168 BATTLE FOR BREST.pdf

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No. 168
£5.00
NUMBER 168
© Copyright
After the Battle
2015
Editor: Karel Margry
Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey
Published by
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ST MALO
BREST
LORIENT
QUIBERON
ST NAZAIRE
NANTES
One basic requirement set by the Allied planners for the success of Operation ‘Over-
lord’ was to obtain sufficient port capacity on the European mainland to support the
forces needed to defeat Germany. High on the list of vital objectives for the Ameri-
cans was the Brittany peninsula with its five good harbours: Saint-Malo on its north-
ern shore, Brest on its western tip, and Lorient, Saint-Nazaire and Nantes along the
south coast. However, as Allied planners assumed that the Germans would strongly
defend these ports and destroy them in the process, they developed contingency
plans for the construction of an entirely new port in the Quiberon Bay, along Brit-
tany’s south shore between Lorient and Saint-Nazaire. Although by July 1944 the
Allies had grown increasingly reluctant to undertake the huge engineering work nec-
essary to develop the Quiberon port area, even so at the beginning of August the
Allies still felt that they needed Brittany with its port facilities.
CONTENTS
THE BATTLE FOR BREST
UNITED KINGDOM
The Ministry of Food Home Guard
WAR FILM
German Concentration Camps
Factual Survey
FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
My Return to the Siegfried Line
2
30
41
50
Front Cover:
An M18 tank destroyer from Company
B of the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion fires at a
German strong point down Rue Duret from its
junction with Rue de Kerfautras in Brest on
September 12, 1944. Signal Corps photographer
Sergeant William Dunn took this photo a few
minutes after he had pictured another M18 of
Company B in the same street (see page 21). Brest
is quite a large city, with hundreds of junctions all
looking much the same, and the location could
only be established thanks to local expert Ronan
Urvoaz.
Back Cover:
Demise of a Siegfried Line bunker,
April 2014. Retracing a trip he made to the
Siegfried Line defences around Goch back in 1969,
your Editor-in-Chief Winston Ramsey happened to
arrive just as one of the bunkers that he had seen
45 years earlier was in the process of being
demolished. A Regelbau 102V personnel shelter, it
stood in the grounds of a farm on Boeckelterweg
in the village of Boeckelt south-west of Goch. Here
Winston contemplates the passage of time at the
heap of concrete debris. (Karel Margry)
Acknowledgements:
The Editor would like to thank
the Marine Nationale (French Navy) for allowing
Jean Paul Pallud to visit the arsenal at Brest and
take comparison photos. He also extends his
appreciation to Herlé Babert, Yannick Creach and
Ronan Urvoaz for their expert support. For help
with the
German Concentration Camps Factual
Survey
story, he thanks the Geoffrey Donaldson
Institute and Hans Houterman.
Photo Credit Abbreviations:
ECPAD — Média-
thèque de la Défense, Fort d’Ivry; IWM — Imperial
War Museum; USNA — US National Archives.
The port of Brest has been the French fleet’s main base in the west since the 17th
century. The military harbour and Arsenal occupied the Penfeld river for nearly three
kilometres from its mouth. As the river valley is deep and narrow, with steep banks,
the narrow terraces on each side only have room for long and slim workshops so
other parts of the Arsenal were located on the plateau above. At the Salou bend, two
kilometres up river, two covered slipways allowed shipbuilding and 32 vessels were
launched here during the First World War. The yard later built several large ships,
including the four 10,000-ton cruisers of the
Suffren
class launched in the late 1920s
and the battleships
Dunkerque
and
Richelieu
in the late 1930s. (The latter ships were
too large for the Penfeld yard so they had their bows attached at Laninon, that part of
the Arsenal outside the river.)
Above:
In early 1916, French photographer Georges
Dangeureux took this shot of the battleship
Carnot
moored in the Salou. Launched in
1894, the old warship was withdrawn from service in 1907 and used as a floating bar-
racks in Brest throughout the Great War. In 1915, its two 305mm guns were removed
to be used as railway guns, and she was finally dismantled in 1922. After the United
States declared war against Germany in April 1917, Brest became the principal port
for the movement of the American Expeditionary Force from the US to France.
2
ECPAD
In the first week of August 1944, American armoured forces
reached the outskirts of the port city of Brest, beginning a siege
that would last for six weeks and ultimately involve three Ameri-
can infantry divisions in a slow and costly battle against a deter-
mined German garrison.
Above:
A landmark feature of pre-war
Brest was the Pont National, a high-level swing bridge linking the
two parts of the city east and west of the Penfeld. Inaugurated in
1861, it was first named the Pont Impérial in honour of Emperor
Napoléon III, being renamed the Pont National after the establish-
ment of the Third Republic in 1870. Though rising 22 metres above
the river, it was not high enough to enable large warships to pass
underneath, so it was built in two halves that could swing open.
The two parts, each 52 metres long and weighing 750 tonnes,
could be opened and closed by four men in 15 minutes.
THE BATTLE FOR BREST
Brest was a Roman fortress built at the
estuary of the Penfeld river although it lapsed
into insignificance until the building of the
castle there in the 13th century. The English
King Edward III maintained a garrison there
for over 50 years in the 14th century. During
the 16th century several attempts were made
by both English and Spanish forces to gain
control of Brest and to destroy the French
fleet based there. When in 1594 Spanish
forces erected a fort at Crozon, on the south
side of the estuary, an English army of 4,000
men with a fleet of ships under Sir Martin
Frobisher was sent to expel them. It was the
subsequent rise of France as a naval power
under Richelieu and Colbert in the 17th cen-
tury that resulted in the development of Brest
as a naval base and arsenal. Vauban built the
first dry dock on the site of the present
Tourville dock and considerably increased the
fortifications. An Anglo-Dutch expedition
sent to destroy both base and fleet in 1694 was
repelled with heavy loss in Camaret bay.
Both naval and commercial ports grew
originally within the confines of the deep and
winding estuary of the Penfeld river, and
both expanded beyond it in the 19th century,
the commercial port to the east and the naval
Right:
Wrecked by Allied bombardment
during the battle for the city in Septem-
ber 1944, the span was replaced by a ver-
tical lift bridge completed in 1954.
3
port to the west. In the Laninon area, two
large dry docks and a submarine base were
built during and after the First World War
and a new quay was completed there in 1939,
together with the construction of a seaplane
By Jean Paul Pallud
base and a number of submarine berths
along the quay.
ATB
ECPAD
To provide protection for the roadsted —
the Rade Abri — breakwaters were built in
the 19th century, enclosing both the Laninon
naval basin and the commercial port. The
longest breakwaters — Jetée Ouest, 600
metres long, and Jetée Sud, 2,200 metres long
— lie on the west side of the harbour, off
Laninon, with Jetée Est — 900 metres long —
on the eastern side. At its northern end the
latter joins the 760-metre-long Digue du Sud
which protects the commercial port. The
entrance passage to the Rade Abri between
the Jetée Sud and the Jetée Est is 300 metres
wide. The main entrance to the commercial
port (the Passe de l’Ouest) also has a width of
300 metres while a narrower passage (the
Passe de l’Est) is 122 metres wide.
The city of Brest originally lay on the
slopes of hills on both sides of the river but in
the 19th century it spread over several neigh-
bouring communities, among them Recou-
vrance and Saint-Pierre-Quilbignon on the
west, Lambézellec to the north, and Saint-
Marc over on the east.
During the German offensive in the West
in 1940, Brest was captured on June 18 by the
leaders of the 5. Panzer-Division although
British troops had carried out demolitions to
most of the harbour facilities before they
evacuated the city. The Kriegsmarine wanted
to base its U-Boats in the ports along the
Atlantic coast of France and Vizeadmiral
Hans Stobwasser, who was already tasked to
restore the arsenal at Lorient, was quickly
transferred to Brest as Oberwerfdirektor.
Before the end of the year he had the har-
bour facilities restored to working order
whereupon preparations for full U-Boat
deployment began.
ECPAD
Following the German capture of Brest in June 1940, and to pro-
tect the harbour against enemy air raids, the Germans erected a
series of barrage balloons along the breakwaters, the ones
shown here being located at the junction of the Jetée Ouest and
4
Jetée Sud off the harbour’s west side. Hundreds of steel cylinders
containing the hydrogen used to inflate the balloons were stock-
piled along the jetties.
Right:
The Marine Nationale (French Navy)
allowed Jean Paul to enter the mole to take his comparison.
ATB
ECPAD
ECPAD
Left:
Oberwerfdirektor (Chief Shipyard Director) Hans Stob-
wasser and his engineers quickly brought the docks back to
running order, and the following November a German PK pho-
tographer pictured the dockyard area from above the river. In
the foreground is the Tourville dry-dock, or Bassin No. 1, and in
the far background, across the Penfeld, are the engineering
workshops on the Capucins plateau. The large crane was used
in the fitting-out and arming of warships and was able to lift
150 tons.
Above:
The crane survived the battle in 1944 (see
page 29) but was later dismantled although its large concrete
base remains. Jean Paul purposely arranged to take his com-
parisons on the 70th anniversary of the final German surrender
at Brest — September 20, 2014 – which also coincided with
French National Heritage Day when the French Navy organise
an open day for visitors to tour the Arsenal.
5
ECPAD
Above left:
In November 1940 General-
feldmarschall Walther von Reichenau,
then commander of the 6. Armee, came
to inspect the Arsenal and the Kriegs-
marine establishments at Brest. Vize-
admiral Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière,
the Naval Commander Brittany, (second
from right) received him on the quay
below the Château.
Above right:
The
office building that originally stood there
has gone, the plot being used today for a
car park. In the background, the old
bridge over the deep cutting leading to
the railway tunnel has also disappeared.
Right:
The Kriegsmarine took their guests
for a sight-seeing tour up the Penfeld in a
motor launch, this picture being taken
just after the vessel had made a U-turn
upstream of the Salou bend. Von Arnauld
de la Perière is wearing the coveted Pour
le Mérite, awarded to him in October
1916 after a year of remarkable successes
as captain of the
U-35.
He later com-
manded the
U-139
and his record of sink-
ings — 194 ships and 453,716 GRT –
made him the undisputed submarine ace
of all time. On February 24, 1941, a few
weeks after these photos were taken,
von Arnauld was killed in an aircraft
crash at Le Bourget airfield near Paris.
ATB
ATB

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