Cross-Channel guns in the Second World War

A 38 cm gun of the Todt Battery

During the Second World War, cross-Channel guns were long-range coastal artillery pieces placed on the English Channel coasts of Kent, England, and the Pas-de-Calais, France, at the point at which England was closest to continental Europe, and with which to bombard enemy shipping in the Channel as well as towns and military installations.

History

The successful German offensive in May and June 1940 placed Calais and its environs under the control of an enemy of the United Kingdom for the first time since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, 125 years earlier. In the initial directive for the invasion of the United Kingdom, codenamed Operation Sealion, which was issued on 2 July 1940 by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the supreme command of the German armed forces, the requirement was stated for powerful coastal artillery to "provide additional cover... against English naval attack". In a further directive on 10 July, the purpose of the guns was stated to be "for covering the front and flanks of a future crossing and landing" and they were placed under the overall control of Erich Raeder, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy (Kriegsmarine).[1] Work to assemble and begin emplacing every Army and Navy heavy artillery piece available, primarily at Pas-de-Calais, commenced on 22 July 1940. The heavy construction work was undertaken by the Organisation Todt.

German guns

The first such guns began to be installed around the end of July 1940. First came Siegfried Battery at Audinghen, south of Cap Gris Nez, with one 38 cm (15 in) gun (later increased to 4 and renamed Todt Battery), shortly followed by:

By early August, Siegfried Battery and Grosser Kurfürst Battery were fully operational as were all of the Army’s railway guns. Seven of the railway guns, six 28 cm (11 in) K5 guns and a single 21 cm (8.3 in) K12 gun with a range of 115 km (71 mi), could only be used against land targets. The remainder, thirteen 28 cm (11 in) guns and five 24 cm (9.4 in) guns, plus additional motorised batteries comprising twelve 24 cm (9.4 in) guns and ten 21 cm (8.3 in) guns, could be fired at shipping but were of limited effectiveness due to their slow traverse speed, long loading time and ammunition types. Land-based guns have always been feared by navies because they are on a stationary platform and are thus more accurate (and can be larger, with more ammunition stowage) than those on board ship. Super-heavy railway guns can only be traversed by moving the entire gun and its carriage along a curved track, or by building a special cross track or turntable. This, combined with their slow rate of fire (measured in rounds per hour or even rounds per day), makes it difficult for them to hit moving targets. Another problem with super-heavy guns is that their barrels (which are difficult to make and expensive to replace) wear out relatively quickly, so they could not be fired often.

Better suited for use against naval targets were the four heavy naval batteries installed by mid-September: Friedrich August, Prinz Heinrich, Oldenburg and Siegfried (later renamed Todt) – a total of eleven guns, with the firepower of a battlecruiser. Fire control for these guns was provided by both spotter aircraft and by DeTeGerät radar sets installed at Blanc Nez and Cap d’Alprech. These units were capable of detecting targets out to a range of 40 km (25 mi), including small British patrol craft near the English coast. Two additional radar sites were added by mid-September: a DeTeGerät at Cap de la Hague and a FernDeTeGerät long-range radar at Cap d’Antifer near Le Havre.[2]

Perhaps the most remarkable gun was the 21 cm K 12 (E), which had an effective range of 45 kilometres (28 mi). Designed as a successor to the World War I Paris gun, it is claimed to have had a maximum range of 115 kilometres (71 mi). Shell fragments from the gun were found near Chatham, Kent, 88 kilometres (55 mi) from the nearest point on the French coast. There were two of these guns, operated by a detachment called Artillerie-Batterie 701 (E), and they remained on the Channel Coast for the rest of the war.

The guns started shelling the Dover area during the second week of August 1940 and continued firing until 1944.

Over a thousand rounds were fired but the German coast batteries only sank:

[3] Empire Lough was one of 21 coastal vessels in the convoy ETC-17, escorted by the frigate HMS Dakins and corvette HMS Sunflower. On 24 June 1944, the convoy left Southend en route to the Seine Bay when the ships were engaged by German long-range coastal artillery guns off Dover. Empire Lough was set on fire and declared a total loss after she was beached near Folkestone. The master Robert Robinson and one crew member were lost. The freighter Gurden Gates (1791 grt, built 1943) was damaged in the same action.

British response

"Winnie", a 14-inch gun at St Margaret's at Cliffe near Dover, March 1941
"Pooh" in March 1941
15-inch gun at Wanstone Battery under construction, May 1942

Having successfully withdrawn in the Dunkirk evacuation and winning the Battle of Britain, the British did not have an immediate answer to this threat, but the high ground to either side of the Port of Dover was fortified on the personal order of Prime Minister Winston Churchill (who had visited to see the situation in person), and large calibre guns dug in there. The only British cross-Channel guns already in place were Winnie (named after Churchill) and – later in 1940 – Pooh (named after the story book character Winnie the Pooh who in turn was named after "Winnipeg" the bear at the London Zoo.).[4] These were two BL 14 inch Mk VII (35.6 cm) guns positioned behind St Margaret's. They were spares taken from the stock of guns of the battleship King George V. One used a mounting from HMS Furious and the other a mounting from a test range; neither was turret-mounted. They were operated from a separate firing-control room and were manned by 25 men of the Royal Marine Siege Regiment. These boosted morale – Winnie fired Britain's first shell onto continental Europe in August 1940 – but were slow and ineffectual compared to the German guns. They attacked the German guns (though they were too inaccurate and slow to fire on ships), and were protected from German aerial attack by anti-aircraft emplacements. Their separate and well-camouflaged cordite and shell magazines were buried under deep layers of earth and connected to the guns by railway lines.

Due to these guns' lack of success in targeting shipping, Churchill ordered three new heavy gun batteries to be built in Dover and manned by the Royal Artillery for that purpose:

These were later joined by Lydden Spout Battery. Also, three BL 13.5-inch (342.9 mm) Mk V naval guns from the First World War (named Gladiator, Sceneshifter and Peacemaker) were brought out of retirement in 1939 and mounted on railway chassis.[5][6]

The British coast batteries sank:

"Hellfire Corner"

This gunnery duel, along with heavy German shelling and bombing of Dover strait and the Dover area, led to this stretch of the Channel being nicknamed Hellfire Corner and led to 3,059 alerts, 216 civilian deaths, and damage to 10,056 premises in the Dover area.

British coastal convoys, by necessity, had to pass through the bottleneck of Dover strait to transport essential supplies, particularly coal; Britain's road and rail network was not then able to cope with the volume of traffic that had to be handled. Although the German guns regularly fired on these slow moving convoys from 1940 to 1944, with an interlude in 1943, they only sank two ships and damaged several others. Two seamen were killed and others were injured by shell splinters from near misses. However, the civilian crews of the merchant ships found the shelling more unnerving than the attacks by aircraft or E-boats that they were also subjected to, and there were instances of crews refusing to sail from their forming-up point at Southend-on-Sea because of the German guns.[7]

The "Channel Dash"

Main article: Channel Dash

On 11 February 1942, the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and more than twenty smaller escort vessels, sailed from Brest in Brittany to their home port of Wilhelmshaven by an audacious dash through the English Channel, codenamed "Operation Cerberus". Due to poor visibility and a number of communication failures by British forces, the first response to the German squadron was by the 9.2 inch guns of the South Foreland Battery, which were the only guns which could be directed by radar; however the 10 centimetre K band set had only recently been installed and had never been used in conjunction with the guns. As the visibility was only 5 miles (8.0 km), it was hoped that the radar would be able to register the splashes as the shells landed so that the guns would be able to correct their aim, but nothing was detected. After firing three two-gun salvoes without being able to detect the "fall of shot" – the shells were actually landing almost a mile astern of the main German ships – it was decided to fire full salvoes using only the ranging information from the radar. After 6 minutes of rapid firing, the last shots were fired at a range of 30,000 yards (27,000 m). None of the 33 shells fired came close to the German ships. A minute before the last shots were fired, South Foreland came under counter-battery fire from across the Channel, but no major damage was sustained.[8]

Final duels

Main article: Operation Undergo

During the Anglo-Canadian operation to capture Calais, on 26 September 1944 (the last day of shelling) fifty shells were fired, killing five people, the last of whom was 63-year-old Patience Ransley, who was killed by a shell from the Lindemann Battery while sheltering in the 900-foot (270 m) long "Barwick's Cave" reinforced cliff tunnel.[9] However, accurate bombardment from the British heavy guns at Dover disabled the Grosser Kurfürst Battery at Floringzelle, thus ending the duels.[10] Dover was finally freed from bombardment and to mark the event the town's mayor was sent a German flag from the batteries.[11]

Today

Rear of a Batterie Todt gunhouse, now open to visitors

Between Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer considerable parts of the concrete gun emplacements and associated bunkers remain, in accessible, although often somewhat dangerous, condition. One of the casemates of the Todt Battery can be visited at the Musée du Mur de l'Atlantique, the Atlantic Wall Museum, at Audinghen.[12] One of the Krupp K5 guns is now also located there. Since 1954 a section of painted armour plating taken as a war trophy from one of the Lindemann Battery's turrets has been on display on Dover's seafront.

The derelict Battery Observation Post at Hougham Battery which was constructed in 1941 for three 8 inch Mk VIII naval guns.

Many of the British batteries were maintained in operational condition until the decision was taken to retire all the coastal artillery in 1956. The big 15 inch guns at Wanstone Farm were not removed until 1959.[13] None of the sites has been preserved and all have either been demolished, buried or left to decay. At Wanstone Farm Battery, for instance, ancillary buildings such as the plotting room and the guard house are still visible, although overgrown, and the sergeants' mess has reverted to its original use as a farm house.[14]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "OKW and Führer HQ Directives for the Invasion of the UK" (PDF). www.da.mod.uk. Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. Retrieved 19 April 2014.
  2. ↑ Schenk, pp.324–325
  3. 1 2 Hans Sakkers "Artillerieduell der Fernkampfgeschütze am Pas de Calais 1940-1944"
  4. ↑ Evans, Martin Marix (2004). Invasion! Operation Sealion 1940. Longman. ISBN 0-582-77294-X., page 59
  5. ↑ Dale Clarke. "British Artillery 1914-19. Heavy Artillery". Osprey Publishing, London, 2005. Pages 41-42
  6. ↑ The Big Guns At Dover WW2 World War Two at the Wayback Machine (archived December 21, 2007)
  7. ↑ Hewitt, Nick (2008). Coastal Convoys 1939-1945: The Indestructible Highway. Pen & Sword Maritime. ISBN 978-1-84415-861-4 (p. 109)
  8. ↑ Ford, Ken (2012), Run The Gauntlet - The Channel Dash 1942, Osprey Publishing, ISBN 978-1849085700 (pp. 33-36)
  9. ↑ The Dover War Memorial Project
  10. ↑ Copp, p82
  11. ↑ Stacey p. 354
  12. ↑ Batterie Todt Museum homepage
  13. ↑ Gander, Terry (2011). "Twentieth Century British Coast Defence Guns" (PDF). www.fsgfort.com. Fortress Study Group. Retrieved 13 April 2014.
  14. ↑ "Wanstone Battery". www.undergroundkent.co.uk. Underground Kent. Retrieved 13 April 2014.

External links

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