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Hello, TimeGhost crew. Love your channels and your historical projects. I was wondering if there was a possibility to help you, guys, with historical materials while not being a Patreon supporter. Is it possible to do this?
The British: "we broke the Enigma code!" The Poles: "no, we broke the Enigma code!" Indy: "well, actually the Poles did break the Enigma code before the war, but the Germans modified it and when the British captured the machine and the code book and sent them to the Bletchley Park it turned out extremely useful". That's history, folks, nothing's simple and nothing's obvious. Thanks to the team for showing that truth so many times.
@@luke-zx4eh that was three rotor version though , what Royal Navy captured from U-110 was a four rotor modified Enigma specialised for Kriegsmarine (later on February 1942 , Kriegsmarine introduced a five rotor Enigma)
@@merdiolu true! Enigma machine possession was not as important like possession of code book. Poles found method how to brake three rotor machine code. For four rotor you need kind of computer... or code book where you can find rotors' initial setting for each day. That's why getting stuff from U 110 was do important.
Starting mid-June we'll be in for several months of more of that relaxing East Africa-like occupied territory color spreading quickly and evenly across the map. It's like popping bubbles.
Poor Wavell, he has to command so many different fronts and theaters and since his forces represent the only Commonwealth ground forces actually fighting the Axis at this time, he has Churchill constantly breathing down his neck. The guy did an admirable job given the circumstances.
I agree. I have always thought that Wavell was one of the most underrated commanders of the war. How many field commanders ever had to deal with battles on 4-5 fronts simultaneously, separated from each other by up to 1,000km? And, as one will see from offensives like Crusader (which took place after he was relieved of command), he was "blessed" with some fairly incompetent and/or overly cautious subordinates at division and corps level (Freyberg, Moreshead, Merservy and O'Connor being exceptions). This problem continued to plague the British Army for much of the war, and lead to several fumbled offensives and failed opportunities to garner the most out of their victories. In a sense, a fair comparison can be made between Wavell's situation and what both Winfield Scott and later U.S. Grant had to deal with during the US Civil War.
Winston Churchill said it best in The Grand Alliance: "The German communiqué claimed the destruction of the Rolls-Royce works at Derby, which they never got near. Two hundred and thirty high-explosive bombs and a large number of incendiaries were however unloaded in the open country. The total casualties there were two chickens."
The truth is the poles captured 1 in 1939 and when they where over run by the Germans they made thair way to England and offered thair services to the allies.
@@richardsinger01 I was just saying this was not the first capture and i am shure that the poles gave them a good heads up on the working of the machine
My great grandfather was a rat of tobruk. He was part of the second line of defence in the section where Rommel reached after breaking the first line of defence. After the siege was lifted, he was medically discharged from the military as he suffered from bomb fragments near his heart. He never spoke about the siege to anyone in the family. And he passed away in 1957 from the shrapnel.
Τhis week in Greece: On Tuesday, May 6, Italian troops occupied the Greek islands of Amorgos, Ios, Santorini, Naxos & Paros. On Friday, May 9, the last allied anti-aircraft and coastal defence batteries were transported to Crete. 32 heavy, and 36 light anti-aircraft guns would defend the island. The total number of British and Commonwealth troops of all services and contingents transported to Crete was just over 32,000. Of these, 6,000 were there since November 1940 (14th British Infantry Bde under Brig. B.H. Chappel) while the rest were evacuated from mainland Greece. In addition there were 10,000 Greeks; one battalion out of the V 'Cretan' Division left behind to garrison the island when the rest of the division was transferred to Albania, the remains of the Greek XII & XX infantry divisions now under British command, the Greek Army Academy Freshmen Cadets, and the local Royal Greek Gendarmerie chapters, including the cadets from the Gendarmerie academy brought from the Peloponnese. A large chunk of the Greek troops was armed with the obsolete Gras Mle 1874/M14 rifle that fired the smokeless 8 mm Lebel cartridge, and carried less than thirty rounds of ammo, as they were unable to be resupplied by the British who had no stocks in such antique calibres. On Saturday, May 10, Italian troops occupied the Greek island of Mykonos, the last Cycladic island that was occupied by the Italians.
"They shell the harbor, twice actually." That is why I love this channel. In the grand scheme of the war, that second shelling probably wasnt a big deal. But for those who lived it, it must have been pretty important. Glad it was included.
My time has finally arrived! Yes Indy you are correct Hal was my Great Uncle (Grandfathers brother who also played in the minors in Arkansas). I remember watching a few of your baseball videos so I was hoping the stars would align one day! Also was and will always be the only pitcher in the history of the game to ever win back to back MVP's (thanks Cy Young award). Love all the shows, cant wait for the baseball special episode!
He also finished second in 1946, so not too far away from winning three in a row! Wow, great to hear from a relative of Prince Hal's- this totally made my day!
@@Southsideindy Same here! Keep up the amazing work and let me know if your interested in any bartering. Would love to trade for anything great war related!
Lol, thanks for this response. I literally re-watched the video to read the comments just to see if this was answered, and I literally DGAF about baseball history lol.
When Iraq was placed under General Archibald Wavell's Middle East and Mediterranean Command by War Office in London (due to Churchill's pressure who held Wavell in low confidence and wished motivate him into action against Iraq rebellion) on 5th May 1941 (Wavell's birthday) , Wavell sent a message to Imperial Chief of Staff General John Dill in London : ‘Nice baby you have handed me on my fifty-eighth birthday,’ he cabled to Dill. ‘I hate babies and Iraqis, but will do my best for the little blighter.’ Dill responded in kind: ‘What a birthday present. Sincerely hope that you will be able to kill the little brute. Many happy returns of birthday but not of baby.’ Schofield, Victoria. Wavell: Soldier and Statesman
This week in Yugoslavia the massacres have begun.Ustashe commit 3 massacres of ethnic Serbs in Croatia. Kosinj massacre with 600 killed, then Blagaj massacre with 400 killed and finally Glina massacre with 250 killed.The last last in Glina is marked with burning an Orthodox church previously filled with dead bodies.
@@stevekaczynski3793 And that is unfortunately just the beginning. It takes a lot to horrify Gestapo officers.Well, congrats to Ustashe regime because they even managed to do that. They frequently sent messages to Himmler expressing their utter disgust regarding the manner in which the Serbs, Jews, and Roma were killed by Ustashe. Most of those hideous crimes were supervised by Catholic priests and cardinals.A mind-boggling fact.
@@milostomic8539 The Italian journalist and writer Curzio Malaparte described interviewing Ustashe leader Pavelic and there was a large pot on his office table holding what looked like mussels. They were human eyes, sent by his "loyal Ustashe".
@@deadset15-hrvavik17 Same here, especially with the fact that the Ustashe or any fascist ideology had absolutely no chance of gaining power in Croatia in a normal way through elections, such a thing was unimaginable even after the creation of an autonomous Croatia within Yugoslavia. Unfortunately the brutal invasion and the fascist Italian trucks brought an evil that still plagues us to this very day. I am beyond sick of the modern Ustashe apologetic narrative in which their crimes and fanaticism are portrayed as tolerable because it was "an expression of Croatian desire for independence", it is in my opinion one of the worst arguments ever that unfortunately still holds ground today. Indy will truly do a strong service for all of the Ex-Yugoslav countries if he portrays war crimes of each side in his weekly episodes, especially in the eyes of foreigners who always find this subject extremely complex. It will also explain the situation in the 90's and why in general extreme nationalism always leads to hostility, madness and degradation.
Rommel's failure of taking Tobruk in April 1941 maybe not surprising if one looks at Morsehead's career in WW1. Rommel gets a lot of credit but Morsehead is relatively unknown and becomes a thorn in Rommels side in North Africa. Highly decorated and received a DSO from Monash for carrying out 2 successful trench raids on the Western front, helped to halt German Spring Offensive at Villers Bretonneux when asked to restore the line at Aubercourt, received a French Légion d'honneur in the grade of Chevalier in his role on August 8th "The Black Day of Germany" or Battle of Amiens. He knew a thing or two about offensive patrolling of which both Australians and Indian troops would now begin to unsettle DAK and Italian forces due to its unorthodox tactics. Like Rommel's rise in WW1, the school master Morsehead also rose from the ranks from a lieutenant at Gallipoli and Lone Pine (where he was the only officer to not be killed and wounded) to become a Battalion commander and by the end of WW2 was up for consideration as a Corps Commander for commonwealth forces in the invasion of Japan. I'm hoping you do a General side project especially as there are not too many that fought battles in deserts and jungles. On which is this the first 'official' land defeat for German forces in WW2? If so the odd quirk of history is that elements of the Australian Tobruk garrison (18th Brigade 7th Division) would go on to fight at Milne Bay and defeat the Japanese land forces for the first time in the Pacific fighting alongside African American engineer troops too. Great as always folks.
You know, maybe the Iraqis should take a "last stand" policy when fighting in a hopeless situation, at least then they'll be able to fight back instead of being sitting ducks when retreating.
First of all, great video guys, thanks a lot for the content. Second, my grandpa fought in the Battle of Crete and this just makes it all the more chilling for me.
Maritime notes from this episode: -Always nice to see the handsome Renown -The merchant ship in the background at 7:14 looks to be the Brisbane Star, which would later go on to both participate in, and survive, the epic 'Pedestal' convoy to Malta in 1942 -Fritz-Julius Lemp made quite a contribution to the allied war effort. As well as allowing an intact enigma machine to fall into British hands, it was he who commanded U30 when it torpedoed the liner Athenia mere hours after the declaration of war in September 1939. That led the British to assume that the Germans had begun unrestricted submarine warfare, therefore the convoy system was immediately introduced for the defence of shipping
I want to just say a big thank you for everyone involved in making this series! I truly appreciate and enjoy every episode, I always look forward to each new episode on Saturday, makes for a great way to start the weekend.
Speaking of not being a leader officially, I once had an argument with a Stalinist who said that all of the crimes committed by Stalin before 1941 were not his fault because he wasn't the leader at the time. It's interesting how some people only look at the de facto for the things they disapprove of, but fail to get past the de jure when faced with the things they blindly follow.
So if I hire a hitman on someone I can just I didn't kill the victim myslef, so it's not my fault. Technically that kind of logic is used by companies today also where they hire workers through other smaller company and when disaster happens, they say that those are not their workers even though they work at their sites just legally employed by other company.
@@firstnamelastname-uw6vq I literally had a Stalinist say numerous times to me "Stalin never killed anyone himself", or something like that. I don't get how they can use these stupid arguments to defend their side.
yeah , i had many ( and still have sometimes ) arguements against stalinists in my uni ( there are plenty of them ) . They also claim to be fans of the greek resistance group ELAS ( which i am a big fan of ) but they dont know anything about them , not even a single battle , they just like the resiastance because it fought nazis and it was communist thats all they know about it , at least the majority of them . They also say that stalin was a saint and 1 of them once told me ( after i nailed him in an arguement ) that the only problem of the modern society is capitalism and that only a communist goverment can solve this .
@@Amusia727 I am amazed to find that this is actually true. I know a libertarian enthusiast who finds himself constantly tormented by these Soviet apologists in on-line political discussion groups.
11:55 Goosebumps, can't wait for some partisan action. One a side note, I always get a chuckle when you mention that Archibald Wavell is the overall commander of the British Middle-East theater; feels as almost it happens in every episode. :D
@@WorldWarTwo " Must be a weird experience to watch this then " Grandfather bombed and killed Plymouth Uncle maiden flight over Germany never came back. No just wished we would learn from history.
@@QuizmasterLaw not a separate peace, and it took another 50 or so years for the bolsheviks to collapse, and there was no war that caused it. But that's spoilers.
@@sonnydog830 well, there were minor wars between a member of Allies and soon-to-be a communist nation in Asia Guess who lost but called it a victory or a draw
I can't wait for Saturday, May 16th. A new episode from World War Two, and my birthday! Love this series because I'm a huge WW2 nerd, keep up the great work!
Indiana Neidell Thank you for all the work that you do, The Great War, TimeGhost and WW2 have reinvigorated my love for history and I am planning on becoming a history teacher.
I was waiting this episode so eagerly for weeks , so much to talk about First of all General Archibald Wavell , British Commander in Chief Middle East and Mediterranean had his plate full : an Axis backed insurrection in Iraq (which is taken under control slowly) , Axis aid over Vichy French held Syria to Iraq , German Italian attack in Libya and siege of Tobruk (that too is taken mostly under control , Tobruk garrison repulsed all Axis attacks and Afrikakorps checked at Egypt-Libya border) , crushing of last Italian held positions at Amba Alagi in East Africa and inglomious retreat from retreat of Lustre Force from Greece and insufficiant positioning of some remants of Lustre Force in Crete against a German attack. If I was Wavell I would call London and ask a raise to my salary immeditely. Under that much pressure it is remarkable he held his sanity.
The captured crew of U110 were also kept isolated from other POW's for the rest of the war, to prevent word getting out and maintain the fiction that the sub had gone down with all hands, preventing the acquisition of any sensitive materials useful to the allies.
Love your content. Expecially Sino-Japanese part, since we don't learn much about it in Europe.I am surprised you mentioned Tito's arrival in Belgrade, but failed to mention Ravna Gora Movement that happened on 6th May and start of first organised resistance in Europe. Cheers and keep up the good work.
The Sino Japanese war is an incredibly mysterious part of history because...The chinese have a government only too eager to change facts or change history and the japanese feel very shameful of this period and do not often recite this war.
@@General_Townes Well wether or not they won, still they should mention as this event is very important. Armija Krajova in Poland also lost to communist, but they are part of history that deserve its place, expecially in videos such as this.
@@General_Townes + I'd say that start of Ravna Gora Movement is more important than Tito opening a shop in Belgrade. Of course Tito and Peoples Liberation Front are important, but there are events on both sides that are more important than other.
Ravna Gora Movement wasn't first organised resistance in Europe. Since 1939 there were Czechoslovak resistance organisations Politické ústředí, Petiční výbor Věrni zůstaneme (PVVZ) and Obrana národa (ON) and with the beginning of 1940 they were organised under Ústřední vedení odboje domácího (ÚVOD).
6 May 1941 , Habbaniya , Iraq : Overnight, Iraqi troops withdrew from the plateau overlooking RAF Habbaniya after suffering 1,000 casualties, largely by RAF aircraft, abandoning large amounts of weapons and supplies. They were pursued by the British King's Own Royal Regiment, which caught up with the Iraqi troops at Sinn El Dhibban, taking 433 prisoners at the cost of 7 British troops killed and 14 wounded. To the south, the 21st Infantry Brigade of the Indian 10th Division arrived by sea at Basra. Meanwhile, Vichy France and Germany signed the Paris Protocol, which gave permission for German troops to march through Syria for Iraq to reinforce the Iraqis; in return, Germany lowered the tribute that France had to pay Germany from 20 million to 15 million Reichsmarks daily 6 May 1941 , Mediterranean Sea , British submarines HMS Taku and HMS Truant sank Italian ship Bengasi off Italy 6 May 1941 , Crete , Eastern Mediterranean , Major P. A. Cohen, who had been among several hundred British soldiers trapped in Greece, reached Crete by caïque, bringing with him 122 Australian troops who had avoided falling into German hands after Greece’s surrender. As some men escaped from German-occupied Europe, others entered it; 6 May 1941 , France , in greatest secrecy, twenty miles north of the town of Châteauroux, in Vichy France, a Frenchman working for British Special Operations, Georges Begué, parachuted successfully into the Unoccupied Zone of France, to set up a clandestine radio transmission at Châteauroux. Four days later, Pierre de Vomécourt was parachuted nearby, as the first group leader in France for the Special Operations Executive: his two brothers, who lived in France, became the first members of his group. Georges Bégue, known as George Noble, and later as ‘George One’, provided the group’s radio contact with London. 6 May 1941 , Occupied Poland , Polish doctor Zygmunt Klukowski noted in his diary that, on this date, he observed Germans conscripting Polish civilians to build military airfields and air raid bunkers even though there was no active war in Eastern Europe. 6 May 1941 , Washington , US Henry Stimson, the United States Secretary for War, made a surprise statement by telling his countrymen that the United States must use its fleet to ensure the triumph of democracy 6 May 1941 , Atlantic Ocean German submarine U-97 sank British ocean boarding vessel HMS Camito and recently captured Italian tanker Sangro 500 miles west of Ireland, killing 28
(1) Capture of U-110's Enigma machine and codebooks on 09 May 1941 was one of real turning points of the war. On 08 May 1941 , two German submarines U-201 and U-110 under command of Captain Julius Lemp (same Lemp who sunk passanger liner Athenia on 03 September 1939 with several civilians) found and attacked convoy. In a daylight attack they sunk three merchant ships from convoy (13.500 tons) and damaged a fourth one but the convoy was guarded by the nine warships of Baker-Cresswell’s Iceland-based Escort Group 3. The flagship, the destroyer HMS Bulldog, along with the ex-American four-stack destroyer HMS Broadway and one of the three corvettes, HMS Aubrietia, detected and hunted U-110, which was still at periscope depth. All three escorts obtained firm sonar contacts. HMS Broadway attacked, dropping a single depth charge. Seeing Lemp’s periscope, HMS Aubrietia, commanded by V. F. Smith, attacked it twice, dropping sixteen well-placed depth charges set for 100 and 200 feet. The depth charges from HMS Aubrietia fell very close to U-110. The blasts smashed the diving gauges and other instruments, knocked out the electric motors, diving planes, rudder, and compass, ruptured an aft fuel or ballast tank, sheared off the high-pressure air valves in the control room, and generated chlorine gas in the forward battery. Flooding aft, the boat went out of control and slid stern first to 300 feet. Seeing that U-110 was beyond all hope, Lemp ordered the chief engineer to “prepare for emergency blow,” which would bring them up. Lemp rushed to the bridge to find a terrifying sight: HMS Bulldog, HMS Broadway, and HMS Aubrietia close at hand, all firing at U-110 with every available weapon. HMS Bulldog and HMS Broadway were coming in at full speed to ram. Lemp shouted: “All hands abandon ship as fast as possible!” There was no time to connect the detonation charges for scuttling. There were forty-seven men on board U-110. In response to the cry “abandon ship,” all hands rushed pell-mell to the bridge in such haste that the radio operator did not take time to destroy or bring the Enigma and code materials with him, and a war correspondent, Helmut Ecke, left behind his still and movie cameras and film. Climbing down on deck through murderous British gunfire, the men dived over the side into the icy water.
(2) Coming in to ram with all weapons blazing, the Escort Group commander, Baker-Cresswell in HMS Bulldog, noted that U-110 was down by the stern but did not appear to be sinking. Believing he might get a boarding party on her or even capture the boat, he ordered full-speed astern to cancel the ramming and in the same breath summoned the boarding party. At about the same time T. Taylor, skipper of HMS Broadway, got the same idea and also canceled his ramming. To panic the German crew, hasten the evacuation of the boat, and thereby possibly prevent scuttling, Taylor came right up to U-110’s bow and dropped two shallow-set depth charges. In the process, however, HMS Broadway fouled U-110’s bow plane, which cut a deep gash in the destroyer’s thin side plating (flooding ten oil tanks and the forward magazine) and damaged the port propeller. U-110's captain Julius Lemp tried to swim back to scuttle the U-Boat when he realised she was not sinking but he couldn't make it and drowned. Intent on raiding or capturing U-110, Baker-Cresswell in HMS Bulldog and Taylor in HMS Broadway made no effort to fish the Germans from the icy waters. Smith in HMS Aubrietia, who had temporarily lost his sonar, hauled out of the area to make repairs. While doing so, he rescued forty-nine survivors from the lifeboats of the freighter Esmond, sunk by Lemp and alongside all remaining German crew of U-110 in the water. Many died of wounds, hypothermia, and shock, or drifted out of sight. The boarding party from HMS Bulldog, commanded by twenty-year-old Royal Navy Sub-Lieutenant David E. Balme, rowed the whaler right up on the forward deck of U-110. Carrying Lee Enfield rifles and pistols, the nine men jumped out and spread around the deck and bridge to shoot any Germans who might attempt to interfere with the mission. To Balme’s astonishment, both the conning-tower and control-room hatches were dogged shut, not what one would expect of a scuttling U-boat. Pistol drawn, he opened the hatches, expecting to confront crewmen below. But the boat was deserted. Increadibly Royal Navy had her first enemy submarine captured almost intact due to her captains panic and misjudgement. All hands had abandoned ship. All the lights were on, burning brightly; there was no sign of flooding or any indication of chlorine gas. After a hurried inspection, Balme signaled Baker-Cresswell on HMS Bulldog that the U-boat appeared to be “seaworthy and towable” and requested that he send an engineering party to operate U-110’s machinery. Baker-Cresswell directed Taylor on HMS Broadway to send an engineer to U-110 via whaler, then eased HMS Bulldog close to U-110 to receive an old, rusty 2″ steel cable that two of Balme’s men had found in a topside locker on the U-boat. Meanwhile, belowdecks, Balme and the other six members of his party were collecting intelligence items of incalculable value. Balme described that work in a secret report to the Admiralty. In part: "The U-boat had obviously been abandoned in great haste as books and gear were strewn about the place. A chain of men was formed to pass up all books, charts, etc. As speed was essential owing to the possibility of the U-boat sinking (although dry throughout) I gave orders to send all books, except obviously reading books, so consequently a number of comparatively useless navigational books, etc., were recovered. All charts were in drawers under the chart table in the control room; there were also some signal books, log books, etc. here. … Meanwhile the telegraphist went to the W/T [radio] office just forward of the control room on the starboard side. This was in perfect condition, apparently no attempt having been made to destroy any books or apparatus. Here were found C.B.s [codebooks], Signal Logs, pay books, and general correspondence, looking as if this room had been used as a ship’s office. Also the coding machine [Enigma] was found here, plugged in as though in actual use when abandoned. The general appearance of this machine being that of a typewriter, the telegraphist pressed the keys and finding results peculiar, sent it up the hatch."
(3) Having been aboard U-110 for about five hours and having ransacked her of everything useful and interesting (including six sextants and ten pairs of Zeiss binoculars, Ecke’s cameras, and Lemp’s Ritterkreuz), Balme’s boarding party and engineering team of HMS Bulldog closed all watertight doors, dogged down all hatches, and returned to their ships. Escorted by the damaged HMS Broadway, HMS Bulldog headed for Iceland-400 miles distant-towing the yawing U-110 at a speed of 6 knots. All went well for about seventeen hours-about 100 miles-but at 11:00 the following morning, March 10, all abandoned U-110 suddenly upended and sank, “her bow standing vertically out of the water.” The loss, Baker-Cresswell wrote, was a “bitter blow.” Baker-Cresswell in HMS Bulldog reached Iceland late on March 10. He transferred the thirty-two German prisoners from HMS Amazon to HMS Bulldog and the next day set off for Scapa Flow, making 25 knots to avoid any possibility of a U-boat attack. En route he talked individually and cagily with the three German officers and the correspondent Ecke, to see if any of them had an inkling that U-110 had been boarded or taken in tow. Apparently none did. Nor did any of the enlisted men, who were canvassed in a similar manner by the crewmen of HMS Bulldog. Since some of the Germans had seen HMS Bulldog launch the whaler with the boarding party, Baker-Cresswell and his crew put about a “cover story” that U-110 had “sunk” before it could be boarded. (crews of HMS Bulldog , HMS Broadway and HMS Aubrietia and rescued survivors of sunk merchant ships who witnessed or participated boarding of U-110 were all sworn secrecy. Remarkably no wording of boarding leaked till naval historian Stephen Roskill wrote a slim book about it “Secret Capture” in 1959. The intelligence haul from U-110, which filled “two packing crates,” was eye-popping and historic and no doubt kind of intelligence material that would change course of war : a working naval Enigma machine, the keys for Heimisch (the Home Waters or Dolphin code) for April and June, the keys to the double-enciphered Offizierte (Officers-Only) code, a book containing the Kurzsignale (Short Signal) code, and Kriegsmarine grid charts, as well as special charts showing the safe routes through German minefields in the North Sea and along the French coast, decoded U-boat traffic (in Heimisch) for the period April 15-May 9, administrative correspondence, a complete set of technical manuals and diagrams of all the Type IXB fuel, air, hydraulic and other systems, war correspondent Eicke's camera and films showing daily patrol life in U-110 and U-Boat base in Lorient and hundreds of mundane items, down to the citation for the award of the Iron Cross Second Class to the chief engineer, Eichelborn. After he had been briefed on the haul, Royal Navy First Sea Lord Dudley Pound telexed Baker-Cresswell, who had codenamed the boarding Operation Primrose: “Hearty congratulations. The petals of your flower are of rare beauty.” The current Heimisch keys for May, printed on water-soluble paper, had apparently been destroyed by the Germans or possibly lost or ruined during the transfer to HMS Bulldog. Hence it was not possible for Bletchley Park to read Heimisch currently until June. Duplicate Heimisch keys for June were obtained when, in a well-planned action, a British naval task force captured the 300-ton German weather-reporting trawler München on May 7. The Admiralty showered praise and awards on all those concerned with the victory over U-110. Pound immediately promoted Baker-Cresswell from commander to captain. In a special ceremony at Buckingham Palace, King George VI appointed Baker-Cresswell and HMS Aubrietia captain, Smith, Companions of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). He awarded Balme , and the captain of HMS Broadway, Taylor, the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC). Three others received the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) and fourteen officers and men were “Mentioned in Dispatches.” When the King gave Balme his DSC, the official naval historian wrote, the King told Balme this boarding operation “was perhaps the most important single event in the whole war at sea.”
I still have my copy of "The Ultra Secret" by Frederick Winterbotham published around 1974 or 75. I was in high school. The Ultra project had been just declassified in that time frame. It caused a stir in history circles because it had apparently been unknown up until declassification. It both answered and raised questions and led to a reexamination of how various allied leaders had conducted the war. There was an article comparing Patton and Montgomery. The information had to used carefully so the project wasn't revealed. No problem with Montgomery. He would sit on a file drawer of product and not move. Give Patton one file from that drawer and he was moving forward. This is an awesome series.
The crew of U110 (32 survived) were sequestered at Monteith POW camp in northern Ontario in an attempt to prevent knowledge of the submarine's capture and that of the Enigma and code books, leaking to the Germans.
Because it's easily the most boring front in the entire war. Just half-hearted offensives that either fail immediately or are reverted by the following week. Doesn't help that most of us are well aware that it's gonna stay this way all the rest throughout the entire war and there won't be any exciting Chinese counter-advances to look forward to. Indy probably doesn't feel like covering it unless he absolutely has to and after December I won't be surprised if the "far to the East" segment becomes almost entirely dedicated to the actually successful Japanese conquests elsewhere in South-East Asia as well as the US initating the Pacific War, with a passing mention of China every few weeks or so, shoehorned under "a few notes to end the week".
@@yarpen26 in 1944 a lot of territory fell to the Japanese, perhaps surprisingly. I'm not sure why the nationalist collapse started in 1944 but it appears to be the case judging by the Japanese territorial gains in that year.
Looking at the book Forgotten Ally, one of Indy's sources, I can see why. It does not really go in-depth into this part of the war. But it still gets mentioned like at 9:39.
Indy, you are the man. I watched your WW1 series and absolutely loved it. And now WW2. I have studied WW1, WW2 and the Korean War for many years. My father, very young---though he was Italian---didn't agree with Italy allying itself with Germany, so when the opportunity came he left his aircraft mechanic apprenticeship, killed a junior German officer and dressed in the man's uniform, and with dead man's ID (no picture) he stole a bicycle and rode down the boot from Lucca to join up with the American forces under Patton. On the way he located pieces of paper or other packaging and with a small pencil circled on the hastily-drawn maps various gun emplacements in each town he rode through. Speaking French, German s as well, he was fine communicating with the German forces he would come across during his trek. Hello spoke some English, having learned it in school. The US forces he met up with under Capt. Bouse (not certain of the spelling) eventually allowed him to stay with them as an honorary US soldier. He ended up in the segregated unit called the Buffalo Squad.
7 May 1941 , Liverpool , UK , German aircraft conducted the first of the two consecutive nightly raids on Hull, England, United Kingdom. Meanwhile, Liverpool, England was bombed for the seventh (and final) consecutive night, damaging destroyer HMS Hurricane; by this time, 75% of Liverpool's port capacity had been destroyed. Over 400 civilians killed and center of Liverpool totally gutted by fire. 7 May 1941 , Tobruk , Libya , During the day, German bombers sank British minesweeper HMS Stoke at Tobruk, Libya, killing 21. After nightfall, British cruiser HMS Ajax and destroyers HMS Havock, HMS Hotspur, and HMS Imperial bombarded Benghazi, Libya, sinking Italian cargo ships Tenace and Capitano Cecchi 7 May 1941 , Basra , Iraq , Indian 20th and 21st Brigades marched out of Basra, Iraq to attack nearby port of Ashar. 7 May 1941 , Atlantic Ocean , In the North Atlantic at 1707 hours, the German weather ship München was sighted between the cruiser HMS Edinburgh and the destroyer, HMS Somali. The latter fired warning shots which caused most of the München's crew to take to the boats. Somali closed at speed and boarded the ship. A prize crew and boarding party from HMS Edinburgh then went over on a cutter, which also carried a mysterious man in civilian clothes (later revealed to be Captain J. R. S Haines RN of Naval intelligence). The München's captain, another officer and several ratings received the boarding party with great courtesy and a search of the German vessel was commenced. Although the German captain had thrown the Enigma machine and the May coding tables over the side as Somali approached, the settings for June were found in his desk, and these were duly collected by Captain Haines, who knew exactly what he was looking for. HMS Nestar took Captain Haines and his valuable find to Scapa Flow, Scotland, United Kingdom at speed. 8 May 1941 , Indian Ocean , A Walrus seaplane from British cruiser HMS Cornwall spotted German armed merchant cruiser Pinguin 400 miles off British Somaliland. The two ships fired on each other at 1714 hours; Pinguin was fatally damaged by HMS Cornwall's superior firepower, but HMS Cornwall was also hit, killing 1 and wounding 3. Shortly after Pinguin's commanding officer gave the abandon ship order, an eight-inch shell hit Pinguin, detonating her store of 130 naval mines and sinking her; 341 crew and 214 prisoners were killed, 66 crew and 22 prisoners survived and picked up by HMS Cornwall 8 May 1941 , United Kingdom , German aircraft conducted the last of the two consecutive nightly raids on Humberside, England. In exchange RAF nightfigthers shot down 23 German bombers 9 May 1941 , Salonika , Greece , A minefield laid by British submarine HMS Rorqual sunk 2.000 ton Italian tanker Rossi
err, the British had the enigma-machine earlier then that... the Polish secret service had handed them one! but the Eingma-machine was modified since then and they did not have the all-important codebook. that's why it was such a stroke of luck that the decoding-guy in service saved the poetry he wrote for his lover, thinking the sub would sink a lot faster then it actually did, instead of wrecking the enigma-machine and throw the code book in the sea...
It was the blunder of U-110's captain Julius Lemp (same U-Boat captain who sunk passanger ship Athrnia in 3rd September 1939) that he gave in to panic and prematurely ordered to abandon the ship when it was obvious that U-Boat was NOT sinking. After that Royal Navy boarding party led by Lt. David Balme remained and ramsacked the u-boat after they abandoned it for six fours even taking mundane items like torpedo field manual , Zeiss binaculars , Chief Engineers Ritterkreuss as well as four rotor Enigma machine and all of its codebooks. Admiral Doenitz at the other hand naively assumed that Lemp died heroicly and named a barracks in Lorient after him. Long after the war though when his gaffe and negligence of letting Royal Navy capture his boat intact , ex U-Boat captains turned quite negative in their assesment of Lemp , some of them remarked if Lemp survived they would gladly shoot him
@@merdiolu close, but not a cigar... there is actually a documentary about the capture/sinking of U-110 (i'm not even sure about that specific number for it is a long while since i've watched said documentary) in which the radio-guy admits that it is entirely his fault that the enigma-machine and the codebook fell into British hands. you're right about Lemp "jumping the gun", but it was the radio-guy's responsability, even at a rapid sinking, to destroy the enigma and the book.
Great show as always Indy and Crew! been around since the halfway point of the great war and binged everything before and till this point, keep on keeping on!
I don't suppose anyone bothered to tell General Morhead that you can't retreat when you're under siege... Looking forward to seeing more of him though as a quick glance at Wikipedia seems to show that he's quite the badass.
That's not how the Enigma machine was captured! The Enigma machine was captured by French Resistance fighter Renee "Nighthawk" Artois and his team. They infiltrated a German banquet, held at a chateau at the French town of Nuvion. And the machine itself was taken by agent Mimi LeBonk, who was hidden in a massive violin case and threw the Engima out of a window, where a team of French Resistance fighters, led by Michelle of the Resistance, captured it with bed sheet. Sheesh, check your sources! Highfive to anyone who gets it.
René is starting to feel this war is getting out of control. Rationing, oppression... Even his wife might begin to suspect that he has been banging the female employees... Amid the great geopolitical events we should never forget the small personal details.
1:12 The capture of U-110 partially inspired the 2000 movie U-571, although the movie is rather highly inaccurate with regards to details (eg. such as Americans capturing an Enigma machine early in the war when it should have been a British crew!). Probably a better movie to watch would have been the 1981 West German movie Das Boot. 5:15 On a side footnote on Crete, quite a significant number of Greek soldiers stationed on Crete were running fairly low on ammunition at this stage after the Battle of Greece, and unfortunately the British Commonwealth units were often not able to resupply them due to different calibers in their ammo stocks. The British Commonwealth themselves also found that they had many unwanted personnel such as stragglers and deserters who were not really being the most helpful in the defence of Crete and often had to evacuate them to Egypt. This may have consequences for the upcoming battle.
If you're interested in the fall of Crete, Operation Mercury by M.G. Comeau is a good read, it's a first hand account written by an RAF ground crewman who fought in the Defense of Maleme airfield. He was awarded the Miltary Medal for his efforts on Crete.
actuqally it was updated version, they already knew how to crack one, how it's build and how to make bomb from Poland, but they had to get updated enigma so they can update proces on newer hardware
Children's author Roald Dahl was one of the 17 hurricane pilots in Crete. He talks about his experience in his autobiography, Going Solo, one of my favourite books growing up. He recalls arriving at Crete, not yet having seen combat, and his mechanic telling him that there were 2000 German planes poised over Crete ready to attack at any moment. Clearly he exaggerated but still, the odds were not in the RAF's favour! Somehow Roald Dahl not only survived but managed to shoot down 5 German planes to the bargain, and then escaped Crete. I highly recommend TimeGhost check it out, it has some very quotable lines.
We used Roald Dahl's experiences as a pilot in the Instagram posts where we quoted "Going Solo" on April 20 1941 - the day of the Dahl-dubbed Battle of Athens. A biography special on him is also planned for the near future!
The British would certainly be able to break the code on their own, but without the Poles they would not be able to do it before the end of the war. After improving the Enigma, Poles gave the machine because it was dangerous for them. They decided that it is better and safer to hand it over to an ally.
they had hardware and instructions how to deal with pre updae enigma, and the needed updated enigma to do it. to give you comparation how much Polish efforts helped them is that it took 6 years to break it, now compare it to how much it took for brits to update it
1.40 In February 1942 the Kriegsmarine switched to the four rotor machine. One of the three ships involved in the capture was HMS Broadway, launched 1919 and acquired in the Destroyers for (non existent) Bases Agreement.
I think his mother was Slovene. In the late 1940s a rumour was circulated in the USA that Tito might be a Polish or even Russian impostor. It was claimed there were oddities in the way he spoke Serbo-Croat that suggested he was not a native speaker and that it was possible the original Josip Broz had been replaced by someone else. However, Tito's native Kajkavian dialect of Croatian does have some unusual features in relation to other forms of Serbo-Croat. It is likely the story was CIA disinformation or a poorly-sourced rumour.
Nope, he was born in Kumrovec a town in Croatias north where his house is still preserved and people can visit it. His father was a Corat named Franjo Broz and his mother was Slovene. Most of his youth and pre-ww2 he lived and worked in Croatia. Never heard about this Russian-Polish imposter. Doubt it because he was against Stalin and his eastern soviet block.
Fritz-Julius Lemp, if you recall was the U-Boat commander who sank the liner Athenia on the first day of the war. BTW, there were three RN Warships who participated in the action: HMS Bulldog ("B" Class DD), HMS Broadway (ex-USS Hunt, Clemson class DD) and Flower Class corvette HMS Aubrelia.
''Are in motley crew'' haha ,nice one !! Besides that ,the battle for Greece is over ,the battle for Crete is about to begin. Next episode : Battle of Crete ''So it begins'' ... Getting better and better , Regards from Greece and Cyprus ,awesome content.
Don't forget that this day on May 9, our old friend the Franco-Thai war officially ended with a peace treaty in Tokyo. France was forced to cede its border territories in Laos and Cambodia to Thailand.
Just for the history, the names of the main cretan cities are(from west to east) - Chania, Rethymno, Herakleio and Aghios Nikolaos. All of them situated on the northern coast.
Indy - great work- could have been 3 episodes as there was so much going on. I have been to Bletchley Park and their work was amazing, breaking Enigma was one thing but breaking Hitler's code machine without even seeing it was outstanding.
Took awhile to get from wk 001 to 089 but now I'm caught up. NOW I can subscribe! Also, gives me time to explore other series like between two wars, etc.
The bottom will be reached at some point right? Well, not anytime soon - as the war still broadens and deepens with every week that passes. To be able to cover the ever-expanding conflict with all its main characters, events, political and cultural changes and hardware and weaponry, we need your support! We fully rely on community contributions to make all of our content - so if you can please support us on www.patreon.com/timeghosthistory or timeghost.tv. We need you!
Cheers, Joram
*RULES OF CONDUCT*
STAY CIVIL AND POLITE we will delete any comments with personal insults, or attacks.
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Hello, TimeGhost crew. Love your channels and your historical projects. I was wondering if there was a possibility to help you, guys, with historical materials while not being a Patreon supporter. Is it possible to do this?
The bottom is in less then 7?months!
How many rotary phones do you have?
Today is the day Russia won *WW2* they hold beautiful parades in celebration of saving the world from NAZI Germany.
@@cranberryeater7459 not today though
meanwhile in belarus...
The Motley crew hand signs with a complete deadpan face made my day
I had to pause it there. I was taken aback lmao
I had to stop the video I was laughing so hard!
Iraqi forces are being pushed back as a War in the Persian Gulf breaks out.
No, not that one.....and not that one either....
👍
uh, no. Not the other one. That was before this.
@@SentMyOwnWay lmao Saddam still chilling around in youtube comments
@@ihmejakki2731 of course, he's watching youtube while smoking weed with Tupac in Cuba.
@David Beach so not that one or that one, but what about that one?
The British: "we broke the Enigma code!"
The Poles: "no, we broke the Enigma code!"
Indy: "well, actually the Poles did break the Enigma code before the war, but the Germans modified it and when the British captured the machine and the code book and sent them to the Bletchley Park it turned out extremely useful".
That's history, folks, nothing's simple and nothing's obvious. Thanks to the team for showing that truth so many times.
By 1940-41 though , Poles made up a small (though important) part of Bletchley Pasrk cryptoanalysis team.
Is this a game of: "I'm Brian and my wife is also Brian!" ?
@@luke-zx4eh that was three rotor version though , what Royal Navy captured from U-110 was a four rotor modified Enigma specialised for Kriegsmarine (later on February 1942 , Kriegsmarine introduced a five rotor Enigma)
If you got to Bletchley Park the poles get credit for the part they played
@@merdiolu true!
Enigma machine possession was not as important like possession of code book. Poles found method how to brake three rotor machine code. For four rotor you need kind of computer... or code book where you can find rotors' initial setting for each day. That's why getting stuff from U 110 was do important.
I get so happy imagining all the future episodes of this series talking about all the crazy events indy hasn't even touched yet.
Same here! Just those short 15 seconds of information about Tito arriving in Belgrade and opening a small shop sent shivers down my spine.
Starting mid-June we'll be in for several months of more of that relaxing East Africa-like occupied territory color spreading quickly and evenly across the map. It's like popping bubbles.
Barbarossa!!!
In just over a month!!
June can't come soon enough
Poor Wavell, he has to command so many different fronts and theaters and since his forces represent the only Commonwealth ground forces actually fighting the Axis at this time, he has Churchill constantly breathing down his neck. The guy did an admirable job given the circumstances.
I agree. I have always thought that Wavell was one of the most underrated commanders of the war. How many field commanders ever had to deal with battles on 4-5 fronts simultaneously, separated from each other by up to 1,000km? And, as one will see from offensives like Crusader (which took place after he was relieved of command), he was "blessed" with some fairly incompetent and/or overly cautious subordinates at division and corps level (Freyberg, Moreshead, Merservy and O'Connor being exceptions). This problem continued to plague the British Army for much of the war, and lead to several fumbled offensives and failed opportunities to garner the most out of their victories. In a sense, a fair comparison can be made between Wavell's situation and what both Winfield Scott and later U.S. Grant had to deal with during the US Civil War.
Is it correct that Tobruk was the first land battle (or major land battle) in which the Allies defeated the Wehrmacht?
@@ChristopherNFP No, the Chinese gave the Japanese a few maulings before Tobruk.
@@lewisirwin5363 Except the Chinese were never officially part of the Allies and Japan isn't the Wehrmacht
@@aussie870 Whoops, I read Wehrmacht as Axis.
Winston Churchill said it best in The Grand Alliance:
"The German communiqué claimed the destruction of the Rolls-Royce works at Derby, which they never got near. Two hundred and thirty high-explosive bombs and a large number of incendiaries were however unloaded in the open country. The total casualties there were two chickens."
2 chickens too much
Press F to pay respects to the chickens
RIP little chickens...
2 whole chickens? That's 3 weeks worth of meat rations for 400 Brits down the drain right there.
f
If Hollywood has taught me anything this Enigma Machine was actually captured by Americans, with Matthew McConaughey and back up vocals from Bon Jovi.
The truth is the poles captured 1 in 1939 and when they where over run by the Germans they made thair way to England and offered thair services to the allies.
lambastepirate I think the real prize were the code books. The polish breaks no longer worked after introduction of modifications to Enigma.
@@richardsinger01 I was just saying this was not the first capture and i am shure that the poles gave them a good heads up on the working of the machine
@@lambastepirate the movie U-571 is about this capture they just pretend it was Americans and not Brits that did it.
Your mom captured it the hard way
My great grandfather was a rat of tobruk. He was part of the second line of defence in the section where Rommel reached after breaking the first line of defence.
After the siege was lifted, he was medically discharged from the military as he suffered from bomb fragments near his heart. He never spoke about the siege to anyone in the family. And he passed away in 1957 from the shrapnel.
Hear hear mate F in Law was a Rat and did Kokoda.
6:35 motley crew sign nice Indie
I almost died of laughter
yes for those with eyes to see
I loved the Mötley Crüe reference! :D
another event in the world war 2 drinking game
Username67357 I got a weird glitch that says your comment was 3 days ago despite this video not even being a day old (at the time of this reply).
@@katalbinson6562 I think you'll find Username67357 is like me a, Patreon supporter. We get the feeds early. Come and join us.
9:54 Luigi Cadorna is outdone
>Japanese are the italians of asia confirmed
How will they ever recover?
@@RedbadofFrisia not exactely, the Japanese were fewer than the Chinese while the italians were more numerous than the Austrians.
Τhis week in Greece:
On Tuesday, May 6, Italian troops occupied the Greek islands of Amorgos, Ios, Santorini, Naxos & Paros.
On Friday, May 9, the last allied anti-aircraft and coastal defence batteries were transported to Crete.
32 heavy, and 36 light anti-aircraft guns would defend the island.
The total number of British and Commonwealth troops of all services and contingents transported to Crete was just over 32,000. Of these, 6,000 were there since November 1940 (14th British Infantry Bde under Brig. B.H. Chappel) while the rest were evacuated from mainland Greece.
In addition there were 10,000 Greeks; one battalion out of the V 'Cretan' Division left behind to garrison the island when the rest of the division was transferred to Albania, the remains of the Greek XII & XX infantry divisions now under British command, the Greek Army Academy Freshmen Cadets, and the local Royal Greek Gendarmerie chapters, including the cadets from the Gendarmerie academy brought from the Peloponnese.
A large chunk of the Greek troops was armed with the obsolete Gras Mle 1874/M14 rifle that fired the smokeless 8 mm Lebel cartridge, and carried less than thirty rounds of ammo, as they were unable to be resupplied by the British who had no stocks in such antique calibres.
On Saturday, May 10, Italian troops occupied the Greek island of Mykonos, the last Cycladic island that was occupied by the Italians.
Captain Carelli at last!
Dude you should collaborate with them
@@hexa-kun4654 and being on the losers side?
@@Kimmerios-l5u εγώ λέω με το κανάλι να συνεργαστεί, για την έρευνα
@Zachary Durocher as Kevin Costner said in Dancing with Wolves:...TATANKA! lol
"They shell the harbor, twice actually." That is why I love this channel. In the grand scheme of the war, that second shelling probably wasnt a big deal. But for those who lived it, it must have been pretty important. Glad it was included.
My time has finally arrived! Yes Indy you are correct Hal was my Great Uncle (Grandfathers brother who also played in the minors in Arkansas). I remember watching a few of your baseball videos so I was hoping the stars would align one day! Also was and will always be the only pitcher in the history of the game to ever win back to back MVP's (thanks Cy Young award). Love all the shows, cant wait for the baseball special episode!
He also finished second in 1946, so not too far away from winning three in a row! Wow, great to hear from a relative of Prince Hal's- this totally made my day!
@@Southsideindy Same here! Keep up the amazing work and let me know if your interested in any bartering. Would love to trade for anything great war related!
Lol, thanks for this response. I literally re-watched the video to read the comments just to see if this was answered, and I literally DGAF about baseball history lol.
When Iraq was placed under General Archibald Wavell's Middle East and Mediterranean Command by War Office in London (due to Churchill's pressure who held Wavell in low confidence and wished motivate him into action against Iraq rebellion) on 5th May 1941 (Wavell's birthday) , Wavell sent a message to Imperial Chief of Staff General John Dill in London : ‘Nice baby you have handed me on my fifty-eighth birthday,’ he cabled to Dill. ‘I hate babies and Iraqis, but will do my best for the little blighter.’ Dill responded in kind: ‘What a birthday present. Sincerely hope that you will
be able to kill the little brute. Many happy returns of birthday but not of baby.’
Schofield, Victoria. Wavell: Soldier and Statesman
Ramadi, Habbaniya, Falluja. There are some spots on this planet that seem to be perpetual battlefields.
the River Isonzo sends it's regards
Different weapons, flags, religions, and languages, all still human blood shed for the same land.
Aleppo since the Neolithic !
it is called geopolitics and geostrategy.
Alexander of Macedonia went through that area, too.
This week in Yugoslavia the massacres have begun.Ustashe commit 3 massacres of ethnic Serbs in Croatia.
Kosinj massacre with 600 killed, then Blagaj massacre with 400 killed and finally Glina massacre with 250 killed.The last last in Glina is marked with burning an Orthodox church previously filled with dead bodies.
Ustashe starting as they mean to go on.
@@stevekaczynski3793 And that is unfortunately just the beginning.
It takes a lot to horrify Gestapo officers.Well, congrats to Ustashe regime because they even managed to do that.
They frequently sent messages to Himmler expressing their utter disgust regarding the manner in which the Serbs, Jews, and Roma were killed by Ustashe.
Most of those hideous crimes were supervised by Catholic priests and cardinals.A mind-boggling fact.
Milos Tomic as a Croat i am saddened that nationalism destroyed Yugoslavia... twice.
@@milostomic8539 The Italian journalist and writer Curzio Malaparte described interviewing Ustashe leader Pavelic and there was a large pot on his office table holding what looked like mussels. They were human eyes, sent by his "loyal Ustashe".
@@deadset15-hrvavik17 Same here, especially with the fact that the Ustashe or any fascist ideology had absolutely no chance of gaining power in Croatia in a normal way through elections, such a thing was unimaginable even after the creation of an autonomous Croatia within Yugoslavia. Unfortunately the brutal invasion and the fascist Italian trucks brought an evil that still plagues us to this very day. I am beyond sick of the modern Ustashe apologetic narrative in which their crimes and fanaticism are portrayed as tolerable because it was "an expression of Croatian desire for independence", it is in my opinion one of the worst arguments ever that unfortunately still holds ground today. Indy will truly do a strong service for all of the Ex-Yugoslav countries if he portrays war crimes of each side in his weekly episodes, especially in the eyes of foreigners who always find this subject extremely complex. It will also explain the situation in the 90's and why in general extreme nationalism always leads to hostility, madness and degradation.
A nice touch of flamboyance here, Indy. Pink and gray always goes well. 4/5
Rommel's failure of taking Tobruk in April 1941 maybe not surprising if one looks at Morsehead's career in WW1. Rommel gets a lot of credit but Morsehead is relatively unknown and becomes a thorn in Rommels side in North Africa. Highly decorated and received a DSO from Monash for carrying out 2 successful trench raids on the Western front, helped to halt German Spring Offensive at Villers Bretonneux when asked to restore the line at Aubercourt, received a French Légion d'honneur in the grade of Chevalier in his role on August 8th "The Black Day of Germany" or Battle of Amiens. He knew a thing or two about offensive patrolling of which both Australians and Indian troops would now begin to unsettle DAK and Italian forces due to its unorthodox tactics. Like Rommel's rise in WW1, the school master Morsehead also rose from the ranks from a lieutenant at Gallipoli and Lone Pine (where he was the only officer to not be killed and wounded) to become a Battalion commander and by the end of WW2 was up for consideration as a Corps Commander for commonwealth forces in the invasion of Japan. I'm hoping you do a General side project especially as there are not too many that fought battles in deserts and jungles. On which is this the first 'official' land defeat for German forces in WW2? If so the odd quirk of history is that elements of the Australian Tobruk garrison (18th Brigade 7th Division) would go on to fight at Milne Bay and defeat the Japanese land forces for the first time in the Pacific fighting alongside African American engineer troops too. Great as always folks.
This series really makes you realize (at least a little bit) about how difficult the times were back then. And how long the suffering was felt.
I could say a lot about this series...
But I´ll make it simple:
- They are ABSOLUTELY BRILIANT!!!!!
Thanks a lot for that!
@@WorldWarTwo I don´t know if you like board games...
But i think covering an Axis and Allies would be interesting to say the least.
I concur!
"The code is unbreakable!!!" "Sir they broke the code" "NO THEY DIDN'T THE CODE IS UNBREAKABLE!!!"
9:30 sounds like the Highway of Death from the first Gulf War.
surprised iraqis would move anything by highway now with those two events
You know, maybe the Iraqis should take a "last stand" policy when fighting in a hopeless situation, at least then they'll be able to fight back instead of being sitting ducks when retreating.
History repeats itself.
First of all, great video guys, thanks a lot for the content. Second, my grandpa fought in the Battle of Crete and this just makes it all the more chilling for me.
Thanks!
Maritime notes from this episode:
-Always nice to see the handsome Renown
-The merchant ship in the background at 7:14 looks to be the Brisbane Star, which would later go on to both participate in, and survive, the epic 'Pedestal' convoy to Malta in 1942
-Fritz-Julius Lemp made quite a contribution to the allied war effort. As well as allowing an intact enigma machine to fall into British hands, it was he who commanded U30 when it torpedoed the liner Athenia mere hours after the declaration of war in September 1939. That led the British to assume that the Germans had begun unrestricted submarine warfare, therefore the convoy system was immediately introduced for the defence of shipping
I want to just say a big thank you for everyone involved in making this series!
I truly appreciate and enjoy every episode, I always look forward to each new episode on Saturday, makes for a great way to start the weekend.
You're welcome! Thanks for the compliments!
Just 0:45 in and wanted to say this was one of the best openings of the show. Got shivers when Indy said "Enigma changes hands!"
6:35 saw those horns Indi, a Motley Crue indeed
This is by far seriously the most genius idea for a TH-cam channel ever.
Thank you! I have to admit though, that when I did WW1 week by week it was a little more original. Though this is bigger.
Speaking of not being a leader officially, I once had an argument with a Stalinist who said that all of the crimes committed by Stalin before 1941 were not his fault because he wasn't the leader at the time. It's interesting how some people only look at the de facto for the things they disapprove of, but fail to get past the de jure when faced with the things they blindly follow.
There's still Stalinists?
So if I hire a hitman on someone I can just I didn't kill the victim myslef, so it's not my fault. Technically that kind of logic is used by companies today also where they hire workers through other smaller company and when disaster happens, they say that those are not their workers even though they work at their sites just legally employed by other company.
@@firstnamelastname-uw6vq I literally had a Stalinist say numerous times to me "Stalin never killed anyone himself", or something like that. I don't get how they can use these stupid arguments to defend their side.
yeah , i had many ( and still have sometimes ) arguements against stalinists in my uni ( there are plenty of them ) . They also claim to be fans of the greek resistance group ELAS ( which i am a big fan of ) but they dont know anything about them , not even a single battle , they just like the resiastance because it fought nazis and it was communist thats all they know about it , at least the majority of them . They also say that stalin was a saint and 1 of them once told me ( after i nailed him in an arguement ) that the only problem of the modern society is capitalism and that only a communist goverment can solve this .
@@Amusia727 I am amazed to find that this is actually true. I know a libertarian enthusiast who finds himself constantly tormented by these Soviet apologists in on-line political discussion groups.
11:55 Goosebumps, can't wait for some partisan action.
One a side note, I always get a chuckle when you mention that Archibald Wavell is the overall commander of the British Middle-East theater; feels as almost it happens in every episode. :D
Stalin: I am the leader now.
Comrade, weren't you already the leader?
Stalin: I am the leader leader now.
It's coming up to the week my grand-uncle died. He was an anti aircraft gunner in Crete
Must be a weird experience to watch this then
@@WorldWarTwo " Must be a weird experience to watch this then " Grandfather bombed and killed Plymouth Uncle maiden flight over Germany never came back. No just wished we would learn from history.
7:27 Spoiler Alert: Today Souda Bay
hosts a huge NATO naval, air-force and missile base.
NATO stands for the Nazi Anti Trotsky Organization right?
I wish you hadn't spoiled the outcome of this series!
@@QuizmasterLaw spoiler alert
NATO is actually West Allies
@@jakubcesarzdakos5442 oh! fantastic! they went for the separate peace and we exterminated the bolsheviks right?
@@QuizmasterLaw not a separate peace, and it took another 50 or so years for the bolsheviks to collapse, and there was no war that caused it.
But that's spoilers.
@@sonnydog830 well, there were minor wars between a member of Allies and soon-to-be a communist nation in Asia
Guess who lost but called it a victory or a draw
I can't wait for Saturday, May 16th. A new episode from World War Two, and my birthday! Love this series because I'm a huge WW2 nerd, keep up the great work!
Every Saturday morning is awesome because of this show. If I’m down about something this show makes me grateful.
I'm honored to be a positive part of your life!
Indiana Neidell Thank you for all the work that you do, The Great War, TimeGhost and WW2 have reinvigorated my love for history and I am planning on becoming a history teacher.
@@Bbuffalofan1 What a great plan!
I'm loving the horns for Motley Crew.
I was waiting this episode so eagerly for weeks , so much to talk about
First of all General Archibald Wavell , British Commander in Chief Middle East and Mediterranean had his plate full : an Axis backed insurrection in Iraq (which is taken under control slowly) , Axis aid over Vichy French held Syria to Iraq , German Italian attack in Libya and siege of Tobruk (that too is taken mostly under control , Tobruk garrison repulsed all Axis attacks and Afrikakorps checked at Egypt-Libya border) , crushing of last Italian held positions at Amba Alagi in East Africa and inglomious retreat from retreat of Lustre Force from Greece and insufficiant positioning of some remants of Lustre Force in Crete against a German attack. If I was Wavell I would call London and ask a raise to my salary immeditely. Under that much pressure it is remarkable he held his sanity.
I was watching the episode and thinking "is Wavell in charge of that too?"
Yep!
The captured crew of U110 were also kept isolated from other POW's for the rest of the war, to prevent word getting out and maintain the fiction that the sub had gone down with all hands, preventing the acquisition of any sensitive materials useful to the allies.
I’m honestly so excited for the coverage of Operation Barbarossa and even the Endsieg, shame that one will be in another 4 years lol!
King of the who?
@@eyeseeyoucuyler7079 A strange woman lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
6:35 nice hand gestures when you're talking about motley crew...
6:34
I see what you did there
I hadn't noticed the Mötley Crue 😂😂😂 Third time watching
Love your content. Expecially Sino-Japanese part, since we don't learn much about it in Europe.I am surprised you mentioned Tito's arrival in Belgrade, but failed to mention Ravna Gora Movement that happened on 6th May and start of first organised resistance in Europe. Cheers and keep up the good work.
The Sino Japanese war is an incredibly mysterious part of history because...The chinese have a government only too eager to change facts or change history and the japanese feel very shameful of this period and do not often recite this war.
Technically the communists are going to be a much greater deal. Might be why he glossed over Chetniks for now.
@@General_Townes Well wether or not they won, still they should mention as this event is very important. Armija Krajova in Poland also lost to communist, but they are part of history that deserve its place, expecially in videos such as this.
@@General_Townes + I'd say that start of Ravna Gora Movement is more important than Tito opening a shop in Belgrade. Of course Tito and Peoples Liberation Front are important, but there are events on both sides that are more important than other.
Ravna Gora Movement wasn't first organised resistance in Europe. Since 1939 there were Czechoslovak resistance organisations Politické ústředí, Petiční výbor Věrni zůstaneme (PVVZ) and Obrana národa (ON) and with the beginning of 1940 they were organised under Ústřední vedení odboje domácího (ÚVOD).
I'm a big baseball fan too Indy. I moved to Detroit from Denver in 72 just when Billy Martin's reign ended when the lost to Oakland in ALCS .
6 May 1941 , Habbaniya , Iraq : Overnight, Iraqi troops withdrew from the plateau overlooking RAF Habbaniya after suffering 1,000 casualties, largely by RAF aircraft, abandoning large amounts of weapons and supplies. They were pursued by the British King's Own Royal Regiment, which caught up with the Iraqi troops at Sinn El Dhibban, taking 433 prisoners at the cost of 7 British troops killed and 14 wounded. To the south, the 21st Infantry Brigade of the Indian 10th Division arrived by sea at Basra. Meanwhile, Vichy France and Germany signed the Paris Protocol, which gave permission for German troops to march through Syria for Iraq to reinforce the Iraqis; in return, Germany lowered the tribute that France had to pay Germany from 20 million to 15 million Reichsmarks daily
6 May 1941 , Mediterranean Sea , British submarines HMS Taku and HMS Truant sank Italian ship Bengasi off Italy
6 May 1941 , Crete , Eastern Mediterranean , Major P. A. Cohen, who had been among several hundred British soldiers trapped in Greece, reached Crete by caïque, bringing with him 122 Australian troops who had avoided falling into German hands after Greece’s surrender. As some men escaped from German-occupied Europe, others entered it;
6 May 1941 , France , in greatest secrecy, twenty miles north of the town of Châteauroux, in Vichy France, a Frenchman working for British Special Operations, Georges Begué, parachuted successfully into the Unoccupied Zone of France, to set up a clandestine radio transmission at Châteauroux. Four days later, Pierre de Vomécourt was parachuted nearby, as the first group leader in France for the Special Operations Executive: his two brothers, who lived in France, became the first members of his group. Georges Bégue, known as George Noble, and later as ‘George One’, provided the group’s radio contact with London.
6 May 1941 , Occupied Poland , Polish doctor Zygmunt Klukowski noted in his diary that, on this date, he observed Germans conscripting Polish civilians to build military airfields and air raid bunkers even though there was no active war in Eastern Europe.
6 May 1941 , Washington , US Henry Stimson, the United States Secretary for War, made a surprise statement by telling his countrymen that the United States must use its fleet to ensure the triumph of democracy
6 May 1941 , Atlantic Ocean German submarine U-97 sank British ocean boarding vessel HMS Camito and recently captured Italian tanker Sangro 500 miles west of Ireland, killing 28
Ayy! I got an ad this time! For now, this video is monetized!
Great work as always, lets hope more videos in the future are monetized.
(1) Capture of U-110's Enigma machine and codebooks on 09 May 1941 was one of real turning points of the war. On 08 May 1941 , two German submarines U-201 and U-110 under command of Captain Julius Lemp (same Lemp who sunk passanger liner Athenia on 03 September 1939 with several civilians) found and attacked convoy. In a daylight attack they sunk three merchant ships from convoy (13.500 tons) and damaged a fourth one but the convoy was guarded by the nine warships of Baker-Cresswell’s Iceland-based Escort Group 3. The flagship, the destroyer HMS Bulldog, along with the ex-American four-stack destroyer HMS Broadway and one of the three corvettes, HMS Aubrietia, detected and hunted U-110, which was still at periscope depth. All three escorts obtained firm sonar contacts. HMS Broadway attacked, dropping a single depth charge. Seeing Lemp’s periscope, HMS Aubrietia, commanded by V. F. Smith, attacked it twice, dropping sixteen well-placed depth charges set for 100 and 200 feet.
The depth charges from HMS Aubrietia fell very close to U-110. The blasts smashed the diving gauges and other instruments, knocked out the electric motors, diving planes, rudder, and compass, ruptured an aft fuel or ballast tank, sheared off the high-pressure air valves in the control room, and generated chlorine gas in the forward battery. Flooding aft, the boat went out of control and slid stern first to 300 feet. Seeing that U-110 was beyond all hope, Lemp ordered the chief engineer to “prepare for emergency blow,” which would bring them up.
Lemp rushed to the bridge to find a terrifying sight: HMS Bulldog, HMS Broadway, and HMS Aubrietia close at hand, all firing at U-110 with every available weapon. HMS Bulldog and HMS Broadway were coming in at full speed to ram. Lemp shouted: “All hands abandon ship as fast as possible!” There was no time to connect the detonation charges for scuttling. There were forty-seven men on board U-110. In response to the cry “abandon ship,” all hands rushed pell-mell to the bridge in such haste that the radio operator did not take time to destroy or bring the Enigma and code materials with him, and a war correspondent, Helmut Ecke, left behind his still and movie cameras and film. Climbing down on deck through murderous British gunfire, the men dived over the side into the icy water.
(2) Coming in to ram with all weapons blazing, the Escort Group commander, Baker-Cresswell in HMS Bulldog, noted that U-110 was down by the stern but did not appear to be sinking. Believing he might get a boarding party on her or even capture the boat, he ordered full-speed astern to cancel the ramming and in the same breath summoned the boarding party. At about the same time T. Taylor, skipper of HMS Broadway, got the same idea and also canceled his ramming. To panic the German crew, hasten the evacuation of the boat, and thereby possibly prevent scuttling, Taylor came right up to U-110’s bow and dropped two shallow-set depth charges. In the process, however, HMS Broadway fouled U-110’s bow plane, which cut a deep gash in the destroyer’s thin side plating (flooding ten oil tanks and the forward magazine) and damaged the port propeller. U-110's captain Julius Lemp tried to swim back to scuttle the U-Boat when he realised she was not sinking but he couldn't make it and drowned.
Intent on raiding or capturing U-110, Baker-Cresswell in HMS Bulldog and Taylor in HMS Broadway made no effort to fish the Germans from the icy waters. Smith in HMS Aubrietia, who had temporarily lost his sonar, hauled out of the area to make repairs. While doing so, he rescued forty-nine survivors from the lifeboats of the freighter Esmond, sunk by Lemp and alongside all remaining German crew of U-110 in the water. Many died of wounds, hypothermia, and shock, or drifted out of sight. The boarding party from HMS Bulldog, commanded by twenty-year-old Royal Navy Sub-Lieutenant David E. Balme, rowed the whaler right up on the forward deck of U-110. Carrying Lee Enfield rifles and pistols, the nine men jumped out and spread around the deck and bridge to shoot any Germans who might attempt to interfere with the mission. To Balme’s astonishment, both the conning-tower and control-room hatches were dogged shut, not what one would expect of a scuttling U-boat. Pistol drawn, he opened the hatches, expecting to confront crewmen below. But the boat was deserted. Increadibly Royal Navy had her first enemy submarine captured almost intact due to her captains panic and misjudgement.
All hands had abandoned ship. All the lights were on, burning brightly; there was no sign of flooding or any indication of chlorine gas. After a hurried inspection, Balme signaled Baker-Cresswell on HMS Bulldog that the U-boat appeared to be “seaworthy and towable” and requested that he send an engineering party to operate U-110’s machinery. Baker-Cresswell directed Taylor on HMS Broadway to send an engineer to U-110 via whaler, then eased HMS Bulldog close to U-110 to receive an old, rusty 2″ steel cable that two of Balme’s men had found in a topside locker on the U-boat. Meanwhile, belowdecks, Balme and the other six members of his party were collecting intelligence items of incalculable value. Balme described that work in a secret report to the Admiralty. In part:
"The U-boat had obviously been abandoned in great haste as books and gear were strewn about the place. A chain of men was formed to pass up all books, charts, etc. As speed was essential owing to the possibility of the U-boat sinking (although dry throughout) I gave orders to send all books, except obviously reading books, so consequently a number of comparatively useless navigational books, etc., were recovered. All charts were in drawers under the chart table in the control room; there were also some signal books, log books, etc. here. … Meanwhile the telegraphist went to the W/T [radio] office just forward of the control room on the starboard side. This was in perfect condition, apparently no attempt having been made to destroy any books or apparatus. Here were found C.B.s [codebooks], Signal Logs, pay books, and general correspondence, looking as if this room had been used as a ship’s office. Also the coding machine [Enigma] was found here, plugged in as though in actual use when abandoned. The general appearance of this machine being that of a typewriter, the telegraphist pressed the keys and finding results peculiar, sent it up the hatch."
(3) Having been aboard U-110 for about five hours and having ransacked her of everything useful and interesting (including six sextants and ten pairs of Zeiss binoculars, Ecke’s cameras, and Lemp’s Ritterkreuz), Balme’s boarding party and engineering team of HMS Bulldog closed all watertight doors, dogged down all hatches, and returned to their ships. Escorted by the damaged HMS Broadway, HMS Bulldog headed for Iceland-400 miles distant-towing the yawing U-110 at a speed of 6 knots. All went well for about seventeen hours-about 100 miles-but at 11:00 the following morning, March 10, all abandoned U-110 suddenly upended and sank, “her bow standing vertically out of the water.” The loss, Baker-Cresswell wrote, was a “bitter blow.”
Baker-Cresswell in HMS Bulldog reached Iceland late on March 10. He transferred the thirty-two German prisoners from HMS Amazon to HMS Bulldog and the next day set off for Scapa Flow, making 25 knots to avoid any possibility of a U-boat attack. En route he talked individually and cagily with the three German officers and the correspondent Ecke, to see if any of them had an inkling that U-110 had been boarded or taken in tow. Apparently none did. Nor did any of the enlisted men, who were canvassed in a similar manner by the crewmen of HMS Bulldog. Since some of the Germans had seen HMS Bulldog launch the whaler with the boarding party, Baker-Cresswell and his crew put about a “cover story” that U-110 had “sunk” before it could be boarded. (crews of HMS Bulldog , HMS Broadway and HMS Aubrietia and rescued survivors of sunk merchant ships who witnessed or participated boarding of U-110 were all sworn secrecy. Remarkably no wording of boarding leaked till naval historian Stephen Roskill wrote a slim book about it “Secret Capture” in 1959.
The intelligence haul from U-110, which filled “two packing crates,” was eye-popping and historic and no doubt kind of intelligence material that would change course of war : a working naval Enigma machine, the keys for Heimisch (the Home Waters or Dolphin code) for April and June, the keys to the double-enciphered Offizierte (Officers-Only) code, a book containing the Kurzsignale (Short Signal) code, and Kriegsmarine grid charts, as well as special charts showing the safe routes through German minefields in the North Sea and along the French coast, decoded U-boat traffic (in Heimisch) for the period April 15-May 9, administrative correspondence, a complete set of technical manuals and diagrams of all the Type IXB fuel, air, hydraulic and other systems, war correspondent Eicke's camera and films showing daily patrol life in U-110 and U-Boat base in Lorient and hundreds of mundane items, down to the citation for the award of the Iron Cross Second Class to the chief engineer, Eichelborn. After he had been briefed on the haul, Royal Navy First Sea Lord Dudley Pound telexed Baker-Cresswell, who had codenamed the boarding Operation Primrose: “Hearty congratulations. The petals of your flower are of rare beauty.”
The current Heimisch keys for May, printed on water-soluble paper, had apparently been destroyed by the Germans or possibly lost or ruined during the transfer to HMS Bulldog. Hence it was not possible for Bletchley Park to read Heimisch currently until June. Duplicate Heimisch keys for June were obtained when, in a well-planned action, a British naval task force captured the 300-ton German weather-reporting trawler München on May 7. The Admiralty showered praise and awards on all those concerned with the victory over U-110. Pound immediately promoted Baker-Cresswell from commander to captain. In a special ceremony at Buckingham Palace, King George VI appointed Baker-Cresswell and HMS Aubrietia captain, Smith, Companions of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). He awarded Balme , and the captain of HMS Broadway, Taylor, the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC). Three others received the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) and fourteen officers and men were “Mentioned in Dispatches.” When the King gave Balme his DSC, the official naval historian wrote, the King told Balme this boarding operation “was perhaps the most important single event in the whole war at sea.”
"The petals of your flower are of rare beauty."
STAPLE THY FOE. OUR LOWER ERROR BEAT A FUY. FAE.
I still have my copy of "The Ultra Secret" by Frederick Winterbotham published around 1974 or 75. I was in high school. The Ultra project had been just declassified in that time frame. It caused a stir in history circles because it had apparently been unknown up until declassification. It both answered and raised questions and led to a reexamination of how various allied leaders had conducted the war. There was an article comparing Patton and Montgomery. The information had to used carefully so the project wasn't revealed. No problem with Montgomery. He would sit on a file drawer of product and not move. Give Patton one file from that drawer and he was moving forward.
This is an awesome series.
Thanks!
*alarm blares* OH BOY 8:30 AM! Time to watch WW2 covered by TIME GHOST ARMY!
Exactly! Look forward to enjoying my weekly “WWII News Briefing” with breakfast every Saturday!
Motley Crew reference and Baseball History buff... how can you not LOVE Indy?!?
“Anglo Iraqi War” Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland: Am I a joke to you?
Indeed the term does half the justice for the whole UK
English are their masters.
The crew of U110 (32 survived) were sequestered at Monteith POW camp in northern Ontario in an attempt to prevent knowledge of the submarine's capture and that of the Enigma and code books, leaking to the Germans.
I feel like there have not been any mentions on the Sino-Japanese conflict for some time.
I presume the front went quiet but who knows?
Stalemate on the Far East as Japanese are extensively preparing for large offensive in the Philippines, British Malaya and Dutch East Indies.
Because it's easily the most boring front in the entire war. Just half-hearted offensives that either fail immediately or are reverted by the following week. Doesn't help that most of us are well aware that it's gonna stay this way all the rest throughout the entire war and there won't be any exciting Chinese counter-advances to look forward to. Indy probably doesn't feel like covering it unless he absolutely has to and after December I won't be surprised if the "far to the East" segment becomes almost entirely dedicated to the actually successful Japanese conquests elsewhere in South-East Asia as well as the US initating the Pacific War, with a passing mention of China every few weeks or so, shoehorned under "a few notes to end the week".
@@yarpen26 in 1944 a lot of territory fell to the Japanese, perhaps surprisingly. I'm not sure why the nationalist collapse started in 1944 but it appears to be the case judging by the Japanese territorial gains in that year.
Looking at the book Forgotten Ally, one of Indy's sources, I can see why. It does not really go in-depth into this part of the war. But it still gets mentioned like at 9:39.
Indy, you are the man. I watched your WW1 series and absolutely loved it. And now WW2. I have studied WW1, WW2 and the Korean War for many years. My father, very young---though he was Italian---didn't agree with Italy allying itself with Germany, so when the opportunity came he left his aircraft mechanic apprenticeship, killed a junior German officer and dressed in the man's uniform, and with dead man's ID (no picture) he stole a bicycle and rode down the boot from Lucca to join up with the American forces under Patton. On the way he located pieces of paper or other packaging and with a small pencil circled on the hastily-drawn maps various gun emplacements in each town he rode through. Speaking French, German s as well, he was fine communicating with the German forces he would come across during his trek. Hello spoke some English, having learned it in school. The US forces he met up with under Capt. Bouse (not certain of the spelling) eventually allowed him to stay with them as an honorary US soldier. He ended up in the segregated unit called the Buffalo Squad.
7 May 1941 , Liverpool , UK , German aircraft conducted the first of the two consecutive nightly raids on Hull, England, United Kingdom. Meanwhile, Liverpool, England was bombed for the seventh (and final) consecutive night, damaging destroyer HMS Hurricane; by this time, 75% of Liverpool's port capacity had been destroyed. Over 400 civilians killed and center of Liverpool totally gutted by fire.
7 May 1941 , Tobruk , Libya , During the day, German bombers sank British minesweeper HMS Stoke at Tobruk, Libya, killing 21. After nightfall, British cruiser HMS Ajax and destroyers HMS Havock, HMS Hotspur, and HMS Imperial bombarded Benghazi, Libya, sinking Italian cargo ships Tenace and Capitano Cecchi
7 May 1941 , Basra , Iraq , Indian 20th and 21st Brigades marched out of Basra, Iraq to attack nearby port of Ashar.
7 May 1941 , Atlantic Ocean , In the North Atlantic at 1707 hours, the German weather ship München was sighted between the cruiser HMS Edinburgh and the destroyer, HMS Somali. The latter fired warning shots which caused most of the München's crew to take to the boats. Somali closed at speed and boarded the ship. A prize crew and boarding party from HMS Edinburgh then went over on a cutter, which also carried a mysterious man in civilian clothes (later revealed to be Captain J. R. S Haines RN of Naval intelligence). The München's captain, another officer and several ratings received the boarding party with great courtesy and a search of the German vessel was commenced. Although the German captain had thrown the Enigma machine and the May coding tables over the side as Somali approached, the settings for June were found in his desk, and these were duly collected by Captain Haines, who knew exactly what he was looking for. HMS Nestar took Captain Haines and his valuable find to Scapa Flow, Scotland, United Kingdom at speed.
8 May 1941 , Indian Ocean , A Walrus seaplane from British cruiser HMS Cornwall spotted German armed merchant cruiser Pinguin 400 miles off British Somaliland. The two ships fired on each other at 1714 hours; Pinguin was fatally damaged by HMS Cornwall's superior firepower, but HMS Cornwall was also hit, killing 1 and wounding 3. Shortly after Pinguin's commanding officer gave the abandon ship order, an eight-inch shell hit Pinguin, detonating her store of 130 naval mines and sinking her; 341 crew and 214 prisoners were killed, 66 crew and 22 prisoners survived and picked up by HMS Cornwall
8 May 1941 , United Kingdom , German aircraft conducted the last of the two consecutive nightly raids on Humberside, England. In exchange RAF nightfigthers shot down 23 German bombers
9 May 1941 , Salonika , Greece , A minefield laid by British submarine HMS Rorqual sunk 2.000 ton Italian tanker Rossi
Great episode- thank you👍
err, the British had the enigma-machine earlier then that...
the Polish secret service had handed them one! but the Eingma-machine was modified since then and they did not have the all-important codebook. that's why it was such a stroke of luck that the decoding-guy in service saved the poetry he wrote for his lover, thinking the sub would sink a lot faster then it actually did, instead of wrecking the enigma-machine and throw the code book in the sea...
It was the blunder of U-110's captain Julius Lemp (same U-Boat captain who sunk passanger ship Athrnia in 3rd September 1939) that he gave in to panic and prematurely ordered to abandon the ship when it was obvious that U-Boat was NOT sinking. After that Royal Navy boarding party led by Lt. David Balme remained and ramsacked the u-boat after they abandoned it for six fours even taking mundane items like torpedo field manual , Zeiss binaculars , Chief Engineers Ritterkreuss as well as four rotor Enigma machine and all of its codebooks. Admiral Doenitz at the other hand naively assumed that Lemp died heroicly and named a barracks in Lorient after him. Long after the war though when his gaffe and negligence of letting Royal Navy capture his boat intact , ex U-Boat captains turned quite negative in their assesment of Lemp , some of them remarked if Lemp survived they would gladly shoot him
@@merdiolu close, but not a cigar...
there is actually a documentary about the capture/sinking of U-110 (i'm not even sure about that specific number for it is a long while since i've watched said documentary) in which the radio-guy admits that it is entirely his fault that the enigma-machine and the codebook fell into British hands.
you're right about Lemp "jumping the gun", but it was the radio-guy's responsability, even at a rapid sinking, to destroy the enigma and the book.
6:35 - Love Indy flashing the devil horns when mentioning the Motley Crue. LOL
I really appreciate the dual devil horns right after saying mötley crüe (6:33).
\m/ (>_
Great show as always Indy and Crew! been around since the halfway point of the great war and binged everything before and till this point, keep on keeping on!
Thanks for watching! Much more to come! Cheers!
@@WorldWarTwo Thank You and cheers aswell!
I don't suppose anyone bothered to tell General Morhead that you can't retreat when you're under siege... Looking forward to seeing more of him though as a quick glance at Wikipedia seems to show that he's quite the badass.
Not when it's a port that's under siege and the waters are in control of your allies. They could evacuate if they wanted to.
He wasn't called 'Ming the Merciless" for nothing.:)
Thank you Indy for showing proper respect to the greatest hairband. Rock on Vince and Nikki!
6:34 got me laughing in real time
This is the best channel on youtube
That's not how the Enigma machine was captured! The Enigma machine was captured by French Resistance fighter Renee "Nighthawk" Artois and his team. They infiltrated a German banquet, held at a chateau at the French town of Nuvion. And the machine itself was taken by agent Mimi LeBonk, who was hidden in a massive violin case and threw the Engima out of a window, where a team of French Resistance fighters, led by Michelle of the Resistance, captured it with bed sheet.
Sheesh, check your sources!
Highfive to anyone who gets it.
Of course I can ear you
The one used by submarines had more modifications.
all the while hiding the fallen Madonna with the big boobies down his trousers
I hope you listened very carefully, it was said only once.
René is starting to feel this war is getting out of control. Rationing, oppression... Even his wife might begin to suspect that he has been banging the female employees... Amid the great geopolitical events we should never forget the small personal details.
Nice to see you back guys!
Will you make a special episode on Enigma and the breaking of the code?
Yes! It is already written and will be filmed soon!
@@WorldWarTwo Nice! good that more people are going to know more details on war on enigma before turing took over
Indy, my father and his unit were only a few kilometers from Sant'Anna when that massacre occurred.
1:12 The capture of U-110 partially inspired the 2000 movie U-571, although the movie is rather highly inaccurate with regards to details (eg. such as Americans capturing an Enigma machine early in the war when it should have been a British crew!). Probably a better movie to watch would have been the 1981 West German movie Das Boot.
5:15 On a side footnote on Crete, quite a significant number of Greek soldiers stationed on Crete were running fairly low on ammunition at this stage after the Battle of Greece, and unfortunately the British Commonwealth units were often not able to resupply them due to different calibers in their ammo stocks. The British Commonwealth themselves also found that they had many unwanted personnel such as stragglers and deserters who were not really being the most helpful in the defence of Crete and often had to evacuate them to Egypt. This may have consequences for the upcoming battle.
Das Boot is the movie to watch regardless of your point of reference ;)
@@Yezu666 Agreed, not to mention their cool techno theme song of the same name by U96 is a classic too!
If you're interested in the fall of Crete, Operation Mercury by M.G. Comeau is a good read, it's a first hand account written by an RAF ground crewman who fought in the Defense of Maleme airfield. He was awarded the Miltary Medal for his efforts on Crete.
The 2002 action/horror movie "Below" was more historically accurate than "U-571" and it had grappling hooks and ghosts.
@@Raskolnikov70 Sounds like a movie I'm going to watch.
Absolutely fantastic,narration perfect, presentation perfect .
Did I hear “Karl Student”? I thought it was Kurt. 5:16
Brain freeze
Yes, it's Kurt. Indy misspoke.
Love the Mötley Crüe reference, Indy!
Brace yourself, Tito's here.
The British got their first Enigma machine out of Poland much earlier in the war. The good thing about the sub machine was the additional code book.
actuqally it was updated version, they already knew how to crack one, how it's build and how to make bomb from Poland, but they had to get updated enigma so they can update proces on newer hardware
Indy talking about baseball do you know that your hair is almost the same color as that of a young Vin Scully.
Children's author Roald Dahl was one of the 17 hurricane pilots in Crete. He talks about his experience in his autobiography, Going Solo, one of my favourite books growing up. He recalls arriving at Crete, not yet having seen combat, and his mechanic telling him that there were 2000 German planes poised over Crete ready to attack at any moment. Clearly he exaggerated but still, the odds were not in the RAF's favour! Somehow Roald Dahl not only survived but managed to shoot down 5 German planes to the bargain, and then escaped Crete. I highly recommend TimeGhost check it out, it has some very quotable lines.
We used Roald Dahl's experiences as a pilot in the Instagram posts where we quoted "Going Solo" on April 20 1941 - the day of the Dahl-dubbed Battle of Athens. A biography special on him is also planned for the near future!
Awesome job guys! I look forward to it.
Didn't the British already had an enigma machine gifted by the Poles who reverse engineered it before the war erupted?
Different, more primitive (at that time outdated) version. It helped somewhat at cracking this advanced one, but not really that much.
The British would certainly be able to break the code on their own, but without the Poles they would not be able to do it before the end of the war. After improving the Enigma, Poles gave the machine because it was dangerous for them. They decided that it is better and safer to hand it over to an ally.
they had hardware and instructions how to deal with pre updae enigma, and the needed updated enigma to do it. to give you comparation how much Polish efforts helped them is that it took 6 years to break it, now compare it to how much it took for brits to update it
We'll be talking more about Enigma in a special coming soon!
@@WorldWarTwo Great!
1.40 In February 1942 the Kriegsmarine switched to the four rotor machine. One of the three ships involved in the capture was HMS Broadway, launched 1919 and acquired in the Destroyers for (non existent) Bases Agreement.
That modified four rotor Enigma also was broken when another U-Boat was boarded in Mediterranean and her signals books were captured in October 1942
uboat.net on Enigma
uboat.net/technical/enigma_breaking.htm
Tito 😍 Probably the greatest Croatian badass.
I think his mother was Slovene.
In the late 1940s a rumour was circulated in the USA that Tito might be a Polish or even Russian impostor. It was claimed there were oddities in the way he spoke Serbo-Croat that suggested he was not a native speaker and that it was possible the original Josip Broz had been replaced by someone else. However, Tito's native Kajkavian dialect of Croatian does have some unusual features in relation to other forms of Serbo-Croat. It is likely the story was CIA disinformation or a poorly-sourced rumour.
Nope, he was born in Kumrovec a town in Croatias north where his house is still preserved and people can visit it. His father was a Corat named Franjo Broz and his mother was Slovene. Most of his youth and pre-ww2 he lived and worked in Croatia. Never heard about this Russian-Polish imposter. Doubt it because he was against Stalin and his eastern soviet block.
@@jurepero6163 It was almost certainly BS but the rumour circulated. A Serb posted details to me about the claim a few years back.
What a great episode... I wait all week for these...
People. Party. Tito
Your channel and each of your series are awesome! Love the content and all the intricate details! Keep up the incredible work Indy!
I really enjoyed that Motley Crew reference. Subtle yet effective.
Best graphics - maps etc on the internet. outrageously excellent work my guys
Thanks a lot! Spread the word!
Fritz-Julius Lemp, if you recall was the U-Boat commander who sank the liner Athenia on the first day of the war. BTW, there were three RN Warships who participated in the action: HMS Bulldog ("B" Class DD), HMS Broadway (ex-USS Hunt, Clemson class DD) and Flower Class corvette HMS Aubrelia.
Nice bit of Sunday Baseball at the end there
Passionnant comme toujours .
Your nod to Mötley Crüe had me chuckling.
6:34 KICKSTART MY F'ING HEART, INDY! 🤘😝🤘
Good show. Thanks. This is my weekly routine now.
Just watched the entire series till now during the lockdown.
''Are in motley crew'' haha ,nice one !! Besides that ,the battle for Greece is over ,the battle for Crete is about to begin. Next episode : Battle of Crete ''So it begins'' ... Getting better and better , Regards from Greece and Cyprus ,awesome content.
Don't forget that this day on May 9, our old friend the Franco-Thai war officially ended with a peace treaty in Tokyo. France was forced to cede its border territories in Laos and Cambodia to Thailand.
Just for the history, the names of the main cretan cities are(from west to east) - Chania, Rethymno, Herakleio and Aghios Nikolaos. All of them situated on the northern coast.
Indy - great work- could have been 3 episodes as there was so much going on. I have been to Bletchley Park and their work was amazing, breaking Enigma was one thing but breaking Hitler's code machine without even seeing it was outstanding.
i wish they do a special about war with enigma from 1935 to 1941
Took awhile to get from wk 001 to 089 but now I'm caught up. NOW I can subscribe!
Also, gives me time to explore other series like between two wars, etc.
:D loving the videos. Look forward to them every weekend!
Great content and ties, especially the North Africa, Crete, and Iraq content