Iron Cross Magazine

18 December 2024

SURVIVING BISMARCK When the battleship Bismarck was sunk in the Atlantic in May 1941 it resulted in a massive loss of life for the Kriegsmarine. Martin Mace looks at the pursuit and destruction of the ship by the Royal Navy and the stories of some of the few survivors. THE HEUSCHRECKE Our regular expert on German armour of WW2 examines how the Wehrmacht attempted to solve the requirement for effective mobile artillery with the Heuschrecke and presents some fascinating and previously unpublished photographs. ON THE RUN When a Heinkel 111 was shot down over England one night in July 1940, its crew parachuted to safety and inevitable captivity. However, as Andy Saunders reveals, three of the crew went on the run and had some extraordinary adventures before being caught. INDIRECT FIRING DEVICES As the war in the east ground on relentlessly after the launch of Barbarossa in 1941, a new menace in the war there emerged: snipers. The Wehrmacht turned a WW1 solution which allowed rifles to be fired from cover without exposing riflemen to danger. A LAST APPEAL TO REASON With the fall of France in 1940, only Britain stood in the way of total victory and Hitler ordered preparations for invasion: Operation Sealion. First, Hitler made one last appeal to Britain for ‘reason’. Martin Mace tells the story, presenting some unique photographs. MAPPING BARBAROSSA How Germany tracked its progress along with Red Army dispositions during the ultimately doomed invasion of the Soviet Union is told by Kevin M Boylan who outlines the story of the large-scale daily situation maps produced by the Wehrmacht. MEIN SOHN When the Luftwaffe launched two heavy tip-and-run raids against Hastings and Bournemouth in May 1943, they were attacks that saw heavy military and civilian casualties on the ground and losses to German units involved in that day’s operations. A PROVEN PROWESS Not all Luftwaffe fighter aces became household names in Germany. Regular Iron Cross contributor, Chris Goss, examines the life and death of one such fighter pilot who served from the Battle of France through to his death over Northern Europe in 1944. HEINECKE’S FALLSCHIRM One of Germany’s pioneers of parachute development before and during WW1 was Otto Heinecke. Dr Niklas Napp returns to Iron Cross magazine to chart his story from the early 1900s through to end of WW2 and his eventual death in Berlin in 1960. OPERATION MARNESHUTZ-REIMS Florian Wein charts the background and progress of Imperial Germany’s last offensive of the First World War on the Western Front as its army attempted to cross the River Marne and push forward into Allied territory in an operation which ended in failure. The author looks at what happened on the Marne in July 1918 and visits the battlefields, focussing on the Würtembergische Gebirgs Regiment BOOK REVIEWS We review a range of new German military history titles with the ‘Editor’s Choice’ this time going to Reiner Decher’s study on the fate of Nazi Germany’s jet engineers. PRODUCT REVIEW In one of our occasional product reviews we put the spotlight an exciting and emerging history guiding app which goes under the name of @guidl - an app which will be of enormous benefit to military history enthusiasts. It is seeing many Iron Cross authors as contributors! LETERS TO THE EDITOR Our round-up of fascinating letters from our readers includes new information on a Luftwaffe of 1940 who dies in an accident whilst flying a WW1 aeroplane, a captured ‘splatter mask’, and a touching postcard from a BEF soldier to his sister regarding Zeppelin raids on London. COMPETITION Enter our competition to win a copy of the truly superb book by Kevin M Boylan on the maps of Operation Barbarossa which has recently been published by Osprey books. EQUIPMENT IN COLOUR In this issue, our regular colourisation artist, Richard J Molloy, presents a fascinating image of Kriegsmarine sailors painting red the top of one of the main gun turrets of Tirpitz as the ship sails through Norwegian waters. FOLLOW-UP A truly fascinating follow-up to our recent article ‘Downing the Red Devil’ is provided by WW1 aviation expert Gregory VanWyngarden who also showcases a series of extremely rare photographs relating to Manfred von Richthofen, the ‘Red Baron’.