Italian Human Torpedo

Photo taken by the British of the first Italian human torpedo recovered after a failed attack on Gibraltar in 1940.

101st seeking to save 'Band of Brothers' regiment

The flag of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, who were made famous as the 'Band of Brothers' in World War II, is seen on a wall on June 27 inside the museum at Fort Campbell, Ky. The 101st Airborne Division is trying to save its storied 506th Infantry Regiment from being eliminated under the Army's massive restructuring. (Kristin M. Hall / AP)

The 101st Airborne Division is trying to save its illustrious 506th Infantry Regiment, whose origins date to World War II’s fabled “Band of Brothers,” from deactivation under the Army’s massive restructuring.

The Army announced this week that at least 12 combat brigades nationwide are to be eliminated by 2017 under sweeping military reductions, among them the 4th Brigade Combat Team at Fort Campbell, Ky.

The long-term reorganization seeks to reduce the Army’s size from a high of about 570,000 members at the peak of the Iraq war to 490,000 to shrink spending and reflect the country’s current military needs as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan end.

The brigade traces its lineage to the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, created in 1942.

The 506th was among several parachute regiments created to sneak behind enemy lines in the war. Nicknamed “Currahee,” which is a Native American Cherokee term for “stands alone,” the regiment parachuted into Normandy during the D-Day invasion in 1944. The regiment raced to liberate Europe amid bouts of fierce fighting in Bastogne, Belgium and then overran Hitler’s famed “Eagle’s Nest” in Germany.

The “Band of Brothers” book by historian Stephen Ambrose and the subsequent HBO miniseries about the men of Easy Company won national acclaim, propelling the unit to wide fame among the public. The 2001 miniseries was produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks and followed the soldiers from paratrooper training through D-Day and the end of the war.

Brig. Gen. Mark Stammer, acting senior commander of the 101st Airborne Division, said the division wants to preserve the regiment’s two battalions, along with its flags and its historical legacy.

He said during a news conference Thursday at the post on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line that the regiment’s battalions should be transferred to two of the division’s three remaining infantry brigades.

The Army’s restructuring plan also calls for adding an additional battalion, which is between 600-800 soldiers, to its remaining infantry and armor brigades. Adding the battalion was a recommendation from commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan who said it would beef up the fighting capabilities of the brigades when they go to war.

If Washington’s defense and budget planners approve of such a plan, he said “the 506th will live, but it will just live in another brigade combat team.”

Following World War II, the regiment was deactivated and reactivated a number of times in its history and moved to other locations as the Army reorganized in the post-war era.

The 506th deployed to the Vietnam War for four years, winning a presidential unit citation for actions in the A Shau Valley. The regiment’s soldiers served in Iraq for a 2004-2005 stint before the regiment returned to Iraq from late 2005 through 2007 in Baghdad as the new 4th Brigade Combat Team under the 101st Airborne Division. The 4th Brigade is currently on its third deployment to Afghanistan.

John O’Brien, the installation historian at Fort Campbell, said the regimental flag with its battle streamers carries the history of the unit, marking the battles and campaigns from World War II to recent times. If the 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment were moved to a new unit, that regimental flag would continue to fly, he said.

“History, heritage and values … those things provide the glue that holds the unit together,” O’Brien said. “You can imagine how powerful it is to say, ‘I am member of the Band of Brothers.’”

Jim Martin is one of the few surviving World War II veterans from the original 506th regiment. At 92, he just returned from a trip to Europe to visit locations, including the coast of France, where he and fellow soldiers fought.

Martin, who lives near Dayton, Ohio, said the Army command needs to exercise care when it makes changes to special units such as the 506th. “If you disband them, you’re not going to get them back very easily.”

He said the regiment’s original commander, Col. Robert Sink, wanted his soldiers to stay together from their initial basic training through paratrooper training and on into combat to build trust among the soldiers. Although he admits he’s not one for emotion, he worried that splitting up the regiment’s battalions would be disruptive for the soldiers.

“The problem with doing that is you lose the unit cohesiveness,” he said. “Anytime you move around or change, you lose that.”

Joe Alexander, 67, of Lenoir City, Tenn., who was a second lieutenant in the regiment during the Vietnam War, said while he understands that the Army needs to cut down its size, but he was hoping they would be spared when the Army spread the brigade cuts throughout the country.

“We are competitive and we all want our regiments to be saved,” he said. “But it does seem like they could have picked another one that had less of a history.”

Axis Submarines WW2

RIN Acciaio

RIN Acciaio

 First welcome to the base. Kptlt. 'Ali' Cremer (left) of U-333

Kapitänleutnant Johann Mohr, commander of U-124 

Kptlt. Lehmann-Willenbrock (U-96)

Radio operator on board of U-124.

 

BombShop U-124 

Weapons Load U-124

Bombshop U-124

Galley U-995

Images of WW2

WWII vet who provided flag in iconic Iwo Jima photo dies at 90

Alan Wood, a World War II veteran credited with providing the flag in the famous flag-raising on Iwo Jima, has died. He was 90.

Wood died April 18 of natural causes at his Sierra Madre home, his son Steven Wood said Saturday.

Wood was a 22-year-old Navy officer in charge of communications on a landing ship on Iwo Jima's shores Feb. 23, 1945 when a Marine asked him for the biggest flag that he could find.

After five days of fighting to capture the Japanese-held island, U.S. forces had managed to scale Mount Suribachi to hoist an American flag.

Wood happened to have a 37-square-foot flag he had found months before in a Pearl Harbor Navy depot. .

Five Marines and a Navy Corpsman later raised that flag in a stirring moment captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal.

Steven Wood says his father was always humbled by his small role in the historic moment.

In a 1945 letter to a Marine general who asked for details about the flag, Wood wrote: "The fact that there were men among us who were able to face a situation like Iwo where human life is so cheap, is something to make humble those of us who were so very fortunate not to be called upon to endure such hell."

In its story on Wood's death, the Los Angeles Times reported that over the years others have claimed that they provided the flag, but retired Marine Col. Dave Severance, who commanded the company that took Mount Suribachi, said in an interview last week that it was Wood.

"I have a file of more than 60 people who claim to have had something to do with the flags," he said from his home in La Jolla, California.

Wood went on to work as technical artist and spokesman at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge.

His wife, Elizabeth, died in 1985. Besides his son, Wood was survived by three grandchildren.

Submarine 'got a hammering'

John Bishop wanted to fly with the RAF but when he went as a teenager to volunteer he was told "sorry, we're full up at the moment".

He ended up as one of the first radar operators on a British submarine, his shore base in Malta, his 25 patrols from there helping to cripple the Axis supply lines to North Africa and hasten Hitler's defeat.

Sitting in his Richmond dining room, the still-dapper 90-year-old tells his war story in a matter-of-fact way and sprinkles it with the natural humour of a Londoner. 

He says he was "about 17" when he joined the Royal Navy and was soon being trained in Scotland and England. 

"Radar was just coming in and it was quite secret." 

Early in 1942 he was assigned to the U-class submarine HMS Ultor, one of 49 that served in World War II. 

Small at 58 metres - think of two railway carriages, Mr Bishop says - they carried a crew of 27 to 31.

Originally designed as training vessels for surface ships to practise their submarine attacks on, they were slow, could only dive to 80 metres, and had crowded living conditions, but their smallness proved suitable for the Mediterranean. 

"They had a lot of drawbacks . . . but they were quick diving, and easy to maintain." 

They had to surface at night so that their diesel motors could charge the batteries used for underwater travel and during that time it was Mr Bishop's job to share radar duties with one other crew member, each working one hour on, one hour off, watching for enemy ships and planes. 

He says the equipment was primitive and "I think the skipper had more faith in it than I did, actually".

Once submerged the radar was inoperative and he was assigned to other duties - maybe going on the ship's wheel or cooking the meal. Watches were four hours and "you didn't get much sleep". 

HMS Ultor was painted deep blue because on a calm day submarines were visible 20 metres under water to patrolling aircraft looking down on the clear water. It was part of the 10th Submarine Flotilla, which fought out of Malta during the legendary siege when German and Italian bombers relentlessly pounded the island in an unsuccessful attempt to subdue it ahead of an Axis invasion that never came. 

Sometimes the Ultor submerged at its berth to avoid bombing raids. Between patrols the crew lived in an old stone building close to the shore. 

"There were more bombs dropped on Malta than on London during the Blitz," Mr Bishop says. 

Having already experienced that bombing as a teenage Civil Defence volunteer before joining the navy, he jokes that "I think the Germans had it in for me". 

The Ultor could be at sea for as little as 10 days or as long as three weeks, depending on how long it took to find targets for the four torpedoes it had in its tubes, and the four it carried to reload with.

"When you'd expended those, you might as well go home." 

Its mission was to sink ships supplying the Axis forces in North Africa. It accounted for 28, more than any other British submarine, Mr Bishop says, and it was often under attack itself. 

Enemy warships would pass overhead, their engines thrumming like an express train, and then the submariners would wait for the sound of depth charges exploding. 

 That's the hardest part, to see if they've thrown anything over the side or not. Half the time they probably dropped the depth charges miles away." 

Nine British U-class submarines were lost in the Mediterranean. The Ultor escaped unscathed.

Mr Bishop says he was too young to feel much fear, except once. On his last patrol they sank a supply ship which had a destroyer and aircraft escort and then found there was another ship nearby also escorted by destroyers and planes. The two groups joined up to hunt the Ultor, which "really got a hammering" while it manoeuvred underwater. 

"I can remember thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing here?'." 

He is more at ease talking about living conditions: canned food day after day, with 12 tins of M and V (meat and vegetables) a standard meal for the crew, one toilet for 15-18 men, with no privacy and a view of the turning propeller shaft, not enough water to wash. 

After the war Mr Bishop trained as a compositor in London and, intrigued by the stories a Kiwi workmate from Canterbury told, brought his wife and daughter to New Zealand in 1953. He worked on the Otago Daily Times, went to Tasmania for a year, came back to New Zealand and was employed by the then Nelson Evening Mail for the rest of his working life. 

He's been an RSA member and has attended many Anzac Day parades. He says when he thinks about the war, it's the "wicked waste" that comes to mind. He's not sure about tomorrow.

"I'll see how I feel. I'm not good at standing for long periods." 

The interview over, a framed text on the sideboard catches my eye. 

Dated September 1944, it's a citation awarding Able Seaman John Bishop the Distinguished Service Medal "for courage and skill serving in war patrols on HMS Ultor". He went to Buckingham Palace with 10 of his shipmates equally honoured, to get his medal from King George. 

He hadn't thought to mention it.

Search Begins for Famous World War II Submarine

One of the most celebrated submarines of World War II could soon be located 70 years after she was scuttled to avoid falling into enemy hands.

On Aug. 14, 1943, the H.M.S. Saracen was deliberately sunk by her crew near the town of Bastia, on the northern coast of the French island of Corsica, after being damaged in a clash with Italian warships. She has lain undisturbed at the bottom of the Mediterranean ever since, but now a new operation to find her wreck is under way.

Medal of dishonor: UK bars WWII vets from receiving Russian award

British North Atlantic Convoy veterans

London has denied Moscow permission to honor UK veterans of the WWII Arctic Convoys by presenting them with the prestigious Ushakov Medal.

Between 1941 and 1945, the convoys formed a crucial supply route from the UK and North America to the northern Soviet ports of Murmansk and Archangelsk. Merchant vessels were escorted by British Royal Naval ships and aircraft carriers.

In April of this year, then-President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree awarding the Ushakov Medal – named after the seasoned Russian Admiral Fyodor Ushakov – to foreign veterans for exceptional contributions to Allied war efforts during WWII.

Under UK law, citizens are allowed to receive foreign medals and awards only if the British government gives them permission, and only if the award relates to the recipient’s activities within past five years.

In May 2012, Moscow officially asked London for permission. The Russian Embassy in the UK forwarded 813 letters from the veterans to Britain’s Foreign Office that detailed their public activities over the last five years.

The Foreign Office turned down the request, saying that the information provided ‘does not describe any relevant service specific to Russia within the last five years,’ the embassy’s press release said. The decision may be revisited if the Russian diplomatic service provides details of veterans who satisfy to the five year criteria.

“It is, however, difficult to imagine the persons in their late eighties and early nineties to do things similar to what they did at the time of the war 70 years ago,” the Russian embassy wrote in its statement.

“It does not diminish in any way our gratitude to them for their fighting for the common cause of defeating Nazism and delivering Europe and the whole of mankind from this existential threat,” the embassy said.

Moscow also vowed to contact each British veteran slated to receive the award.

97-yr-old 'Most Wanted' Nazi war criminal arrested in Hungary

Activists and sympathizers of the European Union of Jewish Students stand in front of Laszlo Csatary's hideaway building, on July 16, 2012 (AFP Photo/Attila Kisbenedek)

Hungarian prosecutors have taken into custody the Nazi-era war crimes suspect Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary, 97, who reportedly helped organizing the 1944 deportation of 15,700 Jews to Auschwitz.

He worked as a police commander in a Slovakian ghetto, at the helm of a brutal regime in the city of Kosice, where 140 people were allegedly driven to suicide to escape his torture in 1941-45.

Csizsik-Csatary fled to Canada under a new identity after being sentenced to death in absentia in 1948. He spent almost half a century in Canada, selling works of art. But his true identity was revealed in 1997 and he went on the run again, where he managed to evade capture for fifteen more years.

In April 2012, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a human rights organization, listed Csizsik-Csatary as the most wanted war crimes suspect.

He was eventually tracked down by journalists from the British tabloid ‘The Sun’, who collaborated their efforts with the Wiesenthal Centre. Csizsik-Csatary opened the door in his socks and underpants. Once asked if he could justify his past, he stammered, ‘No, no. Go away’, and slammed the door in the face of the correspondents.

The tabloid raised publicity of the case on Sunday, passing the information on to the city’s prosecution office. The following day saw Jewish students staging protests outside Csizsik-Csatary’s apartment block, demanding his detention. The suspect is currently under house arrest, and his passport was confiscated.

"It was important for us to cooperate so that it gets wide media coverage, more than we can ever achieve," Efraim Zuroff, the head of the Wiesenthal Centre, told AFP. He added that he had hoped “the coverage would increase the pressure on the courts and public opinion in Hungary, as well as the world at large."

However, French Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld doubts any legal action will be taken “with this conservative government” in Hungary. He added that the only reason Csizsik-Csatary would be at the top of the list is because so few Nazi war criminals remain. 

"In my opinion he did not have major responsibilities, he must have been a stooge," Klarsfeld told AFP, "Thirty years ago, he would have been 3,500th on the list."

JPAC team searches for WWII pilot’s remains

Seventy years after his World War II plane capsized and sent him to his death, a storied Fremont pilot’s remains may finally be recovered from the wreckage near a remote Canadian village.

The Joint Prisoners of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command, a federal agency that works to recover members of the military who are missing in action, began an operation Thursday with Parks Canada to search the amphibious plane’s wreckage for the bodies of Fremont native Jack Zimmerman and four others who were aboard the craft, said Marc-Andre Bernier, chief of Parks Canada’s Underwater Archaeological Service.

Zimmerman, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Air Corps, was a local hero and a pioneer in the commercial aviation industry. He flew the first scheduled flight into LaGuardia Airport the day it opened in New York City, earned the nickname “Million Miler” and flew military missions in Northern Europe during World War II, according to Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center records.

The day he died — Nov. 2, 1942 — Zimmerman had flown military officials to a U.S. military base at the small village of Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan in Quebec so they could assess construction on an airfield. The location was important because the Allies used the route to send troops, supplies and aircraft to Northern Europe, Bernier has said.

As the group got ready to leave that evening while snow was falling, the plane, a two-engine Catalina, sprung a leak after two failed takeoffs and sunk into the icy waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Divers and representatives from JPAC and Parks Canada plan to spend a month diving on the plane wreckage to potentially recover bodies and any personal items, like watches or military tags, that might have belonged to Zimmerman and the crew, Bernier said.

Remains recovered would be taken to JPAC’s base in Hawaii to be identified and ultimately returned to the families of the dead, said U.S. Army Capt. Russell Grigsby of JPAC. Any personal items the recovery team finds also would be returned to the families, said Grigsby, who was at the recovery operation scene on Thursday.

“It will be closure for some of the families and for the people of Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan,” Bernier said. “At that time, the presence of the American base had a huge impact (on the village).”

Back then, Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan had about 200 residents, and the base added a hospital and opportunities to go see movies, he said. There are 10 village residents still alive who saw the plane crash.

“They remember the accident very clearly,” he said. “To see the Americans come to recover their own is quite touching.”

The plane, lying on its wing and partially buried in sand, will remain at the bottom of the gulf. The agencies do not want to do anything that could compromise its interior, Bernier said.

“It would be quite the operation to try to recover that,” he said.

Parks Canada discovered the plane’s wreckage in 2009 while in the area looking for shipwrecks. Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan residents who remembered the crash discussed its location with archeologists and prompted the search.

World War II Marine vet finally gets diploma

Vincent (Jim) Giarmo missed getting his high school diploma when he enlisted in the Marines in 1942 to fight for his country in World War II.

Seventy years later, Giarmo, now 89, finally received the diploma during commencement ceremonies at Monroe High School. He received a standing ovation as Crystal Caldwell, an instructor at the high school, pushed his wheelchair up to the podium to accept the honor from Superintendent Randall Monday.

“This is a great honor for me,” Monday told a throng estimated at 4,000 people crammed into the gym and an adjoining auditorium that had a live video feed. “These men sacrificed their high school completion to join the military.”

Two other men also were to get diplomas, but could not attend. They will be honored at the next board of education meeting June 12.

Wearing his bright red Marines cap, Giarmo clutched his red diploma tightly as he and Gayle Patterfritz, his escort and friend for the past eight years, watched some of the more than 400 other graduates receive their diplomas. Joining them were his niece, Madeline Younglove of Monroe and her husband, James.

Jim Liedel, a member of the color guard from Monroe Post 1138, Veterans of Foreign Wars, carried the flag that Giarmo fought for. He congratulated Giarmo as he passed by.

“He’s like a second dad to me,” Liedel said. “His son, Jimmy, and I used to run around together.”

Other veterans in the audience also congratulated Giarmo, including Ted March from Flat Rock, a Navy veteran who came to watch his grandson, Tedd, graduate.

“The Marines couldn’t get along without the Navy,” Patterfritz noted.

Giarmo was one of five sons of Tony and Petrina Giarmo who served in the war. The younger Giarmo said he had no regrets that he didn’t finish his education. He wanted to join the Armed Forces as soon as he could.

“When they bombed Pearl Harbor (in December 1941), I wanted to sign up,” Giarmo recalled. “But I wasn’t 18 and my parents wouldn’t sign for me.”

In the spring of 1942, his parents relented and signed the necessary papers. Giarmo’s mother cried as she put her “X” on the line.

“She couldn’t speak English,” her son said.

He went to boot camp and wanted to parachute for the Marines, but weighing a mere 110 pounds, he was too small. So he joined the Marines’ “air wings” division and became a mechanic for Corsair planes that bombed and strafed the Japanese islands in the Philippines.

When he returned home after the war, Giarmo went to vocational school and became self-educated in woodworking and plastering crafts. He married and raised three children — Vincent Jr., Steven and Cecilia (Terry) McGreevy — with his wife, Ann, who died in 2000. He worked as a skilled welder at the Ford Motor Co. plant in Monroe for 30 years before retiring and building his own home. A longtime member of St. Joseph Catholic Church, Monroe, he built a baptismal font, candle holders, a cross for Lent and an altar for the Blessed Mother statue in the church, all out of wood. Among his favorite projects are Queen Anne- era chairs that he has made for his children and four grandchildren.

One of the chairs he made with wood from a former boys’ school in Monroe. The chair is on display on the first floor of the Monroe County Historical Museum.