Life After Auschwitz-- Part 1: The 75th Anniversary of Its Liberation

From the January 26, 2020, Chicago Tribune by Markus Schreiber and Kirsten Grieshaber.  "Life after Auschwitz:  Survivors to unite 75 years after liberation to visit horrific symbol of Holocaust."

Oswiecim, Poland.  On January 27, 1945, the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland.  The Germans had already fled westward, leaving behind the bodies of prisoners who had been shot and thousands of sick and starving survivors.

The Soviet troops also found gas chambers and crematoria that the Germans had blown up before fleeing in an attempt to hide evidence of their mass killings.

But the genocide was too massive to hide.

Today, the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau endures as the leading symbol of the terror of the Holocaust.  Its iconic status is such that every year it registers a record number of visitors -- 2.3 million last year alone.

--GreGen

Served on Three Battleships Which Were At Pearl Harbor: William Joseph Gallegos

From the East Bay Times

WILLIAM "BILL" JOSEPH GALLEGO

Passed away peacefully in his sleep on Sunday, June  19 at age 95.

He served in the Pacific during World War II with tours of duty aboad the battleshipps USS Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Nevada.

He became a Radioman 1st Class and was a member of the Navy Band during his time of service.

He was buried at Sacramento National Cemetery.

--GreGen

Not Much AboutThose German Ships Resurfacing in Danube River

I have been doing a lot of searching on the internet for the names, dates and more information about the German ships sunk at some point in 1944 near Prahova, Serbia, but am not finding much.  There are plenty of articles about them resurfacing because of the extended drought and making the river channels much tighter, but as far as the event during the war, not much.

I did come across one  source that said they were sunk to block the Danube River from Soviet ships as well as to prevent their capture.

The Wikipedia sunken ships for September article said that the German subchasers UJ-106 and UJ-110 were sunk at Prahova, Romania, on September 5, 1944.

--GreGen

German Warships Surface in Danube River as It Recedes

From August 19, 2022, ABC News "Severe European drought reveals sunken World War II warships on the Danube River" by Kyla  Guilford.

Europe's scorching  drought has revealed  the hulks of dozens of German warships that sank during WW II near Serbia's river port town of Prahovo.  The ships were part of the German  Black Sea fleet in 1944  that were sunk as Soviet forces advanced.

Now, over 20 vessels have come to the surface as river levels fall.  Many are still loaded with ammunition.  These ships are causing problems with the river traffic.

I am trying to find out more about this story and place it in history, but all I keep getting is what is happening with them right now.  I'll keep looking.

--GreGen

South Texas Hero's Remains Identified After 77 Years: Sgt. Herald R. Boyd, 25

From the August 18, 2022 KIII TV by Haley Williams (Kill).

The remains of a man killed in WW II are coming home to South Texas after 77 years, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA).

The remains of Sgt. Herald R. Boyd, a San Patricio County native were positively identified on July 8, 2022.

Boyd was serving as a gunner on a B-17G Flying Fortress bomber of February  3, 1945,  when his aircraft was hit by a ground rocket immediately after dropping its bombs on the Tempelhof marshalling yard in Berlin.

The pilot tried to save his plane, but was unsuccessful and it crashed into a residential ares of Berlin.    Seven of the nine crew members were kiled.  The other two were captured and became prisoners of war.

After the war, the American Graves Registration Command began to investigate and recover missing American personnel in Europe.  115 sets of remains were recovered from the Doberitz Cemetery in Berlin near the end of 1946.

By the end of 19556, six of th seven dead on his plane had been identified.  Boyd's remains were thought to be  Unknown X-4804, but could not be proven. and they were buried  at Ardennes-American Cemetery in Belgium in 1957.

They were disinterred in June 2018 and sent to Offutt  Air Force Base, Nebraska, for indentification.  They were positively identified through DNA.

He will now be buried in Corpus Christi on September 12 at the Coastal Bend State Veterans Cemetery.

Thanks to the DPAA.  --GreGen

Drought in Germany Exposing WW II Munitions-- Part 2: Getting Across the Rhine River at Remagen

The Siegfried Line stretched from the border with France to the Rhine River, which was intended as a natural barrier that would stop the Allied advance in the closing days of the war.  Consequently, a lot of fighting and bombing took place along the Rhine River.  

The Germans tried to blow up every bridge crossing to delay the Allied advance.

However, during the Battle of Remagen, a town south of Bonn, the Allies were able to capture the bridge intact and started crossing over into Germany as they overcome the last natural barrier.  After that, forces from the south and north were able to perform an encircling maneuvre onto the Ruhr Valley, capturing some 317,000 German soldiers between the cities of  Jamm,  Dortmund,  Essen and Duisburg.

The Battle for  the Ruhr Pocket, as it is known, lasted from 7 March to 21 April, when German  Marshal  Walter Model commited suicide instead of surrendering to the Allies.

The war in Europe officially ended  less than three weeks later, on, May 8.

--GreGen

Drought in Europe Exposing World War II Munitions on the Banks of the Rhine-- Part 1

From the August 12, 2022, The Mayor.

This week the City of Bonn, Germany, announced that die to the heat wave and  drought in Germany, that the  water level of the Rhine Rive had dropped significantly and as a result, old WW II munitions and grenades were exposed.  

The city is asking residents not to go walking in the newly exposed areas, nor pick up anything they find.  If they see something suspicious they are to contact authorities.

The City of Bonn was captured by the U.S. 1st Division between 8 and 9 March 1945 during the Battle of Remagen, fought between March 7 and 25. 

--GreGen

U.S. Navy After the War, Nuclear Testing-- Part 6: The Fates of Other Warships

In addition,  the USS Nevada (BB-36), the lead ship of a World War I-era  class of battleships and survivor of Pearl Harbor, had endured both tests and was later towed back to Pearl Harbor for examination. She was later used for gunnery practice and finally was sunk by an aerial torpedo.  Likewise, both the USS New York  (BB-34), the lead of her class, and super-dreadnaught battleship USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) was also at Pearl Harbor and survived the tests and were used for structural testing before finally being sunk.

Most of the other warships used in the tests included many cruisers, including the German Navy's Prinz Eugen, and a destroyer failed to be sunk during the testing.  It became clear that  the atom bomb could level a city easily, but sinking a warship was another matter entirely.

Of course, the radiation would likely have killed the crew, yet contamination  remained a very serious concern.

In fact, a 2016 study found that even after si many years after the nuclear testing, radiation levels in some parts of the Bikini Atoll remain at least six times the maximum safety limit.

Peter Suciu

An Original Tuskegee Airman Dies Back in 2019

From the Jne 25, 2019, Chicago Sun-Times "WW II pilot, original Tuskegee airman, AP.

World War II  pilot Robert Friend, one of the last original members of the famed all-black Tuskegee Airmen, has died at age 99.

He died at a southern California hospital.

Born in South Carolina on 1920's leap day, Mr. Friend flew 142 combat missions in the war as part of an elite group of fighter pilots trained at  at Alabama's Tuskegee Institute.  The program was created after the NAACP began challenging policies barring black people from flying military aircraft.

Mr. Friend's 28-year Air Force career included service in Korea and Vietnam.

He also worked on space launch vehicles and served as foreign technology program director before retiring as a lieutenant colonel and forming his own aerospace company.

Quite a Life.  GreGen

The U.S. Navy After the War, Nuclear Testing-- Part 5: Carriers Saratoga, Independence and Battleships Arkansas and Nagato

Among the warships targeted  in the Bikini Atoll  Nuclear Target Fleet were two aircraft carriers and five battleships.

They included the  Lexington-class carrier USS Saratoga (CV-3),  which survived the first  blast, but was damaged beyond repair in the second one and the light aircraft carrier USS Independence (CVL-22), which survived both tests. Her radioactive hulk was later taken to San Francisco for further tests and was finally scuttled off the coast of  San Francisco, California.

The battle wagons used at the tests included the USS Arkansas (BB-33), a Wyoming-class  dreadnaught battleship that was crushed by the first test, and the Japanese battleship HIJMS Nagato, which was heavily damaged in the July 25 bombing and sank five days later.

--GreGen

The U.S. Navy After the War, Nuclear Testing-- Part 4

The second test  on July 25, 1946, was named "Baker" and the bomb had the code name "Helen of Bikini."  It was  deonated 90 feet underwater, which resulted in radioactive sea spray that caused  considerable  contamination on nearby ships.

According to the Joint  Chiefs of Staff's  Evaluation Board, it was a serious and unexpected problem.  The radioactive water that spewed from the lagoon 'contaminated" the ships, which became "radioactive stoves,  and would have burned  all living things aboard with invisible, painless but deadly radiation."

It also meant that the task force personnel assigned to the salvage work had to deal with contamination.  The original plan was to decontaminate the ships at the site, and that was only halted after military and civilian personnel had been exposed  to radioactive substances.

A third deep-water test that was to have been named "Charlie,"  and scheduled for the summer of 1947, was canceled due to the Navy's inability to decontaminate  the target ships of the "Baker" test.

--GreGen

U.S. Navy After the War, Nuclear Testing-- Part 2: Bikini Atoll Tests

The United States tested its first atom bomb on July 16, 1945,  at a site 210 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico.  The code name for the test was "Trinity."

Just a year later, a joint Army-Navy task force staged the first atomic explosions since the ones on Japan.  The test was codenamed "Operation Crossroads" and was conducted on the Bikini Atoll, a coral reef in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific.  The goal was to find out the effect atomic blasts would have on warships.

A fleet of 95 ships was gathered was assembled in Bikini Lagoon, and the flotilla was hit by two "Fat Man" plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapons -- the same type dropped  on the city of Nagasaki.  Each had the yield of 23 kilotons of TNT.

The first test, conducted on July 1, 1946, was dubbed "Able" while the bomb was named "Gilda" -- a reference to Rita Hayworth's character from the 1946 film of the same name.  Gilda  was detonated at  520 feet  above the target fleet.

However, it had missed its target aim point by 2,130, it caused signifucantly less dammage than initially expected.

--GreGen