the plane), the 1st and 99th Bombard- dispatched in November 1940 to
Belgian Air Force.) ment Squadrons, in Trinidad and conduct extensive amphibious
For land forces, the island Suriname, to conduct anti-subma- training in Puerto Rico. The Ma-
had one battalion of infantry rine patrols and reconnaissance of rines were supported by a squad-
at Fort-de-France (out of Fort the Vichy force at Martinique. ron of reconnaissance aircraft
Desaix, the Bataillon d’Infantrie Adm. Roberts kept the French flying out of the Virgin Islands.
Coloniale de la Martinique), two vessels in port, ameliorating Late in 1940 the plan had been
field artillery batteries and four American concerns, at least for altered to have the Marines be
coastal artillery batteries under the moment, by agreeing to main- supported by two Army infantry
the Groupe d’Artillerie Coloniale tain the status quo. A US Navy regiments. Despite the agreement
de la Martinique. A subordinate liaison group was established at Roberts had managed to obtain,
unit of battalion-size was located Fort-de-France in order to allow the Marines remained prepared to
in Guyanne (at Cayenne, the
Bataillon d’Infantrie Coloniale de
la Guyanne), and another sub-
ordinate demi-battalion of two
companies was on the nearby
island of Guadeloupe (the 1 and 2
Compagnies d’Infantrie Coloniale
de la Guadeloupe, both at St.
Claude). The Vichy commander
of Martinique, Adm. Georges
Roberts, then also locally raised a
Bataillon de Marche des Antilles.
The bulk of the ground force,
all the major naval units, and most
of the operable aircraft were lo-
cated on Martinique. In addition,
there were a number of French
merchant ships and tankers in
port at Fort-de-France, totaling
approximately 140,000 tons. The
French national gold supply had
also been transported to Marti-
nique, with Fort Desaix holding
the 286 tons in bullion.
The British maintained a loose
blockade of Martinique from
World at War 31

WaW 12 Issue.indd 31 4/14/10 2:58:19 PM

 execute the plan until 1943. Early
in 1941 the 1st Infantry Division
was designated, under plan Rain-
bow 4, as the main component
of the Martinique invasion force,
eventually to be relieved by the
newly raised and reinforced 30th
Infantry Division. On the diplo-
matic front, the US offered to buy
Martinique outright from Vichy,
but Petain demurred.
Increasing German U-boat
activity in the Caribbean during
1941, while not directly con-
nected with Martinique and the
Vichy forces there (except for a
single port visit in which a U-boat
dropped off some injured sail-
ors), increasingly led American
military and political leaders to
suspect the presence of a U-boat
base in the Caribbean, likely at
Martinique.
Then the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor, the perceived
renewed threat to the Panama
Canal and to US shipping in the
Caribbean, again brought up the
Martinique problem. A US naval
task force consisting of the USS
Wasp (CV-7), the USS Brooklyn
(CL-40), the USS Sterett (DD-
407), and the USS Wilson (DD-
408) was dispatched to re-impose
the lapsed British naval blockade.
Eventually that task force depart-
ed, replaced by the USS Juneau
(CL-52) and supplemented by
the previously mentioned aerial
observation and reconnaissance
units.
The US also reinforced its
ground units in the Caribbean, as
well as working to create pro-Al-
lied forces in the South American
countries fronting that sea. The
551st Parachute Regiment was
deployed to the Panama Canal
Zone, with its primary mission
being to train for the invasion of
Martinique. The 70th Tank Battal-
ion was designated to reinforce 1st
32 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 32
Infantry Division for operations
on Martinique. Additional US
units, composed of Puerto Ricans,
were raised in 1942, initially the
295th Infantry Regiment and the
78th Engineer Battalion, and both
were designated for the Marti-
nique invasion.
As all that was going on, the
Vichy ground, air and naval forces
on Martinique remained static,
adhering to the 1940 agreement.
While Adm. Roberts remained
pro-Vichy, the garrison and popu-
lace increasingly shifted its stance
to that of pro-Free French, with
monthly desertions to adjacent
Allied-controlled islands number-
ing between 100 and 200. Much
of the equipment of the Vichy
military forces was deteriorating,
due to poor maintenance and the
lack of spare parts, as well as the
enforced idleness imposed by
Roberts.
The Vichy Navy’s Deuxieme
Bureau did install an intelligence
intercept and monitoring station
on Martinique in February 1942.
It managed to break the naval
codes used by the US observers at
Fort-de-France, as well as monitor
US naval communications in the
Caribbean; though by their own
admission they gained little of
value. The situation remained that
way until into 1943.
The US landing in North Af-
rica and the large-scale surrender
of French forces to the Allies by
Adm. Darlan essentially ended
the possibility of any significant
military threat from Martinique
against Allied forces in the Carib-
bean. Yet the island itself still
remained Vichy under Adm. Rob-
erts. Then events on Martinique
and its adjacent dependencies
nullified all the previous military
planning and any residual Allied
worries. In March 1943 the Vichy
governor of Guyanne resigned
after Free French rallies in Cay-
enne, after which that colony de-
clared for de Gaulle. In April, de
Gaulle dispatched Gen. LeDantec
to Martinique to negotiate with
Roberts for the surrender of the
colony; however, those talks were
inconclusive.
In mid-June the mayor of Fort-
de-France, Victor Severe, placed
a Cross of Lorraine on the local
World War I memorial, calling for
public demonstrations against the
Vichy administration. On 24 June,
extensive pro-Free French demon-
strations gained the support of the
garrison troops and sailors of the
French ships, completely abolish-
ing any pretence Adm. Roberts
had that he could continue to
control the island. On 30 June, he
announced his intention to retire
and requested the US send an
emissary to arrange for the change
of administration.
On 14 July 1943, Henri Hop-
penot assumed control of the
French Antilles (Martinique,
Guadeloupe and Guyanne) for
Free France, also repossessing the
gold reserves. Roberts departed
for Vichy France via Puerto Rico.
The French cruisers and many of
the soldiers departed for opera-
tions against the Germans, and the
US put away its contingency inva-
sion plans.
—Vern Liebl
4/14/10 2:58:19 PM
 Movers & Shakers
Bill Mauldin
The way we see our wars
has changed. For a long time,
great men led faceless groups of
soldiers into battle, and we knew
who won because the colors on
the map changed. Many could reel
off the names of kings, czars and
generals, but relatively little was
known of the men in the phalanx,
the batailles, the regiments, and
the foxholes. Their wartime lives
remained largely anonymous for
centuries. Then came World War
II and Bill Mauldin.
Mauldin was unpromising as
a soldier. He was too short, too
thin, and often too much trouble,
but he made a place for himself
as the cartoonist who finally gave
names, faces and personalities to
the rank and file, paid attention to
their problems, celebrated their
victories, and fought all the way
up to the level of Gen. Patton for
his right to continue to do so. Of
course, it didn’t hurt that he had
the Supreme Allied Commander
in Europe, Gen. Dwight D. Eisen-
hower, on his side.
After being told in a face-to-
face with Patton himself, that his
satiric cartoons made US soldiers
“look like goddamn bums,” with
“…no respect for the Army, their
officers or themselves,” Mauldin
defended himself. He counter-ar-
gued that, when soldiers opened
their Stars and Stripes newspapers
and saw cartoons that expressed
how they felt about their situation,
they felt validated. Hence, those
men would be less likely to cause
problems within the ranks. His
reasoning fell on deaf ears. Patton
ordered Mauldin to “clean up his
act.”
WaW 12 Issue.indd 33
Mauldin failed to comply with When the war in Europe
Patton’s order. His Willie and Joe ended, Willie, Joe and Mauldin
cartoon characters continued to returned to the US. They didn’t
fight in Italy and France just as serve in the Pacific. A collection
grimy, unshaven and irreverent as of his cartoons in book form, also
before. Patton became even more titled Up Front, became a best
infuriated, but Ike had enough seller.
of his ranting. He sent a letter Mauldin thereafter tried his
throughout the European Theater hand at several careers. Celeb-
of Operations stating: “Officers rity and left-wing politics ruined
are NOT to interfere in such his marriage and damaged his
things as Mauldin’s cartoons… public standing. He was lured
and other controversial materials by postwar Hollywood, appear-
published in the army newspa- ing in John Houston’s brilliant
per.” adaptation of The Red Badge of
Mauldin had originally created Courage. There were attempts to
Willie and Joe in 1940 for the 45th create movie versions of Willie
Division News. By 1943 his work and Joe, but none got beyond the
had become a regular feature discussion stage, at least not at
in the Mediterranean edition of first. In the fall of 1951, depressed
Stars and Stripes. In 1944 his and concerned about providing
creations were syndicated nation- for his new family, he was offered
ally by United Feature Service a job by Reader’s Digest and
as Up Front, which increased his
readership to include American
civilians. Mauldin won his first
Pulitzer for cartooning in 1945.
Willie even made the cover of
Time magazine.
Bill Mauldin always called
things as he saw them, and he
saw far more than the top of his
desk on the 4th floor of the IL
Messagero building in Rome. He
earned a Purple Heart at Cassino,
when he was spending time with
K Company, his officially desig-
nated unit. In December 1943 he
was sketching at the front when
he was hit in the shoulder by a
fragment from a German mortar
round: “My only damage was a
ringing in my ears and a fragment
in my shoulder. It burned like
a fury, but was very small. The
wound hardly bled.”
Bill Mauldin in 1945.
World at War 33
4/14/10 2:58:20 PM
 Colliers. They were willing to pay
for rights to Mauldin’s dispatches
from the Korean War; however,
Willie and Joe didn’t reenlist:
Mauldin simply wrote straight
new dispatches.
Two movies were eventually
made based on his characters: Up
Front in 1951, and Back at the
Front the next year. The latter,
bizarrely enough, takes place in
Tokyo and involves a spy plot
during the Korean War.
When he returned from Korea,
Mauldin wrote an unsuccess-
ful novel, a few screenplays for
movies and television, and ran for
Congress, all with little success.
One day, however, he was talking
with an old friend, Walt Kelly of
Pogo fame. They were discussing
the retirement of Daniel Fitz-
patrick, a then-famous editorial
Technology Backdate
British Funny Tanks
The British saw the need for
a number of specialized tanks
before and after their disaster at
Dieppe in 1942. After the bitter
experience of battering them-
selves against German coastal
defenses, several needs were iden-
tified. Troops and vehicles were
bogged down on the soft sand of
the beaches, vehicles and landing
craft were stuck behind belts of
obstacles, and the beach defenses
themselves, consisting of forti-
fications, mines, wire, and other
obstacles, needed to be rapidly
dealt with to prevent disaster. Fur-
ther, the British were aware of the
German doctrine calling for rapid
counterattack, and they wanted
to meet any such counterstrokes
safely inland rather than while
stuck in the middle of a mined
and obstacle-strewn beach.
34 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 34
cartoonist of Joseph Pulitzer Jr.’s
St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Boy,
would I love to have that job,”
Bill exclaimed.
It took several months, but
Mauldin finally phoned Fitz-
patrick, and the rest is literally
history. Within six months he’d
drawn a cartoon that was to win
him a second Pulitzer. He then
began to work for the Chicago
Sun-Times, where his cartoons
took his readers through the Cold
War, the fight for Civil Rights,
the war in Vietnam and the era of
protest and change of the 1960s.
He worked until 1990 for the Sun,
and then did a brief tour of duty
with newsman Sam Donaldson in
the Gulf War.
After retirement he spoke to
veterans’ organizations all over
the US, but became increasingly
The result was “Hobart’s Fun-
nies,” a collection of specialized
engineering tanks from the mind
of engineer Percy Hobart. Both
Eisenhower and Montgomery
saw the tanks in a demonstration
prior to D-Day. Monty wanted
them all, and so was born the 79th
Armored Division. Eisenhower
also wanted them, especially the
DD Shermans. It’s sometimes
reported Ike didn’t really like the
funny tanks, and so didn’t acquire
many of them for US forces. The
actual story, however, was the
British could barely supply their
own army with the menagerie of
weird armor, and simply didn’t
have the capacity to provide for
the Americans. American industry
had thus only built a few compa-
nies of DD Shermans for the US
Army by D-Day.
depressed to find Willie and Joe
were all anyone cared to remem-
ber about him. As cartoon sol-
diers, Willie and Joe have indeed
been involved in every American
conflict since World War II, either
by Mauldin’s pen or those of oth-
ers. Any internet search will turn
up Willies and Joes in Korea, Viet
Nam, Iraq, and anywhere else
military men and women have
served the US.
Mauldin died in 2003, a victim
of Alzheimer’s. His tragedy is he
never seemed to have understood
just how important the images he
created in World War II were to
the soldiers who viewed them,
and how he changed the way
those soldiers were viewed back
home. He altered forever the way
America looks at war and at its
warriors.
—Meg Thompson
Common Funnies
Churchill AVRE. This was a
Churchill tank modified to
pound German defenses. It
had its main gun replaced by a
290mm Petard Spigot mortar.
What the mortar lacked in
range it made up for in power,
throwing a 40 lb. explosive
charge attached to a 28 lb. high
explosive warhead.
Crocodile. Another Churchill
variant, this one with a flame
thrower mounted in place
of the hull machinegun. The
fuel for the flamethrower was
carried in an armored trailer
towed behind the tank (for
the obvious safety reasons).
The flamethrower had a range
of 120 yards, far more than a
man-portable weapon of that
type, and proved far more
4/14/10 2:58:21 PM
 survivable as well.
Crab. This was a Sherman variant
modified to carry a mine flail,
basically a rotating cylinder
with weighted chains that
struck the ground in front of
the tank to explode mines.
While slow – they were only
able to move at about 2.5 miles
per hour while flailing – they
provided a mine clearing
technique that was much faster
than lifting them out by hand,
and they performed excellent
service during beach assaults.
DD Tank. This well known vari-
ant of the Sherman was an
amphibious tank, with flotation
for its 30+ tons provided by a
canvas skirt extended around
the body of the vehicle. The
“DD” stands for “Duplex
Drive,” as the tank had two
propellers mounted on the
back for use in water. Once it
grounded, it would switch to
using tracks. The DD Sher-
mans were supposed to be on
hand to give tank support to
the first wave of infantry on
the beach on D-Day. Never
very seaworthy, they had
mixed results, and many of
them launched into rough seas
off Omaha Beach promptly
sank.
Lesser Known Funnies
Double Onion & Carrot. These
Churchill variants mounted
one or two large demolition
charges on a metal frame
outside the tank. The charges
could be placed against an
obstacle or fortification and
then detonated once the tank
backed away. Much safer than
delivering such goods by hand,
the tank could rapidly place
much larger charges than engi-
neer on foot.
WaW 12 Issue.indd 35
ARC. This was a Churchill vehicles wouldn’t bog in soft
tank with its turret removed, sand or mud. Basically, it car-
becoming an Armored Ramp ried a portable corduroy road
Carrier. It had extendable that could be laid down from
ramps on each end so other the waterline across the soft
vehicles could drive up the sand of the beach. The road
ramps, across the tank, and could also be laid across wire
down the other side, thus obstacles to enable infantry to
crossing or scaling an obstacle. cross rapidly. Tanks are good
Not an extendable bridge, the at clearing wire by themselves,
tank was actually part of the but concertina wire tends to
ramp, with the hull of the tank whip back and partly refill the
part of the roadway. The ramp breach once the tank is past.
could hold 60 tons, and had
a deployed length of 28 feet. —David Newport
Later versions extended the
ramp length to 47 feet, and
later to 54 feet. A variant of
the ARC carried a small box
girder bridge mounted on it,
allowing it to deploy a light-
weight 30 foot bridge in less
than a minute.
BARV. This Sherman variant was
a Beach Armored Recovery
vehicle. Waterproofed BARV
could drag other broken
vehicles out of up to nine
feet of water, thus clearing
them out of the narrow lanes Churchill tank.
that had presumably been
blown through German beach
obstacles. Once the obstacles
and the lanes through them
were covered by the tide, the
remaining obstacles became
unclearable until the tide
receded; so existing lanes were
crucial for the delivery of more
men and material. A destroyed
or broken down vehicle or
small craft in such a lane Double Onion tank.
would otherwise cause it to be
blocked until the tide receded.
The BARV was the solution to Attention readers: We’re always look-
ing for authors for FYI for Strategy &
keep the beach open and the
Tactics and Observation Post for World
lanes cleared.
at War. If you’d like to try your hand
Bobbin or Carpet Obstacle at writing short (under 2,000 words),
Crosser. This Churchill vari- pithy articles for this column, on virtu-
ant was intended to lay down ally any aspect of WWII military his-
a reel of 10 foot wide steel- tory, contact Ty Bomba, FYI editor, at:
reinforced canvas so wheeled WhiteRook@att.net.
World at War 35
4/14/10 2:58:21 PM
 Battle for the Mediterranean:
Cape Matapan, March 1941
By David R. Higgins
Mussolini brought Italy into the war in support of
Germany on 11 June 1940, and that, along with the
French capitulation, created a challenge to the Royal
Navy’s position in the Mediterranean. The British had
to ensure the newly neutral French Navy wouldn’t fall
into German hands and, even more importantly, that the
Italian Navy (Regia Marina) was defeated. Otherwise,
shipping would have to be rerouted from the Gibraltar-
Suez Canal route to the much longer one around the
Cape of Good Hope. Consequently, a naval struggle
for control of the Mediterranean was set in motion.
The British placed control of the Western Mediter-
ranean theater of operations under Vice Adm. Sir James
Sommerville, commander of Force H, which based out
of Gibraltar. Meanwhile, naval units at Malta withdrew
to Alexandria, which was more easily defended against
Axis air and naval raids. From that Egyptian port,
Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean Fleet, Adm. Sir
Andrew B. Cunningham, strained his resources to retain
communications with Malta, due to its importance as
both a logistical hub and a base for attacks against Axis
shipping. On the other side, the British supply convoys
crossing the Mediterranean were viewed as potentially
easy targets by the Italian Navy high command, which
immediately began a campaign of interdiction.
36 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 36
Cunningham was concerned the Royal Navy in the
Mediterranean was unequal to the task of defeating the
Regia Marina’s 15-inch gun-armed battleships, Littorio
and Vittorio Veneto. He therefore requested, and was
given, the modernized battleship Valiant, sister ship to
Warspite. The converted anti-aircraft cruisers Calcutta
and Coventry were also sent, as was the aircraft carrier
Illustrious, to give badly needed air cover. Illustrious
and Valiant were equipped with radar, which went a
long way toward setting the Anglo-Italian technological
balance in favor of the British.
On 11 November 1940, a Royal Navy task force built
around the Illustrious maneuvered to within 170 miles
of the Italian naval base at Taranto. Illustrious launched
21 Swordfish torpedo planes against the Italian group-
ing of six battleships and support craft at anchor there.
This first-ever carrier-based attack against capital ships
completely surprised the Italians. The battleship Conte
di Cavour was sunk by torpedoes, while the Littorio and
Caio Duilio were disabled. The Illustrious and its escorts
withdrew safely. Their morale shaken, the Italian high
command (Supermarina) ordered all its major surface
units to withdraw to more distant and safer waters. The
growing Italian fuel shortage also contributed to that
4/14/10 2:58:23 PM
 decision while also generating a reluctance to initiate a
direct fight with the Royal Navy. The Italian indecision
gave the British the time and opportunity to solidify
their position.
The German Air Inspector General, Field Marshal
Erhard Milch, traveled to Italy in December 1940
to arrange Luftwaffe support for the Mediterranean
theater. Among other things, the Germans transferred
their X Fliegerkorps to Sicily to bolster the Italian Air
Force (Regia Aeronautica). The X Fliegerkorps was
the Luftwaffe’s special anti-shipping formation, with
experience in attacking Allied shipping in the North
Sea. Nicknamed CAT for Corpo Aereo Tedesco (“Ger-
man Aircraft Formation” in Italian), the Fliegerkorps
was also responsible for supporting the deployment of
Rommel’s Afrikakorps to North Africa and neutralizing
the British base at Malta.
One reason the Germans had to be called in was the
Regia Aeronautica lacked maritime combat experience
while the Regia Marina was without aircraft carriers and
night fighting capabilities—all crucial shortcomings in
an aero-naval war. The commitment of the Fliegerkorps
was intended to right that overall imbalance of combat
power, and that it did. Still, the Fliegerkorps was without
authority over torpedo planes, which instead were kept
under Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering’s direct control.
That served to unnecessarily complicate command when
it came to coordinating air and naval operations.
As 1941 opened, British intelligence had been
informed about the Luftwaffe sending air units to the
Mediterranean via the ULTRA cryptanalysis program.
Even so, they were surprised by the rapidity of the Ger-
man reinforcement. On 10 January the British realized
they were facing an entirely new enemy, as German
Ju-88s and -87s relentlessly bombarded Illustrious,
Warspite and Valiant while those ships were on patrol.
The battleships received only superficial damage, but
Illustrious was crippled by six direct bomb hits and had
to limp into Malta before sailing to the US for permanent
repair. Without a carrier, Cunningham’s plans for of-
fensive operations were suddenly out of the question.
Axis Plans
The pace of naval activity was picking up. Convoys
on both sides repeatedly crossed paths as the Germans
supplied the Afrikakorps via Tripoli and the British
reinforced their positions in Greece and Malta. Con-
cerned but undeterred, Cunningham accepted the risky
mission of convoy security and waited for Illustrious’s
replacement, the carrier Formidable, which arrived on
16 March 1941. To compound the admiral’s problems,
Winston Churchill, who was also Britain’s First Sea
Lord, had to keep in mind the Mediterranean was sec-
ondary in importance to the Atlantic, which resulted in
Cunningham’s resources remaining limited.
On 15 March the Commander-in-Chief of the Italian
Fleet, Adm. Angelo Iachino, arrived in Rome to discuss
WaW 12 Issue.indd 37
new plans for disrupting British convoys sailing to
Greece. He wanted to regain the prestige lost at Taranto,
as well as find ways to keep the Germans happy, since
they were pressuring the Italians to go over to the of-
fensive at sea. Iachino decided to create a task force
built around his operational battleships supported by
cruisers and destroyers. Its mission would be to sweep
the waters north and south of Crete, destroying British
shipping and naval forces. Fliegerkorps X and the Regia
Aeronautica would—in theory—provide air cover and
reconnaissance.
Supermarina was aware of the three British battle-
ships based at Alexandria, but they continued with
planning the raid anyway. Canceling the operation
would’ve been detrimental to morale, as several previ-
ous naval sorties had been aborted at the last minute,
and the Italians felt they needed a victory. D-Day was
set for 28 March.
Shortly before the Italian fleet sailed, the Regia
Marina’s Chief of Staff, Adm. Arturo Riccardi, received
information that all British convoys between Greece and
North Africa had suddenly stopped. That included the
specifically targeted AG.9 force then moving from Alex-
andria to Piraeus, as well as GA.9, which was traveling
from Piraeus back to Alexandria. With that sudden and
unexpected change, the plan’s focus shifted from convoy
attack to direct engagement with the combat units of the
Royal Navy. In turn, that meant shifting the northern
arm of the Italian sweep of Crete toward the south in
order to concentrate against the British warships.
Iachino had meanwhile grown skeptical of the air
support promised him. Luftwaffe support in the recent
past had proved to be poorly coordinated with Italian
Allied Intelligence
British forces in the Mediterranean had two advantages
in the intelligence war. First, doctrine stressed the use of the
air arm for reconnaissance. With Britain’s large surface fleet,
and corresponding naval-air element, aerial reconnaissance
quickly became a major component in achieving success in
the Mediterranean. Second, signals intelligence (SIGINT)
was another critical component. By March 1941, the British
Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park was
deciphering both Luftwaffe and Regia Marina Enigma codes
under the aegis of its now famous ULTRA program. That was
only somewhat offset by Axis successes against equivalent
British ciphers in use in the Mediterranean.
The British disguised the source of their SIGINT informa-
tion by sending in reconnaissance aircraft prior to attacks on
convoys in order to make it appear as if aerial recon had found
them. For all its benefits, much of the information gleaned
from ULTRA was low-grade, and it was never enough to
generate a complete picture. It was best used in conjunction
with other intelligence techniques. Protection of its top-secret
source also meant the distribution of ULTRA intelligence
was slow and often, by the time it reached the most relevant
commanders, it was out of date.
World at War 37
4/14/10 2:58:23 PM
 naval operations, while the Regia Marina itself could
only put up a few ship-launched recon planes. Nonethe-
less, he boarded his new 35,000-ton flagship Vittorio
Veneto and departed Naples on 26 March. Supporting the
battleships were the 3rd (heavy cruisers Trieste, Trento
and Bolzano), 8th (light cruisers Garibaldi and Abruzzi),
and 1st Squadrons (heavy cruisers Zara, Pola, and Fiume)
from Messina, Brindisi and Taranto, respectively, along
with 13 destroyers.
Approach
The Regia Aeronautica increased its reconnaissance
patrols southwest of Greece and Crete, but found noth-
ing unusual. At 12:25 p.m. on the 27th, Trieste informed
Iachino that a patrolling British Sunderland aircraft
had spotted Vice Adm. Luigi Sansonetti’s 3rd Cruiser
Squadron. Soon after, accurate and timely cryptanalysis
conducted aboard Vittorio Veneto deciphered the enemy
plane’s transmission, and the Italian admiral was pleased
to hear that only three Italian cruisers and a destroyer
have been detected by the British. Later that afternoon
a report from one of the daily Regia Aeronautica flights
over Alexandria reported three battleships, two aircraft
carriers and several cruisers still in port. The Italians
therefore continued to believe the Royal Navy would
remain inactive for the foreseeable future. Force C’s escorting destroyers, left Alexandria in search
On the British side, Cunningham remained unsure of the unsuspecting Regia Marina force. While exiting
about the developing situation, despite several ULTRA the darkened port, Warspite steamed into a mud bank
intercepts and the sighting by the Sunderland, because that clogged its condensers and forced her out of the
he doubted the Italians were at all willing to make a main formation (which actually worked later to further
show of force. Not wanting any British convoys to be confuse Italian aerial reconnaissance).
taken by surprise, though, he set about mobilizing his air Whereas Cunningham’s orders were carried out
and naval forces for rapid deployment while also trying almost immediately, Iachino needed to go through a
to keep the Axis in the dark as to those preparations. line of communications running from Supermarina
He sent orders to Force B, under Vice Admiral Land to the Italian Air Force High Command (Superaereo),
Forces (VALF) H.D. Pridham-Wippell, directing him to and then back down to the local air units. That delay
sail his patrolling 7th Cruiser Squadron of Orion, Ajax, increased his ignorance of the evolving situation, when
Perth, Gloucester and two destroyers from the Aegean Italian reconnaissance failed to fly over Alexandria the
to a position 30 miles southwest of Crete, near Guado following day, which otherwise would’ve revealed the
Island. sudden absence of the British ships.
Enroute, the Suda Bay destroyers Hereward and After an overcast and uneventful night, the Zara
Vendetta would join with Cunningham’s force, includ- and flanking Trieste cruiser groups were some 60 miles
ing Force C (Nubian, Mohawk, Havock, Hotspur and south of Crete, moving southeast at 23 knots. With Vit-
Greyhound) at 6:30 a.m. on the 28th. Juno, Jaguar and torio Veneto 10 miles to the rear-starboard at 6:00 a.m.,
Defender remained in reserve in the Kythera Channel, Iachino sent up one of the flagship’s reconnaissance
while patrolling submarines Rover and Triumph, along planes to scout ahead. If the search found nothing within
with miscellaneous Greek units, provided support. Thirty an hour, the operation was to have been called off and
Blenheim bombers from Squadrons 84, 113 and 221 were the Italian ships returned to their bases. Handicapped
readied in Greece, with the RAF also providing aerial by an inability to be recovered at sea, the recon plane
reconnaissance in the south Ionian Sea. That plan was needed to continue to land at Leros, but at 6:43 a.m.
then broadened when Cunningham received an ULTRA Pridham-Whippell’s force was spotted 50 miles ahead of
message early on 27 March confirming sizeable Italian Vittorio Veneto, and the British ships were also heading
naval forces were at sea. The three battleships and the southeast at 18 knots. Seizing the opportunity, Iachino
aircraft carrier in Alexandria would now be utilized. increased his fleet’s speed to 30 knots and attempted to
The destroyers of Force C (Jervis, Janus, Stuart and close.
Griffin) would act as the battle fleet’s forward screen.
Pridham-Whippell’s force had arrived at the Guado
At 7:00 p.m. the battleships Warspite, Barham and Island rendezvous point, but Cunningham’s battle fleet
Valiant, along with the armored carrier Formidable and
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WaW 12 Issue.indd 38 4/14/10 2:58:26 PM

 was still 150 miles away. When the Italian plane was
spotted at 6:45 a.m., Pridham-Whippell changed course
southward, away from the suspected Italian force, while
increasing speed to 20 knots. Thirty minutes earlier,
Formidable had sent up a reconnaissance flight of five
Albacores, a TSR for antisubmarine patrol, and two
Fulmars for fighter support.
At 7:20 a.m., Albacore 5B reported an enemy sighting
of four cruisers and four destroyers heading south; that
was soon followed by an additional transmission from
Albacore 5F detailing a second force of four cruisers
and six destroyers. Considering the variables of wind,
visibility and potential pilot error, it remained unclear
if those two reports were of the same enemy force or if
it was simply Pridham-Whippell’s destroyers.
Orion’s lookouts soon sighted smoke from Sanson-
etti’s cruiser group (which the British called “Force
X”), bearing down on them from 18 miles to the north.
Pridham-Whippell’s cruisers, out-gunned by the faster
and more powerful Trieste, Trento and Bolzano and
their escorting destroyers Corazziere, Carabiniere,
and Ascari, altered course again and sped to join Cun-
ningham some 100 miles to the southeast. Unknown
to Pridham-Whippell, the cruisers Zara, Fiume, Pola,
Garibaldi, and Abruzzi and their escorting destroyers
Gioberti, Alfieri, Oriani, Carducci, De Recco and Pes-
sagno (the British termed it “Force Z,” under Vice
Adm. Cattaneo), were approaching from the north to
cut him off. To the west the still undiscovered Vittorio
Veneto and its screen of four destroyers sped to support
the forming trap, as it seemed the British were trying to
withdraw to Alexandria.
WaW 12 Issue.indd 39
Air-Naval Coordination
In the years leading up to the Second World War, both
Germany and Italy struggled with the issue of whether their
navy or air force would control naval aviation. In both cases
a unified air force was established as an independent service,
which left both nations’ fleets to contend with outdated equip-
ment and inter-service rivalry when it came to their own air
services. That situation carried over into the war and, making
things even worse, both the Italians and Germans tended to
plan and fight their own aero-naval efforts against the Allies.
Germany was reluctant to divert technology and support to the
Italians who, in turn, felt the Mediterranean was properly their
domain and resented outside interference.
The Regia Aeronautica mistakenly concentrated its lim-
ited resources on the creation of a high-altitude bomber force
intended to target civilian and military infrastructures. Anti-
shipping aircraft weren’t much of a priority despite Italy’s
position in the center of the Mediterranean. When the need for
anti-shipping capabilities became evident, the Italians had to
call in the Germans, who committed the X Fliegerkorps to the
Mediterranean. There was, however, a persistent lack of radio
communication between German aircraft and Italian ships.
That required pilots to get their orders before take-off, meaning
it was slow and difficult to coordinate operations once units
were in the air. Similarly, it took until August 1941 before the
Regia Marina and the Regia Aeronautica developed common
communication procedures.
World at War 39
4/14/10 2:58:28 PM
 Trieste opened fire on the straggling Gloucester as
it dealt with engine trouble from the previous night, but
neither ship achieved any hits, and the British vessel was
soon ordered to break off and return to Alexandria.
Believing Cunningham’s fleet of battleships and
carriers was still in Alexandria, but suspicious of Prid-
ham-Whippell’s seeming retreat, Iachino ordered Forces
X and Z to turn about and head west. At 8:55 a.m. the
two Italian cruiser groups turned toward the Italian
flagship’s location, roughly 10 miles distant, and broke
contact with the British. Pridham-Whippell, still ignorant
of the Vittorio Veneto’s proximity, then turned west to
shadow the withdrawing enemy. Cunningham’s battle
group continued on its path at maximum speed, having
lessened the gap to 70 miles, but Warspite’s condenser
problem and Barham’s age slowed the pace. Valiant
was ordered ahead along with the destroyers Nubian
and Mohawk.
Both sides remained unsure about the other’s force
composition, but air recon, especially from carrier-born
aircraft, began to favor the Royal Navy. At 9:17 a.m.,
Gloucester’s seaplane came across Force Z shortly after
those ships had made their turn toward Vittorio Veneto,
but that vital information went no farther than the plane’s
40 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 40
parent ship due to transmission issues. Formidable’s
Albacores fared better, making an accurate report of
Force X and Force Z, but because one message referred
to “three Italian battleships,” Pridham-Whippell be-
lieved the hour-old information mistakenly referred to
his own force and he therefore deemed it “manifestly
incorrect.”
With the launching of carrier-based attack aircraft
always ultimately coming down to a matter of timing and
good guesswork, Cunningham gave the order to send a
torpedo plane strike force from Formidable. Under the
command of Lt. Commander Gerald Saunt, six Albacores
of 826 Squadron, an observation Swordfish, and two
Fulmars for fighter escort, launched at 9:56 a.m. Iachino,
still sightless due to his lack of promised Luftwaffe and
Regia Aeronautica support, and skeptical of the lim-
ited capabilities of Italian ship-borne reconnaissance,
disregarded a spotter plane’s report detailing the close
presence of Cunningham’s battle fleet. Believing that
message to be reporting his own force, he turned Force
Y’s Vittorio Veneto and accompanying destroyers east
to position himself on Pridham-Whippell’s front-right.
He hoped that Forces X and Z would snare the British
in a trap if they doubled back to the east.
4/14/10 2:58:29 PM
 Pridham-Whippell was continuing to move toward
the ambush when, at 10:45 a.m., Formidable’s Albacores
appeared overhead. Mistakenly understanding a recent
message from Cunningham stating “a torpedo striking
force was on the way” to be a warning and not a mes-
sage of support, the British destroyer force fired on the
friendly planes, fortunately missing all of them.
Clash
At 10:58 a.m. a lookout on the Orion sounded the
alarm as Vittorio Veneto was sighted 16 miles to the north.
A previously confident Pridham-Whippell quickly gave
the order to turn around and lay a smokescreen to cover
his second withdrawal. With his position increasingly
precarious, Saunt’s six Albacores split into two groups
Across the med: Convoy sails.
and initiated an unsuccessful torpedo run against Vit-
torio Veneto. Under air attack, with a low fuel reserve
and no enemy convoys sighted, Iachino then decided Italian Command Control
to break contact with Pridham-Whippell and turn his Supermarina, the Italian naval high command, suffered
entire force back toward Italy. from several handicaps. Foremost among them was the fact
Owing to the lengthy process of launching carrier- Mussolini throughout the war retained his self-appointed po-
borne aircraft from the Formidable, the prospect of the sitions as Minister of War, the Navy, and the Air Force and,
Royal Navy keeping up with Iachino’s swifter ships was in his role as Il Duce, was also the final arbiter of all military
unlikely. The carrier was therefore left with two destroyer policy. He did create a Supreme General Staff, but he gave it
escorts, while the remaining British ships continued few powers beyond the production of general plan outlines.
the chase. Formidable sent up its second strike force at Operational power was given to the chiefs of staff of the re-
12:22 p.m., under Lt. Commander Dalyell-Stead. While spective services, and each of them generally planned their
attempting to rejoin the main battle fleet, Formidable was own approaches to the war without any coordination among
attacked by two Italian SM79 bombers, which achieved them.
nothing beyond further separating the carrier from the Mussolini and the Supermarina also involved themselves
main British fleet owing to its evasive maneuvering. The in day-to-day tactical decisions, much to the frustration of the
Formidable then headed west to rejoin Cunningham, and commanders at sea. Under that overly centralized command
for the rest of the day a favorable west wind allowed it structure, front line commanders were allowed little initiative
to launch its planes while on the move. and were reluctant to do more than wait for orders. A top-down
Shortly after 3:10 p.m., three Albacores from 829 focus on preserving the valuable capital ships, coupled with
Squadron attacked Vittorio Veneto. The lead plane closed Italy’s small industrial base that couldn’t quickly replace
to within 1,000 feet before releasing a torpedo that losses, pressured Italian ship commanders to refrain from
struck the ship’s stern and forced it to stop for repairs. committing to battle. When combat at sea did occur, as with
Cunningham, still uncertain about the exact position and Iachino’s early confrontations against weaker British forces,
degree of damage to the Italian ships, ordered Pridham- it resulted in failures to capitalize on potential successes.
Whippell to press forward. With night just two hours
off, the British prepared another aerial attack.
Around 5:00 p.m., Iachino received a German
reconnaissance plane’s report describing a westbound
enemy light cruiser group in the Kythera Channel.
Not realizing they were a scouting force sent by Cun-
ningham, Iachino assumed those ships were a threat to
his withdrawal; he therefore ordered his 6th Destroyer
Flotilla and 8th Cruiser Division to block that enemy
force before heading back to Brindisi. As a precaution,
1st and 3rd Cruiser Divisions were ordered to form up
into five columns around the stricken Vittorio Veneto.
At 5:35 p.m., six Albacores of 826 Squadron and
two Swordfish from 829 Squadron took off from For-
midable for the day’s third and final aerial attack, as two
more Maleme-based Swordfish of 815 Squadron added
their support. Warspite soon also catapult-launched one
of its Swordfish, and within the hour its pilot spotted Veneto sails from the battle area.
World at War 41

WaW 12 Issue.indd 41 4/14/10 2:58:30 PM

 Vittorio Veneto and its escorts. At 6:10 p.m., the
two Swordfish from Maleme also reported an
enemy force of four cruisers and six destroyers;
however, as those planes loitered off the Italians’
stern, they were spotted and surprise was lost.
Thirty minutes later, Saunt’s strike force arrived
and the Swordfish of 815 Squadron pulled back
to continue their observation. Believing Formi-
dable’s air strikes had slowed the withdrawing
Italian fleet enough to allow surface contact,
Cunningham prepared for a night battle.
With information from Supermarina telling
him the nearest enemy naval units were 170 miles
away, Iachino believed the greatest threat that
night would be from another air attack or pos-
sibly from a torpedo run by destroyers. By 7:15
p.m. that first concern became a reality when the
six Albacores of 826 Squadron, two Swordfish
of 829 Squadron, and the two others from 815
Squadron, formed for a strike at dusk.
Ten minutes later the rearmost Italian destroyer,
Alpino, reported those planes’ presence, and
the nearby Italian ships opened up with poorly
aimed anti-aircraft fire that only resulted in
some friendly-fire damage. Still, a combination
of blinding searchlights and smoke forced the
torpedo bombers to make haphazard runs, and
only Pola was struck before the attack ceased.
As the British planes flew off, Formidable
radioed that it might soon be involved in a sur-
face action and, with nightfall approaching, the
returning aircraft were to instead land at Suda
Bay or Maleme.
Pola, with three sections of its hull flooded and
electric power failing, stopped dead in the water
as the rest of the Italian fleet unknowingly passed
on. Just over 10 miles to the rear, Pridham-Whippell
charged ahead at 30 knots as his destroyers fanned out
in a seven-mile search line.
Cunningham didn’t have a complete picture of the
situation and theorized Iachino was by now aware of
his battle fleet. Even so, he continued the pursuit. The
risk of land-based Axis aircraft catching the British at
sea was to be disregarded: an opportunity to strike the
Italian fleet might not present itself again. At 8:15 p.m.
Orion picked up a radar signal from a large unknown ship
some six miles ahead. Deciding the unknown contact
was a stopped battleship, Pridham-Whippell opted to
pass his force around the vessel’s north side and continue
the pursuit against the primary target. He reasoned that,
if the ship were the crippled Vittorio Veneto, he could
deal with it later; if not, time wouldn’t be wasted that
could better be used in the pursuit.
Thinking his ships had emerged unscathed from
Formidable’s attack, Iachino was shocked to hear Pola’s
request for assistance. Italian intelligence claimed the
Veneto fires its big guns. enemy’s flagship was 70 miles to the southeast when it
42 #12

WaW 12 Issue.indd 42 4/14/10 2:58:31 PM

 was actually only 55 miles away, thereby causing him to
think he had more time than he did. At 9:00 p.m., Iachino
ordered Zara, Fiume and four destroyers of Cattaneo’s
1st Division to turn back to tow the immobilized ship,
while Vittorio Veneto and the 3rd Division continued
west toward Cape Colonne. Still believing only two
enemy destroyers were nearby, Iachino felt the relief
force was sufficient to deal with any enemy action. If a
more powerful enemy force was discovered, doctrine
dictated Pola would be abandoned.
At 9:55 p.m., Ajax’s radar picked up Zara, Fiume
and the four destroyers of the 1st Division. Pridham-
Whippell incorrectly interpreted those contacts as “three
unknown ships,” but they were actually a misreporting
of D14 (14th Destroyer Flotilla, commanded by Capt.
Philip Mack). Mack’s destroyers remained on course,
since he believed the crippled Vittorio Veneto was just
ahead and traveling at 13 knots. In reality, the Italian
fleet, including Vittorio Veneto, was nearly 30 miles
northwest of Mack’s position and moving toward home
at 19 knots. Iachino’s course alteration following the
third air attack further hampered British attempts to
accurately locate the main Italian fleet.
WaW 12 Issue.indd 43
With nighttime reconnaissance inherently difficult,
and not wanting to interfere with Mack’s operation, Prid-
ham-Whippell directed his cruisers several miles north
and inadvertently away from the chase. At 10:20 p.m.,
Valiant made its second report about the unidentified
inbound ships 4.5 miles ahead. Cunningham, believing
that contact to actually be Vittorio Veneto, altered course
to engage. British naval training would soon be tested
in what would be the first instance of a battle fleet at-
tacking an unknown enemy naval force at night. The
location was off of the Peloponnesian peninsula’s Cape
Matapan.
Night Action
At 10:23 p.m., Stuart sighted the eastbound Italian
ships moving to aid Pola and sounded the alarm. For-
midable turned north, away from the coming fight. Two
minutes later, Cunningham saw the silhouette of Zara
and Fiume and fine-tuned his position to run parallel,
but against the inbound Italian 1st Cruiser Division and
9th Destroyer Flotilla some 3,800 yards off. Greyhound’s
searchlight illuminated Fiume, and Cunningham ordered
his battleships to fire a simultaneous broadside. Warspite,
Valiant and Barham opened up at nearly pointblank
World at War 43
4/14/10 2:58:32 PM

British & Italian Night Combat Capabilities
The Royal Navy had long been the dominant force defending
Britain. After World War I, however, maintaining a large blue
water fleet came to be considered cost-prohibitive, owing to the
expense and resources that went into building modern warships.
That situation was further exacerbated by the economic crisis of
the Great Depression. Consequently, efforts were made to maintain
naval superiority through the use of new tactics, weapons and
technologies. Submarines and aircraft, despite skepticism from
the battleship admirals, were built to provide additional dimen-
sions to naval warfare.
In regard to new technologies, radio direction finding (RDF)—
which had been in some use since the 1920s by the British, French,
German and US Navies—was improved and further applied to
the detection of enemy vessels and enhanced fire control. In the
1930s the Royal Navy exploited improved RDF—later renamed
“Radar” for “radio detection and ranging”—to develop new tactics.
Radar soon came to be applied in night fighting to the point its
use in that way became part of official Royal Navy doctrine.
During Cape Matapan, only a few of the Royal Navy’s ships
were radar-equipped. The Illustrious, Valiant and Ajax possessed
the Type 279 broad-beamed radar that could detect aircraft out to
50 miles, while Orion was fitted with the Type 286, which was
designed to track small ships. Radar sweeps were performed no
more than once every five minutes in order to reduce the chances
for the Italians to detect themselves being monitored.
The Royal Navy’s centuries-old practice of allowing subor-
dinate commanders to exercise a great degree of independent
tactical control, thereby making individual ship actions more
efficient, also facilitated their night-fighting prowess in relation
to that of the Italians.
Many Italian commanders understood the potential of radar,
but the senior military and political leadership deemed its use
too costly and of limited value. Prototype sets, such as the EC1
through EC3, showed promise with their ability to track ships up
to eight miles distant, but the high command remained unmoved.
While Regia Marina standards of conventional daylight training
and experience were good, funding was poor and little was done to
modernize ships during their service life. Radar therefore wasn’t
brought into general use by the Italian Navy until mid-1942. At the
same time, doctrine and training for night combat was virtually
non-existent prior to Matapan. Only small ships such as torpedo
boats were permitted such maneuvers.
In sum then, poor radio communications, limited fuel reserves,
deficient technologies, and a rigid shore-based chain-of-command
forced the Regia Marina into a defensive mentality that often
placed otherwise fine warships into bad situations.
44 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 44
range with 15-inch gun volleys. The Italians, untrained
for night combat, were taken by surprise.
Moving out of the friendly-fire path, Griffin inadver-
tently moved into Greyhound’s searchlight just as the
battleship’s big guns erupted; it narrowly avoided being
hit. Havock, neglecting to turn on its firing lights, was
also nearly sunk by Warspite, but emerged unharmed.
Meanwhile the Oriani, Carducci and Gioberti turned
toward the British battleships, and each fired one torpedo
plus some gunfire before withdrawing through the smoke
and chaos. British destroyers pursued.
Fearing a torpedo attack, Cunningham made an
emergency 90 degree starboard turn with his three
battleships, away from any immediate harm even while
his ships were inflicting damage on the Italians. Alfieri
was struck by two salvos from Barham, while Zara
received four broadsides from Warspite and five from
Valiant. Fiume fared little better, with two broadsides
from Warspite and one from Valiant. In little more than
three minutes, the Italian 1st Division was in shambles
and Stuart, Havock, Greyhound and Griffin were ordered
to mop up.
At 10:40 p.m., Stuart and Havock spotted what
appeared to be Zara and Fiume burning and wrecked.
Moving to attack, Stuart fired eight torpedoes and
achieved at least one hit on Zara before nearly colliding
with Carducci, as that Italian destroyer raced into the
darkness. Turning back to confront Zara for a second
time, Stuart saw the burning Alfieri capsize and sink at
11:15 p.m. some 2,000 yards to the west, Fiume went
down as well. Oriani soon sped away, out of sight to the
northwest, followed at 10:25 p.m. by the lightly damaged
Gioberti. Five minutes later Havock sank Carducci.
With the focus turning back to Zara, Havock fired
star shells near the assumed position of the badly dam-
aged Italian cruiser only to find Pola instead. Mistakenly
believing that large ship to be a Littorio-class battleship,
Havock’s commander, Lt. G.R.G. Watkins, directed two
searchlight-illuminated shots into Pola’s bridge and
aft before sending a signal claiming he’d stumbled on
Vittorio Veneto, “undamaged and stopped.”
Around 10:43 p.m., Mack and Pridham-Whippell
signaled the general alarm after a series of very red lights
were seen in the direction of Vittorio Veneto’s actual
position. Cunningham mistakenly believed that was an
indication of a new enemy contact. Not wanting to risk
an accidental clash of friendly ships in a night action,
Cunningham ordered all units not actively engaging the
enemy to proceed north along parallel courses. Unfortu-
nately, Pridham-Whippell assumed that order included
him, and he broke off shadowing Vittorio Veneto. With
Iachino’s main force just 35 miles to the northwest of
Pridham-Whippell and 30 miles ahead of Mack, the
British had missed out on their ultimate prize.
In response to Havock’s transmission of the position
of the Vittorio Veneto, Mack believed he’d inadvertently
4/14/10 2:58:32 PM
 moved ahead of Iachino’s main force, and he turned
D14 back to the east to make contact. When Havock
corrected its initial message to an “8-inch cruiser”
instead of a battleship, Mack, strangely, didn’t receive
the information until 1:34 a.m., by which time his eight
destroyers had been returning at full speed for nearly
an hour. Arriving on the scene just after 2:00 a.m., D14
came across an ocean littered with debris and lifeboats; it
began rescue operations to pick up Italian survivors.
Not wanting to accidentally damage friendly ships
in the battle’s final stage, only Jervis was sent to deal
with the abandoned enemy cruiser. Surprised to find
Zara, and not Pola, Jervis fired five torpedoes at the
target and, with three making contact, the ship erupted
flame and sank at 2:40 a.m. Nubian, Mohawk, Hereward,
Hasty, Ilex, Janus and Hotspur continued to slowly circle
through the wreckage picking up survivors but, when
recognition signals were seen two miles off around Pola,
rescue operations ceased and the British ships headed
to make contact.
Crewmen from Jervis boarded Pola at 3:25 a.m. and
found 257 demoralized but otherwise orderly Italian
sailors waiting to be rescued. One odd aspect was the
British reported the Italians as being drunk. What had
happened was that the sailors, thinking their ship lost,
had jumped overboard. When brought back on board,
the icy water had taken its toll and a great number of
them began drinking alcohol to stay warm.
Jervis disengaged from Pola at 3:40 a.m. Mack
considered the idea of towing the ship back to Alex-
andria, but he decided that would be impractical and
instead ordered its destruction. Three torpedoes sank
the ship. With nothing more to accomplish, Mack sent
his destroyers northeast for a dawn rendezvous with
Cunningham.
By 7:00 a.m. all British forces had reunited, and
within an hour were heading back through the previous
night’s combat zone, picking up more survivors. Cun-
ningham was forced to discontinue the operation when
German aircraft finally made their appearance. As the
British ships withdrew, Formidable sent a message to
the Chief of the Italian Naval Staff detailing the location
of the remaining survivors.
Aftermath
Though only a portion of the Regia Marina was
engaged at Matapan, the battle effectively cleared the
Eastern Mediterranean of Italian naval power and al-
lowed for the successful evacuation of British forces
from Greece and Crete in the following months. The
determination shown by Italian officers and crew wasn’t
enough to overcome shortfalls in training and technol-
ogy. The Regia Marina suffered from an out-of-touch
command structure and poor coordination with the Regia
Aeronautica. It lacked ship radar, night combat training
and adequate gun-laying systems. Those all played as
WaW 12 Issue.indd 45
Interwar Royal Navy & Regia Marina Doctrine
While the Regia Marina appeared strong on paper, its
ships were deficient in a number of ways. The Italians failed
to develop radar or sonar in the interwar years as they were
considered unnecessary technologies. There was also a lack
of waterproofing, which caused electrical systems and range-
finding equipment to malfunction in anything other than good
weather. The Regia Marina also lacked adequate range-finding
and aerial spotting capabilities, flashless powder, night optics
and illumination rounds. All that made it difficult to engage
in combat at extended ranges or at night. Further, other lim-
ited resources and shortages of petroleum meant training was
inadequate.
Added to that was the “fleet in being” doctrine, which held
it was more important to maintain capital ships than risk them
in battle. The result was, while the Italian fleet contained mod-
ern-looking battleships, they were unable to make their weight
felt in battle. The irony is the Regia Marina’s light units, as
well as its special operations forces, came to have much more
impact on the war at sea.
On the British side, during the interwar years the Royal Navy
attempted to rectify the shortcomings that had become evident
during World War I. They included inadequate coordination and
communication among formations, and the resultant inability
to stay on the offensive and control the pace of battle.
The Royal Navy also possessed a large force of swift bat-
tlecruisers and powerful battleships, and its high command
retained an overriding belief in the effectiveness of heavily
armed capital ships. They remained skeptical of the growing
power of aircraft carriers and submarines, as well as the threat
posed by dedicated anti-shipping aircraft. The invention of sonar
seemed to adequately address those threats, and surface naval
commanders were therefore confident of their ships’ abilities
to perform all their duties.
much a part in the Italian defeat as the Royal Navy’s
exceptional handling of the situation. After Matapan, the
Regia Marina’s battleships would never again confront
the Allies in force.
at
Sources
Angelucci, Enzo. Illustrated Encyclopedia of Military Aircraft: 1914 to the Present.
Edison, NJ: Chartwell Books, 2001.
Bagnasco, Erminio & Grossman, Mark. Regia Marina: Italian Battleships of World
War Two. Missoula, Montana: Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., 1986.
Campbell, John. Naval Weapons of World War Two. London: Conway Maritime
Press Ltd., 1985.
Coates, Tim. East of Malta West of Suez: The Admiralty Account of Naval War in
the Eastern Mediterranean, September 1939 to March 1941. Stationery Office
Books, 2001.
Cunningham, Viscount Andrew. A Sailor’s Odyssey. London: Hutchinson, 1951.
Pack, S.W.C. Night Action off Cape Matapan. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
Press, 1973.
Roskill, Stephen Wentworth. HMS Warspite: the Story of a Famous Battleship.
Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997.
Shores, Christopher. Regia Aeronautica. Warren, MI: Squadron/Signal Publica-
tions, Inc., 1976.
World at War 45
4/14/10 2:58:33 PM
 Yelnia: First Turning Point of
the Eastern Front
by Kelly Bell
Axis units are in italics. Soviet units are in plaintext.
Meaning “Spruce Grove” in Russian, Yelnia lies 40
miles southeast of Smolensk on the banks of the Desna
River. Despite its pastoral name, Yelnia would become
the site of one of the critical battles of the opening stage
of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the
Soviet Union in 1941. Historians originally accorded
that invasion the status of a masterfully conceived and
orchestrated sneak attack, which was eventually turned
back not so much by the Soviets’ combat prowess and
tactical acumen as by the USSR’s expanse and unfor-
giving climate. As time has passed, though, data keeps
surfacing that point toward a different explanation.
Following the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union,
documents began appearing from the Kremlin archives
that outlined Stalin’s pre-war strategy for a possible
future conflict with Nazi Germany. While the two
totalitarian powers were officially allies owing to the
Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, Stalin’s broader as-
sumption was the differences between Communism
and National Socialism would eventually lead them to
war with each other. His possible plan was, when the
Germans became bogged down in their war with France
and Britain, to launch the Red Army against a Reich
that would be to unable to defend itself in the east.
That scheme, of course, was undone by the quick
German victory in the west in the spring of 1940. With
Germany occupying France, the Low Countries and
much of Scandinavia, Hitler was free to turn his atten-
tion elsewhere. Great Britain was still in the war, but
had been put into a position from which it could do little
to effect further events on the continent. Effectively,
46 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 46
Stalin’s strategy was completely overturned. He therefore
needed a new plan, and one way to develop it was by
wargaming.
Gen. Georgii Zhukov, who’d demonstrated his
operational and tactical skills in the Soviet Far East at
the Battle of Khalkin-Gol against the Japanese in 1939,
came up with just such an exercise. By that time, the
start of 1941, Stalin had in mind a new plan centered
on fortifying the westward-jutting Bialystok salient in
Soviet-occupied Poland, which protruded about 170
miles into German-held territory. He decided he would
have it made it into what he believed would be an im-
pregnable bastion against which any German invasion
would flounder. Such a strategy, however, had already
been exposed as outmoded when Nazi armor flowed
around and past the bristling but immovable fortifica-
tions of the Maginot Line to slash grievously into the
vitals of France.
Zhukov had meanwhile devised his own plan in
which he intended using the Bialystok salient as bait to
lure the Germans into a massive trap. He then found a
supporter for that approach in Stalin’s long-time military
confidant, Marshal S.K. Timoshenko. Timoshenko liked
Zhukov’s idea and persuaded Stalin to give it a look.
A series of map-exercise Kremlin wargames were ac-
cordingly begun in January 1941 that examined these
various concepts.
For the wargame, German capabilities were modeled
on what had been demonstrated by them in their recent
blitzkrieg in the west. Zhukov acted as commander of
the simulated Nazi invasion force. In play, his panzers
swept through and past Red Army units along the
4/14/10 2:58:33 PM
 western frontier. They then cut deeply into the flanks
of Red Army columns that, in line with Stalin’s all-out
offensive scheme, were then beginning a counter-inva-
sion of central Poland.
After witnessing that demonstration, Stalin was
persuaded to give his go-ahead for Zhukov’s deeper
strategy. Basically, it acknowledged the frontier was
indefensible and sacrificed the force deployed there
to buy time for the full mobilization of the Red Army
farther east. The Germans would thus eventually be
drawn into a trap deep in Russia, where they’d then
be decisively counterattacked after they’d outrun their
lines of supply.
Certain the invaders couldn’t help but target the
political and industrial center of Moscow, the routes the
German armies would have to take to get there were
then easily deduced. The Pripyat Marsh, not travers-
able by mechanized forces, would inescapably divide
the invading force into two large sectors. North of the
Pripyat is a narrow corridor of open terrain called the
Smolensk-Moscow land-bridge, which lies between
the headwaters of the Dvina and Dnepr Rivers and
that further funnels any large east-bound force along
an even tighter path. Zhukov therefore put forward that
constricted land-bridge as the ideal sector in which to
launch the first large-scale counterattack against the
flanks of the invaders.
For their part, the top-level German commanders—
who were otherwise also fully aware of the importance
of the land-bridge—didn’t believe the Soviets had the
reserves to fight a large battle deep within Russia. Ger- Germans never fully solved.
man intelligence had grossly underestimated the number Barbarossa Begins
of divisions in the Red Army, and that would have a When the German invasion began on 22 June 1941,
critical impact as the campaign began to move deeply their armed forces quickly pulverized the Red Army’s
east of its start line. frontier units, and they then proceeded to envelop
As another essential part of the new strategic scheme, and destroy Soviet troop concentrations farther to the
Zhukov and Timoshenko also won Stalin’s approval to east—just as had been predicted by the January wargames
begin constructing defense lines 100 to 300 miles east in the Kremlin. Yet, also from the start, things didn’t go
of the frontier. By the time the Germans reached those fully as planned by Berlin.
positions, they were expected to have been at least When the initial tally of prisoners of war proved
partially exhausted by combat and outrunning their smaller than the Germans had anticipated, they cor-
supply. rectly deduced the bulk of the Red Army was indeed
Adding to that expectation was the fact the German farther east than they’d expected, but they continued to
campaigns in Poland and the west had been fought across seriously underestimate by how far. They decided the
areas that were smaller in depth, and that had more Soviets had to be concentrating to make their all-out
advanced infrastructures of roads that could support a stand at Minsk. Their extended plan then called for
mechanized force. Further, only a fraction of the German Second and Third Panzer Groups to bypass that city in
Army’s divisions were motorized: roughly 20 panzer order to link up just beyond it in order to create a mas-
and 10 motorized infantry divisions. The majority of sive and—they hoped—decisively large pocket. Then
their footslogging infantry divisions simply wouldn’t the infantry of Army Group Center would close in and
be able to keep pace with the motorized spearheads. In destroy the trapped foe.
western Europe and Poland that hadn’t been much of a At the same time, the old military adage “no plan
problem, since the overall distances involved weren’t survives contact with the enemy” was proving itself
that great. In the much larger theater of operations of for the Kremlin as well as for the Germans. The speed
the Soviet Union, maintaining contact between the of the invaders took Moscow by surprise, and some of
mechanized spearheads and non-mechanized follow- the defense positions that had been constructed to the
on elements would be a much greater problem, one the east of the frontier were overrun before they could be
World at War 47

WaW 12 Issue.indd 47 4/14/10 2:58:35 PM


fully manned. On the plus side, though, most encircled
Soviet formations resisted stoutly instead of surrender-
ing. They thereby tied down many German divisions
that had to be committed to destroy them in ferocious
pocket battles, rather than continuing to plunge east as
fast as possible.
The air war was going in favor of the Germans. Dur-
ing Barbarossa’s opening days the Luftwaffe destroyed
much of the Soviet Air Force by attacking its airfields,
as well as in air battles in which German training and
technical superiority made the difference. German aerial
attacks on communication centers, landlines and radio
antennae also made it difficult for higher-level Soviet
headquarters to coordinate ground units and their move-
ment. That was all the worse because the Red Army made
little use of wireless communications. Further adding to
the confusion were Luftwaffe interdiction raids against
Soviet reserves and supply columns.
By the evening of 14 July the city of Smolensk fell
to the invaders. On 19 July Hitler ordered von Bock
to finish off the surrounded Soviets in that area. Just
as earlier at Minsk, however, though large numbers of
Soviet units were destroyed, the result wasn’t decisive:
the overall resistance of the Red Army continued to
strengthen.
Gen. Heinz Guderian had contributed to that failure
by prematurely turning his XLVI Panzer Corps away
from the pocket and toward the heights west of the towns
48 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 48
of Dorogobuzh and Yelnia. That panzer formation’s
rushed departure from the Smolensk sector made it
impossible for the remaining Germans there to complete
the entrapment of the Soviet Sixteenth and Twentieth
Armies, both of which then escaped to the east. Their
presence in the coming Battle of Yelnia would prove
critical.
Counterattack
Astride the west-to-east approach to Moscow, Yelnia
was the obvious next target for the panzer spearheads
and, with the Germans still advancing faster than had
been expected, Zhukov had to find a way to slow them
in order to give the overall Soviet strategic plan more
time to work. Defensive lines outside Moscow had to
be constructed and reserves moved into position.
On the afternoon of 19 July, tanks of the 7th Panzer
Regiment of the 10th Panzer Division clattered toward
Yelnia from the south. Soon joined there by the 20th
Motorcycle Battalion, the tankers continued north into
the town, securing most of its western half despite a
steadily increasing volume of heavy shelling from Soviet
batteries to the east. By 10:00 p.m. the Germans had
the whole town occupied.
Bolstered by the SS “Das Reich” Motorized Infan-
try Division, the XLVI Panzer Corps then found itself
manning a 30-mile perimeter arcing north to south to
the east of Yelnia, forming Army Group Center’s most
eastward salient into Soviet lines. Under round-the-clock
shelling and armored counterattacks, the Germans were
in an increasingly difficult position as they waited for
infantry reinforcements to march up. The nearest German
infantrymen, in IX Army Corps, were by then a full nine
days behind the panzers. The German tankmen therefore
found themselves to be the defenders, an unaccustomed
role for them. By that time the Soviet strategic reserves,
which the German high command hadn’t believed ex-
isted, were also arriving. Yelnia became the destination
for a good many of them.
The German panzermen were reinforced as their
infantry, after some hard marching, reached the salient.
When the Soviets launched probing assaults on 10-11
August, they were therefore easily repulsed. Guderian,
who favored mobile operations above all else, was
displeased at being tied down at Yelnia. He initiated
a discussion as to whether Yelnia was even worth
fighting over. There was a general consensus at higher
headquarters that abandoning any conquered territory
would be bad for German morale and good for that of
Soviets. Nobody wanted to be the one to order the first
retreat in the face of Soviet counterattack. The decision
from above, then, was Yelnia certainly was a worthwhile
place to be.
Those were difficult tidings for the German soldiers
fighting in and around the town. Ammunition short-
ages, the decreasing air support from an increasingly
overextended Luftwaffe, and the strengthening Soviet
4/14/10 2:58:36 PM
 counterattacks themselves, were all making the position
increasingly untenable.
The losses the Germans were suffering within the
bulge began to panic the frontline commanders on
the spot. They requested the highest-ranking German
commander in the area, Fourth Army commander Field
Marshal Hans von Kluge, to visit the area in the hope
actually seeing the growing carnage would impress him
enough to order major reinforcement of the position. At
the time, though, he was recovering from an illness, and
it was 27 August before he made it to Yelnia. He reacted
by ordering the immediate transfer of the 15th Infantry
Division into the sector. He also dispatched a message
to army group headquarters stating that, if the Soviets
concentrated a division-sized assault on a single sector
of the German line, they could break through. With just
one road running west out of the salient, any evacuation
in case of such a major enemy penetration would be
impossible. Further, he concluded, with guns ranging
in size up to 210mm constantly showering shells onto
the defenders, it had to be only a matter of time before
the Soviets decided to launch such a major effort.
Indeed, the only reason that kind of concentrated at-
tack hadn’t already happened was Zhukov was probing
for weak spots using battalion-sized forces. That way,
he could determine the points where he would make his
major effort. Though the Germans were able to repel
those probing attacks, down to the privates in the line
they all suspected such efforts were merely prelude to daybreak on the 30th, then, when Soviet tanks slammed into their
something bigger. perimeter, that attack opened a hole in the salient’s northern rim.
Zhukov was priming seven divisions in Twenty- That was followed by a three-hour barrage of the adjacent 137th
Fourth Army for simultaneous attacks. One large assault Infantry Division, to prevent it from moving to close the new gap.
would come west of the Uzha River, at the northern base At the same time, six rifle divisions crashed into the defenses at
of the salient. Bolstered by the 102nd Tank Division, the Sadki. The Soviets took that place, but then lost it to a German
100th and 107th Rifle Divisions were to stab south along counterattack at dawn on the 31st.
a narrow three-mile front. The 303rd Rifle and 106th During his earlier probes, Zhukov’s tanks had driven into the
Motorized Rifle Divisions were to simultaneously drive Nazi lines in singles and pairs without infantry support. They were
north from their positions along the eastern bank of the then systematically picked off by German tanks and anti-tank
Striana River, from where they were to advance on the guns. In this new effort, Zhukov sent in his tanks in groups of up
town of Leonovo. Starting directly east of the salient, to 40 or so. That gave the Germans around Yelnia a new dilemma,
the 19th and 309th Rifle Divisions were to push into its because their high command had meanwhile ordered south all of
leading edge on a direct course for Yelnia. The Nazis
were thus to be squeezed within a three-sided vise.
Anxious to move fast enough to please Stalin, the
Soviets, despite their probes, still failed to fully reconnoi-
ter the enemy defenses. With 70,000 Germans manning
a 45-mile-long front, those troops were spread thinly;
so when the opening barrage for the big attack began
at 7:30 a.m. on 30 August, many of the shells fell on
empty terrain. Moreover, the defenders were by then
well dug-in and had just received major re-supply. The
Soviet assault troops were therefore met with blistering
firepower.
The German 15th and 263rd Infantry Divisions had
just mended a breach in their front lines that had been
opened during one of the earlier Soviet probes, and they
therefore weren’t expecting another assault so soon. At Standing guard: Red Army soldier and antiaircraft gun.
World at War 49

WaW 12 Issue.indd 49 4/14/10 2:58:38 PM


Panzers east: German tank column roars through a Russian town.
Guderian’s Second Panzer Group, to close the Kiev
encirclement. So now they lacked armor in the Yelnia
sector. (Of course, that switch of the panzers to the
south also signaled a major change in overall German
strategy. The reasons for it, and the consequence of it,
are still debated by historians and will be the subject of
future articles here.)
With the Soviets applying simultaneous pressure
against both the southern and northern flanks of the
salient, the Germans correctly deduced the Reds were
attempting nothing less than an envelopment that would
trap all their forces deployed around Yelnia. Indeed,
despite a growing shortage of artillery ammunition, poor
tactical intelligence on German defensive positions, and
the enemy’s withering return fire, the Soviets began to
breach the front at several points.
On 31 August a Soviet armored assault knocked the
78th Infantry Division more than a mile backward. On 1
September, Soviet tank formations reached Voloskovo
and captured that important rail junction. By that time
the Reds had also outflanked the 78th and 292nd Infan-
try Divisions, and were in their rear areas destroying
supply depots. To the east the 292nd was also heavily
engaged with other Soviets who’d pierced its defenses
at Vydrina. On 2 September that division’s operations
chief reported to XX Corps headquarters that the 292nd
was “close to the limit of endurance.” The whole of XX
Corps’s northwestern flank was beginning to collapse
while the eastern sector of IX Corps was also starting to
crumble. By that time the 137th Infantry Division alone
had lost 3,000 men killed within the salient.
On 2 September, Army Group Center headquarters
concluded the Soviet counterattack had seriously dis-
rupted their forces’ position. It was clear re-establishing
firm control around Yelnia would require more force
than was presently on hand. The Germans therefore
drew up plans to withdraw their forces from what was
left of the salient.
50 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 50
Conclusion
Over the course of 4, 5 and 6 September, the remnants
of the IX and XX Army Corps straggled west to safety
just ahead of the advance elements of Zhukov’s 102nd
Tank Division. The German decision to abandon Yelnia
had come almost too late, and was only possible because
heavy rains masked the withdrawal. During daylight hours
a dense ground fog made it impossible for Soviet observ-
ers to see the positions facing them were deserted.
From late July to early September somewhere between
45,000 to 50,000 German soldiers died or fell wounded at
Yelnia, and it can be seen as having been the first turning
point in the larger war. It started as an attempt to secure
a jumping off point for the anticipated drive on Moscow.
Even after it became evident Red Army resistance was too
strong, and the Moscow drive had been put off in favor a
move to the south, the German high command continued
to try to cling to the sector, which by then had become
worthless for strategic purposes.
Those German casualties were a high price to pay for
pride, and the battle also began to teach Zhukov and his
peers how best to fight them. They Soviets learned that,
without powerful infantry and artillery support, German
mobile units couldn’t overcome strong, artillery-backed
defenses. They also noted the value of close coordina-
tion between infantry and tanks. Yelnia further taught
the Soviets that German static defenses were vulnerable
if they lacked mobile support. The panzers were needed
to close gaps torn in the line.
Following the recapture of Yelnia, Zhukov toured
the still-smoldering battlefield and was delighted by the
devastation wrought by his rocket batteries and heavy artil-
lery. Even the Germans’ reinforced underground bunkers
had been destroyed. The Red Army’s preoccupation with
big guns, which lasted until the fall of the USSR in 1991,
was spawned in this battle.
Of course, the Germans were still far from finished
with their 1941 campaign. Operation Typhoon, their final
drive on Moscow, kicked off at the end of September.
In the meantime, however, the Red Army used the time
Zhukov bought at Yelnia to fortify the Moscow area and
prepare for the coming battle for the Soviet capital.
In recognition of their fighting skill demonstrated
at Yelnia, several Red Army divisions were designated
“Guards,” meaning they were henceforth considered elite
units and therefore to be given the best men and equip-
ment. They were the first units to be so recognized, which
began another Soviet practice that extended to numerous
other units over the next four years of fighting. The les-
sons Zhukov and the Red Army began to learn at Yelnia
made possible their later victories at Leningrad, Moscow
and Stalingrad.
at
Selected Sources
Dvoretsky, Leo & Bryan. Thunder on the Dnepr: Zhukov-Stalin and
the Defeat of Hitler’s Blitzkrieg, Presidio Press, 1997.
Editors, Time/Life Books Series. The Third Reich: Barbarossa.
Time-Life Books, 1990.
4/14/10 2:58:41 PM
 Windows Edition
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World at War 51

WaW 12 Issue.indd 51 4/14/10 2:58:43 PM

 Yelnia: The German Perspective
by Eric M. Walters
Background
The campaign design for the German invasion of
the Soviet Union lacked consistency from the begin-
ning. German staff studies showed a conflict between
Army (High Command of the Army, Oberkommando
der Heeres—OKH) planners, who advocated a direct
thrust to Moscow, and Hitler’s joint service planners
(High Command of the Armed Forces, Oberkommando
der Wehrmacht—OKW), who put emphasis on secur-
ing economically important targets on the northern and
southern flanks. What united the two perspectives was
the need to defeat the Soviet Red Army as close as pos-
sible to the frontier, and thus avoid battles of attrition
deep within the USSR. Since both OKH and OKW had
the same broad objectives, there was at first seemingly
little conflict. In the event, differences in operational
concepts were still in place just prior to the start of
hostilities on 22 June 1941.
Once the invasion began, however, the differences
in those two views began to show themselves, result-
ing in a general crisis of command starting in mid-July.
The Germans’ overall evaluation of the first two weeks
of fighting seemed to show most of the Red Army had
been destroyed close to the border as planned. The most
telling comment reflecting that general perception was
made by the Army Chief of the General Staff, Col. Gen.
(rank equivalent of a US Army four-star general) Franz
Halder, who wrote in his War Diary on 3 July 1941:
52 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 52
On the whole then, it may be said even now that the
objective to shatter the bulk of the Russian army this
side of the Dvina and Dneper rivers has been accom-
plished. I do not doubt the statement…that east of the
Dvina and Dneper we would encounter nothing more
than partial forces, not strong enough to hinder realiza-
tion of German operational plans. It is thus probably
no overstatement to say the Russian Campaign has
been won in the space of two weeks.
German mobile forces then fanned out in pursuit of
widely separated objectives along the center approach
and on the flanks. It appeared the Germans could try
for everything at once on all three of their army group
fronts. Army Group North was headed toward Leningrad;
Army Group Center advanced on Moscow, and Army
Group South moved into the resource-rich Ukraine. By
13 July, though, it was becoming clear the Red Army
still had plenty of fight left in it. Hastily mobilized
Soviet formations were being thrown in the path of the
invaders, and local counterattacks were endless. On top
of that, the panzer divisions had advanced far in front
of the slower-moving infantry as well as their own sup-
ply lines. The top-level German commanders therefore
realized they had to focus on a primary objective: they
didn’t have the resources to be able to do everything at
once.
4/14/10 2:58:44 PM
 World at War 53

WaW 12 Issue.indd 53 4/14/10 2:58:49 PM

 OKH maintained that a drive to Moscow was of
overriding importance: take the administrative center of
the Soviet state and the peripheral areas had to collapse.
Hitler and OKW called for an advance on the flanks:
the economic objectives of the Ukraine, and the politi-
cal importance of Leningrad, would provide the Reich
with the wherewithal to fight a longer war. Thus, during
the critical part of the campaign, differences emerged
concerning the goals of the war against the Soviet
Union. The two perspectives entailed fundamentally
incompatible intents, and thus each called for different
axes of effort.
Many German field marshals and generals in charge
of executing the campaign agreed with the OKH
Moscow-first concept. That group included the Army
Commander-In-Chief, Field Marshal Walther von
Brauchitsch; Chief of the General Staff, Gen. Franz
Halder; Army Group Center commander, Field Marshal
Fedor von Bock; Army Group South commander, Field
Marshal von Gerd von Rundstedt; Second Panzer Group
commander, Gen. Heinz Guderian; and Third Panzer
Group commander, Col. Gen. Hermann Hoth. They
forcefully argued the case for the Moscow strategy
while continuing to conduct operations in accordance
with it.
Panzer Groups & Armies
The German army at the start of World War II organized its mobile
divisions, armored and motorized infantry, into “panzer groups.” A pan-
zer group was considered a lower echelon than an army command, but it
consisted (in theory) of entirely mechanized forces and therefore could
move much faster than standard infantry armies. Panzer groups were used
successfully as maneuver units for entire campaigns from 1939 to 1942.
Starting late in 1941, the Germans began upgrading panzer groups into
panzer armies. That change moved the panzer group commanders to the
same echelon of command as infantry army commanders, thereby giving
them more independence of action. It also brought with it a decline in the
overall mobility of the panzer armies, as more and more infantry divisions
were assigned to reinforce them. At the same time, panzer and motorized
divisions came to be more and more often pulled out of the panzer armies
to be assigned to the regular armies, in order to help those formations more
quickly salvage operational crises. The result was, as the war progressed,
German mobility declined at the crucial operational level.
54 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 54
Guderian’s 20 July capture of the town of Yelnia, a
steppingstone on the road to Moscow, was consistent
with the OKH concept and his orders from Army Group
Center. He was then unable to further exploit that foot-
hold, however, due to simultaneous requirements to deal
with threats to his southern flank and to cooperate with
Hoth’s Third Panzer Group to fully seal the Smolensk
pocket. As it was, he was hard pressed to accomplish
any of those missions with the troops available. His
own Second Panzer Group was simply stretched too
thin. Even so, he clung tenaciously to Yelnia, despite
the fact that adversely affected his ability to complete
his other assignments.
Guderian made that decision based on his deter-
mination to uphold the OKH and Army Group Center
campaign plan that put the main effort against Moscow.
Given his demonstrated preference to make decisions
that transcended the local situation to address higher
operational needs—such as at Sedan in 1940, where
he took the initiative to exploit a breakthrough in the
Allied lines—his decision about Yelnia wasn’t unprec-
edented. Maintaining a grip on Yelnia, as springboard
for a drive on Moscow, would understandably enjoy a
higher priority for him.
What Guderian didn’t foresee when he made this
decision, though, were the time-consuming debates
raging among Hitler, OKW and OKH over the proper
place of Moscow in the campaign. Because of that
confusion, the Soviets were afforded time to see the
danger in the center and react. Red Army units poured
into the Yelnia area, and they soon mounted a series of
counterattacks. By 6 August that battlefield had all the
characteristics of a World War I stalemate.
Not willing to abandon any options until the campaign
objectives were clarified, Guderian’s superiors condoned
sending more units into the slugfest that became the
Battle of Yelnia. On 27 July, von Bock assigned the
XX Infantry Corps (256th and 15th Infantry Divisions)
to Second Panzer Group in order to free Guderian’s
panzer divisions defending the Yelnia bend. That move
indicates von Bock approved of the decision to hold the
place. Sources conflict on the details, but they agree that
4/14/10 2:58:50 PM
 between 11 and 14 August, Guderian forcefully argued
he couldn’t hold Yelnia without substantial commitment German OKH Plan for Operation Barbarossa
of reinforcements and logistical support. The implica- Gulf of F I N L A N D First Phase

N
tion of his request was the salient should be abandoned Bothnia Viipuri Lake

D E
Second Phase
if those things couldn’t be made available. Guderian’s
(Viborg) Ladoga
Helsinki xxxxx Army Group
Leningrad

S W E
seniors disagreed or, if they thought Yelnia was a waste-
Stockholm Gulf of Finland

ov
Tallinn (Reval) Narva
ful battle, they passed on a golden opportunity to end

Volkh
E s t o n i a Novgorod
it. Pskov
Lake Ilmen
Latvia Rostov ga
Vol
Moscow or Kiev BALTIC Riga Vo
lga Kalinin

Lovat
SEA
OKH was eventually able to persuade some key Memel Lithuania Moscow
xxxxx ina
members of OKW to agree Moscow was a priority. The Danzig NORTH
Kaunas
(Kovno) Dv S O V I E T
dispersion of strength and the fragile supply situation East Orsha Smolensk Tula
of the spearheads meant the Germans had to concen-
Prussia

Oka
Minsk
xxxxx Nie man White U N I O N
trate on a major objective, and the Soviet capital was

na
CENTER Orel
Pinsk R u s s i a

Des
R u s s i a
it. There were hopes within OKH that Guderian, who P O L A N D Pripyat xxxx
Kursk
was the Fuehrer’s favorite panzer general, would win
2
xxxxx
SOUTH Korosten Chernigov
him over to its point of view. Such hopes were disap- Kiev
Lokhvitsa Belgorod Rossosh

Bu

Volga
pointed, though, when Guderian ended up becoming
Cracow Kharkov

g
Lwow
Dn U k r a i n e
the one who was won over. He apparently gave up his VAKIA Dne Stalingrad
SLO ies pr
Ru
th e tr Zhmerinka Donne
ts
support of the OKH plan to gain independence for his HUNGARY
n i Dnepropetrovsk Do
n

Second Panzer Group (soon redesignated Second Panzer

a
Budapest

Pr
Be
ROMANIA

ut

Bu
Rostov

ss
Army) from nominal coordination with Fourth Army.

g
Russo-German Chisinau

ara
Kherson
He would turn south to drive on Kiev. In fairness, given
treaty boundary Sea of

bia
Odessa

Siret
Front line at commence- Azov
that neither Halder nor von Brauchitsch were present at
n
Crimea ba
ment of conflict Ku
Guderian’s meeting with Hitler to back him up, it should 1939 boundaries shown on map.
Bucharest
Sevastopol

be no surprise he bowed to the will of the Fuehrer.

0 100 200 miles BLACK SEA

The idea of a drive to Moscow in late August and

early September was therefore shelved, and the focus
shifted to the Ukraine, with Guderian’s Second Panzer
Army playing the stellar role. The position at Yelnia
thus became superfluous, and the German forces that
Diversion of Second Panzer Group to the Ukraine
had defended the place at great cost were withdrawn Gulf of F I N L A N D Main German
N

Bothnia Viipuri attacks

in the first week of September. Ironically, only a few
Lake
D E

(Viborg) Ladoga xxxxx Army Group

weeks later, Hitler did become convinced he needed to
Helsinki
Leningrad xxxx Army
S W E

Stockholm Gulf of Finland

capture Moscow, and a new drive was launched against
ov

Tallinn (Reval) Narva Front line

Volkh

it on 30 September. By then it was too late; however, E s t o n i a Novgorod

Lake Ilmen
September 1
the heavily reinforced Soviet capital proved to be just Latvia
Pskov
Rostov
Stalin line
ga
Vol
out of reach. BALTIC Riga Vo
lga Kalinin Main Russian
pockets
Lovat

SEA
Had OKH’s campaign concept been consistently Memel Lithuania Moscow
xxxxx
implemented through the July-August command crisis Danzig NORTH
Kaunas
(Kovno) Dv
ina
S O V I E T
and after, the Battle of Yelnia would certainly have East Orsha Smolensk Tula
contributed to a German drive on Moscow in the late Prussia
Oka

Minsk
De

xxxxx Nie man U N I O N

summer.
sna

White
CENTER Orel
Pinsk R u s s i a R u s s i a
Guderian may have acted out of self-promotion in
xxxx
P O L A N D Pripyat 2 Kursk
placing emphasis on Yelnia, but the historical record xxxxx
SOUTH Korosten Chernigov
shows his decisions were made with an understanding Kiev
Lokhvitsa Belgorod Rossosh
Bu

Volga

of what his superiors in Army Group Center and OKH

Cracow Kharkov
g

Lwow
Dn U k r a i n e
desired. His conduct of operations around Yelnia fully VAKIA Dne Stalingrad
SLO ies pr
Ru
t tr Zhmerinka Donne
ts
complied with their objectives as they existed at the time,
he n
ni Do
HUNGARY Dnepropetrovsk
not only as he understood them, but also as advocated
a

Budapest
Pr
Be

ROMANIA
ut

Bu

Rostov
ss

by his peers and superiors. Given the fundamental

g

Russo-German Chisinau
ara

Kherson
dichotomy in the objectives for Barbarossa within the
treaty boundary Sea of
bia

Odessa
Siret

Front line at commence- Azov

German high command, especially in regard to whether
n
Crimea ba
ment of conflict Ku
Moscow was actually an operational objective, it’s 1939 boundaries shown on map.
Bucharest
Sevastopol

understandable commanders on the front would make

0 100 200 miles BLACK SEA
decisions that in retrospect seemed contradictory. The

World at War 55

WaW 12 Issue.indd 55 4/14/10 2:58:53 PM


Guderian & Hoth discuss the situation.
German half -tracks after the battle.
German defeat at Yelnia was thus symptomatic of their
larger strategic failure in 1941, in that the high com-
mand was divided over the objectives of what was the
deciding campaign of the war in Europe.
at
56 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 56
Centralized Planning, De-Centralized
Execution
German army doctrine was to have higher commands formu-
late broad mission objectives, and then let subordinates use their
own initiative to accomplish them. That system had been in effect
since the latter half of the 19th century, and it proved effective in
gaining operational and tactical victories. One reason it worked
was, as the modern battlefield expanded in scope and armies
became more complex, it ensured a much quicker “command
cycle.” That’s the amount of time required for a headquarters
to issue an order, have it carried out by the units in the field,
and then start a new cycle by issuing further orders. The shorter
that cycle is, the more efficient and powerful in combat an army
becomes.
Commanders who led from the front had a better picture of the
tactical situation, and could thus make speedy decisions without
going through cumbersome chains of command. The Germans
could make that work due to the high degree of training among
their leaders, from army commanders down to NCOs. Despite
the Hollywood caricatures now inherent in us when we visualize
someone with “Prussian discipline,” German leaders were trained
to think on their own.
Decentralized command can’t just be seen solely in terms of
initiative by subordinates. The approach also requires a clearly
stated overall intent and an explicit main goal designated by the
top commander. That guides the exercise of initiative by subor-
dinates, ensuring effort isn’t dissipated toward numerous minor
objectives. For the supreme commander’s intent to produce a
unified main effort, the campaign objective must be consistent.
Unfortunately for Germans, that wasn’t the case in the summer
of 1941.
During the course of Second Panzer Group’s August opera-
tions, Guderian for a time ignored explicit operational directives
given by Hitler, instead advanced his forces toward objectives
determined by himself. In doing that, he also convinced Army
Group Center headquarters to adopt his position and support his
actions. All of which resulted in operational chaos during the
critical period of the overall campaign.
Selected Sources
Bock, Fedor von. The War Diary, 1939-1945. David Johnston, trans. &
Klaus Gerbet, ed. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing Company, 1996.
Clark, Alan. Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-1945. New
York: William Morrow & Co., 1965.
Cooper, Matthew. The German Army, 1933-1945. New York: Stein &
Day, 1978.
Glantz, David M., ed. The Initial Period of War on the Eastern Front: 22
June- August. London: Frank Cass & Co, 1993.
Guderian, Heinz. Panzer Leader. Constantine Fitzgibbon, trans. New
York: Dutton, 1952.
Halder, Franz. The Halder War Diary, 1939-1942. Charles Burdick & Hans
Jacobsen, eds. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1988.
Leonhard, Robert R. Fighting By Minutes: Time & the Art of War. Westport,
CT: Praeger Pubs., 1994.
Naveh, Shimon. In Pursuit of Operational Excellence: The Evolution of
Operational Theory. London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1997.
4/14/10 2:58:58 PM
 CeLeBraTinG 35 Years!
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OriginsGameFair.com World at War 57

WaW 12 Issue.indd 57 4/14/10 2:58:59 PM

 Decision at Strasbourg: Ike’s Strategic Decision to Halt the
Sixth Army Group at the Rhine in 1944, by David Cooley (Naval
Institute Press, 2008). Reviewed by Steve Conlon.
Description: It’s well known that,
after the breakout from Normandy
in 1944, Eisenhower pursued a cau-
tious “broad front” strategy that by
November had stalled into a war of
attrition on the German border. Less
known is that farther south, in Alsace,
Lt. Gen Jacob Devers’s 350,000-man
Sixth Army Group, at the end of a
drive as rapid as Patton’s across
Media Reviews
France, was massed and ready to
attack over the southern Rhine. If suc-
cessful, Devers would’ve flanked the
German front, thereby likely averting
America’s costliest battle, the Bulge,
and ending the war quickly. But Ike
stopped that assault, and this book
illuminates that decision.
Pros. Cooley provides ample
evidence that Devers’s well sup-
plied forces could’ve reached their
objectives at minimal risk. The
crossing points were well planned,
and patrols had revealed the bunkers
on the opposite shore to be empty.
To put it simply, however, Ike didn’t
like Devers, and therefore wasn’t
prepared to give him the green light
for a bold stroke that ran counter to
his own cautious strategy. Cooley’s
careful reconstruction of events and
personalities provides an interesting
reassessment of this portion of the
history of the 1944 campaign in the
European theater. He takes us inside
the high-level staff meetings, as well
58 #12
WaW 12 Issue.indd 58
as the lowliest foxhole, in an attempt
to establish historical reality. He’s
passionate about his findings, but
carefully objective, citing a range
of official documents, interviews
and other confirmed sources. His
method elevates the book from the
easy “what if” of some counter-fac-
tual analyses, but the account also
remains dramatic.
Cons. The book’s only faults lie in
its attempt to be all-inclusive. The
chapters segue between the “big pic-
ture” and various actions (all needing
maps) as Colley builds his case and
we follow Sixth Army Group through
southern France. Importantly, he digs
deep into the involved leaders’ com-
plex biographies and illuminates the
personality conflicts among Monty,
Patton, Ike, Bradley and Devers. Into
that mix he adds de Gaulle and the
French generals.
Overall: Nonetheless, Decision at
Strasbourg is a convincing critique
and an important one. One suspects
this book will be seminal, in that it
forces serious reassessment of the
strategy as well as current histori-
ography of the Allied victory.
Hitler’s Rockets—The Story
of the V-2s, by Norman Long-
mate (Skyhorse Publishing, 2009).
Reviewed by Steve Dixon.
Description: Before World War
II, long range missiles and rockets
were something reserved for science
fiction. Then came Nazi Germany’s
revolutionary V-2 rockets, which
created a force so devastating it
not only marked a new phase in the
bombardment of London, but a new
era in the history of warfare. Hitler’s
Rockets is a detailed investigation
of the V2 weapon that caused so
much havoc in 1944 and 1945. By
the time the last rocket fell, more
than 3,000 British civilians were
killed and nearly twice that number
were injured.
Pros. Longmate provides a detailed
look at the inception of the V2 pro-
gram inside Nazi Germany, from
the technical achievements to the
political infighting and finally its
production and deployment. Also
covered in great detail is the English
government’s political reaction to the
V2 and its curious decision to try to
cover up the V-2 menace. What really
stands out are the accounts from the
civilians who had to withstand the
deadly blasts of the V-2. There are
also interviews with German engi-
neers, British officials, and those who
witnessed firsthand the carnage. Also
provided are photos of the destruc-
tion, some never seen before.
4/14/10 2:59:00 PM
 Cons. The book is written for a
British audience; so, if you don’t
know offhand what a quid or shil-
ling was, or what the numerous
English paramilitary organizations
were during that time (for example:
the WVS, or Women’s Voluntary
Services), you may be hard-pressed
to understand some of the terminol-
ogy. A conversion table and a list
of abbreviations in the appendices
would have been helpful. Another
deficiency is the poor quality of the
maps: in some cases the place names
are actually unreadable. All that is
trivial, though, when compared to
what the book offers.
Overall. Even though the V-2 may
be known to those who’ve made
studying World War II their life-long
hobby, the coverage of what the civil-
ians had to endure makes this book a
must-have. It covers a subject rarely
seen in this country.

Attention readers: We’re looking for media reviewers for Strategy & Tactics
and World at War. Any media will do: book, magazine, film, website, etc.
Absolute max is 500 words. We want it to be a critical analysis, not just a
description. Contact Chris Perello at: cperello@calpoly.edu.

Available Now! Available in June

The Holy Grail sought by American Civil War gener-
als was the decisive Napoleonic battle of annihilation,
yet it happened only rarely. This book analyzes the
mechanics of battle, from raising and training armies
to planning the campaign to fighting the battle.
Each chapter looks at one part of the process with a
detailed account of a particular battle or campaign,
liberally illustrated with maps and diagrams. By
Christopher Perello. $35.00
World War I was the crucial event of the 20th cen-
tury, as the great European powers—which until
then dominated the world economically, militarily
and politically— destroyed themselves. In the midst
of all that, politicians and generals still had a war to
win, and soldiers a war to fight. Crowns in the Gut-
ter provides a concise analysis of the strategies and
tactics employed to to try to achieve those goals. The
chapters cover the entire war chronologically. They
weave together the campaigns and battles with politi-
cal events, improvements in weapons and changes in
combat methodology, into one seamless story. The
narrative also has dozens of maps and diagrams to
further illustrate all the action of the first total war.

online: www.StrategyAndTacticsPress.com
World at War 59

WaW 12 Issue.indd 59 4/14/10 2:59:02 PM

 Command your task force in the Pacific!
War in the Pacific $420.00
On Sunday, 7 December 1941, the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was attacked by Japanese
aircraft. For the next four years, Allied task forces engaged elements of the Imperial Japanese fleet
throughout the ocean. Marines and army units began their program of island-hopping, wresting from
the Japanese the empire that they had expanded in every direction.
War in the Pacific is a multi-level simulation of the Pacific theater of operations during World
War II. The game enables players to recreate the entire course of the war, form the opening Japanese
attack on 7 December, 1941 to the climatic Allied assaults in the closing days of 1945. Representing
some 30% of the globe, the strategic maps let players move and engage in combat on all levels: air,
ground and naval. War in the Pacific is the most detailed board game of the Pacific Theater ever cre-
ated. There are a number of rules and concepts that will, at first, be unfamiliar to a majority of players.
But playing through smaller map sections and scenarios enables the player to become familiar with
the mechanincs of the game.
Components: 7 full size strategic maps in full color, new tactical maps with nearly 340 individual islands for
new ground units to fight over, 32 die-cut counter sheets, nearly 9,000 counters showing all types of units from
the Pacific Theater, rule books and assorted displays and player aid charts. Ships as 12 units.

Strategic Map War in the Pacific Extension Kit

This Extension kit extends
WITP into late 1945 and 1946
making it possible to explore the
possibilities of the war continuing
without atomic intervention.
The kit includes a new counter
sheet for planes, ships, and other
units scheduled to appear after
August 1945. It also includes
an additional set of the aircraft
counter sheets for a total of five
counter sheets, plus two more
tactical island maps. The rules and charts booklet covers
the additional rules needed to continue the war. $40

Advanced Pacific Theater of Operations

Like Advanced ETO, the forces in APTO are exactingly accurate and have been ex-
haustively researched. There’s no guesswork; every piece is based on the most thorough
study ever devoted to a wargame. It even features all the Soviet and Japanese forces
that engaged in the “Nomonhan Incident,” along with the units of every nationality
that fielded a military in the war. Indeed, this is actually a division-level game, and is
even more detailed than the acclaimed Advanced ETO.
APTO and AETO can be linked to simulate the entire Second World War more ac-
curately than any other game ever produced. This is more than an AETO supplement;
though, in that it features special rules for: elite pilots, atomic bombs, midget submarines,
coast-watchers, tropical disease and more.
Advanced PTO is the most realistic yet playable game on the subject; it includes
admirals and generals, every type of aircraft and every capital ship that existed in the
Pacific Theater, and even some refits. APTO represents the ultimate blend of playabil-
ity and detail. In conjunction with AETO and also Africa Orientale Italiana (the East
African expansion for AETO and APTO), no World War II strategic series has ever
been so all-encompassing, detailed, playable and realistic. $120.00
Contents: 1,680 Die cut counters, 2 34” x 22” Map, 2 Rule booklets & 1 Scenario booklet, Player Aid cards & display,
3 Dice and#12
60 Storage bags.

WaW 12 Issue.indd 60 4/14/10 2:59:07 PM

 USN Deluxe
Refight the greatest naval-air-land war of history. USN Deluxe is an update
of the classic SPI game on the War in the Pacific, 1941-45. While maintaining
the original game’s basic systems, the new design includes rules for a compre-
hensive simulation that includes the entire war, extending the game from Hawaii
to the Asian Mainland. Scenarios include the first year of the Japanese offen-
sive, as well as 1941-43, 1943-45 and 1941-45. There are also mini-games for
Midway, the Solomons, Burma, China, the Philippines, Manchuria and others.
Included is a War Plan Orange scenario for a “what-if” naval war with the US
and Japan squaring off in the 1930s.
Naval forces are at the squadron level, except aircraft carriers, which are
each represented by individual counters. Air units are in groupings based on
squadrons. Land units are regiments, brigades, divisions, corps and armies.
The game system uses an interactive sequence of play in which both sides
can launch strikes, exploit errors and win great victories. New rules include
kamikazes, armored divisions, task force markers, Soviet intervention,
MAGIC, special operations forces, the China front, strategic bombing, and yes, the atom bomb.
Contents: 2 22x34 inch maps, 840 die-cut counters, rules book and assorted Player Aid cards. $80.00

Pacific Battles, volume 1: 15

X
11 SPA
II
I I B
The Rising Sun 6 (3) 6 37 (4) 12
Pacific Battles is a wargame series covering the great land
battles of the Pacific theater in WWII. Units are battalions, with X
companies and regiments. Most games in the series have players 9I 9I
commanding anywhere from a division to a corps worth of forces, 6 (2) 6 212
and employment of combined arms tactics becomes critical.
The system shows the evolution of tactical doctrine in both the
Japanese and Allied armies with Banzai charges, superior U.S. fire III III
4 4
coordination, naval bombardment, airpower, amphibious landings, 21 21

and engineer operations. Games in this volume include: The Fall 2 (5) 6 2 (3) 6
of Singapore, Struggle for Bataan and Guadalcanal.
Components: 2 22 x 34 inch mapsheet, 460 die cut counters, rules III
USAAF
booklet, player aid cards, storage bags and 1 die. 22 18
$50. 00
2 (6) 7 2
QTY Title Price Total
War in the Pacific $420 5th Air Grp XX
War in the Pacific, Extn. $40 HQ 1
1 5 (4) 12
Adv Pacfic Theater Op. $120
Pacific Battles, Vol 1 $50
USN Deluxe $80
Shipping PO Box 21598
Bakersfield CA 93390
Name 661/587-9633 • fax 661/587-5031 • www.decisiongames.com
Address
City/State/Zip Shipping Charges (Rates are subject to change without notice.)
Country 1st unit Adt’l units Type of Service
$12 $2 UPS Ground (USPS PM add $5)
V/MC # Exp.
24 3 Canada
Signature 34 3 Europe, South America, Asia
Phone # 36 5 Australia
World at War 61

WaW 12 Issue.indd 61 4/14/10 2:59:10 PM

 New Solitaire Games
RAF: The Battle of Britain, 1940
England stands alone against Germany, defended only by the Royal
Air Force. Hitler orders his Luftwaffe to destroy the RAF in preparation
for the invasion of England. You command the RAF or Luftwaffe in
history’s greatest air campaign—the Battle of Britain. Improving on
his award-winning solitaire classic, designer John Butterfield ramps up
the historical accuracy, tension and play options with three complete
games.
RAF: Lion puts you in control of Fighter Command, responding
to German raids. The game’s system generates targets and forces,
which remain hidden until you commit your squadrons. Scenarios
range from one day, taking an hour to complete, to the full cam-
paign, playable in 12 hours.
RAF: Eagle puts you in control of the Luftwaffe raiding England.
You schedule raids and assign missions to your bombers and fight-
ers, attempting to deliver the knockout blow. The game controls
the RAF response.
RAF: 2-Player allows for two-players, one controlling Fighter
Command and the other the Luftwaffe.
Features include: German priorities, close escort, free hunt, the
Channel Patrol, day and night bombing, radar, the Observer Corps,
weather, ULTRA intercepts, squadron patrols, “big wings,” altitude
advantage, ace squadrons, and flak. Each game turn equals a “raid day”
with six two-hour segments. Units are British squadrons and German
groups. On the map, one inch equals 20 miles (32 kilometers).

Contents: 176 Die cut counters, 165 Cards, 3 34” x 22” Map, Rule booklets, Histori-
cal Study Booklet, Player Aid cards & display, 2 Dice and Storage bags.

D-Day at Omaha Beach, 6 June 1944

D-Day at Omaha Beach recreates America’s most bloodiest day
of World War II. In this solitaire game from the designer of RAF and
Ambush, you control the US 1st and 29th Divisions landing under fire
and struggling to establish a beachhead. The game is for two playing
cooperatively, each controlling a division.
Units include assault infantry, tanks, artillery, rockets, engineers
and HQ. The system controls the German defenders. US forces that
break through the beach defense must then contend with German
mobile reinforcements in the hedgerows. The combat rules highlight
unknown enemy deployments and the importance of the right tactics.
Event cards keep the action flowing while controlling German strategy.
The game takes into account intangibles such as leadership under fire
and the initiative of American GIs.
Scenarios: The First Wave (two to three hour playing time) introduces
the basics in a recreation of the initial assault. Beyond the Beach (four
to five hours) picks up on the high ground and adds rules for German
tactics. D-Day at Omaha Beach (seven hours) covers the entire day.
Each game turn equals 15 minutes in the basic game or 30minutes in
the extended game. Units are companies for both sides. On the map,
each hex equals 275 yards.

Contents: 352 5/8” Counters, One 34x22” Full-Color Map, 55 Event Cards, Rules
Booklet, Historical Study Booklet, and Player Aid Cards.
62 #12

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 Struggle
for the
Galactic Empire
In the far future, when mankind has gained the means
to transit space, a human wave extends across the
galaxy. Communities of worlds form alliances; alliances
become federations, and eventually a galactic empire
is born. That empire exists for millennia, growing and
consolidating, bringing most of the inhabited worlds
under its control. Despite its size and apparent
success, though, all is not well. There are rebels,
usurpers, those who want to create empires of their
own, and aliens of every imaginable form. Over the
long millennia, even the form of man is taking a new
shape with genetic engineering.
Struggle for the Galactic Empire is a solitaire science
fiction game. You assume leadership of the empire
as it strives to maintain and expand while fighting
the forces of chaos. You make decisions to deal with
threats, keep the empire stable, and still expand and
bring new glory through discovery, colonization and
conquest.
The map shows the entire galaxy divided into sectors.
Production creates starships and other weapons.
Units have two combat values: weapons and morpho-
genetic systems. Weapons destroy the enemy, while
morphogenetic systems change them into friends.
Loyalties switch back and forth.
Threats are generated by chaos markers, including:
rebels, usurpers, independent empires, invaders
and alien forces, as well as technological, economic,
social, political and military events. You also launch
expeditions to gain new knowledge and technology.
Other rules allow you to use psychosocial warfare
and propaganda to repress rebellions.
Contents: 176 Die cut counters, 1 34” x 22” Map, Rule
booklet, Player Aid cards, 1 Die and Storage Bags.
QTY Title Price Total
RAF: Battle fo Britain $75
D-Day at Omaha Beach $55
Struggle Galactic Empire $50
Shipping
Total
PO Box 21598
Bakersfield CA 93390
Name 661/587-9633 • fax 661/587-5031 • www.decisiongames.com
Address
City/State/Zip Shipping Charges (Rates are subject to change without notice.)
Country 1st unit Adt’l units Type of Service
$12 $2 UPS Ground (USPS PM add $5)
V/MC # Exp.
24 3 Canada
Signature 34 3 Europe, South America, Asia
Phone # 36 5 Australia
World at War 63

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 Turning the Pages of History
Strategy & Tactics magazine covers all of military history and
its future possibilities. The articles focus on the ‘how’ and
‘why’ of war, and are richly illustrated with maps, diagrams
and photos. Use the subscription card or order online.
Don’t miss a single issue!

In-Depth Analysis

Detailed Maps

Orders of Battle

P.O. Box 21598

Bakersfield, CA 93390-1598
ph: (661) 587-9633 • Fax: (661) 587-5031
www.StrategyAndTacticsPress.com
64 #12

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