Italian Piaggio P.108 Heavy Bomber

 

 

 The Piaggio P.108 was the only heavy four-engine bomber to see service with the Regia Aeronautica during World War Two. Too few were built to play a significant role in the war. The bomber version was identified as the Piaggio P108B and Piaggio built just 24 units. The P.108 was an all-metal, low-wing monoplane with a retractable undercarriage. The Piaggio P.108 powerplant consisted of four 1,350 hp Piaggio P.XII radial engines. The Piaggio P.108 was an expensive aircraft to build and cost 3x as much as the .


The Piaggio P108 was an impressive Italian Heavy Bomber with many technological innovations.

The first prototype was completed in October 1939 and contained very advanced defensive armament for its day. The aircraft armament included two 7.7 mm machine waist guns, a 12.7 mm machine gun in the lower turret and a similar weapon in the nose turret. The P108 also had some innovative technology such as two remotely-controlled twin gun turrets in the outer engine nacelles. The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was the first Allied bomber with a similar armament but developed four years later. The  of the Piaggio comprised of 7,700 lbs housed internally in the bomb bay.

An impressive image of the Piaggio P.108 and 274th Long-Range Bombardment Group.

The P.108B in Action

The only unit of the Regia Aeronautica ever to fly the P.108B was the 274th Long-Range Bombardment Group (274a Squadriglia). This unit formed in May 1941 after the first aircraft that came off the assembly lines. The crew training lasted far longer than anticipated and in June 1942 the 274th became operational. The P.108B conducted bombing sorties in Gibraltar, Bône, Algiers, Blinda, Philippeville, Maison Blanche, Oran and Sicily.

The Piaggio P108B in the air.

Piaggio        P108 Variants
The Piaggio P108 had four variants produced.

The Italian invasion of Egypt in 19...


 

Piaggio P.108 cutaway. Image: Delta Editrice s.n.c.
Piaggio P.108A (Artiglieri):  The P108A had an anti-shipping mission.  Armament included a 102 mm cannon in the nose and up to three torpedos. Piaggio built one P108A.
Piaggio P.108B (Bombardiere): Piaggio manufactured 24 of these Heavy Bombers. See the specifications below.
Piaggio P.108C (Civile): Piaggio manufactured six of these aircraft. This variant had a wider fuselage and designed to carry 32 passengers.
Piaggio P.108T (Transporto): This variant could transport two dismantled s,  60 soldiers, eight torpedoes or 13 tons of cargo. A little over 12 were manufactured.
The latter two versions were capable of transporting passengers or freight. The Regia Aeronautica rarely used the P108C and P108T aircraft. The main would become the German Luftwaffe.

A color photograph of the P108 Heavy Bomber.

After the Italian armistice in September 1943, the Luftwaffe captured all fifteen P.108Cs and P.108Ts built. The aircraft joined the Luftlotte 2 and used at the Russian front. They were very reliable and also performed well in the evacuation of the Crimea in 1944.

The Piaggio P108 was a complex design and difficult to build in high numbers.

Bruno Mussolini
On , Commander in the 274a Squadriglia, Bruno Mussolini, son of , died when his Piaggio P.108B crashed in Pisa, Italy. The aircraft was flying too low and hit a dwelling.  Two other crew members perished with him.

Specifications
Model             Piaggio P.108B
Crew               6 or 7
Powerplant      4 Piaggio P.IIX RC 35 at 1350 hp each.
Max Speed      267 mph at 3,900 m (430 km/h)
Max Ceiling    27,187 ft (8,500 m)
Max Range      2,187 miles (3,520 km)
Weight Empty: 38,195 lb (17,325 Kg)
Max:                 65,885 lb (29,885 Kg)
Length              75.19 ft (22.92 m)
Height               20 ft (6.00 m)
Wingspan          105 ft (32 m)
Payload             7,716 lbs (3,500 kg)
Armament         5 12.7 mm Breda-SAFAT machine guns
                          2 7.7 mm Breda-SAFAT machine gun

Antropoid

  

Release Date: 09th September 2016

 

In ‘I942, Britain sends a group of British-trained Czech commandos to Prague to assassinate SS-
General Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Nazi security services.

 

  The Cathedral-set gun battle that rages during the climax to this WWII drama is one of the most authentic and nerve-jangling set-pieces of the year so far. It is also a potent conclusion to a powerful film in which Metro Manila director Sean Ellis casts Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan as Josef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, who are sent from Britain — which hosts the Czechoslovakian government in exile — with orders to take out SS bigwig Reinhard Heydrich, the architect behind the Final Solution. This is Operation Anthropoid.

  The impressive cast recount this operational retelling with thick accents (which sound far more authentic than the vocal horror show of Child 44, it should be said) and the story builds slowly as the ear adjusts, tracking the heroes’ integration into the Czechoslovakian Resistance where suspicion reigns and every move is potentially fatal. Conflict is rife from the outset; some inside the movement are opposed to the plan, anxious about possible reprisals. Nazi rule has already proved ruthless. As Ellis demonstrates with brutal precision, these concerns are prescient. Several scenes in the final third will have audiences flinching.

 

  As with his previous film, Ellis (who takes a co-writing and the cinematography credit) opts for unfussy handheld photography, which lets the audience feel integrated into the mission. And, with a sharp eye for detail, he also charts the heroes’ emotional travails with both Gabčík and Kubiš striking up relationships with local girls, a move that brings added depth and poignancy as the women risk their lives to aid in the mission’s success. The conclusion is both exciting and heart-rending. The Nazi response is grim.

  A compelling and moving interpretation of a largely forgotten moment in European history.

  This is a taught, well-acted film whose subject, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the ruthless SS general hand-picked by Hitler to put down resistance among the Czech population after the country's capitulation to Germany in 1939, presents both heroism and trepidation on the part of the two main Czech resistance fighters who parachuted onto their native country to carry out their assignment but ultimately never succumbing to gratuitous scenes of violence that could diminish the movie's subject. The film's focus on a family of resistance fighters who provide shelter and succor to the commandos leaves the viewer with the feeling that it is only a matter of time that their role becomes less and less tenable especially after the assassination of Heydrich. The film's brutal, apocalyptic ending inserts the viewer into a hell on earth which ironically plays out in a church. The secondary romantic interests of the two men never waver from the main plot and give the viewer an insight into the dangers and fears of German occupation as seen through the eyes of the women, who, like their male counterparts, never waver from their mission in liberating their country from oppression. The acting never slips into the maudlin or abject heroism of the two fighters whose fear of capture and certain death comes through realistically but never superseding the significance and dedication of their mission. I found the film to be an honest portrayal of ordinary people whose love of country and freedom never wavers in the face of those responsible for one of the darkest chapters in history. This is not the typical war movie that relies on gratuitous violence that sometimes takes away from the main theme, although there is a sufficient amount during the battle scenes at the film's conclusion, which highlights the ruthlessness of their German occupiers. It was the actions of those who risked everything, including their lives, which gives the film its power.

A short history of the Mortar

 

Diagram of Stokes 3in mortar showing its method of operation.

Gunpowder weapons termed as mortars had been in use with artillery as early as the fifteenth century, and a huge example was deployed at the siege of Constantinople in 1453 where it was used to batter the walls and buildings of the great city by the Turkish Army. By the sixteenth century, gun founders working in England such as Peter Baud (sometimes written as Bawd) along with Peter van Collen were casting mortars with calibre of 11in and 19in, which more than delighted King Henry VIII, who rejoiced in having a powerful artillery force. Such huge calibre meant these weapons were best used in siege operations against walled cities or castles to fire projectiles at extremely steep angles of elevation to reach over the walls at very short ranges. These types of mortars retained enormous calibre for many years and remained part of the artillery train when on campaign. Gradually the size and weight of these weapon designs was reduced to make them more mobile, which also allowed them to be more versatile in the range of targets they could be used to engage. Around 1674, the Dutch military engineer Baron Menno van Coehorn (variations in the spelling of his name include Coehoorn or Cohorn) developed a mortar which fired a projectile weighing 24lbs and was used in the siege against the Dutch city of Grave during the closing stages of the Eighty Years War. This design was much more compact than anything seen previously and light enough to be moved on a horse-drawn wagon, thereby giving the infantry its first portable mortar to use against field works.

Over the next 240 years, mortars were in continuous use by armies in various wars and some of these designs reached enormous calibre. For example, at the siege of Cadiz in Spain in 1810, the French deployed mortars with 13in calibre along with other artillery. At the siege of Antwerp in 1832, the French once again deployed gigantic mortars with calibre up to 24in. The British Army also considered adopting even larger calibre when the Irish-born civil engineer Robert Mallet proposed a built-up mortar with a calibre of 36in which he intended for use during the Crimean War. A series of events meant that the war had ended in February 1856 before his design was ready, but it continued to be developed. On being test-fired, it showed design flaws and the weapon was scrapped without firing a shot in anger. The British Army still had mortars of 13in calibre in service during the nineteenth century, and both the Confederate and Union armies used mortars of this size during the American Civil War. Some of these weighed over 7.5 tons, such as the ‘Dictator’ used by the Union Army at the siege of Petersburg in 1862, and were so large they had to be transported by train. Gradually the calibre of mortars was reduced again but they were still part of the artillery branch.

It was not be for another fifty years, during the early battles of the First World War in October 1914, that a real need for some form of weapon capable of firing explosive shells at short range into enemy positions was requested. By the end of that year, both sides had halted their initial sweeping movements which were aimed at trying to outflank one another and had kept the fighting mobile. The opposing armies now settled into their respective positions and started to ‘dig in’ and create trench systems reminiscent of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. In that war, the Russian defenders around Port Arthur had dug a series of trenches which had to be captured by attacking Japanese troops who emerged from their own trenches which surrounded the besieged location.

The trench system which developed to snake across France and Belgium eventually extended from the Swiss border to the Channel Coast, a distance of almost 500 miles, in a virtually unbroken line of defences and counter defences. At times these positions were only a few hundred yards apart and in other places they were so close that soldiers could throw hand grenades into one anothers positions. It was a stalemate and some form of weapon was needed which would allow the troops to fire projectiles further than they could throw grenades without unduly exposing themselves to enemy fire. It also had to be sufficiently compact and light enough to be moved around the trenches. Such a weapon would release the infantry from their dependency on the artillery for support, which would allow the guns to be used to fire on other targets such as enemy artillery positions, ammunition supply points and lines of communications.

General Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force in France, took up the call and asked for some ‘special form of artillery’ which his troops could fire from their trenches to ‘lob’ bombs or grenades into German positions. Designs soon began to emerge, many of which were dismissed as being impractical. For example, one design hastily produced in France was based on nothing more original than a piece of 3.7in cast iron drainpipe to fire equally crude projectiles filled with explosive. Mortars which had been made in the mid-nineteenth century, including some which may have been used during the Crimean War, were rushed to the Front, where the troops could not believe the antiquity of these weapons which they were now expected to use.

More surprising was the fact that stocks of ammunition for these weapons had been located and were of equal vintage, and units known as the ‘Trench Mortar Service’ were raised to use these weapons. The serviceability of these weapons was uncertain and methods to fire them from a safe distance had to be devised in the event that they should burst on being fired. At Pont de Hem near Estaires in November 1914, two artillery officers and nine gunners using these obsolete weapons were formed into a group and referred to themselves as the ‘Suicide Club’. Through trial and error they managed to operate these mortars and even achieve a modicum of success, firing projectiles out to ranges of 300 yards.

Whilst these heavily dated mortars and extemporised designs were sound in principle, what the troops in the front line trenches really needed urgently was a properly produced weapon. In an attempt to produce something quickly, frustrated British troops began making extemporised weapons, which included the Second Army producing mortars using brass shell cases from a factory at Armentières. The Germans, on the other hand, were far more organised and had minenwerfers (‘mine throwers’) which had been produced by the huge armaments industry of Krupp. When war broke out, the German Army had 116 medium and forty-four heavy versions of these weapons, which were categorized as trench howitzers and as such were part of the artillery. The levels of these weapons increased as the war progressed so that by the middle of 1916 there were some 1,684 of all types in service, and by the end of the war the number had increased to around 17,000 of all types.

Meanwhile in England a more promising design was being developed in the workshops at the Woolwich Arsenal in London. This was the so-called ‘Twining’ pattern, and weapons were hurriedly sent to France in January 1915. Unfortunately they proved just as unsatisfactory as the drainpipe mortars when eight out of the eleven weapons burst on being fired in the space of ten days. Such an unreliable track record only served to produce a not unnatural reluctance among the troops to fire the weapon. Captured examples of German weapons had been sent back to England to be copied and some had been sent to France, but what was needed was a weapon design which had been properly developed and field-tested before being sent to front line troops. In 1918, the Hungarian Army was using a basic mortar design of 90mm calibre known as the Magyar, which was a very simple tube affair elevated and mounted on a base plate, but worked nevertheless and around forty-eight of these weapons were issued to a division.

One person who applied himself to the task of developing a new weapon to the requirements of the army was Frederick Wilfred Scott Stokes, later to become Sir Frederick when he was knighted in 1917. He applied his engineering expertise to the problem and contrived a design which was simple and really no more than an improved idea based on the initial drainpipe design. Indeed, he personally described his idea as being, ‘little more than a piece of coarse gas-piping, sitting dog-fashion on its hind quarters and propped up in front by a pair of legs corresponding to the canine front equivalent’. Stokes was born in Liverpool in 1860 and apprenticed to the Great Western Railway and took a keen interest in engineering, being involved with designing bridges for the Hull & Barnsley Railway. He later joined the Ipswich-based engineering firm of Ransomes & Rapier and became Managing Director of the company. In 1915, he was working in the Inventions Branch of the Ministry of Munitions when he devised his idea for a new mortar, which would bear his name as the Stokes mortar. Stokes later received a financial reward from the Ministry of Munitions in recognition of his work along with a royalty payment of £1 for each of his mortar bombs used during the remainder of the war.

Stokes approached the design as a means to deliver a HE bomb at short ranges fired at a steep angle to plunge into enemy trenches, where it would explode on impact. He used a smooth bore barrel, which is to say it did not have rifling grooves inside to impart a spinning action which would stabilize the bomb in flight. The base of the barrel rested on a metal base plate and the upper end was supported on a bi-pod rest which could be traversed left and right. By adjusting the height of the legs the angle of fire could be altered. The projectiles were called bombs and produced as very simple cast iron cylinders filled with a HE compound. The fuse was the same type as fitted to the Mills hand grenades and fitted with a safety pin in the nose of the bomb. In the base a 12-bore shotgun-type cartridge filled with ballistite compound, a fast-burning smokeless powder, provided the propellant. By 1917, Stokes had standardized his bombs to 76mm (3in) and a bomb 12.6lbs bomb could be fired out to a range of 820 yards. The later version, known as the 3in Mk 1, fired a bomb weighing 10lbs out to a range of 2,800 yards. By the end of the war, the British Army had 1,636 Stokes mortars in service on the Western Front.

After the war, many Stokes mortars were used in the local wars of South American countries – the Paraguayan Army used them during the Chaco War of 1932, for example. The newly-created state of Poland purchased about 700 Stokes mortars between 1923 and 1926, which led to an unlicensed copy known as the Avia wz /28 being produced. The weapon had to be abandoned in 1931 because the bombs it fired were based on the French Brandt design and a licence to manufacture the ammunition was denied.

 

selected

Erich von Manstein

 

 

 

Outstanding among the younger leaders was Erich von Manstein,
who was born on Lewinslki, son of a distinguished army oflicer, but
was later adopted by his mothers brother-in-law, General von Manstein,
an equally distinguished soldier. As a junior officer in World War 1, young .
Manstein served with distinction on the Western, Eastem, and Serbian fronts,
and was badly wounded. Between the wars his brilliance caused him to
he promoted to majorgeneral, and deputy to the Chief of the German General
 Staff.

Although he was in disfavor with Hitler at the outbreak of World War II,
Manstein became chief of staff to von Rundstedt, who commanded the
Southern  Army Group in the Battle of Poland. He was still Rundstedt's
chief of staff in 1939-40, when the latter was appointed to command Army
Group A for the invasion of Western Europe.

It was at this time that .Manstein's strategic brilliance first had a major

influence on the war. He was very dissatisfied with theoriginal plan of
Hitler and von Brauchitsch, which he felt was amere imitation of the
Schlieffen Plan, by which Germany had almost won World War I. He
believed that the Allies would be ready for such a plan, which could
thus achieve only a partial victory in Holland and Belgium. With the
strong support of von Rundstedt, he proposed instead a powerful
surprise thrust through the Ardennes and northern France to the
 English Channel, thus isolating and destroying the left-flank Allied
armies, and making it easy to overwhelm France with one more blow.
Hitler, having heard minors of a strategic controversy, sent for Manstein,
and after hearing his opinion, revised the plan, which soon afterward
worked out exactly as Manstein had envisaged.

Manstein commanded an infantry corps in the operations in Western Europe,
and led an armored corps in the initial invasionof Russia. His brilliance led
to his promotion to command of the  Eleventh Army, with which he conquered
the Crimea and (in July,1942) Sevastopol. His outstanding success in these
operations (while the rest of the German army had been thrown back from
Moscow and Leningrad) led to his promotion to Field Marshal. After briefly
commanding the Northern Army Group, near Leningrad, late in 1942 Manstein
was rushed to take command of the newly created Don Army Group, for the
purpose of attempting the relief of the German forces cut off in Stalingrad.
His slashing counterattacks would have been successful if Hitler had allowed  
General von Paulus to fight his way out to meet Manstein. But Hitler insisted
that all ground be held, and thus doomed von Paulus’ Sixth Army to destruction.
Not only did Manstein completely stop the Russian counter-offensive from Stalingrad,
but in March, 1943, despite great Russian numerical superiority, he counterattacked
in turn to win a victory in the Battle of Kharkov. This was the last important
German victory of World War II.

During the remainder of 1943 and early 1944, Manstein commanded the Southern
Army Group against the principal Russian offensives in the Ukraine. Although the
Russian forces outnumbered his own by four- or five-to-one during this period,
Manstein's brilliant withdrawals and counterattacks miraculously prevented
a Russian breakthrough, and resulted in far heavier Russian casualties than those
his own forces suffered. Hitler, however, refused to adopt his repeated recommendations
for a further withdrawal, to shorter and more easily defended lines, where Manstein
envisaged a showdown battle to knock Russia out of the war, or at least to
gain a stalemate in the East. Hitler was infuriated by Mansteirfs obvious contempt
for his military blunders, and in March, 1944, relieved him from command.
Mianstein took no further part in the war.

Manstein never exercised strategic command over an independent theater of
operations, although he commanded about one quarter of the vast Russian front.
For four and a half years, however, he demonstrated strategic, tactical, and administrative
capabilities of the highest order, and seems to have had an inherent
military genius unexcelled in Germany, and comparable to that of MacArthur.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Field Marshal Walter Model

 Walter Model liked to call himself “the F iihrer's fireman.” He proved
his capability to put out apparently unquenchable fires on many occasions.
He first came to Hitler's attention as a brilliant staff officer just
before the war. He showed his command ability by leading a panzer
division in the invasion of Russia. By early 1942 he had been promoted
to the command of an army, and continued to distinguish himself on
attack and in the defense.

Model lacked Manstein’s keen strategic genius, but was one of Germany’s
finest tacticians during the war. Even before Manstein was relieved,
Hitler had begun to use Model to take command of diflicult spots. Late
in 1943 he was promoted to command Army Group North, and checked the
Russian winter offensive toward the Baltic States. After the relief of
Manstein, Zhukov took advantage of the situation to break through the
front of Army Group South; Model was rushed to the front, and miraculously
plugged the hole and stopped the Russian drive. W’hen the Russians then
broke through north of the Pripet Marshes and headed toward Warsaw, Model
was again shifted, and again stopped the Russian advance.

Then, with the Western Front splitting apart, as the Americans and British
smashed their way out of the Normandy beachhead, Hitler called on Model to
take command in the West and to perform another miracle — which he did.
‘With the German armies apparently completely smashed in France, Model
nonetheless succeeded in establishing a new and firrn defensive line in Belgium
and eastern France. Later, with Rundstedt recalled to command in the West, Model,
commanding Army Group B, continued his brilliant defensive tactics in the bitter
winter months of battles in Belgium and the Rhineland.

Although Model was always loyal to Hitler, he was never a spineless “yes-man.”
He was one of the few soldiers who could give his frank opinions to the dictator.
Hitler took this from middle-class Model, while he would never take it from
equally outspoken aristocratic officers like Manstein and Rundstedt. When
he thought Hitler would refuse to permit withdrawals, Model simply acted, and
informed the High Command afterward. He maintained this independence of mind
to the very end; when resistance was hopeless in the Ruhr pocket, despite
Hitler’s orders to continue to fight, he ordered his troops to surrender, and
then committed suicide.

Germany's leading Panzer commander was Heinz Guderian, an outspoken tank force
soldier who did much to build up Germans armored strength before the war, and
who was in large part responsible for developing the armored role in blitzkrieg
tactics. He performed well in the command of large armored units in the invasions
of Poland, France, and Russia. In the latter invasion he bitterly protested Hitler’s
diversion of his tank units from the drive on Moscow to the Kiev encirelement.
Formerly a favorite of Hitler, his outspoken expression of opinion at this time,
followed by the later failure of his tanks to take Moscow, in December, led to
his abrupt dismissal from command.

In March, 1943, however, Guderian was called back as Inspector General of Panzer
troops, and was appointed acting Chief of Staff of the army in ]uly, 1944, following
the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Hitler. He was relieved again, following
an argument with Hitler, in March, 1945. Lacking the spark of exceptional genius of a
Manstein or a Rommel, Guderian was,nonetheless, one of the finest fighting soldiers of
the war; a worthy counter part of Americas Patton.