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It was the second day of the operations intended to draw German armor to the south of Caen. Late that afternoon, a patrolling Spitfire spotted a German staff car motoring down the road not far from the small French village of Sainte-Foy-de-Montgommery.
"Red Leader, are you seeing this?"
"I am laddie, you spotted him, he's yours! I'll cover."
Dipping his left wing, the pilot dropped swiftly to line up the speeding black car on the narrow, straight road, there was nowhere for the car to go except straight ahead. As the pilot armed his guns, he couldn't help but wonder what those Jerries were thinking, a Mercedes could not outrun a Spitfire.
Coming down the road at speed, the experienced aviator pressed the firing button and watched his rounds go up the road and into the car. The vehicle swerved slightly then crashed into the ditch. The Spitfire climbed to rejoin his lead, giving not another thought to the wrecked car.
"Not like I just blew up a fuel truck or a tank," was his thought.
Surprisingly the car didn't burn, the ticking of hot metal, the dripping of fluid from the radiator were the only sounds after the thrumming roar of the Spitfire's Merlin engine had faded. After a few long moments, the birds began to chirp again. Sunset was near.
In the driver's seat, Sergeant Karl Daniel was dead, a 20 mm cannon shell had hit him high on the left arm and shoulder, shattering it and causing him to lose control of the car. Swerving off the road, the car had hit a tree, the impact had killed him. Of the two staff officers in the rear of the car, neither had been hit, but one had jumped when the vehicle swerved and had fractured his pelvis. There had been a sergeant seated between the two staff men, his job had been to spot attacking aircraft, he was unhurt.
Lying near the car, his head badly injured, skull obviously depressed, the wound bleeding freely, the front seat passenger wasn't moving. He had been turning around to see the attacking aircraft when Sgt Daniel had been hit. When the car had hit the tree, his head had smashed into the windshield post as he had been thrown from the car.
Lying there by the side of the road, a casual observer might have been able to just make out the decorations at the wounded man's throat, the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds was visible, as was the blue enameled cross of the Pour le Mérite, awarded for actions as a young man in World War I.
The man was still alive, but badly hurt.
For Generalfeldmarschall Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel, commander of Army Group B and of all the German forces trying to stem the Allied advance in Normandy, the war was over. While he survived the wounds he sustained in the attack on his car, he did not survive the outcome of the events of 20 July 1944.
But that is a story for another time.
Author's Note:
You can read more about the attack which took Rommel out of action here. There is also some controversy over who actually strafed Rommel. I left the identity and nationalities of the pilots vague in my tale so as not to lean in any particular direction as to "who did it." You can read about the who done it part here. All I really know is that the aircraft involved were 20 mm cannon-equipped Spitfires. I wasn't there, I'm old, just not that old.
Who strafed Rommel makes me think of the debate over who shot down The Red Baron. You mentioned that in a previous post.
ReplyDeleteMost of those people who blithely say, "You are only as old as you feel.." are younger than me. They will sing a different tune later!
It's a similar debate, and in the long run a waste of time. Someone, doing their job, took Rommel off the board (so to speak), those clamoring for the "credit" are glory hounds.
DeleteI read about Rommel when I was a kid. Book was thin with glossy pages, lots of pictures, even the cover was a black and white picture. The Desert Fox?? Dim memory.
ReplyDeleteLater on, I read about the air superiority that we held, and it made that car trip seem like a suicide mission.
Ditto, John. I feel old some days... Old enough to fart dust....
You are not old until you stop feeling. Those aches and pains are Mother Nature's way of telling you you are still alive. Contrary to what I have been asked, no, I did not cross rate from animal counter on Noah's Ark. Old Guns
DeleteSTxAR - Yes, moving vehicles in western France in daylight was suicide. Yet they still tried, and usually paid a high price.
DeleteOld Guns - Not sure I need as many reminders as I'm being provided these days.
DeleteUnlike many who were accused (rightly or wrongly) Rommel was given a relatively painless way out, and a state funeral.
ReplyDeleteRommel was popular with the German people (due to Goebbels' propaganda machine). To have tried and executed him publicly would have been a propaganda nightmare. By threatening his wife and son, the Nazis convinced him to commit suicide.
Delete"I wasn't there, I'm old, just not that old."
ReplyDelete20mm eh? F4's mounted those, eventually. Admit it...you stumbled across the Philadelphia Experiment settings, nipped back in time and hosed down Rommel and hopefully snagged a box of Winston's cigars and a bottle or twenty of his brandy...
Heh. (Hopefully the Time Police aren't monitoring the blog...)
Delete😳 😝
DeleteI saw the movie “The Desert Fox” as a kid.
About all I remember is the scene where the staff car was strafed and that James Mason played Rommel.
An officer who had served with Rommel had this to say about James Mason's portrayal of the Desert Fox, "He was far too polite."
DeleteOne would think, unless the unit armorer was doing a bad job, that the 20mm Gatling of the Phantom would have done more damage.
DeleteI think it was an IL-2 Sturmovik. After all, Stalin claimed he and his did everything, right?
Heh.
DeleteI dunno. The sheer volume of projectiles coming out of WWII fighters is not small. If it's a spit armed with 4x20mm that's 3000rpm, and the 2x20mm + 4x.303 configuration gives up half the cannons to add a minigun's worth of .303 (4400+rpm).
DeleteBut, crucially, how long does the Spit spend on the gun run, compared to the faster Phantom? Does the pilot have his finger on the trigger for twice as long, which would actually put more lead in the target?
Either way, I'll hopefully watch the experiment from WAY out of the way.
DeleteThat model of Spitfire had 2x20 mm cannons and 4x.303 machine guns. Short bursts, otherwise you run out of ammunition rather quickly.
DeleteAs to the way out of the way part, yeah, me too.
DeleteOne of the more fortunate incidents. We were able to cut off a lot of front-line troops from their commanders.
ReplyDeleteAnd that was a very fortunate random strafing. Rommel would have been a horror to fight in western France. We just had to deal with his prep work and pre-programmed plans, that got screwed up by Berlin from the beginning.
A great man. Sad ending. But probably better than he would have had if he had survived to the end. The way France was trying to get revenge on any major officer that dared to step into France in 1940, Rommel might not have been spared.
When my *redacted* was prepping to go to the sandbox, I dug up a book called "The Tiger's Way" as a travel present. It was distilled info from years of conflict. I default to learning as much as I can, even from the adversary. You never know when the opportunity to use esoteric information will present itself. ;)
DeleteBeans - The game was too far gone for Rommel to have changed the course of the war. But it probably would have been more costly had he lived.
DeleteSTxAR - I looked up that book, looks like something worth having!
DeleteWhat he did, in Africa, outnumbered, outequipped, on the sticky end of a failed logistics train, was nothing short of miraculous.
DeleteFor him to do that in France to the US and England would have been very costly to us.
He was past his prime in 1944. He had really shot his bolt in Africa towards the end, he could make things painful but he had nothing to contest Allied numbers with. Besides, as an Army Group commander he had very little say in the deployment of his troops nor in their tactical decisions. The German command structure in Europe was a complete nightmare. As Field Marshal Rundstedt (commander of the entire Western Theater) said, I have the authority to change the guards at my HQ, Berlin controls the rest.
DeleteThere was no comparison between Africa in 1941 and France in 1944.
Hey Old AFSarge;
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the outcome of the war might have been different if he had survived the attack, might he have been able to marshall the "valkrie" group and make it stick or would he gone through Nuremberg trials or what? who know what the fickle fingers of fate might have done for Erwin Rommel, Perhaps it was best he went the way he went with his reputation untarnished. Btw I mentioned you in my blog ;) today lol
The "what ifs" of history give us a lot to ponder about.
DeleteCool B-36 pics!
I read an excellent historical novel on Rommel by Steven Pressfield, Killing Rommel. The book concerns his time in North Africa and the LRDG (Long Range Desert Group). And the origins of the SAS with David Sterling. Something Pressfield said that stayed with me - that war in the desert was more like an ocean battle, with armies going back and forth hundreds of miles.
ReplyDeleteThere is a story in that book - author's imagination or true? That Rommel was visiting his wounded in one of his field hospitals. And one of the Germans whispered to him to get out - it was now in British hands.
True or not, it tells you have fast the lines changed in North Africa.
As to the Nazis implicating him in the assassination attempt, I had read that he was only on the periphery. Had it succeeded, he would have been the liaison to the allies.
Why?
He was one of the few, if not the only, Nazi flag officer that the allies respected. The Afrika Korps was unique in that there were no SS, no Nazi atrocities. And he made sure that his British prisoners were treated humanely.
War in the desert was very much like a naval battle, no obvious terrain features and your navigation had to be spot on! Of course, most of the fighting took place near the coast as that's where the road was.
DeleteRommel fought a "clean" war compared to his colleagues. In 1944 Rommel was rather manic-depressive in his relationship with Hitler. He would be enthusiastic after meeting with him, then down in the dumps when seeing the reality at the front. I'm not sure what role Rommel would have played if the 20 July coup had worked. I don't even think the plotters really knew.
I liked that book, but I liked the Greek ones (Gates of Fire, Tides of War) better.
DeleteRommel gets to be a legend because the Allies needed an explanation for why they had trouble beating him in the desert, and he gets to keep his legend because postwar, the West needed to hold up his reputation for "clean" warfare to aid with West German rearmament. (We respect and like the Germans, just not those nasty Nazis!)
The British government, especially the Prime Minister, cautioned the commanders in North Africa to stop aiding in the singing of Rommel's praises.
DeleteBut your theory has some merit a bear. We often forget that Rommel commanded the Führerbegleitbatallion, Hitler's escort, in 1939. Many argued that his command of 7th Panzer was a political appointment, though he did prove worthy of the command.
Rommel ran hot and cold about Hitler throughout the war. In my own opinion, the Field Marshal was politically naive but was a damned good soldier.
That has happened a LOT throughout history.
The frightening thing which occurs to me is if the coup had succeeded and Germany had capitulated by the end of July, what would have happened with the holocaust? I suspect it would have been whitewashed to prevent further death and destruction.
ReplyDeleteOf course the holocaust is forgotten today for all intents and purposes. Modern ape-lizards know for certain that they are too good and too smart to let something like that ever happen again. It'll be fun when the machetes come out...
Another troubling question is how prepared today's U.S. military is to do political operations as opposed to supporting and defending the Constitution and refusing unlawful orders. I'm not at all sure that our government of-by-for the people really understands the fire they are playing with.
The consequences of what might have been are terrifying to contemplate. No mention of the Holocaust? The Iron Curtain extending to the Rhine?
DeleteSome people today have no idea of the Pandora's box they are toying with.