In the ongoing crapshow that was the Katanga conflict, A Company, 35th Irish Infantry Battalion, led by Commandant Pat Quinlan, was part of the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC) peacekeeping mission in the region in 1961.
The mixed force of 150 men, armed with the random collection of WWI/WWII era equipment that the Irish forces were known for at the time, held the village of Jadotville (modern Likasi) against a determined force of (up to) 3,000 Katangan gendarme–mostly bands of Luba warriors– led by French, Belgian and Rhodesian mercenaries and supported by light artillery (WWI-era French 75s) and a French-made Fouga CM.170 Magister*, a jet trainer that could carry cannon, rockets and small bombs.
Winning a tactical victory, the Irish refused to quit for a full week until they were out of ammo, short of water, and with no relief in sight– without losing a life. Surrendering, their story was one of shame instead of victory due to striking their flag. Well, that has finally been reversed in recent years and a film has been made of the fight. Great footage of the Vickers dotting up the Magister.
The film, set to release on October 8 on Netflix, is based on the book and scholarship about Jadotville book by Declan Power, who gives a great synopsis and overview in the interview below.
(*Ironically, the Irish Air Corps operated six Fouga Magisters from 1975 to 1999, four of which equipped the Silver Swallows display team, and were the last armed jets the Irish flew).
Today we have narco subs (self-propelled semi-submersibles, or SPSSs) to deal with but they are an idea that is almost a century old.
The Volstead Act in 1919 came at a time of technological innovation and, with a lot of Great War era soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines out of work, some quickly fell into the quick and easy field of bootlegging. While there were plenty of overland smugglers, rum row operations where speedboats (often powered by surplus Liberty aircraft engines) zipped up and down the coast, and some aerial smuggling, there also seems to be at least some evidence of submarine ops.
The photo appears in the chapter “Rum Row”—the name of the smuggling area of the Atlantic coast from Nantucket to New York City and New Jersey. Lawson writes:
“News of a submarine being used on Rum Row appears to have some substance to it. One smuggler testified in court that he saw a submarine emerge on the Row with a German captain and a French crew. Newspapers in 1924 reported that submarines were smuggling liquor to New Jersey and Cape Cod. An aerial photo, taken by a commercial Manhattan map-making firm that same year, suggested submarines were thirty miles up the Hudson River near Croton Point. (German submarines were kept out of the river during World War I by a steel net strung low across the bottom of the Narrows.) The photo purported to document two submarines below the surface of the Hudson River, each 250 feet long [as big as a German Type U-93 class boat or a UE-II minelaying sub] and 600 feet apart. The aerial firm sent the photograph to the U.S. Navy, which had no submarines in the area, and the startling image was given to Coast Guard Intelligence and filed away.”
A firearms blog also contends that, “During prohibition a syndicate of bootleggers operating out of Puget Sound somehow managed to acquire a World War I German U-Boat. They used the submarine to smuggle booze from Canada to Seattle.”
As Roy Olmstead, the “King of the Puget Sound Bootleggers,” was very well connected and financed, it may have been theoretically possible.
So there is that.
The only thing is that at this time the U.S. Navy (as well as those of France, Britain and Italy) were really stingy with selling surplus subs to the public with the exception of established ship breakers and other subs that may seem like there were floating around on the open market just weren’t.
Former Warship Wednesday alumni, the obsolete Lake-built submarine USS USS O-12 (SS-73) was stricken after being laid up during Prohibition and was soon leased for $1 per year (with a maximum of five years in options) to Lake’s company for use as a private research submarine– as far as I can tell the first time this occurred. But, as part of the lease agreement, she was disarmed and had to be either returned to the Navy or scuttled in at least 1,200 feet of water at the conclusion of her scientific use.
Further, in 1919 the Allied powers agreed that Germany’s immense U-boat fleet should be surrendered without the possibility of return and, while some boats were kept for research, the majority were dismantled and recycled or gesunken in deep water in the 20s. Of course, there is always the possibility that a scrapper may have resold a scratch and dent U-boat for the right price, but good luck keeping that quiet as subs of the era had to spend most of their time on the surface and most certainly would have been noticed by some busy body.
Then there is the crew, and a former bluejacket or unterseeboot driver who worked on such a project–providing he didn’t wind up in Davy Jones locker with said rum sub– would be sure to pass on the wild tale to their family post-Prohibition leading to the inevitable “my great uncle told me about his whisky U-boat” anecdotal recollection on a Ken Burns’ documentary.
Build your own
A 1926 newspaper article tells a similar tale of a towed submersible caught coming across the U.S./Canadian border via Lake Champlain.
“[S]ubmarine without motors, has been seized at Lake Champlain with 4800 bottles of ale. The seizure was made by the Royal Canadian Boundary Waters and Customs officials. It is pointed out that bootleggers have been using every known method of conveyance to run contraband liquor from Canada to the United States, including automobiles, motorboats, aeroplanes, and submarines. The latter have been known an mystery boats, having a length of 28ft., with a device for submerging and rising to the surface, but without any propelling mechanism, they being towed by the hawser 175ft. long. Air and vision are obtained by periscopes. The authorities say these vessels are extremely expensive, but they have successfully conveyed so much liquor that they have quickly paid for themselves.”
A history of the anti-smuggling patrol from U.S. Customs on the Lake, collected by the Vermont Historical Society, relates a similar tale, with a better take on a smaller unmanned semi-submersible:
While in the main channel of the lake a bit west of the Rutland Railroad fill, we saw an object which, from a distance, looked like a floating log. Whenever we found logs or other floating hazards to navigation, we dragged them ashore. As we approached the presumed log, to our surprise we saw instead a sort of barge anchored in such a way that the top of it lay awash. About 10 feet long, 6 feet wide and 4 feet deep, it had a hatch on the top which, when removed, disclosed a cargo of sacks of beer which weighted the barge sufficiently to keep it awash. Presumably towed by a small boat in stages over several nights, we assumed that the smugglers would tow it as far as they dared during the night hours and would then anchor it in the hope that no one would discover it during the day. We towed the barge with its contents back to St. Albans Bay and again destroyed the alcoholic contents. The 1932 clippings from the St. Albans Messenger refer to a “submarine” bought at auction. Jack Kendrick later told me that this was the same barge which we had found floating in 1926.
To disguise themselves on the water, some bootleggers tied a long rope to one end of the bags of alcohol and towed it behind them in a hollow log under water like a submarine. The disadvantage here, however, was that the log would immediately float to the surface and become visible if the boat were to be stopped by an officer. The method that worked best was to tie the bags of alcohol to one end of a rope and tie a box of rock salt to the other: if chased, the bootleggers could push the setup overboard, the bags and box would sink to the bottom, and later, as the rock salt dissolved, the box would float to the surface and act as a buoy-like marker for bootleggers to recover their lost cargo.
A look at an alleged effort on the Detroit River complete with oil drum diving helmets
Apparently the one-man submarine was powered by a Model T Ford Engine and used during the early Prohibition period to bootleg whiskey and rum from Davis Island to Vicksburg.
A turn of phrase
Another popular action of the period (and even today), moon-shining, saw the advent of “submarine stills” large black pot stills with a capacity of up to 800-gallons of mash.
Submarine stills…like Japanese midget subs waiting for the 7th Fleet
This led to the inevitable possibility of bootleggers passing off bottles of hootch that, when asked where they came from, would be told “From a submarine”….which may have made the legend of surplus U-boats full of whisky more popular than the reality.
Ian from Forgotten Weapons wraps his scholarly hands around a Marine Corps MC-1952 Sniper Garand, an Army M1C Sniper, and a series of Springfield 1903 sniper rifles for an in-depth look.
In the above video, he chronicles a Marine 1903A1 Springfield with an 8x Unertl scope, a Springfield 1903-A4 with a standard WWII-era M73B1 scope (which was just the commercial Weaver 330C), and a second 1903-A4 with a post World War II M84 rifle scope of the type used through the Korean Conflict into the early stages of the Vietnam War.
If bolt guns aren’t your thing, Ian picks up in the two videos below with the MC-1952, a Marine variation on the M1C Garand sniper rifle with a 4x Stith Kollmorgen Bear Cub scope; an authentic M1C itself with the M84; and of course an M1D.
One of the Texas Flying Legend Museum’s enduring fleet of P-40s.
Texas Warhawk
And she has a great history. From the Commemorative Air Force’s Website:
This P-40E is a cold weather survivor coming out of Elmendorf Field in Anchorage, Alaska. The plane rolled off of the assembly line on January 13th, 1942 as a Curtiss Model H87-A3. The military accepted her as P-40E s/n 41-5709. America was still recovering from the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese were marauding up and down the Aleutian Island Chain. On June 3rd, 1942 the Japanese attacked Fort Mears and Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians. P-40s scrambled from Fort Randall but were too late to turn the Japanese back. The Japanese attacked Dutch Harbor again the next day, but this time American P-40s disrupted the force, shooting down one bomber. On June 5th, 1942 daily P-40 patrols started up in an effort to prevent surprise attacks.On September 26th, 1942, P-40E 41-5709 departed Fort Randall with 1st Lt. Dennis Crisp at the controls as part of the two-ship, daily patrol. Upon landing in the formation, his wingman landed long and ran into 5709′s tail.
Both planes were write-offs that day and ended up on the scrap heap in Cold Bay after the salvage of all usable parts.
The late Dick Odgers and a team of enthusiasts started excavating the dump at Cold Bay in 1987 and recovered significant chunks of 41-5709 among other wrecks. Odgers sold on his projects over the years, and by 1990 ’5709 was with Don Brooks in Douglas, Georgia. She was ready to fly again by August 25th, 2009, when Eliot Cross, a proven test pilot and air show performer, took 41-5709 to the skies again for the first time in 67 years. After the test flights were done, Ray Fowler, Chief Pilot and Executive Producer of the Liberty Foundation, got a turn at the stick and after several hours of flying the P-40E he convinced the board to purchase the fighter to go on tour with their B-17. They removed the rear fuel tank and installed a seat for passenger rides. Walter Bowe purchased the P-40E in 2013, who in turn sold the fighter to the Texas Flying Legends Museum in 2014, although Bowe remains a regular pilot. The P-40E wears the colors of Colonel Robert L. Scott Jr’s aircraft while he commanded the 23rd Fighter Group in the China-Burma-India Theatre during WWII.
She will be one of 7 P-40s at the upcoming 2016 Atlanta Warbird Weekend Sept 24-25, celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers) so if you are in Georgia or can get there, it will be worth it.
In honor of the anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem, here is a kit layout for a British Para Lance Corporal from Operation Market Garden in 1944. Can you say STEN mags? Note the one for the gun, seven in the stick pouches, and eight in the two hip pouches for a total of 16 30-round mags or 480 rounds of ammo. When that ran out, well, there are always the two Mills bombs and the Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife. The para who wore this would likely add a couple 50mm mortar bombs and a belt or two of .303 ammo for machine guns.
In the first part of 1943, the Army began flirting with a two-piece (jacket and pants) herringbone twill (HBT) camouflage uniform. Now, one thing to note is that this differed from the Marine HBT “duck hunter” or “frog skin” camo that was introduced around the time of the invasion of Tarawa, as the Devil Dog kit was based on their P41 design while the Army’s was a slightly different variant based on Big Green’s M1942 fatigue uniform.
These two-piece camouflage uniforms were fielded by units of the 2nd Armored Division, including the 41st Armored Infantry Regiment and 17th Armored Engineer Battalion, for D-Day. They appear in photos between June to September 1944.
Private Joseph De Freitos of Yonkers (New York) of the 41st Armored Infantry Regiment, 2nd US Armored Division, heats his rations on a stove, taken at Pont-Brocard in late July 1944. There is nothing particularly strange about the way he is wearing his e-tool; this was fairly common when the M1928 haversack was not being used.
Records and photos indicate that at least some units of the 2nd Infantry Division and 30th Infantry Division received them also.
U.S. soldiers in HBT camouflage uniforms in a Half-track M2, Pont Brocard July 28, 1944, 41st Armored Inf. Regiment, 2d Armored Division. Cherbourg Library via Flickr.
Camouflaged US Soldiers of the 41st Armored Infantry Battalion working with the 82nd Reconnaissance Battalion (2nd Armored Division) study a captured German map during Operation Cobra in Normandy, France, in July 1944. Note the added foregrip to the M1 Thompson on the right and the German pistol holster on the scout to the left, the latter surely a “battlefield pickup.”
Battle of Saint-Lô, July 1944, 41st AIR, 2AD. LIFE Frank Scherschel Photographer
These surviving examples from the Normandy Tank Museum show a diorama of 2nd Armored Div troops in your typical battlefield mix-match:
The first dummy has the regular GI shirt, camouflage pants, M1 Garand ammo holder belt, M36 web, M1 Garand reproduction, M28 bag, M1 helmet, gaiters very similar to the medic above. The second dummy has much the same but adds a T shovel worn in the same way as the C-rat connoisseur Pvt. De Freitos above, and gas mask cover. The third has the full HBT suit, original camouflage pants, and jacket, M36 webbing with FM-BAR belt and charger holder. He also seems to have ditched his gaiters because he is that kinda guy.
Saint-Georges-d’Elle Normandy France, July 1944, 2nd Infantry Division, note the camo on the one Soldier to the right. LIFE Archives photo by Frank Scherschel
Saint-Georges-d’Elle, Normandy, France, July 1944, 2nd Infantry Division, note the camo jacket on the one Soldier, the M3 Grease gun in his lap, and the censored unit patch. LIFE Archives photo by Frank Scherschel
The thing is, with so many Waffen SS guys and German Fallschirmjäger wearing camo smocks, the idea of GIs in camo proved unpopular, and they were soon withdrawn from the ETO.
However, the material, especially that of discarded parachutes, was recycled by the locals.
“Homemade dress” made out of a parachute used on D-DAY. It was worn by Renée Catherine, a little girl of Sainte-Mère-Eglise
Speaking of which, there is at least some evidence that German paras found U.S. camo very useful in Normandy.
A German cavalry officer (note the spurs and breeches) during the battle for Normandy wearing a crude cover fashioned from U.S. parachute silk duck hunter camo peers through a hedgerow. Also, note his Beretta 38 SMG
Fallschirmjäger at Normandy wearing a cloth cover made from U.S. duck hunter camouflaged cloth, secured to the helmet with a chicken-wire keeper
Meanwhile, in warmer climes
Some U.S. Army units were issued some of the two-piece HBTs in the Pacific late in the war.
U.S. Army Alamo Scouts, two in HBT uniforms. William E. Nellist (middle) pictured with unidentified trainees from the 4th Class. Cape Kassoe, Hollandia, DNG. August 1944. Dig the folding stock para model M1A1 Carbines, very useful in jungle fighting. Via Alamo Scouts website.
Official caption: “Nissan Atoll, Green Islands, South Pacific, 31 January 1944: Inside enemy territory, a recon party lands, senses keyed up for sounds of the Japanese troops known to be present. A perilous fact-finding mission is underway.” The SMLEs and Mills bombs on the men in the center of the landing craft point to Commonwealth troops, probably Australian, in Marine frogskin camo. The non-camo’d fellows at the ramp are likely USCG. A Marine is at the rear, his M1 Carbine at the ready
That theater also saw the use of a one-piece uniform jumpsuit. They were reversible with regular mustard green on the inside.
27th Infantry Division trains in Hawaii before embarking on the amphibious operation to seize Makin in the Gilbert Islands, Fall 1943. A soldier in one piece camouflage uniform is to the right.
Issued briefly, this zippered onesie was found by the Joe in the field to suck balls and was withdrawn.
Many of the Army’s surplus HBT went on to be donated to French forces such as was seen operating in French Indochina, and the Dutch trying to pacify their East Indies archipelago.
HBT-clad French Paratroops in Indochina circa 1953 ready their MAT-49 submachine guns for an assault on Viet Minh guerrillas
Dutch KNIL infantry with British SMLE Enfields fighting Indonesian separatists in 1948– dig the ex-Army HBT
Dutch Lt. Gen. Pieter Lodewijk Gerard Doorman (center-right, just inside the frame) speaks to a duck hunter camo’d crew member of a recycled Japanese Type 89 I-Go medium tank during a visit to 1e Bataljon, 9e Regiment Infanterie (1-9 RI “Friesland”) in Cimahi, Dutch East Indies, September 1946. Formed in the Netherlands in Sept.1945 just after the liberation from German occupation, 1-9 R.I. was sent to the UK in late 1945 for training and basic Malay language lessons, then landed in Batavia on Java as part of V-Brigade in Feb. 1946, where they no doubt picked up the above Japanese armor. Fighting through the Indonesian wars, they were shipped back to Europe (likely sans tanks) and disbanded in August 1948.
The Bay of Pigs gang, Brigade 2506, utilized a significant amount of surplus WWII U.S. gear, including M1941 Johnson rifles and camouflage patterns commonly used by duck hunters.
U.S. Army Special Forces, Vietnam, Sept. 1966. Note camo beret, BAR, and M3 Grease gun. D-Day in the A-Shau
Here is a look at how effective the “Beo Gam” was in Indochina:
And of course, as with anything, both surplus and recreations were popular with hunters in the 1950s and 60s as seen in this 1952 sportsman’s catalog image:
Interestingly enough, Colombia, Turkey, Iran, and Red China adopted duck hunter-like schemes for a time in the 1970s and early 1980s, effectively sealing the fate of the pattern in military service.
Colombia frog duck hunter camo called “Tigrillo” circa 1980s. Note the Galil
Turkish soldiers stand ready during the war in Cyprus, the 1970s with locally made HK G3s and Aegean camouflage pattern, based on American frogskin
Iranian soldiers photographed during the Iran-Iraq War, in the 1980s. The man in front has a locally made version of American P42 camouflage, which was made in the 1970s for the Shah and continued to serve in the war against Saddam
This rakish Chicom soldier during the Sino-Vietnamese War (1979) is wearing Type 81 duck hunter camouflage, with a Type 56 AKMS over his shoulder and a painted combat helmet hanging from the muzzle
As an attempt to control currency during the worst days of the Depression Presidential Executive Order 6102 (1933) and the Gold Reserve Act (1934) made owning or trading gold a criminal offense and required American citizens to sell their private possessions of gold (with limited exceptions— like wedding rings) to the U.S. Treasury. The U.S. Government instituted this policy to help the country weather the Great Depression and did not relax it until 1964 (and since then, investment in gold has skyrocketed).
Despite this barrier, the secret agent men of OSS acquired gold coins to cache in Occupied Europe during WWII and retrieve as needed to finance their efforts or those of the Nazi resistance. Although the coins were not legal tender, their inherent value ensured their usefulness. OSS never distributed this one, a $20 Gold Piece made in 1858, currently housed in the CIA Museum.
The Germans in WWII were the ultimate locusts when it came to re-purposing captured weapons. Not only did they quickly turn around and put everything they found that went bang in an occupied country to good use, they also kept the local factories churning out new guns and munitions for the war machine. In Belgium, FN’s Herstal works kept pumping out Browning Hi Powers for the Third Reich just as Poland’s Radom worked around the clock to make 9mm VIS pistols.
Czechoslovakia was no different and the CZ concern in Brno was forced to keep making their pistols, rifles (which were Mauser 98 copies anyway) and light machine guns until as late as 1945– but for Teutonic use.
One of the more peculiar CZ produced guns made during occupation was a special Böhmische Waffenfabrik 7.65×17mm Browning SR (.32 ACP) CZ Model 27 pistol with an over-length 5-inch barrel, some 30.4 mm longer than normal.
What a curious proboscis
As you can see, the muzzle is slatted at the bottom with a notch
And is made to accommodate a coupling of some sort
Given a phosphate finish, these guns were marked “fnh Pistole Model 27 Kal. 7.65” and the barrel served as a male counterpart to the knurled female coupling of a rather large steel suppressor can.
One of the first “quick detach” suppressor designs….
Fitted with a sight on the top of the can (as the body occluded the standard front post on the slide) the suppressor was made specifically for the CZ27.
There is at least some anecdotal evidence of a more svelte silencer design being issued as well, sans sights.
While some .32ACP is spicy enough to be supersonic, the Germans had a run of “X” headstamped 7.65 Browning rounds made by Geco and DWM Berlin-Borsigwalde which were suitably subsonic for use in these guns. Coupled with a very large baffle can, they were likely very quiet indeed.
According to Czech sources, some 5000 of these guns were ordered in September 1944 (OKH Wa JRu /Wu.G.Z G2-0161-0121 IV 44) and about 4220 were delivered. While some claim they were meant to be used in concentration camps, it is more likely they were intended for commando operations such as those run by Skorzeny which were increasingly popular in the late stages of the war (remember he went into the Ardennes with a unit illegally dressed as U.S. Army MPs in December of that very year).
A silenced pistol (possibly a CZ27?) was used by an SS hit team in Unternehmen Karneval to assassinate Burgomeister Openhoff after Aachen fell to the Allies in 1945, arguably one of the only documented operations undertaken by Werwolf-style units (though they were parachuted in behind the Allied lines and not overrun in this case).
While they were not fielded in great numbers before the conflict ended, there is some rumor that intelligence agencies on both sides of the Iron Curtain used inherited examples of these pistols throughout the Cold War– with a few even popping up in North Korea of all places. After all, what is more “sterile” and deniable than a German contract Czech-made pistol that both East and West captured at the tail end of WWII and takes .32ACP, which is commonly encountered in even the most exotic third world country?
Today, the cans are a rarity, but the pistols themselves sell for about $3,000 at auction.
The gun/can design did go on to inspire others by CZ.
In 1959, Miroslav Rybář of CZ designed the .32 ACP-chambered closed-bolt blowback action vz. 61 Škorpion machine pistol which proved popular in Warsaw Pact countries throughout the Cold War, and still endures today. The suppressor designed to accompany the gun attaches by a quick attach/detach knurled collar that clamps onto the barrel in much the same was as the CZ27 that preceded it by 15 years.
Captain Robert L. Faurot with his P-38F Lightning 42-12623 Nose 16 parked at 14 Mile Drome (Schwimmer) Credit: US Army Signal Corps, NARA SC-168885 Date: January 20, 1943. He was killed in action just 41 days after this picture was taken.
Robert L. (Bob) Faurot was born on the 19th August 1917 in Missouri and attended Mizzou, playing in the Orange Bowl in 1939. Joining the Army Air Corps and training at Randolph and Kelly Fields, Foults was picked to head to Great Britain in 1940 to fly as an observer during the Battle of Britain. He got some hours in single seat Spitfires and Hurricanes with the Nos. 303 and 306 Squadrons, RAF, which were manned by Polish exiles before returning to the states just before Pearl Harbor.
When the balloon went up he was flying P-39s with the 39th Pursuit Squadron at Selfridge Field, Michigan and the squadron, reclassified as the 39th Fighter Squadron, got orders to rush to Australia. Converting to the P-38 Lightning, Faurot led a bombing mission (yes, using P-38s) on the Japanese Air Base at Lae, New Guinea, destroying a Zero that was taking off in the process.
On March 3, 1943, during the Battle of the Bismarck sea, Capt. Robert L. Faurot was killed-in-action when the B-17s his squadron was jumped by about 30 Zeros.
More on Faurot below.
The 39th, the famed “Cobra in the Clouds” squadron is still around as the 39th Flying Training Squadron (39 FTS) at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas.
With the anniversary of VJ Day this week, I was brainstorming something.
The jury will always be out on just what won the U.S. Civil War: the defeat of Lee in the North, Grant’s splitting of the Confederacy by capturing Vicksburg, Sherman’s total war campaign across Georgia, and the turn to take on Johnston in the Carolinas, the South being bled white by losses that it could not replace as the North grew stronger every day, the refusal of Britain to come into the war in support of the South…maybe all of the above.
Of course, I wager that all of the above would have been much harder to pull off without the Anaconda plan, if not impossible.
Envisioned by that “The Grand Old Man of the Army,” Gen. Winfield Scott, the North’s war chief at the beginning of the conflict, Scott– aged 74 when the balloon went up– earned his commission as a captain in the artillery in May 1808 and knew firsthand how much the War of 1812 sucked when the Brits had default naval superiority and controlled the coastline. Sure, the plucky U.S. Navy and a force of privateers raided around the globe and took the fight to the Brits in their home waters, but they couldn’t keep the RN out of the Chesapeake or from landing at New Orleans.
Then there was the blockade.
Robert, 2nd Viscount Melville, who had become the First Lord of the Admiralty in June 1812, noted that,
“We do not intend this as a mere paper blockade, but as a complete stop to all trade and intercourse by sea with those ports, as far as the wind and weather, and the continual presence of a sufficient armed force, will permit and ensure. If you find that this cannot be done without abandoning for a time the interruption which you appear to be giving to the internal navigation of the Chesapeake, the latter object must be given up, and you must be content with blockading its entrance and sending in occasionally your cruisers for the purpose of harassing and annoyance.”
At the end of the war, Scott, who advanced to major general (brevet) during the conflict, remembered the lessons when it came to 1861 and he recommended an idea coined “The Anaconda Plan” to rigorously (if somewhat passively) blockade all of the major and minor Confederate seaports, and seize control of the mouth of the Mississippi, to ensnare and strangle the budding rebellion, cutting them off from imports of munitions and manufactured goods they had no factories for, as well as exports and of agro goods on which their economy was based.
Implemented in the first few weeks of the war, the blockade of the rebel coast proved extremely effective, though some blockade-runners always got through even in the last days of the war. In true capitalist fashion, many of these runners carried luxury goods on their return trips rather than muskets and shells, as there was more profit per pound in the former.
Enter July 1945
With the end of the war in Europe in May, the culmination of the apocalyptic battle for Okinawa (Operation Iceberg) at the end of June, the starving remnants of Yamashita’s Japanese 14th Area Army reduced to isolated pockets on Mindanao and Luzon in the Philippines, and the British annihilation of the Sakurai’s 28th Army in Burma the same month, the biggest nut left to crack (other than bypassed forces Java, Southeast Asia, and China which was a whole ‘nother thing), was the Japanese home islands.
We all know what came next.
A continuation of the intense and unrelenting long-range air campaign by the AAF’s heavy bomber force flattened and rained Japan.
Progressive erasure of Japan’s chief cities…
The map shows the percentage of city destroyed in Japan with an American equivalent for scale
At the same time, the Army prepared Operations Olympic–the land invasion of the southern island, Kyūshū; Coronet–the assault on the main island, Honshu; and Pastel, a diversionary fake-out. The effort, expected to use four full U.S Armies as well as a combined Commonwealth force, would have heaved 55~ infantry and armored divisions across Japan’s beaches under the world’s largest umbrella of Allied air and Naval power in an effort that would have made D-Day look like a yacht club regatta.
The thing is, Olympic/Cornet/Pastel was expected to cost, as noted by Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s staff, upwards of 1.7–4 million American casualties, including 400,000–800,000 fatalities, and 5- to 10-million Japanese fatalities. With the Japanese plan for absolute resistance, Operation Ketsugō, putting millions of untrained and laughably equipped civilians into bitter village-to-village, street-to-street, room-to-room fighting, those figures may have been conservative.
The Kokumin Giyū Sentōtai (Patriotic Citizens Fighting Corps) — that included men and boys 15-60 and women 17-40 — were armed with everything from obsolete 1880s black powder Murata rifles to clubs and bamboo sticks with anti-tank mines attached.
On 31 August 1945 the Japanese reported on hand 1,369,063 rifles and light machine guns with limited ammunition of only 230 rounds per weapon. Records later indicated that actually some 2,468,665 rifles and carbines were received by the Occupation forces and later disposed of. The Japanese reported more artillery ammunition than small arms ammunition. Ammunition for the grenade launcher, often known as the “knee mortar,” was also more plentiful; some 51,000,000 rounds were reported, or an average of 1,794 rounds for each weapon.
This, as we know it, led Harry Truman to drop a couple atom bombs and threaten more, leaving the Emperor to sue for peace and avoiding the above. In effect, saving the lives of those 6-14 million lost on both sides in estimates.
But was there a third option?
Anaconda 1945
Murderers Row at Ulithi atoll. The Japanese could never match the U.S. and her Allies on the high seas after 1944.
The invasion fleet in place in the Pacific by the end of July 1945, made up of U.S., Commonwealth, and French naval assets, amounted to no less than 42 fleet and light aircraft carriers, 100 escort carriers, 24 battleships, 500 destroyers, and destroyer escorts, and nearly 180 fleet submarines including British, Australian, and Dutch boats. The majority of these were new wartime construction with a large portion just off their shakedown cruises.
To oppose this armada, in Japanese Home Waters there was a small and battered Imperial naval force consisting of four battleships (all damaged), five aircraft carriers (all damaged), two cruisers, 23 destroyers/large escorts, 46 seagoing submarines, 115 short-ranged Kōryū-class midget submarines (with another 496 building), 200+ smaller Kairyū-class midget submarines (with 760 planned), 120 Kaiten manned torpedoes (with another 500 planned), 2,412 Shin’yō suicide boats, and 13,000~ aircraft of all sorts.
Koryu Type D Midgets at Kure at war’s end. Though hundreds of these would have no doubt caused havoc among the LSTs on X and Y day, they were short-legged and hard to use in the open sea, making them less of a threat to bluewater forces.
Of these, most were capable of littoral operations only, which, due to extensive mining of Japanese coastal waters by Allied forces, was a danger all its own.
Yamoto’s last cruise. By July 1945 very few Japanese naval assets remained afloat and in the Home Islands
In effect, there was no way that the Japanese Navy could lift a blockade of their shores, especially if one was done far enough out to sea to limit the effect of manned torpedoes and kamikazes.
The islands were suffering from an extended lack of food, fuel, and raw materials, all of which had to come by sea.
The Japanese merchant fleet by August 1945 had been reduced to 1,466,900 tons, about 1/5 of its pre-war strength, and many of these ships were damaged or incapable of operations. With every wave hiding an Allied periscope and every cloud a B-24 ready or PBY/PBM, it was hazardous to a Maru’s health to poke around in blue water.
Therefore, this leads to the speculation that the Allies could have paused in late July 1945, kept the Manhattan Project up their sleeve, placed Operations Olympic/Cornet/Pastel in a holding pattern, and concentrated on a renewed Anaconda plan around the Home Islands.
With Guam, Tinian, and Saipan-based B-29s continuing their operations over the skies of Kyūshū and Honshu, flatting factories and military targets; PBYs and PBMs could haunt the coastline looking for things to sink while sowing sea mines so thick you could walk across Tokyo Bay without getting your feet wet.
Loading aerial mines on a B-29 of the 468th Bomb Group, 24 January 1945. No less than 12,000 mines were dropped into Japanese coastal waters by U.S. forces during the Pacific war. Most dropped from the air in 1945. (NARA)
The surface fleet could establish an exclusion zone around the islands, standing far enough offshore to avoid Shin’yō and Kaiten, enforcing a blockade on the high seas to cut off communications and supply coming from Java, Southeast Asia, and China, letting Japan wither on the vine.
While the Empire still had thousands of aircraft ready for kamikaze attacks, most were single-engine trainers and fighters with short legs. Of course, there was the possibility of long-range suicide raids, such as the Japanese Operation Tan No. 2 in which 24 Yokosuka P1Y Ginga (Francis) bombers flew from Kyushu to attack Ulithi on a one-way 1,100-mile trip, but such strikes took planning, knowledge of Allied fleet movements, and– most importantly– lots of fuel and expendable yet well-trained aircrews capable of navigating precisely over water, neither of which the Japanese had in abundance at that stage of the war.
With the Okinawa campaign showing the Japanese were capable of one-way single-engine aircraft attacks some 400 miles out from Kyushu, a surface fleet blockade zone some 600-700 miles out would keep the Japanese supply lines severed while remaining relatively safe. With F6F’s capable of an 850nm combat range and TBMs as well as the larger follow-on F8Fs some 1,100, its conceivable that Hellcats/Avengers and Bearcats could be launched by carrier groups coming in a tad closer from time to time to get in some coastal strikes over Japanese harbors if Halsey and Spruance felt strongly about it.
Inside the exclusion zone, the massive Allied submarine fleet could keep doing what they did best: sinking Marus and anything afloat with a meatball on its flag. While doing so, they could form early warning pickets for outgoing long-range kamikaze raids and lifeguard service for downed B-29 and PBY crews. Nighttime shore bombardment with their 3 and 5-inch guns could add an element of harassment to outlying areas. This could work with deception and psywar operations to keep the Japanese land forces shuttling from point to point, wasting resources and keeping men tied down on the beach and in the hills waiting for an amphibious assault while the cities, plants, and marshaling yards in the rear burn.
However, what of the Japanese forces overseas?
On the day of surrender, the Imperial Japanese Forces totaled 6,983,000 troops including construction units, naval, and air forces. Of these, Army and Navy forces stationed within the home islands numbered 3,532,000, which meant that nearly as many, some 3.4 million, were still scattered around the Pacific from Manchuria to the Solomons:
-In China, the 900,000-strong Kwantung Army of Gen. Otozō Yamada (along with another 200,000 toy soldiers of the Mengjiang and Manchukuo Imperial Armies) sounded massive on paper, but was filled with the bottom of the barrel units and armor that could be stopped with your average sticky bomb much less a Sherman or T-34. When the Soviets muscled in starting on 9 August, they swept through all of Manchuria with their 1.5 million Ivan force within two weeks. Sure, you can argue they could have held out longer if the Emperor had not ordered Yamada to lay down his arms on 15 August, but either way, this force would have been steamrolled by Stalin by October regardless. The same could be said of Lt. Gen. Yoshio Kozuki’s 17th Area Army in Korea, though allowing Moscow to sweep through the whole Korean Peninsula may not have been politically acceptable in the West.
-Stroke-addled Gensui Count Terauchi Hisaichi’s 680,000-man Southern Expeditionary Army Group controlled French Indochina, Singapore, Thailand, Malaya, New Guinea, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and a dwindling slice of Burma but was facing a huge Indo-British-Australian effort to keep pushing him out. Though they laid down their arms to Lord Mountbatten on 12 September 1945 following the surrender order, the odds that they could have held out against the tide was slim and Hisaichi’s scattered command would likely have folded by that Christmas regardless of events in Japan. Sure, far-flung units would likely have held out longer (it should be remembered that an estimated 1,000 Imperial Japanese Army troops joined Indonesian guerillas and fought the Dutch into 1948) but this would not have ended the blockade of the Home Islands.
-General Rikichi Ando’s 10th Area Army in Taiwan consisted mostly of poorly trained reservists, conscripted students, and local Boeitai home guard militia with some units equipped with sharpened bamboo pikes and longbows. They surrendered to Kuomintang General Chen Yi on 25 October 1945 as almost as an afterthought but could have been left, like Japanese garrison island Truk, to remain isolated in our Anaconda redux effort.
-Smaller forces existed in the Philippines, New Britain, the Japanese naval and air base at Truk, Wake Atoll, the Bonin Islands, Mili Atoll, Jaluit, the Ryukyu Islands, and others. Over the course of a July-December 1945 Anaconda campaign, they could continue to either languish as being strategically invaluable or be captured in small-scale sideshow operations. By that time, most of these areas had been pulverized.
Mili Island, in the Marshalls, for instance, had been the target of 18 months of ceaseless bombing by U.S. Marine Corps aircraft when the surrender order came in Sept. 1945.
Photo #: USMC 134057. Mili Island, Mili Atoll, Marshalls Group. Damaged Japanese Navy Type 89 5″/40 twin dual-purpose gun mount on Mili, at the time of the island’s surrender in late August 1945. Photographed by R.O. Kepler, USMC. U.S. Marine Corps Photograph.
Photo #: 80-G-347131. Emaciated Japanese Naval Personnel. Photographed at a Japanese hospital in the Marshall Islands, 15 September 1945. They show the effects of the blockade and constant bombardment of “bypassed” Japanese-held islands in the central Pacific over the last year and a half of World War II. The location is probably Wotje or Maloelap Atoll. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class Louis Lazarow, of Naval Air Base, Majuro.
So as the theory goes, could a six-month naval and air blockade/bombardment of the Home Islands, say stretching to January 1946, the bitter winter of the new year, coupled with the eventual reduction of the Empire’s overseas outposts, have resulted in Japan seeking peace?
During this time, the B-29s and the newly-introduced Consolidated B-32 Dominators would have covered Japan with fire from sea to sea.
Capable of carrying 20,000-pounds of bombs on each sortie, AAF personnel at Clark Field, Philippines, get their first look at a Consolidated B-32 Dominator in May 1945. Comparable to the B-29 in size and performance, B-32s saw service with only one bomber squadron before the war’s end. (U.S. Air Force photo)
Between January and July 1945, the U.S. firebombed and destroyed all but five Japanese cities, deliberately sparing Kyoto, the ancient imperial capital, and four others. The extent of the destruction was impressive ranging from 50 to 60% of the urban area destroyed in cities including Kobe, Yokohama and Tokyo, to 60 to 88% in seventeen cities, to 98.6% in the case of Toyama….Overall, by one calculation, the US firebombing campaign destroyed 180 square miles of 67 cities, killed more than 300,000 people and injured an additional 400,000, figures that exclude the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki…
Suffer the POWs
At-risk during the pressure cooker of Anaconda 1945, would be the more than 36,000 Allied personnel of various categories located in approximately 140 POW camps in the Home Islands. Another six months of firebombing and evaporating supplies of medicine and food would likely have led to most if not all Allied POWs in the Home Islands losing their lives either through neglect or culling by the Imperial Army.
At least one source maintains that in the last three months of the war, 173 American POWs were murdered in Japan, including 62 burned alive in their cell blocks by guards. Surely, these instances would have increased if the war continued.
Also, there is the Japanese nuclear option.
Japan managed a small-scale atomic program going as far back as 1931 and had both centrifuges and cyclotrons as well as a tiny amount of uranium on hand during WWII, which they attempted to weaponize. Hitler tried to help a brother out and sent U-234 to Japan in the last days of the Third Reich with plans for radars and super weapons as well as 1,200 pounds of uranium oxide. However, when Germany surrendered, the U-boat’s commander was ill inclined to complete his epic voyage and made for the U.S. where he raised the white flag to an American destroyer south of the Grand Banks, Newfoundland on 14 May.
This left the Japanese woefully short of heavy water and uranium and, while some reports have surfaced that hinted the program was still making progress in the last days of the war, was likely never going to produce a workable bomb. Further, even if by some unlikely miracle Tojo pulled off an atomic strike on a U.S. anchorage via aircraft, or West Coast port city via submarine, the retaliation made possible from the more advanced American atomic program would have seen the last remaining Japanese cities glow in the dark– while still not breaking the blockade or clockwork firebombs.
Further, barring a radio broadcast by the Emperor or military coup by the peace faction, Japan’s government may have still been willing to fight to the last bullet in January 1946, leading to Truman dropping the bombs anyway and/or Operation Downfall getting the green light.
In conclusion
Would a rehashed Anaconda worked and brought peace by 1946?
Possibly.
But would it be worth it?
Hundreds of thousands if not millions of additional Japanese would have perished between 1 July-31 December 1945 due to famine and flame that otherwise survived following the actual events. Further, thousands of Allied POWs that made it home in real life would have likely found shallow graves on Japanese soil. Add to this would be Allied submariners sunk by uncharted mines in the winter of 1945 and even more American airmen parachuting into hostile and very hungry villagers below.
Strategically, Anaconda would have extended the war by six months and cost billions of extra dollars keeping huge fleets at sea, B-32s in production, and men under arms. Further, the Soviet Union and likely Mao’s Red Chinese Army would have made much more extensive gains during the last half of 1945 than actually occurred, leaving the prospect of Korea and Taiwan still being vassal states of one or the other.
In retrospect, and in my personal opinion, Anaconda 1945 may have worked, but the A-bombs and Hirohito’s subsequent decision to run a peace appeal was and is the better choice.
