Week 287 - Iwo Jima! - WW2 - February 24, 1945

This week the Battle of Iwo Jima begins and American forces raise the Stars and Stripes on Mount Suribachi. Elsewhere, the Allies fight the stiff Japanese defences in Manila. The Red Army continues fighting through East Prussia and Pomerania as Stalin plans the next stage of the advance on the Reich. There are Allied advances in Western Europe and Italy too.

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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Marek Kamiński
Community Management: Ian Sowden
Written by: Indy Neidell
Research by: Indy Neidell
Map animations by: Daniel Weiss
Map research by: Sietse Kenter
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Artwork and color grading by: Mikołaj Uchman
Sound design by: Marek Kamiński

Colorizations by:
Mikołaj Uchman
Daniel Weiss

Image sources:
IWM SE 3163, IND 3595, SE 3251
Bundesarchiv

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
Joe Wandrini - Dragon King
Dream Cave - Blood in Water
Philip Ayers - The Unexplored
Dream Cave - The Beast
Edward Karl Hanson - Spellbound
Hakan Eriksson - Epic Adventure Theme 4
Fabiel Tell - Weapon of Choice
Jon Bjork - Shrouded in Conspiracy
Johan Hynynen - Dark Beginning
Joe Wandrini - To War!
Alec Slayne - Conspiracy Inc.
Phoenix Tail - At the Front

0:01 Intro
0:54 Recap
1:16 Iwo Jima Begins
6:32 The war in the Philippines
7:56 The Battle of Manila
11:12 Fighting in Burma
12:14 Operation Grenade
13:46 Operation Encore
14:38 Soviet plans for new offensives
21:28 Moscow Commission Meets

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

[WorldWarTwo]

Want to hear more from Indy and Sparty? Join the TimeGhost army for an exclusive look at their thoughts on the current state of the war.

[ceberskie]

As much as its probably going to be overstated....On February 19th 1945 a Marines Marine named Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone was killed while leading an attack near the outskirts of the first airfield on the first day of the Iwo Jima landings...he had already cleared one pillbox and lead a tank through a small mine field. For his actions that day he was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross. He had already won the US's highest honor the Medal of Honor on Guadacanal.
He fully embodied the motto of his first unit the 1st Marine Division "No Better Friend No Worse Enemy."

[gunman]

A sidenote on February 23 1945 is that 23 German Luftwaffe Ju-88 bombers will attack an Allied convoy moving from Murmansk in northern Russia to Scotland in the United Kingdom. American liberty ship Henry Bacon shot down three of the bombers and damaged two, setting a liberty ship record. However, she was eventually hit by a torpedo and sank, killing 23 men, including the skipper, Alfred Carini. What is noteworthy is that she would become the last Allied vessel to be sunk by German aircraft.

[alexamerling]

Another interesting fact this week: Soviet and former imperial Russian General Dmitry Karbyshev died at Mauthausen on the 18th. He had been captured by the Germans in August 1941 near the Dnieper River and was unconscious when captured. He was transferred between a series of camps including Auschwitz, Flossenburg, Majdanek and Mauthausen (among others). He refused to cooperate with the SS and was frozen to death by being sprayed with ice cold water and yet he still refused to help the Nazis. He was later posthumously named hero of the Soviet Union in 1946.

[ShutUpBubi]

Honored to have been able to interview and befriend a veteran of Iwo Jima who lived in my home town almost 10 years ago. His name was Dewey and he was sent there shortly after enlisting at the young age of 18 and was apart of 1st Battalion, 27th Marines, 5th Marine Division who landed in front of Mount Suribachi and took enormous casualties in the opening stages of the battle. He was shot through the upper thigh and had to survive a night (possibly multiple my memory is fuzzy) in a shell crater before emergency evacuations for wounded could safely land. He and his wife were some of the nicest, most caring people I have ever met and I truly hope he is resting easy. God bless.

[grumbleduke]

fun fact, i used to live in Krauthausen, near to Juelich, which was captured this week. One day when digging up my flowerbed I unearthed a bullet casing which i identified as a US 30 cal casing, presumably from this very week.

[annehersey]

Chuikov certainly gets more than his fair share pf urban warfare and hand to hand combat or as Chuikov called it in Stalingrad-‘Hug your enemy’! What a jam-packed episode! Thanks again and I loved the bonus companion episodes from Sparty and Astrid this past week! 😘😘

[nicholasv]

This week February 22, 1945 my grandfather's brother went missing (was probably killed) in the Philippines. He joined the U.S. army before the war in September 1941 and served throughout the pacific in places like Guadalcanal. He was a part of the 182nd infantry Regiment, Americal division. PFC, Juan A. Mora.

[jerryc]

My now deceased father-in-law landed there, lost his best friend there, and saw the flag raised on Suribachi. The Marine Corps sent a unit to his funeral and the blowing of Taps that day by far the saddest moment of my life.

[michaelbergen]

I discovered the Great War in high school, entered this war in grade 12, and I'll be starting a master's degree when it comes to an end in a few months. Hats off to Indy, Spartacus, Astrid, and the whole Timeghost team for teling the story of WWII in such depth and with so much dedication - no one has made the scale of modern war as evident as you guys have. I look forward to seeing what you have planned for the end of WWII, and for the Korean War!

[ianhomerpura]

8:00 the High Commissioner's Residence is still standing, now functioning as the US Embassy. The Army-Navy Club was demolished and rebuilt as a hotel.
8:20 was restored and is still standing as the Manila Police Department Headquarters.
8:58 is the Manila City Hall
9:00 is Quezon Bridge, connecting Quiapo and Ermita.
9:10 is the Colegio de San Juan de Letran. That structure survived and was restored.

[Perebynis]

As the madness of WW2 nears it´s end and battles getting bloodier and bloodier, I wonder why reliving history hits me (as a german born a whole generation after the war) so hard. Good job, Indy & team!

[Arashmickey]

8:20 setting fire to the first floor of a building while standing on the second floor is illustrated on page 98 of my ACME mail order catalog: "ACME flamethrower diagrams and applications"

[whyherewhynow]

I’ve read that Kuribayashi originally believed his mission was to pin the Americans until the Combined Fleet appeared and destroyed them. Then newly arrived Major Yoshitaka Horie told him the “Fleet” had been reduced to a few scattered units with no striking force. Kuribayashi, like most Japanese soldiers, had no idea how the war was really going and at first accused Horie of being a drunk spreading baseless rumors.
(The Rising Sun, John Toland, p 797)

[SMichaelDeHart]

(Posted last week too.)

My father, Staff Sergeant Robert E. DeHart landed on Iwo with the first USAAF groups/squadrons soon after the US Marines took control of the airfields on the plateau of Iwo Jima. Dad was a Flightline Engineer and Mechanic on the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. He was in the 20th Army Air Force, 7th Army Air Corp, 414th Fighter/Bomber Group, 413th F/ B Squadron.
The Squadrons assisted the Marine by giving them close air support on Mount Suribachi and cover sorties for the B29's flight to and from the main Islands of Japan (as far as their fuel tanks allowed them to go).

I've got all the photos dad took on the island and sent back to mom in Mount Airy, NC.

When dad returned home in November 1945, he went to work with the Appalachian Power Company in Bluefield, West Virginia as a Class A Transmission Lineman. They raised 7 of us kids (I'm the youngest @ 60).

My eldest brother final got dad to open up a bit about what they all saw and did in a combat zone to help close out WWII. He taped dad's and his tent mate on Iwo (Bob Baldwin of Columbia, SC). Luckily the connected back up after both retired in the 80's.

We lost dad on 2006 to cancer just before his 89th birthday (born May 1917 at the Weyanoke Coal and Coke Camp in Mercer County, West Virginia).

Wisest man I've ever known!! Miss ya, old man!!

[doverbeachcomber]

In chapter 28 of his autobiography "Samurai", Japanese ace Saburo Sakai described how defenseless Iwo Jima was in July 1944, when he was stationed there. Little had been done to prepare fortifications, and the US Navy attacked Iwo for weeks, culminating in an utterly devastating naval bombardment that left not a single structure standing on the island. The few surviving Japanese soldiers, sailors, and airmen there had almost no food or ammunition, and believed that in its current condition, Iwo could be taken with minimal American casualties in an assault that they were convinced could not be more than a few days off. But no landings came. American attention had been wrenched away from the Central Pacific advance on Japan and refocused on retaking the Philippines, and Iwo, which would be judged worthy of such a stupendous American effort in February 1945, could not be spared even a small force to take it when it could have been had relatively cheaply. With Iwo in US hands in mid-1944, strategic bombing of the Home Islands could have begun at least six months earlier than it did, with effects on the course of the Pacific War that can only be guessed at.

[podemosurss]

0:40 To take the island... and some iconic pictures as well.

[Tomreese]

My grandfather Bill Pospula served at Iwo Jima, thankfully it being his last battle. He was from the 4th Marine Division, and he'd always joke about how he was serving as the ship's cook that day when they gave the order for reinforcements and he was selected. I remember him saying how he owes his life to the USS New Jersey and other battleships for destroying the Japanese artillery that was striking his position. I was too young to speak to him in detail about the battle, he passed away in 2014. I miss him so much.

[bwilliams]

My grandfather was a Sherman tank commander from the 5th Marine Division whose unit came ashore while the Japanese were launching their delayed attack on the beach. He would serve in 5 different tanks, including a tankdozer, one of the 8 flame tanks on Iwo, and what was apparently a field-modified 'corpsman tank.' The latter was created by attaching a steel plate on a hinge to the glacis, the intent being to drive up and straddle a wounded man - picked out by a Navy corpsman riding in the co-driver's seat - drop the plate to prevent Japanese rifle fire getting under the tank, and bring the casualty in through the Sherman's belly hatch. It turned out to be impractical, because the tanks could be more useful in their intended role of pushing the enemy back. From the time I was 4 or 5 years old, he was telling me about the War and his life in the 'Hungry 30s.' As I grew up, he revealed more and more details of his time on Iwo, including some truly horrific, even dehumanizing events that he experienced, including being ordered to take his tank forwards over terrain where the American casualties were so thick on the ground that 'you couldn't walk between 'em.'

[deathmetaldrummer]

I have a picture of my dads history teacher who was a veteran of the battle of Iwo Jima. Co. 1 3rd Bn. 9th Marines, February 1945 Guam his company is pictured with probably two hundred men. Maybe 150 im not sure can't count them all with the quality of the picture. Then there is a photo on the bottom of the picture. 14 men remain and Kermit Davis (my dad's history teacher) is one of those standing. He was a very good and wise man. He was not afraid to talk about his experiences to help teach the younger generations of what he went through. His wisdom made a big impact on my life that's for sure.