Midway: The Fierce Naval Struggle For The Pacific | Battles Won & Lost | War Stories

every battle is both a victory and a defeat it depends which flag you fly in every theater of the second world war battles won and lost determined possession of territory of resources and of the strength to go on fighting for some of the battles it was the victory that most influenced the future course of the war for others it was the defeat this is the story of the battles won and lost that decided the outcome of the greatest conflict in history a world war is a patchwork of actions land sea air massive or small scale and the stories of these actions are just as varied here are battles decided by amphibious forces climate geography and the problems of supply [Music] the naval revolution that had been hinted at in the coral sea would be fully realized at midway a battle for which japan gathered massive naval strength the japanese objective at midway was to destroy the u.s navy and to do this they decided to move on midway island midway island was an island on the hawaii defence perimeter and the plan was to entice the us navy into a trap and destroy it which would of course if that had occurred it would have given the japanese free reign over the west coast of the usa and they would have also had the opportunity to attack hawaii american patrol cited japanese warships and troop transport several hundred miles out at sea heading for this island of midway decided that this was the place to make a stand and committed all available ships to a bold attack the japanese navy was as had been proven early in the 20th century when she destroyed the imperial russian fleet a match for anyone but repeatedly in the story of battles won and lost in the second world war we find the difference between victory and defeat rests with the difference between concentration and dispersal the problem with the japanese was that they had scattered their fleet over a very wide area it was organized into component parts none of which could support each other so in effect as a total number the japanese outnumbered the americans but when it came to a face-to-face battle they didn't the american fleet went into the battle with another advantage because the coral sea encounter ruled both zooey kaku and shokaku out of the midway engagement yorktown on the other hand which was estimated to require three months for repair was swarmed over by 1400 workers and they had the job done in two days she was in the line of battle the japanese had a complicated plan the second carrier strike force would go north to the aleutians midway near enough midway between hawaii and japan would be approached across a broad front of ocean a significant force would break off to possibly support action in the aleutians it was labeled the aleutian's screening force the fleet proper would divide the invasion force under admiral condo would hold back the main body under yamamoto would also wait allowing nagumo to press the attack with the first carrier strike force built around the four carriers akagi kaga soryu and hirio to the south of the main force was the close support force under admiral kurita in the event admirals kurita yamamoto and kondo would play no part in this most decisive battle the americans by contrast were sailing to the battle zone in a compact formation rear admiral jack fletcher task force 17 again flying his flag from yorktown and rear admiral raymond spruance in task 416 with the carriers enterprise and hornet giving the americans three carriers to the japanese four but the americans had another advantage they knew exactly what to expect their crypto analysts had cracked the japanese naval code they could read japanese orders they knew japanese plans they knew where the japanese would be and in what strength it was absolutely decisive a submarine patrol was on station at midway and aircraft based there could extend surveillance to about 500 kilometers from the island the stage was set around 4 30 in the morning of june 4th nagumo steaming about 400 kilometers northwest of the island initiated the action by committing about half of his total air arm to an attack on midway the battle continued in bursts over the next two days the course of the battle of midway was first influenced by admiral nagumo's decision when his aircraft returned to their ships and his pilots reported a failure to completely destroy the installations and aircraft on midway nagumo ordered them to be re-armed with bombs rather than torpedoes for a second attack on the island at 5 45 after a catalina had cited the japanese task force the american carriers turned towards the enemy that they would engage but never see with carrier warfare it was quite clear the person who struck first was going to win and japanese lost that little advantage and the americans were able to conduct an extraordinary successful strike had the japanese found the americans first and focused on conducting a mass strike against the americans it could have gone the other way enterprise and hornet launched their first attacks on the japanese ships shortly after six they launched 29 torpedo bombers of which they lost 24 these were outdated devastator aircraft and after midway they were withdrawn from service they had failed to record a single hit on a japanese ship but they had most importantly disorganized the enemy fleet and forced its air cover down to sea level above them squadrons from enterprise and yorktown went in it was mid-morning and these were the much more effective dauntless aircraft responsible for sinking more japanese vessels than any other weapon the battle would continue but its outcome was decided in five minutes nagumo gave the order to launch at 10 20 but at 10 25 lieutenant commander wade mccluskey of the uss enterprises air group led his 37 dauntless dive bombers in from an altitude of 14 000 feet in a 70 degree dive at 280 knots the carrier akagi was hit first then kaga last sorry as dive bombers from yorktown joined the assault aircraft from the remaining japanese carrier meanwhile hit yorktown but the losses in aircraft were great japanese planes were shut down by the score one flew slap into this these losses meant that hiriu though she remained active was weakly protected and in the last carrier action of june 4th came under attack from the dauntless dive bombers so that as the sun set all four japanese carriers were sinking yorktown two was in a bad state and had to be abandoned during the night of the fourth of june japan's four carriers were either sunk or scuttled the main japanese force had by now sailed to within range of the midway-based b-17 and these attacked as during the sixth the american fleet searched the seas on their first day we hit about 30 shifts of all times battleships storage and transports second day we hit the carriers any luck with them oh the yorktown was taken in tow but both the carrier and the destroyer hammam that had come to her aid were sunk by torpedoes from a japanese submarine news of the engagement was passed to prime minister tojo in tokyo in suitably formal courtly style the navy he was told by general moritaki tanabe has made a great mistake midway was a decisive naval battle whose outcome was decided not by ships but by almost 500 aircraft midway has always been a candidate for turning point was the outcome of the war in the pacific decided in those two days of naval action what happened placed the american and japanese fleets on an approximately equal footing what happened next most influenced the course of the war between midway and 1944 japan built six new fleet carriers the united states built 14. america is building freighters by day and night red-hot rivets and red-hot rivet catchers are on the job they're turning out the ships and the ships are delivering the goods the production capacity was central to what happened in the rest of the war of the pacific the american industrial machine was gearing up in 1942 and its products really started to come out in mass numbers in 1943. if midway was a victory at sea it was made decisive by the shipyards and factories that could make good the losses in a way that japan simply could not match the japanese on the other hand had no similar mass building program nor the ability to mobilize such large numbers of educated people and i think that's a very important point it's not just the extraordinary american industrial output that gave you so many aircraft carriers so many aircraft so many battleships and so many other ships it was this extraordinary ability to take an educated population and train them for people who'd never seen the sea to go out and be effective sailors officers at all levels hitler's position after a disastrous winter on the russian front placed him in a dilemma either he was pushed on into the caucasus and dangerously extend his front or he must somehow contrive to do without the vital caucasian oil field [Music] when with summer the german assault on the soviet union was renewed there were 51 german divisions across europe and 167 on the eastern front they were supported by 30 from various axis partners and sympathizers in a sense german summer offensive of 1942 was like barbarossa remastered yet again the germans were facing this enormous fields a lot of resistance they were taking a lot of prisoners of war so the idea behind it was that now the soviet union will collapse now the russian resistance will die down which happened and not happen at the same time german battle plans were designated full or case and identified by colour case blue the plan for the summer offensive of 1942 was detailed as directive 41 and issued in april the major role was to be shouldered by fonbox army group south [Music] the prize would be the caucasus and while the jewel in that particular crown was the oil fields from the perspective of wide strategy an advance into the caucuses also meant advancing the front past moscow the nazis would have a base from which to launch a flanking attack on moscow with one master stroke the russian armies to the south would be practically cut off from caucasus oil in a preliminary action von manstein's 11th army attacked in the crimea on may 8th four days later completely surprising the germans the russians launched their own offensive timochenko commanding the southwest theatre exploiting the salient that had been created south of kharkov germany had plans to nip out the salient the russians beat them to it by six days so operation frederickas was brought forward [Music] in three days the russians had penetrated more than 40 kilometers but they were over cautious in committing their armor when von kleist attacked with 15 divisions and von paulus brought the sixth army in on the flank stalin refused to vary the offensive order when army group christ and the sixth army on the 22nd trapped the soviet forces in the pocket they had tried to exploit only 22 000 soviet troops managed to escape the encirclement the failed offensive cost the soviet union almost a quarter of a million men taken prisoner and now the main german offensive could begin the six armies of army group b moved at the end of june by the 6th of july they had crossed the dawn [Music] the next day the russians evacuated voronesh von kleist's first panzer army would turn south crossing the dawn close to where it entered the sea of azov forcing malinowski's south front back and reaching the oil fields at make up on august 9th true they did capture a few but this was the scene when they got there the russians carrying out their scorched earth policy with complete thoroughness had themselves fired the wells and the storage tanks on the following day august 10th von paulus crossed the dawn and reached the outskirts of stalingrad the advance into the caucuses continued and on august 23rd the swastika was hoisted on europe's highest peak mount elvis 5642 meters [Applause] this is the high point of the german advance into russia but the deeper they go into russia the bigger the problem becomes and the very same day the day they raise the flag on mount elbrus they also enter stalingrad so in a sense the german success carries within it the seeds of its own destruction the battle for the caucasus and occupation of the vital oil fields had been won but the outcome of the battle for russia and for the living space in the east that hitler had promised to the german people was very finely balanced the british have a tradition of leaders who bring to the art of war a sort of mystery mysticism charisma or charles wingate was very much of that lineage he had a background in guerrilla warfare he fought a guerrilla campaign in palestine before the war he was a man who propounded his beliefs advocated his beliefs with messianic zeal he was argumentative and wouldn't take no for an answer he was a very difficult subordinate wingate's idea advanced for its time and causing him to argue long and hard with his superiors was for a special force that could operate behind enemy lines deep penetration was the expression and the very technical term was asymmetric warfare japanese would then have to divert troops from the front line to deal with these issues in their rear he presafely called it having your hand in the enemy's bowels that idea took hold it was decided to give it a try and the 77th brigade was created it was based on groups of british indian and gurkha troops with commandos signalers burmese guides and interpreters they would go behind the japanese lines as windgate intended and they were called chindits because the chin did was a mythical burmese creature that guarded buddhist temples here they are for the first time in newsreels the chindits a name from legend that's become flesh and blood living guardians of burma's safety [Music] the first intention was to incorporate the deep penetration tactic into a larger campaign but when that was cancelled wingate persuaded general wavel in overall command to allow the chindit operation to go ahead that action became known as operation long cloth it was first and foremost an attempt to prove wingate's concept and the force numbered just three thousand on february 13 1943 the chindits crossed the chinwin river and entered burma modern myanmar two days later they engaged japanese [Music] troops the japs had been out fought and outmaneuvered just where they thought that they were safely tucked away two columns marched south but they were a deception five columns the main campaign marched east two making for the main north-south railway with sabotage in mind on march 4th one column succeeded in its aims wrecking the railway in as many as 70 places the japanese quickly repaired the railway the raid didn't cause any disruption to their plans or dispositions and it didn't inflict many casualties it also consumed a large slice of the air resources and other resources in the burma theatre where resources were very scarce [Music] wingate himself repeatedly changed plans and destinations but communications were poor not least because the terrain was harsh and the columns were behind enemy lines so column commanders were not always informed of wingate's new intentions the nature of the operation and terrain meant that the men were heavily burdened with supplies the kid of a man who will live and fight for months cut off in the jungle is an all-important factor general winget knew how vital it is to carry the things you need it also meant that frequently the wounded had to be left where possible in the care of villagers the resupply by air a single raf squadron of six aircraft was responsible was adequate but lack of a clear objective was becoming an issue wingate elected to cross the erawadi but here terrain was difficult and the japanese were able to maneuver in a way that threatened to trap wingate's command in an ever-contracting with his forward elements now operating at the extreme limit of the range of air supply wingate decided in late march to withdraw his force here the decision to cross the irrawaddy took an awful toll the need to cross the river to return to india meant that the japanese could concentrate their forces along its banks and as soon as an attempted crossing was cited numbers could be concentrated to contest the crossing the losses were catastrophic windgate was wrong in thinking that the japanese would be panicked because of some issues in their rear areas that was never going to happen they were easily able to seal these chin penetrations off this forced the columns to fragment and small groups of men continued to trickle back to their base until the end of april three thousand had set up 818 did not return killed wounded or taken prisoner of the 2187 who did return about 600 so weakened by sickness or their wounds would never return to active service operation long cloth had then halved the effectiveness of the force that set out on its three-month campaign a battle lost but one from which wingate drew many lessons wingate is convinced that these long range penetrations by his chindits are the best way of taking the war to the japanese the best way of regaining burma in his mind conventional operations now subsidiary and he was able to get the resources needed to mount a much larger raid in 1944 but wingate would not play a significant role in march the plane on which he was traveling crashed and he was killed he was 41 years old we mourn his lust but we know that his teaching will bear fruit in due course these are the men of the long range penetration group their fighting behind the enemy lines in burma has made them a name throughout the world that is the epitope for charles ord winger [Music] as summer warmed the soviet soil in 1944 the entire eastern front moved a dozen soviet army groups from the corellian front in the north to the third ukrainian front on the shores of the black sea were in some way involved in a great offensive that stalin had named for a hero of the napoleonic wars operation bagration the offensive was at its heart the drive to expel german forces which still stood in great numbers on soviet soil it was the drive on the vistula and its climax coincided with the breakout from normandy the germans were in big trouble in the west and they needed to shore up the western front the problem was that exactly the same time the russians put in a huge offensive 1.7 million men over the entire front and they were in a position to do in 1944 what the germans had done with operation barbarossa in 1941 [Music] in preliminaries the 21st army of the leningrad front began the attack the carillion front joining the offensive 10 days later on both fronts the fins armed by the germans and supported by one german division [Music] were driven back and then on june 22nd the day after the corellian front had moved and the third anniversary of the german invasion of russia operation bagration opened up the soviets had deployed 300 guns per kilometer on a 560 kilometer front from smolensk through to minsk in belarussia [Music] as always russian artillery has been right in the forefront of the picture gunners of the northern army smashed german efforts to delay the soviet advice the soviet fronts began their surge towards four axis army groups juniakoski's third belarusian moved on the 23rd rokosovsky's first belarusian the next day and they advanced tenaciously for ten weeks and it was that attack that broke through and was so effective in blitzkrieg type tactics which you'd seen developing since stalingrad worked very successfully in the counterattack at kursk in 1943 the russians are pretty good at this by 1944 the first baltic front general bagramian and the third belarusian front cherniakovsky opened the vitensk orsha offensive driving into lithuania while soviet forces are annihilating germans in one great town after another their comrades have been driving on at the rate of 20 miles a day into latvia into lithuania closing rapidly on the very birthplace of germany's incredible military cult east prussia what did [Music] on the huge eastern front tanks go forward in pursuit of other retreating germans by the 27th vitebsk had fallen and the third panzer army was lost german tanks and fortifications received very heavy punishment and defenses which hitler thought to be an almost impregnable barrier were now overrun brokersofsky's first belarusian front was swinging up towards minsk czerniakovsky swinging down to meet him second belarusian front general zakarov crossed the river dnipa aiming directly for minsk these russian newsreels also show the crossing of the people this was carried out by bridge and boat under continuous fire but it was carried out as we all know third belarusian front reached and crossed the river berezina the next day in two weeks operation bagration had penetrated 160 kilometers on a 400 kilometer front army group center's 37 divisions were pulverized by 166 soviet divisions supported by 2700 tanks and 1 300 assault guns seven of army group center's generals had been killed in the action second belarusian front continued its advance this was the monolith offensive which forced opposing troops back on the berezina where they would be trapped [Music] foreign [Music] forces broke through the supposedly impassable prippet marshes his engineers having crossed them with wooden causeways by june 27th he had encircled two german corps east of babrius which was liberated on june 29th the allies had landed at normandy three weeks previously but to contrast the scale of the operations for the duration of the summer german casualties in the east outstrip those in the west by four to one ninety percent of all germans killed in combat died on the eastern front more between july 1944 and may 45 than in the preceding five years i think the germans simply didn't have the resources they were massively uh outgunned in every field even in the air in tanks in mobile artillery artillery manpower they just were being beaten down by vastly superior forces that had been coming in 41 42 43 by the time we got to 44 you're really dealing with an army in in serious trouble the minsk offensive pressed on fifth panzer division was rushed forward to plug approaches to the city but on july the 3rd the second guard's tank core of the red army broke into the city by the end of july 4th the city had fallen 40 000 of its defenders encircled an army group center destroyed the advance continued with the successful results which we know not the least of these results have been more prisoners just one instance of the increasing drain on german manpower [Music] means [Music] m [Music] by july the 11th germany had lost 28 divisions more than 30 generals had been killed or captured and the red army had advanced 650 kilometers rokosovsky's forces reached the river bug the original polish border they reached the eastern banks of the vistula on the 25th and turned to threaten warsaw at the end of this campaign the russians are right next to warsaw they're right next to plowesti in romania they're about to take the last oil fields away from the germans and there stalin held gathering his strength for the final devastating assault that would carry the red army into berlin and see the soviet flag hoisted on the ruins of the reichstag after the normandy landings the allies poured more and more men and materiel ashore and as they moved away from their beachhead the lines of supply extended and the need for supply increased every conceivable kind of material requiring thousands of ships and landing craft to ensure steady progress against a determined enemy it's certainly no picnic these days being in one of the army's supply organizations as the campaign moved into the second half of 1944 the situation became critical the failure to take dunkirk was a setback the belgian port of antwerp potentially vital was in allied hands by early september and it was virtually undamaged but the marine approaches to antwerp were unique and they posed a problem the port sits at the mouth of the shelt ships entering must sail up the estuary and the estuary was flanked along the channel by german defenses and guarded at its mouth by the island of valkyrie general fonzingen recently sent to take over 15th army energetically built up the defenses determined to deny use of antwerp to the allies this battle of course was a vital part of the struggle to free the approaches to antwerp and the importance of antwerp as a supply port certainly needs no stressing canadian divisions faced the estuary and launched their assault in late october the force arrived early in the morning and landed in the face of heavy opposition on a small beach head which was under continuous fire from german batteries in land the second division pressed across the peninsula and into south bavalon taking hulse on october 29th they were moving to link up with other units that had come in from the scene fourth special service brigade as it was then called now fourth commando landed on valkerin on november 1st [Music] rather whimsically their action was called operation infatuate 47th and 48th commandos landed on the north west tip of the island and an infantry brigade with commando elements on the southwest tip from the violence of the enemy's defense two things are perfectly clear first the value germany placed on denying antwerp to us second the supreme determination skill and courage of our troops making this frontal assault on the valkyran beach heads the shells would come down and we all got smacked i just remember spinning around and uh it's in the sand and and shouting something like take cover to the lads and where did they go the balance is a german pillbox or something not the ones who fired us but the ones who were just about to give up the canadians having fought their way through baverland crossed the slow channel on the third the island was an unpleasant place to fight the raf had breached local dikes and the ground was flooded but by the eighth fonzangan's defense had been defeated and as soon as a channel had been cleared through the mines allied shipping began to use antwerp by the opening of the great port of antwerp with its miles of docks and its vast facilities for the landing of supplies our minesweepers have magnificently rounded off the work of the armies in holland supply securing material for one's own army or denying it to the enemy grew more vital as war became more mechanized the use of the great port of antwerp was a significant game for the allied forces as they prepared themselves for the advance across europe towards the rhine and beyond its significance was not lost on german high command the attempt to defend the approaches to antwerp had failed but the idea of launching a drive that could retake the port or at least deny it to the allies was brought into german planning [Music] could enough material enough men be marshaled to make a surprise counter thrust almost mirroring the first great blitzkrieg that had dashed to the channel in 1940 and if such a counter-offensive could be launched might it not alter the outcome of the war the eyes of the german high command returned to that part of the front where they had so successfully attacked when the war first crashed into france the ardennes the war in the west was it seemed moving steadily predictably to its climax on the 8th of november the day that patton began his offensive in the tsar the french first army moved on the belfour gap by the middle of the month there were formations in motion all along the line the american first and ninth armies to the north of patton elements of the us seventh entering strasbourg on the second and the sixth entering the maginot line on the day that the first vessels entered and started to use the port of antwerp operation watch on the line as as this operation was called from the german side was the last major german offensive of world war ii they were being squeezed between the the russians who were advancing in the east and the british and american and other allied forces who were coming at them from the west and so hitler had to do something he couldn't just fight a regard action that would always just end in disaster properly labelled the ardennes counter-offensive history remembers it as the battle of the bulge as we approached the battle of the bulge the germans were about to attack in a place that they'd attacked in 1870 1914 1940 and now they're about to do it in 1944 and as in every other attack they will be successful in achieving complete surprise where the germans surged the 145 kilometer front was held by four american divisions with one inexperienced armored division the ninth in support two of the four infantry divisions had been sent to the quieter dens to recuperate and a third the 106th had never been in action onto this force fell two panzer armies which in hours had created an 80 kilometer salient the bulge in 24 hours the initiative changed hands and the german army which had put the word blitzkrieg into all languages unleashed its desperate offensiveness a short bombardment had pushed allied heads down before the armor came forward and the cover of heavy fog which neutralized allied air superiority it may not be like 1918 but it's certainly not like 1940. [Music] the hun has won a success how big remains to be seen progress in the north fell behind schedule but first panzerkorp made good ground and was dashing for the murders bridges the fifth panzer army brushed aside the 106th but slowed against the experience 28th division it was late afternoon before allied high command realized that what was happening was an all-out offensive rather than a fate the allies were taken completely by surprise they were overconfident they were so busy planning how they would take hitler's forces apart it didn't seem to really occur to anybody that he was making a plan to take their forces apart our command was taken totally by surprise so they reacted in an extreme everything that could fly flew to bomb their supply train [Music] and i can remember seeing the sky just filled with airplanes it was really quite a sight allied confusion was increased in part due to the discovery of 150 germans who dressed as americans had penetrated allied lines under the command of otto scorceney the man who in september 1943 had rescued mussolini as part of operation watch on the ride hitler came up with the idea of creating an infiltration force that would get through the allied lines in order to capture the key bridges on the river muse but really their real impact ironically came when the first unit was captured and it suddenly became known to the americans that there were these germans wandering around behind their lines dressed as americans in with american equipment and panic ensued so suddenly everybody was suspicious of everybody else on the 18th eisenhower halted the advance on the rhine and gave priority to repelling the ardennes offensive the german onslaught slowed fuel was becoming a problem by the 22nd the sixth panzer army had stopped altogether units were losing contact with each other fondman toefl's fifth panzer army which is surrounded by stone was pushing forward but that is as far as the germans got the third u.s army under patton now brought pressure from the south and with the weather clearing the overwhelming allied air supremacy started to tell perhaps no general other than patton in the western side anyway could have been quite as successful at turning his army to come to the rescue of those at the stone he drove his forces hard they got there quickly and it was a very impressive example of the skill of generalship but i think it's too easy to oversimplify and say that the battle was won because of patton that this was patton's victory there were many facets that in the end resulted in the germans being defeated the attack was blunted the spearhead stopped the nazi columns contained and thrown back by men who had flung themselves into the breach ardennes offensive cost each side about 80 000 casualties losses from which the allies could recover but not the axis the germans yes they were able to concentrate significant forces in that theater but they couldn't sustain them they couldn't replace the forces that they lost and they just didn't have the supplies to keep their force going americans could always do that they had that capability the german offensive had been blocked and then reversed the losses inflicted equalled those sustained and with the counter-offensive axis forces were falling back all along the front the bulge had held up the allied push across the rhine for six weeks but it had only been held up crossing the rhine was the last barrier before eisenhower's armies poured into the fatherland we want to be the thrust into mainland germany and all we knew was germany was across the river and we all piddled in the river for good luck patton crossed the rhine at oppenheim the next night montgomery crossed at emmerich the battle was won german soil was underfoot and the war in europe that had started 68 months earlier was almost [Applause] over you

Channel: War Stories

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Keywords: military history, war, war documentary, military tactics, war stories, history of war, battles

Id: u-is_2orQow

Length: 49min 49sec (2989 seconds)

Published: Fri May 14 2021