10 WWII Battles the Losing Side Tried to Cover Up

[00:00:00]Number 10, Exercise Tiger. The D-Day rehearsal America tried to erase. On the night of April 27th, 1944, American soldiers were rehearsing the invasion of Normandy on a quiet stretch of Devon coastline. Slapton Sands had been chosen because its shallow gradient and open beach closely matched Utah Beach where tens of thousands of troops would land 6 weeks later. What happened instead became one of the most aggressively suppressed military disasters in American history. Nine German eboats from Sherberg slipped through a gap in the Allied escort screen in the early hours of April 28 and found a convoy of American landing ship tanks moving slowly through Lime Bay. The convoy was defenseless. The single Royal Navy corvette assigned to escort it was sailing on a different radio frequency from the American ships.

[00:00:57]A change never properly communicated and no warning reached the convoy before the first torpedoes hit. LST507 and LST 531 were on fire and sinking within minutes. LST289 was badly damaged. A total of 749 American servicemen died that night. soldiers from the fourth infantry division and their naval crews. Men who never reached the war they were rehearsing for. Many drowned in the cold channel darkness, weighed down by improperly worn life jackets that no one had trained them to use correctly. General Eisenhower classified the operation top secret.

[00:01:38]Families received missing inaction notices with no details. The secrecy had a tactical basis. The rehearsal site revealed the actual invasion zone, but it was also a burial of the fact that Allied command had failed the men it sent to train. The story did not surface until the 1980s when Ken Small, an English hotel who had moved to Torcross, Devon, spent years recovering a sunken Sherman tank from the seabed and demanded the full account be acknowledged. 749 men had been erased from the record before D-Day even began.

[00:02:16]Number nine, the Battle of Tsavo Island, the worst night in US naval history. In the early hours of August 9th, 1942, a Japanese cruiser squadron under Vice Admiral Gonichi Mikawa accomplished something naval historians still study with disbelief. In approximately 37 minutes, Macawa's seven cruisers and one destroyer located, engaged, and destroyed four Allied heavy cruisers near Guadal Canal. Hamas Cber, USS Quincy, USS Vincens, and USS Atoria were all sunk. The catastrophe happened because failures compounded each other at every level. The Allied radar picket destroyers failed to detect the Japanese approach. The screening cruisers were caught at diminished readiness.

[00:03:06]Communication between ships was so broken that some captains did not know they were under attack until their own ships were burning. Macawa then withdrew without attacking the vulnerable Allied transport ships nearby. A decision that arguably cost Japan the broader Guadal Canal campaign. But that strategic error offered no comfort to the men drowning around four wrecked warships. The US Navy classified the operational details.

[00:03:33]A combat narrative was published by the Office of Naval Intelligence in January 1943, but the specific intelligence failures and command dysfunction that produced the disaster was stripped from public account. The Navy feared that a transparent analysis would devastate confidence in American naval power, already shaken from Pearl Harbor 8 months earlier. The Battle of Tsavo Island has been described by the US Naval History and Heritage Command as the worst defeat suffered by the United States Navy in a surface fleet action.

[00:04:09]The full account of how those 37 minutes unfolded remained a carefully managed silence for years afterward.

[00:04:16]Number eight, the DEP raid when a catastrophe was rebranded as a lesson.

[00:04:22]On the morning of August 19th, 1942, approximately 6,086 Allied troops landed on the beaches surrounding the French port of DP. Nearly 5,000 of them were Canadians. By early afternoon, the operation was over. Of all the men who had landed, 3,623 had been killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. 97 Canadians were dead. 1,946 were in German captivity. The Royal Air Force lost 106 aircraft against 48 Luftvafa planes. A British destroyer and 33 landing craft were gone. The fighting had lasted fewer than 10 hours. The Germans had been ready. The preliminary bombardment was inadequate. Tanks that made it ashore found the beach shingle too loose for traction. Infantry who reached the seaw wall were pinned with nowhere to go. Some units were effectively destroyed before they cleared the waterline. What emerged from the British government under pressure from Canada and the public was not accountability but reframing. DEP was a reconnaissance in force. The dead had purchased lessons that would make D-Day possible. Vice Admiral Lord Mountbatton, who oversaw the planning as chief of combined operations, defended the raid in precisely these terms for decades.

[00:05:48]Military historians have challenged this framing persistently. Many supposed lessons, the importance of fire support, the difficulty of attacking a defended port were either already understood or better absorbed from later operations in Sicily. More than 900 Canadians were killed and the families who buried them were given the language of necessary sacrifice for a disaster whose strategic rationale remains contested to this day.

[00:06:16]Number seven, the battle of Tarowa. The government that hid its dead marines.

[00:06:22]Before the battle began, Rear Admiral Ki Shibazaki told his garrison it would take 1 million men 100 years to conquer Tarawa. He did not survive to see how wrong he was. Shibazaki was killed on the first day of the assault by naval gunfire as he moved between command posts. The island fell in 76 hours. In November 1943, the second marine division landed on Betio Island as part of Operation Galvanic. They faced a Japanese garrison of approximately 2,636 troops reinforced by over 2,000 construction workers. behind some of the most heavily prepared defenses in the Pacific. The pre-landing naval and aerial bombardment expected to neutralize those defenses did not.

[00:07:12]Japanese fortifications built of reinforced concrete and thick coconut logs absorbed the shelling with little structural damage. Marines who came ashore waited through chest deep water under sustained fire. their landing craft grounded on a reef that pre- battle intelligence had failed to properly account for. By November 23, 1,09 United States Marines had been killed and 2,1 wounded. Of the Japanese garrison, only 17 combatants survived to be taken prisoner. The fighting had been total on both sides. The US government's initial response was to classify combat photographs and restrict what correspondents could report. Officials feared that images of Marines face down in the Pacific Surf would damage public support for a war still years from its end. What went unspoken in official communications was that the casualty count reflected in part planning that had misjudged both the effects of naval bombardment on reinforced concrete and the tidal conditions that would strand landing craft on the reef. Number six, Operation Market Garden, the bridge that failed and the general who said otherwise. In September 1944, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery proposed the most ambitious airborne operation in military history. Three airborne divisions would drop into the Netherlands, seize a series of bridges across the Rine, and open a corridor into Germany's industrial heartland. The plan was called Operation Market Garden.

[00:08:52]The American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions seized their objectives with hard fighting. At Arnum, the first British Airborne Division landed to capture the furthest bridge across the lower Rine. What Allied intelligence had assessed as a lightly defended area held two SS Panza divisions refitting nearby, the 9inth and 10th SS, part of General Wilhelm Bitrix Ili SS Panza Corps. One officer had seen this coming. Major Brian Urkart, chief intelligence officer for British I Airborne Corps, had identified German armor in aerial photographs and raised the alarm with his commanding officer, Lieutenant General Frederick Browning. Browning placed Urkart on medical leave for nervous exhaustion 2 days before the operation launched. The attack proceeded. Of the approximately 10,000 British and Polish forces committed at Arnum, 1,984 were killed and 6,854 were taken prisoner. Fewer than 2,000 escaped back across the Rine. Montgomery maintained that Operation Market Garden had been 90% successful, a position he held in official statements and repeated in his memoirs. The 10% he declined to account for was nearly 9,000 British and Polish soldiers dead or in captivity and a strategic objective that had failed entirely.

[00:10:20]Number five, the Battle of Cree.

[00:10:23]Germany's victory that cost more than a defeat. In May 1941, Germany executed the first successful large-scale airborne invasion in the history of warfare. Operation Mercury dropped over 22,000 paratroopers and mountain infantry onto Cree, defended by British, Commonwealth, and Greek forces. After 11 days of brutal combat, the Allies evacuated. Germany had won. What the German public was never told was the price. General Kurt students 11 airp spearheaded by the elite 7th air division Germany's falsam paratroopers suffered losses that stunned the high command approximately 5,670 were killed or wounded with more than 3,600 killed among the paratroopers specifically the allied defenders warned in advance by ultra inelligence intercepts of the German plan had been ready and waiting at malem Heracleion and Rethmnon paratroopers dropped directly into prepared positions and were cut down in the olive groves before they could consolidate. On July 19th, 1941, Hitler summoned student to his headquarters. After presenting him with the Knights Cross, the Furer took him aside. Of course, you know, General, Hitler said, we shall never do another airborne operation. The German OKW suppressed the casualty figures.

[00:11:55]Newspapers described the conquest of Cree as a glorious achievement. The men who died in the olive groves were mourned privately by families given no account of the scale of the losses.

[00:12:06]Hitler kept his word. No major German airborne assault was ever ordered again.

[00:12:12]The island of Malta, which directly threatened Axis supply lines to North Africa, was never invaded, partly because the price of another CIT was a price the German leadership would not pay twice. Number four, the Filet's pocket. The Vermachar's destruction that was called a withdrawal. Between August 12 and 21, 1944, the Allied breakout from Normandy produced one of the most complete battlefield encirclements of the entire war. American, British, Canadian, and Polish forces closed around the remnants of the German 7th Army and fifth Panzer Army in a pocket centered on files. Approximately 50,000 German soldiers were taken prisoner.

[00:12:57]Approximately 10,000 were killed. The roads inside the pocket were choked with destroyed armor, field guns, supply wagons, and the dead. Allied fighter bombers flew continuous sorties over columns with nowhere to move and no air cover of their own. Eisenhower surveying the aftermath described it as unquestionably one of the greatest killing grounds of the entire war.

[00:13:22]Joseph Gerbles faced an impossible task.

[00:13:26]The encirclement could not be entirely concealed. Soldiers who escaped through the narrowing gap arrived home with accounts of what they had endured. What emerged instead was the language of controlled retreat. German newspapers described the Normandy fighting as a planned withdrawal to shorten defensive lines. The encirclement was not reported. The tens of thousands taken prisoner were not reported. Field Marshal Walter Model sent by Hitler to stabilize Army Group B had to communicate the scale of the disaster to headquarters in pieces because the full account was too complete a catastrophe to absorb at once. The German public went on believing they were reading about a war still within reach of resolution.

[00:14:12]Number three, the Battle of Lee Gulf.

[00:14:16]Japan announced a victory it had lost completely. On October 23rd, 1944, the Imperial Japanese Navy committed virtually its entire remaining surface fleet to a single engagement in the waters surrounding the Philippines. What followed over 4 days was the largest naval battle in recorded history, involving nearly 200,000 personnel and approximately 282 warships. When it ended, Japan had suffered a naval catastrophe from which no recovery was possible. Japan lost four aircraft carriers, three battleships, 10 cruisers, and nine destroyers.

[00:14:57]Approximately 10,500 Japanese sailors and aviators were killed. The carrier force that had struck Pearl Harbor 3 years earlier was finished as an offensive instrument. No significant naval operation of strategic weight was possible for Japan after Lee Gulf.

[00:15:14]Imperial General Headquarters issued its communique within days. It announced a Japanese victory. The military controlled press reported the battle in terms of enemy ships sunk and objectives achieved. The four sunken carriers, the three battleships, the 10,500 dead, none of it reached the Japanese public. The reality that the Imperial Navy had been destroyed as an offensive force and that the home islands were now within range of American bombardment without meaningful naval resistance was a truth the government of Japan chose not to share with the people it was asking to keep sacrificing. They continued to sacrifice for nearly another year.

[00:15:58]Number two, the Battle of Midway. the Imperial Navy that quarantined its own survivors. In June 1942, 6 months after Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Navy assembled its most powerful carrier strike force to seize Midway at destroy the remnants of the American Pacific Fleet. The four fleet carriers at the core of that force, Akagi, Kaga, Soru, and Hiru, represented the most capable carrier aviation force on Earth. Within 3 days, all four were gone. American codereers at station Hypo in Pearl Harbor had broken enough of the Japanese naval cipher to identify the time and location of the attack. Admiral Chester Nimitz positioned three American carriers accordingly. On June 4, dive bombers from USS Enterprise and USS Yorktown found Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo's carriers during rearming operations. And within 5 minutes, Akagi, Kaga, and Soru had each been struck by bombs that ignited fuel and ordinance below decks.

[00:17:08]Hiru was fatally struck later that afternoon and sank in the early hours of June 5. 248 Japanese aircraft were destroyed. Approximately 3,57 Japanese sailors and aviators were killed. What followed was not an announcement. It was a quarantine. Admiral Yamamoto ordered an immediate news blackout. Survivors from the sunken carriers were transferred under guard and forbidden from communicating with their families or anyone outside naval jurisdiction.

[00:17:41]Wounded men were treated in military hospitals where visitors were prohibited. Japanese newspapers reported a major victory. NHK radio broadcast the engagement in triumphant language.

[00:17:54]Japan's strategic planning after Midway continued to assume a naval parody with the United States that no longer existed. Operations were designed and resources committed on the basis of a carrier force that lay on the floor of the Pacific. The survivors were kept isolated so the truth they carried could not reach the people whose decisions depended on knowing it. Number one, the battle of Su Musalmi. The Soviet coverup that helped start the bloodiest campaign in history. In December 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland. Joseph Stalin expected a rapid campaign. The Red Army that crossed the border was the largest land force on Earth. Finnish resistance, Soviet planners assumed, would collapse within weeks. What happened in the forests around Su Musalmi cannot be measured only in the dead inside a single battle. It must be measured in the tens of millions who would die across the Soviet Union in the war that its coverup helped make possible. The Soviet 163rd Rifle Division advanced through dense forest towards Sua Musalami and found itself encircled by Finnish forces under Colonel Hyalmar Silas Vuo. Finnish ski troops moved through terrain that Soviet soldiers, roadbound, unequipped for Arctic warfare and unfamiliar with the ground, could not follow. The 163rd was surrounded and destroyed. When the Soviet 44th Rifle Division was sent along the Ratt Road to relieve it, Seusvu's forces cut the column into isolated segments, a Finnish tactic called motti from the word for a cubic meter of firewood. Each segment was reduced in turn. When the battle ended in January 1940, both Soviet divisions had been effectively annihilated. Finnish estimates put Soviet dead in the Sua Musalami area at approximately 27,000.

[00:19:55]Finnish losses were approximately 750 killed. A military band complete with instruments and ceremonial banners was found with the wreckage of the 44th Division. The Soviets had marched to Sua Musalmi expecting to play victory music.

[00:20:11]On January 11th, 1940, General Alexe Vinogradov, commander of the 44th Division, was publicly executed in front of his surviving troops. Soviet military sensors suppressed all detailed reporting on the battle. Casualty figures for the winter war were classified. Soviet newspapers described the Finnish campaign as orderly and progressing, but the world's military establishments were watching. German military intelligence compiled detailed assessments of Soviet performance throughout the winter war. What they observed was an army that could not coordinate at the divisional level, could not adapt to difficult terrain, and whose officer core, gutted by Stalin's purges of the late 1930s, could not lead effectively. Hitler reviewing these assessments in early 1941 concluded that the Soviet Union was a military colossus standing on feet of clay. On June 22nd, 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarasa, the largest land invasion in recorded history. Among the factors that gave Hitler confidence the Soviet Union could be defeated rapidly, the performance of the Red Army at Su Musami was significant. The deaths they concealed on the Ratt road were followed by more than 27 million Soviet dead in the war that coverup helped make possible. If this kept you watching, there's more where that came from. Click the like button and subscribe so you never miss what we uncover next.