Dunkirk

From Answers.com:

"
"Later fighting at Dunkirk

The city of Dunkirk was besieged in September 1944 by units of the Second Canadian Division; German units withstood the siege, and as the First Canadian Army moved north into Belgium, the city was "masked" and left to wither on the vine. The German garrison in Dunkirk held out until May 1945, denying the Allies the use of the port facilities."

 

IIRC the masking force was the Czech brigade

 

I can't beleive I did not know that Dunkirk held out until May 9, 1945.
I just threw out my pipe.

 

Another fact that flies in the face of commonsense: - The War in Germany didn't end until 1960. The reasoning is that Germany was not reunited until this time. The German state had been split into sectors of occupation. This point was aired on QI -the quiz show on BBC2. Go figure - apparently it is correct!!

 

Correction here I am sure it is meant to be 1990!!

 

hi guys i have a question about the evacuation of dunkirk.

i have read that clowd cover stopped the luftwaffe from finishing the job but also the RAF played there part but not as much as the soldiers on the beach would have liked..

am i right in saying there were about 250,000 troop on a 10 mile stretch off beach....if so thats a lot of men plus they all had rifles and some machine guns.

just a thought but did the soldiers try and hold off the luftwaffe as they swooping over. Did they set up a defence

i wouldnt have thought amunition would have been a factor as air drops wouldnt have been that difficult.

Thanks

 

The RAF were flying further inland. Which is why the troops on the beaches didn't see much of them. I know after Dunkirk that some of the army lads blamed the RAF for not protecting them, which wasn't true.

 

What stopped the Germans from turning Dunkirk into a Killing Field?

Many did die. But those straight lines of retreating troops must have been easy targets.

There should have been much more destruction.

The 'straight line' photographs were taken when the Luftwaffe wasn't over Dunkirk. There was atleast one day (30th I think of the top of my head) when the Luftwaffe didn't even fly over Dunkirk due to fog and mist over the area. When the Luftwaffe was there, there was no straight lines all the troops on the beach dispersed and due to the sand being soft the bombs sunk quite deep before exploding causing very few casualties. A bit like detonating explosives under sand bags I would guess. Many British soldiers mention bombs dropping and exploding near them doing little damage.

As for destruction have a look at some post 'Op Dyanmo' pictures of Dunkirk (There are many in my walking with the BEF thread) and you will see there was't much left of the town by the time the Luftwaffe and German artillery had finished. There is very little Pre War Dunkirk left-Even the inner harbour was re-built after the war.

I think a lot of people think (and I'm no expert, just my opinion) that Hitler gave the halt order to allow the BEF to escape but according to 'Tapping' of senior captured German Generals he gave it for an entirely different reason.

According to Walter Lords The Miracle of Dunkirk he states that the Germans were listening to the Royal Navy's radio traffic and were completely aware of Op Dyamo and the operations objective before it even started. I believe the Germans were in no rush to capture Dunkirk anymore than they were to capture Boulogne and Calais, according to Lord's and a few other books I've read it was 'just another town'. Towards the end of May the Germans had lost a lot of armour, so much that they were very concerned and were not in a rush to loose anymore unnecessarily.

Another thing that is often overlooked (As Owen often points out) the Germans still had over three weeks of fighting after Dunkirk so it was long from being over for them so why waste so many assets when they would be needed elsewhere.

 

My Granda was there with the Northumberland Fusiliers.
I had the pleasure of going in 1979 with the Dunkirk Veterans Association and we stayed in De Panne for the few days. Memorable!

 

From Walter Lord's - The Miracle of Dunkirk.

German Intelligence:

 

Interesting that a suggestion was put forward to land German troops on the beaches to cut off the BEF's retreat.

 

hi guys i have a question about the evacuation of dunkirk.

i have read that clowd cover stopped the luftwaffe from finishing the job but also the RAF played there part but not as much as the soldiers on the beach would have liked..

I dont have exact number of aircraft lost at hand. There are quite a few books with details on the air battle avaialble. What I do recall is the German AF was not able to bring its full weight against Dunkirk. Operational losses (broken down aircraft) were already mounting, the French army was still fighting & required air attacks, and many of the German aircraft were still based deep in Germany-out of effective range. In proportion to the number of aircraft actually flying over Dunkirk the Germans lost more than they expected. Goering's miscalculation was in not checking to see how many aircraft he could actually commit to this attack.

Another factor was the Brits switched to night operations part way through the battle.

Montefiore's 'Dunkirk' is one of several good books on the subject.

am i right in saying there were about 250,000 troop on a 10 mile stretch off beach....if so thats a lot of men plus they all had rifles and some machine guns.

Not all at one time. Service units begain leaving long before the the BEF combat units arrived and the numbers on the beaches and docks were kept to a managable level with the balance remaining in defense against the Germans untill it was their turn. In the opening days the perimeter of the pocket was much larger than 'ten miles' and in the last days it was a bit smaller.

The heavy weapons were still in action during the battle. From the 'Journal of Royal Artillery' I accquired two articals written by artillery commanders a few months after the campaign. Both describe their regiments retreating across Belgium with their guns and firing off their ammununition during the evacuation. Their main limit was the fleet no longer brought ammunition or fuel for the vehicals and the division ammo trains only had enough ammo for a couple days of combat.

just a thought but did the soldiers try and hold off the luftwaffe as they swooping over. Did they set up a defence

Yes the Anti Aircraft Artillery regiments were there. There were not enough of them, and like the field artillery there was no resupply of ammunition.


i wouldnt have thought amunition would have been a factor as air drops wouldnt have been that difficult.

Thanks

The British had no airdrop capability in 1940. Neither did the French. In that sort of defensive battle the artillery of ten British and French divisions would easily use 5,000 tons per day of artillery ammunition.

Both the British and French had some ammo remaining in their supply trains. The divisions had their own ready ammo and part of that in the Army forward depots in Belgium was moved back in the reatreat, but it was not enough for a sustained fight. The books seldom have anything on a boring subject like supply. From the bits I've found the BEF and the French 1st Army probabllly arrived on the coast with less than 20,000 tons of ammo of all types. Possiblly less than 10,000 tons. Enough for a few days of carefull use.

 

I haven't really read up on the Calais part of the fall of France (I'm saving it until I have time to do a trip) but I've read, indeed there may even be a thread on here, that the RAF were dropping supplies on Calais when they thought the British were surrounded, when actually Calais had fallen or the the area supplies were being dropped on was in German hands as all the ammo and rations etc were captured.

The Luftwaffe mounted 3 assaults in total on Dunkirk on May 27th, 29th and June 1st. Each day after the initial attacks the Luftwaffe was unable to perform follow up attacks due to mist, fog and low cloud over Dunkirk.

 

My father was based at Avizes with No.6 Air Stores Park (RAF), south of Paris. Their evacuation took days, traversing France all the way to Brest. He was involved in a skirmish with German paratroopers on the way - interestingly, they were dressed in civilian clothes.
He was finally awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1944 - the French took a lot of trouble to find him...

 

I've been meaning to dig this picture out for a while for this thread. It shows just how much devastation the Luftwaffe and German Artillery did to Dunkirk during May and June and adds weight in my opinion to the fact the Hitler wasn't allowing the BEF to slip away.



You can quite clearly see the city has been severly bombed and the only identifiable landmark is the Belfry and Church.

 

Right. I have got myself in a right tissy!!! I was looking at some colour film from Dunkirk 1940 on You Tube. Very intersting, good footage. I guess I was just hoping to see something of my Grand Dad in there to show my Mum. I made the mistake of reading comments below the film and well, I am livid!!! Some flippin man made a comment that I will not repeat on this site about the British soldiers involved in the event. I have written a civilised reply without swearing or calling names.............. aarrrrrgggghhhhhh...... sorry guys, I had to let off steam somewhere and you got it. XX