Which were the most important battles of World War Two? The Battle of Stalingrad? The Invasion
of Normandy? The Defence of Shanghai? Sure, these battles were key, but many other operations had
an equal, or perhaps even greater, impact on the war. Daring, classified, and brilliant,
we present four of the lesser-known operations that turned the tide of the Second World War.
The British were the war’s undisputed masters of intelligence gathering.
They had agents everywhere and often knew about enemy attacks before the grunts attacking did.
It’s no surprise, then, that one of their most important operations
came about due to clever intel.
When the Brits captured a high-ranking German officer, like a colonel or general,
they didn’t banish them to a POW camp.
Instead, they hosted these men in the luxurious Trent Park estate,
where the officers’ every whim was catered for.
Staff cooked sumptuous meals, tended the gardens,
pressed the officers’ uniforms, and served them whiskey and cigars.
It was a POW paradise, but the British had an ulterior motive.
They wanted to loosen up the Generals enough to get them talking to each other,
then eavesdrop on their conversations with microphones hidden throughout the mansion.
Many valuable secrets were gleaned this way,
including the location of a secret rocket testing facility.
The Germans were testing their wonder weapon, the V-2 rocket,
at the top-secret Peenemünde Research Center.
This weapon was far ahead of its time: the world’s first long-range guided missile.
It was super-sonic and totally unstoppable.
Britain’s answer was Operation Hydra, a massive bombing raid
meant to obliterate the facility. Winston Churchill recognised the risks, and said,
“Although the German night fighters will be close at hand and it is too far to send our own,
nevertheless, we must attack it on the heaviest possible scale.”
Five-hundred-and-ninety-six four-engined bombers took off from bases across Britain and converged
above Peenemünde on the night of August 17th 1943. They dropped 1,924 tonnes of bombs,
demolishing the facility, but lost 40 planes to night-fighters.
The cost was high, but delaying the V-2 rocket program likely saved thousands of lives.
Hungary officially joined the Axis powers on November 20th 1940,
although ultranationalistic sentiment had been building in the country for some time.
Hungarians prized their freedom and independence above all else; therefore,
the opportunity to grow their borders at the expense of the Allies was a popular move.
Hungarians fought alongside the Wehrmacht all the way to Stalingrad and
suffered alongside them during the long retreat.
By early 1944, things weren’t looking so good for Hungary. The war had clearly turned
against the Axis, and a full-scale German occupation of the country was underway.
Sensing his nation was about to lose its independence,
Hungarian Regent Nicholas Horthy started fleshing out a deal with the Soviets.
In return for Hungarian independence after the war, he offered to turn on the Germans.
He finalised this in a speech to the Crown Council, stating,
“I decided to safeguard Hungary’s honour even against her former ally, although this ally,
meant finally to rob the Hungarian nation of its greatest treasure, its freedom and
independence. I informed a representative of the German Reich that we were about to conclude a
military armistice with our former enemies and to cease all hostilities against them.
This was bad news for Hitler, so the Fuhrer sent his best man to fix it:
SS-Obersturmbanfuhrer Otto Skorzeny.
Skorzeny was the Reich’s expert in unconventional warfare,
and he had an unconventional plan to get Hungary back into the war:
kidnap Horthy’s son, Nicholas Jr.
Nick Jr was on a mission to meet the Soviets, but Skorzeny’s men intercepted him. After knocking him
unconscious, they rolled him up in a carpet and threw him on a plane bound for Vienna.
Skorzney then led four King Tigers and a column of German troops to the gates of Horthy’s residence.
The show of force kept the Hungarians at bay,
and Horthy was replaced by pro-Nazi Ferenc Szálasi as Hungary’s leader.
Operation Panzerfaust kept Hungary in the war until the end and likely saved over one million
Wehrmacht soldiers fighting in the Balkans, who would otherwise have been hopelessly cut off.
What was the most costly American attack on Japan? The bombing campaign?
Nope. What about submarine warfare? Not that either.
It was an aerial mining operation that some believed could have
won the war in the Pacific on its own.
The campaign was the brainchild of Admiral Chester Nimitz and was codenamed Operation Starvation.
The plan was relatively simple: roughly 160 B-29 Superfortresses assigned from the 313th
Bombardment Wing were modified to allow them to deploy mines.
At night, they flew low over the water, along sea lanes Japanese freighters frequented.
Radar was used to position the drops with precision,
and the mines floated silently through the sky via parachute.
The bombers flew these missions alone to avoid attracting unwanted attention.
This tactic contrasted heavily with the “safety in numbers” philosophy of massive bombing raids,
but it worked.
A network of drifting sea mines built up in all Japanese shipping lanes,
and freighters started going down.
Japan relied on imports for nearly all of its raw materials and food supplies.
Without freighters coming in, the country would starve; hence the operation’s name.
It worked beyond Nimitz’s wildest predictions.
In six months, 670 ships were sunk by mines,
equalling a loss of one-and-a-quarter million tonnes of cargo.
The mines were more efficient than both submarines and aircraft combined,
and only a tiny fraction of the cost.
After the war, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey and several Japanese admirals
concurred that, had Operation Starvation begun earlier, before April 1945,
it would almost certainly have crippled Japan.
Without strategic bombing, submarines, or nuclear weapons,
the US could have starved Imperial Japan into submission with sea mines alone.
There are few battle plans more audacious than a direct attack on an enemy commander,
but that’s exactly was US forces did on April 18th 1943. They called it Operation Vengeance,
and its goal was the death of Imperial Japanese Admiral Yamamoto.
Yamamoto had been the architect of the Pearl Harbour attack, and the Yanks were out for blood.
They decoded a secret transmission from his staff on April 14th, explaining that
the admiral would be touring Japanese bases around New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
Translated by Nisei, the transmissions also detailed Yamamoto’s full itinerary,
as well as the exact aircraft he and his staff would be carried in.
The plan was to fly in a 600-mile semicircle from Guadalcanal to Bougainville,
shoot down Yamamoto, and then fly 400 miles home.
The only plane capable of making the long journey was the P-38 Lightning,
so a unit of 18 Lightnings was put together at short notice.
Ace pilot Major John W. Mitchell was chosen to lead the mission.
They took off at 7:25 AM on the 18th of April and made their way
to the interception point in two groups.
The four-plane kill team would go straight for Yamamoto
while the 16 other aircraft provided top cover.
When Japanese planes appeared on the horizon,
Mitchell gave the order to drop tanks and close in, but one aircraft’s tanks failed to detach.
The pilot broke off, leaving three in the kill team. Japanese escort fighters caught
sight of them and came screaming in to protect the admiral’s plane.
Captain Lanphier gunned it towards the fighters, buying time for his wingman, Lieutenant Barber,
to engage the transports. Yamamoto’s plane dived away, but the speedy P-38 caught up with it.
Barber filled the right-hand side of the aircraft full of hot lead before pulling
away to engage the second transport plane. A messy dogfight ensued, costing one P-38 pilot his life,
before the American planes disengaged due to lack of fuel.
When he landed back at Henderson field, Lanphier mocked Yamamoto’s famous warning, by shouting,
“That son of a bitch will not be dictating any peace terms in the White House!”
A day later, Yamamoto’s body was found by a Japanese rescue party in the jungle below.
The late admiral was still grasping his sword,
even though a 50-cal round had gone straight through his head.
The United States had its vengeance for Pearl Harbour, courtesy of Lieutenant Rex T. Barber.
But what do YOU think? Which of these operations had the most impact on the war? Do YOU think
events would have gone differently had they not taken place? Were sea mines the secret
weapon that could have brought Imperial Japan to its knees early? Let us know in the comments!