Reporter gives bird’s-eye view of raid by Superfortresses
By Thoburn Wiant
…
YANKS AIM FOR ROAD CENTER
Driving to sever lines leading to Cherbourg
Nazi resistance grows in violence
By Wes Gallagher
Allied array in Normandy
Here is the disposition of Allied divisions thus far officially disclosed to be participating in the battle of the Normandy beachhead (black line). Six U.S. Army divisions have been officially reported in action in the areas indicated by the pointers in the western sector, and two British and one Canadian division in the eastern sector.
SHAEF, London, England (AP) –
Lt. Gen. Bradley’s troops, ramming home another blow to cut off Cherbourg, have advanced to within two and a half miles east of Saint-Sauveur, a junction controlling two of the three roads leading to the nearly beleaguered port, Allied headquarters announced today.
The Americans marked up a gain of two and a half to three miles west of Carentan after having previously reached Regnéville, three miles to the northeast of Saint-Sauveur.
Plugging away on a 10-mile front and rapping out repeated gains despite stubborn resistance, the Americans were now within 11 miles of the Cherbourg Peninsula’s west coast beaches. Their spearhead was some 17 miles below the big port.
While Bradley’s Yanks still fought a dingdong battle with Germans in the streets of Montebourg, 14 miles southeast of Cherbourg on the allied right flank, the British were engaged in stiff tank battles with German troops in force two miles south of Caumont. This is about 20 miles inland, the deepest Allied penetration.
Tank battles also still raged around Caen and Tilly-sur-Seulles on the Allied left flank.
Weather turns bad
Meanwhile, headquarters reported the worst weather over the battlefields since D-Day with a 20-mile-an-hour northwest wind blowing onto the beaches – the only place the Allies now hold for the reinforcement and supply of their invasion armies.
Despite the weather, however, the battleships USS Texas and USS Nevada and the cruiser USS Augusta were reported arching their shells deep inland in support of the troops driving across the peninsula.
A few miles south of the U.S. spearhead pointed at Saint-Sauveur was another column pushing toward Le Haye-du-Puits, a road junction controlling all the remaining roads leading into Cherbourg. The Americans were last reported about six miles from this objective.
A late dispatch from Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s advanced command post said it was estimated 300,000 German troops had been thrown against the Normandy beachhead.
This dispatch said four German divisions had been badly mauled in battle, including the 709th, 711th and 352nd.
Reserves sent in
Alive to the vital necessity of holding Saint-Sauveur and Le Haye-du-Puits, the Germans rushed reserves into the battle and vigorous, fluid fighting was in progress.
The German communiqué said the Nazis drove the Allied back southeast and southwest of Carentan, but admitted Allied gains west and north of Sainte-Mère-Église. It also claimed that a wedge had been driven into the allied bridgehead east of the Orne River.
West of newly-captured Quinéville, on the extreme right wing of the 100-mile beachhead front, U.S. forces advanced a mile or more to reach the Sinope River.
These were the only advances registered along the front. Communiqué No. 21 said there were no major changes.
Furious armored fighting raged in the Tilly-sur-Seulles sector, while further east, the battle of Caen settled into trench warfare with the British and Canadians holding on tenaciously. The nearest approach to a “line” was held around Troarn, at the extreme left flank of the bridgehead.
Generals up front
Field dispatches said mobile fighting in the spearheads of the American sector found generals in the frontline with their troops, tossing hand grenades and firing rifles side by side with privates.
U.S. columns pushing forward sometimes were cut off and had to fight their way back into contact with the main forces.
Weather hampered air operations somewhat, but unloading of troops and supplies on the beachhead continued at full blast, and Supreme Headquarters declared Montgomery’s striking power “is growing daily.”
Photographs of Le Havre after a raid by RAF Lancasters Wednesday night showed the German E-boats, which had been lurking there to attack the flanks of the ceaseless trans-Channel convoys, had disappeared. Before the raid, 10 E-boats and motor torpedo boats had been seen in the harbor.
Yanks advancing on Saipan Island
Push against Japanese tanks, artillery and soldiers; Navy gives cover
USPACFLT HQ, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (AP) –
U.S. troops, landed by the most experienced invasion fleet in the world, advanced against Japanese tanks, artillery and soldiers today 1,500 miles southeast of Tokyo at Saipan in the Marianas – potential base for the B-29s which raided Japan Thursday.
Covered by battleship guns and rocket-firing carrier planes, the Yanks secured beachheads Wednesday, moving in from behind Saipan, 72-square-mile island 3,800 miles southwest of Pearl Harbor, the starting point of the war.
They captured Agingan Point, a headland on the southwest coast. They battled two miles north across cane fields to the sugar mill community of Charan Kanoa. They were placed in reports covering action through Thursday within five miles of Garapan, Saipan’s major town of 10,000 population.
Supported by shells of offshore warships and bombs of planes from aircraft carriers, they beat off a series of stiff counterattacks by Japanese tanks.
Strongly defended
“In general, fighting is heavy but good progress is being made against well-organized defenses,” Adm. Chester W. Nimitz announced last night in his second communiqué on the operation. He first announced the invasion, but supplied no confirmation of a Tokyo radio report that an attempt had also been made to invade nearby Tinian.
Battleships and cruisers, opening up with their guns after carrier planes knocked out Japan’s Southern Marianas Air Force Saturday and Sunday, silenced most of the Saipan coastal batteries and anti-aircraft positions.
Shells of the warships and rockets fired by planes and infantry landing craft effectively curtained the troops moving ashore.
“Initial reports indicate our casualties are moderate,” Adm. Nimitz said. Tokyo radio claimed, without confirmation, the invaders sustained 1,800 casualties and lost 40 landing barges.
Suitable for bombers
Saipan is relatively flat, adaptable for the Superfortresses which loosed their destruction Thursday on Japan’s industrial areas. But the same flatness prompted the invasion commander, VAdm. Richard Kelly Turner, to expect opposition for the first time in the Pacific amphibious campaign by mobile artillery. He warned that lightning victories in the Marshalls may not be duplicated at Saipan.
Saipan’s invaders leapfrogged 1,100 miles west of Nimitz’s previous forward base in the Marshalls.
They also sailed more than 600 miles past Truk, air and naval base fortified for a quarter of a century by Japan – and now bypassed.
Japanese unable to combat fire
Primitive and confused methods to fight conflagrations
By Russell Brines, Associated Press war editor
…
Aerial offensive sweeping Europe
Nazis send pilotless bomb-loaded craft over Britain
By Gladwin Hill
SHAEF, London, England (AP) –
The Allied aerial offensive against continental targets swept on today after RAF heavy bombers made their second big high-altitude pre-dusk precision attack yesterday plastering 12,000-pound bombs on Nazi E-boat, R-boat and minesweeper pens at Boulogne.
Meanwhile, it was announced that the Germans, in a desperate gesture against Allied air superiority, had begun hurling pilotless bomb-carrying aircraft against Britain.
As the aerial assault im support of the Normandy invasion rolled on this morning, the German radio reported hostile aircraft approaching the Austrian provinces of Carinthia and Styria.
Big British four-engine Lancasters, with their fighter escort, hit the French channel port of Boulogne first at 10:30 p.m. yesterday – just before dusk. The attack was similar to one the RAF made Wednesday on installations at Le Havre – a strike which reconnaissance indicated was very successful.
Other British heavy bombers continuing the attack into the night, hit railway centers at Valenciennes and Lens and a fuel dump at Châtellerault. Fourteen bombers were missing from all these operations which Allied night intruder planes destroyed four enemy aircraft and damaged others over France.
The evening and night operations also saw a Mosquito force hit targets in western Germany. These blows were a thunderous follow-up to yesterday’s daylight operations which included attacks by an armada of 1,300 U.S. heavy bombers.
In addition to the U.S. heavy bomber blows, Supreme Headquarters announced that 3,000 sorties were made by Allied planes yesterday in direct support of the ground operations in Normandy. Many of these were flown by planes based in France.
During yesterday afternoon, medium bombers hit fuel and supply dumps, bridges and other communications targets from Valognes in the Cherbourg Peninsula to Laval about 75 miles behind the enemy lines.
The use by the Germans of pilotless aircraft against Britain was disclosed in the House of Commons by Herbert Stanley Morrison, Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security. A small number were used in raids on Britain last Tuesday morning, and a larger number last night and this morning. The latest attack was described as the more serious of the two.
Former doctor instructs Marine ‘Grasshopper’ pilots
By Cpl. Robert W. Kirby, USMC combat correspondent
…
The Pittsburgh Press (June 16, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Normandy beachhead, France – (June 8)
I took a walk along the historic coast of Normandy in the country of France.
It was a lovely day for strolling along the seashore. Men were sleeping on the sand, some of them sleeping forever. Men were floating in the water, but they didn’t know they were in the water, for they were dead.
The water was full of squishy little jellyfish about the size of your hand. Millions of them. In the center each of them had a green design exactly like a four-leaf clover. The good-luck emblem. Sure. Hell yes.
I walked for a mile and a half along the water’s edge of our many-miled invasion beach. You wanted to walk slowly, for the detail on that beach was infinite.
The wreckage was vast and startling. The awful waste and destruction of war, even aside from the loss of human life, has always been one of its outstanding features to those who are in it. Anything and everything is expendable. And we did expend on our beachhead in Normandy during those first few hours.
For a mile out from the beach there were scores of tanks and trucks and boats that you could no longer see, for they were at the bottom of the water – swamped by overloading, or hit by shells, or sunk by mines. Most of their crews were lost.
You could see trucks tipped half over and swamped. You could see partly sunken barges, and the angled-up corners of jeeps, and small landing craft half submerged. And at low tide, you could still see those vicious six-pronged iron snares that helped snag and wreck them.
On the beach itself, high and dry, were all kinds of wrecked vehicles. There were tanks that had only just made the beach before being knocked out. There were jeeps that had been burned to a dull gray. There were big derricks on caterpillar treads that didn’t quite make it. There were half-tracks carrying office equipment that had been made into a shambles by a single shell hit, their interiors still holding their useless equipage of smashed typewriters, telephones, office files.
There were LCTs turned completely upside down, and lying on their backs, and how they got that way I don’t know. There were boats stacked on top of each other, their sides caved in, their suspension doors knocked off.
In this shoreline museum of carnage there were abandoned rolls of barbed wire and smashed bulldozers and big stacks of thrown-away lifebelts and piles of shells still waiting to be moved.
In the water floated empty life rafts and soldiers’ packs and ration boxes, and mysterious oranges.
On the beach lay snarled rolls of telephone wire and big rolls of steel matting and stacks of broken, rusting rifles.
On the beach lay, expended, sufficient men and mechanism for a small war. They were gone forever now. And yet we could afford it.
We could afford it because we were on, we had our toehold, and behind us there were such enormous replacements for this wreckage on the beach that you could hardly conceive of their sum total. Men and equipment were flowing from England in such a gigantic stream that it made the waste on the beachhead seem like nothing at all, really nothing at all.
A few hundred yards back on the beach is a high bluff. Up there we had a tent hospital, and a barbed-wire enclosure for prisoners of war. From up there you could see far up and down the beach, in a spectacular crow’s-nest view, and far out to sea.
And standing out there on the water beyond all this wreckage was the greatest armada man has ever seen. You simply could not believe the gigantic collection of ships that lay out there waiting to unload.
Looking from the bluff, it lay thick and clear to the far horizon of the sea and beyond, and it spread out to the sides and was miles wide. Its utter enormity would move the hardest man.
As I stood up there, I noticed a group of freshly taken German prisoners standing nearby. They had not yet been put in the prison cage. They were just standing there, a couple of doughboys leisurely guarding them with Tommy guns.
The prisoners too were looking out to sea – the same bit of sea that for months and years had been so safely empty before their gaze. Now they stood staring almost as if in a trance.
They didn’t say a word to each other. They didn’t need to. The expression on their faces was something forever unforgettable. In it was the final horrified acceptance of their doom.
If only all Germans could have had the rich experience of standing on the bluff and looking out across the water and seeing what their compatriots saw.
Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (June 16, 1944)
Communiqué No. 22
Advances by Allied Forces westward from Pont-l’Abbé in the CHERBOURG PENINSULA have continued. Our troops had local successes in the TILLY sector, but the town remained in enemy hands. Active patrolling has been kept up by both sides.
Adverse weather during the morning once again restricted our air activity, which was confined to limited patrols over the supply beaches and adjacent Channel waters and the immediate battle zone.
Yesterday HMS RAMILLIES (Capt. G. B. MIDDLETON, CBE ADC RN) engaged a battery at BENERVILLE on our eastern flank, which she silenced after an hour’s duel, while HMS NELSON (Capt. H. H. MAXWELL-HYSLOP, AM RN) engaged an enemy battery north of LE HAVRE, which had been firing into the anchorage. Enemy batteries and concentrations were bombarded throughout the day by Allied cruisers.
On the western flank, the USS TEXAS (Capt. C. A. BAKER, USN), wearing the flag of RAdm. CARLETON F. BRYANT, USN, the USS NEVADA (Capt. P. M. RHEA, USN) and the USS ARKANSAS (Capt. F. G. RICHARDS, USN) carried out heavy bombardments in support of the armies near ISIGNY and CARENTAN.
Völkischer Beobachter (June 17, 1944)
Unsere neue Waffe wirkt
Die Gegenrechnung den britischen Luftbarbaren präsentiert
…
‚Orkanartiges Artilleriefeuer über dem Invasionsbrückenkopf‘
Montgomerys Lage kritisch
dr. th. b. Stockholm, 16. Juni –
Die ungeheure Härte der sich ihrem Höhepunkt nähernden großen Schlacht in der Normandie kommt nun in den Berichten der britischen und amerikanischen Kriegskorrespondenten voll zum Ausdruck. „Die Kämpfe an den Fronten des Brückenkopfes,“ so heißt es heute in der Meldung eines Amerikaners, „rasen jetzt mit einer bisher niemals beobachteten Heftigkeit. Das Artilleriefeuer wächst stündlich zu Orkanstärke an. Man hat den Eindruck, als ob ein Steppenbrand von riesigem Umfang über die Kanten des Brückenkopfes eingebrochen ist.“
Als besonders blutig werden die Kämpfe um die Stadt Tilly bezeichnet, wo britisch-amerikanische Verbände sich unter schwersten Blutopfern den deutschen Panzern entgegenwerfen. Tilly gleicht der flandrischen Stadt Ypern im ersten Weltkrieg. Wenn die feindlichen Berichterstatter auch versichern, daß der deutsche Gegenangriff nicht unerwartet gekommen sei, so hat seine Wucht anscheinend trotzdem überrascht. Im Hauptquartier Eisenhowers sehe man der weiteren Entwicklung, so heißt es in einer anderen Meldung, zwar ruhig entgegen, gebe aber zu, daß sich die Lage der Invasionstruppen kritischer gestaltet habe.
Für Montgomery käme es jetzt darauf an, seine Front intakt zu halten, auch wenn das um den Preis von Geländeverlusten geschehe. Noch vorgestern dagegen hieß es, Montgomery habe die Lage so fest in der Hand, daß er weitere Verluste nicht mehr zu befürchten brauche und jetzt dem Brückenkopf durch neue Vorstöße den erforderlichen operativen Raum geben könne.
Die Entwicklung in den nächsten 48 Stunden, so wird in Eisenhowers Hauptquartier weiter betont, wird von ungeheurer Bedeutung sein. Wenn die Deutschen in der Normandie alles auf eine Karte setzen, wie es den Anschein habe, und es ihnen nicht gelinge, die Invasionstruppen ins Meer zu werfen, so müsse das sowohl militärisch wie moralisch auf die deutsche Kriegsmaschine einwirken, wenn es zu neuen Landungen komme und dann dürfte die Lage eintreten, daß die Deutschen alle Kräfte in der Normandie eingesetzt und andere Invasionsgebiete von Truppen entblößt hätten.
Es ist zwar rührend von den feindlichen Berichterstattern, die deutsche Führung davor zu warnen, „in der Normandie alles auf eine Karte zu setzen,“ nötig aber ist es noch nicht. Heute weiß jedes Kind in Deutschland, daß der Kampf gegen die Invasionstruppen in der Normandie von der Überlegung bestimmt ist, daß noch weitere Angriffe gegen den europäischen Kontinent zu erwarten sind und daß deshalb die deutsche Führung mit ihren Reserven eher haushälterischer umgehen wird, anstatt sie blindlings in den Mahlstrom einer einzigen gewaltigen Materialschlacht zu werfen.
Über den Verlauf der Kämpfe wird an Einzelheiten noch folgendes amtlich berichtet:
Am Südrand des feindlichen Brückenkopfes in der Normandie hielt auch am Donnerstag der starke Druck der Briten und Nordamerikaner an. Südwestlich Tilly-sur-Seulles warf der Feind eine frische Panzerdivision in den Kampf, um den Gegenangriff der deutschen Truppen im Quellgebiet der Aure aufzuhalten. Dennoch konnten unsere Infanterie- und Panzerverbände weiter Boden gewinnen und das letzte Stück der östlich Caumont bisher noch bestehenden Frontlücke schließen.
Beiderseits der Straße Bayeux-Saint-Lô setzten die Nordamerikaner ihren Angriff ebenfalls fort. Bis auf einen geringfügigen Einbruch bei Saint-André blieben aber alle Vorstöße erfolglos.
Mit weiteren starken Kräften leitete der Gegner neue Stöße im Raum südlich Carentan, und zwar zwischen der Tarde und dem großen Sumpfgebiet südlich Baupte nach Südwesten ein. Hier sind die schweren Kämpfe noch im Gange. Außer im Raum südwestlich Tilly machte der deutsche Gegenangriff auch östlich der Orne weitere Fortschritte. Der von Südosten her angesetzte Stoß gegen den britischen Frontvorsprung auf dem Ostufer der Orne gewann einige Ortschaften – darunter Touffreville, dass nun bereits zum drittenmal den Besitzer wechselte.
Vor der Ornemündung erschien der Feind weiter mit zahlreichen Schiffen. Im Laufe der Nachmittags- und Abendstunden entwickelten sich hier schwere Artilleriekämpfe zwischen deutschen Küstenbatterien und feindlichen Flotteneinheiten, unter denen sich vier Schlachtschiffe und eine Anzahl leichter Kreuzer befanden. Das Feuer unserer Küstenwerke lag so gut, daß sich die Kriegsschiffe einnebelten und abliefen. Ein einziges Küstenwerk wurde dabei durch ein Schlachtschiff, zwei Kreuzer und fünf Artillerieträger beschossen. Unsere Batterie hatte jedoch keinerlei Ausfälle oder Schäden und lieferte damit einen neuen Beweis für die Stärke der Atlantikbefestigungen.
Auch die Luftkämpfe nehmen täglich an Härte zu, da der Gegner in wachsendem Maße versucht, im Frontbereich wie im Hinterland alle Abwehr- und Angriffsbewegungen durch den Einsatz seiner Luftwaffe zu behindern. Die deutsche Jagdwaffe warf sich den oft in starken Wellen bis tief in den nordfranzösischen Raum vorstoßenden Bomber-, Jagdbomber- und Jägerformationen des Feindes immer wieder entschlossen entgegen. Vom ersten Morgengrauen bis zum letzten Abendlicht waren sie am Feind und erkämpften sich einen wesentlichen Anteil an den über 1.000 vernichteten feindlichen Flugzeugen, die laut Wehrmachtbericht vom 15. Juni bisher über dem Invasionsgebiet zur Strecke gebracht wurden.
Neue Schandtaten der Luftgangster
Triest, 16. Juni –
Die anglo-amerikanischen Luftgangster haben in den letzten Tagen wieder eine Reihe völkerrechtswidriger Unternehmen durchgeführt. So wurde beim Angriff auf Triest das klar mit dem internationalen Abzeichen gekennzeichnete Rote-Kreuz-Schiff Innsbruck durch mehrere Bombentreffer versenkt.
In der Nähe von Revigno wurde ein gleichfalls eindeutig mit dem Zeichen des Roten Kreuzes gekennzeichnetes Flugzeug, das zur Bergung von in Seenot geratenen amerikanischen Fliegern aufgestiegen war, von feindlichen Flugzeugen angegriffen und beschossen.
Ein weiteres Rotes-Kreuz-Flugzeug wurde bei Pola bombardiert. Außerdem wurden Fischerboote bei der Insel St. Andrea von feindlichen Jägern beschossen und dabei vier Fischer schwer verletzt.
Verworrene Innenpolitik der USA –
Katalog der Präsidentschaftskandidaten
Von unserer Stockholmer Schriftleitung
dr. th. b. Stockholm, 16. Juni –
In wohlbemessenen Dosen hat Roosevelt immer wieder die Meldung verbreiten lassendes scheine noch nicht sicher oder wahrscheinlich, daß er zum viertenmal kandidieren werde. Dabei hat kein ernsthafter Mensch jemals daran gezweifelt, daß er das nicht versuchen würde. Wenn jetzt also der Daily Express aus Washington meldet, in Kreisen, die dem Weißen Haus naheständen, erkläre man, daß sich Roosevelt nun doch endgültig entschlossen habe, zum viertenmal zu kandidieren, so ist das alles andere als eine Sensation. Wer als Vizepräsident kandidieren soll, ist allerdings weniger klar.
Der bisherige Vizepräsident Wallace versucht zur Zeit, Bolschewisten und Tschungking-Chinesen durch zu nichts verpflichtende Reden zu beglücken. Seine Aussichten sind nicht groß. „Big Business“ liegt ihm nicht. Anders ist es mit Wendell Willkie, der als republikanischer Kandidat ausgespielt hat – noch einmal wollen sich die Republikaner durch eine Scheinoffensive wie 1940 nicht aufs Glatteis führen lassen – aber doch in einzelnen Staaten des Mittelwestens über eine ansehnliche Zahl von Anhängern verfügt, die er als Morgengabe in die politische Ehe mit Roosevelt einbringen könnte.
Sollte Wendell Willkie wirklich als Vizepräsident von den Demokraten aufgestellt werden, was durchaus noch nicht sicher ist, so würde sich das innerpolitische Bild noch mehr als bisher verwirren. Zum Schluss dürfte niemand mehr recht wissen, für wen oder für was er wählt, so fließend sind die Grenzen zwischen den Parteien geworden. In Roosevelt und Dewey, dem wahrscheinlichen Kandidaten der Republikaner, stehen sich zwar zwei ausgeprägte Persönlichkeiten gegenüber. Mit einem Gegensatz der Charaktere und Temperamente aber läßt sich ein Wahlkampf allein kaum bestreiten.
Auf welcher Grundlage und mit welchen Parolen der Wahlkampf auch immer ausgefochten werden wird – feststeht, daß er sich auf das Feld der Innenpolitik beschränken muß, es sei denn, es käme während des Wahlkampfes zu einer militärischen Katastrophe für Roosevelt.
Die Demokraten werden auf die „Fortschritte“ hinweisen, die das Land in den letzten elf Jahren gemacht hat. Die Republikaner werden demgegenüber betonen, daß „frisches Blut“ notwendig sei. Die Republikaner werden das Zentralisierungsbestreben der Regierung angreifen. Die Demokraten werden entgegnen, daß ohne eine gewisse Zentralisierung Reformen nicht möglich seien. Die Republikaner werden erklären, daß die Agrarpolitik der Regierung zu einer Warenverknappung geführt hat. Die Demokraten werden von einer Stabilisierung in der Landwirtschaft sprechen. Die Republikaner werden es als verfassungswidrig bezeichnen, daß ein Mann über zwei Perioden hinaus Präsident ist. Die Demokraten werden entgegnen, daß man Roosevelt als Führer im Kriege nicht entbehren könne. Die Republikaner werden behaupten, daß die Kriegsanstrengungen nationale Einigkeit erfordern und daß das amerikanische Volk mehr und mehr republikanisch gesinnt sei. Die Demokraten werden das auf das bestimmteste verneinen.
Solche Kontroversen und noch manche andere müssen also ausreichen, um einen Wahlkampf zu bestreiten, dessen Bedeutung für den weiteren Kriegsverlauf zwar groß, aber noch nicht entscheidend ist. Der Ruck nach der republikanischen Seite hält zwar an, aber es bleibt weiter zweifelhaft, ob die Mehrheit der Bevölkerung der Vereinigten Staaten bereit ist, „in der Furt die Pferde zu wechseln.“ Alles hängt, wie gesagt, von der weiteren militärischen Entwicklung ab.
Neutrale Beobachter in den Vereinigten Staaten sind in ihrer Beurteilung der öffentlichen Meinung nach dem Beginn der Invasion sehr vorsichtig. Sie weisen darauf hin, „daß die meisten Amerikaner eigentlich erst seit der letzten Woche ähnlich wie Willkie entdeckt hätten, daß die Erde rund ist.“ Die Kämpfe in der Normandie stießen nicht nur, weil hunderttausend amerikanische Truppen in sie verwickelt seien und schwere Verluste erlitten, auf tieferes Interesse, als man ursprünglich vermutet habe. Man müsse abwarten, ob diese Reaktion anhalte, vor allem aber abwarten, welche Folgen ein ernsthafter Rückschlag haben werde.
Judenanmaßung in Rom –
‚Glücklichere Zeiten sind angebrochen‘
Von unserem Berichterstatter in Italien
…
Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (June 17, 1944)
Communiqué No. 23
Allied troops continue their advance with leading elements in SAINT-SAUVEUR-LE-VICOMTE. Local advances were made in the face of heavy enemy opposition between CAUMONT and TILLY. East of CAEN, a strong enemy attack was beaten off.
Throughout yesterday Allied cruisers and destroyers engaged gun batteries which the enemy had established on the eastern bank of the river ORNE.
Concentrations of enemy armor northeast of CAEN were bombarded by HMS RAMILLIES (Capt. G.H. Middleton, CBE ADC RN).
Merchant convoys continue to arrive at beaches steadily and in safety.
Adverse weather again restricted air operations yesterday afternoon and evening. Heavy bombers attacked enemy airfields near PARIS and LAON and objectives in the PAS-DE-CALAIS. Railway targets, road transport and tanks behind the battle zone were attacked by fighters and fighter-bombers, and an ammunition dump near CAEN by medium bombers. Fighters also flew protective patrols and escorted the bombers.
During the night, our light bombers attacked supply dumps in the CHERBOURG PENINSULA. Two enemy aircraft were shot down over NORMANDY.
U.S. Navy Department (June 17, 1944)
CINCPAC Communiqué No. 53
U.S. Marines supported by elements of an Army infantry division have improved their positions on Saipan Island, and are driving forward toward Aslito Airdrome. Harassment of our beachheads by enemy mortar fire has been considerably reduced.
On the night of June 14 (West Longitude Date), enemy torpedo planes launched an attack against our carrier force, but were repulsed without damage to our ships.
Our heavy surface units bombarded Guam Island on June 15.
Liberators of the 11th Army Air Force bombed Matsuwa, Paramushiru and Shimushiru on June 14. Five enemy aircraft were airborne near Matsuwa but only one attempted to attack our force, and did no damage. Fourteen enemy fighters appeared over Paramushiru and several made attacks causing damage to one of our planes. One enemy fighter was probably shot down and an enemy medium bomber was damaged. Ventura search planes of Fleet Air Wing Four also bombed Paramushiru and Shumushu on June 14. Fifteen enemy fighters attacked our force, causing minor damage to several of our aircraft. Shimushiru was again attacked by 11th Army Air Force Liberators on June 15.
Army, Navy and Marine aircraft of Central Pacific Air Forces bombed objectives in the Marshall Islands and Eastern Caroline Islands on June 13 and 15 (West Longitude Date).
CINCPAC Communiqué No. 54
U.S. Marines and Army troops advancing east across the southern portion of Saipan Island, made gains averaging 1,500 yards during the night of June 15‑16 and on June 16 (West Longitude Date). The area now held by our forces extends from a point just south of Garapan for a distance of approximately five and a half miles to Agingan and extends inland two miles at the point of deepest penetration. Our forces have captured Hinashisu due east of Lake Susupe.
Our positions were under sustained enemy fire during the night of June 15‑16, and before dawn on June 16 the enemy launched a determined counterattack. This attack, which was broken up, cost the enemy heavily in lives and destroyed more than 25 enemy tanks.
Early in the morning of June 16, our troops launched the offensive which resulted in general advances. Some of our forward echelons penetrated the naval air base at Aslito Airdrome, but were later withdrawn under severe enemy fire.
During the action on June 16, our aircraft bombed and strafed enemy positions, and during the night of June 15‑16, enemy strongpoints were shelled by our ships.
On June 15, one of our destroyer transports encountered five enemy coastal cargo ships and sank them. Twenty‑nine survivors were rescued and made prisoners of war.
CINCPAC Press Release No. 448
For Immediate Release
June 17, 1944
As the South Pacific has become relatively quiet, Adm. William F. Halsey Jr., USN, has been relieved of command of the South Pacific Area and the South Pacific Force. He will henceforth command the Third Fleet which will operate in the Pacific Ocean in the same way that the Fifth Fleet is operating under command of Adm. Raymond A. Spruance, USN.