Dam Busters

617 Squadron RAF was formed in March 1943 to attack the Mohne and Sorpe dams, which provided water to the industrial German Ruhr region, and the Eder, which helped keep canals at navigable depth. A special bomb was developed for the mission by Barnes Wallis. Dropped from low level, it bounced on the water before sliding down the dam wall. On the night of May 16-17, the Mohne and Eder dams were both breached, but although loss of life and industrial dislocation were considerable, the damage was short-lived. Above, Wing Commander Guy Gibson, commander of 617 Squadron, is seen boarding his Lancaster. Eight of the nineteen bombers were lost.

The Barnes Wallis 9,250 Ib (4,195 kg) bouncing bomb slung below a British Lancaster bomber.

The breached Mohne dam four hours after the raid.

Guy Gibson, photographed near RAF Scampton on 22 July 1943. Awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for military valour, Gibson was killed the following year at the age of 26.

Katyn — 1943

When Poland was divided between Russia and Germany in 1939, over 180,000 Polish prisoners of war fell into Soviet hands: officers were segregated in special camps. In April 1943, the Germans discovered a mass grave in Katyn forest near Smolensk, later found to contain the remains of 4,400 Polish officers, and accused the Russians of mass murder, summoning an international team of experts to investigate the crime. Although the Russians long blamed the Germans for the atrocity, in 1990 they at last admitted responsibility.

The victims had their hands wired behind their backs (above) and had been shot in the back of the head. This evocative photograph sums up the fate of tens of thousands of victims of mass murder during the war.

The German-sponsored international experts (below, all but one from Axis or occupied countries) examining of the bodies of Katyn. When the London-based Polish government in exile suggested an impartial International Red Cross investigation, the Russians broke off diplomatic relations.

The Battle of the Convoys

Churchill wrote that the only thing that really worried him was the submarine menace. The Battle of the Atlantic reached its crescendo in 1943, when operations in North Africa drew escorts away from the Atlantic, and Britain depended utterly on the main North Atlantic convoy routes at the very time that German submarines, concentrated in “wolf packs,” redoubled their efforts, paying particular attention to the narrowing gap in mid-Atlantic left uncovered by land-based aircraft. ULTRA proved decisive, enabling escorts to find submarines with accuracy: the Germans lost 47 in May alone. Sinkings continued, but the battle was won by the end of the month.

Above, the Torch convoy at sea, November 1942. The convoy was kept under an air umbrella that reduced the risk of attack, but demands imposed on convoy escorts by the demands of North Africa were to influence the Battle of the Atlantic.

Arctic convoys ferried supplies to Russia. Here the cruiser HMS Belfast is at sea in northern waters, March 1943.

Most British warships relied on multi-barrelled automatic “pom-poms” for close defence against aircraft. This air spotter, binoculars at the ready, watches for hostile aircraft.

The cruiser HMS Sheffield, on the same convoy as the Belfast, has both forward turrets trained to the beam to avoid damage to their canvas blast screens. Nevertheless, one turret roof was torn right off by a wave.

Depth-charges dropped by a Canadian corvette ship. The Canadians, short of modern equipment and adequate destroyers, had a particularly hard war in the Atlantic.

A U-Boat commander at his periscope. German submarine crews had a horrifyingly high casualty rate: 40,900 men served in submarines during the war, and 28,000 perished. Admiral Dönitz, Commander-in-Chief of the German navy, lost both his sailor sons, one in a submarine.

The last moments of a freighter, seen from a submarine. From January to May 1943 Allied shipping loses averaged 450,000 tons per month.

U625 sinking after depth-charge attack by a Sunderland of 422 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force, March 10, 1944.

This U-Boat, attacked at periscope depth by a Sunderland, was brought to the surface by depth charges and then sunk.

Merchant seamen scramble aboard a U.S. Coast Guard cutter.

Firemen “Bonny” Bartell and “Snowy” Foster, both of Canning Town in East London, come up for a breather on a North African Convoy, July 1943.

North Africa — 1943

The North African campaign had a sting in its tail. In January 1943, Arnim mounted an offensive, catching ill-equipped French divisions off guard and going on to shake the Americans. Rommel, forced steadily westwards by Montgomery's advance, put in an attack of his own, inflicting a sharp defeat on the Americans at the Kasserine Pass in February. The Allies then reorganized their chain of command, forming the 18th Army Group, comprising both armies (Anderson's 1st and Montgomery's 8th) fighting in Tunisia. Axis forces were gradually compressed into a pocket round Tunis, and the last of them surrendered in mid-May, leaving 238,000 prisoners in Allied hands.

The Mareth Line, based on prewar French defenses in southern Tunisia, was held by Rommel's old army, now renamed the 1st Italian army under General Giovanni Messe. Montgomery's first attack, on March 19, failed, but a hook round the desert flank forced Messe to pull back. Here (above) a 4.5-inch medium gun bombards the line.

On March 6, Rommel turned on Montgomery at Medenine, but, using information from ULTRA, Montgomery was ready for him and the attack was easily repulsed. These Gurkhas are using their distinctive weapon, the kukri, near Medenine, but this shot comes from a sequence that suggests that it was staged for the camera.

This, in contrast, is a real photograph of the Medenine battle, showing a German Mk III Special knocked out by 73rd Anti-Tank Regiment Royal Artillery, part of the anti-tank screen deployed by Montgomery as a result of ULTRA.

The end in Tunisia. An American intelligence officer interrogates two prisoners. Two French soldiers, once more on the Allied side, are in the background.

Roosevelt, in North Africa for the Casablanca conference, took the opportunity to visit troops in the field, the first President since Lincoln to do so.

Operation Torch

Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa, was launched in November under the command of the unknown U.S. Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Allies tried to ensure French co-operation, and in the event resistance was patchy in quality and quantity. Fortuitously, Admiral Darlan, Marshal Petain's deputy, was visiting his sick son in Algiers, and was persuaded to order a ceasefire. The Germans swiftly sent troops to Tunisia, and the Allied advance bogged down with the rains of early winter.

Although the Vichy government repudiated Darlan's ceasefire, Hitler was furious and invaded the Unoccupied Zone of France. A German force had orders to seize the French fleet at Toulon, but the French activated a well-prepared plan and the fleet was scuttled by its crews in the nick of time. Here damaged and sunk cruisers and destroyers can be seen (above) through the smoke of burning heavy cruisers.

American troops, part of the Central Task Force, on their way ashore by landing craft at Oran. It was thought that the French would be less likely to engage the Americans than the British, still mistrusted because of the attack on Mers-el-Kebir and the fighting in the Levant.

With Allied convoys at sea, sailors could be told their destination. Here Rear Admiral Sir Harold Burrough explains forthcoming operations to officers and men aboard his flagship.

Strategic Air Offensive

In 1942 the strategic bombing offensive against Germany was substantially increased. The 1941 Butt report, which showed just how inaccurate night bombing actually was, encouraged the introduction of area bombing of German cities. Sir Arthur Harris took over as Commander-in-Chief of the RAF's Bomber Command in February. He quickly ordered fire-storm raids on Rostock and Lübeck, and then, in May, mobilized his second line and training aircraft to mount the first thousand-bomber raid, on Cologne. RAF armourers are seen fusing bombs (above) prior to loading them aboard a Short Stirling at RAF Waterbeach, near Cambridge, April 30, 1942.

The caption to this German photograph of the gutted Lübeck cathedral described the raid on the city as “a new crime against civilization.” It helped inspire the German Baedeker raids, so called because the official announcing them declared that the Germans would attack all building marked with three stars in the Baedeker guidebook.

On the night of May 30, the first thousand-bomber raid was launched on Cologne. The top picture shows a rubber factory at Deutz, on the east bank of the Rhine, before the raid, and the lower picture shows it afterwards.

The four-engined Avro Lancaster came into service in early 1942. Although it was generally used at night, this
photograph shows a low-level daylight raid on the Schneider armament works at Le Creusot on October 17.

Another daylight attack, this by Lockheed Venturas, Douglas Bostons and de Havilland Mosquitos on the Philips radio valve works in the Dutch town of Eindhoven, December 6.

German flak and fighters imposed a steady toll on bombers. Here a Vickers Wellington of the Polish 301 (Pomeranian) Squadron, lies in the mud of a Dutch estuary.

The Malta Convoys

The island of Malta possessed the only British-held harbour between Gibraltar and Alexandria and was crucial to convoys bringing supplies to forces in the Western desert. The Axis hoped to neutralize it by air attack, and Malta was besieged from 1940 until the Axis surrender in North Africa in May 1943. It owed its survival to fighter squadrons based on its airfields and fast convoys that ran the gauntlet to reach the island. In March-April 1942 Malta received twice the tonnage of bombs dropped on London during the Blitz, and in all 1,493 of her citizens were killed and 3,764 wounded.

The aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable (above) almost hidden by near misses from air attack as she helps escort the vital Pedestal convoy to Malta, August 1942.

Tugs bustle round the American tanker Ohio, crippled but still full of fuel, as she enters Valetta harbour, August 1942.

The crew of a pom-pom multiple antiaircraft gun aboard a destroyer escorting the Pedestal convoy enjoying a smoke break between air attacks. The photographer had already been sunk aboard the cruiser HMS Manchester, and transferred to a destroyer “with his camera intact.”

Raid on Dieppe

On August 19,1942, the British mounted Operation Jubilee, a large scale raid on the port of Dieppe, Seine-Maritime, France. Some 4,900 Canadian, 1,000 British and 50 U.S. troops left five English ports in a fleet of 237 warships and landing craft. Air support was inadequate and intelligence poor, and despite some minor successes the main assault was a bloody failure, with 3,367 Canadian casualties. The Royal Navy lost a destroyer and several landing craft, and the RAF 106 aircraft to only 48 German. Although useful lessons were learnt from Dieppe, the operation's unjustifiable risks were worsened by its labyrinthine planning. Landing craft run in towards the beach (above) under cover of floating smoke dischargers.

The frontal assault was mounted by The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry and The Essex Scottish, with armour from the 14th Canadian Army Tank Regiment (The Calgary Tanks), supported by the Fusiliers Mont-Royal. Twelve tanks were stopped on the beach because shingle jammed their tracks, and the 15 that made their way inland were soon knocked out. Here a German infantryman picks his way among blanketed Canadian dead.

Canadian prisoners are marched through Dieppe.

Propagandists found some crumbs of comfort: No. 4 Commando, seen here after returning to Newhaven, had taken the Varengeville battery. The U.S. Ranger makes the point that this was the first time Americans had been in action on the ground in Europe during the war.

Britain at War, 1942 — Part 2

Members of the Women's Land Army ploughing in Hertfordshire, March 1942.

Between January 1942 and D-Day in 1944 more than a million and a half U.S. servicemen arrived in Britain. There were complaints that the Americans were “overpaid, oversexed and over here,” but paradoxically most civilians were sympathetic to black G.I.s, victims of colour bars in their own army.

Although women did not fly in direct combat, 166 served in the Air Transport Auxiliary which ferried aircraft from factories to their bases, and servicewomen like this Wren (from WRNS, Women's Royal Naval Service) radio mechanic flew to test radios.

In 1942 the Germans mounted hit and run “Baedeker raids” on historic cities in retaliation for raids on Lübeck and Rostock. Canterbury cathedral was damaged in June.

Many anti-aircraft batteries has male and female personnel. These women of the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) operate a mobile power-plant on an anti-aircraft site in December 1942.

Britain at War, 1942 — Part 1

Britain was emphatically a nation at war. Food rationing began in January 1940, and that autumn saw the beginning of the London Blitz, with endemic air raids thereafter. A 1940 extension of the 1939 Emergency Powers Act gave the government “complete control over… all persons, rich and poor… and all property.” Britain mobilized a higher proportion of its population than any other combatant: by June 1944, 22% of the working population was in the services and another 33% in war work. Women replaced men in factories, public transport and on the land. Men were not only drafted into the forces, but eventually down the mines as well.

Mrs Minnie Murless of the Wynnstay guest house (above) clips the ration books of her guests. There were weekly forms for butcher and grocer, and every two month the local Food Office required detailed lists of consumption. Fuel and animal food required separate permits.

“Local defense,” reads the original caption, “releases men for overseas offense.” Like most Home Guard units, this one includes those too old or too young for regular service as well as men in some key occupations which spared them regular call-up.

Rail travel was cramped and uncertain. Here a member of the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) and a soldier sit on their luggage in the corridor of a London to Scotland express.

In May 1942 Molotov, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, flew to England to sign a Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance. Here he is walking next to Churchill in the garden of No 10 Downing Street. Clement Attlee, Deputy Prime Minister, is shrouded in tobacco smoke in the centre of the photograph, and Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary, is just behind Churchill.

Russian ambassador Ivan Maisky accepts the first tank produced under the “Tanks for Russia” scheme. War material was shipped to Russia, often at great cost, in the arctic convoys through the Norwegian and Barents seas.

North Africa — Part 3

British infantry advance in open order on October 24. The infantry was tasked with “crumbling” Rommel's defences.

An Advanced Dressing Station, October 24. An officer of the Royal Army Medical Corps gives a drink to one of the wounded.

German prisoners await transport at El Alamein corner, October 25. Some 30,000 prisoners of war were taken.

General von Thoma, commander of the Afrika Korps (now an elite minority in the larger German-Italian force in North Africa) introduced to Montgomery after capture, November 4.

Crusader cruiser tanks in pursuit after Alamein.

Cecil Beaton's view of the crew of a Martin Maryland light bomber receiving a last-minute briefing before take-off. Slick co-operation between ground and air forces characterized Montgomery's conduct of the battle in North Africa.