Sword Beach: British 3rd Division/27th Armoured Brigade

By Tim Kilvert-Jones

This WWII guidebook brings the momentous drama of D-Day to life with an in-depth study of the fighting on Normandy’s Sword Beach.

As the left most inland flank of the Normandy landings, Sword Beach was thought most likely to receive the first German counterattacks. British troops had the tasks of securing the beach and advancing on the heavily defended medieval town of Caen. The troops were determined to link up with British paratroopers and glider units who had landed the night before on special missions.

Backed up by an impressive array of modified armored vehicles, the veteran 3rd Division, spearheaded by No. 4 Army Commando and forty-one Royal Marine Commando, stormed ashore and secured its objectives with moderate casualties. No. 4 Commando also reached the airborne troops before they could be overwhelmed by German armor. However, the British failed to secure the key town of Caen on schedule.

This volume of the Battleground Europe series covers all the action on this Normandy beach in vivid detail while also providing essential context to highlight its broader significance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 18, 2009
• ISBN: 9781783461554

Book preview

V

Chapter One

GERMANY’S SECOND FRONT

By the winter of 1943 the Germans were already engaged in a multifront war. On the Russian Front the finest units of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS were being consumed at an appalling rate. In the Mediterranean the Axis powers had been defeated in North Africa, an Anglo-American expeditionary force had conquered Sicily and the mainland of Italy had now been invaded. In the skies over Germany an air war of extraordinary proportions was also consuming manpower and industrial production capacity as losses of aircraft and ground defenses climbed. In an effort to stem the devastating tide of day and night area bombing by the Allied bomber fleets, the Germans relocated fighter wings and air defense systems to protect the Fatherland at the cost of other fronts. The German air defense system (including searchlight units, gun crews, and radar centres) had absorbed 900,000 men alone. All these assets were being employed well away from what was to be the decisive ‘Second Front.’

Defending the Reich from night and day bombing raids was absorbing large numbers of men, armaments and munitions.

Defending the Reich: Fortress Europe

In December 1941 Adolf Hitler ordered his national military command headquarters, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), to plan,

‘The construction of a new West Wall to assure protection of the Arctic, North Sea and Atlantic coasts against any landing operation of very considerable strength with the employment of the smallest number of static forces.’

On 23 March 1942, with the Third Reich at the peak of its success, he went on to issue his Führer Directive Number 40. This directive set down the detailed defensive responsibilities for the operational commanders in the West. It stated:

‘The coastline of Europe will, in the coming months, be exposed to the danger of the enemy landing in force... Even enemy landings with limited objectives can interfere seriously with our own plans if they result in the enemy gaining any kind of foothold on the coast... Enemy forces that have landed must be destroyed or thrown back into the sea by immediate counterattack.’

Ironically three days after he had signed this directive the British mounted the highly successful – though costly – raid on the port and dry dock facilities at St. Nazaire. The raid was so effective that the ‘Normandie’ dry dock (destroyed by the explosive-laden HMS Campbletown) was inoperable for the rest of the war. Within five months, on 19 August, the German defences were further probed by Operation JUBILEE, the disastrous raid at Dieppe. This operation was a frontal assault on a partly fortified harbour. The German defenders used their limited fortifications and counter-attack troops to devastating effect. After nine hours the remnants of the Anglo-Canadian force withdrew leaving behind 3,658 men out of the 5,100 troops who had landed. One thousand men had been killed and the remainder was wounded, missing, or taken prisoner. The Germans had suffered 300 casualties.

The costly experience at Dieppe was to provide diverse lessons that would be fundamental to the subsequent successful landings in North Africa, Sicily in 1943, and in Normandy one year later. Each side drew very different conclusions from the disaster. For the Germans a greater emphasis on fixed fortifications became the order of the day. For the Allies a more detailed analysis produced far reaching lessons-learned that would ultimately support NEPTUNE-OVERLORD. For the most part, the German newspaper headlines in late August 1942 illustrated the Führer’s sentiments on JUBILEE: ‘Catastrophic Defeat a Setback to Invasion... What does Stalin say about this Disaster to Churchill’s Invasion?’ For the Reich the Allied disaster provided valuable propaganda material and a reassurance that lightly held fortified defences could repel enemy amphibious assaults. The Germans certainly viewed the Anglo-Canadian operation as an amateurish undertaking. In truth, it had been.

Valuable experience in amphibious landing techniques were gained through Operations TORCH (Tunisia) and HUSKY (Sicily).

General Patton surveys the beaches following the successful landings in Sicily.

Work on the West Wall (also known as the Atlantic Wall, a component of Fortress Europe) now began in earnest amid a blaze of propaganda. The focus of effort was on the major ports (the evident target of enemy raids and any future invasion) and then on vulnerable coastal areas, such as the Pas de Calais, Hook of Holland and the Gironde estuary. The Germans had once again forgotten their own history; it was Frederick the Great of Prussia who had stated, ‘He who defends everything, defends nothing.’ In reality, what emerged was a loose necklace of powerful fortresses such as Calais and Cherbourg, interconnected by weak outposts and routine patrol activities spread over 2,400 miles of coastline. Inflexible dogma and self-delusion had replaced effective critical analysis of the threat now gathering strength across the Channel.

Workers of the Todt Organization constructing a massive bunker on the French coastline. Reinforcing steel rods are being put in place prior to the pouring of concrete.

The Germans were also hampered by shortages of defensive materials such as concrete, mines, adequate weapons, fighting men and labor. By 1943 the war in the East was draining the Reich’s increasingly limited resources and this was now impacting on every front. The aging Field Marshal Gerd Von Rundstedt, Commander-in-Chief West (OB West), identified the serious manpower shortfall. He reported in October 1943, that the existing West Wall could be covered but not fully defended. Yet he also recognized the utility of the Wall as a propaganda tool and, to a lesser extent, the military value of Hitler’s port-city fortress policy. That policy would actually lead to the denial or destruction of the principal French ports in the face of the Allied advance for several months after D-Day and impact on the Allied line of operations for the rest of 1944. However, Von Rundstedt went on to note that:

‘A rigid German defense (is) impossible there for any length of time, the outcome of the battle must depend on the use of a mobile and armoured reserve... the best that might be hoped for [is] that it might hold up an attack for twenty four hours, but any resolute assault [is] bound to make a breakthrough anywhere along it in a day at most. And once through all the rest could be taken from the rear...’

Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt

Führer Directive Number 51

On 3 November 1943 Hitler issued one of the half dozen of his most significant directives of the war. Führer Directive Number 51 specified the tasks required of OB West to create an effective bastion against an Anglo-American landing. The Directive stated:

‘...If the enemy here succeeds in penetrating our defences on a wide front, consequences of staggering proportions will follow within a short time. All signs point to an offensive in the Western Front no later than spring, and perhaps earlier.’

For that reason I can no longer justify the further weakening of the West in favor of other theatres of war. I have therefore decided to strengthen the defences in the West, particularly at places from which we shall launch our long-range war against England. For those are the very points at which the enemy must and will attack: there – unless all indications are misleading – will be fought the decisive invasion