Few people in history in our own time have become as infamous as Adolf Hitler, the dictator who alone started perhaps the greatest catastrophe in the history of mankind – World War II. But how did it really happen? In this series of articles, we make an attempt to shed some light on the events and circumstances that enabled Hitler to seize power in Germany in 1933.
Hitler and the First World War
In August 1914, World War I broke out. Hitler called the outbreak of war “a liberation”. “I fell on my knees and thanked God with all my heart,” he said.
National moods prevailed everywhere. The students on the streets of Munich sang “Die Wacht am Rhein”. Kafée Fahring on Karlsplatz was vandalized when musicians refused to play the national anthem over and over again. Hail the emperor! Heal the Lord! was heard everywhere. Everyone with German as their mother tongue must gather in one kingdom and become a people. That was the mentality in Munich for a few weeks during the hot August days of 1914.
Hitler had previously been misled in the muster and was considered unfit to bear arms. But now he was accepted as a volunteer in the 1st Bavarian Infantry Regiment. An eyewitness says that when he got his rifle out, he looked at it with the same delight as a woman looks at her jewels.
Adolf Hitler never became popular with his comrades in the trenches. He was a “patriot” and acted as an important petter. The comrades thought he was a strange figure living in his own world. When the others talked about women, Hitler kept to himself. He then engaged in his reading and painting. But he gave esteemed “lectures” on art and architecture. Hitler always had a book with him and was therefore considered an intellectual. His comrades also admired Hitler’s ability to sneak forward in the Indian way. That was what he practiced during his childhood Indian games.
Hitler served as a reporter (ordonnans) and performed many missions. At one point, he and one of his comrades were ill. For every meter they advanced, they were exposed to enemy bullets and grenades. They had to take shelter in water-filled graves and ditches. The comrade collapsed and Hitler dragged him back to safety. However, Hitler lacked leadership qualities and never became more than a corporal. In addition, he had a weak, non-military attitude. But he still received the Iron Cross for his efforts during the war. And the one who made sure that Hitler got the Iron Cross was a Jew, the battalion adjutant Hugo Gutmann.
Hitler in the hospital
During the last days of the war, Hitler was injured by gas. He later woke up far away from the front of a makeshift hospital in eastern Germany.
While he was there, World War I ended. The old world order went to the grave and a new chaotic world appeared. To his disgust, Hitler discovered that left-wing revolutionary letters were circulating in the hospital. Hitler could not accept that Germany had lost the war. Jews and communists must have dealt a stab wound to the back of the German soldiers, he thought.
He writes: “So everything had been in vain. Was this the meaning of the victims that the German mothers brought to the motherland? Had this happened so that a band of criminals would get their hands on it? During those days, the hatred within me grew towards those who were responsible for this evil. “
Marxists and Jews are blamed for Germany’s defeat
Hitler was just one of many who experienced connections between the Jews and the revolutionary movements, those who accepted Germany’s defeat and the Peace of Versailles . In early January 1919, the Marxists in Munich staged a coup led by Kurt Eisner, an elderly Jew with wild hair. The Spartakist Uprising in Berlin was led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, both of Jewish descent (read about the Spartakist Uprising in the fact box below).
The notion of a Jewish world plot gave new impetus to the already strong anti-Semitism in Central Europe. The Völkisch (popular) movement was prominent in Germany at this time. It meant belief in the innate superiority of the German nation and culture. They cherished a mysterious German nationalism and spoke of a pure, Aryan race .
At the same time as unemployment worsened in Germany, Jews fled the persecution in Russia and Poland . Now they flocked to Germany and competed with the native Germans for the increasingly rare jobs. Völkisch supporters called these Jews outcasts who defiled the Aryan race. Stories were spread about Jewish ritual killings of Christians and about Jewish conspiracies to achieve worldwide political domination. The attitude was that it was the Zionists who planned the First World War as well as the post-war revolutions. It would thus be part of the Jewish world conspiracy. Among the authors were pan-Germanists (those who wanted to unite all of Europe’s German speakers in a single “Greater Germany”) and anti-Semites.
Hitler received Eckart’s racist pamphlets (“political pamphlets”), which were similar to those he had read in turn-of-the-century Vienna . Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazis’ future chief ideologue, also spoke with Hitler about a major global Jewish conspiracy to conquer the world. Rosenberg then pointed out, among other things, Zion’s minutes (see the gray box below). Nobody cared that the writing was long ago revealed as a forgery. This anti-Semitic writing, which was allegedly a program of a Jewish world plot, fit exactly as evidence in Hitler’s own argument against the Jews. He used it as a genuine document. We know the consequences today …
The Spartacus uprising
Left to right Against right-wing forces, the far left was organized in the Spartacus League. The Spartacists wanted to create a Soviet Germany in the same way that the Communists in Russia at this time created the Soviet Union . Karl Liebknecht, one of the leaders of the left in Germany, wanted an immediate armed takeover. But Rosa Luxemburg , another left-wing leader, advocated a more cautious approach.
Liebknecht and Luxemburg were the driving force behind the frequent, huge rallies that took turns in Berlin. There was competition between the Social Democrats and the revolutionary socialist groups. The Social Democrats wanted to allow a socialist society to emerge based on democratic rules of the game. The more revolutionary socialists instead wanted to take advantage of the chaos in Germany and Europe to push through their policies quickly. The Social Democrats’ struggle against radical socialists and Spartacists was supported by both the military and the free forces. The Social Democrat and Minister of Defense Gustav Norske was particularly active in this collaboration. The Spartacists occupied strategic places in Berlin. They published the newspaper Die Rote Fahne . Their revolutionary propaganda aimed at a coup attempt.
At the beginning of January 1919, the Spartacus uprising broke out in Berlin. The Social Democratic government responded by appealing to the Liberals for help. The military joined forces with the government. Fierce and ruthless street fighting broke out in Lichtenberg, a suburb of Berlin. Everyone arrested with weapons was shot on the spot. Both Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered.
The Spartacus uprising is put down It must be remembered that behind Ebert and Norske in this struggle, stood the forces of old Germany. Gustav Norske behaved with great firmness towards the communist insurgents. On January 13, the uprising could be described as the downfall. This would not have been possible without the help of loyal forces of the old army who made themselves available to the government to fight German Bolshevism.
She was real, she lived once, and she had more power than perhaps any woman in world history. But still she disappeared from all fairy tales and stories; her memory was literally cut away from rock walls and tomb chapels, from temple walls and memorial statues – before she was finally rediscovered. This is the story of Hatshepsut, the mistress of Egypt, whose name for countless years was not even allowed to be pronounced.
A female pharaoh
When scientists in the 19th century finally learned to read Egypt’s ancient written language, the hieroglyphs, a whole new and fantastic world of knowledge opened up. But it was often really difficult to understand.
Jean-Francois Champollion himself, the Frenchman who once and for all solved the mystery of the hieroglyphs, was confronted with one of these mysteries, as he tried to decipher the writing on the temple walls of the huge Deir el-Bahri burial complex outside Luxor. There he could read about the mighty Moeris, also known as Thutmosis III, one of the greatest recognized of all the pharaohs of Egypt. But it also mentions its predecessor, Amenenthe. This pharaoh is depicted as all the country’s rulers, with the typical loose beard and the typical royal costume. But there is something strange about how the text is formulated. The pharaoh is mentioned as a woman. “Her Majesty the King”, roughly.
“It’s very puzzling,” Champollion wrote in a letter. “I find the same weirdness everywhere…”
Only eventually will the truth be revealed. Amenenthe was in fact a name written there in retrospect, to hide the fact that there once existed a female pharaoh named Hatshepsut. She had ruled the vast empire for twenty-two years and had also been very successful. Under her leadership, several wars had been won and a rich trade with the outside world established. Countless huge building projects were started, and so many statues and sculptures were erected that there are not many museums in the world with an interest in ancient Egypt that do not have at least some work from Hatshepsut’s time in their exhibition halls.
Yet for almost three thousand years she was completely forgotten. How was that possible?
The memory of Hatshepsut is cleared …
Careful detective work could finally reveal the truth. It was Thutmosis III, her powerful heir, who towards the end of her long reign decided to clear out all the memories of the woman who had been his mother-in-law. Hatshepsut’s name was removed from official archives and pictures depicting her were destroyed, in temples and tomb complexes. Sculptures had their faces smashed, before being thrown into deep pits and covered with sand and mud. And soon the memory of Hatshepsut’s long reign was gone.
Only the fact that her name and image have been preserved in so many places, in hidden corners of temple buildings and deep inside long-covered tomb chapels, meant that archaeologists would later rediscover her; only then could she be highlighted as one of the most important rulers in Egypt’s millennial history .
Why then did Thutmosis do this? A first interpretation was that it was an expression of a personal need for revenge. Perhaps he hated his mother-in-law, who was believed to have intrigued her to the throne, and then kept him out of power for far too many years. Maybe that was why he immediately struck back, by trying to eradicate the very memory of the person he so hated?
That interpretation has now been abandoned. Not least because it has turned out that Thutmosis seems to have had an at least decent relationship with her mother-in-law, at least judging by the fact that she actually gave him power over the country’s army while she was still alive. In addition, the attacks on her memory did not begin until the end of Thutmosi’s reign, more than twenty years after her death. Hardly the way a man would act if he were full of hatred and vengeance.
… the men’s monopoly of power is reaffirmed
Perhaps, at least argues the English archaeologist Joyce Tyldesley, it was all about an attempt to restore what was perceived as a kind of natural order of nature, a precondition for the cosmic balance – that men should rule over women. By obliterating her from history, the dynastic order was restored; power seemed to have been inherited in safe succession from one man to the next.
Admittedly, women in Egypt had relatively great independence, measured by ancient standards. They could make a career, and divorce without having to be ashamed of it. But female rulers were rare. Although in exceptional cases it was always about more or less temporary solutions, which left no great traces behind, really nothing that could be used to question the basic principle of male supremacy.
For this is an unpleasant truth that is difficult to ignore for anyone who takes a look at the history of mankind. Almost without exception, men have had the power, and moreover claimed that this is the way it obviously must be. Women are not capable of governing, it has been called, through the ages and across virtually the entire earth.
Hatshepsut questions this statement. She shows that a woman can be as strong, as successful, as near-divine, as any penis-bearing homo sapiens. Maybe that’s why Thutmosis III so desperately wanted to erase her from all living people’s memories?
Who knows what future women would otherwise get for themselves… Maybe they would not accept their lot as at most the wife, sister or mother of a powerful man, but start making demands on real power, on real influence?
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The clash between 4,000 German and Soviet tanks in western Ukraine in June 1941 became the largest armored battle in history: the Battle of Dubno-Brody. The Germans’ advance was first halted by the armored heavy Soviet carriages – until the Luftwaffe took control of the air.
The battles of Dubno-Brody at the end of June 1941 are now considered to be the largest armored battle in history. Despite the fact that over four thousand tanks were involved in a few days of fighting, the battle was unknown well into the 1990s. The day-to-day World War II kiosk uprising from 1977 only tells that army group Syd encountered “tougher resistance” at the end of June. It was not until John Erickson’s The Road To Stalingrad that the operations of the Southwest Front were discussed in detail, and Erickson’s disciple David Glanz has since dug further into history.
In the summer of 1941, the German-Russian border between the Pripyat Swamp and the Carpathians looked like a mirror-inverted “S”. In the southern arch lay the former Polish city of Lviv. In the north, the small town of Sokal was the easternmost point in Gerd von Rundstedt’s army group Syds line.
Rundstedt had orders to attack from the “northern arch” in the direction of Kiev. The spearhead of the attack was Ewald von Kleist’s Panzer Group 1. North of the armored group, the 6th Army would advance along the edge of the Pripyat Swamp, and south of it, the 17th Army would push the “southern arch” backwards towards Lviv.
On the Soviet side, the Southwest Front was scattered rather than grouped. Commander General Mikhail Kirponos had for several weeks been convinced that the Germans were going to attack and tried to group their units for defense. When he did not receive permission, he had begun preparations on his own initiative, but Stalin reportedly called him and explained that “there will be no war.”
Finally, on June 21, 1941, Kirponos received permission to increase preparedness. He ordered that the Southwest Front take a position in the line of defense at the border called the “Molotov Line”. Enormous numbers of troops and materiel were set in motion, crowded on roads and at railway stations, were in the way and mixed up.
Began to break the Molotov line
The mobilization mercilessly revealed that there was a lack of equipment and supplies, and that they did not practice things that were suddenly necessary. Still, it barely took 24 hours for Kirpono’s divisions to make a difference. They had time to march and in many cases get in position – in contrast to the forces north of Pripjatträsken.
At dawn on June 22, Army Group South’s infantry divisions began to break through the Molotov line while Soviet troops tried to occupy it. The fighting was tougher than anywhere else along the front this morning. At the same time, the Luftwaffe attacked the Soviet air forces, but even here the increase in preparedness made a difference. Over the next few days, Kirponos’ flight squadrons offered desperate resistance, instead of being wiped out on the ground.
Kleist wanted to break through both at Sokal and at Volodymyr-Volynskyj 40 km further north. At lunch, the German infantry had taken Sokal and the 11th Armored Division was deployed to attack at depth.
Lack of communication
Kirponos had two armies at the front. To the north, in front of Kleist’s armor, was the 5th Army and along the arch around Lviv was the 6th. The German breakthrough struck along the border between the two armies, making it unclear who would address the problem. At the same time, the Soviet connection between the regiments and divisions constantly broke down.
There were too few radios and even fewer signalers. Communication between higher staffs, on the other hand, was by telephone and worked better. The generals could scold each other, but not get much more done. In addition, Stalin was able to call and hand out orders over Kirponos’ head.
An illustrative example was that at Volodymyr-Volynskyj the Germans had met with furious opposition from the 87th marksmanship division. But Kirponos had no contact with his division and did not know what was going on, while Kleist kept his armored units waiting while his infantry fought with the reluctant defenders.
Controlled 3400 tanks
Kirponos had six large mechanized corps with about 3,400 tanks in the area. At Lutsk, almost directly in the way of Kleist’s intended attack, stood the 22nd mechanized corps with 710 chariots (of which 30 T-34 and KV-1). At Lviv, seventy miles south of the breakthrough, lay the 4th mechanized corps with another 700 chariots (of which 100 were T-34 and KV-1).
Further south, in Uman, there was the huge 8th Mechanized Corps consisting of 900 chariots (including 170 T-34 and KV-1) – it alone consisted of more chariots than the entire Kleist armored group. To the east of these were the 15th mechanized corps’ 750 carriages (with 130 T-34 and KV-1), if you want another group. Finally, the two smaller corps, 9th and 19th mechanized, with 300 (no T-34 or KV-1) and 450 wagons (only five T-34 and KV-1), were just over a dozen miles to the east.
In total, 710 tanks stood in the way of Kleist’s 720. At the same time, 1,900 tanks threatened his southern flank and another 750 his northern. Of these, 450 wagons were new T-34 and KV-1, whose thick armor the German 37 mm cannons had difficulty hitting. To sharpen the math further, only two-thirds of Kleist’s wagons were Panzer III and IV with larger-caliber cannons.
Only the Panzer III was armed with 50 mm cannons that had a real chance against the T-34. The rest of his fleet was obsolete light wagons. In addition, Kleist kept one of his divisions in reserve and 140 of his tanks were deployed only around the turn of the month. Kirponos, on the other hand, had almost 1,000 wagons in addition scattered in smaller reserves.
Stalin’s order was unrealizable
Kirponos realized that his front had been breached at Sokal and correctly assumed that this was the German main attack. At five o’clock he gave the 15th and 4th mechanized corps orders to attack the breakthrough. The 8th mechanized corps further south also received the same order. The units had previously received approximately the same order from the 6th Army commander, something that would create many misunderstandings in the coming days.
Later in the evening, Stalin had recovered from the shock of being attacked and ordered a counter-offensive without any regard for reality. “Directive number 3” ordered the Southwest Front to surround and defeat the German armies in front of it and then advance towards Lublin.
It all took two days. Kirponos replied to Stalin that he needed more time. It would take weeks before Stalin understood the extent of the Soviet losses during the first days of the war, and over a year before he stopped ordering attacks in time and out of time.
At midnight, Stalin’s envoy General Zhukov arrived at Kirpono’s headquarters and, after some heated discussions, realized that Stalin’s plan was unworkable. Zhukov approved Kirpono’s plan, and went out into the night to find the 8th Mechanized Corps.
Zhukov’s flinging was effective in the sluggish Soviet system. This is what he had done when he defeated the Japanese at Chalchin-Gol. He was everywhere, inspected, ordered and threatened. For the next few days, he was constantly on the move to make Kirpono’s plan work.
The Germans panicked
The next day, Kleist’s attack continued without a clear breakthrough. At dawn, the 11th Armored Division clashed closely with parts of the 4th Mechanized Corps in what would become a battle typical of the battle. The Soviet wagons attacked, contemptuously and without support. For a brief moment, panic broke out among the Germans when they realized that the T-34 and KV-1 wagons seemed invulnerable.
But the Germans recovered quickly, and while the Soviet wagons were knocked out by aircraft, artillery or infantry, the German tanks chased after the “softer parts” of the enemy. The attack crumbled in individual wagons that fired at everything that came in their way – until they were knocked out, lost heart or ran out of grenades.
One of the many Soviet problems was that the units “marched apart” on their way to the front. In the mechanized corps, first came the tanks, followed by artillery pulled by trucks, and then the infantry on foot. Finally, the artillery pulled by tractors arrived. Entire units got lost or got stuck on the road.
Halfway to Kiev, the 9. mechanized corps looted 200 trucks from a district reserve to even move its infantry. What on paper the day before had been around 3,400 tanks quickly eroded away. Of the 900 carriages of the mechanized corps, 150 were already missing.
Soviet attack failed
In the evening, the southern German breakthrough had penetrated more than 60 km on Soviet soil. The Germans now also broke through at Volodymyr-Volynskyj and Kleist let two new armored divisions move east.
On the 24th the German attack continued along two lines, while the 6th Army south of the breakthrough tried to cover an ever longer front behind its own flank. The 5th Army did not even succeed. A forty-mile-wide hole now gaped between the Soviet armies. The 22nd Mechanized Corps, which was in the middle of the hole and had spent two days waiting for its artillery, was now ordered to stop Kleist’s northern breakthrough. The attack was a complete failure.
The union leader suddenly lost half his strength, over 300 carriages had disappeared. Eventually he sent 50 chariots to meet the German 13th and 14th Armored 300s. In the evening he had fallen and on the way to Lutsk German tanks passed rows of abandoned Soviet ditons. As a unit, the 22nd Corps had collapsed, although its subdivisions still offered resistance.
On June 25, the 11th German Armored Division rolled into Dubno, 105 kilometers from the border and hours before the Kirponos Division sent to hold the city. Behind followed the 16th Armored Division and protected the advance flank. At the same time, Kleist’s north was close to Lutsk through hordes of fugitives who escaped Soviet counterattacks. In the evening, they had gained a foothold in the city. That same afternoon, the commander of the 8th Mechanized Corps stated that he was in the starting position to attack the Germans’ southern flank.
Supported by aircraft and artillery
But he had lost half his strength and had received three different orders on how to attack. At the same time, it was clear that the 4th Mechanized Corps, which would attack along with the 8th and 15th Corps, had been deployed further south, where the German 17th Army was pushing against Lviv.
After four days of brutal “training at work”, the Soviet counterattacks began in earnest. Kirponos sledgehammer, the 8th and 15th mechanized corps, attacked from the south and hit the 16th Armored Division in the crest of the southern breakthrough. The heavy Soviet tanks were again impossible to stop and this time had the support of both aircraft and artillery.
The 16th Armored Division suffered heavy losses, was pushed back and exposed the back of the 11th Armored Division, which moved further east from Dubno. In the same crank, the 9th and 19th mechanized corps attacked and met Kleist’s northern close. The Soviet corps, which had few modern wagons, was slowly driven backwards.
During the night, the Soviet armored units succeeded in two complicated maneuvers. The 19th Mechanized Corps withdrew to concentrate from the north on the void behind the 11th Armored Division. At the same time, the 8th mechanized corps also detached skilfully and aimed at the same void from the south.
The only time in history the T-35 came into combat
It became increasingly clear that the extent to which Soviet units “palled the pressure” differed. Some continued to function as units while others as 22nd or 4th mechanized fell apart into stray parts. It depended a lot on the commanders: for example, Ryabyshev, who led the 8th Mechanized, would lead attacks throughout the war and not stop attacking until he encountered the British in Wismar.
On June 27, north of the Pripyat Swamp, the huge Minsk pocket was closed and captured 350,000 soldiers and 4,500 tanks. South of the swamp, von Rundstedt also described the situation as “serious”. At dawn, 200 heavy tanks from the 8th Mechanized Corps had attacked the backs of the 11th Armored Division, chasing panty linemen and artillerymen in front of them.
It was a powerful attack and probably the only time in history the giant T-35 came into combat. The Soviet wagons arrived in Dubno, defended by collapsed German units. At the same time, further west, the 15th Mechanized Corps attacked German infantry, which hurried forward to protect the long German flank. There were fierce battles that led nowhere and the Germans began to drive back the Soviet forces.
The following day, more and more chaotic battles were fought. Both sides’ planes chased across the battlefield and did not always distinguish between friend and foe. The German 11th Armored Division was cut off and could do little more than defend itself. There was a chance here for Kirpono’s tank unit to crush the German lead, but rapidly marching German infantry penetrated deeper and deeper behind the 8th Mechanized Corps (which attacked the back of the 11th Armored Division and which in turn was attacked in the back).
The Germans filled up with infantry
While the Germans filled up with new units, Soviet reserves such as the 37th Rifle Corps stood still some distance from the fighting, awaiting orders that never came. In the northeast, the Soviet 9th and 19th mechanized corps launched new, minor attacks, but were slowly driven backwards. Later in the afternoon, the 15th Mechanized Corps attacked with almost 200 BT-7 wagons. But instead of helping the increasingly pressured 8th Mechanized Corps, the attack was launched against well-prepared German infantry further west.
On June 29, the Germans managed to maintain a cohesive front and filled with more and more infantry. The battles in the air were almost settled and the Germans received more and more air support. The 11th Armored Division was rescued without drama, at the same time as the headquarters of the Mechanized Corps was knocked out by an air strike. After that, the corps had a total of two radios left.
In the 8th mechanized corps, all fuel ran out and about twenty modern wagons were left standing. They had done everything that could be asked of them. In the north, it is said that the commander of the 9th Mechanized Corps, Rokossovsky, refused to attack again because he had no tanks left to attack with. The corps next to him had 30 wagons left of its 450.
Soviet tank soldiers retreated on foot
On the night between 29 and 30, Lviv fell into a chaos of revenge and ethnic cleansing. The Soviet 6th Army withdrew so as not to be encircled. Around Dubno the fighting ebbed. The remaining Soviet tank soldiers at Dubno had their last tanks blown up and retreated on foot.
Some of them did not reach their own units until a month later. The Germans salvaged and repaired their tanks, while there were hardly any soldiers left who could repair tanks on the Soviet side. If a wagon got a slightest mistake, it stood still and was lost.
On June 30, Stalin approved the withdrawal of the Kirponos from the Southwest Front to the old border. But there were few tanks left to pull out of the fighting. Most units had lost more than three quarters of their wagons. The German air force chased relentlessly for the retreating units.
The last act of the battle was a farce. On July 1, more than two hundred wagons from the 22nd Mechanized Corps found out of the swamp they had been stuck in the past week and were immediately put into an attack on Kleist’s northern flank. As in a replay, they hit an open flank and chased German troopers until the Luftwaffe fell over the columns of tanks. The battle was over.
Hardest battles during Barbarossa’s introduction
The southwestern front was allowed to retreat to what was called the Stalin Line, with the Germans on their heels. On July 5, they broke through the line of defense and called in a couple of weeks into the southern half of the Southwest Front at Uman.
One hundred thousand Soviet soldiers fell and as many were captured. Army Group South’s advance then stopped for a few weeks before launching the attack, which in September included Kiev in the largest encirclement battle in history. In all, more than 600,000 Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner of war.
The effects of the battles around Dubno-Brody are difficult to estimate in retrospect. It was without a doubt the toughest battle during Barbarossa’s introduction. But even if Kleist’s units were bruised, they could continue against Kiev. The armored group lost up to 200 wagons, half of which could be repaired. The southwestern front lost over 3,000 carriages. At the same time, the Russians lost over 1,500 machines in the air war, while the Germans’ losses were below 100.
General Rokossovsky got revenge
There were many lessons to be learned. The shock for the Germans was, of course, that the modern Soviet tanks were difficult to strike with the anti-tank weapons at their disposal. At the same time, the Soviet inability to include infantry and artillery in the major armored attacks meant that their superior chariots could still be knocked out.
The difficult-to-lead Soviet armored divisions set up last year were never rebuilt after the disasters of June. Instead, much smaller, more flexible and more easily guided mechanized corps were developed.
One of the leaders in the development was General Rokossovsky, who led the 9th Corps at Dubno-Brody. He got his revenge on the victors from Dubno-Brody when in November 1942 he led the great attack that surrounded the 1st Panzer Group in Stalingrad.
For millennia, humans have dreamed of being able to fly like birds – to float freely and unbound on the ground. There are lots of stories about how people managed to fly with the help of carpets, magic horses, brooms and cannonballs. One of the ancient myths tells of how Icarus, with the help of artificial wings, could fly, but in his pride flew too close to the sun; the wax that held the wings melted, and he plunged to death. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Wright brothers succeeded in fulfilling man’s millennial dream – but then suddenly no one was interested in their invention.
The first to seriously study the problems of flight was Leonardo da Vinci , who studied the flight of birds and drew sketches for a helicopter. Da Vinci believed that man with his own muscular power could fly – in reality it is not enough. Trying to fly in the same way as a bird is doomed for man to fail. The birds can fly because their skeletons, unlike humans, have hollow legs and because they have very strong wing and chest muscles in relation to their weight.
Attempts to conquer the air have been made according to two principles: with craft that are lighter than air and with craft that are heavier.
One of the first to realize that it was with craft heavier than air that the sky would be conquered was the British George Cayley (1773-1857). In 1799 he made a sketch for an airplane that would carry a human. He had the basic principle clear to him; the inertia of the air had to be exploited, and a sufficiently powerful driving force was needed – an engine.
The shape of the wings is crucial
An airplane can take off because the shape of the wing means that the air that flows past the wing goes faster on the upper side than the lower side. This means that there is negative pressure on the upper part of the wing, overpressure on the lower part and thus the plane is pressed upwards. Cayley figured out what the wings would look like, but the gasoline engine had not yet been invented. Cayley was therefore unable to provide its models with a sufficiently good driving force. His work was forgotten, and for a long time man tried to fly by waving large wings like birds. People tried to jump from towers and hills with various devices that resembled large dragons. At best, the designer hovered a few hundred meters – at worst, he crashed and killed himself.
Others tried to build steam engines into airplanes, but the steam engines were so heavy that the creatures could not possibly lift. Sometimes the whole machine exploded.
During the end of the 19th century, several pioneers were close to a technical solution, but either they lacked money or no engine.
The German engineer Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896) was the first to succeed in gliding gliders with craft heavier than air. He came to the right principle by studying floating seagulls in the port city of Stettin. By studying the seagulls, he discovered that a curved wing has better bearing capacity than a straight one. But in August 1896 he was to try out a new rudder, plunged into the hill and died the next day.
Bird escape or engine?
Eighteen years earlier, two Americans, brothers Wilbur (1867-1912) and Orville (1871-1948) Wright, had received a flying toy as a gift. Using a rubber-powered propeller, the fragile bamboo and paper craft floated. The brothers were fascinated and played with it until it fell apart.
In 1896, the brothers were 29 and 25 years old and jointly ran a bicycle repair shop in Dayton, Ohio. The news of Lilienthal’s death shook the brothers, and their interest in flying was rekindled. Even those who wanted to fly with machines that were heavier than air were divided into two camps. A group led by Lilienthal wanted to try to float and imitate the birds’ flight. Another group claimed that an engine was necessary.
The Wright brothers believed most in Lilienthal’s idea. But many more than he had had to put to death on test flights, and the Wright brothers had no desire to risk their lives. They therefore decided to do a series of tests and really study what happened on flights before they even tried.
Several successful attempts had been made with box kites, and this form was used extensively by the first aircraft builders. The model is familiar from the First World War fighter aircraft – double-deck aircraft of light materials.
The Wright brothers got the idea that each wing would have a special rudder, so that they could be set separately. In this way, the plane could always keep its balance in the air. Such a rudder is called a skew rudder and is still used today.
The brothers carefully studied previous experiments, and in 1900 they began experimenting with Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. The place was specially chosen for the even winds that blew there. By 1903, Orville and Wilbur had made over 1,000 successful sail flights but had also changed their position. Now they were convinced that an engine was necessary.
The airspace is conquered in Kitty Hawk
But no suitable engine could be found, so the brothers decided to build one themselves. They managed to design a light four-cylinder petrol engine of about 13 horsepower. It was mounted in a double-deck plane with two propellers. The plane was named “Flyer”.
On December 17, 1903, the brothers invited everyone living within 10 miles [10 km] to the first attempt at the Kitty Hawk. There were five people besides the brothers themselves. Three of the five came from the rescue station right next door.
“Not many people wanted to expose themselves to the raw December breeze in order, as they no doubt thought, to once again see an airplane that did not fly,” the Wright brothers wrote afterwards.
After three years of uninterrupted work, the time had come. The plane would fly with its tail first, with the pilot lying on the underwing. He had a propeller behind him and one in front.
Orville got on the plane, and Wilbur started the engine. “Flyer” began to move forward on its slides, faster and faster and suddenly the aircraft rose above the ground. Man had conquered the airspace.
But the first flight was short. “Flyer” flew for twelve seconds and during that time flew about 40 meters.
The spectators clapped in their red-frozen hands but still seemed disappointed. However, the brothers were happy. They made a few more attempts. The fourth flight, piloted by Wilbur, lasted 59 seconds. “Flyer” flew 250 meters.
After the successful attempts, everyone stood and talked when an accident occurred. A gust of wind caught hold of “Flyer”, and it began to move.
– We all ran there to keep it, but it was too late, the brothers said afterwards. Mr Daniels, a huge man with great powers, was dragged along and lost contact with the ground. He fell into the apparatus between his wings and flew like a stone in a rattle as the machine rolled around several turns.
Daniels did quite well, but “Flyer” was so badly injured that no more attempts could be made that day.
Longer and longer
After their successful flights, the Wright brothers left the Kitty Hawk and moved back to Dayton. In the spring of 1904, they invited several reporters to a demonstration. But the many failed attempts made by others had made the journalists distrust all the lunatics who said they could fly.
When the wind and engine failure made the flight only a few meters long, the newspapers lost interest.
So did the Wright brothers, who continued to improve their invention. In 1905, they managed to fly almost 40 km in 38 minutes.
Now the invention was finished, man’s millennial dream was fulfilled – but suddenly no one was interested. In vain did the brothers try to sell the plane to the US government. No result. They traveled to Germany, France and Great Britain. Nor did anyone there want to buy an airplane.
Three years passed, more and more people came closer to a solution to the problem. Finally – in 1908 – the Wright brothers began flying around passengers to open people’s eyes to the new invention. One of the passengers was the brothers’ 82-year-old father. The old man was delighted:
– Higher, higher! he shouted incessantly to Orville, who was sitting by the levers.
Yes, he sat, because over the years the brothers had made several improvements, and the pilot no longer had to lie on his stomach.
The demonstrations with passengers had an effect, and in 1908 the US government ordered a plane.
Now the development progressed rapidly. In 1906, the brothers were the only ones to master the art of aviation. In 1909, several others were notched in the heel. In 1909, the Frenchman Blériot flew as the first man across the English Channel. In 1908, Wilbur Wright set a height record of 115 meters. In 1910, the record of 3,100 meters was achieved by the aviation pioneer Legagneaux.
In 1910, Orville crashed Wright when he was to deliver the first plane to the United States government from the factory started by the brothers. Orville survived, but his companions perished.
The Wright brothers continued to work together until 1912, when Wilbur died of typhoid fever. Orville mourned his brother deeply. He continued to work for three years, but then gave up the flight. Orville lived until 1948 and managed to experience flights across the Atlantic and the first jets.
The first fighter jets
Two years after Wilbur’s death , World War I broke out – the first war in which aircraft were used. The first air battles – the pilots fired at each other with pistols – took place. Soon, some planes were provided with machine guns, but because they were behind the propeller, the pilots in the first attempts shot their own propeller blades. A new method later caused the shots to be fired at such a rate that they went between the propeller blades. Thus, the first hunting grounds could be put into use.
From the first simple fighter planes and bombers – where the bomb hung in a rope that was cut with a knife – the development has gone to computer-controlled aircraft with monitors that quickly give the pilot all conceivable information.
Aviation developed rapidly from the primitive plan of the First World War to becoming a decisive factor in war. World War II led to further improvements, such as the jet engine. In 1939, the world’s first jet was tested in Germany. In 1940, the ” Battle of Britain ” was decided in the air, a battle that ended in British victory.
Aviation conquers the world
The rapid development of aircraft forced through the First and Second World Wars also benefited civil aviation. After the end of the First World War, airline after airline was opened. The German Junkers and the Dutchman Fokker together built the first planes entirely of metal. In 1919, the English Alcock and Whitten-Brown flew across the Atlantic. In 1927, the Swedish descendant Charles Lindbergh made the first solo flight without a stopover across the Atlantic. He flew between New York and Paris in just over 33 hours and was greeted at the landing by hundreds of thousands of people. Today, the Atlantic can be crossed by plane in a few hours.
On long-haul routes, airships were also used for passengers until 1937 – zeppelin liners – which were built according to the principle lighter than air. But that year, the zeppelin “Hindenburg” , which was filled with explosive hydrogen gas, was destroyed by a fierce fire. Since then, the superiority of aircraft has never been questioned.
On May 14, 1897, five men sat huddled together in a large wooden hut at Lavernock Point near Cardiff on the west coast of Britain. The wind blew and made the eyes water, but the five kept an eye on the receiver. From a small islet off the coast a flag was suddenly hoisted, and shortly afterwards the men could hear the Morse code sign V. The experiment had succeeded. For the first time, Morse code could have been transmitted as far as five kilometers without a wire connecting receivers and transmitters. Mobile telephony, radio and television broadcasts all stem from the Italian Guglielmo Marconi’s (1874-1937) experiment at Lavernock Point.
Marconi’s invention was based on the theory put forward by James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879). Maxwell’s theory was that electricity and magnetism move in waves. And what’s more – they create each other. If there is a changing electric field, a magnetic field arises and vice versa. According to Maxwell, there was really only one kind of field – an electromagnetic one – and what he was talking about was not electricity and magnetism but electromagnetism.
Maxwell believed that light is also an electromagnetic wave motion and that there must be other waves with both shorter and longer oscillation times than light. Maxwell was absolutely right, and when you talk on your cell phone or listen to music in it, you use exactly the kind of waves he predicted would be detected.
Hertz and megahertz
It was the German Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894) who first succeeded in proving that the waves Maxwell described really existed.
In 1887, Hertz performed a classical experiment. In a corner of his laboratory, he set up an apparatus with two large metal plates. In another corner he placed a device with a steel wire bent into a ring. The ring was broken by two small pieces of metal with an air gap of one-fifth of a millimeter between them.
When Hertz sent alternating current through the first plant, a spark jumped between the metal plates as the current reached its highest strength. Maxwell’s theory predicted that an electromagnetic field would form.
Hertz had calculated that when the current created a magnetic field in the first plant, the magnetic field would create current in the second plant. Quite rightly, Hertz could see sparks jumping between the pieces of metal in the other plant even though no power was connected there.
Hertz had created electromagnetic oscillations and also been able to capture them. He could later show that the waves moved at the speed of light, that they spread in all directions and that they passed through both solids and water.
Hertz was also able to calculate the length of the waves and found that they were much longer than the light waves. Through his experiment, he showed that Maxwell’s mathematical proof worked in reality.
Hertz died only 37 years old. To honor him, the frequency, that is, the number of wavelengths per second, is now counted in hertz. When tuning to a program on your radio, follow a scale graded in megahertz abbreviated MHz. Mega stands for million, and 1 MHz is thus 1 million hertz. In today’s Gothenburg, for example, P1 is transmitted on the frequency 89.3 MHz.
On the wireless path
Many continued to work on the Hertz discovery, among them the Italian Guglielmo Marconi. His father had plenty of money, and the son could devote himself to his experiments without having to worry about earning any. In the family house in Villa Griffone near Bologna, Marconi was given two rooms for his experiments. Throughout the day, the young researcher sat trapped and tried different ways to succeed with his idea: to send messages through the air without wires.
Several other researchers had improved Hertz’s facility. The Russian Popov had invented the predecessor to the antenna. Marconi found that he could make further improvements by grounding one part of the receiver and connecting the other to the antenna.
One night in December 1894, Marconi woke his mother and asked her to hurry to the study. In the room, mother Marconi saw a bell in one corner and a transmitter in another. The son pressed a telegraph key on the transmitter, and the bell began to ring triggered by an electromagnetic impulse even though no wire was running between the devices.
The mother was overjoyed, but the father was harder to convince of the benefits of the experiment.
– There are other ways to ring a bell, was his comment.
The distance between the clock and the transmitter was only four meters, but in the spring of 1895 Marconi sent out his brother Alfonso with a receiver. Alfonso walked about a mile and a half from the house and disappeared behind a small hill.
Marconi remained in Villa Griffone with a transmitter and sent the agreed signs. To his delight, he saw Alfonso come up the hill and perform a dance of joy – the experiment had succeeded.
To understand how the waves that Marconi sent spread, it can be compared to a stone thrown into a pool of water. Waves form around the stone that move away from it. In a similar way, the waves move away from the transmitter.
Experiment in the UK
Marconi now needed more money than his father could raise, but no one in Italy was interested in his ideas. At the age of 21, he came to Britain to do his military service as a naval attaché at the Italian embassy.
Immediately upon arrival, Marconi was arrested on suspicion of being a spy. The mysterious devices in his luggage were, proof enough, considered a zealous customs officer.
Marconi was only released after the British Telegraph Office’s chief engineer Preece had approved him. Preece tried to create a system to keep in touch with the various lightships that lay off the British coast. Marconi had written about his experiments and Preece had promised to help. His first attempt now was to free Marconi from prison. The story became a treat for the British newspapers.
“An Italian has come here with a positive but without a monkey,” wrote a newspaper. Marconi was so upset that he later refused to apply for British citizenship. But the collaboration with Preece continued, and on May 10, 1897, the decisive experiments began.
At Lavernock Point near Cardiff on the Bristol Canal, the first receiver and transmitter were set up. On the island of Flat Holme five kilometers from the coast, the other was mounted.
On the first day, Marconi and Preece, two English experts and the German Adolf Slaby gathered at Lavernock Point. The flag was hoisted on the island to mark the start of the broadcast, and the five men pricked up their ears to try to catch any sign. After two hours, the experiment was stopped without any signals.
The fault was that the antenna was held up by steel ropes, which enclosed it like a cage and obstructed the signals. The antenna had to be extended and made 20 meters longer. But the result was just a few vague signs.
Marconi decided to take the receiver down to the beach in order to further amplify the antenna signal. It so happened that on 14 May 1897 five men sat huddled in a wooden hut due to the strong wind and waited. Suddenly there came – three short and one long – the Morse code for the letter V. Marconi had succeeded.
Broadcast around the world?
Already a week after the first tests, Marconi managed to telegraph over a three times as long distance using antennas carried by dragons.
The device was improved, and soon more and more ships and lighthouses could start installing wireless telegraphs .
Now the question was how far the signals could be transmitted. Would Marconi’s dream of being able to broadcast across the globe come true?
In December 1901, Marconi sat again waiting for signals on a windy coast, but this time in Newfoundland, North America. Now the decisive test would take place. Was it possible to send signals from Europe to the United States?
Because the earth is a globe, the surface is curved. Most, including Marconi himself, therefore expected the signals from Europe to continue straight into space. But when the time came, Marconi heard the agreed morning signal: three short for the letter p. The radio waves had not disappeared into space.
Marconi, however, did not know why the experiment was successful. A couple of physicists proposed the theory that the radio waves bounced off the earth’s air layer and returned to the earth’s surface. It was not until the 1920s that the British physicist Appleton succeeded in proving that the theory was correct. The radio waves can bounce several times against the ionosphere and thus be transported around the entire globe.
When Marconi showed that it was possible to telegraph wirelessly all over the world, he was again hailed by everyone – except the Anglo-American telegraph company, which saw his entire business threatened.
Marconi had to suspend its experiments on Newfoundland, as the company claimed they had the exclusive right to telegraph broadcasts in America. But the development could not be stopped.
Wireless telegraphy gained enormous importance for shipping. Ships in distress at sea could now telegraph for help from other ships in the vicinity.
The radio is making its entrance
When Marconi returned to Italy at the age of 29, he was received as a head of state. The huge crowds gathered to see him forced Marconi’s train to stop outside the city limits.
Marconi still has to solve a number of problems. One of them was to make the receiver receive only the wavelength the transmitter transmits. As the number of devices increased, the problem grew. If you on a radio did not have a certain wavelength for each program, everyone would be heard at the same time.
Marconi solved that problem. When it had succeeded in transmitting telegrams without wires, researchers soon became interested in the possibility of also transmitting speeches and music – what we today call radio. After the end of the First World War in 1918, Marconi worked on the development of radio . Already during the war he had managed to make telephone contact with a warship at a distance of five miles.
When Marconi died in 1937, he received a state funeral. His grave and his home became memorials. But Marconi was honored already in his lifetime; In 1909 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
On June 6, 1944, the Allied Western powers succeeded in landing in Normandy in northern France. The invasion, which went by the name D-day , is the largest landing operation made in history.
Ever since Germany had attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, Stalin demanded that the Western allies would open a “second front” against Hitler’s armies in Europe. But the Western Allies felt for several years that they had no resources for it. First, Italy had to be defeated, as did the German submarines that ravaged the Atlantic and disrupted the supply of munitions and other supplies to Britain .
The plans for an attack on France, which was occupied by Germany, had therefore been planned for several years by British leader Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D Roosevelt . Thousands of landing craft had been built before the attack, as well as two artificial concrete harbors.
The D-day was carried out in two phases. The first stage consisted of an airborne attack that began shortly after midnight on June 6 with 24,000 airborne troops being landed by parachute or glider. In the second phase of the invasion, which began later that night, 5,000 ships shipped more than 150,000 soldiers in just 24 hours.
On the morning of June 6, the landing in Normandy was in full swing on five French beaches. The American, English and Canadian soldiers met fierce resistance. But the scattered and sparsely manned German defense was not enough. The Germans could not throw the attackers back.
The landing in Normandy meant that the Allies could continue to attack Germany from two sides, which sealed the fate of Nazi Germany and shortened World War II .
A Brief History about D-DaysFacts
Fifteen minutes before midnight on June 6, 1944, three gliders landed on the Pegasus Bridge over the Caen Canal. At 01.00 the bridge was taken. Thus began Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, France. Day D had begun.
Stalin demanded a second front
Ever since Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Joseph Stalin had demanded that the Western Allies (England and the United States ) open “a second front” against Hitler’s armies in Europe. But the Western Allies did not consider themselves to have the resources to do so. First, Italy had to be defeated, as did the German submarines that ravaged the Atlantic and disrupted the supply of munitions and other supplies to Britain .
The plans for an attack on France , which was occupied by Germany, had been planned for several years by British leader Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D Roosevelt . Thousands of landing craft were built before the attack and two artificial concrete harbors were built.
Finally, June 5 was chosen as D-Day . But the invasion of Europe was postponed for 24 hours due to the bad weather.
Atlantvallen
When Hitler realized that he could not invade England, he began to build the so-called Atlantic Wall, which was a vast coastal defense facing the English Channel and the Atlantic. In 1944, Hitler commissioned his favorite general, Erwin Rommel , to expand and strengthen the Atlantic Wall. Thousands of slave laborers built huge fortifications in steel and concrete. In this Atlantic embankment there were 15,000 bunkers and about 300,000 soldiers. Rommel’s order to subordinate commanders was: “In the short time that remains until the great offensive begins, we must succeed in getting all defense facilities in such a condition that they can withstand the strongest attacks. The enemy must be defeated before he reaches the actual battlefield. We have to stop him in the water. “
Eisenhower gives the go-ahead – D-day begins
Early in the morning of June 5, Allied Commander-in-Chief Eisenhower signaled that the invasion of England would begin on June 6, even though everyone knew the weather was not good. The Germans believed that the attack would be directed at Calais, where the English Channel is at its narrowest. They were also surprised that the attack came when the weather was so bad.
During the first day, thousands of ships landed more than 150,000 men and 14,000 vehicles on five French shores. The Allies met fierce resistance.
The first landed troops managed to establish a bridgehead along the Normandy shores, despite massive opposition from the Germans. D-Day was a huge success for the Allies.
Omaha beach – an American carnage
Omaha was the hardest beach to take and the attack became a bloodbath for the Americans. This was because the American landing troops met experienced German soldiers who were well fortified. The Germans had positioned their weapons so that every meter of Omaha Beach was covered in fire. The basic weapon was machine guns.
Of the first wave’s 14 tanks, all were knocked out on the beach. On the eastern part of the beach, German soldiers sat in a bunker and fired machine guns for 9 hours, which cost the Americans 4,184 fallen or wounded. Afterwards, the American soldiers told of a German machine gunner they called “The Monster at Omaha”, it is said that he shot 2,500 Americans. Probably two Germans took turns handling the bunker’s machine gun.
Only after several hours of fighting did small groups of American soldiers succeed in advancing past the German strongholds. The Americans had too few amphibious tanks and they were launched far too far from land, which meant that several of them disappeared in the waves and sank. Of the 29 tanks, only two entered the beach. For a while, the Commander-in-Chief at sea considered stopping the attack and instead diverting forces to the Utah beach, which was some distance away. The author and war reporter Ernest Hemingway was present at the landing on Omaha Beach and described with horror how many young American soldiers were killed.
Losses
About 10,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded in the first day. The Germans’ losses are uncertain, but are estimated at between 4,000 and 8,000 killed and wounded.
The resistance movement
On 5 June at 6.30 pm, the BBC sent messages to the resistance movement in France. Each operating unit had found out in advance about their assignments and knew exactly what they were going to do. A resistance group of 40 people had the task of cutting off Normandy’s communications with the outside world by cutting the rough telephone cable from Cherbourg. Other groups would blow up an entire network of railway lines between Cherbourg and Paris .
Paris next
During the first week after D-Day, more than 360,000 soldiers and 54,000 vehicles were landed in Normandy. At the beginning of July, there were over 1 million Allied troops in France and more than 170,000 vehicles.
On August 15, 1944, the Allies also landed on the French Riviera, and on August 19, the people of Paris rebelled against the Germans, who had no choice but to withdraw from France as soon as possible.
In September, the Western Allies prepared to begin the invasion of Germany.
World War II was the start of a new kind of technology that would dominate airspace: jet-powered aircraft. The Germans were the first to put the Messerschmitt Me 262 into combat, and soon the great powers followed. Here we list the first jets to be put into service.
The first jet-powered aircraft saw the light of day during World War II. Just a few days before the invasion of Poland and the outbreak of war, on August 27, 1939, the German prototype Heinkel He lifted 178 from the airport in Marienehe. The flight lasted only about eight minutes, but set the entire German aviation structure rolling.
The physicist Hans von Ohain and the engineer Ernst Heinkel, the brains behind the design of the first successful jet aircraft engine, did not understand why the management of the Reichsluftsfahrt ministry showed no interest in the groundbreaking design. They did not know that the Ministry of Aviation had already launched its own secret project under the pseudonym P. 1065.
Me 262 were mass-produced
The project bore fruit in the summer of 1942, when a Messerschmitt Me 262 made its first successful flight, equipped with twin jet engines. It became the first mass-produced jet in the world, with the goal of fighting the allied propeller fighter planes Supermarine Spitfire and P-51 Mustang – both of which could reach speeds above 700 km / h.
At the same time, and independent of the Germans, variants of the jet engine were invented elsewhere: among others by the Italian Secondo Campini and the British Frank Whittle. Of these, only the British jet construction was deployed during the war, in the form of the Allies’ first jet-powered fighter Gloster Meteor. It would take until the Korean War before jet planes met in air battles.
Heinkel He 178 – small pioneer was first
The world’s very first jet-powered aircraft was comparatively small and measured only 7.48 meters and weighed just over 1.6 tonnes. Hans von Ohain, who is considered one of the fathers of jet engines, had in 1936 issued a patent for using the combustion gases from a gas turbine as a propellant. Ernst Heinkel agreed to develop an aircraft with the engine.
Three years later, days before the outbreak of war, test pilot Erich Warsitz (who also flew the world’s first rocket plane) flew the maiden flight. The project had been cherished by strict secrecy and not even the Luftwaffe knew about the tests.
When Heinkel presented the plane to the air force’s command in the form of Ernst Udet and Erhard Milch, they were unimpressed by the low speeds of 598 km / h and the high fuel consumption.
But Heinkel did not give up and started sketching on his own battlefield with twin engines. The result, the Heinkel He 280, became the first turbojet-powered fighter. But a combination of political and technical factors led to the model being overlooked in favor of Messerschmitt Me 262.
Camproni Campini N.1 – Italian propaganda
For many years it was believed that the Italians were the first in the world with a successful jet aircraft, before the German test flights a year earlier became known. On 27 August 1940, the Campini N.1 flew outside Milan with a thermojet design measuring a maximum speed of 515 km / h. However, Mussolini achieved a major propaganda victory thanks to the successful test.
Gloster Whittle – against German robot attacks
Gloster E.28 / 39 or Gloster Whittle, named after the author Frank Whittle, was equipped with the UK’s response to a turbojet engine. The patent was already under development in 1936, but it took some time before the Ministry of Air Affairs granted its support for the project and the first successful flight test was performed on 15 May 1941.
The success accelerated plans for a dual-jet fighter, and three years later lifted the prototype of the Gloster Meteor, which was later used to fight the Germans’ V-1 retaliatory weapons.
In total, the RAF shot down 14 robots during the war, but when the threat from the V-1 rockets passed, the Meteors were banned from flying over Germany so as not to risk being shot down and seized. Meteor served in the Air Force until it was phased out by more advanced models from 1956.
Arado AR 234 – the only jet bomber
On June 15, 1943, the world’s first and war’s only fully operational jet-powered bombers flew for the first time. In total, the Luftwaffe was supplied with 214 copies of the model, but the Arado Ar 234 Blitz was used mainly for air reconnaissance, and it served only to a greater extent in the Kampfgeschwader 76 unit during the last weeks of the war.
On Christmas Eve 1944, eight Ar 234s flew to Liège in Belgium for the first bombing raids. Further efforts were mainly during the Ardennes offensive: against Antwerp, Brussels and Bastogne. Three copies were also rebuilt for night hunting. The plane could carry a bomb load of up to 1,500 kilos, but a full load lowered the maximum speed to 660 km / h and made it possible for the fastest propeller-driven enemy planes to catch up. Due to a general lack of fuel, however, the Ar 234 mostly remained on the ground in favor of other aircraft types.
The Havilland Vampire – the record planet
The RAF’s second jet initially flew on September 20, 1943. It was a versatile design that set several records. Double tail booms and a shortened exhaust minimized the loss of traction.
The plane was able to fly faster than 880 km / h and was, among other things, the first jet to both land on an aircraft carrier and to cross the Atlantic. Production began in the final stages of the war and only twelve copies were completed before Germany’s capitulation. Later, the plane was also adapted to the navy and was taken into the service of the British navy. The Swedish Air Force was the first foreign customer to order fighter aircraft of the type 1946, a total of 70.
Me 262 would turn the tide of war
With the nicknames Schwalbe for the fighter version and Sturmvogel for the fighter bomber, Messerschmitt Me 262 was the very first turbojet-powered plane in combat.
The development of the first mass-produced jet-powered fighter was plagued by indecision, delays, engine problems and dubious priorities, and once the jet was deployed, the war was already lost. A jet-powered Me 262 took off on July 18, 1942, and two years later the plane was deployed.
The design of the plane was revolutionary. The arrow-shaped, backward-swept wings provided better aerodynamic conditions and higher flight speed. At the same time, the plane became vulnerable at low speeds as during takeoff and landing – not least due to inexperienced pilots. This weakness was later exploited by enemy planes.
The first sharp operation by jet plane was on July 18, 1944 when the 3rd Division of the Kampfgeschwader 51 bombed targets in France. Hitler had prioritized the production of the hunting bomb variant, in retaliation for the Allied bombing boards – despite the fact that the Me 262 worked better in the role of fighter.
The change from bomb to fighter plane also delayed production. In November 1944, series production of the hunting version began and the following spring, the Jagdgeschwader 7 became the world’s first operational jet hunting flotilla. They mainly defended German cities against Allied bombing raids. The other unit that gained access to Me 262 was Adolf Galland’s Jagdverband 44 which consisted of a flight attendant. Lieutenant Kurt Welter became Germany’s foremost jet fighter pilot with twenty confirmed shootings in the air war.
P-80 Shooting Star took the United States into the jet age
The Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star was the first successful turbojet-powered fighter in the United States. After the maiden flight on January 8, 1944, only two were put into operational service with the Air Force before the end of the war, where they performed air reconnaissance missions in Italy.
Production continued and the plane was later deployed in the Korean War. On November 1, 1950, Russian Lieutenant Chominitch went down in history as the first pilot to shoot down a Shooting Star with his MiG-15 during an air battle between jets.
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Exploding socks and glass razors that shattered into thousands of pieces. These were just some of the failed inventions John Logie Baird launched before he finally came up with the art of transmitting moving black and white images through the air – television. Baird was the first to send a picture of a human to a TV screen and the first to send pictures in color. But he was haunted by bad luck and was not allowed to take advantage of his invention or experience the triumph of television around the world.
When a TV show is broadcast, some basic equipment is required. Something should divide the image into a number of points and turn them into electric current. Then the current must be fed to a receiver, where the current is converted back to points. Finally, the points must be joined together in the correct order, so that we can see the picture.
The points that fool the eye
It’s not quite as complicated as it sounds. A black and white photograph has a variety of shades of gray. When such a photo is printed in a newspaper, only black is used. If you look closer, preferably with a magnifying glass, at a black and white photo in a newspaper or book, you will see that it is made up of small dots. At each point, the black color and the white paper have different sizes. At a distance, the points flow together and deceive the eye. By varying the amount of black and white in the dots, it is possible to produce all shades of gray, and the eye sees no or very little difference from the original photograph.
Splitting a photo that way is called rasterization. Color images can also be rasterized, then shades of the colors blue, red and yellow are used together with black.
The same principle is used in TVs. Then what is to be transmitted must be divided and converted into electric current. The first to figure out how to do it was the German Paul Nipkow. Some elements emit electrons – an electric current – when they are hit by light. One such element is cesium. The stronger the light, the more electrons are emitted and the stronger the current.
In 1883, Nipkow made a round disk in which he drilled a number of spiral holes. Then he put an image in a projector and showed the image on a layer of selenium, which has similar properties to cesium. The disc with the holes was allowed to rotate between the projected image and the projector. As the holes passed, the selenium plate became differently illuminated depending on whether the light came from a dark or a light part of the image.
When the disc was illuminated differently, it emitted different strong currents. This current was led away in a line to a lamp, which thus flashed irregularly. Nipkow put a disc of the same type behind the lamp in front of the selenium layer and let it spin in time with the first one. Then he could see the image faithfully reproduced on another screen behind the second disc.
Alone and misunderstood
Nipkow could not find any good use for his invention. One of the first to seriously study the possibilities of television was John Logie Baird (1888-1946). He is a typical example of the lonely and misunderstood inventor, who embarks on a series of impossible projects, succeeds in realizing his dream but ultimately fails.
Baird was born in 1888 in Glasgow, Scotland. His father was a priest, very strict – and Baird’s childhood was not happy. He hated school and was often away due to illness. But already as a child he was interested in inventions . Together with a friend, he built a glider, and they threw themselves from a roof hanging under the plane. They immediately crashed and hit themselves quite badly.
Baird graduated as an electrical engineer and began working. But his poor health haunted him. He was often away and eventually resigned.
Baird tried his hand at a number of projects. He made unsuccessful attempts to make diamonds by heating graphite and invented a glass razor. The idea was that the glass knife would not rust. It did not either – but often shattered into hundreds of small sharp pieces of glass.
He invented an electrically heated sock to keep his feet warm. He made shoe polish and patented a compressed air sock against flat feet. But the socks tended to explode at unexpected moments.
Baird was a bad businessman, and his recurring periods of illness meant that he could not always complete his projects. But then he got a new idea.
After Guglielmo Marconi’s success with wireless telegraphy, engineers had begun discussing whether it would be possible to send images through the air as well as voices.
Baird began experimenting in his bedroom. He made a Nipkow disc and built a simple device. He made the projector from an empty biscuit jar fitted with cheap lenses, and the Nipkow disc was supported against a worn-out washbasin.
Baird achieved his first success in 1924 when he managed to send the image of a Maltese cross.
The BBC starts with TV
In 1925, Baird succeeded in attracting an electrical company, which concluded an agreement with the Selfridges department store in London. For three weeks, Baird showed a small TV show. But the pictures were pretty blurry. Baird continued to work on improving his invention and eventually managed to send a picture of Bill’s belly doll doll’s head. Baird then went and fetched an employee from the company downstairs to his laboratory on Frith Street in London as a guinea pig. The 20-year-old William Edward Taynton thus became the first living person in the world whose face was shown on a TV screen.
By 1926, Baird had reached the point where he could invite members of the Royal Society’s Academy of Sciences and a journalist from The Times to a demonstration.
Baird’s invention was now so good that it interested the British radio company BBC. He started working there, and in 1929 the first television program was broadcast. So far without sound. But in 1930 the sound came, and next year the big horse race was broadcast on Derby.
The electron camera
Now the future looked bright for Baird. But then came the killing blow. From the United States came the electron camera, which used an electron beam to read what was to be transmitted. At the other end, the process was run backwards, so that an electron beam drew the image on a monitor. Baird’s device with rotating Nipkow discs immediately became obsolete.
Color TV is coming
Baird was bitterly disappointed when his device became obsolete. He started again and devised methods both to send pictures in color and to send three-dimensional pictures. But just when Baird was finished, bad luck grinned in his face again. He caught a bad cold and died in 1946 – just as developments in television began to pick up speed again.
The outbreak of World War II in 1939 had stopped the development of television, but after the end of the war in 1945, the experiments continued. At the end of the 1940s, regular TV broadcasts started in Great Britain and in Sweden they started in 1957.
The first TV sets attracted a lot of interest. Outside shop windows where the appliances were set up, clusters of people gathered. Soon, TV took home seriously. Today, almost all Swedish households have at least one appliance.
As early as the mid-1950s, Americans were able to make color television programs. In Sweden, a color program was first broadcast throughout the country in 1967. Regular color television was introduced in 1970.
Color TV is based on the same principle as a halftone color photo, where some basic colors that are mixed can form all colors and trick the eye into seeing a complete picture.
Billion-dollar industry
Today, TV is a billion-dollar industry, and in a never-ending stream, images from around the world are carried straight into the living room. Among other things, this has led to politicians having to make an effort to look good in the picture, otherwise they risk losing voters.
TV attracts attention. A thing said in a newspaper can pass unnoticed, while the same statement made on TV can lead to a huge uproar.
Gradually, Baird’s efforts have received increasing attention. In 2006, he was counted as one of Scotland’s top ten scientists of all time. In 2015, Baird was inducted into the Scottish Hall of Fame for engineers. Other members include James Watt , Alexander Graham Bell and James Clerk Maxwell . In 2017, the scientific organization IEEE put up a plaque on the house on Frith Street in London where Baird showed his invention in 1926.
But John Baird never got to experience the success. As with everything else, he was unlucky to the last.
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Tasks and questions
Questions to the text:
When and where was John Baird born?
Explain how a black and white halftone photo in a magazine can appear to have different shades of gray, even though only black has been used to print it.
Baird invented a number of things. Give examples of some of his peculiar inventions.
In what year could Baird show a person’s face on a TV screen for the first time?
In what year was the first TV program broadcast?
Give an example of Baird using simple means when he did his first experiments.
Why did Baird’s equipment suddenly become obsolete?
In what year did the TV broadcasts start in Sweden?
Explain how an image can be shredded and then rendered using Nipkow discs.
