70TH ANNIVERSARY DISCUSSION (4) THE BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE 1939

And the Allies never had it during the war? Would the Axis have won. I hear it’s very important.

The Second Battle of Kharkov was an Axis counter-offensive in the region around Kharkov (now Kharkiv)[8] against the Red Army Izium bridgehead offensive conducted 12–28 May 1942, on the Eastern Front during World War II. Its objective was to eliminate the Izium bridgehead over Seversky Donets or the “Barvenkovo bulge” (Russian: Барвенковский выступ) which was one of the Soviet offensive’s staging areas. After a winter counter-offensive that drove German troops away from Moscow and also depleted the Red Army’s reserves, the Kharkov offensive was a new Soviet attempt to expand upon their strategic initiative, although it failed to secure a significant element of surprise.

On 12 May 1942, Soviet forces under the command of Marshal Semyon Timoshenko launched an offensive against the German 6th Army from a salient established during the winter counter-offensive. After initial promising signs, the offensive was stopped by German counterattacks. Critical errors by several staff officers and by Joseph Stalin, who failed to accurately estimate the 6th Army’s potential and overestimated their own newly trained forces, led to a German pincer attack which cut off advancing Soviet troops from the rest of the front. The operation caused almost 300,000 Soviet casualties compared to just 20,000 for the Germans and their allies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Kharkov

Was Stalin right to order this operation against oncoming German forces on the Eastern front?

The Shetland Bus was the nickname of a clandestine special operations group that made a permanent link between Shetland, Scotland, and German-occupied Norway from 1941 until the German occupation ended on 8 May 1945. From mid-1942 the official name of the group was “Norwegian Naval Independent Unit” (NNIU). In October 1943 it became an official part of the Royal Norwegian Navy, and was renamed the “Royal Norwegian Naval Special Unit” (RNNSU).

The unit was operated initially by a large number of small fishing boats, and later augmented by three fast and well-armed submarine chasers – Vigra, Hessa and Hitra.

Crossings were mostly made during the winter under the cover of darkness. This meant that the crews and passengers had to endure very heavy North Sea conditions, with no lights, and constant risk of discovery by German aircraft or patrol boats. There was also the possibility of being captured whilst carrying out the mission on the Norwegian coast. However, early on it was decided that camouflage was the best defence and the boats were disguised as working fishing boats, with the crew as fishermen. The fishing boats were armed with light machine guns concealed inside oil drums placed on deck. The operation was under constant threat from German forces, and several missions went awry, of which the Telavåg tragedy is a prime example. Several fishing boats were lost during the initial operations, but after receiving the three submarine chasers there were no more losses.

Leif Andreas Larsen (popularly known as Shetland Larsen) was perhaps the most famous of the Shetland Bus men. In all he made 52 trips to Norway, and became the most highly decorated Allied naval officer of the Second World War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetland_bus

The Shetland Bus is a little known story of WWII.  What do you guys think?

@CWO:

Italy didn’t hold on to British Somalia for very long.  Britain recaptured it in early 1941, and likewise liberated Ethiopia and conquered Italian Somaliland.  Germany didn’t save Italy’s rear end in that part of Africa, nor did it even intervene as far as I know;

I believe the Suez Canal was closed  :wink:

Escaping Montevideo Harbour – possibly.  Getting all the way back to Germany – extremely doubtful.

In terms of getting out of the harbour, Langsdorff would have had two options: heading across the river Plate to Argentina, or making a break for the open sea.  If he’d headed for Argentina, there was no guarantee that he’d be any better off than in Uruguay.  Argentina had some Axis sympathies, I think, but it was still nominally neutral, and the British and French would have put the same diplomatic pressures on it as they had put on Uruguay to respect the Geneva Convention and either intern the ship or force it to leave.  Making a break for the open sea was problematic too.  The British had made sure that the Graf Spee’s departure from Montevideo was in a carefully defined time window by making use of an article in the Geneva Convention that prohibited a warship from sailing from a neutral harbor less than (I think) 24 hours after an enemy merchantman had left the same harbour.  There were British merchant ships in Montevideo at the time of the Spee incident, and the British arranged for one of them to leave the harbour at the right moment to put Langsdorff in a bind between the Geneva Convention and the expiration of the Uruguayan government’s deadline for the Spee to leave.  Harwood’s cruisers were lying in wait nearby, and it’s doubtful that the Spee could have given them the slip.  Moreover, the shallow waters of the Rio de la Plata area were unsuited for combat from Langsdorff’s perspective because his water intakes might have gotten clogged with mud.  Additionally, having the ship sink in combat in shallow water carried the risk that secret equipment and papers would have fallen into Allied hands (this being less of a concern if, as eventually happened, the ship was scuttled under controlled conditions).

Assuming for the sake of argument, however, that Langsdorff had managed to elude Harwood, getting back to Germany would have been very challenging.  Although the Spee was technically still able to sail and fight, the damage she had suffered in the original battle with Harwood had left her in very poor condition to make a long sea voyage.  Harwood, even if he’d initially been eluded, would still have been close by and would have sent his ships (and his scout plane) to look for the Spee; additionally, some British and French naval groups were already converging on the general area following Harwood’s initial battle a few days earlier, so Langsdorff would have had an awful lot of sea power focused on finding him.

Only a few of them are war related, but all of them are definitely from the era. Incredible color photographs - enjoy!

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/07/26/captured-america-in-color-from-1939-1943/

(a bit slow to load, but worth waiting for)

Those are some good ideas but i thought this was The Battle for Greece? Shouldn’t we keep this just to that battle?

Greece…Crete and dodacanese Island.
With that, players may used,planes, warships and paratroopers.

The Winter War is an amazing tale of bravery on the Finns’ part.