War and Game

Posted by Mitch Williamson in Ancient, Britain on Saturday, February 7, 2009

Germany's High Water Marks

By Mark Mazower

(Penguin Press, 726 pp., $39.95)

Between 1935, when Germany re-acquired the Saarland at the French border, and 1942, when German soldiers hoisted their flag on Mount Elbruz, Europe's highest peak in the Caucasus, the Third Reich expanded steadily until no country on the continent escaped its direct or indirect influence. It took a world-wide coalition of nations another three years to crush the Nazis--and yet as late as April 25, 1945, when American and Soviet troops joined hands in the heart of Germany, Hitler's soldiers were still occupying parts of Austria, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Finland and, last but not least, Great Britain, whose Channel Islands had been under German rule during most of the war. German colonialism (inspired by British, French, and American models), imperial policy, native collaboration, and resistance are what Mark Mazower brilliantly describes in this majestic historical synthesis.

Mazower is the author of two major monographs on Greece, each with particular emphasis on World War II. Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44, which appeared in 1993, showed impeccable scholarship but also seethed with moral indignation over the callousness of the Germans, who had allowed approximately 250,000 Greeks to starve to death. Mazower also condemned the Greek collaborators, who not only killed their communist compatriots during the war but continued to do so after the liberation, this time under the protection of British troops and the Greek royalist government. Nor did Mazower spare the anti-Nazi non-communist resisters, many of whom had engaged in ethnic cleansing during the war. As for the communist and other leftist resisters, Mazower unhesitatingly listed their acts of extreme brutality in the war of liberation against the Italian and German occupiers, and in the simultaneous civil war. Inside Hitler's Greece foreshadowed Mazower's later and geographically broader studies, in which he argued that the Nazi war allowed for the settling of accounts among social, religious, and ethnic groups all over eastern and southeastern Europe.

Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950, which was published five years ago, is a less tragic narrative: one detects also a note of nostalgia in Mazower's evocation of the great traditions of the city, also called Thessaloniki, which once harbored three thriving civilizations--Greek, Muslim, and Jewish. The rise of nineteenth-century Greek nationalism put an end not only to Ottoman rule, but also to a cultural symbiosis that, while not perfect, nevertheless produced an enviable urban culture. During World War II, the persecution and the starvation of the non-Jewish population were acts trumped by the Germans' maniacal effort, near the end of the war, to deport every single Greek Jew to the extermination camps. As a result, one-fifth of the city's inhabitants were gone forever. Ironically, and this was the case also in the rest of Europe, many non-Jews at first profited from the disappearance of the Jews, but the economy took a long time to recover fr om the destruction of so many members of the intelligentsia and the commercial elite. Nor had the nationalist goal of ethnic purity been achieved, owing to the massive presence of Slavic-speakers in the area.

Mazower is also the author of The Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, which is one of the few high-quality overviews of twentieth-century European history. It moves the reader from the collapse of the European empires following World War I, through the rise and failure of interwar parliamentary democracies and the most barbaric period in world history--the 1930s and early 1940s--to a much calmer second half of the century. Compared with the years until 1945, when some fifty million people perished, the second half of the century was idyllic, unless of course one believes that the hot wars of the Cold War were fought not in Europe but elsewhere, by proxy.

The Dark Continent is particularly effective in pointing to the vast contrast between the two halves of the same century. If the years 1914-1945 were marked by wars, revolutions, inflation, depression, half-closed borders, fanatical political groupings, armed militias, and genocide, the main event of the second half of the century was Europe's march from ruin through the Coal and Steel Community to the European Union and general prosperity. There was also the slower but ultimately successful move to integrate the communist bloc countries into free Europe. Mazower embraces the idea of continued cultural diversity, but he supports political unification. And indeed it must be said that today's marvelously open frontiers can be really appreciated only by those who have known the ghastly opposite.

As the title of Mazower's new book indicates, Hitler's Empire concentrates on World War II, and within it on Europe's fatal division into a western/ southwestern segment and an eastern/southeastern segment. Mazower paints a shattering portrait of Eastern Europe at war, owing to his extraordinary familiarity with the area's political, cultural, and ethnic histories. (I was on the lookout for factual errors in his several overviews of the wartime history of the Eastern European countries, and I found none.) It is enough to listen to the tales of German war veterans to realize that the East was where the "real war" took place: a war of gigantic armies, titanic tank battles, endless marches, mud, frost, snow, burning villages, the shooting of civilians, and the bodies of real and alleged partisans swinging from trees. And even though German losses were horrendous in Normandy and elsewhere in the West during the last year of the war, it was not commensurate with the conflict in th e East, because the war in the West was fought more or less according to international conventions. In the West, captured soldiers could expect--even demand--humane treatment; but in the East there were no such expectations and no such demands could be made.

More than three million Soviet soldiers died in German captivity in the early years of Operation Barbarossa--and yet, strangely and as proof of the inconsistency of Nazi politics, nearly a million Soviet prisoners were allowed to escape death by joining the German army as soldiers, auxiliaries, and concentration camp guards. Only with regard to the British and American aerial attacks and the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" did conditions in the West resemble those prevailing in the eastern half of Europe: bombs dropped by Flying Fortresses utterly defied international conventions, and the Nazis exterminated all the Jews they could lay their hands on, whether they were highly assimilated Dutch businessmen or the starving inhabitants of a Lithuanian shtetl.

In 1941, Soviet soldiers learned that to die fighting was better than to starve to death in German captivity. In the last years of the war, German soldiers learned the same thing: many chose desperate resistance over surrender. It was during the Soviet siege of Budapest in the winter of 1944 that I met a young man named Helmut, a seventeen-year-old draftee in the Feldherrnhalle Division, who told me that his parents had perished in an air raid on Cologne, and that he would choose suicide over surrendering. I never learned his fate, but it is unlikely that he survived either the siege or Soviet captivity.

Hitler's Empire explains clearly what it meant for the world when, in June 1941, the greatest army in history--3.6 million Germans, Romanians, Finns, Hungarians, Croats, and Slovaks--stormed the Soviet Union. They were followed soon by Italians and Spaniards, as well as by volunteers from the rest of Europe. From that time on, astronomical casualties, devastation, cruelties, death camps, deportations, hunger, and disease were the rule. Eastern Europe became the scene of continued and accelerated ethnic cleansing that has changed the national and demographic composition of the entire region east of Germany and Austria. The Holocaust, to which Mazower dedicates a great deal of attention, was in many ways a unique event, but it also formed a part of the great ethnic cleansing that rid Eastern Europe of many ethnic, religious, and cultural minorities.

In the East, most nations fought at least two wars, and were often subjected to two or more occupations. Finland, Romania, Slovakia, and Bulgaria changed sides during the war, suffering heavy losses in the struggle both for and against Germany. Following World War I, Romania acquired a greatly enlarged Transylvania from Hungary, as well as several major Russian, Austrian, and Bulgarian provinces. In 1940, Hitler forced Romania to return the northern part of Transylvania to Hungary. From that time on, until 1944, Hungarians oppressed the Romanians and the Jews in the northern part of Transylvania, while Romanians oppressed the Hungarians and the Jews in the southern part of that province--all this despite Romania and Hungary being allies in the common struggle against Bolshevism. In August 1944, Romania turned against Germany, and soon Soviet and Romanian troops invaded northern Transylvania. There followed a series of Romanian atrocities against the Hungarian population, which caused the Soviets to take back the administration of the province. Finally, northern Transylvania again came under Romanian rule, but these rulers were now communists and even among them some of the most ruthless sort.

During the war, revolts and civil wars ravaged Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic states. In the West, too, there was an incipient civil war in France, as well as a ferocious conflict, during the last few months of the war, between the fascists and the mostly communist partisans in northern Italy. In notorious incidents, SS men killed hundreds of innocent civilians at Oradour-sur-Glane in France, in the Ardeatine Cave near Rome, and at Marzabotto, near Bologna, in Italy. Yet most Western Europeans experienced violence only briefly, such as during the German attack in 1940 and the Allied counter-attack in 1944. The vast majority of Danes, for instance, experienced no violence whatsoever during the war; instead they lived comfortably from the profits of their lively commerce with Germany.

In eastern and southeastern Europe, by contrast, most everyone was involved in the terrible historical events, as victim, perpetrator, or both. In vast regions of Eastern Europe, not only did the nationality of the occupier change over the years--such as in eastern Poland, where Polish rule ceded to Russian occupation, then to German occupation, then to Russian occupation again--but it also sometimes changed from sunset to sunrise. In thousands of Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, and Balkan villages, German soldiers and their allies ruled during the day, while anti-Nazi partisans held sway during the night, all of them robbing and killing in the process.

Mazower directs his attention mainly to Germany's conquest of the East. The ultimate goal of German imperialism was the creation of living space--Lebensraum, as they infamously called it--which involved the extermination of at least a part of the inhabitants, and the importation of German settlers as overlords. Earlier European imperialisms of the Roman, Hapsburg, and Ottoman varieties had been supra-national, promoting local talent so long as it was subservient, and acknowledging local autonomies so long as they did not hurt the interests of the center. In the Ottoman Empire, members of subjugated ethnic and religious groups governed the country at the price of individual conversion to Islam. Even such nineteenth-century imperialisms as the British, the czarist Russian, and that of the Kaiser's Germany had little in common with Hitler's racist and xenophobically homicidal imperialism. But as Mazower also emphasizes, Hitler's ideas regarding imperial policy were not new: he had learned some of them from aggressively expansionist German imperialist groups that thrived before and during World War I.

One of the main Nazi goals was the unification of all Germans, which was to begin with the gathering-in of hundreds of thousands of Germans from the East. This was necessitated by the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, which allowed the Soviets to gobble up eastern Poland, the three Baltic countries, and Bessarabia, as well as northern Bukovina in Romania. As Mazower skillfully explains, very few among these people were Baltic barons, traditionally the awe-inspiring representatives of German superiority in the region. Most were poor peasants, with bad teeth, little education, and little German, or a German that no one in the Reich understood. The Nazi authorities settled them in what used to be western Poland and in the territories from which the Polish farmers had been deported. All this took place in an atmosphere of chaos and confusion, of contradictory orders and intrigues within the party and the state bureaucracy, though there were certainly many young party members sincerely tr ying to help their compatriots.

It is important to note that the Germans were not the only ones to engage in the "un-mixing of peoples." The same procedure was practiced on a gigantic scale by the Soviets, within their country and in their newly acquired territories. In Poland, the common aim of the Germans and the Soviets was to decapitate Polish society through the elimination of its educated classes. Ethnic cleansing was also practiced by the Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Croats, and Finns--that is, by the sovereign allies of the Third Reich. Countries occupied by Germany, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, would follow suit after the war.

Consider the case of three Hungarian-speaking villages in northern Bukovina. The latter was once a Turkish, then an Austrian, later a Romanian, and finally a Soviet Ukrainian province, from which not only the German settlers but the Hungarians, too, were withdrawn following the annexation of the region by the Soviets in 1940. The few thousand villagers, who spoke a lovely ancient Hungarian, were settled in northern Yugoslavia, which the Hungarians had re-annexed in 1941 on lands and houses from which Serbs and Jews had been evicted. Yet no sooner did the new arrivals learn how to cultivate their new lands than the war came to an end, and those Hungarian settlers whom Tito's partisans had not killed fled to western Hungary. There they were assigned houses and lands from which their German ethnic owners had been deported to western Germany. The Bukovina immigrants vegetated under communist rule until they dispersed in the world, with no traces left of their original speech, ref ined folk art, and ancient customs.

The second stage of the great German project, namely the settling of Germans in the East, was no less complicated and no less frustrating. Instead of sturdy farmer warriors who would rule over millions of helots in fortified manors connected by new Autobahnen, there arrived, following the German attack on Russia in 1941, thousands of German civilians who, as former evacuees from the East, had been pushed from one place to another. The colonization policy was organized and supervised by German bureaucrats whose bosses had wanted to get rid of them back home, as well as by carpetbaggers who were keen on enriching themselves. Settlement policies contradicted one another, and in any event within a few years the settlers had to flee westward from the triumphant Red Army. The colonization program was a failure, except for the German successes in killing or deporting millions.

With regard to the subjugated peoples, German policy was a bundle of contradictions, varying from Hitler's and Himmler's extermination plans and practices to the not unsuccessful efforts of some minor Wehrmacht officers and bureaucrats to win over the local population for the anti-Stalinist cause. Particularly eager to use the services of Russians and other eastern peoples were such eastern specialists as Georg von der Ropp, Wilfried Strik-Strykfeldt, and Count Claus von Stauffenberg, later a resistance hero. It is no exaggeration to say that had they succeeded in persuading the German high command to treat the Russian population better and to mobilize them against Stalin, Germany could have won the war. Luckily for the world, mindless German brutality prevailed.

Ethnic cleansing was not, of course, a German invention. Consider only the mutual expulsion of Greeks and Turks in the 1920s. Sanctioned by the League of Nations as an "exchange of populations," it amounted to mutual mass murder and the dumping into foreign lands of millions of poor people, including Eastern Orthodox who spoke no Greek or spoke an incomprehensible variety of that language, and Muslims who spoke no Turkish. Even with regard to religion there was a good deal of uncertainty, as some Turkish-speakers were Orthodox Christians by religion and some Greek- or Bulgarian-speakers adhered to Islam. None of these niceties influenced the inventors and the executors of ethnic cleansing.

Mazower believes, with most historians, that the Germans went east to enslave and eventually to kill the Slavic Untermenschen, an inferior race. Maybe this would have been the final outcome; but the fact is that in the interim the Slavic-speaking Slovaks, Bulgarians, and Croats functioned as Hitler's trusted military and political allies. Himmler himself could not make up his mind whether the Ukrainians, with so many blond people among them, were Aryans or Slavs. Also, despite Hitler's utter contempt for the Czechs, workers in the so-called Protectorate received the same food rations as the Reich German workers and, vague Nazi plans to the contrary, no non-Jewish Czechs were deported east from their country.

If contempt and hatred for the Slavs was the leitmotif of the Nazis, why then did they respect Bulgarian sovereignty to the point of allowing Bulgaria not to enter the war against the Soviet Union and to protect the lives of its Jews? Why did the SS take in thousands upon thousands of Slavic-speaking volunteers? Nor is there any proof that the Germans held the non-Slavic Italians, Hungarians, Romanians, Greeks, and Baltic peoples in greater respect than they held the Slavs. The Germans made concession after concession to the Italians and the Romanians so long as the two countries seemed to be reliable allies; they shot or enslaved the Italian and Romanian soldiers whom they captured following the surrender of these countries to the Allies. One must conclude that unmitigated German hatred existed only for the Poles, which was nothing new, especially in the history of Prussia; and for the Jews, of course.

One of the most fascinating questions about World War II is whether Germany's allies possessed enough independence for their actions to be more than an extension of German policies. The answer to this must be a categorical affirmation of their sovereignty in all fundamental questions, such as whether to conclude an alliance with Germany, if and when to enter the war on the side of Hitler, and how much assistance to offer to the Nazi war effort. Again and again, the decision was made not by Germany but by the governments allied to the Nazis. Consider that, in June 1941, Italy, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia all decided on their own, with a minimum of German prodding or without any prodding at all, that they would join in Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. Their major motivation for taking this step was local: they were driven by fear that their neighbor and rival would enter the war before them, and thus would be first to reap the fruits of German victory. Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Croatia eyed each other with the greatest suspicion when joining in the fray. So German power was limited even at a time of their greatest military successes.

Despite the grand confusion and incessant intrigues prevailing in Nazi elite circles, despite their insane policy of killing their potential labor force such as the Soviet prisoners of war and the Jews of Europe, one must agree with Mazower that in the early years of the war the Nazi conquest was a great propaganda success. Had it been up to the Europeans alone, Hitler would have become the acknowledged and much admired leader of a continent in which--between 1939 and 1941--only the Poles showed the will to resist. Fortunately, there were also the British, who, to Hitler's great exasperation, decided to continue the war and thus ultimately won it.

Mazower devotes a good deal of attention to the German treatment of POWs, slave laborers, and deportees. Change in this destructive and self-destructive policy came much too late, in 1944, when Albert Speer and others finally realized that they needed the prisoners' labor for the Reich's survival. Yet there is a problem even with this well-known interpretation of German wartime policy--after all, nearly half a million Hungarian Jews and hundreds of thousands of others, many of them excellent labor material, were destroyed at the time of the greatest German need. Slave workers in the war industry were largely irreplaceable, and yet they were allowed to die. There is no proof that Russian POWs were fed any better in 1944 than in 1941. As Viktor Klemperer recorded in his secret diary, Soviet POWs in the factory in Dresden were starving abominably. I myself can testify to the spectacle of skeletal Russian POWs being beaten ferociously by their German guards in Hungary in the summ er of 1944

Clearly, as Mazower repeatedly says, there were too many German authorities, too many plans, too many expectations, too much confusion. It was a dark miracle that the system worked at all, but it did work, at least to a degree. The mind reels at the thought of what would have happened to the world if the Nazi system had truly been marked by the renowned German efficiency.

This remarkable book is crowned by several concluding chapters that place Nazi Europe into a historical framework and offer a few reflections on the future. Mazower explains that the Nazi revolution and the Japanese imperial expansion heralded the end of the European colonialist empires, and he raises the question of why so few people, even among the anti-Nazi resisters, understood that Fascist, National Socialist, and Japanese colonialisms were responses to challenges posed by the older European colonialisms. Wartime anti-Nazi resisters in France and the Netherlands were among the strongest advocates of preserving, with the force of arms, their countries' enlightened, progressive rule in the former colonies. All the European empires are gone now, and Europe exists within a modest but prosperous and humane framework. But Europe is only a small part of a teeming world, and it is unlikely, I think, that imperialism, the idea of expanding the grandeur of one's country or one's tribe and one's family at the expense of others, will ever disappear.

István Deák is an emeritus professor of Columbia University and the author, most recently, of Essays on Hitler's Europe (University of Nebraska Press).

Posted by Mitch Williamson on Friday, February 6, 2009

Following the Battle of Lützen (May 2) for perhaps no battle better exemplifies the inherent strength of the Napoleon’s strategy, and in none was his grasp of the battlefield more brilliantly displayed, for, as he fully recognized, “These Prussians have at last learnt something—they are no longer the wooden toys of Frederick the Great,” and, on the other hand, the relative inferiority of his own men as compared with his veterans of Austerlitz called for far more individual effort than on any previous day. He was everywhere, encouraging and compelling his men, it is a legend in the French army that the persuasion of the imperial boot was used upon some of his reluctant conscripts, and in the result his system was fully justified, as it triumphed even against a great tactical surprise.

As soon as possible the French army pressed on in pursuit, Ney being sent across the Elbe to turn the position of the allies at Dresden. This threat forced the latter to evacuate the town and retire over the Elbe, after blowing up the stone bridge across the river. Napoleon entered the town hard on their heels, but the broken bridge caused a delay of four days, there being no pontoon trains with the army. Ultimately on the 18th of May the march was renewed, but the allies had continued their retreat in leisurely fashion, picking up reinforcements by the way. Arrived at the line of the Spree, they took up and fortified a very formidable position about Bautzen. Here, on the 20th, they were attacked, and after a two days’ battle dislodged by Napoleon; but the weakness of the French cavalry conditioned both the form of the attack, which was less effective than usual, and the results of the victory, which were extremely meager.

The allies broke off the action at their own time and retired in such good order that the emperor failed to capture a single trophy as proof of his victory. The enemy’s escape annoyed him greatly, the absence of captured guns and prisoners reminded him too much of his Russian experiences, and he redoubled his demands on his corps commanders for greater vigor in the pursuit. This led the latter to push on without due regard to tactical precautions, and Blücher took advantage of their carelessness when at Haynau (May 26), with some twenty squadrons of Landwehr cavalry, he surprised, rode over and almost destroyed Maison’s division. The material loss inflicted on the French was not very great, but its effect in raising the moral of the raw Prussian cavalry and increasing their confidence in their old commander was, enormous.

Still the allies continued their retreat and the French were unable to bring them to action. In view of the doubtful attitude of Austria, Napoleon became alarmed at the gradual lengthening of his lines of communication and opened negotiations. The enemy, having everything to gain and nothing to lose thereby, agreed finally to a six weeks’ suspension of arms. This was perhaps the gravest military error of Napoleon’s whole career, and his excuse for it, “want of adequate cavalry,” is the strongest testimony as to the value of that arm.

VALLEYS OF THE ASSASSINS The castles of the Isma’ili Assassins lay in the remote mountain valleys of northern Iran. Away from trade routes and major cities they had maintained their independence against all comers for almost two centuries when Hülegü destroyed them in a single season’s campaigning in 1256. It was a triumph for Mongol siegecraft.

The end of the European campaign in 1241 was not the end of Mongol expansion in the West. Memories of the conquests of Genghis Khan were still very much alive and at the Kuriltay In 1251 the Great Khan Mongke (1251-9) despatched two of his brothers on major wars of conquest. Kubilai was sent to China to conquer the southern Sung and Hülegü was sent to Iran. Hülegü’s expedition was a far cry from the impetuous campaigns of Genghis’s time. His army was probably larger than the one Genghis had led to the conquest of Iran. It included contributions from many Mongol princes, including Batu, who still held court on the Volga steppes. There were also Chinese siege engineers and shooters of naft. His progress was stately and fairly slow. Pasture on both sides of the route was reserved for the army, boulders and thorns were cleared from the roads, bridges and ferries arranged. It was also something of a social occasion and he stopped off to stay with-the princess Orqina, widow of Genghis’s son Chaghatay (d. 1242) who now ruled over her husband’s followers. There was tiger hunting in the bush along the Oxus river and magnificent feasts in huge tents organized by the Mongol governor of Iran, Arghun Aqa.

But there was also a military objective. Hülegü’s first aim was to take the castles of the Isma’ili Assassins. Since the time of the Crusades and Marco Polo, the legendary Assassins have fascinated outside observers. The Isma’ilis had begun as a radical Shi’ite sect in the tenth century: At the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century members of the sect in Syria and Iran had been driven from the cities and taken refuge in the mountains of northern Syria and northern Iran. In Iran they had established a series of castles on rugged peaks in remote areas: Alamut and Maymun-Diz north of Qazvin were the most famous. They defended themselves not by maintaining large armies but by the remoteness of their situation and the use of suicide assassins to dispose of enemy leaders. The story went that the Master of the Assassins would attract young men to a remote castle. They would be drugged and when they woke up would find themselves in a garden where they were offered all the joys of paradise as described in the Quran. When, exhausted by their pleasures, they fell asleep, they awoke to find themselves on some bleak and stony mountain side. The Master then suggested to them that if they were to carry out a mission, which would inevitably result in their own death, they would enjoy the pleasures they had tasted so briefly for all eternity: Perhaps sadly, the story as it has come down to us is certainly a fabrication put about by their enemies, but the Isma’ili Assassins did use political murder and they did inspire fear and loathing among their opponents.

The reality was that by the 1250s they were much tamer than they had been a century before, yet they still resisted Mongol rule in Iran: as such they had to be exterminated. Hülegü’s campaign reveals the Mongol genius for siegecraft. When he arrived in Iran in the spring of 1256, Hülegü demanded that the Master of the Assassins, Rukn aI-Din, should surrender his castles. This was met with a polite refusal. A diplomatic game of cat and mouse now ensued as Hülegü made his military preparations. As the Mongol army approached the mountains around Alamut, Rukn aI-Din played for time, hoping the winter snows would come in time to save him. He sent hostages and 300 men to serve as hashar to demolish the outlying castles. But he still hoped to hang on to Alamut with its magnificent fortifications and the library built up over previous centuries. Hülegü knew he had a struggle on his hands. Supplies were collected from all over north-western Iran, for winter was near and there would be no pasture to be had in these craggy mountains. Flour and animals for transport and slaughter were assembled. On 8 November Hülegü found himself overlooking the castle at Maymun-Diz. The next day he rode around looking for the weak points. He then held a council of war. Many of his commanders were in favour of retreat, given the problems of supply and the deteriorating weather, but a minority, including Kit-Buga, one of his most experienced generals, urged him to press on. He set about making trebuchets, cutting down the great trees which previous generations of Isma’ilis had planted on the surrounding hills. Relays of men were established to transport the beams up to the castle. The defenders in turn set up trebuchets on their ramparts to rain stones ‘like falling leaves’ on their assailants. As usual, the Mongol attackers responded with clouds of arrows. Chinese siege engineers had constructed a sort of giant crossbow called a kaman-i gav (ox’s bow) which is said to have been able to shoot arrows up to 2,500 paces. If this is true, then the range must have been at least 2,000 yards, significantly longer than the recorded range of any other pre-gunpowder artillery. However, the historian Juvayni, who was present at the siege, may have got carried away with the excitement of the new technology.

The historian describes the effect of the bombardment:

As for the trebuchets which had been set up it was as though their poles were made of pine trees a hundred years old [that is, they were very strong]. The first stones which were discharged from them broke the defenders’ trebuchet and many were crushed under it. Fear of the quarrels from the crossbows overcame them so that they were in a complete panic and tried to make shields out of veils [which is to say that they did their best to defend themselves with very inadequate equipment]. Some who were standing on towers crept in their terror like mice into holes or fled like lizards into the crannies of the rocks. Some were left wounded and some lifeless and all that they struggled feebly like mere women.

Mongol sieges never lasted very long. In the face of this unrelenting bombardment, Rukn aI-Din agreed to surrender. It was 19 November. Even after this, some of the more determined Isma’ilis held out with the courage of desperation for another three nights until, on the fourth day, the Mongol troops entered the castle and began to destroy the buildings, ‘brushing away the dust with the broom of annihilation’. Having seen what had happened at Maymun-Diz, the commander of nearby Alamut surrendered after a few days’ siege. As ]uvayni remarks, in the early twelfth century the Seljuk sultan Muhammad (1105-18) had laid siege to Alamut for eleven years with no result: the Mongols had taken it and all the other castles in just two weeks. There could not be a clearer illustration of the contrast between the determined and efficient Mongol military machine and their more ineffectual predecesso

Posted by Mitch Williamson in Aircraft on Thursday, February 5, 2009

Check your 6! is an air combat simulation of the 1925-1947 era and can be played with any aircraft from this era, including the early jets.

Movement is planned ahead and simultaneous. This makes the game very suitable to play with many players. It uses a maneuver template similar in form to Blue Max / Canvas Eagles.

CY6 requires airplane models which can be of any scale - 1/72, 1/144, 1/300 or 1/600 - and a hexagonal mapboard. Or it can be played with cardboard counters on a hexboard.

Individual pilot skills matters in this game. As Chuck Yeager said: “It’s the man, not the machine!”.

2007 Origins Awards Winner, Historical Miniatures Game of the Year.

If you don’t like pre-plotted moves then you can simply move the planes in the Move Group priority order without plotting as their turn comes up. The approach would not change any major major
mechanics but you would loose one of the major advantages of the game which is that folks can all decide what they want to do at the same time rather than waiting for folks one by one. I think the “no plot” approach would work fine for small games with folks who know how to play but would be a pain for big con games with new players.

Tailing works almost exactly like Blue Max - the tailed player must reveal some information to the tailing player prior to the move.

Cheers,
Scott

All -

I just wanted to post the following two messages on this list as there seem to be several threads on TMP about CY6!. The first is my response that talks about Robustness (how tough a plane is in CY6), I thought that some of you might be interested in it. The second is from George about his Historicon experience (I am pretty sure George would not mind me posting it here).

Cheers, Scott

______SCOTT________

Thanks for the kind words for the game – we certainly worked hard to model reality as close as possible without bogging down play.

In the comments above it seems there is one that says the aircraft are damaged too easily and one that says they are not damaged easily enough. I will try to address both.

Not easy enough to damage: We took the damage model pretty seriously and decided that to make the game play quickly there are only four states that really matter (at least for CY6!). They are 1)”ok”, 2)”destroyed” 3)”engine damage” and 4)”airframe damage”. Numbers 1&2 are self explanitory. For numbers 3 and 4 we decided that minor hits that don’t drastically impact the aircraft don’t really matter that much and will only slow down play – we decided to make “damage” a state that would really impact play and would roughly equate to when most pilots would disengage. We even toyed with rules to make you disengage when damaged but figured that the way the victory points work, you are mostly silly to stick around (a fighter that is damaged is worth 1 victory point, destroyed it is worth 4). Of course, there can always be that one in a million shot (the magic BB) that takes a plane down with a fuel explosion etc, and those who played know this is reflected in the Lucky Hit Table.

As for aircraft that seem too fragile: I think folks should note that we played all our demo games with A6M Zeros, Gloster Gladiators and CR.42s – all these planes have an R0 robustness rating, making them the most fragile aircraft in the game. We chose these planes for the demo game so that the demos would have some “action”. I am confident that when players try to shoot down a FW-190 (with Robustness R2) or better yet a B-17 (with Robustness R4) it will be a quite different story. We used the curve of the 2x d6 distribution to make R4s much more difficult than R3s etc…

Thanks again for all the comments – it is fun to see the reaction to the game we worked so hard on.

Cheers, Scott

______GEORGE_______

I had a chance to play the demo game and watch a couple of bigger games. I like the game a lot and picked up a copy of the game and some planes and flight stands. The stands seemed a bit expensive but there are always other options. One of the dealers had starter packs of stands, planes (6 each) and decals. The sets were 6 of one type of plane and I would have preferred to have seen at least one starter that had, say, 3 wild cats and 3 zeros instead of two boxes with 6 of each. The gentlemen doing the demos did a great job of explaining the rules and making everyone feel welcome, despite the players experience level. Scott really went out of his way to answer my questions and explain the logic behind the rules (this was also done in the rules and really helped understand where the designer is coming from. I wish more game companies did this).

As far as the game itself goes, it plays fast after a brief explanation and after a few turns, everyone in the session I played in was pretty up to speed and were able to continue with minimal questions. Unfortunately, understanding the rules didn’t help keep me from getting really shot up and eventually stalling out and falling out of the dogfight ;) The emphasis seems to be on pilot’s skill and ability and I like that aspect. There is plenty of data for number crunchers though about the different planes. There are different data or manuever sheets, I think 5, for different classes of planes and there are rules that differentiate planes within these. Altitude and speed were easy to keep track of and combat isn’t slowed down by a huge list of modifiers. The game also includes a lot of interesting scenarios.

I read the rules again on the flight home and I’m looking forward to playing again. I’m going to try it out with friends and then offer it to my middle school students. Again, I’d like to thank Scott, and the other gentleman I spoke with whose name escapes me, for all their help and patience. I think they’ve got a great game on their hands.

George

LINK

In Spain, the PzKpfw I were popularly known as ‘negrillos’ (blackies), due to their panzer grey overall finish. The Italian CV33 tankettes were nicknamed ‘latas de sardinas’ (sardine tins) for obvious reasons.

Many of the vehicles of Russian origin wore the cyrilic script ‘3HC’ (ZiS=Zavod imeni Stalina=Stalin's factory). Some local ‘expert on Russian affairs’ explained his comrades that the meaning of ‘3HC’ was ‘3-Hermanos-Comunistas’ (3-Brothers-Communist)!

About "3 brothers", Cubans say that CCCP found on soviet products stand for "Cargue Con Cuidado, Pesa" (handle with care, heavy)

The PzKpfw IVGs received from Germany in 1943 were christened ‘Maybachs’ immediately after someone opened the engine deck!. Years later, some of these tanks were sold to Syria. These Syrian IVGs saw combat in the 1967 war against Israel, and it seems that these old workhorses performed decently. So much for the IV supporters!

One surviving T-26 from the last batches sent to Spain in 1938-39 was under restoration several years ago when, after removing the external layers of paint, an original Russian inscription was exposed. It proved that this particular tank had served in Eastern Asia, and probably had seen action against the Japanese in 1938.

Posted by Mitch Williamson in Aircraft, Britain on Wednesday, February 4, 2009

PZL P.24

Тhe Bulgarian aviation traces its origins as early as in the late XIX century. The attempts of Yorchi Sabev of Malomir village and Elisey Petkov of Khotnitza were closer to the dreams rather than to the reality. The free flight pioneers tried to construct hand-made wings to fly like birds. As expected, their naive experiments were unsuccessful as was the effort for a balloon construction in the city of Razgrad in 1880. However, these air pioneers and enthusiasts inaugurated the aviation idea in Bulgaria, which soon developed into reality.

By this time, the main achievements in the flying science were well-known in Bulgaria. Aerostatics is the first branch of this science, dealing with the devices and conditions of flying in the air of objects in accordance to Archimedes principle on the free floating. The second one is the aviation (derived from the Latin word avis, denoting bird), a science on flying which deals with the principles and construction of flying craft, lifting in the air thanks to the mechanical principles based on performing a certain quantity of mechanical work. Aviation idea’s propaganda and popularization in Bulgaria ran in parallel with the first steps of indigenous aviation science (1880 - 1903).

In 1902, Kharalambi Djamdjiev carried out the first serious study on the theory of flight, which transitioned into practical realization. He is known to had developed two theories on flying - the first one based on the reflecting-parabolic principle (explaining how birds fly) and the second one on the hydro-aerodynamic vacuum principle. Kharalambi Djamdjiev has also offered projects for both aircraft with waving wings and airplane employing fixed wing.

The beginning

On 19 August 1882, the city of Plovdiv witnessed the opening ceremony of the First Agricultural & Industrial Fair. The famous French aeronaut Eugene Godard was invited to demonstrate his balloon named La France. On August 31, in presence of Prince Ferdinand, he took to the air for the first time into Bulgarian sky, raising over the enthusiastic public. This is the reason to consider that 31 August was the date on which the Bulgarian aeronautics was formally born.

Vassil Zlatarov was the first Bulgarian officer to fly on La France. Later on, he became the organizer and chief of the young Bulgarian military aviation and aeronautics forces. He was the first Bulgarian to fly on glider (1904) and on airplane (15 November 1910), and is known as the first glider and kite designer in Bulgaria.

In 1903, Vassil Zlatarov initiated the formation of the Aeronautics Section subordinated to the Bulgarian Army Engineering Forces, and on 22 June was nominated its Commander.

Bulgarian Army’s first balloon section was formed on 22 February 1906. Six years later, its personnel was tasked to construct in four months the first Bulgarian-made balloon named Sofia One, after the country’s capital. It made its first climb out on 1 August 1912, and one month later took part in Forth Exercise held near the city of Shoumen, and then saw use in the Balkans War.

1911 was the year of the formation of the Bulgarian Army aviation branch. It was a common view by that time that aviation’s use in anger is forthcoming. The combat aviation was expected soon to be turned out into the ‘eyes and ears’ of the army, designed to operate in ‘rushing, decisive and hard-beating’ manner.

As expected, the Bulgarian Government preparing the war against Turkey, took a prompt resolution to acquire aircraft and sent pilots and technicians for training abroad. Ministry of War Order of 3 April 1912 published the names of 17 officers selected for pilots. Their flying training was carried in several countries: France (Bleriot Flying School in Etampes, Military Aeronautics School Sapre Aerostiers in Paris and Voisin company), Germany (Albatros company) and Britain (Bristol company).

Seven aircraft were initially purchased to form the first Aeroplane Section within the structure of the Bulgarian Army, thus marking the formal beginning of the Bulgarian military aviation. The section was based at an airfield located north of Sofia Railway Station, and was reporting to the Engineering Forces Command. First Lieutenant Toprakchiev was nominated its first Commander. A single French-made Bleriot XXI airplane was delivered in July 1912; it became the section’s first aircraft; First Lieutenant Simeon Petrov was the Bulgarian pilot to fly solo for the first time in home airspace on 12 July.

Shoumen Forth Exercise held between 7 and 10 September 1912, immediately before the beginning of the Balkans War, saw the Aeroplane Section participating in its full size. The sole airplane was used by the offensive party in cooperation to the attacking force and the aircrews proved capable to reveal the defending force’s positions. As expected, their operations during the exercise were praised highly by the Bulgarian Army commanding officers.

Amongst the First in the World

Bulgaria’s strong army established its own aviation element in 1910-1912, during major territorial disputes with Muslim Turkey. The Balkans War (1912 - 1913) was widely considered liberation war in Bulgaria. On 12 September, during the mass mobilisation, the Aeroplane Section was ordered to relocate its sole Bleriot XXI aircraft to an airfield near Tarnovo Seimen city. On 11 October, it deployed near the village of Moustafpasa (now known as Svilengrad), in close proximity to Second Army headquarters. A number of recently delivered aircraft were assembled and flight-tested. All Bulgarian pilots and technicians, most of them just graduated from foreign schools, were posted there together with several foreign volunteers willing to participate in the war on Bulgarian side. Thus, when the war had started, the Bulgarian aviation inventory numbered some 21 fully assembled and combat-ready aircraft, and by the end of the war, the number of aircraft grew to 29. The aircraft brought by the foreign volunteers and those captured during the battles eventually increased the figure to 35.

The young Bulgarian aviation force comprised various aircraft, made by Bleriot, Voasin, Albatross, Nieuport, Farman, Sommer and Bristol. These were both single and two-seat ones, monoplanes and biplanes, featuring maximum speed up to 110 km/h and practical ceiling up to 1,500 m, and were powered by piston engines rated between 35 and 100 hp.

During the army advance in the first stage of the conflict the available aviation, assets were grouped in three aeroplane sections:

1st Aeroplane Section was retained at its initial location at Svilengrad airfield. It was assigned to the Second Army HQ, which was tasked with the siege of Odrin Stronghold; First Lieutenant Radul Milkov was nominated Commanding Officer.

2nd Aeroplane Section was formed on 3 November 1912 and was deployed to the airfields at Chorlu, Kabakcha and Cherkezyoy. It was assigned to the Third Army HQ and First Lieutenant Dimitar Sekelarov was nominated Commanding Officer.

3rd Aeroplane Section was formed on 10 November 1912 and was deployed to the airfield around Malgara and then to Ursha. It was assigned to the Fourth Army HQ at Bulair Front; First Lieutenant Penyo Popkrastev was nominated Commanding Officer.

The three sections were assigned to the Aeronautics Park, commanded by Major Vassil Zlatarov and integrated into the Railway Battalion structure. The Park was also responsible for the control over the balloon section as well as over the supply service dealing with spare parts, fuel and lubricants.

On 16 October 1912, two Bulgarian pilots - Radul Milkov and Prodan Tarakchiev - flying an Albatross F-2 biplane performed what may have been the first real combat mission in Europe, against a heavily defended target. They were tasked with air reconnaissance of the heavy defended Odrin stronghold and then bombed the neighbouring Karaagac railway station dropping a couple of hand grenades.

Besides other occasional bombing missions during this war, the Bulgarian pilots flew regular visual and photo reconnaissance gathering missions, and the first ‘intercontinental’ mission over the Asian side of Istanbul - as well as the first anti-shipping bombing mission and leaflet dropping missions. Artillery fire correction was another important mission type performed by the brave Bulgarian pilots. In fact, Bulgarian aviators proved the combat effectiveness of heavier-than-air craft during the Balkans War.

Lieutenant Toprakchiev was the first casualty amongst Bulgarian pilots. He died as his aircraft crashed during a combat mission on 19 October. It is of note that the 15-year-old nurse Raina Kasabova flew on 30 October during leaflet dropping mission onboard of an aircraft piloted by First Lieutenant Stefan Kalinov; this may have been the first combat mission with woman’s participation.

The what may have been the first group combat mission in the world was performed on 14 November as four-ship formation, made by the pilots Radul Milkov, Nikifor Bogdanov, Stefan Kalinov and the Russian volunteer Nikolay Kostin bombed Karaagach railway station near Odrin.

The notably successful combat operations of the young Bulgarian military aviation attracted a lot of interest all around Europe. Tens of military correspondent and experts, including aviators are known to have been dispatched to the Balkans War battlefields in 1912 and 1913; they were tasked to study and analyse carefully the air combat operations, pioneered by the Bulgarians.

During the Balkans war the Bulgarian aviators revealed and proved the ways for aircraft multi-role combat employment: single and multi-ship flights in tactical and operative depth over the enemy territory, air reconnaissance, photo survey, bomb drops against manpower, defensive installations and other inventory on the battlefield and in depth of enemy-held territory as well as for artillery fire correction. The principles of centralised and de-centralised control over aviation units were proved as well as the close cooperation with the land forces.

The Balkans War a victorious one for Bulgaria and had led to the London Peace Treaty signed on 17 May 1913. A month later, however, another war commenced between the yesterday’s allies of the anti-Turkish coalition. The Bulgarian military aviation was not able to take part in this conflict due to the lack of prepared airfields and shortage in fuel, lubricants and spare parts supply. On May 1913, the 3rd Aeroplane Section and majority of the 1st Section were rebased to Drama region and were merged into a single unit which received the number plate of the 1st Aeroplane Section. The 2nd Aeroplane Section was rebased to Sofia, and on June 10 was stationed near the village of Slivnitza while the Balloon Section went the airfield near the Central Railway Station in Sofia.

Following the end of the Inter-Allies War, both the Aeroplane Sections were disbanded and then reorganised into one Airplane Company while the balloon unuts were grouped into the Balloon Company, a division of the Aeronautics Park, which was incorporated into the structure of the Technical Battalion of the Engineering Forces. The Aeronautical Park was commanded by Major Zlatarov and based north of Sofia Railway Station. In 1914, the first aviation school was established there and its sole instructor was the Italian citizen Giovanni Sabelli; he worked as an instructor pilot in Bulgaria until July 1915.

A new airfield was built in 1914 near the village of Bojurishte, located some 10 km northwest from Sofia and not before long it was developed into a major aviation centre. By late 1914, the aviation school and the repair shop were also relocated there.

The Bulgarian aircraft building traces its origins from early 1915 when the aviation technician Ilya Mladenov and the pilot Stefan Kalinov built an aircraft by their own design named Dogan, which was similar to the French-made Voisin. However, their undertaking was unsuccessful as Dogan crashed during its first test flight killing the pilot Stefan Kalinov. In fact, the first successful aircraft of Bulgarian design was built by the young Assen Jordanov, which took the air on 15 August 1915 piloted by Radul Milkov. This date was announced by the War Ministry as the formal Bulgarian Aircraft Building Day.

Victories and Losses

Bulgaria entered the World War One on October 1, 1915 participating as a strong German ally; the aviation element grew to battalion size, comprising three companies equipped with German-supplied second-hand combat aircraft.

The Bulgarian Army stated an offensive towards Greece and Serbia, and then was dragged into a positional war against the Allies, on the so-called Macedonian theatre.

During the war, the Bulgarian Air Force inventory accounted to as many as 100 aircraft. These were:

L.V.G.-B.II - 12 aircraft, the first six of which were delivered in November 1915;

Otto C.I - 13 aircraft, the first of which were delivered in August 1916;

Albatross C.III - 18 aircraft, the first of which were delivered in August 1916;

DFW-C.V -12 aircraft, the first of which were delivered in August 1917;

Roland D.II - 6 aircraft, the first of which were delivered in July 1917;

Roland D.III - 6 aircraft, the first of which were delivered in late 1917;

Fokker E.III - 3 aircraft, the first of which were delivered in the spring of 1916;

Fokker D.VII - 8 aircraft, the first of which were delivered in September 1918;

Fridrichshafen FF_33 floatplane -8 aircraft, delivered n 1916;

Rumpler 6B-1 floatplane - 2 aircraft, delivered in 1916;

Albatross C.I - 2 aircraft, captured in 1915 during their ferry flight from Germany to Turkey.

The Fokker D.VII fighters were not used in anger since these were delivered just before the end of the war. Seven of them were destroyed in accordance to Paris Peace Treaty in 1920, and the only survivor was hidden and later was use by the reborn Bulgarian military aviation. During World War One, Bulgarian pilots also flew on many occasions Albatross D.III and Halberstadt combat aircraft, based at Ksanti airfield, but these belonged to the German air force and none were formally delivered to the Bulgarian air arm.

The Bulgarian pilots flew thousands of combat missions over the Macedonian theatre against the Allied forces. The first air-to-air combat was performed by Capt Tarakchiev on 21 April 1916. On 30 September 1916, the Bulgarian Air Force scored its first air victory. Lieutenant Marko Parvanov flying a Fokker E.III fighter, assisted by the German instructor pilot Wagner, successfully intercepted and shoot down a French Air Force Farman 40 bomber which was on a raid against Sofia.

A total of 60 air-to-air encounters were recorded by the Bulgarian pilots during the war, and air five victories have eventually been scored. Five more enemy aircraft were captured lightly damaged together with their aircrews. Own losses accounted to five pilots and two observers. Three Bulgarian aircraft made forced landings on territory held by the enemy, but their aircrews have successfully burned out the machines and escaped capture.

The Bulgarian Naval Aviation saw its establishment in 1916 - in the form of the Floatplane Section based at Peinerdjik (Tchaika), on the side of Devnya Lake near the city of Varna.

Crash and Rebirth

After the end of World War One, Bulgaria was prohibited from establishing any military aviation structure for 20 years. The 1919 Paris Peace Treaty called for almost complete demolition of the Bulgarian armed forces. Almost the entire air force inventory - a total of 70 aircraft, 100 aero engines and 76 machine-guns - was destroyed under the strict control of the Allied occupation corps. The floatplanes were the last aircraft to be destroyed, in September 1920.

The country was restricted to buying civil aircraft from the Allies, as the power rating of their engines was restricted to 180 hp. Several World War One-era airframes and engines, however, were hidden and later clandestinely used for training. In 1921, the military aviation was ‘hidden’ into the Gendarmerie Aeronautics Section, a paramilitary structure controlled by the War Ministry. However, it was disbanded in 1922 following the strong protest by the French authorities, but was to be soon restored under the new name as Aeronautics Section, controlled by the Ministry of Railways, Post and Telegraph. The first new aircraft were acquired in 1924 and during the same year, King’s Decree of 15 July 1924 reformed the section into Aeronautics Directorate of the Ministry of Railways, Post and Telegraph.

In order to provide its ‘hidden’ air force with cheap but modern trainers, reconnaissance and light attack aircraft, in 1925 the Bulgarian government established at Bojourishte near Sofia an indigenous aircraft factory -DAR. In 1931 Caproni established its own factory in Kasanlak named Bulgarski Caproni.

In the mid-1930s, when it became absolutely clear that Europe was on the edge of a new large-scale war, both King Boris III and the Bulgarian Government took active steps towards the creation of a capable air force. The formal rebirth of the Bulgarian Air Force took place on 27 June 1937 at Bojourishte airfield. King Boris III handed the standards of the four newly-formed regiments (wings) as he donated 12 Dornier Do 11 bombers and 12 Arado Ar 65 fighters paid for from his own pocket. The other aircraft of the emerging air arm were 12 He 51 fighters and 12 He 45 reconnaissance aircraft, delivered in late 1936. 12 Polish-made P.Z.L. P.43B reconnaissance and close support aircraft (an export version of the P.Z.L. P.23) and 12 P.Z.L. P.24 fighters were taken on strength in 1938 and 1937 respectively. 36 P.23Bs were delivered in 1939 and two more in 1941. In total, 72 combat aircraft were purchased until the end of 1938.

The three-year and rather ambitious plan for the Bulgarian Air Force development called for the establishment of large-size air arm, headquartered in Sofia and composed by four composite regiments - 1st based at Ikhtiman airfield, 2nd at Plovdiv, 3rd at Yambol and 4th at Lovetch. Other units to be established in accordance to this plan comprised the independent regiment at Bojurishte airfield, naval aviation unit in Varna or Bourgas and training regiment based in Kazanlak.

The 1938 Thessaloniki Treaty between Bulgaria, Britain and France finally abolished the Paris Treaty limitations on the development of the Bulgaria’s military aviation. Soon after the beginning of the war Bulgaria eventually turned toward the Third Reich as the sole supplier of defence equipment.

By that time, however, the Reich’s aviation industry was busy to supply the Luftwaffe with state-of-the-art front line aircraft; therefore it was able to offer mainly newly built trainers and recce aircraft, and only a small number of modern fighters and bombers. These were insufficient for building up of a strong air arm of the Kind Boris III envisaged. The solution to the problem was found by means of the procurement of the remains of the air force inventory of what was known until 15 Marct 1938 as Czechoslovakia and later as the Reich’s Bohemia and Moravia Protectorate. A total of 214 aircraft of the former Czechoslovak air arm was delivered. These comprised 62 second-hand Letov-Smolik S 328 reconnaissance aircraft, 32 Avia В 71 (a licensed Tupolev SB version) and 12 Aero MB 200 (licensed Marsel Bloch MB 200En-4 version) medium bombers as well as 29 Avia В 122 trainers and one Aero В 304 photo ship. In the summer of 1939 the Bulgarian air arm ordered 78 brand new Avia В 534 biplane fighters and one year latter another agreement was signed for the local assembly of 12 Avia В 135 fighters, followed by large scale licensed production. Between 1936 and 1941 the RLM itself supplied a total of 203 aircraft -19 Messerschmitt Bf 109E-4, 12 Heinkel He 51, 12 Arado Ar 65 and 6 Focke-Wulf Fw 56 fighters, 18 Dornier Do 17 and 12 Do 11 bombers, 8 Fw 58 and 12 He 45 reconnaissance aircraft, 2 Junkers Ju 52/3M transports, 6 Bf 108 and 3 Fieseler Fi 156 liaison aircraft, 6 He 72, 40 Fw 44, 12 Bucker Bu 181 and 24 Ar 96 trainers. The indigenous aircraft industry provided the Bulgarian air arm with a large number of various trainers, recce and light, attack aircraft. Between 1936 and 1941 a total of 154 units were delivered - 24 DAR-3, series I, II and III and 46 KB-5 recce aircraft, 28 KB-4 trainer/recce aircraft, 10 KB-309 twin-engined training bomber and reconnaissance aircraft as well as 13 DAR-8 and 26 KB-2A/3 trainers.

Another peacetime reorganization of the Royal Bulgarian Air Force took place on 1 December 1939. The Army regiments with composite structure were reformed into single-role combat units: 1st Line Regiment at Bojurishte with three 12-aircrfat squadrons; 2nd Fighter Regiment at Karlovo with four 12/15-aircfrat squadrons equipped with the Avia B.534; 3rd Reconnaissance Regiment at Yambol with four 9/12-aircrfat squadrons equipped with the Letov S.328; 5th Bomber Regiment with three squadrons - 2 with 12 B.71 bombers and one with 12 Dornier Do 11.

In the summer of 1940 the fist batch of 12 Messerschmitt Me 109E-3 fighters were acquired together with six Me 108B-1 liaison and conversion training aircraft. A total of 145 Me 109E-3 and Me 109G-2/6 were taken on strength until mid 1945. The capability of the fighter force was eventually boosted up with the procurement the second-hand Dewoitine D.520s. These were initially intended to be employed for the air defence of the Reich, but in August 1943 the fighters were sold to Bulgaria. 100 units were planed to be delivered in September and these were to be followed by 24 more later that year. In fact 96 D.520s were eventually delivered. These equipped 2/6 and 4/6 regiments at Karlovo airfield, which commenced their conversion in November. The modernisation of the bomber force took place in September 1940 with the delivery of the first batch of 18 Dornier Do 17Ps, and the first Ju 87R-2 dive bombers entered service in December 1943.

In March 1942, a new organisation was purposely created to control all the front-line units - the Air Escadra. It was an Air Combat Command - like structure controlling the 2nd Line Regiment (latter renamed the 2nd Attack ‘Stuka’ Polk, equipped with two squadrons of Ju 87D/R attack aircraft and B.534 fighters re-roled as attack aircraft), 5th Bomber Division (with two regiments equipped with Do 17 and B.71s) and the 6th Fighter Regiment (with two regiments equipped with Me 109E/G and D.520). The 1st Reconnaissance Regiment (with two regiments equipped with S.328, Fw 189 and KB-11 and one long-range reconnaissance squadron equipped with the Do 17) was placed under the direct control of the Royal Bulgarian Air Force headquarters. The other direct-reporting air units of the air arm were the Air Transport Squadron (equipped with the Ju 52/m3), the Floatplane Squadron (with Ar 196A-3 and He 60) as well as the Flying School with various types of trainers.

First Battles

The first air combat between Bulgarian fighters and US bombers took place on 1 August. This day the 9th Air Force started the Tidal Wave operation on the suppression of oil production in Ploesti region in Romania. 165 B-24 Liberator bombers lacking any fighter escort were involved in the 1 August bloody raid, plotting their route trough the Bulgarian airspace. A flight of four Me 109G-2s intercepted a group of about 20 returning B-24s over northern Bulgaria. The followed several firing passes resulted in the shoot down of five or four B-24s, two of which on the score of First Lieutenant Stoyan Stoyanov. For his brave leadership and the double B-24 kills, the formation leader First Lieutenant Stoyanov was awarded the Bravery Cross.

On 12 August the most potent Bulgarian fighter unit - 3/6 Regiment, equipped with 16 Me 109G-2s was deployed to Bojourishte, assuming the responsibility for the air defence of Sofia. The ground-based air defence of the capital was strengthened to 56 88-mm AAA guns by late 1943.

In the autumn of 1943, the Allies launched the Point Blank strategic air offensive against Bulgaria. The main aim was that bombings would cause severe political instability followed by a prompt break away with the Axis, thus denying the already battered German armed forces from the use of Bulgarian bases and resources. The main target in the country was Sofia, on which 10 large-scale bombing raids were launched from 14 November 1943 to 17 April 1944 by the Italy-based 15th Air Force.

The fiercest air combat during the 1943 raids on Sofia occurred on 20 December 1943. Three formations of a total of 50 B-24s, escorted by similar number of P-38s, approached Sofia. By 12.30 the first of the 16 Me 109Gs of 3/6 Regiment took off from Bojourishte simultaneously with the lead element of the Vrazhdebna-based 24 D.520s of 2/6 Regiment. For the first time the two fighter units were ordered to fight co-operatively. The later started the first firing pass run against the lead enemy group approaching from southwards; ignoring the escort, the D.520 mounted deliberate head-on firing passes, followed by the Me 109Gs. Most of the bombers of the southern group hastily dropped its ordinance when engaged before to reach Sofia. The brave pilot Lieutenant Dimitar Spissarevsky attacked a small group, which approached the southern outskirts of the capital. Flying a Me 109G-2, he made a deliberate firing pass on one bomber and then undertook an intentional suicide ramming on another B-24 within the same formation.

The Bulgarian pilots achieved 10 confirmed kills (seven P-38s and three B-24s), and according to the official Bulgarian records, damaged at least five more enemy aircraft. Their own loses numbered two pilots and a pair of Me 109G-2s. The 20 December air battle was the most efficient air defence operation by the Bulgarian fighter force, as 10 per cent of the enemy aircraft participating in the raid were confirmed shoot down.

On 10 January Sofia was again the main target for the Allies. This was the most devastating air raid, followed for the first time by another one in the night. These were tasked to resist the heaviest Allied strike to the date, which caused considerable devastation of the city center. The strike package of about 150 B-17s, escorted by about 100 P-38s approached Sofia from the eastwards. The followed 20-minute air combat with the P-38s left the bombers without fighter escort thus allowing 32 D.520s to run on them just over Sofia. Their head-on firing passes scattered the first B-17 group but the next ones were able to carry out their bomb drops without fighter resistance thus causing severe devastation of the densely populated centre of Sofia.

The Allied bombing raids carried out between April 1941 and September 1944 resulted in 1,828 killed and 2,372 wounded Bulgarian citizens. Some 50,000 high explosive and incendiary bombs were dropped on Bulgarian territory. The Bulgarian fighters continued their actions against Allied bombers overlying Bulgaria on their way to and from Ploesti in the summer of 1944. The most successful summer air combat occurred on 17 August when 3/6 Regiment scored four confirmed and one probable B-17 kills.

Thus, the final combat record of the Bulgarian fighter force between 1 August 1943 and 9 September 1953 reached 53 confirmed kills, among them 37 four-engined bombers as well as 16 P-38 and P-51 fighters. Four four-engined bombers were claimed by the AAA. The damaged aircraft and probable kills numbered some 70 bombers and 22 fighters. Some of these crashed or force-landed on their back route over Serbia, Albania and the Adiratic Sea. Some 117 wrecks of Allied aircraft shoot down during their strikes on Bulgarian and Romanian targets were located on Bulgarian territory. The Me 109Gs and the D.520s of the 6th Fighter Division accumulated about 970 combat sorties. 550 of them were flown by the pilots of 3/6 Regiment, 275 by 2/6 Regiment, 90 by 1/6 Regiment and 52 of 4/6 Regiment. Bulgarian loses numbered 27 fighters and 23 pilots. More than 30 fighters made forced landings due to extensive combat damages.

The Patriotic War

After the pro-Allied coup of 9 September 1944, Bulgaria turned against Germany and all airworthy aircraft including a total of 146 aircraft, including 53 fighters, 33 attack aircraft, 32 bombers and 28 reconnaissance aircraft were engaged in close air support of the ground forces attacking Axis positions in Serbia, Macedonia and Greece. Main types used in the Patriotic War were the Me 109G fighters, Ju 87D dive bombers, Dornier Do 17 bombers and reconnaissance aircraft plus a host of support and liaison types.

In the early days of the ground offensive, the aircraft inventory available daily numbered between 80 and 100 but as the time had passed by, this number steadily dwindled. The lack of enough ground attack aircraft and the virtual absence of Luftwaffe fighters in the theater made possible the fighter units to switch to low-level attack role where they suffered from heavy attrition due to the dence AAA cover. A secondary combat task was the escort of both Ju 87D and Do 17 strike groups.

The first combat actions of the VNVV in the anti-Nazi new war took place by the mid-day on 9 September. A total of 35 combat sorties were flown. The Air Escadra was ordered to mount pre-emptive air strike against the Luftwaffe airfield at Nish and also to provide close air support to the 15th Infantry Division of the 1st Bulgarian Occupation Corps in Macedonia, which was encircled by the German troops near the city of Biloya. The Nish strike, carried out by three Me 109Gs of 3/6 Regiment resulted in six Luftwaffe fighters destroyed on the ground. The own loses numbered one aircraft and its pilot. 6 Do 17s of 1/5 Regiment, and 9 Ju 85D-5s of 1/2 Regiment mounted effective strikes in order to help the 15th Division to penetrate the surrounding and to initiate its retreat toward the Bulgarian border.

Subsequent strikes were carefully planned, in cooperation with the Soviet 17th Air Army, which was re-based in the northern part of the country and around Sofia in mid-September. The demanding mountainous terrain and the rapidly deteorating weather in the southern Balkans in the autumn were familiar to the Bulgarian air crews, so they were considered better suited to operate in this region at low level than the Soviets. The Bulgarian Air Force was tasked to provide close air support to the Bulgarian Army divisions advancing in the mountainous region of southern Serbia and Macedonia. The 17th Air Army was restricted to operations in central and northern Serbia and then in Montenegro. In order to prevent the incidents and loses from friendly fire - for the majority of the Bulgarian aircraft were German-made - the two air arms were planed to operate concurrently in non-overlapping zones. Within the few common operating zones they were ordered to operate at different times.

After the end of the battles in southern Serbia and Macedonia, the 1st Army joined the 3rd Ukrainian Front of the Red Army advancing toward Austria via Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary. The German-made Bulgarian Air Force inventory was suffering from severe unserviceablity by the end of 1944, and the front-line aircraft were not able to participate in the battles, which happened more than 1,000 km away from Bulgaria. The close air support of the 1st Army was provided by the Soviet 17th Air Army. The air assets of the 1st Army were grouped in a liaison squadron of two Fi 156s and one Me 108 based at Zemun. One Do 17P of 73rd Long Range Recce Squadron flew reconnaissance and liaison missions in March 1945. Ju 52/3Ms flew some transport missions in support to the 1st Army. One Fi 156 with its crew of two was lost on 10 May to enemy small arms fire.

In air combat, and on the ground, the Bulgarian pilots destroyed 25 Luftwaffe combat aircraft. During 3,744 ground attack, air cover and recce sorties, they destroyed 690 tanks and combat vehicles, 25 artillery batteries, 23 locomotives and 496 railway cars. The total number of sorties, flown by the VNVV during the Patriotic War reached 4,424. 3,374 of these were flown during the first stage of the war between 9 September and 2 December, losing a total 32 downed or heavy damaged aircraft and 18 crew members.

By BAFP

Posted by Mitch Williamson on Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Duke Charles of Burgundy by Peter Paul Rubens

A MOUNTED ARCHER in Burgundian service, depicted in battle gear of c.1470 - note his long boots and spurs - is a wealthy mercenary. He wears an open-faced sallet (helmet), and a brigandine (made of small, riveted plates) to protect his torso.

Burgundy’s conflict with the Swiss Confederation resulted principally from the effort by Charles the Rash to expand his domain and elevate his Duchy to the rank of kingdom and even one of the Great Powers of Europe. To connect his core holdings in the north with rich Italian lands to the south, he sought to carve a path of conquest and annexation through the Swiss Confederation. The inevitable clash came at Héricourt in 1474, where mature Swiss square tactics allowed the men of the Cantons to catch in a pincer maneuver a mercenary relief column, mostly comprised of armored cavalry, and destroy it. The next major encounter came at Grandson (1476), where the Swiss captured the Burgundian artillery train of over 400 very fine cannon and many more ammunition and support wagons. However, the Swiss pursuit floundered when it reached Charles’ hastily abandoned camp and a frantic and ill-disciplined scramble for booty began. The Cantons thereby missed a main chance to destroy the Burgundian army. The two forces met again at Morat (1476), where some 12,000 Burgundians and allied mercenaries in lance formation fell to Swiss ‘push of pike’ and the spears and pistols of allied cavalry from Lorraine. At Morat, a further 200 Burgundian cannon were lost to the Swiss, giving them one of the finest trains in Europe. This string of defeats unhinged what might have become a Burgundian empire. Along with mutinies and treachery by mercenary garrisons, Charles’ power and territorial holdings were alike eroded. The final act came at Nancy (1477), where Charles lost another battle through stilted tactics to a superior and more disciplined enemy, saw the Burgundian army built up over a century destroyed, and surrendered his life. The defeat ensured that Burgundy would not emerge as one of the Great Powers of the early modern age but would instead see its territory eaten by more powerful and militarily successful neighbors, especially Austria and France.

Wargaming Notes:

SWISS 1470s AD

The usual formation was into three commands called the Vorhut (vanguard), Gewalthut (centre) formed around the cantonal standards and Nachhut (rearguard). Either of the first two could be the largest, but the Nachhut was always the smallest. The three commands sometimes attacked in echelon, each in a solid block, but this was not invariable. At Nancy in 1477 the Nachhut comprised only a large body of skirmishing handgunners used to connect the other two commands. Committee control continued and the C-in-C’s function is assumed to reside in a front rank element of the Gewalthut. This applied even at Nancy where the nominal commander of the army was its hirer, Duke René of Lorraine, the former leader of the cavalry at Morat in 1476. Although most elements are classed as pikemen, pike units still contained a large proportion of halberdiers. This should be represented by using halberdiers as the centre figures of the rear three elements of each four deep pike block. However, until about 1490 there can also be separate halberdier elements; at Morat the Nachhut consisted entirely of these. Most halberdiers were unarmoured. Skirmishers were usually mostly attached to the Vorhut, handguns progressively replacing crossbows. Mounted crossbows can always dismount. Allied contingents drawn from this list prior to 1490 can include halberdiers. Swiss artillery consisted of light pieces dragged along with the infantry. A large number of extra guns were captured at Grandson in 1476 and used on the walls of Morat later that year to beat off initial Burgundian assaults before succumbing to counter-battery fire from heavy bombards. Accordingly, captured Burgundian artillery can only be used in prepared fortifications.

BURGUNDIAN ORDONNANCE 1471 AD - 1477 AD

This covers Burgundian armies after the reforms of Charles the Bold (or Rash). Though various measures were mooted earlier, nothing seems to have actually been done before 1471 AD. Feudal troops had declined badly in both equipment and training during the peaceful proceeding reign of Philip the Good, whose benevolence and economy did not save him from the French. Low Country contingents were now more efficient, but also extremely unwilling. This led Charles to institute a new regular army using the best troops and ideas from all over Europe. It failed to cope with the Swiss, but so did everybody else. The Ordonnance companies comprised men of many nationalities, including Frenchmen, Germans, English and Italians. Each of their gendarmes was supposed to be supported by a coustillier, a valet and 3 mounted longbowmen, also armed with a two-handed sword. The mounted archers usually deployed separately, and the valets sometimes held the horses, but the coustilliers were deployed with the gendarmes, so are assumed to provide the rear ranks of each Knight element. The mounted archers were ordered on occasion to combine with pikes in a mixed formation, and it is possible that others also did so. According to the Ordonnance of 1473, “The pikemen must be made to advance in close formation in front of the archers, kneel at a sign from them, holding their pikes lowered to the level of a horse’s back so that the archers can fire over the pikemen as if over a wall. Thus, if the pikemen see that the enemy are breaking rank, they will be near enough to charge them in good order as instructed.” This suggests that there was some difficulty in obtaining the required number of missile-men, the difference being made up by extra pikemen. Charles’s “pick and mix” approach is typical of many wargamers, so this army’s popularity despite its real life 100% record of defeat is perhaps not so surprising. At Grandson, charging gendarmes failed to break into the Swiss and the army broke when fresh enemy arrived while it was changing its dispositions. At Morat, an inadequately manned trench line was stormed by the Swiss and the rest of the army beaten in detail as it came up. At Nancy, the Swiss avoided an artillery ambush by a flank march and rolled over dismounted gendarmes as they changed front. The Burgundians had earlier acquired the practice of dismounting their men-at-arms from the English. Although they still did so on occasion, they now retained a mounted reserve and wings. Charles was apparently fighting mounted in such a reserve when killed at Nancy and those Italian gendarmes not included in the Ordonnance companies were part of a mounted wing. Accordingly, Ordonnance and feudal Knight can always dismount. Yorkist allies arrived to help against the French in 1475, though there was no fighting.

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