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123-532: The idea is credited to a Greek citizen, Marcel Mitzakis, who devised the system for the de Thoren Syndicate in the 1930s; they were advised by J F C Fuller . The device was demonstrated to the British War Office in 1937. Although three examples were ordered for tests, the trials did not begin until 1940, when the War Office took over and ordered 300 lights for fitting to tanks. A prototype was constructed using

246-435: A Matilda II tank. The tank's normal turret was replaced with a cylindrical one containing both a 13 million candlepower (12.8 million candela ) searchlight and a machine gun. The searchlight turret included a station for an operator, who had the task of changing the light's carbon electrodes when they burned out. The light emerged from a vertical slit that was just 2 inches (5.1 cm) wide by 24 inches (61 cm) tall,

369-459: A German soldier captured on the edge of Remagen that the bridge was scheduled to be destroyed at 4:00 pm. Timmermann called for artillery to fire on Erpel with burning white phosphorus shells to create a smoke screen. Soon after the American troops arrived on the ridge overlooking Remagen, German forces on the west bank near the town were alerted to the approaching enemy armor and raced back across

492-471: A M1940 aluminum-alloy treadway bridge and a M1938 pontoon bridge followed by a Bailey bridge across the Rhine. Over 125,000 troops established a bridgehead of six divisions , with accompanying tanks, artillery pieces, and trucks, across the Rhine. The Americans broke out of the bridgehead on 25 March 1945, 18 days after the bridge was captured. Some German and American military authorities agreed that capturing

615-545: A boy, he returned to England at the age of 11 without them; three years later, at "the somewhat advanced age of 14", he began attending Malvern College and, later trained for an army career at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst , from 1897 to 1898. His nickname of "Boney", which he was to retain, is said to have come either from an admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte , or from an imperious manner combined with military brilliance which resembled Napoleon's. Fuller

738-730: A bridge across the Rhine was front-page news in American newspapers. The unexpected availability of a bridgehead on the eastern side of the Rhine more than two weeks in advance of Operation Plunder allowed Allied high commander Dwight Eisenhower to alter his plans to end the war. The Allies were able to rapidly transport five divisions across the Rhine into the Ruhr , Germany's industrial heartland. The bridge had endured months of aircraft bombing, direct artillery hits, near misses, and deliberate demolition attempts. It finally collapsed at 3:00 pm on 17 March, killing 33 American engineers and wounding 63. But by then U.S. Army combat engineers had finished building

861-563: A conspiracy against the British government in 1940. Fuller was born in Chichester , West Sussex , the son of Alfred Fuller (1832-1927), an Anglican clergyman, and Selma Marie Philippine (1847-1940), née de la Chevallerie. of French descent but raised in Germany. Alfred Fuller retired as rector of Itchenor and moved to Chichester, where his son was born. After moving to Lausanne with his parents as

984-671: A hindrance to his career. Crowley writes in chapter 67 of his book, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley : ...to my breathless amazement he fired pointblank at my head a document in which he agreed to continue his co-operation on condition that I refrain from mentioning his name in public or private under penalty of paying him a hundred pounds for each such offence. I sat down and poured in a broadside at close quarters. "My dear man," I said in effect, "do recover your sense of proportion, to say nothing of your sense of humour. Your contribution, indeed! I can do in two days what takes you six months, and my real reason for ever printing your work at all

1107-403: A knack for aphorisms , witness: "To attack the nerves of an army, and through its nerves the will of its commander, is more profitable than battering to pieces the bodies of its men." His Lectures have attracted much attention over the course of decades, with one staff writer even going so far as to extend his vision of the tank as "master-weapon" to say that the helicopter not the tank would be

1230-492: A man famous in arms and letters, one who has known the greatest statesmen, warriors, dictators, of our age, declare solemnly that the most extraordinary genius he ever knew was Crowley." After the Second World War and Crowley's death, Fuller wrote a letter to Edward Noel FitzGerald stating: "Crowley was a genuine avatar, but I don't think he knew it, but I do think he senses it in an emotional way." (17 September 1949) Fuller

1353-503: A master, but please don't think that either I or the Work depend on you, any more than J.P. Morgan depends on his favourite clerk." After this, contact between the two men faded rapidly. The front pages of the 1913 issues of the Equinox (Volume 1, nos. 9 and 10), which gave general directions to A∴A∴ members, included a notice on the subject of Fuller, who was described as a "former Probationer";

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1476-439: A normal M3 tank. The operator was the only occupant of the turret—the vehicle commander had a seat to the left of the driver. The project was shrouded in secrecy. It was tested during Exercise Primrose in 1943 at Tighnabruaich , Scotland; it was concluded that it was "too uncertain to be depended upon as the main feature of an invasion". The CDL was shown to senior US officers (including generals Eisenhower and Clark) in 1942 and

1599-565: A number of German citizens in nearby towns, the closest direct warhead impact of which landed 300 metres from the bridge. When the Germans sent a squad of seven navy demolition swimmers wearing Italian underwater-breathing apparatus, the Americans were ready. For the first time in combat, they had deployed the top-secret Canal Defence Lights which successfully detected the frogmen in the dark, who were all killed or captured. The sudden capture of

1722-462: A portion of the explosives detonated. U.S. forces captured the bridge and rapidly expanded their first bridgehead across the Rhine, two weeks before Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery 's meticulously planned Operation Plunder . The U.S. Army's actions prevented the Germans from regrouping east of the Rhine and consolidating their positions. The battle for control of the Ludendorff Bridge saw both

1845-486: A potential leader of the coup, with Fuller telling retired Admiral Barry Domvile , a fellow Nazi sympathizer, that "Ironside is with us." A fellow conspirator, Samuel Darwin-Fox, told an MI5 agent that: "Italy would declare war almost immediately, that France would then give in and that Britain would follow before the end of the week. There would be a short civil war, the Government would leave first for Bristol and then for

1968-460: A radio unit of eight men but during their 64-kilometer (40 mi) trip they had to route around American tanks and ran low on gas, forcing them to detour further so they could refuel. The radio unit got separated and Scheller didn't arrive until 11:15 am, less than two hours before the Americans. The German commandant at Remagen, Captain Willi Bratge was at first relieved when Scheller announced he

2091-616: A regular infantry brigade and the garrison of Tidworth Camp on Salisbury Plain . Fuller believed he would be unable to devote himself to the Experimental Mechanized Force and the development of mechanized warfare techniques without extra staff to assist him with the additional extraneous duties, which the War Office refused to allocate. He was promoted to major-general in 1930 and retired three years later to devote himself entirely to writing. After retirement, Fuller served as

2214-586: A reporter during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935) and the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Impatient with what he considered the inability of democracy to adopt military reforms, Fuller became involved with Sir Oswald Mosley and the British fascist movement. As a member of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), he sat on the party's Policy Directorate and was considered one of Mosley's closest allies. He

2337-753: A river road and two narrow mountain roads, any of which could be easily blocked by the Germans. General Gustav von Zangen's Fifteenth Army staff believed that the Allies would cross the Rhine using the open terrain of the Rheinbach Valley near the Ahr River. Zangen thought that the Rheinbach Valley offered the Allies a natural funnel for military operations. He argued with German Army Group B commander Field Marshal Walter Model, "The Americans would have to be stupid not to take advantage of this hole and push tanks toward

2460-478: A settlement at Remagen in the first century AD. Over that long period of time, it had been destroyed multiple times by invading armies from several nations. The town was rebuilt each time. In March 1945 about 5,000 people lived in the small resort town. The Rhine near Remagen was about 270 meters (890 ft) wide. The Ludendorff Bridge had been built by Russian prisoners of war during World War I to help transport supplies from Germany to France. The bridge connected

2583-462: A small size which reduced the chance of battle damage to the optical system. The beam diverged at 19° horizontally and 1.9° vertically, forming a pool of light of around 34 by 340 yards (31 m × 311 m) at a distance of 1,000 yards (910 m). The turret could rotate 360° and the light beam could be elevated or lowered by 10° from the horizontal. Blue and amber filters allowed the light to be coloured as well as white. A shutter could flash

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2706-441: A vehicle carrying five men and a machine gun, but the driver simply accelerated the vehicle across the bridge. Scheller concluded the bridge could not be defended and was ready to destroy it when Lieutenant Karl Peters pleaded for extra time to get his unit across the bridge. Peters, commanding "3rd Battery of FlakLehruVersAbt 900 (o)" (a multiple rocket launcher battery of "stationary Anti-Aircraft Training and Testing Battalion 900"),

2829-489: Is displayed at Cavalry Tank Museum , Ahmednagar in India. J F C Fuller Major-General John Frederick Charles " Boney " Fuller CB CBE DSO (1 September 1878 – 10 February 1966) was a senior British Army officer , military historian , and strategist , known as an early theorist of modern armoured warfare , including categorising principles of warfare . With 45 books and many articles, he

2952-410: Is my friendship for you. I wanted to give you a leg up the literary ladder. I have taken endless pain to teach you the first principles of writing. When I met you, you were not so much as a fifth-rate journalist, and now you can write quite good prose with no more than my blue pencil through two out of every three adjectives, and five out of every six commas. Another three years with me and I will make you

3075-495: The 14th Tank Battalion commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Leonard E. Engemann to the north flank and attached it to the 1st Division. The 9th Armored's Combat Command B attacked towards the Erft river , and Combat Command A advanced towards the Ahr river . They were to then move south to capture Remagen and Sinzig before linking up with the flanks of Patton's Third Army. On the right flank of

3198-457: The 491st Bombardment Group attempted one more time to destroy the bridge, but failed. Operation Lumberjack was planned to prepare the way for Field Marshal Montgomery 's massive Operation Plunder , an operation that rivaled the Normandy landings in size and complexity, eventually involving over a million troops and more than 30 divisions. Montgomery's typically cautious plan was to cross

3321-762: The First Oxfordshire Light Infantry he had entered and won a contest to write the best review of Crowley's poetic works, after which it turned out that he was the only entrant. This essay was later published in book form in 1907 as The Star in the West . After this he became an enthusiastic supporter of Crowley, joining his magical order, the A∴A∴ ., within which he became a leading member, editing order documents and its journal, The Equinox . During this period he wrote The Treasure House of Images , edited early sections of Crowley's magical autobiography The Temple of Solomon

3444-561: The Ludendorff Bridge was still standing. It was one of three remaining bridges across the Rhine that the Germans had not yet blown up in advance of the Allied armies' advance. Lt. Timmermann and Grimball followed the scouts on the rise to see for themselves and radioed the surprising news to Task Force Commander Engemann. Arriving on the rise, Engemann could see retreating German vehicles and forces filling Remagen's streets, all heading over

3567-658: The Red Army , which developed its armored warfare doctrine based on deep operations , which were developed by Soviet military theorists Marshal M. N. Tukhachevsky et al. in the 1920s based on their experiences in the First World War and the Russian Civil War . Fuller was the only foreigner present at Nazi Germany's first armed manoeuvres in 1935. Fuller frequently praised Adolf Hitler in his speeches and articles, once describing him as "that realistic idealist who has awakened

3690-523: The Rur river dams, flooding the valley below and slowing down the advance of Hodges' units. During the two weeks that the valley was flooded, Hitler refused to allow Gerd von Rundstedt , Commander-in-Chief of the Western Front, to withdraw German forces to the east side of the Rhine. Hitler believed that this move would only delay the inevitable fight and ordered Von Rundstedt to fight where his forces stood. By

3813-622: The Second World War , 1939–1945, Fuller was under suspicion for his Nazi sympathies. At one meeting of the Right Club , which had been set up in May 1939, Fuller, declared the need for "a bloody revolution" in Britain and added "I am ready to start one right away." In 1940, Fuller was implicated as a participant in a fascist plot, organized by Leigh Vaughan-Henry, against the British government. Vaughan-Henry

Canal Defence Light - Misplaced Pages Continue

3936-457: The Siegfried Line was to be held at all costs. The rapid Allied penetration of the border fortifications had disrupted German communications, command structure, and their entire defense of the west bank of the Rhine. It would have been logical to fall back to the east side of the Rhine and regroup, but Hitler absolutely refused to allow a retreat and irrationally demanded that his Army recapture

4059-532: The " Law of Threes " throughout his work. Fuller did not believe the Principles stood alone as is thought today, but that they complemented and overlapped each other as part of a whole, forming the Law of Economy of Force . These Principles were further grouped into the categories of Control (command / co-operation), Pressure (attack / activity) and Resistance (protection / stability). The Principles of Control guides

4182-510: The 14th Tank Battalion (14th TB): Company A (led by 22-year-old Lt. Karl H. Timmermann ); Company B (led by Lt. Jack Liedke); and Company C (led by Lt. William E. McMaster). The three tank companies of the 14th TB each consisted of three platoons. 1st Platoon of Company A, 14th TB, led by Lt. John Grimball , had been assigned five of the newest heavy-duty T26E3 Pershing tanks, although only four were operational on 7 March. The other platoons were each equipped with five M4A3 Sherman tanks, and

4305-585: The 357th Searchlight Battery, Royal Artillery provided hazy indirect light for the mine-clearing flail tanks supporting the infantry in Operation Clipper . Some British tanks were sent to India in 1945. The US Tenth Army requested deployment of CDL tanks for use during the Battle of Okinawa , but fighting there was complete by the time they arrived. During the Korean War, there was a requirement for searchlights on

4428-427: The 3rd Armored Division arrived. General Eisenhower offered his generals some latitude in choosing the exact points for crossing the Rhine, though two areas where the Rhine valley was relatively broad were generally considered favorable. The first was between Cologne and Bonn in the north, and the other was between Andernach and Koblenz in the south. Both had some challenges, but offered relatively rapid access to

4551-689: The Allied advance. Responsibility for the bridges, including the Ludendorff Bridge, was shifted to the Army, although the Wehrkreis officers tried to retain their command authority. The anti-aircraft units around the bridges did not report to the army, the Wehrkreis or the Waffen SS, but to the Luftwaffe . On 1 March during U.S. Operation Grenade , the Fifth Panzer and Fifteenth Armies switched zones and responsibility for

4674-456: The American and German forces employ new weapons and tactics in combat for the first time. Over the next 10 days, after the bridge's capture on 7 March 1945 and until its failure on 17 March, the Germans used virtually every weapon at their disposal to try to destroy it. This included infantry and armor, howitzers, mortars, floating mines, mined boats, a railroad gun, V-2 rockets, and the 600 mm Karl-Gerät super-heavy mortar. They also attacked

4797-493: The Americans down was a machine gun manned by infantry over the town square, which two of the Pershings quickly dispatched. Relatively unmolested, the Americans arrived in strength at the western end of the bridge and the tanks began covering the bridge and the east shore with tank rounds, destroying a locomotive attached to a string of freight cars on the rail line parallel to the river. At about 3:00 pm, U.S. soldiers learned from

4920-429: The Americans that "only a fool would try to cross the Rhine where the cliffs rose steeply on the opposite bank". He refused to allocate more troops to Zangen’s Remagen sector. The command structure for the region around Remagen was fractured and several changes during February and early March complicated German command of the Rhine crossings. Before the U.S. advance on the Rhine, the 22 road and 25 railroad bridges across

5043-497: The Autumn offensives of 1918. His Plan 1919 for a fully mechanised offensive against the German army was never implemented. After 1918 he held various leading positions, notably as a commander of an experimental brigade at Aldershot . After the war Fuller collaborated with his colleague B. H. Liddell Hart in developing new ideas for the mechanisation of armies, launching a crusade for

Canal Defence Light - Misplaced Pages Continue

5166-465: The British as part of the 79th Armoured Division . The British 35th Tank Brigade and US 9th Armored Group were retained in the UK. The system was highly secret as surprise was considered essential to its use. This hampered its employment, as commanders were often unfamiliar with, or did not know of it, and did not consider it when drawing up plans for attack. Rather than let trained tank crews sit idle, most of

5289-446: The CDLs to protect the Ludendorff Bridge after it was captured intact during the Battle of Remagen . The Germans used virtually every weapon at their disposal to try to destroy the bridge. This included sending frogmen, using Italian underwater breathing apparatus, to plant floating mines but they were discovered by US Army military police , who used Canal Defence Lights to locate and blind

5412-684: The Colonies, General Ironside would become dictator and after things had settled down Germany could do as she liked with Britain." Fuller spent his last years believing that the wrong side had won the Second World War. He most fully announced that thesis in the 1961 edition of The Reformation of War . There, he announced his belief that Hitler was the saviour of the West against the Soviet Union and denounced Churchill and Roosevelt for being too stupid to see so. Fuller died in Falmouth , Cornwall, in 1966. Fuller

5535-678: The Corps of Engineers. The final assembly of the CDL tank was at Rock Island Arsenal . By the end of 1944, Alco had produced 497 tanks. American crews were trained at Fort Knox and in the California-Arizona manoeuvre area. The six battalions of tanks then moved to the UK to join the British CDL tanks in Wales. The British and American CDL units deployed to the continent did not cross over to France until August,

5658-545: The First Army south of Bonn, the 9th Armored Division moved swiftly, and the closer they got to the Rhine, the more quickly they advanced. The speed of their movement towards the Rhine surprised the Germans. When the First Army captured Cologne and reached the west bank of the Rhine, it was greeted as a major success of the Allied campaign, but German engineers dropped the Hohenzollern Bridge on 6 March, shortly before

5781-470: The German retreat, but the artillery commander refused, citing erroneous reports that U.S. troops were already too close to the bridge. When Operations Officer of Combat Command B Maj. Ben Cothran arrived and saw that the bridge was still standing, he radioed Brig. General William M. Hoge , commanding officer of the Combat Command B, 9th Armored Division. Hoge joined them as quickly as he could. Engemann

5904-510: The Germans back during the Battle of the Bulge , the Allies quickly advanced into western Germany . General Eisenhower established a twofold mission. The first was to prevent German forces defending the west bank of the Rhine River from escaping to the east bank. The second was to allow the Allied forces to select a river crossing where they could concentrate the attack leaving minimum forces defending

6027-471: The Germans reacquired the Rhineland and control of the bridge, in 1938 they attached 60 zinc-lined boxes to the bridge girders, each capable of containing 3.66 kilograms (8.1 lb) of explosives. The system was designed to detonate all 60 charges at once, though by 7 March 1945, the charges had been removed and were stored nearby. They placed additional charges on the two piers. Within an inspection shaft in

6150-535: The King and produced highly regarded paintings dealing with A∴A∴ teachings: these paintings have been used in recent years as the covers of the journal's revival, The Equinox, Volume IV . After the April 1911 Jones vs. The Looking Glass case, in which a great deal was made of Aleister Crowley's bisexuality (although Crowley himself was not a party to the case), Fuller became worried that his association with Crowley might be

6273-435: The Ludendorff Bridge, told him over the phone, "You see that black line on the map. If you can seize that your name will go down in history." In the last week of February, Colonel Charles G. Patterson, the anti-aircraft artillery officer for III Corps, led a meeting for brigade and group commanders during which they discussed what they would do if they were lucky enough to capture a bridge intact. On 2 March, Millikin assigned

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6396-668: The Middle East without seeing action, returning to the UK in April 1944. It landed in Normandy on 12 August 1944, seeing no action until 29 September 1944, when it was ordered to transfer all of its equipment to the 42nd and 49th Royal Tank Regiments, and was retrained to operate the American amphibious LVT-4 , known by the British Army as the Buffalo Mark IV. In their turn, the 42nd and 49th Royal Tank Regiments were largely inactive for

6519-451: The Remagen area, wandered into U.S. lines and was captured. In the midst of this confusion, General der Infanterie Otto Hitzfeld , the new commanding officer of LXVII Corps, was told at 1:00 am on 7 March that he was now responsible for defending the Ludendorff Bridge. Hitzfeld dispatched his adjutant, Major Johannes "Hans" Scheller, to take command of Remagen. Scheller left at 3:00 am and took

6642-478: The Rhine in late March and invade central Germany. It included a large array of transport aircraft to ferry paratroopers and glider-borne infantry across the Rhine to set up the river crossing. Montgomery's ground assault plan included the British 21st Army Group , consisting of the British Second Army , First Canadian Army and the attached US 9th Army . They were charged with crossing the Rhine north of

6765-406: The Rhine into the German interior. After capturing the Siegfried Line , the 9th Armored Division of the U.S. First Army had advanced unexpectedly quickly towards the Rhine. They were very surprised to see one of the last bridges across the Rhine still standing. The Germans had wired the bridge with about 2,800 kilograms (6,200 lb) of demolition charges. When they tried to blow it up, only

6888-587: The Rhine were the responsibility of the German Wehrkreis , or military districts. These soldiers did not report to an Army command but to the military arm of the Nazi Party, the Waffen-SS . During February, responsibility for the Ludendorff Bridge was transferred from Wehrkreis VI to Wehrkreis XII. In late February, German forces were reeling backwards and they had instituted a number of command changes to try to stem

7011-704: The Rhine, only four remained standing: the Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne (destroyed by the Germans on 6 March); the Rhine Bridge at Bonn  [ de ] (blown up by the Germans on the evening of 8 March); and the Crown Prince Wilhelm Bridge  [ de ] at Urmitz (destroyed by the Germans on 9 March); the Americans would capture the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen on 7 March. In early March, units assigned to Operation Lumberjack, including

7134-478: The Rhine. Geographically, the northwest shoulder of the bridge was situated on a shallow salient exposed to the eastern bank of the Rhine. There was only one primary road into the town of Remagen from the west, and that road did not parallel the normal Allied axis of supply. From a logistical viewpoint, the location of the bridge was badly situated near the southern boundary of the First US Army. The ground on

7257-466: The Rhine. I think they will use this valley—like water flowing downhill." Zangen believed that the Rhine River towns of Sinzig and Remagen were likely targets of Hodges' First Army. Zangen tried and failed to persuade Model to block the Americans by withdrawing two corps from the West Wall defenses along the German frontier and placing them at Remagen to protect the Ludendorff Bridge. Model believed like

7380-721: The Ruhr following the airborne assault. To the south, Montgomery would be supported by Lt. Gen. Omar Bradley 's 12th Army Group , including the First Army under the command of Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges . Hodges was given the objective of capturing dams on the Rur River and then trapping the Germans in a pincer move west of the Rhine. Plans for Operation Plunder had begun in England in August 1944, almost since Operation Market Garden failed. After pushing

7503-532: The U.S. Army's 9th Armored Division , were tasked with mopping up elements of the German Army trapped on the west bank of the Rhine and to prevent a counterattack against the Ninth Army's flank. To the south of the First Army, Lieutenant General George Patton 's Third Army would also support Montgomery's advance across the Rhine. But the First Army had been delayed by two weeks when the Germans released water from

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7626-506: The US M3 Grant , which was superior in several ways. It was a larger, roomier and better-armoured tank, also faster and better able to keep up with tanks such as the Sherman. It was armed with a 75 mm gun mounted in the hull and a 37 mm gun in a turret, so could retain some fighting capacity when the searchlight turret was mounted. A dummy gun-barrel fitted to the turret made it resemble

7749-426: The US decided to produce their own tanks using the CDL design. The codenames "Leaflet" for the tank, and "Cassock" for the training programme for crews were used. For secrecy the construction was dispersed. Conversion of the M3 to take the CDL was by the American Locomotive Company as "Shop Tractor M10", turrets were produced by Pressed Steel Car Company as "coast defence turrets", and the arc lamps were sourced through

7872-465: The advantage to shift back and forth between the offensive and the defensive. Fuller's firsthand experience in the First World War saw a shift from the defensive power of the machine gun to the offensive power of the tank. Fuller had an occultist side that oddly mixed with his military side. He was an early disciple of English poet and magician Aleister Crowley , and was very familiar with his and other forms of magick and mysticism . While serving in

7995-414: The aircraft dispatched against them. The German air offensive failed. On 14 March, German Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler ordered Schutzstaffel (SS) General Hans Kammler to fire V2 rockets to destroy the bridge. This marked the first time the missiles had been used against a tactical objective and the only time they were fired on a German target. The 11 missiles launched killed six Americans and

8118-410: The autobahn and into the Lahn river valley connecting to the Frankfurt – Kassel corridor. The least favored crossing points were in the area around the railroad bridge at Remagen. The upstream confluence of the Ahr River south of Remagen added considerable speed and turbulence to the 270-metre-wide (890 ft) Rhine at Remagen. The Americans in the area around Remagen were not even supposed to cross

8241-415: The battlefield. There was brief interest in resurrecting a CDL on an M4 Sherman design (T52) that had started in 1944, but it was recognized that four battalions could be equipped with normal searchlights for the cost of a single CDL tank. The only surviving CDL-equipped Matilda tank is in the collection of the Royal Armoured Corps at The Tank Museum , Bovington, Dorset, in Britain. One CDL-equipped M3 Grant

8364-410: The beam on and off, up to twice a second. It was found that the blue light caused the CDL tank to appear to be at a greater distance, and blue and amber light beams from two CDL tanks could combine to illuminate a target with white. A flashing beam would further dazzle and disorient enemy troops by not giving their eyes a chance to adapt to either light or darkness. The Matilda tank was later replaced by

8487-402: The beating they had been receiving, could not hold on to the area they controlled, much less retake ground. As a result, the Americans advanced even more rapidly towards the Rhine. An unintended consequence was that German forces paid less attention to the bridges across the Rhine. On 6 March, General of the Cavalry Edwin Rothkirch , commanding officer of LIII Armeekorps with responsibility for

8610-472: The belief that they would defend their towns and villages. German defensive policy did not include planning for defending rear areas in depth. There were no antitank ditches or mines, barbed wire, or trenches on the route to Remagen. The few defensive obstacles that had been constructed were too weak to block tanks or had been placed in open terrain, and the roadblocks they had built usually allowed plenty of room for vehicles to pass. The only defense that slowed

8733-487: The bridge blows up in my face?" Timmermann asked, but Deevers did not answer. At 1:50 pm, the troops of A/27/9 AIB set out cross-country for the town. Thirty minutes later, Engemann led the 17 tanks of A/14/9 AIB forward down the winding narrow road into town. The troops and tanks arrived at about the same time and advanced quickly through Remagen against light resistance. The Germans relied for local defense on Volkssturm , citizens who were conscripted close to their homes in

8856-460: The bridge shortened the war, although one German general disputed this. The Ludendorff Bridge was not rebuilt following World War II. In 2020, plans were initiated to build a replacement suspension bridge for pedestrians and cyclists. There is no other river crossing for 44 km (27 mi) and few ferries. Local communities indicated an interest to help fund the project and an engineer was commissioned to draw up plans. Romans originally built

8979-459: The bridge using the newly developed Arado Ar 234B-2 turbojet bombers. To protect the bridge against aircraft, the Americans positioned the largest concentration of anti-aircraft weapons during World War II leading to "the greatest antiaircraft artillery battles in American history". The Americans counted 367 different German Luftwaffe aircraft attacking the bridge over the next 10 days. The Americans claimed to have shot down nearly 30 percent of

9102-501: The bridge was back in use again on 9 November. A few weeks later on 28 December 1944, 71 B-24 Liberator bombers were dispatched to strike the bridge. They hit it with four bombs but the Germans quickly repaired it. The 446th Bombardment Group attacked the bridge again on the next four consecutive days from 28 to 31 December 1944. More bombers struck at the bridge during raids in January and February 1945. On 5 March 1945, B-24 bombers from

9225-515: The bridge, that he would send a battalion of men to help defend the bridge, but his request was turned down. He also requested without success laborers, additional explosives, radios, and signal equipment. He was promised a heavy anti-aircraft battalion, but it never arrived. By 6 March, the 9th Armored was already just 14 kilometers (8.7 mi) from the Rhine. On the same day, Botsch was so quickly transferred that he did not have time to brief his replacement, Generalmajor Richard von Bothmer. Bothmer

9348-483: The bridge, which was full of soldiers, civilians, vehicles and even livestock. Previous attacks by Allied aircraft had destroyed the vessels used to ferry civilians and workers across the Rhine. All were now forced to use the bridge. Captain Bratge was in Remagen on the western approach to the bridge directing traffic onto the bridge. Timmermann called for artillery to fire on the bridge using proximity fuses to slow down

9471-471: The bridge. The bridges should only be demolished following an order in writing from the officer in charge, and only as a last resort and at the last possible moment. This order left officers responsible for destroying bridges nervous about both the consequences if they blew up the bridge too soon and if they failed to blow it up at all. When Major Scheller saw how inadequately the bridge was defended, he attempted to commandeer passing German troops including

9594-447: The bridge. Bratge wanted to demolish the bridge as early as possible to avoid capture, but he had to first get written authorization from Major Hans Scheller, who had only assumed command at 11:15 am. By the time the Americans arrived, most of the civilian Volkssturm had melted away, leaving the main German force on the eastern side of the Rhine. Written permission was required because on 14–15 October 1944, an American bomb had struck

9717-445: The bridges for the benefit of engineers carrying out maintenance. Conventional searchlights would have been more suitable, but none were available. The CDLs were eventually replaced by captured German searchlights. The 11th Royal Tank Regiment was raised in January 1941 and designated for the CDL role in May 1941. The unit trained at Lowther Castle near Penrith , and was based at Brougham Hall , Cumberland. It spent 1942 and 1943 in

9840-468: The bridges. Lt. Gen. Walter Botsch , Commander of LIII Armeekorps, was assigned to defend the Bonn-Remagen area. He visited the Rhineland to inspect the troops and on 5 March found that the Ludendorff Bridge was defended by only 36 men, most of them convalescents recovering from injuries, along with a few engineers and anti-aircraft gun crews. Botsch promised Captain Willi Bratge, the combat commander for

9963-514: The chamber containing the demolition charges on the Mulheim Bridge in Cologne, prematurely destroying the bridge. Hitler was angered by this incident and ordered those "responsible" for the destruction of the Mulheim Bridge to be court-martialed. He also ordered that demolition explosives should not be laid in place until the very last moment, when the Allies were within 5 miles (8.0 km) of

10086-469: The chief determinant of success on the battlefield from the late 20th century. The book was carefully read by General Heinz Guderian of later Blitzkrieg fame and at the time Germany's foremost tank expert. The Soviet Army initially issued 30,000 copies of it and designated it as a table book for all Red Army officers. Later, the Soviets increased publication to 100,000 volumes. In Czechoslovakia, it became

10209-492: The commander, but they are a factor in the use of Force. Force resides in the center of the pattern, as all of these elements revolve around it. These Principles of War have been adopted and further refined by the military forces of several nations, most notably within NATO, and continue to be applied widely to modern strategic thinking. Recently they have also been applied to business tactics and hobby wargaming . Fuller also had

10332-486: The common sense of the British people by setting out to create a new Germany". On 20 April 1939, Fuller was an honoured guest at Hitler's 50th birthday parade, watching as "for three hours a completely mechanised and motorised army roared past the Führer." Afterwards Hitler asked, "I hope you were pleased with your children?" Fuller replied, "Your Excellency, they have grown up so quickly that I no longer recognise them." During

10455-411: The company also had a command unit of three more Sherman tanks. Their orders were to capture the town of Remagen, and then continue south to link up with Patton's Third Army, but were not given any specific instructions regarding the Ludendorff Bridge. At 12:56, scouts from 89th Reconnaissance Squadron arrived on a hill on the north side of Remagen overlooking the village and were astonished to see that

10578-411: The dual Principles of Pressure and of Resistance, which in turn create the Principles of Control. They were also grouped into Cosmic ( Spiritual ), Mental ( Mind / Thought / Reason ), Moral ( Soul / Sensations / Emotions ), and Physical ( Body / Musculature / Action ) Spheres, in which two Principles (like the double-edged point of an arrowhead) combine to create or manifest a third, which in turn guides

10701-452: The east bank. The standing bridge could have been a trap. Hoge risked losing men if the Germans allowed U.S. forces to cross before destroying it and isolating the American troops on the east bank. But the opportunity was too great to pass up. Battalion Commander Major Murray Deevers asked Timmermann, "Do you think you can get your company across the bridge?" Timmermann replied, "Well, we can try it, sir." Deevers answered, "Go ahead." "What if

10824-413: The eastern side of the bridge rose steeply from the river. Inland, the steeply sloped terrain and gullies provided natural tank traps against advancing armor. The rough, wooded Westerwald forest rose from the Rhine to elevations ranging from 200 to 400 metres (660 to 1,310 ft) about 500 metres (1,600 ft) inland. The primary road network on the eastern side was severely limited, consisting of only

10947-413: The entrance to the tunnel under Erpeler Ley. As a backup, the Germans attached a primer cord to the charges under the eastern pier that could be manually ignited. During the autumn of 1944, the Allies had repeatedly attempted to destroy the bridge to disrupt German efforts to reinforce their forces to the west. On 9 October 1944, a raid by 33 bombers damaged the bridge and it was reported as destroyed, but

11070-587: The first and second Principles (like the fletches on an arrow's tail). Each Sphere leads to the creation of the next until it returns to the beginning and repeats the circular cycle with reassessments of the Object and Objective to redefine the uses of Force . The Cosmic Sphere is seen as outside the other three Spheres, like the Heavens are outside the Realm of Man. They influence it indirectly in ways that cannot be controlled by

11193-443: The foundation of much of modern military theory since the 1930s, and which were originally derived from a convergence of Fuller's mystical and military interests. The Nine Principles went through several iterations; Fuller stated that "the system evolved from six principles in 1912, rose to eight in 1915, to, virtually, nineteen in 1923, and then descended to nine in 1925". For example, notice how his analysis of General Ulysses S. Grant

11316-417: The last 800 troops of the 277th Volksgrenadier Division crossed the bridge. On the morning of 7 March, German engineers put down wood planks to allow vehicles to use the bridge. Captain Bratge attempted to persuade the soldiers crossing the bridge to stay and defend it, but most were leaderless stragglers and their only concern was to get across the Rhine. The German defensive doctrine called for positioning

11439-682: The majority of forces at the front lines, leaving minimal troops to reinforce rear areas. On the afternoon of 7 March 1945, Lt. Col. Leonard Engemann led Task Force Engemann towards Remagen , a small village of about 5,000 residents on the Rhine with the objective of capturing the town. The task force, part of Combat Command B, consisted of C Troop of the 89th Reconnaissance Squadron manning M8 Light Armored Cars and M3 Half-tracks; Company A of 27th Armored Infantry Battalion (27th AIB) equipped with M3 Half-tracks , commanded by Major Murray Deevers; one platoon of Company B, 9th Armored Engineer Battalion (9th AEB) led by Lt. Hugh Mott; and three companies of

11562-539: The mechanisation and modernisation of the British Army. Chief instructor of Camberley Staff College from 1923, he became military assistant to the chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1926. In what came to be known as the "Tidworth Incident", Fuller turned down the command of the Experimental Mechanized Force , which was formed on 27 August 1927. The appointment also carried responsibility for

11685-617: The next year on sick-leave, where he met the woman he married in December 1906. Instead of returning to India, he was reassigned to Volunteer units in England, serving as adjutant to the 2nd South Middlesex Volunteers (amalgamated into the Kensingtons during the Haldane Reforms ) and helping to form the new 10th Middlesex . Fuller later claimed that his position with the 10th Middlesex inspired him to study soldiering seriously. In 1913, he

11808-533: The notice disparaged Fuller's magical accomplishments and warned A∴A∴ members to accept no magical training from him. However, Fuller continued to be fascinated with occult subjects and in later years he would write about topics such as the Qabalah and yoga . During the mid-1940s, Charles Richard Cammell (author of Aleister Crowley: The Man, The Mage, The Poet ) met with Fuller and reported his views about Crowley: "I have heard an eminent personage, General J.F.C. Fuller,

11931-511: The rails on both banks, equipped with fighting loopholes and accommodations for up to a battalion of troops. On the eastern side, a 1,299-foot-long (396 m) tunnel was cut at almost 90° through Erpeler Ley, a steeply sided hill that overlooks the Rhine. The designers built cavities into the piers where demolition charges could be placed, but when the French occupied the Rhineland after World War I, they filled these cavities with concrete. After

12054-425: The remainder of the front. The Allies held little hope they would be able to capture a Rhine River bridge intact. Instead, they brought up huge amounts of bridging equipment to the front. But Eisenhower left a standing order that if any unit found a bridge intact, they were to "exploit its use to the fullest, and establish a bridgehead on the other side". On 1 March 1945, of the 22 road and 25 railroad bridges across

12177-681: The remainder of the war and all three units were disbanded after the end of hostilities. Battalions of the American 9th Tank Group trained using the Grant variant of the CDL tank at Camp Bouse in the Arizona desert. In 1944, before deployment in the European Theatre of Operations, they continued training on the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire, West Wales. Before dawn, at 06:00 on 18 November 1944, CDLs of

12300-475: The special units were converted either to other special roles (such as mine clearance tanks) or regular tank units. For the crossing of the Rhine , some CDL units were used. The one British squadron that had not been converted from CDLs was used in the north, 64 American CDL tanks were brought back into use with their former crews. The US tanks were spread across the First , Third and Ninth armies. The Allies used

12423-600: The standard reference for the teaching of mechanized warfare at their staff college. Ironically, in Britain only 500 copies were sold by 1935 while in the United States, the Infantry Journal received a copy at the time of publishing but failed to review it. Fuller also developed the idea of the Constant Tactical Factor . This states that every improvement in warfare is checked by a counter-improvement, causing

12546-456: The swimmers. The armour of the CDLs made them more suitable for this task than conventional searchlights as, in some sectors, the East bank of the river was held by German forces who subjected the CDL tanks to considerable artillery and small-arms fire. The use of the system resembled its name, which had been intended to be spurious. Later, the battle moved eastwards and the CDLs were used to illuminate

12669-426: The territory it had lost. Units that were threatened with the possibility of being overrun or surrounded could not fall back to a more defensible position. To protect themselves from Hitler's wrath, a court-martial and a firing squad, commanders falsified reports to cover actual losses. To shift the blame to someone else, they issued orders that could not be realistically fulfilled. The German troops, thoroughly routed by

12792-471: The theory that areas of large enemy activity should be bypassed to be eventually surrounded and destroyed. Blitzkrieg-style tactics were used by several nations throughout the Second World War, predominantly by the Germans in the invasion of Poland (1939), Western Europe (1940), and the Soviet Union (1941). While Germany and to some degree the Western Allies adopted Blitzkrieg ideas, they were not much used by

12915-559: The time the flooding subsided and the U.S. Ninth Army was able to cross the Rur on 23 February, other Allied forces were also close to the Rhine's west bank. The German divisions on the Rhine's west bank were cut to pieces. About 280,000 German troops were captured and another 120,000 were killed, wounded, or missing in action. Major General John W. Leonard , commanding officer of the 9th Armored Division, later recalled that on 6 March, III Corps commander Major General John Millikin , referring to

13038-552: The village of Erpel on the eastern side with Remagen on the west bank. It had been named after the World War I German General Erich Ludendorff , who had been a key proponent for building this bridge. It carried two rail lines and pedestrian catwalks on either side across the Rhine. The total length was 400 metres (1,300 ft), while the main steel structure was 325 metres (1,066 ft) long. The arch spanned 156 metres (512 ft) and at its highest measured 28 metres (92 ft) above

13161-414: The water. Two trusses on either side of the central arch were both 85 metres (279 ft). An elevated overpass on each end of the span connected the approach to the bridge and allowed a rail line or roads to pass underneath, parallel to the river. The bridge was normally about 15 metres (49 ft) above the Rhine. Since it was built for military purposes, it had solidly built stone towers on either side of

13284-686: The weapons moved to the top of Erpeler Ley as quickly as possible, but the units were not yet in place at 2:00 pm when the first Americans arrived. Bratge commanded only 36 convalescing soldiers, some of whom could not even fire a weapon. The bridge was also defended by an engineer company of 125 men commanded by Captain Karl Friesenhahn, 180 Hitlerjugend , a Luftwaffe antiaircraft unit of 200 men, 20 men from Battery 3./FlakLehruVersAbt 900 (rocket battery), 120 Eastern "volunteers," and roughly 500 civilian Volksturm, totalling about 1000 troops. Most of these were ill-equipped and poorly trained. On 6 March,

13407-405: The west pier, the Germans placed 2,000 kilograms (4,400 lb) of explosives, and on the east pier they attached two charges of 300 kilograms (660 lb) to the girders connecting the bridge to the pier. The approximately 2,800 kilograms (6,200 lb) of charges were attached to an electric fuse and connected by electrical cables run through protective steel pipes to a control circuit located in

13530-410: Was a highly prolific author whose ideas reached army officers and the interested public. He explored the business of fighting, in terms of the relationship between warfare and social, political, and economic factors in the civilian sector. Fuller emphasised the potential of new weapons, especially tanks and aircraft, to stun a surprised enemy psychologically. Fuller, a Nazi sympathizer, was implicated in

13653-477: Was a prolific writer and published more than 45 books. Books on Warfare Biography Books on Occultism Notes Further reading For examples of the use of Fuller's campaign theories in the business world see: For examples of Fuller's occult books and pamphlets see: For examples of Fuller's fascist essays and pamphlets see: Battle of Remagen American victory [REDACTED] Erich Brandenberger Logistics The Battle of Remagen

13776-521: Was a vigorous, expressive, and opinionated writer of military history and of controversial predictions of the future of war, publishing On Future Warfare in 1928. Seeing his teachings largely vindicated by the Second World War, he published Machine Warfare: An Enquiry into the Influence of Mechanics on the Art of War in 1942. Fuller is perhaps best known today for his "Nine Principles of War" which have formed

13899-803: Was accepted into the Staff College, Camberley , starting work there in January 1914. During the First World War , Fuller was a staff officer with the Home Forces and with VII Corps in France, and from 1916 in the Headquarters of the Machine-Gun Corps ' Heavy Branch which was later to become the Tank Corps . He helped plan the tank attack at the 20 November 1917 Battle of Cambrai and the tank operations for

14022-739: Was also a member of the clandestine far-right group the Nordic League . Fuller's ideas on mechanised warfare continued to be influential in the lead-up to the Second World War, ironically less with his countrymen than with the Nazis , notably Heinz Guderian who spent his own money to have Fuller's Provisional Instructions for Tank and Armoured Car Training translated. In the 1930s, the German Army implemented tactics similar in many ways to Fuller's analysis, which became known as Blitzkrieg . Like Fuller, theorists of Blitzkrieg partly based their approach on

14145-560: Was an 18-day battle during the Allied invasion of Germany in World War II . It lasted from 7 to 25 March 1945 when American forces unexpectedly captured the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine intact. They were able to hold it against German opposition and build additional temporary crossings. The presence of a bridgehead across the Rhine advanced by three weeks the Western Allies' planned crossing of

14268-529: Was assuming command, but then learned that Scheller had not brought the battalion of reinforcements with him that Botsch had promised to send. During 6 March, the III Flak Korps anti-aircraft gun crews emplaced on top of the 180-meter-high (590 ft) Erpeler Ley, strategically overlooking the Ludendorff Bridge, had been ordered by the Luftwaffe to help defend Koblenz. The replacement unit was not motorized and

14391-408: Was cautiously considering his options when Hoge ordered him to immediately move into town and to capture the bridge as quickly as possible. Timmermann had been promoted only the night before to commander of Company A, and Engemann ordered him and his company of dismounted infantry into Remagen supported by A Company/14th Tank Battalion. Hoge had no intelligence on the number and size of German forces on

14514-611: Was commissioned into the 1st Battalion of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry (the old 43rd Foot ) on 3 August 1898. He served in the Second Boer War in South Africa from December 1899 to 1902, and was promoted to lieutenant on 24 February 1900 a couple of months after arriving there. In the spring of 1904 Fuller was sent with his unit to India, where he contracted typhoid fever in autumn of 1905; he returned to England

14637-493: Was not interned or arrested, he was the only officer of his rank not invited to return to service during the war. There was some suspicion that he was not incarcerated in May 1940 along with other leading officials of the BUF because of his association with General Edmund Ironside and other senior officers. Mosley himself admitted to "a little puzzlement" as to why Fuller had not been imprisoned. Ironside himself had been implicated as

14760-407: Was placed on the outskirts of Remagen. As the Americans advanced towards the Rhine on the night of 6–7 March, 14 men from the anti-aircraft gun crews deserted. Bratge only learned about the replacement unit's presence on 7 March when he saw what was left of the unit manhandling its guns across the bridge. Aware of the Americans' impending arrival, he angrily ordered the unit's Luftwaffe commander to get

14883-469: Was presented in 1929. The United States Army modified Fuller's list and issued its first list of the principles of war in 1921, making it the basis of advanced training for officers into the 1990s, when it finally reconceptualised its training. The Nine Principles involve the uses of force (combat power). They have been expressed in various ways, but Fuller's 1925 arrangement is as follows: Cabalistic influences on his theories can be shown by his use of

15006-699: Was reported to have already organized 18 cells of 25 members each for the coup, which was intended to take place when Germany landed in Britain. In a separate plot organized by John Beckett , Fuller was named as the Minister of Defense for a Quisling government. Fuller continued to speak out in favour of a peaceful settlement with Germany. Alan Brooke (in his war diaries, p. 201) comments that "the Director of Security called on him to discuss Boney Fuller and his Nazi activities", but Brooke commented that he did not think Fuller "had any unpatriotic intentions". Although he

15129-469: Was unable to visit Remagen, as he was concentrating on defending Bonn. Instead, he dispatched a liaison officer to Remagen the evening of 6 March, but he was caught up by the Americans' rapid advance and was captured when he accidentally entered their lines. When retreating Germans informed Bratge on the evening of 6 March that the Americans were nearing Remagen, Bratge tried to contact Botsch, unaware that he had been reassigned. Hitler had issued orders that

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