| The Battle of the Bulge and the weather |
| |
| Extract from the book:
Thor’s Legion, Weather Support to the US Air Force and Army.
By John F. Fuller
|
| |
| It was the largest pitched battle ever engaged in by U.S. troops – some 600.00 of them, more than twice the number that fought on both sides at Gettysburg. And men of Tommy Moorman’s Twenty-first Weather Squadron were in the thick of it. |
| |
|
Observers were with air coordination units attached to each of the ten American division operating south and east of Bastogne. Major Maynard E. Smith, Tommy’s commander of Twenty-first detachments supporting ground forces, functioned as staff weather officer to Patton and his Third Army staff, as well as to the commanding generals of the Twelfth and Twentieth Corps. Detachment ZY, with 1st Lieutenant Eddelman as the weather officer, supported Patton’s headquarters. 1st Lieutenant Blattenberg’s Detachment YF, near Bullingen, Belgium, was forced to retreat and abandon some of its equipment when German paratroopers jumped behind it, threatening to cut it off completely.
|
| |
| Major Perry’s detachment HH, at Kornelimuster, Germany, also found it necessary to retreat back into Belgium due to approaching German forces. 1st Lieutenant Lulegian’s Detachment YC was with Eighth Corps at Beho, south of Malmedy, Belgium. On December 17, with the opening German artillery barrage, Detachment YC began a retreat through a succession of towns (Gouvy, Houffalize, La Roche, Champlon, Recogne, and Chassepierre, just south of Sedan) within the next couple of days. They were always just ahead of German tanks and were frequently called upon to man temporary defenses with bazooks issued them to supplement their carbines. |
| |
| “Weather is a weapon the German army used with success, especially in the Ardennes offensive,” said von Rundstedt, the German commander in chief in the west, following his capture five month later. |
| |
| This Battle of the Bulge, as you call it, might have changed the entire course of the war, had it not been for the fact that the United States (Army) Air Force so quickly took advantage of the break in the weather.(Fuller, Weather and War, p.6) |
| |
| It was ironic too, whether by divine providence or sheer coincidence, that in the early morning hours of December 23, George Patton, whose Third Army was called upon to help relieve pressure on the “Bulge,” and whose armor was slowed by the same weather, summoned his chaplain to compose a prayer the general then distributed among all his troops. “Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of The great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend” read the prayer. “Grant us fair weather for Battle?” (Blumenson, The Patton Papers. P.605.) |
| |
| December 23, 1944 |
| |
| Actually, disturbed weather dominated the continent from the summer through the close of 1944, a factor the Germans readily took advantage of in their last-ditch offensive in the Ardennes, referred to as Battle of the Bulge. |
| |
| Hitler chose the place, and it was he who stipulated that, among other prerequisites, the offensive’s initial phase be shielded from Allied air power by a period of bad weather for at least ten days. (Ellis. The defeat of Germany. P.178) |
| |
| The original target date, established by German meteorologists, was late November. Even after that date was slipped (the necessary logistical support could not be marshaled), the bad weather from mid-November on masked Germany’s concentration of resources from Allied aerial reconnaissance. When Germany finally launched the Ardennes offensive on December 16, it caught the Allies by surprise. Commenting later that month, Hitler declared that: The best omen was the weather development which had been forecast by a young weather prophet who actually proved to be right. The weather situation enabled us, already two or three days earlier (before the jump-off), to actually camouflage the final build-up so that the enemy failed to recognize it. To achieve this had appeared almost impossible. (Royce L. Thompson, Study of Weather of the Ardennes Campaign. Oct.2, 1953. p.7.) |
| |
| Hitler’s “weather prophet” was Werner Schwerdtfeger, and for the first seven days of the Battle of the Bulge, inclement weather that he correctly forecast critically limited the help Allied air power rendered the defenders. “As long as the weather kept our planes on the ground it would be an ally of the enemy worth many additional divisions,” wrote Eisenhower. (Crusade in Europe p.345) |
| |
| The Allies’ inability to operate aircraft in a close support role at night and in bad weather provided a built-in guarantee that the minimum supply and reinforcement needs of Hitler’s armies would me met. On the other hand, alternate rains, snows, and thaws muddied roads and hampered German armor, just as it did the Allies’. |
| |
| With the elements grounding Allied air power, the pressure for favorable weather prognoses became nearly unbearable for staff weather officers of Tommy Moorman’s Twenty-first Weather Squadron supporting Ninth Air Force tactical air units. |
| |
| Early on December 22, the official, twenty-four-hour centralized forecast issued by the USSTAF center at St Germain called for a continuation of the scuddy weather blanketing the battlefield of Belgium. But late that afternoon, reports from Twenty-first observers near the front lines signaling a change in the weather began arriving at the Twenty-first’s Detachment B, supporting Major General Sam Anderson’s Ninth Bombardment Division (Medium) at Reims, France. |
| |
| Detachment B forecasters included Captain Robert F Rosenburg, 1st Lts Lloyd W Vanderman and Carl W Wegener, and M/Sergeant Harold H Wyman. Temperatures and dew points were falling, but the barometric pressure rose. “It was what we call the “Russian high” Vanderman explained, “an area of high barometric pressure moving eastward across the European continent, emptying its mass of air moisture over the long stretches of land and arriving over the west front stable and clear.” (History of the 21st Weather Squadron. June 6 – December 31, 1944) |
| |
  |
 |
| After checking with St Germain, 1st Lieutenant Lloyd Vanderman telephoned the revised forecast about midnight to Anderson who was in bed. Once assured that his prognosticators were supremely confident, Anderson called Vandenberg’s Ninth Air Force headquarters at Luxembourg. |
| |
| (Interviewed twenty-two years later, Sam Anderson took pains to pay tribute to his weatherman, whose name he could not recall. See Hugh H Ahman, US Air Force Oral History interview General Samuel E Anderson. No. K239.0512-905 (Marxwell AFB. AL: Air Force Simpson Historical Research Center, June 28 – July 1, 1976). Pp.268-270) |
| |
| They were indifferent because their forecasters did not pick up the Russian high. But they finally gave some targets to Anderson who ordered his men to work through the early morning hours if necessary to get his bombers ready. |
| |
| The weather cleared as forecast, and Anderson’s B-26s and A-20’s got off. The problem was that Vandenberg’s headquarters, skeptical of the forecast, failed to alert the Ninth’s fighters in time to protect Anderson’s bombers. Instead, Luftwaffe fighters met the bombers in shot down 44 of nearly 600 bombers in about 5 minutes before the Ninth’s fighters arrived to rid the skies of Germans. So, as predicted, the weather broke for 5 days beginning on December 23, offering superb flying conditions. Allied air power helped break the back of the German offensive. |
| |
|
|
Presentation:
2Lt Gilbert STEVENOT
(Interpreter)
|
6800th Special Troops
12th Army Group
 |
Campaigns
|
|
Battle of the Bulge,
Belgium
|
|