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WWII On This Day: July 25

What happened on July 25 during World War II? This date brings together 7 events from 1942 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1942
A German tank commander in southern Soviet territory in June 1942, shortly before the opening of Case Blue.
Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-218-0528-30 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Case Blue and the Drive to the Caucasus

Sixth Army meets the main Don defence

On 25 July Sixth Army encountered stronger Soviet resistance inside the Don bend as Stalingrad Front's armies came into contact with the German advance. The fight was no longer a pursuit across undefended steppe. Fuel and ammunition shortages immediately limited the German response. Ziemke records that half of Sixth Army's daily supply tonnage was being directed toward Army Group A, which had higher priority and formations closer to the available railheads. The same operational success that had carried German troops far east was now producing its logistical consequence. The front…

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1944
A military convoy moving through the ruins of Saint-Lô.
A military convoy moving through the ruins of Saint-Lô. US Army Signal Corps · NARA · Public domain Source
Operation Overlord

Operation Cobra, the breakout

Around 1,500 heavy bombers saturated a narrow rectangle of front west of Saint-Lô, destroying much of Panzer Lehr as a fighting formation. Some bombs fell short into American lines, killing well over a hundred men including Lieutenant General Lesley McNair, the most senior American officer killed in the European theatre. US VII Corps went through the gap. Within three days the breach was too wide to close, and the hedgerow fighting that had defined seven weeks was over.

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Medium bombers over the Cobra target area, 25 July 1944.
Medium bombers over the Cobra target area, 25 July 1944. US Army Air Forces · NARA · Public domain Source
Operation Cobra

Four thousand tons

About 1,500 heavy bombers, 380 mediums and 550 fighter-bombers attacked a rectangle roughly 6,000 yards by 2,500 in under two hours, dropping in the region of 4,000 tons of high explosive and fragmentation bombs. The dust and smoke drifted north over the road that the following waves were using to identify the target, so each wave aimed slightly further back than the last. Bombs walked northward into the American start line.

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American armour moving through the ruins of Saint-Lô during the breakout, July 1944.
American armour in the ruins of Saint-Lô, July 1944 · US Army Signal Corps · NARA · Public domain · Source
Operation Cobra

McNair is killed

One hundred and eleven Americans were killed and around 490 wounded by their own bombing on the second day. Among the dead was Lieutenant General Lesley McNair, who had built and trained the wartime United States Army and had come forward to watch the attack from a forward foxhole. He is the highest ranking American killed in the European theatre. His death was concealed at first because he was nominally commanding the fictitious army group in the deception plan, and announcing it would have told the Germans that the formation…

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German armour destroyed in the Cobra bombardment area.
German armour destroyed in the Cobra bombardment area. US Army Signal Corps · NARA · Public domain Source
Operation Cobra

What it did to Panzer Lehr

Bayerlein's division had been in the line for six weeks and was already worn down. The bombing fell directly on it. Tanks were overturned, guns buried, telephone lines destroyed, and command and control ceased to function across the whole sector. Bayerlein reported afterwards that the division had been annihilated and that at least seventy per cent of his men were dead, wounded, buried or driven insane. Something in the order of a thousand men were killed outright.

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Operation Cobra

The first day disappoints

The infantry attack went in through ground so churned that vehicles could barely cross it, and met resistance from survivors who had been left dazed but were still shooting. Gains on the first afternoon were about a mile. At First Army headquarters the operation looked like another expensive failure. Collins, commanding VII Corps, read the same reports differently: the resistance was uncoordinated, with no artillery answering and no counterattack forming, which meant the crust was broken even though the advance was slow.

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Operation Cobra

Collins commits the armour early

Rather than wait for a clean breach, Collins ordered his two armoured divisions and the motorised infantry to move on the evening of the first day. It was a gamble on his own reading of the enemy rather than on the reported line. It is the decision that turned Cobra from a breakthrough into a breakout. Had he waited a day, the Germans would have had a night to form a new line out of what was left.

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