NEPTUNE and OVERLORD
Operation OVERLORD was the code-name given to the Allied landings in Normandy by air and by sea, but the naval aspect of the landings was so important that it was given its own code-name, Operation NEPTUNE. This was the largest operation ever undertaken by the Royal Navy, which provided more than 79 per cent of the warships involved on D-Day. The largest maritime invasion in history required almost 7,000 ships of all kinds to land 75,215 British and Canadian troops and 57,500 US troops – a total of 132,715 men – plus armoured vehicles, artillery, motor vehicles and supplies on the first day.
Some say that to those aboard the ships in this massive armada, it seemed to stretch to the horizon but the truth is that it almost certainly did, as once assembled at the rendezvous point at ‘Piccadilly Circus’, actually some miles to the south of the Isle of Wight rather than the centre of London, the assembled fleet covered 5 square miles of sea. There were more than 4,000 landing ships and landing craft, preceded by 287 minesweepers in line abreast clearing the English Channel ahead of the invasion fleet. Escorting the convoys (but not the landing ships and craft) were 6 battleships; 4 monitors (shallow draft ships with a heavy armament that would join the battleships in giving naval gunnery cover); 22 cruisers; 104 destroyers and another 152 escort vessels such as corvettes and frigates; 80 patrol craft including anti-submarine trawlers and gunboats; and 360 motor launches. No less than 79 per cent of the warships were British or Canadian, 16.5 per cent were American, and the remaining 4.5 per cent manned by crews from France, Greece, The Netherlands, Norway and Poland. The US contribution consisted not just of United States Navy warships, but also those of the United States Coast Guard, which in wartime passed from the US Department of Transportation [sic] to the USN, although today its peacetime home is the Department of Homeland Security.
Missing from the vast armada of ships was the aircraft carrier. There was no need for carriers, with the landing zones only around 80 miles from the south coast of England. Equally important, there was no room, as with so many ships in a relatively small area of water, aircraft carriers would not have been able to charge around at full speed, heading into the wind ready to launch aircraft or recover after a sortie.
Even though the strength of the Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy and the United States Navy had increased massively since the outbreak of war, assembling such a vast armada was no easy task and operations elsewhere were seriously affected. The most obvious change was the decision to postpone the invasion of the south of France until August, but less obvious was the suspension of a number of convoys for the Soviet Union. The navies concerned were stretched to the limit, especially as the war in the Pacific moved steadily towards Japan. Perhaps Stalin did not appreciate that this would happen when he insisted on a ‘second front’ but naval strategy was never his strong point.
An indication of just how the Normandy landings differed from any invasion before or since was the fact that they required more than just shipping.
First, two harbours – the Mulberry harbours, built from prefabricated parts – had to be towed across the Channel and assembled, one for the British zone and one in the American zone. A bad storm hit the area before the harbours could be completed and the American Mulberry was so badly damaged that it had to be abandoned. This left the British harbour as the main supply point. Such harbours were important because landing ships had a much lower cargo space than conventional cargo ships, and the latter could carry supplies all the way from the United States and Canada without the need for transhipment. While strenuous efforts were made to capture ports in France, these were not immediately available for use as the Germans took care to damage and sabotage as many of the facilities as possible.
Next, fuel was another problem for heavily-mechanized Allied armies and for the intense air support that they needed from aircraft of the two tactical air forces, one American and the other British and Empire, which had their first aircraft land in France late on D-Day. A pipeline, known as PLUTO for ‘pipeline under the ocean’, was laid from Shanklin on the east coast of the Isle of Wight with the initial single line being joined by others and meeting the fuel needs of the Allied armies.
Most of the minesweepers used to prepare the way for the landing fleet were of the Royal Navy’s Bangor class, with a displacement of 672 tons and a complement of sixty men. They were capable of up to 16 knots. Armament consisted of a 3in gun and one 40mm cannon, as well as four .303 machine guns. Clearly such ships had little chance of standing up to a German destroyer had any chanced upon them, but the Allies had never lost naval supremacy in the war against Germany.
The navies of the day knew how to sweep contact mines and the Royal Navy had discovered a means known as degaussing (or demagnetizing) to protect ships from magnetic mines, but acoustic mines that reacted to the sound of ships’ propellers or machinery were more difficult. Worst of all were the new pressure mines known as ‘oysters’, which responded when a ship passed over the mine, creating an increase in water pressure. Acoustic mines had the unpleasant characteristic of being able to be set not to explode the first time a ship passed but instead waiting for the second or third vessel, all of which made mine clearance more difficult.
Not all the minesweepers were British as many were American and on the afternoon before the landings at 1757 one of these ships, the USS Osprey, was to discover just how necessary minesweeping was to be to the landing force. The War Diary of Mine Squadron 7, part of Force U covering Utah beach, tells the tale:
USS Osprey (Lt Charles Swimm, captain) was struck by an underwater explosion, under forward engine room; explosion is believed to be from a moored contact mine. Position 50 degrees 12.9N, 01 degrees, 20.4W – about 35 miles south of the Isle of Wight. USS Chickadee came alongside Osprey to assist. Fire that broke out onboard Osprey was under control in 3 to 5 minutes and extinguished in 10 minutes… In view of the list and irreparable damage and lack of watertight integrity, as a result of the blast, the order to abandon ship was given at 18.15. Chickadee took all survivors onboard. (Casualties were six dead, twenty-nine wounded.)
Such a loss in broad daylight and 20 miles north of where the nearest enemy minefield was charted was a sobering warning of what might lie ahead.
Potentially the most serious casualty from hitting a mine was the Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth-class battleship HMS Warspite, a veteran of the First World War that had seen action at Narvik during the Norwegian campaign in 1940 and later at the Battle of Cape Matapan. This mighty warship, with a full load displacement of 36,450 tons and eight 15in guns, had been repaired in the United States after being damaged at Matapan and then operated in the Far East before returning to Europe for the Mediterranean landings, but was not fully repaired after being struck by a glider bomb off Salerno. Playing an important part in the Normandy bombardment, she hit a mine and damaged her propulsive system to the extent that when needed for further bombardment duties at Brest, Le Havre and later at Walcheren, she had to suffer the indignity of being towed into position by tug. Even then her ‘X’ turret, one of the two aft turrets, was inoperable.
Combined naval personnel and men from the Allied merchant navies, a total of 195,701 seafarers took part, actually outnumbering those landed ashore.
Overall command of this vast armada was given to a British naval officer, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay. His signal on 31 May to all the ships under his command summed up the situation, and the task, perfectly:
Our task in conjunction with the Merchant Navies of the United Nations, and supported by the Allied Air Forces, is to carry the Allied Expeditionary Force to the Continent, to establish it there in a secure bridgehead and to build it up and maintain it at a rate which will outmatch that of the enemy.
Let no one underestimate the magnitude of this task.
The absence of aircraft carriers did not mean that naval aviation did not play a part. At any one time, a number of the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm squadrons would be based ashore, often under the control of RAF Coastal Command, and in 1944 squadrons such as No. 811 NAS equipped with Fairey Swordfish played a part in protecting the Normandy convoys from being attacked by U-boats.
Several years into the war, the standard of aircraft recognition was still so poor that to protect British and American planes over the Normandy area from being shot at by Allied AA gunners, aircraft were painted in ‘invasion stripes’, i.e. the wings and rear fuselage had black and white stripes painted to show clearly that they were Allied forces.
By 1944 the Royal Navy was well on its way to its war’s end strength comprising 61 battleships and cruisers; 59 aircraft carriers; 846 destroyers, frigates and corvettes, all of which could be classified as ‘escort vessels’; 729 minesweepers; 131 submarines; 1,000 minor naval vessels including trawlers and drifters adapted for patrols; and 3,700 aircraft. Many of the aircraft carriers were the small auxiliary or escort carriers, most of which were supplied by the United States under Lend-Lease.
The service included a number of types of vessel no longer in service today. The large battleships with their 14in, 15in or 16in guns, so useful for bombarding targets ashore, were augmented by the much smaller monitors, again with 15in guns but being smaller they also had a shallow draft, allowing them to operate closer inshore. Two of these were of wartime construction, HMS Roberts and Abercrombie, each of 8,123 tons displacement and with two 15in guns as opposed to up to eight on a battleship, and eight 4in guns that could also be used as anti-aircraft weapons as well as multi-barrelled anti-aircraft pom-poms, known as ‘Chicago pianos’ to the men of the fleet. Another two, HMS Terror and Erebus, dated from 1916 and were slightly smaller but still had two 15in and eight 4in guns. Roberts and Abercrombie were off the British landing beaches, while Erebus was off the American destination of Utah Beach.
The bombardment group consisted of the elderly battleships HMS Warspite and Ramillies as well as twelve cruisers and thirty-seven destroyers. In reserve were the battleships Rodney and Nelson with their 16in guns and three cruisers. The heavier-calibre guns did not simply fire a heavier shell, their range was also greater. Nevertheless, the last British battleship class introduced before the war was the King George V class with just 14in guns. A shell from a 15in gun weighed more than a ton and had a range of more than 20 miles.
It was important that the landing ships and landing craft should reach the part of the Normandy coast where they were due to land. Matters of command and control were simplified by the establishment of British and American sectors, with the British eastern sector having the beaches designated Gold, Juno and Sword, and the American western sector having Omaha and Utah. The American sector was west of the British, which also included a substantial Canadian force destined for Juno Beach. The disposition of the British and American sectors was dictated by the basing of the troops in England. Some argue that the Americans would have been better equipped to take the eastern sector and the British the western, but that would have complicated an already difficult and demanding convoy system for the landings. Swapping the troops around before embarkation would have avoided this but then created problems of a different kind, stretching transport and logistics resources at a time when everyone was preparing for the cross-Channel assault and even creating enough of a commotion to have put security at risk.
Not everyone could wait until the night of 5/6 June before crossing the Channel. Getting the mass of landing ships and landing craft to the right beach was no easy task. Once clear of the rendezvous the ships headed for the five invasion beaches but, as previously mentioned, guidance was necessary and this came from the crews of midget submarines, the X-craft. These usually had a crew of four – two officers and two ratings – and when used offensively they would all be divers, capable of fixing mines to the hulls of enemy warships. For NEPTUNE, the officers were drawn from among the best of the Royal Navy’s navigators.
For the men aboard these small craft, they left what was then the Royal Navy’s main submarine base at Gosport, HMS Dolphin, just across the harbour from the major naval base of Portsmouth, late on Friday 2 June. They cleared the Isle of Wight, towed most of the way by converted trawlers, and crossed the 80 miles to the coast of Normandy; once in position they submerged and spent the daylight hours sitting on the sea bed, just offshore. On Sunday night, the midget submarines surfaced and dropped anchor once on their marking position. Those aboard X23 watched as a lorry dropped off a crowd of German soldiers who then played a game of volleyball on the shore, unaware that they were being watched or of what the future held in store for them.
Lieutenant George Honour was aboard X23:
We hoisted our radio mast and got a signal that the invasion had been postponed, so then we had to retreat to the bottom again and wait until Monday night. That night we surfaced and received a message that the invasion was on. So we went back to sit on the bottom and at about 0430 on Tuesday, 6th June, we surfaced again, put up all our navigational aids: 18-foot telescopic mast with a light shining seaward, a radio beacon and an echo sounder tapping out a message below the surface. This was for the navigational mine-layers used to guide the fleet to pick up as they brought the invasion in.
Our particular operation for D-Day was called ‘Gambit’. When we looked it up in the dictionary, much to our horror it said the pawn you throw away before the big move in chess, which didn’t encourage us too much.
Not everyone could wait until H-hour before landing on the beaches. The troops arriving aboard the landing craft would need to be shown the way off the beach and not spend time exposed to German fire on the beach. The Royal Navy Commandos were given the task of landing to set up signs and indicators for the main assault force. One of their landing craft was hit before it reached the beach with the ramp blown down so that it dropped below the bows, leaving those aboard unable to use it and having to leave the craft by the stern, dropping into the rough seas. None of them were too pleased as they had spent weeks training for the landing on windswept beaches in Scotland. On coming ashore, they were met by the discouraging sight of bodies being swept in and out with the waves and hastened to seek shelter in the sand dunes.
Reaching the beaches was an ordeal in itself. The Germans had placed obstacles along the coast: tetrahedral steel posts with shells and mines attached. A number of landing craft had been modified with twenty-four 60lb spigot bombs so that they could blow up the beach obstacles at half-tide. Immediately behind them came the landing craft tank carrying tanks with flails, which would clear the beaches of any mines to allow infantry to follow them ashore. The landing craft heading for the beach obstacles sailed in under a heavy destroyer bombardment, but at H-hour minus one minute the bombardment lifted, the landing craft let go their spigot bombs and within seconds the air was rent with massive explosions.
It seems that not all the beach obstacles could be cleared in time for the landing force. Able Seaman Ken Oakley was a Royal Navy Commando preparing to go ashore with the beach master, a naval officer who would take charge of operations ashore and ensure that the beaches were cleared quickly, the priority being to dismantle ‘Rommel’s asparagus’ (half-sunken wooden poles, each with an unhealthy 88mm shell on the end). ‘Rommel’s asparagus’ was, of course, also used in his attempt to close off the possible glider landing-grounds.
All around the sea was one mass of craft, landing craft of all kinds, shapes and sizes. A lot in our immediate area were LCAs because we were going for the initial assault. There was a good feeling as we went forward, except that most of the army was seasick. I wasn’t very happy myself. However, when we got within sight of the shore we were getting splattered with light gunfire, nothing very heavy at this moment. Finally, we got within sight of the stakes, the dreaded stakes, with the shells and mines on, which protected the beaches. Our coxswain did a marvellous job. We were headed straight for this stake and I could see the 56lb shell lashed to it. In just the last second, he missed it. He got it just right. He steered us in between the stakes and got ashore without touching one of those shells. At the order ‘Down ramp’, we were all surging ashore. We were in a few inches of water. All around were craft beaching and chaos and more gunfire was pouring down on us. We ran, under fire, up to the top of the beach where we went to ground, about a hundred yards from high water. People were going down and screaming and crying all around us. As we hit the sand at the top of the beach we took stock of our bearings and realised that we had landed almost exactly in our correct positions.
The landing craft infantry (LCI) sailed towards the beach in tight circles and when they closed on the beach, they peeled off one at a time and rammed their bows onto the beach with the next LCI coming alongside the previous one. Some of the landing craft had been hit by German artillery fire and were ablaze, often with many casualties aboard. After the rough seas, many must have been longing to reach the shore.
Other ships, including converted merchant vessels as well as landing craft, were fitted with artillery rockets to clear the beaches and also put the defences under pressure. All this, of course, was in addition to gunnery. Destroyers at the time were generally fitted with a main armament of 4in guns, although a few of the more modern ships had 4.5in versions. Cruisers had 6in guns with 4in ones as a secondary armament. One of these was HMS Danae and on her bridge was Captain J.H.B. Hughes, a Royal Marine:
Just before dawn, those of us on the bridge of HMS Danae had a tot of the most superb 1812 brandy from a bottle laid down by my great-grandfather in 1821, sent to me by my father with the comment, ‘You may find this of some use in the near future.’ We then commenced the operations for which we had been trained, namely engaging and knocking out three enemy batteries. At about 1000 we closed the beaches to knock out the opposition to the landing forces in the Ouistreham area. Our open 6inch and twin 4inch guns went into independent fire, the guns being laid, trained and fired by the crews stripped to the waist. This was real ‘Nelson stuff’. We knocked up a fantastic rate of fire. X and Y* guns were firing at least 19 rounds per minute on occasion. We all joined in, jumping in to relieve the exhausted crew members where we could. It was exhilarating beyond description and even my thirteen-year-old boy bugler fired Y gun with the lanyard while the captain of the gun, a corporal, leapt to get more charges into the breech.
Then it all came to a halt and we sailed to Portsmouth for re-ammunition.
HMS Danae had been in Greenock when the plans for the landings had been finalized. Her commanding officer assembled her ship’s company in their respective divisions on the quarterdeck in freezing cold weather to tell them of her role. He commented that they had ‘the honour to be expendable’, to which someone in the ranks of the stokers’ division promptly commented: ‘Fuck that for a lark!’
Another rating aboard one of the ships in the bombardment force commented: ‘Cor! I’m sorry for those poor bastards on the other side.’ The Germans might not have seen the invasion fleet coming, but they certainly heard it when it arrived. The bombardment started before the landing craft went in and crept ahead of the troops once they were ashore. There seem to have been no reports of ‘friendly fire’ casualties once on the beaches.
The naval bombardment started at 0530 and the landings commenced at 0630, by which time the bombardment moved away from coastal targets and headed inland.
There was a sense of improvisation even in this, the largest amphibious assault in history and with first call upon the resources of the British, and although the Americans had much to do in the Pacific, there was no doubt that this was their biggest effort in the Atlantic. The naval commander in the eastern sector was Admiral Philip Vian, whose flagship was the light cruiser HMS Scylla. Aboard the ship, the volume of messages to be decoded and encoded meant that extra officers were required but there was no space to accommodate them. The result was that they were sent every other day from Portsmouth aboard MTBs and stayed working aboard for forty-eight hours before being returned to Portsmouth.
Despite the best efforts of the minesweepers, by the time Operation NEPTUNE officially ceased on 30 June, 59 ships had been sunk and another 110 damaged, many by pressure mines. Nevertheless, despite a storm that wrecked one of the two Mulberry Harbours – that at St Laurent serving the US forces on Utah and Omaha beaches – 850,279 men, 148,803 vehicles of all kinds and 570,505 tons of supplies had been landed.
Once the initial landings had been made, the major warships were back to continue bombarding enemy-held territory. Ships were routinely rotated out of the Normandy coastal waters and back to Portsmouth or even Plymouth to re-arm and if necessary refuel. This fire could be so devastating that on one occasion Rommel authorized the movement of a Panzer division away from the coast to a much safer location further inland. Even the armour of a tank was not proof against a 15in shell.
Throughout June 1944, more than 70,000 shells were fired by the Royal Navy at German shore targets. Naval shellfire is more constant and wearing than that of land-based guns as the mechanized handling equipment means that a warship gun can fire six times as many shells in a given period as a land-based artillery piece and often the shells are much heavier.
The German Commander-in-Chief, Army, West, Gerd von Rundstedt, reported later:
The enemy had deployed very strong naval forces off the shores of the bridgehead. These can be used as quickly mobile, constantly available artillery, at points where they are necessary as defence against our attacks or as support for enemy attacks. During the day their fire is skilfully directed by … plane observers, and by advanced ground fire spotters. Because of the high rapid-fire capacity of naval guns they play an important part in the battle within their range. The movement of tanks by day, in open country, within the range of these naval guns is hardly possible.
Another German report discovered later noted that:
Even more disastrous than the material effect was the morale effect of the rapidly and precisely firing naval guns. Even when not reinforced by simultaneous air bombing, the drum fire inspired in the defenders a feeling of utter helplessness, which in inexperienced recruits caused fainting or indeed complete paralysis. The supporting fire of warships was extremely accurate and made the movement of strategic reserves impossible within the 20-mile range of their guns.
So that was it. The constant hammering of exploding shells all around them kept many Germans imprisoned within their shelters and concrete gun emplacements.
However, the Germans weren’t the only ones to suffer. Those aboard the ships got no rest until they withdrew to refuel and re-arm. The firing and recoil of a heavy gun on board a warship sends sound and shock waves right through the ship. The battleship Nelson had nine 16in guns spread over three turrets – the heaviest calibre in the Royal Navy at the time – and these each fired a round once every minute on the night of 12/13 June, bombarding Caen. Those aboard the bombarding ships demonstrated great endurance. They also had to be ready for action at a moment’s notice at any time of day or night. Some of the officers did not take off their clothes for several days; some reports suggest for as long as seventeen days. It was tiring, but it says much about the poor state of the defenders and the weakness of the Kriegsmarine that the Germans never tried to take advantage of their weariness. Hitler had, of course, brought home his battle-cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen earlier in the celebrated Channel Dash of February 1942.
The Allied navies continued to shell for as long as necessary and as long as there were enemy targets within range. On 30 June US troops seized the port and city of Cherbourg, one of the great Channel ports. Elsewhere, the Allied armies took Caen on 9 July, followed by St Lô on 18 July and Avranches on 25 July, finally allowing the bombardment fleet to leave the Normandy coast, their work done. Seizing ports helped and was necessary, but capture often marked the start of considerable work to clear a port and its approaches of mines, while the Germans had usually been careful to sabotage many of the port installations.
Friendly Fire
While NEPTUNE ended on 30 June, the Royal Navy’s involvement did not and the service continued to patrol the waters off the coast of Normandy looking for mines, while E-boats and U-boats were not forgotten. The campaign had seen relatively few naval casualties, a tribute to the use of overwhelming force and a reflection of the weak state of the German Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe. The Germans were, after all, by this time on the defensive in Italy and the south of France as well as in Normandy and on the Eastern Front.
What happened next was all the more distressing because it did not come as a result of an engagement with the enemy but was a clear case of ‘blue on blue’ or ‘friendly fire’. On 27 August two of the Royal Navy’s minesweepers were sunk and a third had its stern torn off after an attack by rocket-firing Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers from the RAF’s 263 and 266 Squadrons.
The Royal Navy’s First Minesweeping Flotilla was operating off the French coast in the region of Cap d’Antifer when it was decided to move it to a new area and details of the change were sent by signal to all interested parties. Later that day, another naval officer came on duty and decided to send the flotilla back to its original area of operations; again a signal was sent, but somehow the area naval headquarters was not included among the recipients and therefore could not notify the Royal Air Force. As a result, when Allied radar spotted five ships sweeping in line abreast at noon on 27 August, they were immediately assumed to be a German formation. Not having received the signal detailing the change, the Flag Officer, British Assault Area (FOBAA) agreed that any ships must be German. Two of the vessels, HMS Hussar and Britomart, were larger than most minesweepers and had served as sloops on convoy escort duties. From the air they seemed large enough to be small German destroyers. A Polish airman flew over the ships in a Spitfire and reported that they seemed to be Allied vessels but gave the wrong position. FOBAA then attempted to contact the officers controlling minesweeping but couldn’t get through as the lines were down. FOBAA then called for an anti-shipping strike and sixteen Typhoons of the RAF’s 263 and 266 Squadrons were ordered into the air. As he approached the flotilla, the strike leader thought that he could see Allied ships so he radioed questioning his orders, only to be told to attack. He subsequently queried his orders twice.
At 1330 the attack began. Sweeping out of the sun towards the first ship, Britomart, the Typhoons started strafing and firing anti-tank rockets, deadly against the thin-plated hulls of minor warships. In less than two minutes the ship had lost its bridge and was listing heavily, while another, Hussar, was on fire. Those on board the ships immediately assumed that the aircraft must be those of the Luftwaffe and Jason signalled that she was under attack by enemy aircraft, but as the aircraft raced away the distinctive D-Day black and white ‘invasion stripes’ could be seen and another ship, Salamander, fired recognition flares, forcing the hapless leader of the strike to query his orders yet again, for the fourth time. Yet, he was again ordered back into the attack and at 1335 dived down again towards the warships, hitting Britomart once more and strafing Jason while rockets went into both Salamander and Colsay. Despite a large white ensign and a Union flag being draped over the stern of Jason as she fired further recognition flares, a third attack followed at 1340, hitting Hussar which exploded and Salamander, whose stern was blown off by rocket strikes. As the crippled Salamander drifted shoreward, a no doubt bemused German artillery battery with 9.2in coastal guns opened fire, forcing Jason to launch her small boats to tow Salamander out of danger.
This was the Royal Navy’s worst friendly-fire incident of the Second World War, with 117 officers and ratings killed and another 153 wounded. The whole incident was covered up and those involved sworn to secrecy on threat of prosecution; the events only came to light in 1994 when the then Public Record Office, now The National Archives, released the papers.
The three officers responsible for this appalling and unnecessary loss of life and valuable ships were court-martialled, but two were acquitted and the other severely reprimanded. No doubt had the strike leader disobeyed his orders, he would have been dealt with far more severely.
Beyond Normandy
The Normandy landings did not mean that the war in Europe against Germany was over, not even for the Royal Navy. The Russian convoys still had to be run, and there was much to do even as the Allied armies moved across Europe. Seizure of the port of Antwerp was vital as the supply lines from the French Channel ports became extended. This was initially hampered by the need to capture the Dutch island of Walcheren, which blocked access to the port. After valiant attempts by Canadian troops to take Walcheren across a causeway linking the island to the mainland, it had to be taken by a seaborne assault with covering fire from the battleship Warspite which needed to be towed into position by a tug.
On 1 November at 0554 the three Royal Marines Commandos of the British 4th Special Service Brigade attacked from seaward at Westkapelle in Operation INFATUATE I, accompanied by troops of the No. 4 (Belgian) and No. 5 (Norwegian) Commandos from Brigadier Peter Laycock’s No. 10 (IA) Commando. No. 4 Commando with French troops in support then crossed from Breskens to attack Flushing with support from No. 155 Infantry Brigade in Operation INFATUATE II, aided by a heavy naval bombardment from the crippled battleship HMS Warspite, two monitors including HMS Roberts, and other naval vessels, despite many of their landing craft being sunk by heavy fire from German coastal batteries. The crossing was made mainly in Buffalos, which one Royal Marine present described as being ‘like tanks with no tops’.
The run ashore was not easy, as Captain J. Linzel of No. 10 Commando recalled.
This operation had more impact on me. The objective was to clear the seaway to Antwerp. We went to Belgium, where the No.4 Troops Brigade and the No.10 Commando were billeted. We were an attached unit of 14 men. We entered our LCT’s Buffalo’s amphibious vehicles to go to Walcheren where we experienced heavy German artillery. Our vehicle got hit direct by a grenade, setting our flamethrowers and ammunition on fire. This was a chaos. Our burning Buffalo was pushed into the sea and I can remember that together with 10 other men I ended up in another Buffalo and landed at Westkapelle. We experienced some serious fighting there and a lot of the Brigade were killed. It took us 3 days to capture the German dyke at Vlissingen, there were about 300 casements.
Frederick Weston was a sergeant in No. 41 Commando Royal Marines:
We were in the open, unlike D-Day, so we saw everything as we went in. It was very heavily defended, we manned gunboats to take these on and we also had rocket ships that shot off scores of shots at a time. We’d also been told that there could be fixed flame-throwers on this part of the beach, so that was something to look forward to. We managed to get on all right and got into the village there, and saw their strongpoint at the base of a lighthouse. We got cover in an old house and found the old hands in there getting a brew of tea going. As we were pretty wet and miserable at the time, we had a quick cup of tea.
Unfortunately our troop commander was killed when we reached their strongpoint. It was a very sad occasion for us, it seemed like they were giving themselves up and then one man decided not to, and that was the end of our troop commander. It made us all very angry.
This was one thing that most fighting men could not accept: enemy troops surrendering and when approached to be taken prisoner, shooting their exposed would-be captors. It says much for the discipline of the Royal Marines that they did not shoot the Germans, or at least the man who betrayed their trust.
Two days of street-fighting followed before the regional capital Middleburg could be seized and the Germans surrendered there on 5 November. Nevertheless, some resistance continued in the north of Walcheren and it was not until 8 November that this ended.
Tragedy now awaited the Allied navies at Ostend.
Even by spring of the following year, most of The Netherlands was under German control, including the major naval bases of IJmuiden and Den Helder, acting as bases for E-boats. The E-boats posed a major threat to the steady stream of shipping crossing the southern North Sea and as always, the best defence against E-boat attacks on the northern flank of the Allied convoys was to provide motor gunboats or motor torpedo boats as escorts or on patrol to ward off E-boat attacks before they could get within reach of a convoy. Two MTB flotillas were based at Ostend – the Royal Navy’s 55th and the Canadian-manned 29th – with a mobile base unit to service the vessels. These two units had been fighting alongside each other since June 1944. The 29th had eleven 72ft 6in MTBs, while the 55th had the larger Fairmile ‘D’ boats. Most British MTBs and MGBs had petrol engines rather than the safer diesel alternative, meaning that accidents involving fuel vapour-induced explosions and fires were relatively common.
On 14 February 1945, there were no fewer than thirty-one MTBs of all kinds as well as other small craft gathered in the harbour at Ostend, with many of the MTBs moored alongside one another. Many of the crew members had been granted shore leave, but others were busy preparing for that night’s patrols.
Among those preparing for the patrols were four of the Canadian boats of the 29th MTB Flotilla. Of these, MTB464 was carrying out an armament check at sea when one of its engines cut out due to water in the fuel system. This was a common problem as one of the tankers supporting the MTBs had pumped water-contaminated fuel ashore. The base maintenance staff were too busy to provide assistance and simply suggested that the MTB’s crew pumped water from their fuel tanks into buckets and then disposed of the contents over the side. Before long, a strong smell of petrol spread throughout the harbour. Many noticed this but no one reported it or took any action.
What happened next was a major fire, but what actually ignited it remains unknown. One witness was Ken Forrester, serving aboard one of the Royal Navy’s MTBs, MTB771, in the 55th Flotilla:
It was a rest day, and half the crew had been taken on a sightseeing trip to Bruges for the afternoon. It was around 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I had volunteered to make the tea and went up on deck to go to the potato locker which was just below the bridge. Before I got there I saw flames and smoke rising from the middle of a group of MTBs that were berthed in a large lock entrance some 30 yards away. Our boat was tied up to the wall with two others of our flotilla tied alongside us. The tide was low which meant that our torpedoes were below the level of the seawall. There was a raised gangway over the torpedoes bypassing the 0.5in turret. This gangway was level with the top of the wall. On seeing the fire I ran to the forward hatch – the crew’s quarters – and yelled out Fire! Ran to the stern of the boat, took hold of a fire hose that was permanently rigged and ran unreeling it as I went. I was just passing over the gangway that was level with the wall when the boat that was on fire blew up with a huge Woomph noise. There was a rush of seething hot air which blew me over. The next thing I remember was picking myself up on the dockside with burning debris everywhere covering the quayside and all of our boats. Our own boat had been protected somewhat with being shielded by the dockside. I was still dazed, realised I’d lost my shoes and beard mostly singed off. I had blood running down my face by that time. Someone was running past me, so I ran while pandemonium was going on. Ammunition was exploding, torpedoes going off, pieces of flaming boats everywhere.
It seemed as if the entire harbour was ablaze, with torpedoes and other ammunition exploding, fuel tanks rupturing and exploding, adding their contents to the fire.
Some 36 members of the Royal Navy were killed with the loss of 7 boats, while the Royal Canadian Navy lost 26 personnel and 5 boats.
It had originally been intended that the Normandy landings would coincide with landings in the south of France, forcing the Germans to divide their forces. Another advantage of this two-pronged attack was that it would also put pressure on German forces still fighting in Italy who risked being cut off should the Allied landings result in an advance eastwards into northern Italy. No matter what the advantages of such a co-ordinated assault may have been, it soon became plain that insufficient resources were available to land in two places at once. The original plans for the Normandy landings had been on a much smaller front with fewer landing beaches than were eventually used, with a broader front seen as being less vulnerable to a German counter-attack. This was not all. The Normandy landings were not happening in isolation. American forces were moving across the Pacific and the demand for landing craft and landing ships plus supporting fire from battleships and cruisers was such that the south of France would have to wait.
It could be argued that, even if Stalin only saw land battles as constituting a ‘front’, then the Normandy landings had provided a ‘second front’, but in the Pacific there was a ‘third front’ and even a ‘fourth front’ as the United States Army conducted landings in the southern zone and the United States Marine Corps in the north, steadily advancing towards Japan, and even this is to ignore the fighting in Burma.
This global demand for resources also explains why so many of the warships engaged in supporting the Normandy landings came from the Royal Navy. The United States Navy was otherwise engaged; nevertheless, it did well to provide the support given off Normandy.
Operation Dragoon
The landings in the south of France were originally code-named ANVIL, possibly because the planners saw the landings in Normandy and in the south of France hammering the German occupiers into shape!
The south of France did not compare with Normandy. The Germans had left a substantial part of France unoccupied and under Vichy control partly to avoid overstretching their occupation forces. Even after they occupied Vichy territory following the Allied landings in North Africa in late 1942, the resources were not available to build a ‘Mediterranean Wall’, and indeed the Atlantic Wall itself was far from complete.
Landings in the south of France had been delayed by the need to devote further resources to the campaign in Italy. The landings at Salerno had not produced a fast enough advance, and those at Anzio had been even more disappointing. These problems and the strong German resistance at Monte Cassino had delayed entry into Rome until just before the Normandy landings. The scale of the landings in the south of France almost make it seem like a sideshow compared to North Africa, Sicily and Normandy, but even so the resources expended were considerable.
The seaborne operation was under the command of Vice Admiral Henry Hewitt, USN. He led a fleet of 500 landing and 200 escort vessels to put ashore Lieutenant General Alexander Patch’s US Seventh Army between Cannes and Toulon on 15 August 1944. Hewitt had three American battleships as well as one each from the Royal Navy and the French Marine Nationale. There were also 9 escort carriers, 25 cruisers and 45 destroyers.
Little resistance was met and within a few days both the major naval base at Toulon and the important port of Marseilles were in Allied hands. The Luftwaffe mounted little resistance and before long the Supermarine Spitfires from the British escort carriers and the Grumman Hellcats from their American counterparts found themselves providing ground-attack missions in support of ground forces. This had not been entirely unexpected and some naval air squadron commanders had been granted time to fly with RAF squadrons flying ground-attack sorties in Italy.
Operations were helped by the fact that there were more escort carriers than at Salerno and there was plenty of room to manoeuvre, while the escort carriers could be rotated out of operations for refuelling off Corsica, avoiding the dramas caused by the shortage of fuel off Salerno. After 24 August the Germans were clearly withdrawing and, being out of range for the carriers, air-to-ground operations were taken over by the USAAF.
*‘X’ and ‘Y’ turrets, the two closest to the stern, were manned by Royal Marines rather than naval gunners on British warships.