Some military units of the Second World War really pulled the short straw.
Chosen for the deadliest missions, ordered to fight bitter last stands, or simply thrown into
combat at every available opportunity, these units suffered more casualties than any others. In this
video, we shed light on ANOTHER seven of the most dangerous units a new recruit could be sent to.
This is the second video on this topic so if you haven’t seen the first, be sure to check it out.
We’re starting with the US 29th Infantry Division, a unit which did all its fighting in France and
Germany. In its 242 days of combat, the 29th took well over its fair share of casualties.
The 29th’s first combat experience was the mayhem of Omaha beach on D-Day, where they were *meant*
to be protected by tanks that would draw enemy fire and allow them to advance. Unfortunately,
a quarter of this tank support was made up of the ill-fated “DD” tanks. These were normal Sherman
tanks with canvas skirts that *theoretically* allowed them to swim to the landing beach.
They worked just fine in the testing pool, with a swell of about one foot,
but quickly turned into submarines in the six-foot swell of June 6th,
1944. With a large portion of their armoured support at the bottom of the English Channel,
the 29th Infantry Division had to assault the beach by themselves.
Casualties were horrendous, with the Americans losing around 3,000 troops on Omaha beach alone.
Pushing inland, the 29th captured the heavily fortified town of Saint-Lo
and fought on into the German heartland. By the war’s end, the 29th had taken 28,776 casualties,
just over 200% of its starting strength.
While not strictly an organised military unit,
the crew of the Japanese Imperial Navy’s Type A Kō-hyōteki-class submarine,
better known as the “Midget Submarine,” was NOT somewhere a new recruit wanted to be sent.
Used only a handful of times throughout the war, midget submarine missions were considered
so dangerous that the crews always wrote goodbye letters to their families before they set out.
Only 24 metres long and with a maximum dive depth of 30 metres, these tiny two-man
submarines were designed for sneak attacks inside enemy harbours. As far as we know,
these attacks only occurred three times during the war: in Pearl Harbour, Sydney, and Madagascar.
Due to the secrecy of their deployment, and unreliable records, it's possible more Midget
submarine missions were launched, but none of the attackers ever reached their targets.
Of the five subs launched in the Pearl harbour attack, only two definitely made it in. Their
orders were to launch their two torpedoes and then blow themselves up. Even though a rough
plan was made to pick up the crews, they were aware it was a suicide mission. Only
one crewman of a midget submarine was known to have survived: Ensign Sakamaki, the commander of
one of the submarines that attacked Pearl Harbour. Captured after failing to scuttle his vessel,
Sakamaki was seen by those back in Japan as a coward and traitor for not committing suicide.
Bad luck just seems to follow some units around, and this was especially true for
the Soviet infantry fighting against the grey tide of the German advance
into Russia. Managing to get destroyed twice over, we have the Soviet 103rd Rifle Division.
The German Panzer spearhead crashed through Russia in October 1941, encircling four entire Soviet
armies in two pockets. The 103rd was unlucky enough to be caught in the Vyazma Pocket,
the result of one of the two major encirclements by the 3rd and 4th Panzer Groups. The 103rd fought
hard but was eventually crushed with the other Soviet units by no less than 28 German divisions.
Out of this maelstrom, only 30 of the 103rd’s several thousand troops managed to escape.
Reformed and rearmed in Central Asia, the 103rd would go on to get obliterated yet again.
Just seven months after the disaster in the Vyazma pocket, the 103rd was encircled again
during the Second Battle of Kharkov in May 1942. Without air cover, and running out of supplies,
the Soviet soldiers reportedly charged into the German lines with their arms linked together,
shouting “Uraaaaaa.” The German machine gunners had a field day,
and the 103rd Division was wiped out for the second time.
In the first part of this series, we discussed Merril’s Marauders,
the precursors to the US Army Rangers, and their operations in Burma. Brigadier-General
Merril himself was inspired by the exploits of the Chindits,
a Long-Range Penetration Special Forces unit of the British Indian Army.
The Chindits were sent into Burma twice. The first time, in February of 1943,
they only managed to temporarily disable a railway and harass Japanese troops.
The terrain was inhospitable and constant Japanese attacks inflicted massive casualties. Of the 3,000
who marched in, 818 were killed and another 600 were too badly wounded to return to the fight.
British command, however, wasn’t put off by such a large loss of
*Indian life* and sent a far larger force of Chindits back in February of 1944.
This second operation was much better prepared, but the Japanese were ready. Flown in close to
their objectives, the Chindits were soon in fierce combat. Some engagements were close-quarters,
kukri-armed Indians squaring up against katana-wielding Japanese. Eventually fighting
their way out, the Chindits were ordered to assault several well-defended Japanese positions.
Armed only with light weapons, the Chindits suffered heavy losses. Attrition from disease was
also very high, and as the weeks wore on, their position was increasingly unstable. The Chindits
were pulled out of Burma in July, but not before ANOTHER 1,396 were killed and 2,434 were wounded.
While fighting it out on the ground was deadly, some units took far more casualties in the air.
Next up we have the Royal Canadian Air Force’s 6 Group, a majority-Canadian
force that operated with British Bomber Command from airfields in southern England.
Not content to simply let their aircrew serve in British units,
as most other commonwealth nations had done, the Canadian government demanded that a specialised
bomber group be organised for them alone. In 1943, they got their wish. The experienced
British aircrewmen were reassigned elsewhere and replaced by “green” Canadians. 6 Group
quickly became infamous as the unit with the highest losses in the whole of Bomber Command.
Flying several missions every week, the survivors soon began to gain critical flying experience.
By the start of 1944, 6 Group had turned things around. Taking the most dangerous missions over
Germany, these Canadian bombers flew over 40,000 sorties and dropped 126,000 tons of bombs. Every
flight was a roll of the dice, where one or two planes were almost certain to be shot down. The
final score in this deadly game was 814 aircraft shot down along with 4,200 aircrewmen killed.
With the Soviet reputation for taking horrendous casualties It’s no surprise
that another Soviet infantry unit features here. Next up is the 284th Rifle Division.
The 284th was formed rapidly, in July 1942, as part of the rush to put as many Russian
bodies between the advancing Germans and the Russian capital, Moscow, as possible.
Ordered to defend the approaches to Kyiv, the unit was encircled when German forces diverted further
East. The 284th was trapped around Kyiv and, just two months after its founding, annihilated.
The 284th was founded for a second time from Siberian recruits. They
quickly made a name for themselves, defending the region of Kastornoye
with exceptional stubbornness even though they were woefully ill-equipped with heavy weaponry.
Reinforced with sailors due to manpower shortages, the 284th was sent to Stalingrad.
They fought hard to secure landing sites across the Volga river and then pushed forward to capture
the hill named “Mamayev Kurgan” from the Croatian Jager Regiment. It was during these battles
that one of the Navy reinforcements came to the commander’s attention, Sergeant Vasili Zaitsev. A
master sniper, Zaitsev scored around 300 confirmed kills while fighting with the 284th in Stalingrad.
The sniper survived the war, but most of the 284th weren’t as lucky.
Fighting in Stalingrad mauled the Division so heavily that even Stalin took notice,
reforming it into the 79th Guards Rifle Division as a reward for the unit's courage.
Finally, we have the “Courage Division.” A nickname for the
Imperial Japanese Army’s 109th Division,
this was the unit tasked with the last-ditch defence of Iwo Jima from February to March 1945.
The island contained an airbase in bombing range of Tokyo, therefore making it
critical for Japan’s defence. The garrison force were veterans of
the war in China and commanded by the expert strategist General Kuribayashi.
Kuribayashi prepared his defence well,
digging tunnels across the island and concealing his heavy guns inside a hill.
He waited until the beaches were crowded with US Marines and equipment before opening fire.
Expecting a Banzai charge, the US Marines were caught unprepared, and took massive casualties.
Undersupplied and without air or naval support, the defence of Iwo Jima was doomed from the start.
General Kuribayashi led the final charge himself, choosing to die with his men instead of committing
suicide in his bunker. Of 109th Division’s 21,000 troops, roughly 18,500 were killed.
Two to three thousand held out in the tunnels once the battle was lost.
Taking no chances, US Marines entombed most of these holdouts by blowing up the tunnel exits.
That was ANOTHER seven of the deadliest units for a new recruit to be sent to.
Which do YOU think would have been the worst? Would you rather risk your life flying bombing
missions over Germany or on the beaches of Normandy? Let us know in the comments!