Osprey - Fortress 037 - D-Day Fortifications in Normandy.pdf

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D-DAY
FORTIFICATIONS
IN NORMANDY
STEVEN J ZALOGA
ILLUSTRATED BY HUGH JOHNSON
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
FORTRESS • 37
D-DAY
FORTIFICATIONS
IN NORMANDY
STEVEN J ZALOGA
ILLUSTRATED BY HUGH JOHNSON
Series editors
Marcus Cowper and Nikolai Bogdanovic
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
Contents
Introduction
Design and development
Case 3a: Normandy • Principles of defense • Fortification construction
4
5
14
31
34
Tour of the site
Shore defense • Fortified strongpoints • Coastal artillery fortifications • Other fortifications
The living site
The site in war
Pre-invasion attacks • Naval gun duels • Utah Beach • Bloody Omaha
Gold Beach • Juno Beach • Sword Beach
Aftermath
The site today
Further reading
Index
57
59
62
64
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
Introduction
German defenses along the Normandy beaches were part of the larger Atlantic
Wall fortifications, intended to defend Fortress Europe from an Allied
amphibious invasion. Hitler’s grandiose scheme for impregnable coastal
defenses proved unrealistic due to the enormous length of the coast to be
defended and the limited resources available to the exhausted German war
economy. Due to strategic misperceptions about the Allied plans, German
coastal defenses were concentrated on the Pas de Calais rather than in
Normandy. In addition, German doctrine preferred to concentrate coastal
defenses around key ports and to repel amphibious landings away from ports
using mobile forces. When Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was appointed to
take command of the invasion front in late 1943, he re-examined the basic
assumptions about coastal defense and began a program to enhance
fortifications along the Normandy coast. Rommel believed that any Allied
invasion would have to be stopped immediately on the beach, and so insisted
that more effort be made to defend the coastline between the ports. His most
important contribution to the defenses was an extensive program of
improvised beach obstructions to complicate any landing attempt. As a part
of this program, there was a belated effort in the spring of 1944 to fortify the
Côte de Nacre in lower Normandy, the D-Day beach area. German resources
were inadequate to rapidly construct defenses-in-depth along the most
threatened areas of the coast, and those along the Normandy beaches were
hasty and incomplete at the time of the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944. The
German defenses quickly failed when assaulted by Allied forces on D-Day, a
reminder of the military adage of Frederick the Great, “who defends
everything, defends nothing.”
The most potent fortification to
take part in the D-Day fighting
was the Crisbeq battery of
3/HKAA.1261 located near Saint-
Marcouf. Only two H683 casemates
for its four Skoda 210mm K39/40
guns were completed by D-Day.
After engaging in prolonged gun
duels with Allied warships off Utah
Beach on D-Day, the battery was
the scene later of intense ground
combat, which earned its
commander, Oberleutnant zur See
Ohmsen, the Knight’s Cross.
(NARA)
4
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
Design and development
Coastal defense had been the responsibility of the Kriegsmarine (navy) since
the reforms of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1888. Kriegsmarine doctrine focused on the
defense of German ports, not on repelling major amphibious attacks. In World
War I, the Kriegsmarine’s resources proved to be inadequate for coastal defenses
outside of Germany, for example in Flanders, so the army had to be brought in
to assist. After World War I, the Kreigsmarine remained responsible for coastal
defense, so the army ignored this mission. German army fortification
engineering concentrated on land defense, a capability influenced by the
experiences of World War I and brought up to date with the construction of the
Westwall (Siegfried Line) along the French border in the late 1930s.
1
At the time of World War II, the Kriegsmarine did not have an autonomous
coastal defense force, but rather the coastal defense mission was the
responsibility of regional commanders. In the case of the Normandy beach
area, Sea Defense Command-Normandy led by Rear Admiral Hennecke in
Cherbourg was subordinate to Adm. Krancke of Naval Command West. From a
naval perspective, coastal defenses included short-range submarines, torpedo
boats, mine warfare and coastal artillery. Due to the limited space here, the
primary focus is on the Navy’s shore-based coastal defenses.
The Kreigsmarine coastal artillery was considered an adjunct of the sea force,
and its traditional missions were to engage enemy ships near the shore, protect
harbor entrances and support friendly warships in combat. Engagement of land
targets and defense against enemy landing forces were only secondary
missions. As a result, the Kriegsmarine coastal artillery force was based
primarily on large-caliber guns suitable for engaging enemy warships rather
than on small-caliber artillery more suitable for use against large numbers of
landing craft. The Kriegsmarine’s coastal defense efforts in France were
concentrated near the ports both due to its traditional doctrine, and the
widespread view that the Allies’ main objective would be a port.
The Kriegsmarine did not have the resources to conduct a defense along the
thousands of kilometers of coastline under German control in 1941, so once
again the army was gradually brought in to assume more and more responsibility
for this mission. This began piecemeal in the autumn of 1940 when the army’s
artillery branch was brought in to reinforce the navy’s coastal batteries for
planned operations against Great Britain, including the construction of fortified
long-range artillery positions on the Pas de Calais. When Operation Sealion
failed to materialize, the mission of the Wehrmacht forces in France shifted from
offense to defense. Gradually, German infantry divisions being used for
occupation duty took over more and more of the coastal defense mission.
In 1941–42 the German occupiers began to consider how to deal with future
threats, and the planning concentrated on the most likely objectives such as
ports and harbors. Starting in December 1941, the OB West (Commander-in-
Chief West) began to designate some of these ports as fortified areas
(Festungsbereichen). The port defenses would include both seaward and
landward approaches since the Wehrmacht worried that the Allies could stage
airborne landings behind the ports. These initial defensive efforts were quite
modest due to a lack of resources and included ordinary field entrenchments as
well as concrete fortifications.
1. For further information on the Siegfried Line, see: Neil Short, Fortress 15:
Germany’s West Wall
(Osprey:
Oxford, 2004)
5
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