Alphonse Joseph Georges French Forces

 Alphonse Joseph Georges 

(15th, August 1875 in Allier, Montlucon - 24th April , 1951 in Paris)

 was a French army officer. He was commander in chief of the
North East Front in 1939 and 1940. Opposing the plan by
supreme commander Maurice Gamelin to move the best
Allied forces into the Low Countries, he was overruled.
Georges tried to allow as much initiative to his
subordinates as possible to improve operational
flexibility.
 

Kaiapit, Morobe, Papua New Guinea

Kaiapit, Morobe, Papua New Guinea

Members of the Australian 2/6th
Independent Company display Japanese flags they
captured at Kaiapit, 1943.

- The Battle of Kaiapit was an action fought in 1943
between Australian and Japanese forces in New
Guinea during the Markham and Ramu Valley —
Finisterre Range campaign of World War ll. Following
the landings at Nadzab and at Lae, the Allies attempted
to exploit their success with an advance into the upper
Markham Valley, starting with Kaiapit. The Japanese
intended to use Kaiapit to threaten the Allied position
at Nadzab, and to create a diversion to allow the
Japanese garrison at Lae time to escape. The Australian
2/6th Independent Company flew in to the Markham
Valley in 13 USAAF C-47 Dakotas, making a difficult
landing on a rough airstrip. Unaware that a much larger
Japanese force was also headed for Kaiapit, the
company attacked the village on 19 September to
secure the area so that it could be developed into an
airfield. The company then held it against a strong
counter-attack. During two days of fighting the
Australians defeated a larger Japanese force while
suffering relatively few losses. The Australian victory at
Kaiapit enabled the Australian 7th Division to be flown in
to the upper Markham Valley. It accomplished the 7th
Division's primary mission, for the Japanese could no
longer threaten Lae or Nadzab, where a major airbase
was being developed. The victory also led to the capture
of the entire Ramu Valley, which provided new forward
fighter airstrips for the air war against the Japanese.
 

B17 Bomber

 

 

 Months before the USA started its
participation in WW2, the B-17 four-engine bomber had
seen combat and had been shot down.
RAF’s Bomber Command acquired 20 B-17C ‘Fortress
I’ (photo) from the US in late 1940, flying their first
combat mission on 8th July 1941, (6 months before Pearl
Harbor), when three B-17C departed RAF Watton to
bomb the German naval base at Wilhelm
shaven from
high altitude (30,000 ft) in broad daylight.

The Germans fighters failed to intercept the high-flying
bombers, but the engine of one of them failed and it
diverted to a secondary target. The other two bombers
proceeded to the German port but at the high altitude
they were flying the low temperature congealed the
machine guns’ lubricant rendering them non-operational
Bombing is reported as ‘ineffective’.

By September, eight B-17Cs had been lost in operations
(combat and accidents). Bomber Command retired the
bomber due to numerous mechanical breakdowns and
its vulnerability to fighters caused by light defensive
armament and light armor. Relatively small bomb loads
and low aiming accuracy are sometimes reported -it
seems the B-17C did not employ the Norden bombsight-
The remaining bombers were handed out to Coastal
Command for anti-submarine patrols.

The Luftwaffe claimed to have shot down nine RAF
B-17s but three of the claims precede the Fortress
debut, so they are probably misidentified.
The first B-17 shot down can probably be attributed to
Uffz. Karl Pfeiffer, flying a Bf 109E-7 or F (1 or 2) from
3./JG 2 over La Pallice in France on 23rd July 1941 at
sunset

The B-17C (see picture) lacked the machine gun turrets
later installed in the B-17E. It had one MG in the dorsal,
nose, and ventral (bathtub) positions and one each in
the port and starboard side blisters. Its empty weight of
30,900 pounds was 1351 pounds lighter than the B-17E,
the model initially used by the USAAF in Europe.