Croatian Do-17Z and Pilot

Colourised by Doug Banks

 

 

A Croatian Oberfeldwebel pilot of 10.(kroatische)/Kampfgeschwader 3 standing by his Dornier Do 17Z on the Eastern Front, ca. October 1941.

 

     The Croatian Air Force Legion (Croatian: Hrvatska Zrakoplovna Legija), or HZL, also known as the Croatian Legion, was a foreign volunteer unit of the Luftwaffe raised from volunteers drawn from the Independent State of Croatia. When formed in August 1941 it was designated 10.(kroatische)/Kampfgeschwader 3 and began training at the Grosse Kampfflieger Schule 3, in Greifswald, Germany, the squadron was equipped with Dornier Do 17Z aircraft.

 

    When it arrived on the Eastern Front on 25 October 1941, their first area of operations was near Vitebsk, Belarus. The rest of the Bomber Squadron's assignments were in the Northern Sector of the Eastern Front, including the bombing of Leningrad and Moscow. On 9 November 1941, the Squadron was congratulated by Feldmarschall Kesselring for its actions thus far. The Squadron moved its base to Agram (Zagreb), Croatia in March 1942.

 

     Officially redesignated 15.(kroatische)/Kampfgeschwader 53 in June 1942 while based at Agram. The unit began moving about from base to base from June until December 1942. The exact areas are uncertain, but one base was at Korowje-Selo, Russia and another was at Seschtschinskaya, Russia. After flying some 1,500 sorties on the Eastern Front, the Squadron and its aircraft were re-deployed to Croatia in December 1942, to help combat the growing Yugoslav Partisan threat to the Axis forces on the Yugoslav Front. The unit was disbanded in June 1944 and the men of the unit were used to form the bomber wing of the Air Force of the Independent State of Croatia (Croatian: Zrakoplovstvo Nezavisne Države Hrvatske, ZNDH), and was designated 1./(Kroat.)KG after having flown its nine Dornier Do 17Z bombers from Russia back to Croatia. The Dorniers proved a welcome addition to the strike power of the Axis forces fighting the Yugoslav Partisans on the Yugoslav Front.

 

     The Dornier Do 17, sometimes referred to as the Fliegender Bleistift ("flying pencil"), was a German light bomber produced by Claudius Dornier's company, Dornier Flugzeugwerke. It was designed as a Schnellbomber ("fast bomber"), a light bomber which, in theory, would be so

fast that it could outrun defending fighter aircraft.

 

 

Dornier Do 17Z of 15.(kroatische)/Kampfgeschwader 53



German Submarine U-505

Colourised by Doug Banks

 

     The German Submarine U-505 (Type IXC) captured at sea off the coast of Río de Oro, Western Sahara, West Africa on the 4th of June 1944 by a US carrier task group which had sunk two of U-505's sister boats from Lorient only a few weeks earlier.

     The carrier in question was the escort carrier USS Guadalcanal, which, in conjunction with four destroyers, formed hunter-killer Task Group 22.3. The group was commanded by Captain Daniel V. Gallery, one of the most talented and determined American sub hunting skippers of the war.

     On that day, shortly after 11 a.m., U-505's faulty sound detection equipment picked up faint propeller noises. When their captain Oblt.z.S. Lange rose to periscope depth to investigate, the sight he saw made his blood run cold. U-505 was in the midst of a carrier task group and about to be attacked by three destroyers and several aircraft. The boat immediately dived, but freakish water conditions allowed the aircraft to see the sub and use bursts from its .50-caliber machine guns to mark her submerged position for the destroyers.

     'They really gave it to us!' crewman Hans Goebeler remembers. 'They fired hedgehogs and about 64 depth charges at us. The explosions were the biggest I ever heard. One depth charge was so close it damaged torpedoes stored in the upper deck. Other depth charges jammed our main rudder and diving planes. Lange managed to fire one torpedo, but soon there was nothing for us to do but surface and abandon ship before she sank for good.

     Believing U-505 to be seriously damaged, Lange ordered his crew to abandon ship. This order was obeyed so promptly that scuttling was not completed.

     A boarding party from the escort destroyer USS Pillsbury safely secured U-505, it attempted to take her in tow, but collided repeatedly with her and had to move away with three compartments flooded. Instead, a second boarding party from Guadalcanal rigged a towline from the aircraft carrier to the U-boat.

     After three days of towing, Guadalcanal transferred U-505 to the fleet tug Abnaki (ATF-96). On Monday the 19th of June, U-505 entered Port Royal Bay, Bermuda, after a tow of 1,700 nautical miles (3,150 km; 1,960 mi).
     This action was the first time the U.S. Navy had captured an enemy vessel at sea since the War of 1812. 58 prisoners were taken from U-505, three of them wounded (including Lange); only one of the crew was killed in the action.

Tiger 308, schwere Panzer-Abteilung 502

Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger Nr. 308 of 3./schwere Panzer-Abteilung 502 near Dünaburg (Dauganpils), Latvia.

 

 

Colourised by Jiří Macháček

 

 

 

     On 1 July 1944 the Abteilung is attached to XXXVIII.Armee-Korps. They arrived by transport train from Ostrow to Dünaburg from 2 to 4 July and moves out to an assembly area on the southern bank of the Düna River in the area of Peski and Laucesa, 8 kilometers south of Dünaburg. (I suspect that is where this photo is taken). The assembly took place from 4 to 6 July.

 

     On 8 July the Abteilung received orders to move south along the Dünaburg-Sarasi road to Deguziai. There they were to join up with the 205.Infanterie-Division for a relief operation to free trapped units near Pilkoniai. Due to the heat and the excessive distance the Abteilung had to march (50 Kilometers) only 5 Tigers from 2.Kompanie and 3 Tigers from 3.Kompanie are operational, out of an initial 22 operational Tigers.

 

 

 

Russian soldier posing near Tiger 308, August 1944

 

     From 10 July to 27 July the Abteilung is in almost constant combat around Dünaburg. Tiger 308 is lost before the end of August.