China was a disappointment, and the only aim of Allied strategy during the last year of the war was to keep Chinese resistance alive in order to distract Japanese forces in that area. He placed three divisions (243d Air Landing, 709th and 716th Infantry) on the Calvados coast and Cotentin Peninsula, backed by two counterattack units, the Ninety-first Air Landing and 352d Infantry Divisions. Offensive Against Rabaul: Third Phase. Consequently, the 116th did not engage the Allies until July, in the massive tank battle for Mortain. D-Day Regiments: American, British, and German, California – Do not sell my personal information. Still, the Nazis were not caught entirely by surprise by the D-Day landing. Gen. Erich Marcks’s LXXXIV Corps defended a 250-mile coastal area with five divisions. Marines landed on Tarawa on 21 November and took the island in a four-day fight at a cost to the Marines of some 3,000 casualties. On 8 December 1941, within less than an hour after a stirring, six-minute address by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Congress voted, with only one member dissenting, that a state of war existed between the United States and Japan, and empowered the President to wage war with all the resources of the country. While the Japanese enjoyed the advantage of interior lines of communication, they had somewhat overextended themselves. Kraiss withdrew his division the next day, counting some 1,200 casualties. However, even at its height the German army was approximately 50 percent horse drawn, and the practical difference between panzer grenadiers and ‘‘straight leg’’ infantry dwindled considerably over time. Fall of the Philippines. However, the average panzer division along the Atlantic Wall possessed merely seventy-five tanks. After assignment to Obergruppenführer (lieutenant general) Josef Dietrich’s I SS Panzer Corps, Lehr was stationed in the Chartre-LeMansOrleans area. On 15 August 1943 a powerful Allied amphibious force, including a U.S. infantry division and elements of the Royal Canadian Army commanded by Maj. Gen. Charles H. Corlett and a naval escort commanded by Admiral Kinkaid, assaulted the island of Kiska, where the Japanese had developed their largest base. Driven out with the Sixth Parachute Division, Ostendorff ’s troops unsuccessfully attempted to recapture the city from U.S. parachutists and elements of the Second Armored Division. The division was sent to Russia in March 1944 and, like its sister division Ninth SS, participated in the Kamenets breakout in April. On 10 December Japanese forces landed at Aparri and Vigan on the northern coast of Luzon. The Japanese carrier task force sailed away undetected and unscathed. In waters of this area, shadowed by American planes, the Japanese never again risked a transport larger than a small coaster or a barge. On 2 July 1944 American troops had landed on Noemfoor Island, 90 miles beyond Biak, and near the end of the month other troops had pushed on to the western tip of New Guinea. The organization and conduct of such Kampfgruppen (battle groups) was so impressive that NATO commanders studied them during the Cold War. The defenders of the landing beaches were, west to east: Deployed at the west end of the Utah Beach sector, the 709th was reasonably well staffed, with eleven battalions in three regiments: the 729th, 739th, and 919th. The best way to cut communications to the south was to gain control of the South China Sea, and the objective chosen for this purpose was a triangle formed by the south China coast, Taiwan, and Luzon. Most were experienced in the West and Russia. Albert C. Wedemeyer became (27 October) commanding general of the USFCT. Having been repulsed in attempts to take Port Moresby in southeastern New Guinea by sea in May 1942 in the Battle of the Coral Sea, and again in August by the Australians at Milne Bay, the Japanese pushed a drive toward their objective over the Owen Stanley Mountains from the Buna-Gona area in southeastern New Guinea. Admiral Nimitz invaded the Marianas in June 1944. Papuan Campaign. Japan's losses, both at the Coral Sea and Midway, did much to restore the balance of naval power in the Pacific, and the Japanese never fully recovered from the loss of many of their best naval pilots in the two battles. Allied naval units intercepted the invading Japanese naval force in the Coral Sea on 7-8 May 1942. Rather, Allied forces "leap-frogged" toward Japan, their leaps limited only by the range of land-based aircraft and the availability of carrier-borne planes. Subsequently, plans were made for the conquest of Taiwan as an additional base for B-29's after a foothold had been gained in the Philippines. By then merely 450 youngsters of the original 21,300 remained in the division. This was another battle in which planes did all the attacking. By 1 June the component regiments were Twelfth Panzer, Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Panzer Grenadier, Third Artillery, and the usual recon and support units totaling 17,800 personnel. The invasion of the Ryukyus was made by troops of the U.S. Tenth Army, which had been activated on 20 June 1944 with Lt. Gen. Simon B. Buckner, Jr., as commanding general. This operation set the pattern of Allied operations in the Pacific for the rest of the war. The primary mission of this Army command was training. Ostendorff was badly wounded on 15 June, and the Seventeenth was steadily repulsed to Paris, then Metz, then through Alsace. Owing to Allied deception measures, some German armored units failed to engage the Anglo-Americans until after D-Day. From Kwajalein a naval task force, moving west 340 miles with a regiment each of Marines and infantry, captured a Japanese air base on Engebi in the Eniwetok Atoll on 17-19 February 1944. Part of the division escaped the Falaise pocket, regrouped in September, and participated in the Ardennes offensive that winter. This raid revealed that the Japanese had virtually abandoned Truk as a naval base, and a plan to assault that atoll in June was abandoned. Despite these measures, the Japanese maintained pressure against the beachhead, mounting an especially heavy but unsuccessful counterattack as late as March 1944. Page 11 shows 12th RTR still with 6x Churchill I CS in Sept 1943 for example. Wisch took First SS to Belgium during May 1944, bringing its strength up to 16,600 men. Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke assumed command after Wisch was wounded in August, then withdrew and re-formed the division in time to participate in the Ardennes offensive that winter. Throughout June and July, Japan was subjected to increasingly intensive air attack and even to naval bombardment. The U.S. Eighth Army, activated on 10 June 1944, arrived in New Guinea in August and set up headquarters in Hollandia where Lt. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger assumed command on 7 September 1944. The second stage of the offensive against Rabaul began in late June 1943. The Japanese air attack on the Philippines on 8 December 1941 seriously crippled elements of the American air forces stationed in the islands and damaged naval installations. In May, surrounded, it surrendered to the Soviets at Schonau in Saxony. The following armored units were engaged during June: Germany had ten panzer divisions in Normandy, including five from the Waffen SS. Oberst Paul Freiherr von Hauser was in command when Panzer Lehr was finally trapped in the Ruhr pocket in April 1945. Originally the plan had been to bypass the Philippines and to conduct the B-29 strategic bombing program from bases in China. Instead, Nimitz drew up plane for an invasion of the Marianas in June, to be followed in September by an advance into the western Carolines. At Oradour sur Glane, 250 miles south of Normandy, a company of the Der Führer Regiment killed 642 civilians in reprisal for French Resistance attacks and abduction of a German officer in the area. Returned eastward in February 1945, the division subsequently was withdrawn to Pomerania. In preparation for the invasion of Japan, a reorganization of U.S. Pacific forces had been effected on 3 April 1945, in which General MacArthur was given command of all Army forces and Admiral Nimitz of all naval forces. Between the wars he had served in infantry, cavalry, and staff positions. On 2 July 1942 the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff issued orders specifying that Rabaul, on the island of New Britain, would be taken. During 1943 the best the United States could do to support China was to keep alive Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault's Fourteenth U.S. Army Air Force in China, train two Chinese divisions airlifted out to Ramgarh in India, push a trickle of war supplies over the "Hump" and send a combat team of U.S. ground forces to support the Chinese in a projected plan to recapture Burma. Generalleutnant Heinrich Freiherr von Luttwitz took command of the division in February 1944. On 22 April Army forces landed at Tanahmerah Bay, Aitape, and Humboldt Bay. Once the Allies became strong enough to threaten their perimeter from several directions, the advantage would be lost, since Japan did not have and could not produce enough planes and ships to defend in force at all points. Thirty-eight German infantry divisions were deployed in Normandy, including five static divisions for coastal defense. By then Generalmajor Meinrad von Lauchert had taken over. Each war was described in a narrative style within a framework of broadly outlined operations. Quickly recovering from the initial shock of surprise, the Americans fought back vigorously with antiaircraft fire. Upon Stilwell's departure the American administrative area CBI was separated into the U.S. You can also buy the book by clicking on the buttons to the left. Two American task forces under Rear Admirals Raymond A. Spruance and Frank J. Fletcher, assisted by planes based on Midway Island, intercepted and outfought a large enemy naval force in the vicinity of Midway, which the Japanese had intended to seize. Hohenstaufen’s final commander was Brigadeführer (brigadier general) Sylvester Stadler, who assumed command in October 1944 and remained for the final seven months of the war. Their personnel losses (according to Japanese sources) were 55 airmen, 9 crewmen on the midget submarines, and an unknown number on the large submarines. The Japanese defenders of Biak fought desperately to retain the island, and General Krueger, the U.S. Sixth Army Commander, did not declare the operation over until 20 August 1944. Early in June they assembled sufficient naval strength to destroy naval units under MacArthur's control and sent about half their land-based aircraft in the Carolines and the Marianas to airfields in western New Guinea, where they were within easy range of Biak. On 8 June Bayerlein was wounded in an air attack and turned over to a nobleman, Generalmajor Hyazinth Graf (Count) von Strachwitz. On shore the issue was in doubt for almost three months. The German army was often misidentified in Anglo-American reports as the ‘‘Wehrmacht,’’ which in fact referred to the armed forces as a whole. Kraiss deployed the division’s own 914th, 915th, and 916th Regiments plus the 726th, attached from 716th Division, minus one battalion. The division also deployed the 1709th Artillery Regiment. A pair of Canadian Army 49th Loyal Edmonton Regiment shoulder titles. Defending Normandy was the Seventh Army under Col. Gen. Friedrich Dollmann. Lacking 25 percent of its authorized strength in officers and noncoms, the division also faced a severe transport shortage— 345 cross-country trucks were on hand of the nearly 1,100 authorized. In the following three months Marine and Army forces completed the encirclement, and effectively isolated the 100,000-man Japanese garrison at Rabaul. In May 1942 they launched a new offensive, moving to Tulagi from the northern Solomons, after which they began building an airstrip at Lunga Point on Guadalcanal. During January and February 1944, Admiral Nimitz proceeded to positions in the central and western Marshalls. In any event, President Roosevelt had displayed a growing disinterest in the China problem following his meeting with Chiang Kai-shek at Cairo in November 1943. Following the Papuan and Guadalcanal campaigns there was a five-month lull for ground forces while the Allies prepared for the second phase of the drive on Rabaul, but there was plenty of action on the sea and in the air. Iwo Jima, a barren volcanic island midway between Saipan and Japan, was considered desirable as an emergency base for B-29's flying to and from Japan. To the surprise of the Allies, they found that the island had been secretly evacuated by the Japanese under cover of heavy summer fogs which had prevented aerial observation or interception.