How the Second World War shaped up in 1943
The year started with key developments in the Battle of Stalingrad, writes Neil Owen.
The German 6th Army was surrounded by Soviet forces and destroyed piecemeal by massive rolling attacks.
Despite Hitler’s order to the contrary, the German commander Field Marshall Paulus surrendered. This defeat and the massive tank battle at Kursk, which finally sealed the fate of the German campaign in Russia, was a pivotal moment in the Second World War.
In the Battle of the Atlantic, a similar step change in favour of the Allies also evolved with the introduction of new technologies, tactics and weapons against the U-Boat scourge. The hunter became the hunted. In North Africa, the Afrika Korps surrendered to the British and American armies on the May 7. Field Marshall Rommel had already left for Berlin on Hitler’s orders. In Italy, the bombing of Rome led to the arrest of the Italian Fascist leader Mussolini by forces loyal to the Italian King and ultimately the offer of a peace settlement with the Allies.
On the September 3, British and Canadian forces invaded the Italian mainland. The attack on Churchill’s “soft underbelly of Europe” had begun.
In the Pacific, the US started to take back islands in hardfought amphibious assaults against a fanatical Japanese defence. On Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands, American Marines lost 1,000 men, the Japanese 4,900 out of a garrison of 5,000. In Oban, the North Atlantic convoy system was as important as ever, both to the supporting Naval Base and also the covering RAF squadrons based at the town at Ardentrive on Kerrera and at the new RAF Ganavan Sands.
The resident operational squadron at this point was the Canadian 422 Squadron, to be supplemented later in the year by No. 330 Squadron of the Royal Norwegian Air Force.
Both units operated the Short Sunderland Mk III, equipped with new and accurate Air to Surface Vessel (ASV) radar which could detect a U boat conning tower on the surface at an appreciable range.
A reporter for the American Time Magazine visited the town, his accompanying war artist providing a somewhat abstract image of the town, which of course is not named and described as “a harbor in England”.