Flanders Flame Thrower Attacks

[bob lembke]

Guys;

Came across two flame thrower (FW) attacks that I know little about, at Flanders, especially the British side of the events.

On June 2, 1916 the 9th Company of the Garde=Reserve=Pionier=Regiment (Flammenwerfer) attacked at Zillebeke, Flanders, one of three attacks they made here in this time frame (the others this day, this week? I don't know.). Attacking under the command of Lt. Frisch, using 20 light FW, they broke through the British positions and took over 500 POWs, including a general, trenches, and MGs. Two flame pioneers died in the attack. A third died at Zillebeke on the following day, possibly another engagement, or due to shelling.

Anyone know anything about this? Or can suggest a source from the British side?

The same flame unit attacked "south of Hooge" on the sixth of June. It was ranked as a "successful" attack, and no flame pioneers were lost, but I know nothing more about this engagement. Any ideas or leads?

Bob Lembke

[6th Shropshires]

Hi Bob

This must be the attack on the Canadians, the Germans captured two lines of trenches from about Mount Sorrel to Torr Top. I think Chris' main site as a good account of this attack.

Annette

[6th Shropshires]

Plus the Canadian's lost Hooge on the 6th June.

Annette

PS Bob- the 9th Company of the Garde=Reserve=Pionier=Regiment (Flammenwerfer) would not have captured all the gains mention above by themselfs

[bob lembke]

Annette;

Complicated topic. At these engagements I think you are right. But they had a lot of trouble with other units, and often in smaller attacks they just did it themselves. (My father did this for his "work", as he called it, and he expressed their distrust of most infantry to me. They would turn the FW on, and their own infantry would run.) Their tactics for smaller attacks were often odd, counter-intuitive, and they often just did it themselves. A lot of infantry just brought artillery fire down on them. They carried light MGs, very light mortars that they made in their own workshop, and had their own bombers.

Or, for bigger attacks, they trained supporting infantry for a few days, if they could.

But the nature of the weapon said that they had to lead the attack, in any case.

You mentioned "Chris' site". not sure what that is. (New boy on the block.) It is possible that the FW troops, who didn't fight in Flanders a lot, captured Canadians and thought that they were English.

Can you give me a lead to "Chris' site"?

Bob Lembke

PS: I hope that I don't sound patronizing (and I am not especially PC), but I am delighted that a good number of the fairer sex participate here. A really classy site. Hope my Hunnish slant is not an irritation, but, as a forumite recently stated: "It is good to know what was going on on the other side of the hill."

[chris.wight]

Bob, the attack you mentioned was likely on the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles. The C.O. of the 3rd Canadian Division, M.S. Mercer was killed and the C.O. of the 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade, V.A.S. Williams was severely wounded and captured.

You can read more in the Official History here (Page 131), link.

You can also read the War Diary of the 4th C.M.R. here, link.

There is also a thread about the Mount Sorrel Battle in the Western Front section, link.

[bob lembke]

Annette and Chris;

Thanks for the leads. I have gone over them, and it is clear that it was a series of major engagements in which the FW only could have a certain role, not central or a where the flame troops carried out the whole attack, as often happened. The Canadian history states that the initial 2. 6. 16. attack had five battalions in the leading wave. It also suggests that the FW went forward with the attacking troops against the badly shot-up Canadian positions, and were only used when a pill-box or dugout survived and resisted, as opposed to the mass initial flame attack type of attack. The heavy artillery preparation had provided the shock that in other cases was provided by an initial attack by massed FW, often after only a two-minute barrage, intended just to get the defender's heads down.

Thanks again. I will now trawl the German official sources. The initial information that I had was only a few lines from a flame officer.

Bob Lembke

[bob lembke]

Annette and Chris;

It unfortunately seems that this fighting is not covered in the series Schlachten des Weltkriegs, which tends to have a lot of detail in the battles that it covers in its about 38 volumes. (I have all but one; they are really inexpensive.)

It probably is mentioned in the other major series, Weltkrieg 1914-1918, whose about 14 volumes (totaling more text than the above series) is fairly comprehensive but looks at matters from an Olympian height, and has little combat detail, but more the background, command decisions, political considerations, etc. This attack will probably be mentioned in Volume (Band) 10, which I do not have at hand. These books are fairly expensive, more like $50 vs. $8 for the other series, exclusive of postage, etc.

Bob Lembke

[6th Shropshires]

Hi Bob

Chris.wight as given serval great links. But if you wish to look at Chris Baker's (the owner of this forum) main site, then press on The Long Long Trail in the top left hand corner.

I hope that I don't sound patronizing (and I am not especially PC), but I am delighted that a good number of the fairer sex participate here. A really classy site.

There is a growing number of us, I am pleased to say

Hope my Hunnish slant is not an irritation,

Far from it Bob, I would say most Brits like to hear the German side, I for one am very interested in the Germany Army (I some times use a German MG team as one of my avaitor).

Annette

[AOK4]

Bob,

The attack was performed by the XIII. Armeekorps (26. and 27. Infanterie-Division). You should have a look in the different regimental histories, there's quite a lot about the attack in them.

Jan

[bob lembke]

Bob,

The attack was performed by the XIII. Armeekorps (26. and 27. Infanterie-Division). You should have a look in the different regimental histories, there's quite a lot about the attack in them.

Jan

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

We all know the remarkable Jan V. as a helpful and very knowledgable student of WW I and especially Flanders. Here, however, we see his cruel side. It is quite clear that in his extraordinary collection of regimental histories he possesses more of them than can be found on the entire North American continent.

I am only kidding, tinged with a bit of jelousy. Jan, could you cite a few regimental histories that cover these attacks (the June 1916 attacks mentioned in this thread), and also the July 1917 attack on the British Yser bridgehead? I do have an angle or two on getting my hands on some of these. Page numbers would be super, as I have a source in Europe that might scan some of these for me.

Research resources in the US for such materials are, not surprisingly, thin. I am in Philadelphia, and I do not believe that there is a publicly available set of Ranglisten, for example, anywhere between Washington, DC and New York City. And the library in the latter city keeps their copies in storage in New Jersey, so you have to make special arraingements to have them trucked across the river so that you can look at them.

Bob Lembke

[BatterySergeantMajor]

General Mercer is burried at Lyssenthoek Cemetery near Poperinge.

Erwin

[bob lembke]

Plus the Canadian's lost Hooge on the 6th June.

Annette

PS Bob- the 9th Company of the Garde=Reserve=Pionier=Regiment (Flammenwerfer) would not have captured all the gains mention above by themselfs

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Annette;

To respond to your important point in more detail.

I have built a spreadsheet for all flame attacks where I know how many prisoners were taken. For some of those, I have figures on other types of booty, such as MGs, guns, etc. The overall totals are quite stunning.

34 attacks - 49,715 POWs (some of these figures only include non-wounded POWs)

Of these:

13 attacks - 503 MGs

7 attacks - 277 cannon captured

3 attacks - 72 mortars

8 attacks - 23.6 km of front-line positions taken

1 attack - 1 tank knocked out

(Of course these results are not representative, one crows more about the attack when you take 18 guns, if you take none it simply would not be mentioned.)

Flame pioneers killed - 85 (This includes a number who died a few days after the attack from the same company and in a hospital near the battle site - so I assigned the loss to the engagement.)

Now, you probably think that, at this juncture, that I am nuts. I think that the actual data is rather defensible. For many attacks I have multiple sources; for one, I have matching data from about five French and German sources. In this case, at Verdun, on 3/20/16, an attack was launched, utilizing 63 flame throwers. A French brigade simply collapsed. 2883 men were captured, including 58 officers, including the brigade commander and the two regimental commanders. Additionally, 25 MGs, 18 mortars, and 12 cannon were captured. The loss to the 63 flame thrower teams? 4 men. The brigade HQ was able to get out a one sentence phone message to their higher HQ before being captured, creating rumors of treason. (This was not helped by the fact that the Brigade CO seems to have been an ethnic German, by his name. He complained, as being captured, that he had not heard a shot.)

In his classic book on Verdun, Price of Glory, Alistair Horne described this attack, mentioning the treason rumor, I think, but not mentioning the FW connection, which I am sure that he was not aware of. On the previous page he repeated the old story that the FW was a rather useless suicidal weapon. I am the proud possessor of a manuscript letter in which he responded to an American reader about FW many years ago. Thus emboldened, I recently wrote him about this this, but I have not gotten a response.

To return to your point. The attacks in the sample of 34 that I mentioned above is the entire sample for which I have POW numbers. (I have not done any creative editing here, taking out less successful attacks. For example, in one attack in 1918, a large concrete British bunker held up a German advance; about 30 flame pioneers under a sergeant went out to get it. As they approached it they were fired on from a flank by a tank, which killed two men. One of the two sections then stalked the tank, got behind it, fried it from behind, and then rushed up and poked a FW nossile into a firing aperature to be sure it was KOed. They then returned to sneak about the bunker, and one other man was killed. They got behind, flamed it, despite rifle and pistol fire (I guess the MGs were in the front), then fired FW into the bunker, and obviously some inside were burned and perhaps killed. 75 men surrendered, including an officer or two, and 7 MGs were captured. After this bunker was silenced the advance was able to continue.) If I had edited this minor action out, I would have lost 75 POWs and 3 FW Pioniere dead, which would have improved my "score".

But to return to your point. The 34 attacks seem to fall into four classes. One is the FW attack conducted soley by FW personnel. This actually probably included most FW attacks, but a minority of the 34 attacks. Here the credit for the results clearly belongs to the FW arm.

A second is a small to medium attack, where the FW men were joined by some infantry, sometimes drilled by the FW personnel before the attack.

A third class were those fairly large attacks where a large number of FW were joined in with by a good number of supporting infantry. However, these were often led or guided by the FW, who of course usually had to lead from the front. These attacks had many features of a FW attack, sometimes only two minutes artillery preparation. These attacks often involved 30, 60, 101, and, in one case, 154 flame throwers. One can imagine the shock effect of such an attack. These often led to the complete collapse of the defense.

A fourth class of attack was a very large scale attack, involving one or more divisions. Here, an attack by say 30 FW may have given the attacking forces an edge, possibly allowing the attackers to break into the defensive lines, it is clear that in these cases only a small share of the success, if any, can be attributed to the FW troops. However, I think that only 4-5-6 of the 34 attacks in my spreadsheet fall into this fourth category.

Also, admittedly some of the most "successful" attacks were on the East Front, where the opponents were not as adept. However, the great majority of the 34 attacks were in the west, only a few in Russia, Macedonia, or Italy.

Your point is well taken, and I have to address this question before I make too much of this sort of analysis. However, I should point out that the CO of the flame troops rated 82% of the 653 flame attacks launched by his troops were "successful", so arguably the total "score" would be very impressive, after discounting much of the results of the larger attacks.

Bob Lembke

[Jack Sheldon]

Bob

Here's a list of the books you want, if you wish to check out the infantry regiments of 26th and 27th Divisions:

Das Grenadier-Regiment Koenigen Olga (1.Wuertt.) Nr. 119 im Weltkrieg 1914-1918, Gemmingen-Guttenberg-Fuerfeld, Oberst Freiherr v., Belser, Stuttgart 1927

Das Infanterie-Regiment "Kaiser Wilhelm, Koenig von Preussen" (2 Wuerttemb.) Nr. 120 im Weltkrieg 1914-1918, Simon, Oberst a.D., Belser, Stuttgart 1922

Das Infanterie-Regiment "Alt-Wuerttemberg" 93. Wuertt.) Nr 121 im Weltkrieg 1914-1918, Brandenstein, Oberst v., Belser, Stuttgart, 1921

Das Fuesilier-Regiment Kaiser Franz Joseph von Oesterreich, Koenig von Ungarn (4. Wuertt.) Nr. 122 im Weltkrieg 1914-1918, Bechtle, Hauptmann d.R. Richard., Belser, Stuttgart 1921

Die Ulmer Grenadiere an der Westfront. Geschichte des Grenadier-Regiments Koenig Karl (5. Wuertt.) Nr 123 im Weltkrieg 1914-1918, Bechtle, Hauptmann d.R. Richard., Belser, Stuttgart 1920

Das Infanterie-Regiment Koenig Wilhelm I (6. Wuertt.) Nr. 124 im Weltkrieg 1914-1918, Wolters, Hauptmann G., Belser, Stuttgart 1921

Das Infanterie-Regiment "Kaiser Friedrich, Koenig von Preussen" (7. Wuertt.) Nr. 125 im Weltkrieg 1914-1918, Stuemke, General., Belser, Stuttgart 1923

Das neunte wuerttembergische Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 127 im Weltkrieg 1914-1918, Schwab, Oberstleutnant A & Schreyer, H., Belser, Stuttgart 1920

I am told that the Library of Congress has a big stock of these histories, so you might strike it lucky over there. Hope this helps.

Jack

[Jack Sheldon]

Sorry, there were one or two formatting hiccups, for some reason. IR 121's sub-title is (3. Wuertt.)

Jack

[bob lembke]

Jack;

Many thanks for digging these leads up. I have not seen it, but I gather that there is a book written in about 1980 that is basically a bibliography of German regimental histories. I only have about four of these "in the flesh", and about five others on CD, but I have an e-friend who probably has 800 original histories, and is proud to find ones not listed in the book mentioned above. (No, I can't give his name out; he is not a forum type of guy; I myself don't ask him for help, generally.)

Thanks for the lead on the Library of Congress. I often use their on-line catalog to find if a given book exists in the US, as it is the biggest library in the US. I also think that the New York Public Library (not really a public library, in large part; a bit like English "public schools") has a good assortment. They have a largely complete set of at least the preussisches/wuerttembergisches Ranglisten from about 1850 to 1914, except for the 1914 and the 1926 Ehrenrangliste, which some rat must have pinched. But be warned that they are in storage in New Jersey and prior arraingements must be made to have them on hand if you visit the library. It is a wonderful place where I did a lot of work decades ago; I may not have even been in the building for 30 years, but send them a little check every year.

These large-scale attacks in Flanders clearly fall into the category of the large-scale attacks where only a relatively small portion of the credit (if any) should be given to any participating FW. For example, in the attack on the 2nd the Germans clearly shelled the Canadian positions (and the inhabitants) to pieces before the actual assault. In the classical large-scale FW attack the artillery preparation was often just for two minutes, just to get the heads of the infantry down and give the first flame teams a few more seconds to open up, after which the FW provided their own cover. These attacks were carefully planned and often rehearsed; typically first say 8 teams with very large fixed FW with multiple oil tanks would leap out of saps and run forward, sometimes the hose between the fire tube and the tanks were as long as 30 meters long. They would not only spray into the first line of trenches, but also diagonally across no-man's land, utilizing the longer range and flame duration of these large units, providing a lot of cover. (The oil mix most usually used was specially blended to produce a lot of dense black smoke.)

Under this cover more teams (a number of times say 55 teams, sometimes even more) with the light Wex model would rush forward and open up on the front trenches. At this stage the front-line defenders would often bolt, not surprisingly, sometimes shedding burning uniforms as they ran. Sometimes the momentum of the attack could carry forward into the rear lines. Some flame teams carried a second set of oil-nitrogen tanks to provide a second store of oil to run through the flame tube. These units were fairly light, 2-3 pounds lighter than the standard German field-pack even when filled.

Due to careful training of the men, careful planning of flame attacks (and the right of the flame commander to turn down an attack that he did not agree with), careful selection of the location of an attack, and great surprise and shock effect when properly utilized, these attacks were usually successful, to one degree or another, and the casualties were low. By far the highest toll of dead in a single attack was in an attack in Russia, where 154 FW led six battalions of selected and rehearsed infantry attacking an about 2 square mile complex of concrete bunkers and dugouts that previous more conventional attacks had failed to capture. The large complex of forts and bunkers was taken, over 4400 POWs taken, 27 MGs and 12 mortars, but 21 flame pioneers seemed to have died, including about five that died in the following weeks in local hospitals. Still, this attack was very successful, although about 4% of the attacking flame troops fell, although the Russian complex did not collapse, but fought bitterly. The attacking columns were guided in their attack through the complex of trenches, pill-boxes, etc. by the flame commander, Major Dr, Reddemann, the latter and possibly the flame teams working from aerial photographs; Reddemann receiving real-time reports of progress from aerial observers with two-way radios; Reddemann then relaying his further instructions to the aircraft by radio, which then dropped the message to the assault column commanders. (A major problem in storm attacks on large defensive complexes was the storm troops losing their way in the labyrinth of trenches; going off in the wrong directions, bombing their own trenches, etc.) This technology and this attack was in November 1916. I have a letter in which my father, writing from Stenay-sur-Meuse to his father, said that Reddemann had just telegraphed the news of a great flame victory in Russia to each of his flame companies.

Bob Lembke