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DECEMBER 20, 1944

BATTLE OF THE BULGE, DAY 5

At this point, the reserve forces (the 82nd and the 101st and the headquarters of the XVIII Airborne) are in sector and in their fighting positions. For the first time ever, the XVIII Airborne Corps is operating in combat.

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Back to the Battle of the Bulge.

He's late.

Thursday, December 28, 1944, ~ 2:30 PM.

Delayed by fog and snowbanks, Eisenhower's command train pulls into a rail siding in the Belgian town of Hasselt three hours behind schedule.

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Ike is there to meet with Monty.

Ike needs to get the bellicose Brit on board with this plan [we're calling it the "middle option" plan] we showed you yesterday.

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Monty is good with the plan, but he believes it's too early to counterattack.

Monty makes his case: intel suggests another (final) impending German attack, so we should build up our defenses & wait rather than attack.

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Monty recommends a strategy of patience. He wants more divisions, he wants to set conditions before a strike. Wait for the moment to present itself, then pour it on.

[if you get the point of this GIF, we appreciate you]

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Ike counters: If we remain stagnant, we may lose our gains. If we lose momentum, we allow the Panzers to slink back over the West Wall and this war might go on for years.

1 of 16: WE ARE ALL JEWS HERE: THE STORY OF RODDIE EDMONDS

One of the most moving and relevant stories of the Battle of the Bulge, or any American Soldier in any war, is that of Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, a Knoxville, Tennessee native, who served with the 106th Infantry.

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Roddie was captured early on in the Battle of the Bulge, on December 19th, when Panzer forces plowed through his unit.

He, along with almost his entire regiment, was forced to surrender.

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The men were transported to the Stalag IX-A POW camp in Ziegenhain, Germany.

Roddie was the senior enlisted American Soldier at the site. As such, he was the conduit between all American Soldiers and their German captors.

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In late January, the camp’s commandant, Major Siegmann [pictured here], ordered Roddie, a Christian, to identify all Jewish Soldiers and order them to stand in formation by themselves the next day.

[Jewish Soldiers were a minority within American units]

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Throughout WWII, captured Jewish Soldiers were often tortured and then killed by their German captors.

In fact, Jewish Soldiers had been told to bury their dog tags before capture. The dog tag identified Jews with the letter “H” for Hebrew.

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BATTLE OF THE BULGE DAY 3: DECEMBER 18, 1944

Battling Bastards of Bastogne

~2:15 AM, Major General Matthew Ridgway, unaware of the fighting in Ardennes, and sleeping in his HQ, is awakened by a call from Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges, commander of First Army.

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Hodges, calling from the town of Spa in Belgium, tells Ridgway that the Germans are smashing through the Ardennes & the XVIII Airborne Corps had been released from theater reserve and assigned to First Army to help push back the offensive.

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Until just recently, with the creation of the 18th Airborne Corps, there was no traditional "reserve" in the European Theater. Now, the 18th was the reserve.

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Ridgway sends the 101st and 82nd into the teeth of the ferocious German attack.

Here’s Jim Gavin, 82nd commander, who would push east to Werbomont, Belgium.

The 101st would drive into the wood chipper outside of Bastogne, Belgium.

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The 101st, in particular, was in no shape to go back into the fight.

Yesterday we announced the launch of The Doomsday Clock, an original 18th Airborne Corps podcast series telling the incredible story of the Corps' Cold War history.

Today we're going to tell you more about some of the guests who will appear on the program.

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Of course, we'll have John Lewis Gaddis, the dean of Cold War historians about the start and end of American confrontation with the Soviets (Episode 16: April 27).

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We'll also have the great H.W. Brands to talk about the Korean War and the stare down between Truman and MacArthur (Episode 7: February 23).

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Podcast king Dan Carlin joins us for a deep, dark journey into the philosophy of the Soviet Union (Episode 9: March 9).

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You know Sir Max Hastings as the great historian, but long before that he was a war reporter. That's him on the right in Vietnam in 1968.

He joins us to talk about American escalation in the Vietnam War (Episode 10: March 16).

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By Jan 13, 1945, the Allies entered the final (and most historically overlooked) phase of the Battle of the Bulge

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By midday 75 years ago, all final Allied offensive actions were in motion.

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So, to set the table, let's remember who is who here.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

In the South, Patton's 3rd Army is still slowly making its way northeast to Houffalize (remember, they've been making progress that way since Jan 3rd).

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In the North, you've got
Robert Hasbrouck (commander of 7th Armored Division)

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In the North, you've also got Leland Hobbs who commanded the 30th Infantry Division. Hobbs and Hasbrouck reported to...

The Churchill Tank in Normandy: Part One 40-44

Ratty Relic or Bocage Buster?

How did it go from a hated, atrocious POS tank worthy only of the scrapheap to a reliable, trustworthy, survivable and popular gun tank in action?

Another pertinent tale. /1
#WW2 #SWW #History

At 38 tons the Churchill was clearly a beast but a manageable one, given concerns about railway loading gauge had informed development (even then you still had to remove the side air louvres for rail tpt).

As always, compromise & industrial limitations underpinned design. /2

Early Mk I and Mk II were respectively armed with a 2 Pounder with coaxial Besa in the turret but with differing hull armament, I - 3" howitzer, II - Besa machine gun.

88.9mm of front armour provided excellent protection for the five man crew, and WS No. 19 provided comms. /3

Other than being undergunned another problem was, they didn't work very well.

But why?

It call comes back to, you guessed it, June 1940 - at the height of that invasion-scare summer.

AFV cupboards were bare so the initial models were raced into production in June 1940... /4

there wasn't time for proper prototyping or accompanying development as the imperative to have ANY gun tank pushed Vauxhall to the limit in the race to get SOMETHING, ANYTHING into the field.

9 RTR probably enjoyed the dubious honour of the first Churchill deliveries. /5

In 1997, the Clinton administration created the "1033" program, whereby the Pentagon gave away its "surplus" equipment to local law enforcement agencies, leading to the nationwide militarization of America's cops.

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In the decades since, 1033 became a $5B industry: beltway bandits lobby their pals in the DoD to place massive orders for weapons and materiel which are immediately declared "surplus" and transfered to undertrained cops

Opponents of this program hypothesized that it would obey Checkhov's Law: "A machine-gun in the police armory in Act One will go off by Act Three. And then again, and again, and again."

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They were right.

Empirical studies show that cops who get milspec penis surrogates through 1033 murder the fuck out of the people who pay their

But 1033's defenders insisted (without any evidence) that turning Deputy Dawg into a USMC Fallujah Street Patrol Cosplayer seriously improved the quality of US policing.

They were wrong.

5/

I keep thinking about the parallels between terror groups like Al-Queda, the Taliban, etc and the recent domestic insurrection.

Both start with people who feel they have been wronged. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, it doesn't matter if it's devastating or a slight.

Add to that, their religious leaders driving into them thru rhetoric that gives them someone to blame. Their religious leaders (Pastor, Minister, Imam, Cleric etc) focus on one or two things, and forsake all the rest of the teachings of their faith.

They then explain how their deity expects them to go and make it right in the name of [deity]. It's not remotely relevant if it's Jesus, God or Allah. They find the people they want torn down and have sent them off.

Add to that, their false idols like Donald Trump, Osama bin Laden, or whoever, who never stops telling them "the truth" (well, as they see it). They tell them to ignore the [mainstream media, infidels, etc] and isolate them from any kind of semblance influence that disagrees

It's a constant barrage of preaching, and false idols telling them that they are somehow chosen, and that what they do is "right".

1 of 19: TANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE

You crazy for this one, #TankTwitter

The Battle of the Bulge was among the largest tank battles in US history.

[If you are here seeking something other than straightforward analysis of a historical event, please look elsewhere]

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After the war, a narrative developed that American tank units (7th, 9th, 10th Armored Divisions, in particular) overcame a German tank superiority in the Battle of the Battle.

[3 of 19] We'd like to put that idea to the test.

We've discussed Kampfgruppe Peiper outmaneuvering our tanks early on with the newest German tank, the 70-ton Tiger II.

The remaining German forces had the Tiger I and Panzers.

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Lt. Colonel Robert Erlenbusch commanded company A, 31st Tank Battalion in St. Vith during the fighting. After the war, he wrote a paper for III Corps in which he stated that German Panther and Tiger tanks were far superior to the American Sherman and Stuart tanks.

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American tanks had success in Ardennes only if they hit "lucky shots" according to Erlenbusch. Many historians still reference Erlenbusch's findings.

So you're a company commander in Normandy, trying to coordinate your three platoons in action, & liase w supporting tanks & some arty, & keep battalion headquarters appraised, & adapt as needed.

You know your platoons' sets are a bit crap.

What do you do? /1
#WW2 #SWW #History

The whole thing is a bit of a juggling act.

The core set at Company HQ was the WS No. 18 set, linking in with WS No. 38 sets used by platoons & back to Battalion HQ.
0.25 Watts
6-9Mhz
2.5 miles range with R/T and 4 miles with W/T
Interference in woodlands/around armour /2

The 18 set was more durable than the WS No. 38, but much less powerful than the popular WS No. 19 and 22 sets... then again you can carry it about and not worry about a vehicle or cart for it in action. /3

Much like the WS No. 38 set, the No. 18 set also relies on a rather conspicuous aerial - 10' (3m) high.

The Army knew such height wasn't desirable and trials of ground trailing aerials for the 18 and 38 sets were underway in theatre but there were problems... /4

It performed poorly on wet ground, and Normandy was... frequently soggy, whilst movement through thick undergrowth could damage the copper wire which also had the habit of snapping if stepped on.

So signallers, and those around them, had to be pretty considerate in action. /5