January 2021 Military History Group U3A Dorking Newsletter Number 7 Contents Group Leader Barry Friend 2 Programme 2021 3 Zoom Presentations 3 Night Bomber 3 Coronel and the Falklands – George Blundell-Pound 4 Saving Private Ryan: Saving Private McArdle 11 War Graves Week 2021 15 Three sons from Cranleigh 16 Guernsey at War – Occupation 17 Policing during the Occupation of Guernsey 20 Meetings via Zoom during Pandemic Any contributions to the newsletter are very welcome and should be sent to Robert Bartlett at [email protected] 1 From Group Leader Barrie Friend Fellow enthusiasts The evenings are becoming lighter, all Covid 19 graph lines are going south and increasing numbers of us are receiving our inoculations, plus - the snowdrops are smiling at us. How heartening! Whilst these are positive signs we can still only guess when we will meet face to face but you continue to support our Zoom meetings in a very positive manner. Thank you. Our last talk, by George, attracted an audience of 54 who heard of how the Royal Navy was badly bruised and battered at the Battle of Coronal in 1914 only to repay the compliment to the German Kriegsmarine a few weeks later at The Battle of The Falklands. If you missed the talk, or wish to see it again, then visit Dorking U3A YouTube site. The link is https://youtu.be/Q2jRFpyIND0. Thanks to Mike Docker for setting this up. George’s summary of the talk features below. A reminder that our YouTube site carries these talks by military history group members: What Did Grandfather Really Do in the Great War? Barrie Friend Adler Tag, The Battle of Britain. George Blundell- Pound The Unknown Warrior. Barrie Friend Balloons, Barnstormers and the Royal Flying Corps. Jim Barnes The Battle of Gallipoli, 1915-16. Mike Smith Was The Royal Navy Invincible in 1914? George Blundell- Pound Our March 2 meeting Zoom talk will be by Jim Barnes on Women at War. Details are below. Our Zoom learning curve, unlike the Covid 19 graph, is trending healthily upwards as Jim Barnes, George Blundell-Pound and John Sinclair apply their separate and joint skills to perfect your experience. Programme for 2021 March 2 Jim Barnes “Women at War, that superior race! - Those Magnificent Women in their Flying Machines.” Jim Barnes will tell the story of how some very courageous and talented women contributed to the two world wars. From making ammunition to Bletchley Park and flying WW2 aircraft. Jim compares the success of the Air Transport Auxiliary women with the unhappy story of the American Women’s Air Service Pilots and how women became expert in flying and instructing on fighters and bombers like the Spitfire and Lancaster – yes superior to men! 2 April 6 Barrie Friend “The defence of Britain in wartime.” We were all weaned on the tales of the Norman invasion of 1066, but since then we have kept our shores successfully sealed from our enemies’ threats. Yes, OK - 1667 was a hiccup for us and well done to the Dutch. When can we have our ships returned? But how did we defend our country from enemy invasion in more recent times and how did we plan to deal with the invaders if they arrived on British soil by boat or parachute? Barrie Friend will identify the nature of the threats, the strategy behind the defence and the legacy around us today. May 4 June 8 July 6 August 3 September 7 Zoom Presentations https://www.danhillmilitaryhistorian.com/archive Night Bomber The following message has been received On Amazon Prime video and You Tube the incredible documentary called “Night Bomber.” It is without doubt the best documentary I have watched because there is no hype, no unnecessary comments or scenes and it’s all from real life footage shot during the Second World War at a Lancaster bomber base. I think that you would appreciate it very much with all the planning at different levels needed for operations. The incredible debriefing exercises after any air raids and the research and coordination of so many different branches all working together to produce the best possible result. It was interesting to see the lives of the RAF personnel, the loading of the bombs and looking inside the Lancaster bomber, the different equipment and all the different roles performed within. The tight tolerances from take-off to the chosen site to bomb and the return to base. Just a complete all-round documentary, I never realised just how much coordination was required every day to put these bombers in the air. Although it’s not mentioned in the documentary, just imagine all the factories and workers and supply chains that backed up the bombing operations. I really recommend it. 3 Coronel and Falklands George Blundell-Pound Having been born in Accra in the then Gold Coast, I was a colonial boy and ever since have had an interest in the history of such places. Whilst I was aware of German colonies in Africa before the start of World War I, I was unaware that they also held territories in the Far East. Coincident with that discovery was finding out of the above two naval battles between the Royal Navy and the Imperial German Navy during the very early months of the War. The combination brought about this research. The German territories in the Pacific were called German New Guinea, included what is part of now Papua New Guinea and an extended groups of islands including the Marshall, Marianas and Carolinas. These are shown on the map below. The German navy had its main base at Tsingtao, now Qingdao on the coast of China. The area covered by these territories was large, 96,000 square miles and military support was primarily provided by the German East Asia Squadron based in Tsingtao (now Quingdao), but cruising extensively throughout the Pacific, including the East coasts of the USA and South America. Whilst the squadron was not large, the ships and crews were specially selected for the task and had trained together for a number of years and more significantly had won prizes in gunnery competitions. 4 The squadron was commanded by Vice Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee aged 53. One of his ships was the light cruiser Leipzig shown at anchor ‘somewhere in the Pacific.’ It was clear from news arriving to him from Europe that war might break out which would mean that the German territories would be indefensible against the potential allied armies and navies of Great Britain, Japan and Australia. That being the case, von Spee decided that the squadron’s best chance of getting back to Germany, although challenging, was via the Pacific and then the South and North Atlantic. As a result, the squadron left Tsingtao in mid-June 1914 with the remaining ships joining as they crossed the Pacific. In fact, the Squadron was at Ponape (now Pohnpei) when World War I formally commenced. The squadron’s passage across the Pacific was known to the Allies although often much later from reports of allied ships being taken to obtain fuel (coal). They reached a group of islands off the coast of Chile on the 26 October 1914 having gathered together the squadron’s five ships. SMS Scharnhorst (flagship) SMS Dresden Armoured cruiser, 12,895 tons Light Cruiser Main armament 8 x 8.3 inch Main armament 10 x 4.1 inch Plus SMS Gneisenau as per Scharnhorst Plus SMS Leipzig and SMS Nurnberg similar to Dresden The British Admiralty had all sorts of priorities at the start of the War and von Spee’s squadron was just one of them. They had however sent the newly appointed Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Craddock aged 52, South on HMS Good Hope to meet up with and become the commander of the South Atlantic Station based at Port Stanley in the Falklands. 5 Sir Christopher Craddock and his flagship HMS Good Hope. The Good Hope was an armoured cruiser of 14,450 tons and a main armament of two 9.2-inch guns. She was supported by another armoured cruiser HMS Monmouth 9,500 tons with a main armament of only 6-inch guns, a modern light cruiser HMS Glasgow 4,800 tons main armament two 6-inch guns, and an armed merchant ship HMS Otranto 12,124 tons and recently added 4.7-inch guns. Lastly and literally bringing up the rear was a battleship HMS Canopus 14,300 tons main armament four 12-inch guns. On paper a formidable warship but with a poor reputation for engine reliability and allegedly a chief engineer suffering from mental instability. It was supposed to be able to manage 18 knots but in reality, nearer to 12 knots, whereas the rest of the ships in Craddock’s command were capable of much higher speeds. In the current age of satellites, radar and the internet it is difficult to imagine the difficulties of global communications in 1914. Craddock realised that von Spee’s warships would have to round Cape Horn and so he sent HMS Glasgow to Coronel on the Chilean coast to pick up intelligence and orders from the British Admiralty. The intelligence would therefore often be of date or received too late to be actioned. Craddock and the rest of his ships followed around Cape Horn with HMS Canopus even further behind with the collier ships to refuel the warships. Craddock believed his orders were to find von Spee’s ships and sink them, whereas the Admiralty knew he had a weaker force and only wished that he should find the enemy ships.