Military History

By John Dudek @ The Wargamer

Dudley Walker “Mush” Morton was a dynamic, utterly fearless, yet personable submarine skipper and a natural born leader of fighting men. The nickname of “Mush” was short for “Mush-mouth”, a name he picked up in college because of his decided southern drawl way of talk. Described as a “happy warrior” who exuded happiness, good humor and joy whenever entering into combat. His infectious, positive “can-do” outlook was electric and never failed to fire up his crew. Although prone to take great chances while playing against long odds, he continued winning big against the Japanese and single headedly raised the morale with the entire US Submarine Force with the tales of USS WAHOO’s mostly successful five war patrols over ten months.

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By John Dudek @ The Wargamer

Bernard Law Montgomery, Field Marshall, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, KG, GCB, DSO, and so on, is undoubtedly best remembered for commanding the 8th Army in North Africa, Sicily and Italy and then commands in Europe for D-Day and beyond. However, he did not just spring into those commands out of the blue. He also saw action in Europe at the very start of the war, and here we look at his experiences in France leading up to Dunkirk.

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By John Dudek @ The Wargamer

Location: The South Pacific’s Solomon Island’s chain, Blackett Strait somewhere between Gizo and Kolombangara Islands; 0200 Hours, 2 August 1943. What followed could, if it had turned out differently, have dramatically changed the events of U.S. and world history some 20 years later – certainly the U.S. would have a different name inscribed as that of its 35th president.

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Allied Commando Raid on Singapore Harbour 26-27 September 1943

By John Dudek @ The Wargamer

Three two-man canoe-kayaks manned by British and Australian commandos paddled silently along and unobserved into the blacked out roadstead of Japanese occupied Singapore Harbor on the night of 26/27 September 1943. Their targets were the dozens of dark and shadowy Japanese merchant ships and tankers anchored throughout the harbor. With some 45 ships to choose from anchored nearby, theirs was a truly target rich environment. One by one, the Allied canoe boats fanned out to choose their individual ship targets. Each boat silently glided alongside their chosen ships to quietly plant magnetic “limpet mines” with attached timers below the waterline before casting off in search of other prey. Any inquisitive Japanese crewman who might have looked over the side of their ships could easily spy the attacker’s menacing canoes lurking below. Yet somehow the merchant ship and tanker crews remained completely oblivious to the sabotage operation taking place around them and the earth shattering explosive climax that was soon to follow. Perhaps their being anchored in an extremely well defended harbor in a rear area backwater of the war played a major role in their complacency, but many of them would never see another sunrise.

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The Capture of the U-505

By John Dudek @ The Wargamer

TIME: 1109 Hours.

DATE: 4 June 1944

LOCATION: 150 nautical miles off the Cape Verde Islands.

The US Navy Hunter-Killer group had the U-Boat submarine’s location down cold. Using high-frequency direction (Huff-Duff) and sonar (ASDIC) triangulation from the destroyer escorts, it was only a matter of time before they’d find and sink the submarine. Unfortunately the U-boat was now dangerously well inside the task force screen of 5 destroyer escorts – USS Pillsbury, Flaherty, Jenks, Pope and Chatelain. In response, the task force’s nearby escort aircraft carrier USS Guadalcanal sheered off and moved away at high speed while launching two Wildcat fighter planes and a TBM Avenger bomber to aid in their search for the elusive submarine. Chatelain fired her hedgehog anti-submarine launcher at the submarine because the shallow running submarine’s depth would not allow the depth charges to sink quickly enough to strike the U-boat. Following the detonation of hedgehog charges, a large oil slick came to the surface and a patrolling plane overhead radioed: “You struck oil! The sub is surfacing!” The U-boat broke surface less than 700 yards from Chatelain and the destroyer immediately opened fire with her automatic weapons on the injured and wallowing submarine. The submarine’s crew abandoned ship in the hail of gunfire as the U-boat continued to slowly circle at around 7 knots. Chatelain fired a single torpedo at the submarine but missed. Aboard the USS Guadalcanal the carrier’s executive officer spoke to task force commander Captain Daniel Gallery as he pointed at the submarine, now riding high at the bow but low at the stern. “What do we do with her Skipper?” Gallery quickly answered. “I want to take this bastard alive.” He paused but a moment further before giving the electrifying cry not heard in the US Navy for well over a hundred years. “AWAY ALL BOARDING PARTIES! BOARDERS AWAY!”

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The Battle of France June 1940

By John Dudek @ The Wargamer

Time: 0900 hours 5 June 1940

Location: The village of Vandy France

The French artillery officer crouched low over the camouflaged WW I vintage, 75mm. cannon pointing towards the turn in the road a hundred yards away from the French farmyard they were concealed in. His gun crew were itching for action that was guaranteed to be not long in coming. As he looked through his binoculars, a column of German tanks, trucks and support infantry vehicles swung into view a few hundred yards distant and the gun crew quickly made their gun elevation and directional corrections. They aimed at the lead tank and awaited the “firing” order. The first round missed the lead tank but nailed the second one immediately behind it. That tank slewed out of line and drove off the road into a ditch to begin burning and “brewing up.” The second French artillery round nailed the lead tank squarely as well and it too began to burn, its crew evacuated the vehicle, only to be taken under flanking fire from hidden French automatic weapons fire. The third tank halted abruptly to begin sweeping the farmyard with machine gun and tank gunfire as the trucks and half tracks behind it began disgorging its supporting troops onto the ground. This was what the French officers in the farm house were waiting for as their Major emerged shouting and waving his sword. “Mes amis! Mes frères! Baïonnettes de charge!” (My friends, my brothers! Charge Bayonets!) A company of enraged, blood thirsty French infantry with bayonet fixed rifles and with their officers leading them, charged the shocked and surprised dismounted German infantry to quickly put them all to the sword, sparing only the rare few who managed to flee. A badly wounded German gefreiter, (private) lying next to one of the burning trucks coughed up blood as he tried to hold in his guts that had been recently pierced by a French poilu’s bayonet. He shook his head in disbelief saying: “I thought the war in France was over.”

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The US Strategic Bombing Campaign on Japan, Part 3

By John Dudek @ The Wargamer

As soon as Colonel Paul Tibbets felt his B-29 bomber the “Enola Gay” lurch upwards following the release of the 9,700 lb. atomic bomb “Little Boy” from its bomb bay, he and his co-pilot advanced or “firewalled” the engine throttles to maximum over boost as he put the plane into a shallow dive to gain as much speed as possible and put as many miles between his fleeing bomber and the nuclear bomb currently hurtling towards earth. He had two minutes before the bomb was scheduled to detonate in an air burst 2,000 feet above the city. He ordered his crew to put on their welders goggles over their eyes to shield them from the bomb’s expected blinding flash. Concussion from the bomb’s detonation rattled and shook the bomber as one crewman exclaimed “My God!” over the interphone as to what he witnessed below. A massive mushroom shaped cloud of many colors boiled and arose thousands of feet above the now brightly blazing city. A Japanese fighter pilot flying through the same cloud rolled back his canopy and stretched his hand outside the cockpit to the colorful smoke all around his plane. In doing so, he unknowingly signed his own death warrant and soon died from radiation poisoning in the coming days. The bomb killed 78,000 people although many thousands more would die from its after effects in the weeks, months and years afterwards. In addition, the bomb destroyed almost 5 square miles of the city. The Enola Gay and its five accompanying weather spotter bombers returned to the Marianas without incident. Their 509th Composite Group had dropped the very first atomic bomb in wartime history. Unfortunately, the Japanese military government remained completely unmoved in their fervent Bushido code desire to continue their suicidal war to its bitter, bloody end against the Allies.

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The US Strategic Bombing Campaign of Japan – Part 2

By John Dudek @ The Wargamer

US Navy battleship and cruiser shells fell thick and heavy upon the Marianas island of Saipan’s landing beaches on the early morning of 15 June 1944. Well offshore, more than 300 LVT amphtrac landing craft carrying over 4,000 Marines cruised in circular formations, chasing each other’s rooster tails of spray emerging from the rear of their tracked amphibious landing vehicles. They were awaiting the “Go Order” to proceed ashore. At 0830 hours Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner gave that order and the LVT’s fanned out towards the Saipan shore. Somewhere off BLUE BEACH 2 a grizzled, flinty old pre-war Marine gunnery sergeant gave his neophyte troops his final orders. He shouted and pointed to a nearby track then running alongside. “Listen up you people! We’re crossing the final line of departure. That’s Lt. Smith’s amphtrack over there. When we get ashore, un-ass this vehicle as soon as we stop, get ashore and tie in with his herd! One other thing. Don’t get killed! That would make me most unhappy because you know how much I hate doing paperwork. Now lock and load and keep your damned heads down!” As the Marines loaded their M-1 Garand rifles, the old “gunny” put a five round clip into his much older Springfield 1903 bolt action rifle. He winked and grinned at the other Marines in the landing craft. All too soon and with a terrifying crashing suddenness, Japanese artillery and mortar shells began falling thickly and heavily around the Marine amphtracks as if someone had unzipped the very heavens above. Japanese anti-boat guns located in the still hidden pillboxes and caves ashore began taking an ever increasing toll of American landing craft. Meanwhile, Japanese artillery gun batteries located well behind the landing beaches began firing upon the incoming amphibious landing force. The sergeant’s LVT lurched to a halt at the water’s edge and the Marines aboard launched themselves over the vehicle’s gunwales onto the sandy beach, but there was no Lt. Smith or any of his men to be seen. His LVT lay still burning on the coral reef offshore like a number of so many other burning, broken toys out there, all of them victims of an anti-boat gun’s direct hit. A mortar shell concussion knocked down the gunnery sergeant, but aside from a few minor metal splinter cuts he was unhurt. As he brushed the black coral sand from his face, eyes and forehead, he looked up at the smoking, mountainous and craggy heights that lay far above and well behind the landing beaches. He shook his head and said incredulously. “How in hell are those doggy pricks going to build a B-29 bomber airfield way up there?”

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The US Strategic Bombing Campaign of Japan June 1944 – August 1945, Part 1

By John Dudek @ The Wargamer

Looming out of the warm spring darkness, a bomber stream formation of 68 US Army Air Force four engine Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers made landfall well over the Japanese home island of Kyushu around midnight on 15 June 1944. The formation’s lead plane was piloted by Brigadier General Laverne G. Saunders. Japanese searchlights with their multi-million candlelight arcs snapped on ahead of them in the distance, sending up numerous probing shafts of ultra brilliant light skyward searching for the oncoming bombers. The plane’s navigator spoke. “General, we’re approaching the target and are on the bomb run.” In response. Saunders said. “Bombardier, the plane is now under your control.” “Roger!” the bombardier replied. The man sitting in the “greenhouse” glass nose of the plane and gave the “OK signal” with his hand held over his head. He then leaned over his Norden bombsight and began making minute adjustments to the plane’s course and speed; all the while fighting the only recently discovered high altitude jet stream winds that buffeted the bomber and all others in the formation. Tail winds with this speed and velocity could propel a high flying aircraft to over 500 mph while a head wind could slow their progress down to a crawl. Either eventuality could easily spoil the bombardier’s aim. The bomber’s target was the Imperial Japanese Iron and Steel Works at Yawata. Heavy but inaccurate flak artillery fire exploded brightly around the bomber stream but caused little to no damage. In addition, there were no Japanese night fighter planes anywhere in sight. The bombardier soon called out “Bombs away!” as the first of 107 tons of bombs cascaded downward towards the steel works. The bomber formation effected a long, lazy turn away from the target to return to their newly built air bases in Nationalist China. The bombing mission appeared to have been a success. However, subsequent photo reconnaissance flights sadly revealed poor results from the raid with only one bomb striking within the industrial complex due to both the high speed jet stream winds and poor visibility over the target. However, this fact was mitigated by the knowledge that the raid on Yawata was the first aerial bombing raid on mainland Japanese since the pin-prick Doolittle aircraft carrier launched air raid over two years before. The US news media was absolutely elated by the news of the Yawata bombing raid, proclaiming that this was but the first of many more air raids that would soon knock Japan completely out of the war. For once they were completely correct.

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WWII’s highest scoring U-boat ace

By John Dudek @ The Wargamer

Otto Kretschmer was without a doubt the greatest and most gifted U-boat Captain ever to serve in the German Navy in WWII. He was known as “Silent Otto”, not only for his reluctance to make small talk, but also his reluctance towards making regular radio contact with the U-boat headquarters. In addition he was also a firm believer in the “silent running” of his U-boat if being searched for by Allied destroyers while submerged. Kretschmer was something of an anomaly during the age of the cold hearted Nazi “supermen,” in that he believed in the traditional values of sea warfare: those of chivalry, fair play and doing all possible to relieve the suffering of a vanquished foe. During his career in WWII, it was common for Kretschmer upon encountering a life boat filled with the men he’d tried to sink and kill only hours earlier, to surface his submarine alongside to give them food, water, blankets and a compass heading towards dry land. On one such occasion he encountered a single British sailor in a life raft who was suffering from the advanced stages of hypothermia exposure. He had the man brought aboard, taken below, bundled in hot blankets and given a hot mug of tea. As the man gradually came out of shock, he thought he’d been taken aboard a British submarine and marveled at his good fortune. Given how many of Kreschmer’s crew were fluent in English and that the German submariners wore no insignia while wearing basic overhauls in lieu of uniforms, it took quite a bit of convincing to get the sailor to believe he was actually aboard a German U-boat. The survivor was eventually placed upon another life boat they encountered, one filled with other Allied sailors and a single extremely haughty British officer. When Kretschmer called down to the life boat, asking if they had provisions aboard, the British officer offered up an unprintable and less than desirable response. Undeterred, Kretschmer ordered food and water to be placed aboard the life boat. After giving the survivors a compass heading for the nearby coast of Ireland, Kretschmer saluted the officer and bid him “Good luck!” The British officer, upon realizing the extremely generous nature of the gifts of food and water, returned the salute and wished the Germans “Good Luck!” in return as the U-boat sailed away.

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