Chapter 3
The major British and Commonwealth offensives in Normandy typically began with a simultaneous salvo from massed artillery batteries announcing the start of a sustained bombardment. GOODWOOD was to be different.
THE ARTILLERY SHORTFALL
In October, 1941, Churchill foresaw that ‘Renown awaits the Commander who first, in this war, restores the artillery to its prime importance on the battlefield.’1 By 1944, the British artillery arm had most certainly regained its ‘prime importance’ based on the experience, equipment, and sheer professionalism acquired in the war years. In raw numbers, the Royal Artillery outnumbered the British infantry arm: the two arms by then accounting respectively for 22% and 19% of Army manpower, followed by the Royal Engineers with 9% while the Royal Armoured Corps accounted for a mere 4%.2 And in Montgomery, 21st Army Group indeed had a commander cognisant of the vital role of artillery.
The ubiquitous 25 pounder field gun.
Operation EPSOM had been delayed until the end of June mainly in order that shortages of artillery ammunition resulting from the great storm in the Channel could be made up.3 When the great operation commenced, it was with the support of over seven hundred guns. The infantry and armour remained throughout the ensuing battle under the ‘umbrella’ of artillery support. The arrival in Normandy of II. SS-Panzer Korps with its two armoured divisions turned the EPSOM offensive into a dogged defence of ground taken. But before the élite German force could come to grips with the British, its ground forces had first to pass under that artillery umbrella. 9. SS-Panzerdivision reported its assaults stopped by massed artillery described as being reminiscent of the First World War. (Although by the crude measure of guns-per-kilometre of front, the British artillery available for EPSOM was barely two-thirds that employed at the Somme, its close integration with the front line troops and responsiveness to their needs made it remarkably effective.) One SS officer’s battle report ended quoting Dante: ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here.’ Another SS officer reported on the events of 30 June,
Futile attempts to get the attack moving again. Each attempt saw the enemy artillery fire rise to hurricane force and smash the squads and platoons… the 9th and 10th SS-Panzer Divisions simply could advance no farther.4
The battery was reduced to a single Wespe.
Against an enemy underpinned by this wall of fire, unit élan and individual heroism could not prevail. These were novel experiences even for units accustomed to harsh fighting on the Russian front. An artilleryman of 9. SS-Panzerdivision recorded that on 1 July his battery of six Wespe self-propelled 10.5 cm guns was quickly reduced by counter-battery fire to his gun alone, which spent the day dodging incoming fire. Ammunition resupply was next to impossible. Communications were hampered since radio transmissions were rapidly detected, inviting enemy artillery concentrations, and telephone lines to the batteries from their remote radio emplacements were repeatedly cut by shells.5
The field telephone: undectable but its wires vulnerable to artillery fire.
By July, the Allies’ Normandy bridgehead was packed tight with military units. When hundreds of guns might be called upon to support a single corps action, finding the space for so many guns and their provisioning became a problem. For Operation GOODWOOD, some logistical difficulties were insurmountable. When the three divisions of VIII Corps crossed the waterways east of Caen and turned south through the minefields, they would be moving ever further from the supporting artillery, left behind north and west of the city. On paper, the guns allocated to the GOODWOOD operation looked impressive. However, by the time the leading regiments emerged from the minefield passages to reach the Start Line for the operation, they would already be close to the extreme range of some of the supporting batteries. Later in the morning, as it led the way into enemy territory, 29th Armoured Brigade would have to rely mainly on the guns of its accompanying 13th Royal Horse Artillery, whose three eight-gun batteries of self-propelled 25 pounders were apportioned between the three armoured regiments. And even those batteries would have to divide their time between moving and firing. To make matters worse, 2nd Army was experiencing a shortage of field artillery ammunition.6 For the field batteries within range, 500 rounds per gun could be spared, but overall the artillery support available fell short of the ideal.
The battlefield was still in range of naval artillery, and this would go some way to filling the gap. But still more was needed, and the army had turned to the strategic air forces.
WAITING AND WATCHING
In the small hours of 18 July, the forces arrayed to lead the morning’s assault awaited the dawn. The last vehicles had reached their assigned places for what remained of the night and engines were switched off. With maintenance tasks complete, vehicle crews grabbed a last opportunity to sleep. An officer still awake noted that,
Apart from the distant drone of a motor cycle, diminishing as it passed away up the column, and the snoring and coughs of my men… complete stillness settled on us… It was unbelievably quiet.’7
A mist lay over the trampled crop in the fields serving as parking lots for a mass of vehicles. Then, as the first troops on the ground were being roused for ‘stand to’ in the pre-dawn hour, there came from the north a distant, droning buzz, which rapidly resolved itself into the sound of aircraft. Men emerged from vehicles and shelters to stare upwards as ghostly silhouettes passed in the dark sky and began to drop marker flares on target areas behind the enemy lines. A Guardsman recalled,
Possibly the only time in the history of the 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards when all ranks were up before reveille was on July 18th, 1944, for at 05.00 hours a distant thunder in the air brought all the sleepy-eyed tank crews out of their blankets.
The noise grew steadily: a deep, pulsing throb from four-engined heavy bombers. The RAF Bomber Command Lancasters started to appear overhead a little after 05.00 hours. Southbound in groups of three, scattered across the sky in no particular formation, the stream of bombers became increasingly dense: an awesome spectacle accompanied by an overwhelming roar of engines. They flew unusually low, at barely three thousand feet. As the sun rose the black undersides of the big night bombers were silhouetted against the lightening sky.
Then, when the throb of multiple Rolls-Royce Merlin engines appeared to have reached its climax, there came a different cacophony of sound as the artillery to the rear opened up. This was ‘APPLE PIE 1’, the first phase of the morning’s complex artillery programme. While thousand pound bombs plunged from the night bombers onto distant enemy positions, and German antiaircraft guns opened up in reply, eight Royal Artillery Field Regiments backed up by one heavy and four medium regiments commenced counter-battery fire against known and suspected enemy Flak positions. This fire was to be maintained so long as heavy bombers were overhead, after which those same regiments would from H – 100 to H – 10 (that is, from 06.05 hours to 07.35) progressively transfer their attentions from Flak positions to counter-battery fire against enemy field gun, howitzer, and rocket emplacements.
An unusual sight: Bomber Command bombing in daylight.
In less than an hour from their first appearance, over nine hundred8 British heavy bombers (Halifaxes as well as Lancasters) had passed overhead, released their bombloads, and turned for home leaving huge pyres of dust and smoke over the German lines to the south. Their departure afforded the defenders little respite. As the counter-battery fire of the Army’s artillery reached a crescendo, it was supplemented by big guns of the Royal Navy. Six-inch shells from cruisers HMS Enterprise (seven guns) and HMS Mauritius (twelve guns) and enormous fifteen-inch shells from the two guns of monitor HMS Roberts worked-over known and suspected German gun positions on the flanks of the proposed battlefield.
Around 07.00 hours, more and more vehicles of the leading British units were starting engines. By now, the sun was rising in a blue sky, quickly dispelling the early mist of a summer morning. But away to the south, all that could be seen was an appalling cloud bank of smoke and dust, pulverized earth and debris thrown up by half-ton bombs and continually stirred by large-calibre shells. And now a different force appeared overhead. The medium bombers of the Ninth United States Army Air Force arrived: twin-engined bombers, B25 Mitchells and B26 Marauders, charged with raining 500 pound high explosive bombs on to the villages to the east of the corridor down which VIII Corps was shortly to advance: Cuverville, Giberville, and Démouville; and with laying a carpet of 260 pound fragmentation bombs over the corridor itself.
Medium bombers over Colombelles.
Soon after yet another Air Force made its appearance, this time the United States’ Eighth. These were the American heavy bombers, today reassigned from daylight raids over the heartlands of Germany. Unlike the British bombers, they flew at their accustomed high altitude: precisely arranged ‘boxes’ of B17 Flying Fortresses and B24 Liberators making their stately entrance over the battlefield. A British officer recalled,
the whole northern sky was filled with them as far as one could see – wave upon wave, stepped up one above the other and spreading out east and west till it seemed there was no room for any more… The bombers flew in majestically and with a dreadful, unalterable dignity, unloaded and made for home… Everyone was out of their vehicles now, staring in awed wonder till the last wave dropped their bombs and turned away. Then the guns took up in a steadily increasing crescendo the work which the bombers had begun.’ 9
While the task of the mediums of the Ninth was to shower the direct path of VIII Corps with fragmentation bombs, the heavies of the Eighth were to reach further back behind German lines. Their first targets were Troarn and the Dives valley to the east, from 07.00 hours. Successive waves visited the area south of the Caen to Paris railway with concentrations of 20 pound and 100 pound fragmentation bombs up until 09.30 hours.
THE BOMBING SHORTFALL
Unfortunately for the American mediums and their later wave of heavies, visibility around the VIII Corps objectives was poor. The corridor of the initial ground assault, roughly four miles long from Escoville to the Caen to Troarn railway and barely a mile across, was surrounded by the devastation of the earlier bombing. To the west the enormous metal works and to the east the foothills of the Bois de Bavent had been pummelled. Alongside the end of the corridor, the little town of Cagny had in the final ten minutes of the RAF assault received up to 650 tons of bombs. Delayed fusing of big 500 and 1,000 bombs meant substantial cratering,10 with dry Norman soil blasted high into the air and carried southwards on the breeze in clouds of increasing density. Many of the newly-arrived American bombers could not find their targets in the murk and a good quarter of the American heavies carried their bomb loads back to Britain.
This was understandable. Private soldiers and generals alike had little experience of seeing modern heavy bombers operating over the battlefield. Barring the invasion itself, Bomber Command so far supported Montgomery’s Normandy campaign on only three occasions: bombing German rear areas on the night of 14-15 June, Villers-Bocage on the afternoon and evening of 30 June, and Caen on the evening of 7 July. This last was the closest the heavy bombers had come to the troops on the ground. And an overriding concern of both soldiers and airmen was to avoid friendly casualties. To this end, on 7 July the bomb lines had been set far back from the front lines (actually, so far behind that little direct damage was inflicted on the main German defences). Harris insisted on a safety margin of six thousand yards. And even so, strenuous efforts were made to ensure that the bombing in progress did not ‘creep’ back towards friendly troops. As one bomber pilot recalled,
All the way from base right up to the target, we were working, as we put it, for the Government. But once the bombs were gone, then we were working for ourselves. So the final run-up time on “Government business” was critical, with everyone feeling: “If only we can get over the next three minutes, I stand a good chance of getting home.” There was a tendency to bomb at the earliest possible moment.’ 11
‘Working for the Government.’
The devastated City of Caen: to the north castle hill; south of the Orne River is the flattened suburb of Vaucelles and the main railway station.
Frequently, the bomb line would creep back as premature releases were emulated by following aircrews. Striving to overcome this tendency was the Master Bomber. He supervised the bombing raid from high above, calling on his deputies when the red aiming marker flares became obscured to ‘Back up the reds! Back up the reds!’
On the night of 7 July, the bombing was extremely accurate, and friendly casualties were averted. But they were averted at great cost. The following morning, the ground assault of Operation CHARNWOOD would run into a German line largely untouched by bombing which had fallen on empty rear areas and on the unfortunate inhabitants of Caen. And when after bitter fighting the city was finally reached, the rubble and devastation resulting from the bombing presented a serious obstacle to the would-be liberators. Similar means were adopted to achieve accuracy on 18 July. One German observed, ‘thousands of bombers. Each wave dropped smoke signals after they had unloaded, to indicate to the next wave to start dropping more bombs.’12 Not so far from the truth: these were the red flares designed to refresh the aiming points.
So, on seeing heavy bombers in direct support, the soldiers had a number of thoughts. One of these was concern that the bombs might fall short. On the morning of 18 July, some did.
Then came the Marauders, speedy and glistening white in the sun. A whistling scream and crash shook everyone’s attention away from the sky to find that a jettisoned bomb had fallen beside Fourth Troop, ‘B’ Squadron, just as the Troop Leader was talking to his men. Lieut. Cochrane was badly wounded and two men were killed.13
Against this, it should be noted that advancing close behind an artillery barrage carried the very real risk of being hit by ‘short’ rounds, as was to be seen later that morning. And once again, the caution of the air planners was to exact a price. The RAF had been asked to neutralize the three adjacent villages of Touffréville, Sannerville, and Banneville, using delay-fused High Explosive bombs since cratering was deemed acceptable in this area. As will be seen, the effect on the latter two villages was utterly devastating. But without informing the Army, Bomber Command had unilaterally decided that Touffréville, northernmost of the three, should not be made an aiming point for fear of hitting British troops. When they came to take Touffréville, British 3rd Division would pay a heavy price for being spared the possible risk of accidental damage.14
Set against soldiers’ fears of ‘shorts’ from the aerial bombardment was the tremendous morale uplift of seeing such extravagant pounding of the enemy, ‘Vastly impressive and encouraging to our own troops,’ the 11th Armoured Division historian recorded.15Closest of all to the aerial bombardment was the 3rd RTR group. Already in their Forming Up Place, the vehicle crews had nothing to do but watch the show while enjoying a last cigarette in the open air. ‘We heartily cheered. We thought nothing could survive such an onslaught.’16 But then, amid all the excitement, there came to some of the men a further thought. To what extent had the enemy really been suppressed?
HEAVY BOMBERS OVER THE BATTLEFIELD
In 1944 the use of medium and heavy bombers on the battlefield was a science in its infancy. It was politically charged. Only by massive effort in the course of the First World War had the British air arm won its independence from Army and Navy. The proudest heritage of the fledgling RAF of the 1920s was the Independent Air Force of 1918, the little force that had extended its reach beyond the battlefield to strike at the industry and the morale of Germany17. Through the lean years of the 1930s and the early days of the renewed war with Germany, the RAF had endured as junior partner of the three services: starved of resources pre-war, relegated to a support role with the Army in France, with the Senior Service in the defence of the coast and the Battle of the Atlantic. Now, sanctified by the memory of the Battle of Britain and enthused by the prospect of retaliation in the skies over Germany, the Royal Air Force was unwilling to play second fiddle to the Army. And despite its title, the United States Army Air Force felt likewise. Major General Carl Spaatz was no less determined than Air Marshall Sir Arthur Harris that the war should be won by strategic bombing. The two might disagree (violently!) on the tactics of the air war over Germany, but neither the United States’ strategic bombing force nor RAF Bomber Command would lightly countenance the diversion of their heavy bombers in direct support of Army operations.
German front line: the west-east road from the Orne River, past the S.M.N., to Cuverville, and the proposed British ‘Armoured Corridor’.
Politics (and war-winning strategies) apart, in 1944 the practical effectiveness of heavy bombers on the battlefield was little understood. In many quarters it was to remain so to the war’s end and beyond. At its simplest: bombing the battlefield had great appeal. While the payload of an artillery shell is typically something under ten percent of its overall weight, that of an aircraft-delivered bomb is virtually its entirety. Aircraft could deliver explosives to the battlefield in a volume and density unapproached by conventional artillery. A modern adage has it that: ‘cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate: the bombs never miss the ground.’ The point being made is of course that strategic bombing has until recent years been a rather blunt instrument. But the irony would have been lost on many 1944 generals. Until experience and analysis proved otherwise, it was easy to be convinced that little on the ground could survive such a bombardment as was delivered on the morning of 18 July. The truth was sometimes different.
Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris.
By 1944, the Allied strategic bombing forces’ equipment, training, and – increasingly – experience were geared to the destruction of urban and industrial areas. Even in the most heavily bombed targets, human beings have historically proved surprisingly resilient to the effect of high explosive. While Hamburg eventually lost 47% of its housing, 3% of the populace died; Frankfurt lost 33% of its housing, yet ‘only’ 1% of its people.18 Once targets moved from cities and towns to the countryside, the likely impact of bombs on military units was even less. The work of the British Operational Research Sections was later to reveal that the density of bombs required to make an area militarily impassible was inversely proportional to that area’s level of development. That is, while a density of five bombs per acre (typically achieved against a point target by fifty British heavy bombers) would obstruct a heavily built up area, achieving the same effect in open countryside would require up to forty bombs per acre of villages and fields. Such truths were counter-intuitive. And in July, 1944, these truths had yet to be evaluated. Even after ORS disseminated their findings, it was hard for the generals to accept that the awesome sight and sound of heavy bombers pulverizing the battlefield might not be achieving all that was hoped.
Nevertheless, some lessons were already being learned. An army accustomed to the ‘rolling barrage’ could easily accept the importance of advancing closely behind the bombardment. Troops might find ‘leaning on the barrage’ uncomfortable (the impact on advancing infantry of live shells bursting ahead has been likened to being punched in the body and face). Losses to ‘friendly fire’ occurred: worn barrels and faulty shells did lead to a proportion of rounds falling short. Nevertheless, it was recognized that these were minor concerns compared to the saving of life that could be achieved if the enemy’s positions could be taken before defenders emerged from hiding. Increasingly sophisticated artillery tactics were invented (or often, revived from the First World War). Artillery bombardments would stop long enough to tempt defenders out of their bunkers before renewing their fire; rolling barrages might end with smoke or noise-makers over the enemy positions as friendly troops closed the final yards. From the earlier bombing of Caen, it was clear that giving the enemy hours to recover was futile. Minutes and even seconds of respite might allow defenders to recover and defences to be manned.
The ground forces of GOODWOOD were to be ready to advance immediately following the aerial bombardment. And a further lesson had been learned. The bombing of Caen a week before, and the town of Cassino in Italy the preceding March, had in each case resulted in advancing forces being held up by the devastation wrought by their own bombardment. This would be avoided. The aerial choreography of GOODWOOD assigned the British heavy bombers the job of cratering the areas either side of the VIII Corps ‘corridor’, using heavy, delay-fused bombs. The American bombers which followed had smaller payloads but greater numbers of bomb hooks. A B17 bomber had forty hooks, compared to a Lancaster’s fourteen; one hook could drop a cluster of smaller bombs onto the corridor itself, ‘carpeting’ the avenue of attack with high explosive and fragmentation munitions designed to suppress the enemy without overly churning the ground. (Curiously, this sensible plan was not emulated for the Americans’ own Operation COBRA, a week later. Then, the resulting craters were to prove an unwelcome obstacle, particularly to wheeled vehicles.)
THE DEFENDERS’ EXPERIENCE
The first wave of bombers hit the German forces holding the western flank of the proposed advance. Lookouts posted in the Colombelles metalworks first heard, then saw the aerial armada approaching. Their worst fears were realised when the leading aircraft dropped coloured marker flares in their midst and then, even as men on the ground were being hastily roused into action, down came the first wave of bombs.
The men who had to submit to this carpet bombing were powerless in their helplessness, their entrenchments their only hope of survival. Most reckoned that their end was nigh.19
In the open ground between Colombelles and Cuverville stood a line of tanks ‘underpinning’ the forward infantry. These ten Panzer IV had arrived at midnight from the 22. Panzerregiment holding area around Emiéville to relieve the previous company there. The experienced tank men denied themselves the luxury of occupying their predecessors’ positions. Assuming these would by now have become known to the enemy, they formed a new security cordon. The ten tanks formed a single line, behind the east-west Cuverville to Colombelles road (the modern D226), spaced about twenty five metres apart. Their night was quiet, the men sleeping peacefully in or under their tanks. Then in the early morning the storm broke. Huge explosions were felt and seen; and before long the view towards the nearby factory complex in the west was obscured as fountains of earth were raised into the air. The wall of explosions marched over Colombelles in the west, angling south-eastward to hide Giberville as columns of dust and smoke merged into a solid cloud. The heavy bombardment was rapidly reducing the whole area to a hellish nightmare. The bombs appeared to the awestruck tank crews to be rolling across the countryside in waves. With no time to escape and nowhere to go, they felt trapped. One wave crashed down directly ahead of the position. A pause. Then by great good fortune, the next wave of bombs fell a few metres behind. The ten tanks in the line west of Cuverville had been spared, for the moment.
Fountains of earth and smoke were raised into the air.
Though they could not appreciate it, the ground these tanks stood on had not experienced the full weight of the Allied bombing. They were just far enough away from Target Area A to miss the worst effects of Bomber Command’s cratering. This was the bombardment they had witnessed falling around their left flank and rear before they were subjected to the fragmentation munitions of the Ninth U S Air Force. So survived, more or less intact, all the tanks. The crews however did not fare so well.
Quite apart from the physical danger, these events had a huge psychological impact. The morale effect of the enemy’s monstrous matériel superiority, bombs raining down from the air and drumfire from artillery, made even the most courageous lose heart. Our helplessness faced with such expenditure of matériel, and our own lack of antiaircraft support to counter it, could only have a depressing effect. 20
Closer still than the tanks to the maelstom of Colombelles were the infantry of 192. Panzergrenadier-Regiment. Hans Höller, commanding an armoured antitank detachment, recalls men shaking with nervous reaction, hardly knowing what to do; ‘We cursed this insane war.’21
As has been shown, the Allied armies of 1944 tended to have high expectations of heavy bombers over the battlefield. Hindsight, aided by the scientific analyses of Operational Research, was to conclude that heavy bombers were poor battlefield attack weapons.22 Given that defending German military units might be expected to be well dispersed and well dug-in, the GOODWOOD air plan was optimistic. As it happened, in the case of GOODWOOD some of that optimism was rewarded.
To the great annoyance of some of its commanders, the principal armoured formations of 21. Panzerdivision were positioned well forward. Given the importance of the ground east of Caen, and the extreme depth of the German defences, this was unusual. During the First World War, the Germans had evolved defensive tactics which minimized the numbers of troops exposed in the front lines. In the linear warfare of the western front, the forward trenches were ‘thinned out’ to the point that they were little more than a screen, or in more modern terminology, a ‘tripwire’. Multiple lines to the rear contained the main strength of the defenders. Here were the reserves, intended to recapture the front lines after the attackers had expended much of their force, moved beyond their own sources of supply and command control, occupied German positions which faced the wrong way for defence, and generally been worked-over by German artillery registered on known key points. It is worth noting that the popular image of 1916 German machine gunners in forward positions ‘hosing’ down advancing lines of Allied infantry is somewhat misguided. On the opening day of the Somme battle, the German machine guns which so devastated the British advance were most often 2,000 or even 3,000 yards behind the front lines. As in the Allied armies, medium and heavy machine guns continued to be employed in a manner more akin to artillery than infantry; as often as not they delivered indirect, ‘area’ fire rather than firing over open sights.23
The ten Panzer IV stood twenty-five metres apart.
By 1944, defence in depth had proved vital on the eastern front, where the Germans and their allies simply did not have the manpower to form a homogeneously strong line across vast distances. Here it was usual to hold the mobile reserves, destined to counter attack and restore lost ground, well back from the front. Mobility and concentration of force thereby achieved local fire and armour superiority and so made up for lack of numbers. With their extensive experience gained on the Steppes of Russia and the Ukraine, the combat veterans of 503. schwere Panzer-Abteilung had become used to operating as a mobile ‘fire brigade’ and became resentful if left in the front line. ‘I fully realise,’ wrote Tiger tank commander Alfred Rubbel,
that it was necessary to have tanks immediately behind the battle line as “corset stays” for the hard-fighting infantry formations that had been bled white, so as to stabilize their fighting morale... that requirement interfered with the tactically correct commitment.24
Some of the 503. Abteilung found their tactical deployment close behind the front line perplexing. Leutnant Freiherr von Rosen, in temporary command of the westernmost 3. Kompanie, recalled,
The battalion was an independent battalion, of the Army reserve, and therefore came under a division for a certain period of employment at the time of the main effort. When a particular mission was accomplished, we were moved to other critical points. That was the reason why the battalion was moved in the beginning of July from the Russian front where it had been engaged in heavy fighting to Normandy. My company was in Manneville, only three miles behind the front line. We were in a state of permanent readiness to be employed as events required. In my opinion for this task the battalion was located much too far forward. We – that is my battalion commander and all the company commanders – were fully aware of this and constantly represented that we should be in as position further back from which we would be able to move to meet the weight of any enemy breakthrough. But all our representations were turned down by a higher authority. We were under the 21. Panzerdivision.25
Such dissatisfaction was not unknown in the British Army, whose specialist units were frequently misunderstood and misused by senior officers to whom they were attached. The Germans went so far as to produce a special handbook of guidelines for generals ‘loaned’ a Tiger battalion (Guderian’s ‘Merkblatt über Tiger-Einsatz’), though from the comments of the ‘Tiger men’ this did not always lead to correct appreciation of a very specialized weapon.
Leutnant Freiherr von Rosen.
A simple explanation for the tanks’ unorthodox deployment so close to the front might have been the fear that without the close and visible support of the tanks, the battered and demoralized infantry of 16. Luftwaffenfelddivision might collapse altogether. In fact, the reason went deeper. There was little love lost between Generalmajor Edgar Feuchtinger, commanding 21. Panzerdivision, and his superior Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel, Oberbefehlshaber West. While both individuals were favourites of the Nazi party, their career paths differed greatly. Rommel was a hero of the First World War who had again distinguished himself in the 1940 France campaign and gone on to gain almost mythic reputation in North Africa. Feuchtinger was a proud individual with an independent turn of mind who might easily resent being reminded that his own rise through the Nazi party had not been achieved on the battlefield so much as in managing the great Nuremburg Parteitag rallies. Visiting the headquarters of 21. Panzerdivision on 15 July, the field marshal made critical reference to the unpreparedness of Feuchtinger’s division on the eve of invasion. In Rommel’s view, they had been too far from the landing areas to intervene in a timely fashion. He reminded Feuchtinger that, during the morning of 6 June, LXXXIV Korps commander General der Artillerie Marcks had personally taken command of 22. Panzerregiment, in a nail-biting fury and before witnesses blaming Feuchtinger’s absence for his division’s failure to throw the British back into the sea. It was on Marcks’ initiative that the only major armoured counterthrust of the day took place. As it turned out, it was too little too late.
Feuchtinger was not pleased. Nor was he awed by his superior. He rose to his own defence: showing the written orders he had received regarding his deployments and reminding Rommel of how elements of the division had been detached to other parts of the invasion front, not least his entire antitank battalion, which had been sorely mishandled on 6 June. He went further, pointing out that Rommel had neglected the opportunity to review the division’s deployments during his visits on 11 and 18 May.26 As tempers rose, Rommel may have sensed that he was losing the argument. He let slip a comment on Feuchtinger’s absence from his unit on the invasion night. (It was notorious that the invasion had caught him by surprise as he spent the night in Paris with a black showgirl.) Well might Feuchtinger respond by pointing out Rommel’s own absence in Germany during those critical hours. Both men parted on bad terms. Feuchtinger for his part resolved to carry out to the letter his superior’s orders for forward deployment of the armour, regardless of the consequences. So it was that both the tank regiment of 21. Panzerdivision and the attached Tiger battalion found themselves immediately behind the front line. Just where RAF Bomber Command was planning its heaviest concentrations.
Feuchtinger rose to his own defence against Rommel.
In the early morning of 18 July, the dozen Tiger tanks of Leutnant von Rosen’s 3. Kompanie of the 503. schwere Panzer-Abteilung were dispersed under trees at Manneville. Von Rosen himself was asleep under his Tiger tank 311. While three crew members slept in the tank itself, von Rosen and Unteroffizier Werkmeister preferred the cool air to be found in their entrenchment dug between the tank’s multiple layers of overlapping roadwheels. Von Rosen recalls that, about 06.00 hours, ‘I was awakened by the thunderous sounds of aircraft engines. As I crept out from under my tank, I saw the first bomber waves approaching.’ A stick of bombs impacted some distance away. The blast wave hit him like a hammer blow and he sensed the mighty Tiger tank shaking with the concussion.
The walled, pentagonal ‘haras’ (stud farm) of Manneville.
1 = defensive artillery positions (see page 74).
2 = 3.Kompanie Tiger tanks initial position.
3 = route of von Rosen’s surviving tanks around the haras.
4 = Tiger 213 (see page 189).
Note the concentration of bombing, affecting only the eastern side of the haras. (Details provided by R. Freiherr von Rosen.)
From this moment on, all concentration areas were subject to air bombardment which lasted for two and one half hours without interruption. We were located in the very centre of the bombardment area.
This was not strictly the case, though he could be forgiven for imagining it to be true. In fact, the walled estate in which von Rosen’s company of a dozen operational Tiger tanks straddled the western extremity of Target ‘H’. This first stage of the bombing was broadly accurate. Most of the stream of southbound bombers flew an accurate course with few ‘shorts’ or ‘overs’. In consequence much of the haras was spared. Few bombs from the first wave fell on the open, western half of the estate. A single line of bombs marched north to south, one leaving a crater adjacent to the main stable block. A few smaller bombs hit the kitchen gardens between the farm buildings and the château. But though rocked by blast, the château itself was spared (for the time being; more extensive damage would occur as the front lines moved over the estate). Ironically, in seeking the tree-cover camouflage of the wooded eastern half of the estate, von Rosen’s company had placed themselves under the fringe of the main target area, the corner of the estate hardest hit by the bombing.
Harder hit still was the ground further east. Beyond the eastern boundary of the Manneville haras the accuracy of the bombing was marked by a five hundred yard wide avenue of devastation, beginning around Sannerville and extending southwards, east of Manneville, over Guillerville (generally referred to in 1944 as ‘Cuillerville’) and Emiéville. The dust and smoke from the first detonations tended to drift away south west, enabling the bombers to continue for some time before the target area became obscured. Much of that fatal avenue was left densely pockmarked by the big craters. At the northern end of the target area, a swathe of devastation extended through Banneville to Sannerville. Buildings were smashed and the single-track railway uprooted. Even so, the concentration of craters was somewhat less than at the epicentre. Consequently, though the dispersed 1. and 2. Kompanie Tiger tanks were blasted and their crews concussed, nevertheless most of the heavy tanks escaped outright destruction. Southward, at the heart of Target H, the villages received special attention and were reduced to featureless rubble. Where had stood the stone houses of Guillerville and Emiéville, craters now overlapped one another. Roads were obliterated. And in this area was lost the greater part of 22. Panzerregiment.
Accounts vary regarding the total number of Panzer IV available to 22. Panzerregiment on 18 July: some suggest as few as twenty five, while most favour a figure closer to fifty. On one thing nearly all accounts agree. In the assembly area around Emiéville barely a half-dozen of the regiment’s tanks survived the bombardment in sufficiently good state to have their mobility restored.
Felwebel Korflür commanded one of the Panzer IV relieved at midnight to return from screening Colombelles. Rejoining the main body of the regiment around 02.00 hours, he and his crew completed their routine maintenance work and by 05.30 were ready to grab some rest.
The devastated village of Sannerville. The Caen-Troarn road can just be made out, and further north traces of the Caen-Troarn railway line.
No sooner had I crawled under my tank, when suddely I heard a buzzing and growling of enemy air formations. On the horizon I could see a great number of oncoming aircraft, and I had second thoughts about my looked-for rest. Wherever they were going, someone was going to catch it! Suddenly, I saw something floating down, and thought of tin-foil strips. [“Stanniolstreifen”, the device code named “Window” by the British, designed to blind radar receivers.] The squadrons came ever nearer and the “tin-foil strips” turned out to be bombs.’ Korflür and his crew had only seconds to prepare for the inevitable. ‘I believe my waking senses have experienced nothing like that first wave. Three of my comrades could not take it any more. They ran away and I saw no more of them. After that first wave everyone was fairly panic stricken. We wanted to get our camouflage sorted out, but quickly became aware that fighter bombers were coming, intent on finishing us off. I passed that next wave under my tank.’ Around 09.00 hours, the ordeal ended. ‘Emiéville and our formation area looked terrible. Some of the tanks had disappeared. The whole avenue had simply vanished. Crater upon crater made it almost impossible to make out the road. Still, it was possible to get six Panzer IV started up. Towards midday we moved off with these tanks to new positions. Emiéville will never be forgotten by those who survived…
Another survivor had a narrow escape. Hans-Jürgen Eggers was a radioman, taking shelter with seven other men under his own 4. Kompanie tank.
Uncounted bombers laid a carpet over the land… the bombs fell ever nearer, the earth trembled… But we were lucky and our tank escaped a direct hit, although it slid sideways. Our way out was buried and we had to dig. This went on for hours, until first one then all the rest of us were freed. I myself lost consciousness for about two hours and could hardly breathe. When I finally came around, I could no longer recognise the surroundings. Where previously an orchard had stood now there was only a lunar landscape… The dead were buried and the wounded crawled to the aid post. Our driver had lost his hearing. Weintz had injured his back. Kampsmeyer suffered a head injury. I got away with convalescing in a rest home in Jort[near Falaise].27
The bulk of Oppeln-Bronikowski’s 22. Panzerregiment had been smashed by the bombing. Even among the few Panzer IV which could be restored to some sort of running order, a number were later found broken down on roadsides a short way from their assembly area. It is far from certain how many – if any – of these actually participated in combat on 18 July.
In the Manneville haras, under their tank, von Rosen and Werkmeister pressed themselves into the earth as shock waves pummelled them.
It was like Hell and I am still astonished that I ever survived it. I was unconscious for a while after a bomb had exploded just in front of my tank, almost burying me alive.
Both Werkmeister and von Rosen were hurled into a corner of their dugout, concussed and covered in earth. Only slowly did consciousness return, and meanwhile the nightmare continued with only occasional, short pauses. Von Rosen recalls that he simply lay under his tank, hands clapped to his ears, biting his blanket. He later estimated that this might have gone on for over four hours; in fact it was less than two. But the ordeal could not be measured in minutes or hours. It was impossible to hear anything. It was as if we were dead. It was so nerve shattering that we couldn’t even think… One could say to oneself, will there never be an end to these explosions?28
Then,
the air bombardment stopped suddenly, and the following silence was uncanny.
When it was clear that the raid was ended, von Rosen emerged from his shelter, deafened and dishevelled. This part of the park with its well-tended orchards had become a moonscape of overlapping craters, the woodlands now sparse and shattered. The world was grey.
I could see that another tank, about thirty metres away, had received a direct hit which had set it on fire instantly.
This was Unteroffizier Westerhausen’s Tiger, now a flaming wreck. Obergefreiter Bleidiesel had witnessed its destruction:
Finding myself outside my own Tiger 321, twenty five metres from Westerhausen’s tank, I had been waiting my opportunity since the beginning of the bombardment to slip into the trench his crew had dug under his tank. Suddenly, the tank received a hit full-on. The crew disappeared.
No trace was found of Westerhausen or his crew.
Clambering over severed tree trunks, von Rosen came to a great crater, and alongside it another tank ‘turned upside down by the blast.’
This was Oberfeldwebel Sachs’ Tiger 313. Two crewmen and two of the maintenance company had disappeared under the overturned behemoth; some time later Sachs and two survivors were dug out alive.
And, when I tell you that the tanks weighed 58 tons and were tossed aside like playing cards, you will see just what a Hell we found ourselves in. It was next to impossible to see anything as so much dust had been thrown up by the explosions. It was like being in a very thick fog.
Discipline took over; von Rosen began an objective survey of the damage.
As far as my company was concerned: two Tigers were completely neutralized; two others were so badly damaged that they couldn’t be employed. All the tanks were completely covered with earth, and the gun turrets had been thrown completely out of adjustment by the shock effect. Fifteen men of the company were dead; two further had committed suicide during the bombardments; another had to be sent to a mental hospital for observation. The psychological shock of these terrrible exchanges remained with us for a long time.’29
Von Rosen’s own tank, Tiger 311, which had sheltered him throughout the bombing, had received damage to the engine compartment and was unserviceable. It was later left to Panzerfährer Siehl, the surviving driver of the inverted Tiger 313, to take charge of 311 as a captured Sherman towed it back to the workshops (whereupon Siehl himself finally fainted and was taken to hospital in Paris).
SUMMARY AND ASSESSMENT
The Germans in the sector expected an imminent attack. They did not expect the sheer volume of bombardment that initiated the battle. The shock was numbing: both for those directly under the bombs but also for those viewing from afar, awed by the sheer extravagance with which the enemy loosed explosives across the countryside.
The Allied attack benefited enormously from the bombers’ ‘kicking in the front door’. The tank squadrons plunging into the narrow armoured ‘corridor’ made their first move untroubled by serious opposition. But further ahead, the story would be different. Key village strong points had been left largely intact. Emplaced artillery pieces remained mostly operational.
Lastly, it should be noted that two key German strongpoints lay outside the designated bomb zones. Sitting squarely across the armoured divisions’ planned advance were two sturdily constructed former priories: le Prieuré, a mile north of Cagny, and le Mesnil Frémentel, a half-mile to Cagny’s north west. Each was garrisoned by infantry, and around each was emplaced one of Becker’s ten-gun mobile batteries. Each was to cause annoyance and delay to the armoured advance.
Within the walled farm complex of le Mesnil Frémentel lay the headquarters of I. Bataillon, 125. Panzergrenadier-Regiment , and around the perimeter the underground command bunkers of the battalion’s three grenadier companies. At his headquarters outside the north west corner of the wall, the 3. Kompanie commander Leutnant Gerhardt Bandomir was just starting his breakfast when the waves of bombers appeared.
Our first thought was that they were on their way to bomb the cities of Germany, which depressed us. But suddenly the first wave of aircraft loosed their bombs, then the second. They fell on the Emiéville sector, over to the east… Then the gates of Hell opened up!
Like so many others that morning, Bandomir lost track of time. Sitting in the dugout with his staff, unable to do anything but await the inevitable, he found it hard to distinguish the distant bombing from the subsequent artillery barrage.
Thanks to our deep and solid entrenchments, well covered, the loss of life was relatively slight. But as a demonstration of enemy air supremacy it showed up our own weakness. The psychological impact of the bombardment was severe.
The farm buildings and the well-constructed bunkers stood the test. ‘Every square metre of ground in our sector was dug-over. My bunker was hit two or three times but it held out.’ Bandomir had survived bombardments in the harsh combat of the Russian front. Nevertheless, ‘I came later to the conclusion that a new form of warfare was born this 18 July: a first glimpse of the nuclear age.’30
References
1
‘Against Odds’, Dominick Graham, 1999, ISBN 0-333-66859-6, p 133
2
General Return of the Strength of the British Army for the quarter ending 30th September 1944, AG Stats: W073/162; unpublished John Robert Peaty thesis, ‘The British Manpower Crisis, 1944’, King’s College, University of London, p 333
3
‘Montgomery and “Colossal Cracks” The 21st Army Group in Northwest Europe’, Stephen Ashley Hart, 2000, ISBN 0-275-96162-1, p 98 & 120
4
‘Hill 112: Cornerstone of the Normandy Campaign’, Major J J How, 1984, ISBN 0-7183-0540-X, p 138; ‘Comrades to the End’, Otto Weidinger, 1998, ISBN 0-7643-0593-X, p 308
5
‘9. SS-Panzer-Division’, H Fürbringer, 1984, ISBN 2-902171-17-X, p 227-229
6
French, p 118
7
Ellis, ‘Welsh Guards’, p 175
8
Sources do not agree on the total numbers of bombers engaged in the three waves. Various accounts give between 942 and 1056 Bomber Command aircraft in the first wave. Data included in Staff College documentation and battlefield tours from 1947 into the 1990s contain obvious errors and inaccuracies. Moreover, the precise number of aircraft which missed targets or aborted bombing altogether due to visibility can only be guessed at. Numbers of aircraft used herein generally accord with the most authoritative study of recent years: ‘Air Power at the Battlefront’, Ian Gooderson, 1998, ISBN 0-7146-4211-8
9
‘Victory in the West’ vol 1, L F Ellis, 1962, ISBN 0-89839-193-8, p 339
10
Some histories mislead over the cratering of Cagny. See Appendix 8 for this and other details of the bombing.
11
Flight Lieutenant Linacre, quoted in ‘Caen: Anvil of Victory’, A McKee 1964, p 226.
12
Leutnant Hans Höller, quoted in McKee, p 280
13
Bishop, 23rd Hussars, p 70
14
‘Operations of Eighth Corps’, G S Jackson, 1948, p 100
15
‘Taurus Pursuant: A History of 11th Armoured Division’, E W I Palamountain, 1945, p 23
16
Close, p 117
17
A particularly good study of the Independent Air Force is ‘First of the Many’, Alan Morris, 1968.
18
‘Beneath the City Streets’, P Laurie, 1970, ISBN 0 7139 0114 4, chapter IV. Note that secondary effects of bombing such as ‘firestorms’ did under certain circumstances greatly increase the death rate. But even with the advent of nuclear weapons, explosive blast remains a fairly inefficient killer of human beings, especially those with access to shelters. Far more efficient as incapacitants of large numbers of people are modern chemical and biological agents: nerve gases, bacteria, and especially viruses.
19
Kortenhaus diary, p 129
20
Kortenhaus diary, p 136
21
Höller, quoted in McKee, p 283
22
‘Heavy and Medium Bombers in the Tactical Close Air Support Role’, Ian Gooderson, Journal of Strategic Studies, vol 15 no 3, 1992, p 392.
23
An authoritative source is ‘Machine Guns of World War 1’, Robert Bruce, 1997, ISBN 1 85915 078 0, see also Graham, p 36-37
24
‘The Combat History of Schwere Panzer-Abteilung 503’, ed A Rubbel, 2000, ISBN 0-921991-55-X, p 19
25
Von Rosen, interview at Staff College, Camberley, 1979
26
Perrigault, p 354
27
This and other passages quoted in Kortenhaus diary
28
Von Rosen, interview at Staff College, Camberley, 1979
29
Von Rosen, interview at Staff College, Camberley, 1979
30
Kortenhaus diary