Innehållsförteckning för Issue 15 från Iron Cross

One of the most recognisable armoured vehicles of the Second World War is the mighty Tiger tank which appears on the front cover and features in one of our articles for this issue. As we currently see in daily news stories on our TV screens and in newspapers, the ability to ‘kill’ an enemy’s tanks is a paramount consideration on the battlefield. Picking up this theme, and in the first of a two-part series, one of our new contributors, Craig Moore, addresses how the Allies first discovered the existence of the Tiger and then developed methods to eliminate what initially might have seemed a nigh-on indestructible tank. In respect of those TV news stories from the battlefield that are now relayed to us in real-time, the conveyance of moving pictures…

“I have the honour to report that at 6.30 a.m. on Monday, November 9, a wireless message from Cocos was heard, ‘Strange warship at entrance.’ I was ordered to raise steam for full speed at 7 a.m. and proceeded thither. I then worked up to 20 knots, and at 9.15 a.m. sighted land ahead, and almost immediately the smoke of a ship, which proved to be the Emden coming out towards me at a great rate. “At 9.40 a.m. fire was opened, the Emden firing the first shot. I kept my distance as much as possible to obtain the advantage of my guns. Her fire was very accurate and rapid to begin with, but seemed to slacken very quickly, all casualties occurring in this ship almost immediately. My fore-most finder…

EDITOR’S CHOICE TO SAVE AN ARMY The Stalingrad Airlift Robert Forsyth Publisher: Osprey Publishing Web: www.ospreypublishing.com ISBN: 978-1-4728-4541-2 Hardback: 352 pages RRP: £25.00 Ever since I met and interviewed Luftwaffe veterans of the Stalingrad airlift during the mid-1970s I have thought that the subject was crying out for a seriously researched book on the subject. Finally, some forty plus years on, Robert Forsyth has delivered just that very book. And what a stonkingly well researched, superbly written, and thoroughly absorbing book this truly is. It has certainly been well worth waiting for! In what is a highly detailed account of the inevitably doomed attempt to supply the encircled and beleaguered German Sixth Army, Robert delivers a sometimes-visceral account of the monumental efforts of the Luftwaffe to keep the German troops…

KRISTEN ALEXANDER Kristen Alexander received the Australian War Memorial’s 2021 Bryan Gandevia Prize for Australian military–medical history. She has written five books on aviation history including Clive Caldwell Air Ace and Australia’s Few and the Battle of Britain. She is currently working on a book about the experiences of Australian POWs in Stalag Luft III. CRAIG MOORE Craig Moore is the author of eight books about tank history and hunts for undiscovered documents on armoured warfare in UK archives. He is an editor of www.tanks-encyclopedia.com and writes for various military history publications. In 2017 he was part of a dig team that recovered a buried WW2 Covenanter tank. PAUL REED Paul Reed is a military historian and Battlefield Guide, the host of the Old Front Line podcast, and author of…

The RAF’s Air Intelligence (g) and (k) sections reported on the wreck of the aircraft and interrogation of the crew: “All the available aircraft of II./KG53 started at about five minute intervals from Lille-Vendreville, the A1 + JN being the second aircraft of the 5th Staffel to take off. From Lille-Vendreville, this aircraft made landfall at Dover and flew up the Thames to London at 14,000 feet. The crew reached the objective and release the bombs, but the results were not observed. On the return journey, they were attacked from behind by a single-engine night fighter. In all, six attacks were delivered by this aircraft which was thought to be using cannon. The port engine was disabled and the starboard engine damaged. The pilot dived down to 150 feet in…

Viewable on the YouTube channel is a short, silent film clip from June 1957, entitled ‘Admiral Doenitz and Admiral Raeder – no sound.’ It shows what was probably the last joint public appearance of the two men who had successively headed the Kriegsmarine during the Second World War. The occasion was the dedication of the naval memorial at Wilhelmshaven, a symbolic event for surviving Kriegsmarine veterans. In the clip, a visibly frail 81-year-old Erich Raeder is helped from his car and is pictured chatting good-humouredly to his successor, Karl Dönitz, as they sit together in the church service. The older of the two Grand Admirals by fifteen years, Raeder served as commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine from 1928 to 1943, bridging the transition from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich.…

Recovered from the wreck of the first enemy ship sunk by the Royal Australian Navy during the First World War as a trophy, the Emden’s bell was later stolen twice and recovered in high-profile cases that made headlines around Australia. Displayed at the Australian naval base on Garden Island, Sydney, from 1917, it was stolen in a daring raid in 1932. Bolted to a stand in the entrance of the main office, it was discovered missing on 12 August and eventually found buried in the Sydney area in February 1933 and donated to the Australian War Memorial. With the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany, the Memorial feared the bell could become a target for German nationalists and wanted to make sure it was secure. Displayed in a temporary…

INSIDE ISSUE 1 • D-Day and the Luftwaffe. How Germany tried to counter the 1944 Normandy invasion from the air• ‘Slaughter Birds’. The German Schlachtflieger’s role during World War 1• Get The Glorious! How the key British aircraft carrier was sunk off Norway• Waffenkammer. A detailed analysis of the MG15 machine gun• Story of Feldgrau. The development of the field grey uniform in World War 1 INSIDE ISSUE 2 • Diary of a WW1 fighter pilot• Valkyrie Plotters. The men behind the 1944 Hitler assassination attempt• The Jagdpanther. Inside story of the discovery and restoration of WW2 tank• Battlefleet Ghosts. Exploring the scuttled high seas fleet at Scapa Flow• Luftwaffe Decline. Dismantling the German Air Force after its defeat in 1945 INSIDE ISSUE 3 • Predators of the Channel –…

Hitler’s Wolfsschanze This superb book by John Grehan was reviewed in Iron Cross #12 and we also ran a feature article on the Wolfsschanze HQ in issue #13 of the magazine - and so t there can be absolutely no excuse for not getting the answer to our simple competition (below) correct! All you need to do is look at your back issues. What could be easier? So, thanks to the generosity of Frontline Books, our readers now have a chance of winning one of four copies of this truly excellent book which are being offered as competition prizes. Not only is this a wonderfully researched, well written, and splendidly illustrated book, but it is one which will appeal to anyone interested in the story of Hitler’s war. And at…

The Great Escape took place on the night of 24–25 March 1944 via a tunnel nicknamed Harry. While 76 Allied airmen succeeded in exiting Stalag Luft 3, nearly all were recaptured. Fifty were later killed on Hitler’s order, including five Australians: compass maker Warrant Officer Albert Hake (though, as far as the Germans were concerned, he was a Pilot Officer), Squadron Leader James Catanach who spoke fluent German and was proficient in Norwegian, carpentry team members Squadron John Williams and Flying Officer Reginald Kierath, and Flight Lieutenant Thomas Leigh. How were they and the other 45 Kriegies selected for death? Kriminalrat Hans Wilhelm Merten of the Berlin Kriminalpolizei (criminal police) told war crimes investigators that he had witnessed Arthur Nebe, the organisation’s chief, scrutinising cards containing the personal details of…

When the bombs fell at 01:45 hours on 26 July 1944, Erna Doh was sitting in the bunker of the women’s clinic on Bismarckstrasse in Stuttgart. She was heavily pregnant and could go into labour at any moment - but although she had been looking forward to the birth of her child, she lost all courage now that the earth was shaking, “…as if a freight train was going underground”. Decades afterwards, in a letter that her son Gerhard later found, she wrote of the horror: “Inwardly, I had finished with my life and was ready to face what was to come with icy cold resignation. I could no longer pray, but kept my rosary hidden in my hand like a weapon. I could no longer think of myself and…

• 1842: Introduction of the spiked helmet.• 1844: Introduction of the ball finial for artillery regiments.• 1857: Reduction in overall size and weight of helmet (2 cm shorter).• 1860: Significant reduction in size of helmet (4cm). Spike and base also reduced in size.• 1867: Radically different helmet design. Front visor now has round metal edging with the spike base also being round. The back spine is completely eliminated.• 1871: Back spine is re-introduced.• 1887: New style helmet for enlisted model helmet. Metal front visor trim removed and replaced with a hardened curled leather edge. Chinscale rosettes are replaced with a hook retention system. Pearl ring at spike base is removed.• 1891: Metal front visor trim re-introduced. M-87 chinscale hooks replaced with lug retainer (M91 side lug) for a leather chinstrap.•…

When the Heinkel 111 made its crash landing at Kennington, villagers were quickly on the scene - even though raiders could still be heard overhead. Nevertheless, sisters Joan and Joyce Peters raced back to the village to fetch blankets and pillows for the injured airmen. It was an act of humanity towards fellow human beings in distress. Other curious villagers turned up in their night attire, eager for a glimpse of the enemy that had landed in their midst. Also arriving on the scene was Captain R E H Hadingham* of the locally based 265 Battery, 67th Anti-Tank Regiment, RA. He was the unit’s Orderly Officer and was roused from his sleep when the Heinkel was downed. Arriving on the scene also clad in pyjamas, but wearing his Sam Browne…

Erich Maria Remarque’s novel was first published in 1928 in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung, and in book form in 1929. The book and its sequel, The Road Back (1930), were among books banned and burned in Nazi Germany. All Quiet on the Western Front sold 2.5 million copies in 22 languages in its first 18 months in print and in 1930 the book was adapted as an Academy Award-winning film of the same name, directed by Lewis Milestone. It was adapted again in 1979 by Delbert Mann, this time as a TV production. In October 1918, Paul Bäumer is finally killed on a remarkably peaceful day. The situation report from the frontline that day stated simply: “All quiet on the Western Front.” At the beginning of his book, Remarque…

With the collective European imagination of the 1920s and 1930s seeing apocalyptic visions of total war involving civilian populations, the German expressionist poet, Johannes R Belcher, articulated such fears in a novel where he imagined how it might be: “Suddenly, hundreds of aeroplanes took off. They hummed steadily towards their target, a metropolis. Three hours later, the residents – although they wore masks and protective clothing – lay whimpering and crying for help, most of them in the shelters. Others wandered about on the roofs like madmen, spread their arms and legs, and cursing, threw themselves onto the pavements. There were pools of blood everywhere.” It perhaps lent itself more to a 20th Century iteration of Dante Alighieri’s Hell than it did to any reasonably prophetic outlook as to how…

At a conference held by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring on 6 March 1942, raids against Britain to retaliate for the growing intensity of air attacks on Germany were discussed and it was made clear that Adolf Hitler wanted to see the strongest force possible undertaking attacks against London as soon as the weather was suitable. In part, this determination might well have been triggered by an RAF Bomber Command attack against the Renault factory at Boulogne-Billancourt on 3 March which saw 235 aircraft strike the target across a two-hour period. Whilst not an attack against the home territory of the Third Reich, per se, it was a raid which signalled the increasing power of the RAF’s bomber force – a power which was inexorably and increasingly being deployed against the German…

In a seasonal variation to our usual recruitment, propaganda, or war film poster feature we thought that readers might enjoy this German advertising placard for sparkling wine dating from 1917. This colourful poster promotes what it calls ‘The German sparkling wine brand of our best days’ and depicts a smiling, dashingly handsome, and obviously gallant young Leutnant standing on castellated ramparts and raising a glass of the ‘Feist-Feldgrau’ brand by Sektkellerei of Frankfurt am Main. And whilst 1917 could hardly be described as Germany’s ‘best days’ – especially for soldiers like the officer depicted – maybe the inference is more that this is the German soldier’s drink of choice to celebrate victory or success in battle? Either way, it would have been patriotically appealing to the German folk back in…