Anti-submarine warfare

Completely coincidentally, in these days of submarine anniversaries, I found the site Indicator Loops on Allied harbour protections against submarines. Apparently there was one of these just next to the grounding site at the time, one wonders if they are still around or if they have been dismantled.

Ship spotters

Reading up on aircraft carriers, I ran into scores of codes indicating the convoys the carriers were protecting. I could distinguish certain patterns, but the full information is of course available at ConvoyWeb

Guarding the ramparts

One of the prominent features of the Siarö fort is that it’s not actually located on Siarö, but Sjöbris knows how to get to the right place, so we jumped ashore on Kyrkogårdsön. It was one of the few sunny days this summer, so I insisted we start with a walk around the island. We soon found ourselves in a rock-and-concrete trench with two smallish guns on tracks at each end. Little concrete machine gun nests that somehow had been rendered in the same reddish tone as the granite were strewn all over the hillside.

A staircase led up to what turned out to be the huge concrete cap over the actual fort. It looked for all the world like a huge skateboard park, but with two 152 mm gun turrets. The entire thing was surrounded by more slit trenches, from which any landing of marines would be repelled.

The forest was filled with old and rusting barbed wire and I wondered how often deer or elk would get trapped in it—not even in its active period was the fort manned more than intermittently.

Beyond the fort lay the cholera churchyard for which the island was named, now just a lush meadow. We continued down to the café for lunch. (Note: both the cafeteria and the boat had only been able to offer pancakes in the way of vegetarian food. There is a limit to how many pancake meals one can have in a day.) Fortified, we were ready to tackle the insides of the fort. The entrance consisted of one of those one-person-at-a-time revolving doors, to make sure nobody would get in without a ticket.

Inside it was quite cold and damp and it turned out that the military had soon realised the premises were too unhealthy to keep even conscripts in, so in spite of the carefully marked sleeping quarters for officers, NCOs and privates, the garrison had actually spent most of their time in what eventually became the hostel we had just visited. However, one of the rooms had been furnished with an industrial-grade de-humidifier and heating to serve as a lecture hall. As soon as we entered, a projection screen rolled down from the ceiling and a showing of military archive films started. I noted with professional interest that sea waves apparently did not compress well in whatever digital format had been chosen and ended up as a mess of artefacts. On the other hand, the pedagogical trick of indicating cut-away drawings with an animated knife actually cutting away bits was absolutely brilliant.

The washing facilities for the conscripts. I presume the faucets have been removed to keep people from testing if they work, not that an overflowing sink would make any difference whatsoever here.

I climbed up into one of the lookout hoods and found I had a most excellent view of the fairway, but I still wonder what kind of damage the mounted guns would have been able to inflict on 1940s warships.

It was a relief to return out into the sunshine.

Om kriget som aldrig kom

Som jag nämnt tidigare, så gjordes stora ansträngningar under Kalla Kriget att skydda befolkningen inför och under sovjetisk invasion. Bergrum.se är ett försök att samla och systematisera information om dessa ansträngningar – ett inte helt lätt arbete eftersom man, just med tanke på en eventuell invasion, dokumenterade mycket lite, utan lät det mesta sitta i huvudet på berörda personer. (Och det man hade dokumenterat, skickade Wennerström och Bergling vidare till just Sovjet.)

Och när jag ändå letade runt, hittade jag Anders Jallais blogg där han gör sitt bästa för att dokumentera Sveriges dåtida, och enligt hans mening, fortgående underrättelsesamarbete med NATO.

Utö and Ålö

The Mill House is a short walk through the woods from the main building.

Back to Utö again. The morning doesn’t start off very well—the weather isn’t the best, the place is too crowded, the usual staff is on vacation, and a million other little things annoy us. However, we get a very cosy room in the Mill House and we go for what seems to have become our favourite activity here: Collapse in bed and wake up in time for dinner. A five-course meal later we feel a lot better.

The next morning we have breakfast outdoors and then make use of the bike tour we won last Christmas. We get a couple of sturdy bikes with balloon tires, buy us lunch in the local shop and then strike out to explore the map with secret bathing places we have been supplied with.

The sea is never far away.

In no time at all we are in a landscape which makes me feel as if we were in a Swedish 1940s film, perforce the bike even wants to go on the left side of the road. We travel on wheel-track roads past green meadows with cows and sheep, the sun is warm without being hot (though I’ve taken the precaution of slathering myself with the usual SPF 50+) and it feels as if all the road is downhill. (We did start at sea level, but since we are moving southwards this must obviously be due to the curvature of the Earth…)

A TGB m/42 SKPD

We move into the firing range at southern Utö, open to the public during the summer. The landscape is as lush as before, but every few metres are placards with dire warnings about not touching unexploded ordnance. We arrive at a military compund with a couple of armoured vehicles on exhibit outside. We crawl around a bit on them and then continue on our way.

Eventually we cross a little bridge to Ålö, separated from Utö by the narrowest of sounds. Here is our first stop, we sit on a rock, looking on the sea and eating our lunch and then we just sit there and enjoy the day.

A Södermanland forest at its most beautiful.

Then to find the next bridge back to Utö. Next to it is a little hut like a ticket window, but its actual purpose is opaque. We end up on what goes for the main road around the south of the island. It brings us to a beach, perfect for amphibious assault exercises, but now occupied by a smattering of families with children. It turns out to be mostly impossible to bike through the loose sand, we have to push the bikes along until we get up on solid ground again. We continue, soon stopping to eat wild strawberries and chat with a baby squirrel sitting by the road.

Soon we find ourselves by the centre piece of the firing range, a long rail track on which I surmise targets are pulled during exercises. A seriously shot-up skip stands by the track.

Faithfully guarding the ramparts.

We aim for our final target, a cave by the shore. We have to leave the bikes by the road and follow a foot path through the forest for a bit. To Honeybuns’ disappointment, the caves are in fact little more than deep crevices, but the cliff landscape is fantastic and I suddenly find a dilapidated bunker hidden in a ravine. We jump around on the cliffs for a while, but now, how should we get back to the bikes? Probably best to just cut straight throught the forest. Of course, since this is a military area, the forest has never been logged and does not take lightly to our efforts to pass. Finally we sight the road and stumble up on it. Time for tick inspection. No nasty critters seem to have attached themselves to us. Honeybuns is relieved. I am even more relieved that we didn’t accidentally step on an old landmine or something, belatedly having realised what a stupid idea it was to go off-road.

Now it is time to return to the harbour and get home. Rather tired by now, we pedal along sedately when I see something brownish moving out of the corner of my eye. Another squirrel, no, a dog, no, AN ELK! The elk jumps up on the road behind me and I, flustered, pedal away as fast as I can, wishing I had a ten-speed. Luckily the elk drops the chase after just a few steps and returns in among the trees without showing much interest in Honeybuns, so she soon rejoins me. We return along the side of the shooting range and while we have seen very few people all day, now returning bikers appear on all tributary roads, heading for the harbour. Soon we are a convoy, heading north.

Luckily the Earth has revolved enough that it’s still mostly downhill, because by now we are really tired. We return the bikes and sit down for a breather. We have dinner in the restaurant on the main street and then get on the boat.

Finished model 2011-I

The cover art on Matchbox’ “Focke-Wulf FW.190” kit has the following caption:

Two F.W. 190’s patrolling over the Eastern Front on the 17th December 1942 are shown attacking one of the seven Petlyakov PE-2’s they destroyed on this their first sortie with the new F.W. 190.

The painting instructions on the back of the box indicate that the aircraft on the cover comes from “111 Group J.G. 51 Fighter Unit (Eastern Front)”, i e presumably III/JG 51. More specifically, since the aircraft carries red numbers, it would be from 8./JG 51, or, spelling out the abbreviation: 8. Staffel/III Gruppe/Jagdgeschwader 51 „Mölders“. (More explanation)

Finding out more about this incident required trawling through quite a bit of references. It was known that a Günther Schack had shot down five of those Pe-2s, but what was the exact date, what unit did he belong to and what subtype of Fw 190 was he flying?

• Campbell [1975] says a Lt. Gunther [sic] had shot down six Pe-2s on his first sortie with a Fw 190A-4 of III/JG 51, at some point before 1943-02-11.
• Weal [2000] says Oblt Günther Schack flew a Fw 190A-4 of 9./JG 51 and shot down five Pe-2s on 1943-01-29. This is contradicted by Weal [2006], where he says Lt Günther Schack shot down five Pe-2s on 1942-12-17 (possibly, unclear from context) while flying with a unit of III/JG 51, possibly 7./JG 51, extrapolating from the unit he’d flown with earlier in 1942.
• Shores [1974] says Lt Günther Schack shot down five Pe-2s while flying a Fw 190A-4 of III/JG 51, but gives no date.
• Kacha says Günther Schack performed this feat both on 1942-12-17 and on 1943-01-29, while flying a Fw 190A-4 of III/JG 51, possibly 7./JG 51.
• Lexikon der Wehrmacht says he flew with 7./JG 51 and was promoted Leutnant on 1943-01-01.

Fortunately we can go to more primary sources: the Luftwaffe claims lists give us the information we need:

17.12.42	Ofw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	25 km. N.E. Sychëvka: 250 m. (Smolensk)	11.58
17.12.42	Ofw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	27 km. N.E. Sychëvka: 2.500 m.	11.59
17.12.42	Ofw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	35 km. N.E. Sychëvka: 2.500 m.	12.00
17.12.42	Ofw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	33 km. N.E. Sychëvka: 2.500 m.	12.01
17.12.42	Ofw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	20 km. S. Subzoff: 3.000 m.	12.17

And, we also find this:

29.01.43	Fw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	63 322: at 1.800 m.	08.31
29.01.43	Fw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	63 444: at 1.700 m.	08.32
29.01.43	Fw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	63 444: at 1.600 m.	08.33
29.01.43	Fw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	63 444: at 1.500 m.	08.34

So, we have one occasion of five Pe-2s shot down, and a second of four shot down. The unit definitely seems to be 7./JG 51, though it seems unlikely that Schack would have been demoted from Oberfeldwebel to Feldwebel between December and January, so some error in the sources seems to be present.

In the December incident, we see that there is a first group of four shot down within minutes (it seems likely that the first kill is also at 2500 m, rather than 250) and the last one 16 minutes later, some distance away and at a different height. When we plot this on a map we see some interesting things: III/JG51 were at the time based in Orel (marked with a red blob on the map) [Holm], and the patrol’s interception was over 200 km to the north, past Moscow. The first three kills are made while flying on a north-easterly course, but the patrol has then doubled back for the fourth. At 12:10 Unteroffizier Baumestner (presumably Schack’s wingman) shot down another Pe-2 12 km south of „Subzoff“, i e further west, and then at 12:17 Schack shot down the final Pe-2 almost at the point of the first kill. (Assuming the positions given are trustworthy and precise. Movable Type’s lat/long scripts were invaluable in fixing them on a map.) The north-easterly course would imply that the Soviet bombers were on their way home, but the question is then why the last kills were further west, as it seems unlikely that the Soviet crews would try to escape to safety in that direction, but possibly these were stragglers that had become separated from the others. That the positions are given with reference to Zubtsov rather than Sychyovka, suggests that the patrol had moved about and taken new bearings before finding the last two bombers.

The January mission was closer to home, if I have managed to convert the Jägergradnetz coordinates correctly (using LUMA). Further, the given times would indicate that the kills were made just before daybreak. Might this in fact have been an interception of a dawn raid on the airfield itself? (It is also possible that the time given was Berlin time, rather than local, Moscow, time.)


Show a bigger version.

(The map also indicates that while the landscape is not completely flat, it does not feature anything like the dramatic snow-covered mountains on the box art.)

Now, what about the aircraft? In this case the relevant document is Flugzeugbestand und Bewegungsmeldungen III./JG 51 which gives us that III/JG 51 during the relevant months had:

1942-11:	7 Fw 190A-3, 6 Fw 190A-2
1942-12:	11 Fw 190A-3, 23 Fw 190A-2
1943-01:	16 Fw 190A-3, 16 Fw 190A-2
1943-02:	15 Fw 190A-3, 25 Fw 190A-2

Clearly Schack could not have flown an A-4 at this time, but it could have been either an A-2 or an A-3. For modelling purposes they are identical, as the difference lies in the engine subtype [Baugher 2004], so we will not worry unduly about this distinction. The Matchbox kit claims to be an A-3, but in fact contains a mixture of A-3 and A-4 features, the most visible being having both the A-4’s high antenna post on the fin and the A-3’s direct lead into the fin. Well, this is pretty typical Matchbox, but onto more visible features: how would the aircraft have been painted? The painting instructions indicate a 70/71/65 camouflage, with a high demarcation line and a spinner with concentric circles in black and white, but is this supported by photographic and documentary evidence? There is relatively little in the way of photographic evidence of JG 51 Fw 190s [though see Arthy], but we can extrapolate from other Fw 190 units on the Eastern Front, primarily JG 54.

German fighters had switched from 70/71/65 to 74/75/76 camouflage in 1941, but this was dictated by high altitude flying where grey colours blended in better with the sky. On the Eastern Front, fighters were sent out against low-level bombers and attack aircraft and also needed to be better hidden on the ground, so units there reverted to the old-style camouflage. Then, when winter arrived, they were winter camouflaged with white paint over the top surfaces. However, photographs indicate that green/green aircraft were used in parallel with white-painted aircraft, there were also aircraft only partially white-painted over the green/green surfaces and then the thin layer of white would wear off fairly quickly, letting the green/green surfaces shine through.

In the end I decided, mostly out of time constraints, to go for an all-white scheme, and since they supposedly were on their first patrol, the paint would still be fresh. Weal has drawn a profile of Herbert Wehnelt’s Fw 190A-3 from 7./JG 51, though without giving any photographic source for it, that I let myself be inspired by.

Then, the markings. Clearly Matchbox’ markings were spurious (which actually is a bit surprising, usually they are based on some well-known individual), and worse, the „10“ numerals on the actual decals were for no good reason drastically simplified from the rendition on the box art, the latter which correctly depicted 8 Staffel markings in red with white surrounds. In the absence of any other evidence, I just pilfered a white number „1“ and III Gruppe vertical bar from the Kagero decal sheet nr 25 „JG 26 vol II“. Something clearly visible from available photographs was that, in opposition to JG 54, JG 51 aircraft did usually not carry any unit emblems at this time, so I didn’t have to worry about that.

Yeah, and then the actual building of the model:
I scratch-built a cockpit interior, opened up the cooling louvres behind the engine and also deepened the space behind the exhaust tubes (but didn’t bother making the tubes themselves). I wanted to build an aircraft in flight, so I filed down the tail wheel to its correct semi-retracted position. I also added an antenna cable and removed the incorrect antenna post. Some amount of filler was needed, in particular around the wings, and some panel lines needed to be (re-)scribed. Another curious item was that the wings had the bulges for MG FF cannon, but no barrels supplied. These were of course easy to add. I also created a pitot tube out of a length of syringe and a Q-tip that I stretched over a candle.

Painting was a bit of a painful process, I’m using the airbrush too seldom to become really proficient, but I think I learned some useful lessons.

Literature:
Chronik Jagdgeschwader 51 »Mölders«, Gebhard Aders & Werner Held, 2009, Motorbuch Verlag.
Aircraft Archive: Classics of World War Two, Argus Books, 1989.
“Early Focke-Wulf FW 190s on the Eastern Front: The FW 190 A-1, A-2 and A-3 with Jagdgeschwader 51”, Andrew Arthy.
“Modeller's Guide to Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Variants: Radial Engine Versions—Part I”, Joe Baugher & Martin Waligorski.
Focke Wulf FW 190 in action, Jerry L. Campbell, 1975, Squadron/Signal Publications.
Luftwaffe at War: Fighters over Russia, Manfred Griehl, 1997, Greenhill Books.
„Jagdgeschwader 51 "Mölders"“, compiled by Michael Holm.
„Flugzeugbestand und Bewegungsmeldungen: III./JG51“, compiled by Michael Holm.
“Günther Schack”, Petr Kacha.
„Schack, Günther“, Lexikon der Wehrmacht.
German Aircraft Interiors 1935–1945, vol 1, Kenneth A. Merrick, 1996, Monogram Aviation Publiations.
Focke-Wulf FW 190 im Detail, Jens Nissen, 2002, Motorbuch Verlag.
Focke-Wulf Fw 190A/F/G Luftwaffe, Christopher Shores, 1974, Osprey Publishing.
Luftwaffe Air & Ground Crew 1939–45, Robert F. Stedman, 2002, Osprey Publishing.
Oberflächenschutzverfahren und Anstrichstoffe der deutschen Luftfahrtindustrie und Luftwaffe 1935–1945, Michael Ullmann, 2000, Bernard & Graefe Verlag.
Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Aces on the Eastern Front, John Weal, 2000, Delprado Publications.
Jagdgeschwader 51 ‘Mölders’, John Weal, 2006, Osprey Publications.
“O.K.L. Fighter Claims Chef für Ausz. und Dizsiplin [sic] Luftwaffen-Personalamt L.P. (A) V Films & Supplementary Claims from Lists Eastern Front (Ostfront) August–December 1942”
“O.K.L. Fighter Claims Chef für Ausz. und Dizsiplin [sic] Luftwaffen-Personalamt L.P. (A) V Films & Supplementary Claims from Lists Eastern Front (Ostfront) January–June 1943”, compiled by Tony Wood.

Taking my breath away

Honeybuns, J, and I decided it was time to go see what the Air Force Museum looks like after the recent renovation, so I booked (with some effort) tickets to Linköping and then we got on the early morning train. Coincidentally an erstwhile colleague turned up on the same train. He dissed the “murder machine museum” in no uncertain terms, but we decided to go anyway and take up his more wholesome alternatives at a later point in time.

Paint peeling off the radome of a Tp 82.

Linköping was sunny as we rode the bus out to the museum (they have SMS tickets in Linköping, too, these days). We got there a bit before opening time, and had a look at the outdoors exhibits. The Tp 79, Tp 80, Tp 82, and Tp 83 were looking rather the worse for wear. Apparently, being lowly SIGINT aircraft (and rather large) they weren’t allowed indoors. It was all rather sad.

A freshly restored Thulin G right inside the entrance to Hall 2.

Eventually we got indoors. Even while Hall 2 was generally recognisable in its layout, the exhibits had been much improved: There were screens with pictures, video material and text on the exhibits and the walls carried huge paintings of what a Swedish military airbase would have looked like in the different time periods depicted, coupled with descriptions of the technical development in that time. Showcases along the walls showed various smaller paraphernalia, such as uniform details, instruments, etc. Unfortunately these were mostly not labelled, so one had to guess at much of what was shown. A feature which I particularly liked was that several aircraft had ramps up to the side, making it possible to peer down into the cockpits.

From the exhibition on the museum’s patron saint, Carl Cederström, a satirical play on his exploits. Note ”Flygberg”, a reference to Carl Richard Nyberg, the original inventor from Sundbyberg.

After a while IPMS Östergötland turned up for their last-Sunday-in-the-month modelling meeting, right in the middle of the big hall. Very inspiring, but there was much to see, so I, rather impolitely, exchanged just a few words with my southern colleagues, and then continued through the exhibits.

Eventually we felt rather hungry, and found that the food facilites had been much improved since last as well, the museum now had a pleasant little restaurant with perfectly good food.

We skipped the Flight lab with the simulators and instead entered the new Cold War hall, which turned out to be high point of the visit. While Hall 2 was very pedagogical, it was still mainly an exhibition of aircraft qua aircraft, the Cold War hall was designed to demonstrate a historical process. This was done in four stations from the 1950s to the 1980s. Each station was in the form of a contemporary home, with news clips playing on the radios (later in the tv sets), poster stations etc. The aircraft were placed on top of the stations, but they became relegated to the background as we were hard hit by nostalgia. Just seeing the Salomon backpack on the coat hanger in the 80s flat brought back so many memories, even though I never had one myself. I visited the Britain at war experience several years ago and was a bit disappointed by it, but suspected that Brits with more personal memories would feel differently about it, and this would confirm that, it was a very strong experience to suddenly be brought back 30–40 years in time.

Then, in the cellar, the exhibition Acts of Secrecy, with the retrieved and preserved remains of the Tp 79 shot down in 1952, still an aching ulcer. The setting was very solemn as befits a war grave. The facts were laid out dispassionately, but there was clearly much still unsaid, partly because much information has been destroyed over time, but also because there are still living persons affected. So, while the Vasa museum can display detailed reconstructions of the dead in the wreck, such would not have been acceptable here, we are not even told whose remains have been found (their identities are known, they are just not mentioned). Four crew members are still missing, leaving their fate open. That well-preserved items of clothing were exhibited in a show-case added to the feeling of unease.

Mats Johansson had prepared a large-scale cutaway model of the aircraft, based on the best available knowledge and guesses. It brought home how tense the atmosphere must have been with the five SIGINT officers, each by a rack of listening equipment, trying to extract as much information as they could out of all signals from different sources crossing the air, busily jotting down notes as the plane flew back and forth, sniffing out the most interesting scents, all so secret that the truth couldn’t even be hinted at for fifty years.

In one of the show-cases I found an antenna mast, identical to the one I have as a trophy in my living room, though mine is said to originate from the one B 3 that was modified for SIGINT purposes.

Before we were all done, the museum closed. We will have to go back.

More war

Martin R, ever supplying me with MÖP material, a while back forwarded me a then new book from Gyldendal: Danskere i krig 1936–48 (Danes at war 1936–48), edited by Rasmus Mariager.

Finland and Norway have never doubted they did the right things during the Second World War, they fought against overwhelming force and acquitted themselves well under the circumstances. That Finland fought alongside with Nazi Germany is considered OK, since it was against bolsheviks. Sweden and Denmark have a more troubled relation to their history, was their collaboration with Nazi Germany necessary for survival or was it due to national spinelessness?

This book studies how Denmark was affected by the conflicts around the time of the Second World War through the examples of a few Danes who took part in these conflicts.

The first chapter is about Leo Kari, a volunteer on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Now, Morten Heiberg’s text actually does not say very much about Kari, but rather discusses the political situation in Europe around the time of the war. Much of it was new to me, apparently sources unavailable during the Franco period are only now being explored, even if few eyewitnesses are left anymore.
The Spanish Civil War was a time of intense political manœuvring and positioning, with allegiances shifting over time. For example, at the time Germany and Italy were not yet formal allies, but rather rivals, so that Germany saw it fit to sell arms to the Republican side, partially in order to bring in some cash, but also so that the more numerous Italian forces on the Nationalist side would be, eh, culled. The side-effect that German participants might end up being shot with German weapons was an acceptable price. Since the Western Powers did not allow arms trade with Spain, all weapons had to be smuggled into the country, preferrably with the help of Greek merchants and ships. My reflection is that the enormous economic upswing this caused in Greece may have been an additional reason for the now-allied Germany and Italy to invade Greece some years later. The Spanish government’s arms purchases completely spent the Spanish gold reserve, which had been the fourth largest in the world.

The next chapter tells the story of Hans Fenger. When Finland was attacked by the Soviet Union in 1939 this caused dismay all over Europe and with surprising speed various help actions were organised. In Denmark many wanted to volunteer to fight on the Finnish side, but the Danish government decided this would be a breach of Danish neutrality and forbade its citizens to take part. Many managed to travel to Finland anyway, among these Fenger, even though he was an officer on active duty and thus formally guilty of desertion. Fenger travelled through Sweden to northern Finland where the various volunteers were organised and got initial training. In particular he had to learn to ski. Eventually he managed to get to the front where he got killed in his unit’s first skirmish. His body was brought home to Denmark and given a hero’s funeral. When the other Danish volunteers returned to Denmark everybody agreed to at most slap their wrists for their desertions, as they had after all defended the Danish national honour. Interestingly enough the authors Ahtola Nielsen and Kirkebæk seem to imply that Finland probably would have been better off acquiescing to the original demands by the Soviet Union than going to war to defend its territory, even though one would think that the fresh experiences at the time would have suggested this was not a sustainable strategy.

Mere weeks after the end of the Winter War, Denmark was invaded by Germany. Resistance being considered futile, Denmark capitulated with nary a shot. The Danish government then for several years continued a policy of not rocking the boat and trying to getting along with the occupational forces. This was by many felt to be humiliating and a blot on the Danish escutcheon. Paradoxically, this led to many enrolling in the German armed forces, to show that Danes could fight. In line with the policy of not giving the Germans any excuses for being dissatisfied with Denmark, Danish citizens, including military on active duty, were freely allowed to join German forces. The about 6000 Danes that did, did so for many reasons, not least of which was that signing up promised food for the day. Many professional soldiers joined up to get a chance to practice their métier and then there was a large contingent who politically aligned with Nazism, among those the subject of the next chapter: Per Sørensen. He was a Danish officer who joined the Waffen-SS and made a spectacular career before getting killed defending Berlin a few weeks before the end of the war. The authors Bundgård Christensen, Bo Paulsen and Scharff Smith point out that since all SS units committed war crimes, there is no reason to assume Danish SS members did not also do so, even though little documentary material on the Danish units exists. After the war, all Danes who enrolled in the German forces were retroactively declared criminal and in many cases sent to prison for longer or shorter periods.

A number of Danes, mostly those who were abroad at the time of the German invasion, but also a few who managed to escape from Denmark, joined Allied forces. Werner Michael Iversen was a Danish ex-soldier and merchant who acutely felt the necessity for Danes to join the fight and eventually liberate Denmark and thus worked hard at forming a Danish recruitment office in London and build up a Danish unit within the British Army. This was not entirely uncontroversial among exiled Danes in Britain, many who felt they should not get involved, not least to protect family members still in Denmark. Others agreed they should join up and many of these passed through Iversen’s recruitment office. The most promising ones were silently passed on to SOE to become secret agents in occupied Europe. Eventually though, not least due to Iversen’s abrasive and self-important personality, he was taken out of the loop and the recruitment office closed somewhat later.

After the war ended in Europe, grateful Danish volunteers offered to enlist in the British Army, at first to join the war in the Pacific, but after Japan’s capitulation wherever else His Majesty’s Government saw fit to use them. Britain hardly could refuse this gesture and out of about 11000 volunteers, 2500 were selected to serve in the British Army, most in various parts of Asia. Per Christensen was one of these. He ended up mostly serving on guard duty in the Far East, but other Danish units were used for policing in Palestine and India, both subject to civil unrest at the time. The Danish volunteers came home in 1948, when most had already forgotten about them in Denmark.

The final chapter by Ib Faurby puts all of this in context and how the foreign and defence policy of Denmark had been formed by its relations with Germany ever since the Napoleonic wars, Schleswig-Holstein being conquered and reconquered, but history eventually making Germany a Great Power and Denmark a small country that needed to keep good relations with its southern neighbour (Sweden by this time having dropped its traditional enmity with Denmark). Still, Danish volunteers have taken part in various wars and conflicts all through the 20th Century, shifting alliances causing the volunteers to sometimes fight alongside each other and later against each other.

So, what was my impression of the book? Well, it seems a slightly haphazard collection of various essays that did not necessarily form a coherent whole, and the use of select individuals (because they have left at least some amount of written material behind) as symbols of various subjects does not, in my opinion, work very well. Faurby’s wrapping-up chapter gives a much needed overview, unobscured by the minutiæ of the life stories of individuals. In the same way Heiberg’s overview of the context of the Spanish Civil war works well, and the few paragraphs about Leo Kari could have been easily excluded without losing any of the informative content.

The book ends in 1950, when Denmark joins NATO, as if Denmark just returned to its Sleeping Beauty status, but of course Danish volunteers have continued to serve in wars, now latest in Afghanistan.

Best mashup ever!

That the run on the Death Star in Star Wars: A New Hope is heavily based on the climactic bomb run in The Dambusters is well known, but never so well demonstrated as in this clip made by HenryvKeiper:

Button, button

August Strindberg coined the term knappologi (“buttonology”) for the purportedly scientific systematisation of trivial matters. Now, there really are people who are intensely interested in buttons, as I realised when I came across Neville Poulson's seven-volume work Buttons of the Indian army.

Looking a bit further brought up the web page of the British Button Society. I don't often agree with Strindberg and here, too, I am feeling very pleased to have found the buttonologists and that they are doing fine.

Mission accomplished

With patient scouring of Tradera I have finally completed my collection of all issues of Pilot from 1974 to 1980—the top years of the magazine.

Leafing through the magazines, I reflect that they probably have done quite a lot to shape my character (causation unclear, but certainly strengthening any pre-existing MÖPish tendencies). At the time I thought Pilot was among the coolest reading you could find; now I have a somewhat more nuanced attitude towards the magazines, but they have nostalgic value and indeed still serve as inspiration for many modelling projects.

So what can we find in them? Well, for one thing, aviation is presented as almost exclusively military aviation, and indeed, even the proportion of stories about infantry soldiers is many times the proportion of stories about civilian pilots. Natacha would have been completely out of place. To be further specific, when we say “military”, we are talking about World War II, with a smattering of World War I. There might have been one or two stories from the Korean War, but absolutely none about the Vietnam War. With time this was leavened with such characters as Dan Cooper, a contemporary pilot in the Canadian Air Force, and the occasional serialisation of Buck Danny adventures. It was notable how much higher the quality of the latter was both with regards to the drawing of aircraft and in the plot construction than in the more mass-produced Battler Britton adventures that were the mainstay. Now, with 30 more years of studies behind me, I tend to cringe at the depiction of the aircraft in many of the comics as the artists often seemed to have worked from pictures with no understanding of the system behind markings, camouflage or combat tactics.

The comics often revolved around several common themes: Sacrificing yourself for your buddies, redemption of past transgressions (often through death), honouring one's opponents, curing of temporary cowardice, not judging people too hastily and in particular not underestimating the nerdy-looking guy. I guess there could be worse morals.

During the period covered by my collection the magazine also contained quite a bit of aviation history and modelling-related material. Relatively superficial as forced by the limited space, but still data, profiles and often even three-view plans that encouraged further exploration. For some years Pilot even ran an inofficial Swedish championship in modelling based on photographs readers sent in of their models. There did not seem to be any cooperation between Pilot and IPMS, possibly their target groups were not considered to overlap, IPMS being for adults rather than the mainly tween audience of Pilot.

And then of course, regular competitions in which I won stuff every now and then, my Fritz von Flaxen keyring still dangles from the lamp on my modelling table…

Well, there they are, and at the top of my “unbuilt” stack waits a major conversion project inspired by plans in issue 13/1977, expect further reports.

Why Germany lost the war, reason #427

So I have a case of serious cognitive dissonance with relation to the military business, but I'll admit to occasionally enjoying march music—especially with bag pipes—and will always sing along to Kgl Södermanlands Regementes marsch (”Här i Bayern skall ölet flöda fritt”).

Now, one would perhaps expect Nazi Germany to have been particularly good in the march area, it certainly sounds so in films, but having discovered a stash of original WWII music (children under the age of 18 are kindly requested to stay away) I must say that Nazi marches all sound like dirges, even those written in the beginning of the war. Prescient.

Bitch-slapping with precision

Sigma-6 is a blog that unfortunately has not been updated for a while, yet contains a lot of worthwhile reading, including this long and detailed history of tanks and anti-tank weapons, all for the purpose of demonstrating conclusively why the stated reasons for the invasion of Iraq were drivel.