A few years before, even experts would have boggled at the state of Cherbourg, and would have agreed that even its partial rehabilitation must take many months. In the war years, however, the Allies had learnt much of the science of clearing ports and enabling them in a short time to handle a greater quantity of traffic than that for which they had been originally designed.
A notable example was Naples. The Germans had been at great pains to block the port of Naples and destroy not only the port facilities, but the installations which provided the power, light and water for the port. Yet British and American engineers and salvage personnel went to work with such skill, teamwork and friendly rivalry that the shambles which had been Naples harbour soon became a workable port, the capacity of which rose day by day until it was far beyond its original peacetime capacity. The existing jetties were cleared; one hundred and seventy wrecks were lifted and moved; new jetties were built upon the hulls of sunken ships. Thus the wartime Naples which rose from the ruins left by the Germans achieved the amazing feat of handling a greater weight of freight than the port of New York. Not only did Naples supply the Allied armies in Italy, but it was able to handle the additional commitment of being the point of departure for most of the convoys for the invasion of the south of France.
The experience which the Allies had gained at Naples stood them in good stead at Cherbourg. This was concerned not only with the developments of methods but also with the development of port-clearance and salvage “weapons.” At Naples the latter had been in short supply and inadequate. At Cherbourg new implements were available, among them a plentiful supply of underwater welding and oxyacetylene cutting plants and fire-fighting appliances.
In the clearance of a damaged and blocked port the navy is responsible for clearing everything up to the point at which the delivery of cargo from a ship normally ends. In other words, the navy is responsible for everything that floats and for moorings and the berths of ships alongside jetties. From that point, it is the responsibility of the military Port Repair Organisation to clear the quayside of obstructions and put the landward facilities and organisation into working order.
The mines which the Germans had strewn on the bottom of Cherbourg harbour were of types which might not reveal their presence until they had been swept over several times. The sweeping of a harbour is at the best of times a tricky job both technically and from the point of seamanship, and Cherbourg had to be swept for magnetic and acoustic operated mines. When the harbour had been swept once the job had to be started all over again, for the sweep passing over a mine would only have given the mine one “click,” and some of the German mines had to have eight or ten “clicks” before they exploded.
Only if the harbour had been swept for all types of mines a dozen times or more, and there was certainty that no further mines had been dropped by aircraft, could the harbour therefore be considered as “swept.” Even then there would have been an element of uncertainty, for if the Germans could design a mine which required several “clicks” before the one which exploded it, they might well have designed a mechanism which would lie inert for even longer, although it grew more dangerous every time a ship or a sweep passed over it.
To work on the principle of the straightforward sweeping of the harbour would therefore have taken a very considerable time, particularly as enemy aircraft were frequently over the harbour and might be dropping more mines, and time was at a premium for the use of the port was most urgently desired by the Supreme Allied Command.
Fortunately, however, this problem had been anticipated and steps had been taken long before D-day to solve it.
The solution of the problem was the use of “human minesweepers.” These “human minesweepers” were underwater bomb disposal experts who could render mines harmless when they were found. When that had been done the safe mines could be raised in order to make assurance doubly sure and to avoid them becoming foul of ships’ anchors and cables.
These “human minesweepers” were young men between nineteen and twenty-two years of age who had undergone a difficult and rigorous training for their task. They were all volunteers. They were first trained on dry land on the various types of German mines which they were likely to meet. Then they were trained in the use of shallow-water diving apparatus until they were quite at home under water. The next step was to train them on the mines under water. For this training, of course, the explosive charges had been removed from the mines, but otherwise nothing was made easy for them during their training. It was appreciated that they would have to work on the bottom of harbours where the mud would soon be stirred up so that the mines would be lying in a thick opaque soup. They therefore underwent their final underwater training on the bed of the Lower Thames, where the mud is as thick as it is likely to be anywhere. In these conditions they had to work entirely by the sense of touch, for the visibility was seldom more than a very few feet and often less than a foot. They were taught to move along the bottom like a crab, and to do so very gently, for it was known that the Germans had evolved trip wires and other traps for unwary divers.
These men had to be physically tough as well as possessed of a high degree of fearlessness and coolness. It was found that many of them failed to qualify during their training because they were not sufficiently resistant to the cold. It must be remembered that the low age limits meant that none of them could have had any extensive experience of diving. The vast majority of them had none.
The bottom of Cherbourg harbour was described by an expert on mines, anti-sweeping devices and other devilish contrivances as a “professor’s paradise.” There is no question that it was a seaman’s nightmare.
One good thing could be said about Cherbourg on its capture, the entrances through the breakwaters had not been blocked by wrecks. This was not because the Germans saw no necessity for such a step—they sank ships in the entrances to other harbours—but because they did not have at Cherbourg enough ships of a size suitable for this work.
The fact that the entrances were not blocked by wrecks made the Allies the more wary, for they suspected that the Germans would have laid mines in the hope that an Allied ship or two would do the work for them by being blown up and sunk in the entrances. Thus it was that the initial entry into Cherbourg harbour from the sea was made very gingerly by very small craft, the commanding officers of which had to think in terms of the magnetic field of their vessels and the sound of their engines and screws. Thus they almost drifted in, having stopped their engines well outside the gaps between the breakwaters.
German mines in a railway wagon at Cherbourg.
For the same reason much of the minesweeping and clearing of the harbour was done from small boats and even from rubber dinghies.
The first vessel to enter Cherbourg harbour was a British naval Motor Launch. This ML was sweeping as she entered the harbour and no sooner was she past the breakwaters than her sweeps became foul of her first “catch.” It was obviously something strange and the crew of the ML accordingly hove in their sweep very gently indeed, wondering what sort of “horror” they had got hold of. When the “horror” finally broke surface they saw that they had caught a large section of a crashed German Heinkel bomber!
Other strange things were brought to the surface from the bottom of Cherbourg harbour as well as German infernal machines. One of the “human minesweepers” treasures one half of a hundred franc note which he found in the mud—an indication of how thorough the search had to be.
The clearing of Cherbourg harbour and the rehabilitation of the port was a joint Anglo-American undertaking. It was, of course, in the American area and would be used chiefly for the landing of reinforcements and supplies for the American army, while those for the British army continued to flow into France through the “Mulberry” harbour at Arromanches. Nevertheless, while the Americans did wonders with the jetties and landing stages and the port facilities in general, the clearance of the mines and “horrors” from the bed of the harbour was done by British personnel, w
orking for the most part from the surveying ship HMS Franklin under the command of Commander E. J. Irving, RN. Our American Allies realised that we had had longer and more varied experience in dealing with different types of German mines, explosive obstructions, and “booby traps.” Moreover, in HMS Franklin the Royal Navy had a ship which had been specially fitted and equipped to deal with the problems likely to be encountered. Among other equipment HMS Franklin carried a number of small wooden flat-bottomed boats for harbour searching and surveying. These were fitted with small echo-sounding machines which at once recorded the fact if the boat was passing over a pronounced unevenness on the bottom. Such unevennesses were nearly always wrecks, and their position, size and the way in which they lay on the bottom could more often than not be accurately plotted by passing over it several times at different places and in different directions and recording each time the readings of the echo-sounding machine.
Although the searching, surveying and clearance of mines from Cherbourg harbour was done by the British, the American salvage organisation did great work in raising or disposing of wrecks. This organisation was commanded by Commodore W. A. Sullivan, USN, Chief of the United States Naval Salvage. For his work he was afterwards decorated with the CBE by Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Andrew Cunningham. Before, working on the clearance of ports in Northern France Commodore Sullivan had been in charge of raising the French trans-Atlantic liner Normandie which became the USS Lafayette, in New York Harbour, and had subsequently done much good work in the ports of North Africa and Sicily and at Salerno.
The work of clearing and rehabilitating Cherbourg harbour went forward rapidly despite the destruction and the difficulties left by the enemy. No chances were taken, and yet it was not long before ships could use the sheltered anchorage of the great harbour. The first ships to enter the port with supplies for the armies were four “Liberty” ships. Men watched with bated breath as they entered the harbour, steaming dead slow, but the mine clearance experts were confident. Their confidence was justified. Each one of the ships anchored safely in her appointed berth and was very soon discharging her cargo into DUKW’s and lighters and on to the flat “Rhino” ferries.
Docks at Cherbourg after initial clearance.
From that moment the capacity of Cherbourg harbour increased rapidly. By early September it was handling half its full capacity, and not long afterwards as much as 12,000 tons a day were being landed in the port. Cherbourg, like other ports captured by the Allies in both Southern and Northern Europe, was before long handling a far greater quantity of shipping and cargo than it had ever known even in the most prosperous years of peace. DUKW’s were for ever plying to and fro between ships and shore, dashing from one element to another along sloping “hards” specially built for them. Along the water-front were immense stacks of packing cases of military supplies, each of them served by a dozen or more of those fascinating contraptions which are half-trolley and half-lift so that they can carry a load and lift it into its appointed place on top of the dump, practically in one motion. All along these dumps there was always a row of lorries, backed into the dump and being rapidly loaded while their drivers snatched a hurried snack and a smoke before taking the wheel of a loaded vehicle. Day and night the work went on without a break. At first men were inclined to be nervous about lights, but as the Allied Air Forces moved into France, drove back the Luftwaffe, and gave Cherbourg a growing assurance of security, arc lights were used with impunity.
And meanwhile the petrol pipe lines of “Operation Pluto” were laid across the Channel, pumping stations were set up, and the pipes ran ever-growing distances across the land of France, their delivery ends keeping always as close as possible to the front line.
The cause of anxiety changed from the ability of the Allies to clear a port and increase its unloading capacity to the upkeep of the roads, and particularly those of the Cotentin Peninsula which had in many places been badly broken up by bombing and by shell fire. Along them gangs of German prisoners were kept at work under guard—working to ensure that the armies pursuing their countrymen did not outrun the supplies which the navies and merchant navies were delivering in such quantities.
After the great break-through of the American army at St Lo part of that army swung westwards into Brittany and finally confined the Germans whom they had driven before them into a narrow perimeter around the great French naval base of Brest.
It was at that time considered that the capture of Brest would be a valuable contribution to the solution of the supply problems of our armies. It was an excellent and large deep-water harbour. It was certainly farther to the westward, but it was found that the railway had for the most part miraculously survived. At that time we required a deep-water port which could take supplies shipped direct from the United States. If ships went direct to Cherbourg from the United States they would have to shape a course up the comparatively narrow waters between Ushant and the Scilly Isles with the U-boat nest at Brest close on the southern flank. There was no denying that the U-boats were still a very real danger, particularly since the “schnorkel” device had just made its appearance. This device enabled the U-boats to remain submerged while ventilating or charging the electric batteries, and even enabled them to proceed on their main diesel engines while submerged. It therefore reduced the reliance which could be placed on patrols, and particularly air patrols, to keep the U-boats away from the convoy route and the focal points of the sea-lanes. Here, then, was another very good reason why the seizure of Brest was very desirable.
A combination of these reasons led to the decision to lay siege to, and finally to assault the fortress of Brest.
Before the final assault on Brest took place, however, other events had taken place which greatly altered the general situation and made it unnecessary to set store upon the possession of Brest as a supply port for the armies. This was as well, for when Brest finally fell to the Allies it was found to be so badly smashed and encumbered with wrecks that it would have needed many months of work to enable it to handle any appreciable quantities of supplies.
These events, which had changed the whole aspect of the supply problem, had happened in both south and north.
Assault forces from the US VI Corps file ashore near St Tropez in southern France during Operation Dragoon on 15 August 1944.
In the south “Operation Dragoon” had been carried out with conspicuous success. This was the invasion of Southern France, the naval component of which had been under the command of Rear-Admiral T. H. Troubridge. This invasion had given the Allies possession of the great commercial port of Marseilles in an almost undamaged condition. Nor was this all. The American troops landed in the south of France had advanced so rapidly up the valley of the Rhone that they had secured virtually undamaged the magnificent railway running north from Marseilles through Lyons, to Dijon. This was a railway capable of carrying many times the traffic that could have been handled by the Brest railway even at its best and most efficient, while Dijon was comparatively close to the German frontier between Switzerland and Luxemburg, an area in which a considerable proportion of the American armies were assembling. It would be much easier and safer for the direct trans-Atlantic shipping bringing the supplies for the American armies to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar and go to Marseilles, where their cargoes could be rapidly unloaded in an almost undamaged port and whence they could be taken north by rail.
In the north, too, ports had fallen to the Allies. Most important by far of these was Antwerp, and this also had been captured practically undamaged. There is no denying that the dash of the British armoured column to Brussels and down the great double highway past the horror-camp at Breendonck to Antwerp must be accounted a great victory which was to have a far-reaching effect upon the war. It so surprised the enemy by its speed that he had no time to carry out the demolitions in the port as he had planned.
Antwerp was by no means open to traffic. It was obvious that the Germans, realising the danger to which they were exposed by
the Allied possession of the great port, would do all in their power to hold their positions along the Scheldt which denied us the use of the port. Nevertheless, the port was in our hands, and very little had to be done to it to render its facilities fully operative, for they had suffered more from neglect than from the enemy.
Thus the two greatest commercial ports west of the German frontier, and both of them within easy reach of it, had come into the possession of the Allies. Antwerp would be needed, when it had been opened up, chiefly for the supply from the United Kingdom of the British and Canadian armies on the Allied northern flank, but it could if required be used for direct trans-Atlantic traffic which could either pass up the English Channel or north-about round Scotland and down through the North Sea.
The reduction of the fortress of Brest, however, was still important because of its strategic use to the Germans in the U-boat war. The German High Command was well aware that their only salvation now lay in imposing a sufficient delay upon the development of the Allied strategy to allow the “secret weapons” to become fully operative. At the time this German faith in such weapons appeared childish, highly dangerous and unpleasant though those weapons were. The defeat of Germany, however, has brought to light certain facts which give serious food for thought. It is established that the “V-weapons” from which London and Southern England suffered were but samples, and plans were nearing completion in Germany for the daily delivery of a quantity of such missiles as could hardly have failed to paralyse the life of the south-eastern part of England, and might well have done very serious damage elsewhere. At the same time the production was being pushed forward of new forms of maritime weapons which might well have created a serious situation at sea.
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