Looking for POW photographs

Petch, Walter. (Wally) Sgt. 77 Squadron Whitley Z6642 Two photos added and a group photo of Petch and others in Stalag 9C Muhlhausen.

Jack Smith of 578 Squadron added

Thanks Matt

Hi, David,

Halverson was not a place, but a US general. Google on “Halverson detachment” and you’ll find much on HALPRO, or the Halverson Detachment. Here’s one long excerpt…more than perhaps you want to know. For general interest, HALPRO Liberators were the first to bomb the Ploesti oil refineries, but over a year before the legendary low-level US Ploesti Liberator mission.

Cheers,

Matt

From http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/egypt/egypt.htm:

As it happened, a special group of B-24s found itself in the Middle East in early June 1942. The so-called Halverson Detachment, named for its commander, Col. Harry A. Halverson, consisted of twenty-three B-24D Liberator heavy bombers with hand-picked crews. HALPRO, the detachment’s code name, had been designed and trained to bomb Tokyo from bases in China, but by the time it was ready to deploy Japanese control of the Burma Road had made it highly improbable that the detachment could be logistically supported in China. General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, therefore sought and received permission from Roosevelt to divert the detachment to Egypt for a surprise raid on oil refineries in Ploesti, Rumania. The idea behind the Ploesti raid was to upset German preparations for their expected summer offensive against the Soviet Union.

With the President’s approval of the scheme, HALPRO moved to Khartoum, a city in the Sudan 1,700 miles upstream on the Nile from Cairo, to await further instructions. Shortly after Halverson and his detachment arrived in Khartoum, they received orders sending them to Egypt in preparation for the Ploesti raid. On 11 June 1942, the U.S. Army’s Egypt-Libya Campaign opened with thirteen of Halverson’s four-engine heavy bombers taking off from an RAF field at Fayid near the Suez Canal to attack the Rumanian oil refineries. On 12 June, after inflicting what turned out to be negligible damage on the target, four of the planes landed in Turkey, where they were interned. The others made it to various airfields in Syria and Iraq.

Although the raid had little effect on the German offensive into the Soviet Union, it did have psychological significance for the Allied cause. As the first American air raid conducted against a strategic target in Europe during World War II, it had an impact similar to that of the Doolittle bombing of Tokyo two months earlier. The strike symbolized America’s entrance as a military combatant into what had been a primarily European contest. It also demonstrated that American military forces had the ability and willingness to strike at the heart of their opponent’s industrial power.

As Halverson’s planes returned from their raid in Rumania, the British Eighth Army suffered further reverses in Libya. In just two days, 12 and 13 June, the German-Italian forces destroyed some 230 British tanks during the Battle of Gazala, greatly increasing American concern about British prospects of holding Libya and Egypt.

As they were struggling in the desert, the British were also trying to resupply their garrison at Malta by sea, and they requested American heavy bombers to support that effort. The War Department gave Halverson the mission, and on 15 June he sent seven of his planes to assist the RAF in attacking an Italian fleet which had put to sea to intercept a British resupply convoy on its way to Malta. Although the American bombers inflicted only minimal damage on the Italian fleet, the RAF later credited the raid with keeping two Italian battleships in port for the remainder of the summer. The mission proved to be first of many that HALPRO would fly in support of British forces in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, General Marshall had begun to establish a stronger American command and control organization for the Middle East theater. On the day after the Ploesti raid’ he created U.S. Army Forces in the Middle East (USAFIME) to replace both the North African Mission in Cairo and the Iranian Mission in the Persian Corridor. On 16 June the War Department named General Maxwell as the first commander of USAFIME. The next day the War Department informed Maxwell that the Halverson Detachment would remain in Egypt as a part of USAFIME. With the China mission overtaken by the Japanese closure of the Burma Road’ HALPRO had thus become part of the campaign in the Middle East by default, and eventually it would become the nucleus of the U.S. Army Middle East Air Force (USAMEAF). In addition to HALPRO, Maxwell’s new command included the U.S. Army personnel previously assigned to the North African and Iranian military missions.

USAFIME’s specific responsibilities were vague, as was its charter. The message instructing Maxwell to activate USAFIME designated him as the “initial” commander, who would “probably” be replaced should it become necessary to send “an appreciable number of combat troops” to the command. The ambiguous tone of the message reflected American uncertainty over the type of assistance the British would ultimately need. Initially the War Department planned to send about 6,000 American support troops to USAFIME, the first of whom would arrive in October 1942, but there were no plans to provide any combat forces.

On the same day Halverson and Maxwell learned that HALPRO would remain in Egypt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was traveling to the United States to discuss Allied strategy with President Roosevelt. In light of the recent British reverses in the Mediterranean, the British Prime Minister was particularly eloquent in his pleas for additional American support, especially in the form of heavy bombers. Churchill’s request presented the American Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) with something of a dilemma. On the one hand, they wanted to conserve American resources in the hope of launching decisive air and amphibious actions against the German forces in western Europe by 1943, a course of action the Soviets strongly supported. But on the other hand, if the British were unable to hold the Middle East, then the Persian Corridor supply route to the Soviet Union, plus the existing air ferry route to India and China and the oil now supplied from Iraq and Iran, all stood a good chance of being lost to the Axis, a situation that would be highly detrimental to any Allied efforts in western Europe. The JCS, in effect, faced a choice between providing support to the British in Egypt, the key to the Middle East, or holding American forces in reserve for a future attack on the European continent, hoping that the British alone could somehow hang on to Egypt.

Complicating this choice was Churchill’s unbending desire for an Anglo-American amphibious landing in French North Africa in late 1942. In combination with an offensive by the British Eighth Army in Libya, such a stroke would have the goal of ending Axis domination of the southern shore of the Mediterranean. But such a plan also supported the argument for holding American ground forces and materiel out of the more immediate fight in the Western Desert. Yet without increased assistance the likelihood of a strong British Eighth Army offensive into Libya or anywhere else seemed very unlikely.

The JCS straddled the fence. Although Churchill was persuasive enough to inspire brief interest in a plan that would have sent Maj. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., and an American armored division to Egypt to bolster the British Eighth Army, the JCS limited American troop commitments in the theater to air units. Seeking compromise, Marshall proposed sending some of the Army’s latest equipment to the British forces in Egypt: 300 M4 Sherman tanks, 100 self-propelled 105-mm. artillery pieces, and 150 men qualified to maintain and repair this equipment, which had only recently entered the American inventory. The President immediately approved the proposal, and the Prime Minister quickly accepted it. The British especially appreciated the Sherman models because their 75-mm. guns were mounted more effectively in turrets instead of in sponsors (protrusions mounted on the side of the hull). The Sherman gave the British a tank approximately equal to the German panzers facing the Eighth Army. Although the War Department immediately began to implement the agreement, the distances between the United States and Egypt and the acute shortage of Allied shipping meant that the tanks, artillery, and support troops would not actually arrive in Egypt until early September.

British and American staffs also developed plans to move additional air combat units and their ground support elements into Egypt. By early July they had agreed to move six U.S. air groups to Egypt: three bomber and three fighter. As with the tanks and artillery, it was some time before the first of these American air combat organizations were operational in Egypt.

In anticipation of the arrival of the American air groups, the War Department sent Maj. Gen. Lewis H. Brereton, commander of the U.S. Tenth Air Force in India, to Cairo for temporary duty to assist the British. His orders instructed him to take as many planes as he could to Egypt. After managing to police up nine B-17s (described as “near cripples”), he arrived in Cairo on 25 June, along with 225 assorted staff officers, fliers, and mechanics. When these forces arrived from India, Maxwell, as commander of USAFIME, established the U.S. Army Middle East Air Force (USAMEAF) and named Brereton its commander. The new command initially comprised the Halverson Detachment, the Brereton Detachment (the nine bombers from India), and a few transport and liaison aircraft previously assigned to the small air section of the old North African mission.

Brereton, an experienced aviator, was understandably surprised to find himself subordinate to Maxwell, a brigadier general with no aviation background. But he may also have been aware of Maxwell’s appointment as an interim commander who would probably be replaced when substantial American combat forces arrived in the theater. Brereton initially regarded both Maxwell and USAFIME as somewhat superfluous, believing a direct relationship between his own organization and the British a more sensible and efficient arrangement. When Maxwell and Brereton both appealed to Marshall for guidance, the Chief of Staff left the command organization unchanged. He sent them a brief message expressing his expectation that they would work together in harmony and implied that they had better things to do than worry about rank. Both officers replied immediately with assurances of mutual cooperation. Their initial coolness toward each other did not affect the support they provided the British, and Maxwell and Brereton shortly developed a cordial working relationship.

USAMEAF started small, but with the experience already gained by the North African mission in studying the tactical and logistical problems of the British, Brereton was able to coordinate effective support almost immediately. The situation in front of the British Eighth Army was deteriorating rapidly; Rommel had captured Tobruk on 21 June, and the Axis offensive was continuing to make progress toward Egypt. As early as 30 June Brereton had directed the B-17s which he had brought from India to move their operations to Palestine, while the B-24s of the Halverson Detachment continued to fly their missions from Fayid in Egypt. But both units flew day and night bombing missions against the Axis’ increasingly inadequate supply lines, concentrating their efforts against the port of Tobruk. The missions were small when compared to what the Allies were able to put into the air later in the war; no more than ten American bombers flew together at one time, and most missions were even more modest. Nonetheless, the bombing put further pressure on Rommel’s tenuous enemy supply lines as his offensive finally reached its culminating point at El Alamein. By the end of July both sides had settled into defensive postures on the ground to rest and await reinforcements.

As the fighting in the desert reached a temporary halt, the American materiel shipped from the United States in late June began to arrive. The first American planes flew into Egypt by the end of July, and ground support personnel and equipment began to arrive by ship in early August. In the same month the American and British governments officially agreed to mount Operation TORCH in November 1942 to relieve the increasing German pressure on the Soviet Union and to remove, once and for all, the Axis domination of North Africa.

When the Americans and British came to an agreement on TORCH, they also debated the possibility of sending air support to the Soviet Union. Against the advice of the War Department, which feared that such an effort would weaken support to the British in Egypt, President Roosevelt agreed to provide an American air transport group and a heavy bomber group to a new combined Anglo-American air force that would support the Soviet Army in the Caucasus. Negotiations dragged on until December 1942, when it became apparent that Soviet concern over having Allied forces near their oil reserves in the Caucasus overrode their desire for air support. During the negotiations, however, the Allies prepared to provide the promised support, and Brereton organized a bomber group from his meager USAMEAF assets to deploy to the USSR. When the Soviets finally decided they did not require Allied air support, the newly organized 376th Bombardment Group stayed in USAMEAF.

Even as the American fighter and bomber groups promised in June became operational in the theater, the focus of Allied attention moved from the eastern to the western portion of North Africa in anticipation of Operation TORCH. This change of focus restricted the growth of USAMEAF. As early as 8 August Brereton was told that because of other “important projects,” it was unlikely that the air forces at his disposal would be further increased beyond the six air groups already en route. Although USAMEAF was second in priority for support in the Mediterranean, Allied shipping shortages dictated that most of the available carrying capacity went to support TORCH.

Despite the prospect that USAMEAF would remain a relatively small and now secondary force, Brereton energetically pressed ahead supporting the British. He took advantage of his excellent relations with the British Western Desert Air Force to draw on RAF help to introduce newly arrived American air combat units to the nature of the air war in North Africa. The heavy bombers of the Brereton and Halverson detachments (now combined into the 1st Provisional Group, under Halverson’s command) had been flying with the British for some time, and drawing on that experience, the 98th Bombardment Group (Heavy) which arrived in mid-August, was able to go directly into action. The newly arrived medium bombers and fighters were the units that benefited from further training from RAF instructors.

When the 12th Bombardment Group (Medium) and the 57th Fighter Group arrived in the theater of operations, they entered a highly cooperative type of air warfare in an unfamiliar desert environment. Initially, they were integrated into comparable RAF formations, allowing them to observe firsthand the complex techniques of air-ground coordination that the British had developed during their years of fighting in the Western Desert. For American airmen, this was their first experience coordinating close air support with ground forces. British techniques soon proved popular with American fliers, and they became instrumental in liberating both the RAF and the AAF from the direct control of ground commanders.

By late 1942 the commanders of the British Eighth Army and its RAF counterpart, the Western Desert Air Force, agreed that ground and aviation command elements at the army level would function best if they worked as equal partners. Air and ground staffs in the evolving British system shared the same headquarters facilities and living quarters. The result was a truly joint command where neither the ground nor air commander held ultimate authority. The techniques of joint command seemed to work particularly well in offensive operations, as demonstrated during the renewed British offensive in October. Brereton reported to Lt. Gen. Henry H. (Hap) Arnold, Chief of the AAF, that joint ground-air command arrangements were of utmost importance. He emphasized that the British system of cooperation derived from a natural sympathy and understanding between air and ground commanders and urged its adoption by the American leadership.

Essentially the British joint system allowed the air commander to exploit the peculiar capabilities of his units to the mutual benefit of both air and ground forces. Aircraft were not tied to specific ground units. This allowed the available air power to be concentrated for maximum effect reflecting the changing character of the battle. The ground support elements of RAF units in the Western Desert were highly mobile and could move rapidly between airfields as the tactical situation dictated. Ground support could thus be sequentially positioned at the airfields located most advantageously for supporting the land battle. By October, as the British prepared to resume the offensive at El Alamein, USAMEAF had established the IX Bomber Command in order to effectively coordinate the activities of all heavy bombers in the theater. Although it initially controlled only the American heavy bombers in the 1st Provisional and the 98th Groups, those units constituted 80 percent of the heavy bombers then available in the Middle East. Subsequent agreements with the RAF put the British heavy bombers of the 160 Squadron under the control of the IX Bomber Command as well.

To gain experience in handling air forces in support of a fast-moving offensive operation, USAMEAF attached an advance element to the forward headquarters of the RAF’s Western Desert Air Force as it prepared to support the El Alamein offensive of the British Eighth Army. This advance element became the Desert Air Task Force Headquarters in late October. The task force, which remained in existence until the end of the Egypt-Libya Campaign in February 1943, exercised administrative control over the American air forces supporting the British Western Desert Air Force.

While USAMEAF was maturing in North Africa, its higher headquarters, USAFIME, evolved rather more slowly. The responsibilities of the Services of Supply (SOS), USAFIME, had been increasing steadily as more American planes and crews arrived in the theater. Initially SOS, USAFIME, developed an ambitious construction program to support a large buildup of Allied forces in Egypt. But available Allied shipping could not simultaneously support both this construction program and the growing American air presence in the theater. Priority went to air force personnel and equipment, and the larger support projects were deferred.

Further delays followed. The arrival of a large contingent of support troops scheduled for August had to be canceled to provide shipping for the ground elements of the air groups that had flown their planes to North Africa in July. By mid-August SOS, USAFIME, had only about 1,000 personnel assigned, and by early November there were still less than 3,000. Although some 6,000 additional men were en route or at least scheduled for transport to the theater, most did not actually arrive until early in 1943. Supplies and construction material were likewise slow in arriving. As a result of these delays, by the end of 1942 only about half of the planned Allied construction projects in Egypt had been completed. By then, however, the British Eighth Army was back in Libya, and the Axis threat to the Middle East was over.

As the British successfully moved west, USAFIME turned its attentions to other parts of the Middle East. In November, Lt. Gen. Frank M. Andrews assumed command of USAFIME, replacing Maxwell. Andrews was an experienced airman, and one of his first acts was to establish the Ninth Air Force to replace USAMEAF. Brereton assumed command of the new organization and established the IX Air Service Command, which joined the IX Bomber Command and the IX Fighter Command as the major subordinate headquarters of the Ninth Air Force. The 376th Bombardment Group, originally organized to support Soviet forces, became part of the IX Bomber Command. As was the case with the Halverson Detachment, the 376th flew its first combat missions not in support of its original mission but over the deserts of North Africa.

As USAFIME and the Ninth Air Force went about their various reorganizations, events on the western shores of North Africa had shifted Allied attention away from Egypt and Libya. On 8 November 1942, Operation TORCH, the Anglo-American amphibious invasion of the western portion of North Africa, began, and the Axis forces found themselves squeezed between two Allied offensives. But even though TORCH received first priority for troops and materiel, operations in the Western Desert continued. The British, with American support, pushed west through Libya until February 1943, when the Northwest African and the Middle East theaters merged. The U.S. Army’s Egypt-Libya Campaign ended on 12 February 1943, when the Allied forces finally succeeded in driving all Axis forces out of Libya.

Analysis

The Egypt-Libya Campaign was one of the smaller, less well known U.S. Army campaigns of World War II. Its significance, however, cannot be measured simply by counting Army forces involved. The campaign made a major contribution to Allied success in World War II by laying a firm foundation of Anglo-American cooperation for the later, much larger combined endeavors on the European continent.

Strategically, the United States had to balance support to the British in North Africa with growing demands for help from other Allies in other theaters. The need to react quickly and decisively to the rapidly deteriorating British position at the beginning of the campaign gave the American high command experience in the flexible deployment of forces. The Halverson Detachment and the 376th Bombardment Group had been designed and trained for specific missions elsewhere, but both units quickly and successfully adapted to a different role in North Africa.

Tactically, the air-ground teamwork the AAF learned by working with the RAF provided the embryo of the techniques adapted during the Allied advance across Europe two years later. Given the existing state of technology, organization, and experience, air power was still quite limited in its ability to provide direct air support for individual ground commanders. Although the air forces were theoretically free to move throughout the theater wherever they were needed, in reality communications limited their range. The existing radios simply did not provide effective long-distance communications, and even communications between pilots and tactically engaged ground commanders were extremely problematic. Pilots also could not clearly distinguish between friendly and enemy ground forces from the air. But the effort to develop effective, direct, close air support had begun.

Logistically, the success of the Eighth Army’s offensive in October 1942 made the completion of many of the remaining planned American support projects unnecessary. The American assistance effort, however, had been significant, and its results did play a major role in the British autumn campaign. American tanks, artillery, and motor transport operated by British troops contributed to the breakthrough and exploitation at the Battle of El Alamein. The American equipment and support provided by the SOS, USAFIME, helped give the British the superior mobility and logistical ground support required to finally push the Axis forces out of Egypt and Libya. The fact that many of the American bases in the Middle East were never completed after the British victory at El Alamein, on the other hand, did lead to a decline in the importance of USAFIME before it ever reached its projected full strength.

In the final analysis, although the U.S. Army provided no ground combat troops to the Egypt-Libya Campaign, the close cooperation between American and British staffs set the tone for Anglo-American cooperation for the rest of the war in the Mediterranean and European Theaters of Operations. American leaders had agreed that the Middle East was a British responsibility but that American support was essential for it to remain in Allied hands. Both parties clearly understood and followed through on the necessity to work together to defeat a common foe in a theater critical to Allied worldwide goals.

Matt thanks for the information. Very interesting. Unfortunately this is part of the war that I am not familiar with. Where is Halverson? I know where Lydda is.

David,

Your project is impressive, and I commend you on your great progress, attention to detail, and website design sense.

Your first POW listing, that for J. Allen Charlton, jumped out at me when I saw “159 Squadron”. My research took off, so to speak, due to my family’s connection to 159 Sqn, though by the time I mainly focused upon, 1944, 159 had already transferred from the Middle East (where Charlton’s Liberator was lost) to the Far East.

I’m sorry to say I have no photos of Charlton, but let me offer this small tidbit of related info — a review of the 23 July 1942 op, as found in the records of 242 Wing’s Operations Record Book (courtesy of researcher Peter Hasselgren):

[ATTACH=CONFIG]237217[/ATTACH]

The 159 Sqn Operations Record Book is missing for July 1942, so the 242 Wing ORB is the next best thing.

Regards,

Matt

Dave
From the RAF Museum

Quote

As Bader descended under his parachute, he noticed “My right leg was no longer with me… the leather belt which attached it to my body had broken under the strain, and the leg, the Spitfire, and I had all parted company.” He was knocked unconscious on landing and woke to find two German soldiers removing his parachute harness.

Bader was taken to hospital in St Omer. His missing right leg was recovered from the wrecked Spitfire, and as soon as it had been repaired, he made his first attempt to escape. A rope made of bed sheets enabled him to climb down from a window, but he was soon recaptured and sent to Oflag VIB at Warburg. By that time the RAF had dropped a replacement leg by parachute, and Bader had determined to be “a plain, bloody nuisance to the Germans”.

After three months in Stalag Luft III, Bader was moved to Stalag Luft VIIIB at Lamsdorf, from which he made another attempt to escape. He and four others joined a working party outside the camp, intending to make their way towards the Polish border. The alarm was raised when a Luftwaffe officer called at Lamsdorf to visit Bader and he was found to be missing; he was arrested and returned to Lamsdorf. A few days later Bader was transferred to Colditz Castle – Oflag IVC. With typical boldness, he told the Germans that he expected “to travel first class and be accompanied by a batman and an officer of equal rank.” Colditz was thought to be escape-proof, and Bader remained there – making life difficult for his captors – until the camp was liberated on 15 April 1945.

Peter Gurnell added.

I was able to add two photographs of Gordon Jack today.