Category Archives: General History

Just How Bad Did Things Go For the German U-Boats in 1943

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Sometimes I’ll do some thinking about a topic and try to apply some math to the problem. In this case, it was in regards to the losses suffered by the German U-Boat arm in World War II. A number of sources list the killed at about 75% and another 5% captured out of a total of something like 40,900 men.

The extensive uboat.net site has listed the top 50 German Submarine commanders of World War II. I thought I would do some analysis of the fates of those top 50 commanders and see how they fared in comparison to the general loss rate.

The following table counts the number of these commanders that for one reason or another ended their front line service in each year, from 1940 through to the end of the war. The result is interesting.

Fates of the top 50 U-Boat Commanders

The blank column counts those that were still active at or near the end of the war. The loss to death or capture ratio was 50%, much better than the often reported overall rate of 80%. I suspect the reason is that many of these commanders were transferred to staff or training positions before they were killed. A few points can be gleaned from these stats.

  1. Of the 30 sub commanders that were still in the front lines in January, 1943, 16 were killed and 2 captured by the end of that year. It appears that the U-Boats were badly beaten in 1943. No military force can sustain a loss rate like that and continue to operate effectively, at least without a period of rest and reorganization.
  2. Also, by the end of 1943, all but three of these commanders were no longer actively commanding submarines in war patrols. You must wonder if all of these transfers were an effort to rest fatigued commanders or an attempt to spread the expertise of these men around through the training and staff positions that they recieved.
  3. Of the three that still commanded front line boats after 1943, one was transferred to a training command in January, 1944 and the two others ended up operating in the Indian Ocean, presumably a much safer environment for U-Boats.

A follow on project might be to compare the fates of these top 50 commanders to the entire list of U-boat commanders, which I think, can be derived from the data on uboat.net.

Two Battles, Similar Results, Different Assessment

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In this post, I’m going to briefly compare two Civil War battles. Both battles had very similar results. Both of these battles were surprise attacks on strongly entrenched defenders.

The Battle of the Crater

Union Attacker: 8,500 troops and suffered losses of 3798 men

Confederate Defender: 6,100 troops and lost 1491 men

Result: Attackers were thrown back around midday

The Battle of Fort Stedman

Confederate Attacker: 10,000 troops and lost 4000 men

Union Defender: 14898 troops and lost 1044 men

Result: Attackers were defeated by around 8:00AM

Detailed accounts of both battles reveal a pretty similar chain of events. At first a breakthrough, but confusion and strong counterattacks caused high casualties among the attackers. In both cases, it was particularly difficult for the attackers to find a way to return to friendly lines.

Both attacks involved surprise in order to initiate the breakthrough. The Union Army used a mine to blow a hole in the Confederate lines to start the Battle of the Crater, while the Confederates used men posing as deserters to surprise and overcome the initial defense of Fort Stedman. The Union had more men to engage in the defense of Fort Stedman, and were able to defeat the assault early in the morning. The Confederates had less men involved in the Battle of the Crater, and took longer to completely throw back the assault.

To me, one of the the most interesting things about these two battles is how the results were reported by the defeated army commanders.

The complete text of all of these messages can be found online in the Official Records, just follow the embedded links and you will find yourself on the right page. Scroll down to find the relevant messages.

The day after the Battle of the Crater, General Grant sent a telegram to his Chief of Staff, General Halleck, and classified the battle as a disaster. The next day, in another letter to Halleck, a court of inquiry was requested by General Grant. Generals Burnside and Ledlie lost their commands and a number of other Union Generals were censured by the inquiry. In contrast, Lee’s message to Secretary of War, Breckinridge, was in a more matter of fact style. He did under-report the losses as “not heavy”. Lee was very complimentary of his troops and their leaders.

I think that there are some questions that are worth asking about the reports of each commander.

  • Why was Grant so tough on his leaders? Did he believe that he needed a scapegoat, or did he feel that some of those leaders needed to be replaced?
  • Why was Lee so indifferent to a bad day? Remember that at the time of this battle, the Confederacy was on it’s last legs. Did he expect the attack to fail before it was launched or was he maintaining a somewhat positive outlook to keep moral up?

One last point. It is interesting to think about how each of the losing commanders initial reports has carried down through history to today. Even though the results of each battle was about the same, the modern historians perception of the management of the two battles largely mirrors the commanders initial reports.

First City Point Model Railroad Module Benchwork

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This is the plan for the first module of my City Point Terminal Civil War model railroad. Additional modules will be added where each track leaves this module.

Model Railroad Engine House Module

Model Railroad Engine House Module

At one point, I was going to model early December, 1864, as the 6th Army Corp returned from the Shenandoah Valley. However, I have decided that the late March, 1865 meeting between Lincoln, Grant, Sherman and Porter right after the battle for Fort Stedman would make a much more interesting moment in time. Besides major leaders, this moment also provides opportunities to depict masses of prisioners, and cavalry movements, as Sheridan’s cavalry passed near City Point upon his return from the valley during this time.

The City Point terminal changed a lot over the period of Army occupation, and this is my best guess of the track layout at that point in time. This map has been edited in Photoshop to reflect differences between Merrick’s original map, which was made after the war and suriviving photos. There are two small buildings between the tracks on the right side of the diagram, that don’t show up on the map, that I will need to add. Also, there were two water tanks, one apparently was replaced by a small building before Merrick’s map was drawn.

My next post will show the benchwork that I have already constructed for this module.

Old School Engineering

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I just viewed Dave Jone’s latest video blog about the Sony Walkman. For some reason, I decided to download the service manual and have a look. One thing that I immediately noticed, was the lettering on the schematic appears to be another example of Leroy Lettering.

This caused me to reflect a little bit about my first year or two of college and my first job in industry. Before discovering computer science, I started out in a mechanical engineering program. The first engineering oriented courses you took, were drafting courses. I had no trouble with perspective and different technical aspects of drawing. However, I really had trouble creating drawings that looked nice, clean and sharp. There was no mention of Leroy or any other mechanical lettering system, so we had to hand letter our work. To this day, I don’t have the hand of an artist, and I think that lack of natural artistic ability held me back in that program. The skill of an artist, developed or natural is something that is apparent in a well done engineering drawing or schematic.

In years gone by, many engineers would spend their workday at a drafting board. I started my first co-op engineering job, in the late 70’s. That first company that I worked for, still had a drafting department for creating PCB layouts, as well as an art department that did the artwork for manuals as well as marketing material. The “uniform” of many of the experienced engineers was a white shirt, dark pants, a dark tie and a pocket protector. Second level managers omitted the pocket protector and added a sport coat. It’s basically the look of the NASA mission control team for the Apollo program.

A few years later, in the early 80s, I remember going for a job interview at IBM’s small system division. That was the first home of the IBM PC which was located in Boca Raton, Florida. Almost all the engineers there still wore that “uniform”. I did see one guy wearing a colorful shirt and jeans. He stuck out like a sore thumb. The IBM employee that was with me at that moment, pointed him out, and said he didn’t really fit in to the culture.

How times have changed.

Familiar Sight

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B-32 Bombers under construction at Air Force Plant #4

B-32 Bombers under construction at Air Force Plant #4

I was killing some time the other day, browsing the web, finding out about the great warplanes of World War II, when I ran across this photo.

The photo was found on this blog page which contains much information about it: http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/b-32-bomber-factory-fort-worth-texas1944/

After looking at it, and reading the caption, I wondered if this was the same war plane factory that I had visited in the mid 80’s. At the time, I worked for the Computer Systems Division of Gould, Inc. This company produced super-mini computers and sold a large percentage of the computers used to power commercial and military flight simulators. When introducing a new version of the computer, some of the engineering team attended a show in Fort Worth, Texas. Before the show, a local sales representative invited us to visit the General Dynamics factory outside town. At the time, General Dynamics made F-16 fighter planes at the plant. We got to walk out on the factory floor. We could see workmen constructing F-16s, one rivet at a time. No automation or moving assembly line there, those planes were practically hand-crafted. Our guide told us that it was the longest factory in the world. He said that they rolled raw material in one end and complete airplanes out the other end. It was a very cool experience. Later on, at the show, I got to “fly” a General Dynamics F-16 cockpit proceedures trainer. What a memorable trip that was.

Follow this link to see F-16s under construction in this factory.

Well it turns out that this factory was indeed the same factory as produced 3000 B-24s during World War II and over a hundred B-32s towards the end of the war. It’s official name was Air Force Factory #4. There are a number of photos of this place while B-24s Liberators were being constructed on the Library of Congress website.

B-24s Under Construction

B-24s Under Construction

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/oem2002005697/PP/

Today the F-35 lighting II is produced at the facility.

Well Known Game Designer, John Hill, has Died

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It’s sad to see another icon of the wargaming world, has died. I found out today that well known game designer John Hill has died on January 12th, at age 71.

I was deeply involved in wargaming in the mid to late 70’s and spent many hours playing his most well known game, “Squad Leader”. He also designed a popular Civil War Miniature’s rule’s set called “Johnny Reb”.

The World War 1 Meuse Argonne Campaign compared to the World War II Battle for Normandy

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This is a follow up to a previous post about my grandfathers involvement in World War 1.

World War 1 seems almost forgotten these days. Compare the little remembered Meuse-Argonne Offensive with the Battle for Normandy. Each of these campaigns is considered a major contributor towards ending a tragic war.

  • The Meuse-Argonne Offensive lasted 47 days from September 26,1918 till the end of the war, November 11, 1918.
  • The Battle for Normandy lasted 86 days, from June 6,1944 to August 30, 1944.
  • The Meuse-Argonne Offensive involved 1.2 million American and French troops and about 450,000 German troops.
  • The Battle for Normandy involved 1.45 million Allied troops and about a million German troops
  • During the the Meuse-Argonne offensive, the French and Americans suffered about 187,000 casualties and the Germans about 100,000 casualties.
  • During the battle for Normandy, the Allies suffered about 225,000 casualties and the Germans around 425,000 casualties.

    • It seems a bit of a shame that the loss, pain and suffering of hundreds of thousands of people in World War 1, has nearly been forgotten.

    More on the Sightseeing Sixth Division in World War I

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    In a previous post, I noted how my Grandfather was a member of the Sightseeing Sixth Infantry Division in World War 1. I found a history of the Sixth Infantry in World War 1, written at the end of the war. The history can be downloaded from this site

    Using this history and Google Maps, I created a rough map of where my Grandfather might have travelled. The routes from place to place are not exact, but the general areas where the Sixth travelled up to the end of the war are taken from the history. Travel from the LeHarve to the training facilities around Chateau Villain would have been by the famous 40 men or 8 horse box cars.

    The Sightseeing Sixth Division in France in the Fall of 1918

    The Sightseeing Sixth Division in France in the Fall of 1918

    The other interesting thing that I learned was the extreme lack of transportation that troubled the Sixth Infantry’s movements. Horses were poor cast offs from the French army. Often the men hauled their equipment themselves, instead of relying upon horses or trucks. Once at the front, most travel was on foot. It is interesting that my Grandfather was a truck driver for a unit that apparently had very few trucks. The only mention of type of truck, was a brief mention of usage of some “liberty trucks”.

    Grandfather Willegal’s Experience in World War 1

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    My Grandfather was a World War 1 veteran. I only talked to him once about his war experiences. He was a truck driver and told me how he used to get those old trucks up to a speed of 60 miles an hour. I also remember him saying that the army in World War 1 was the last good army or something to that effect. I’m not exactly sure why he held that opinion, but he wasn’t bashful about making the claim. My Grandfather also showed me some trench art that he had made out of some cartridge cases. I wish I knew where that trench art was. Hopefully someone in the family got a hold of it, after he passed away.

    Grandpa Willegal - circa 1960

    Grandpa Willegal – circa 1960

    I learned a little bit about my grandfather from my dad. He once told me that Grandfather mentioned that when they were being shelled by the German artillery, that they would take cover in the ditches by the side of the road. I was once visiting Circus World Museum with my dad, and he mentioned that the trucks in the circus train display would be similar to those trucks my Grandfather drove in World War 1. I think the Circus World trucks are Mack AC’s, which were indeed, used in World War 1 by the British and Americans. I don’t know for sure that this is the type of truck he drove, but it’s possible. The Mack AC’s have a rated speed of 18 miles per hour. Another army truck of the time, the famous Liberty Truck, was only supposed to reach 15 miles per hour. I wonder what my Grandfather was doing to get up to 60 miles per hour.

    My sister did some online searches and found a few records, including this certificate of service which she found at the Wisconsin’s Veteran’s Office.

    grandpa Willegal's Certificate of Service

    grandpa Willegal’s Certificate of Service

    It turns out that he was a member of the Sixth Infantry Division. The medal depicted at the top of the certificate is the World War 1 victory medal. He is given credit for participating in Vosges Sector (Aug 31, 1918 – Oct 18, 1918) and the Meuse-Argonne Defensive Sector (November 2-6, 1918). The other interesting thing is how quickly he was moved into the combat zone. He joined the army on May 4th, 1918 and was overseas by July 14, 1918. By August 31st, the 6th Division was on the front lines.

    There is some information on the Sixth Infantry Division in World War 1 at this site. The Sixth Infantry Division site focuses on the World War II, but there are a few tidbits about the Division’s activities in World War 1. The interesting thing is that this brief history mentions how the division was involved in marches that were subject to German artillery fire, just like my grandfather told my father.

    My research on the Sixth Infantry shows that they did a lot of marching, during which time, they picked up the nickname, “The Sightseeing Sixth”. Like most new American divisions, after training they were moved to the relatively quiet Vosges Sector in order to become adapted to actual combat conditions. Here is website with some information about the Vosges Sector. They were in reserve at the end of the war. Apparently they were about to be committed to the Meuse-Argonne offensive, when, rather unexpectedly, the war ended.

    The Meuse-Argonne offensive was a very bloody affair. Who knows, I may not be here, if the war had lasted much longer and the Sixth Infantry ended up being committed to that fight. I plan upon putting together a blog entry comparing the Meuse-Argonne offensive of World War 1, with the biggest American battle of World War II.