The Kriegsmarine on D-Day (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | knygos.lt

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On 6 June 1944, the Allies opened their long awaited 'Second Front' with the invasion of Occupied France. Ashore in Normandy they faced a disparate conglomeration of Wehrmacht and Waffen SS formations that varied enormously in size and quality. At sea they faced the tattered remnants of the Kriegsmarine in the west.

In the weeks leading to D-Day the Allies had stepped up efforts to eliminate any potential German naval threat, culminating in Operation Hostile that witnessed fierce destroyer actions in the western English Channel. In the early hours of the morning of the invasion, Vizeadmiral Theodor Krancke, commander of Marinegruppenkommando West in his Paris office, placed naval forces on alert after reports of parachute landings. Despite intelligence estimates dismissing the likelihood of enemy activity during what was a period of bad weather over the Channel, Krancke ordered all available units to stand by for immediate action.

Among the forces available to him within the English Channel were Rudolf Petersen's S-boats, five isolated torpedo boats stationed in Le Havre, minesweepers, artillery barges and patrol vessels. Ashore, naval artillery batteries were made ready for firing as Allied bombers began a systematic bombardment of the positions. In Brest, the headquarters of the 1st and 9th U-Flotillas were placed on Alarmstreife II - invasion alert. News of the Allied parachute landings had arrived at Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote, the supreme commander of the German Navy's U-boat Arm, ten minutes earlier, and two U-boat groups were placed on immediate readiness. The vanguard sailed that evening for Normandy, as part of the formidable thirty-six-boat Landwirt group.

The last surviving destroyers and torpedo boats based in Biscay were also ordered to sail and make an offensive sweep to the north-east of the Cherbourg Peninsular, with the objective of attacking the Allied supply ships headed for Normandy. Three destroyers and a torpedo boat were to be pitted against the bulk of the Allied Navy in Europe.

In this book, the renowned historian and author Lawrence Paterson reveals the part that the Kriegsmarine played in attempting to stem the Allied assault on D-Day, 6 June 1944.