German Gun Boats Pegasus Bridge

Here's another crop from an undated, low quality aerial found on Battlefield Historian. As you can see there is no other vessel to be seen but the one we have been considering on the east bank. Unless something else comes along I'll go out on limb with Nijemgen and say that is our gunboat. Hopefully an actual photo of the boat turns up someday.



Regards

 

Cee,

The link you gave Brithm, http://sgmcaen.free.fr/navire-allemand-canal.htm, mentions a book (Le Commando Du Pont Pégase) which has a pretty long description of the attack. Three boats, the bridge being opened (which makes a lot of sense), the first boat sinks (hit by PIAT), the second boat lands on the eastern bank and the third one gets away (crew hid for several days, halfway between bridge and Ouistreham).

 

It's amazing the amount of variation that has arisen in the various stories of the gunboats coming from both Caen and Ouistreham. That particular account though very entertaining strikes me as being wildly exaggerated for effect?

A reviewer of Carl Shilleto's book, Pegasus Bridge & Horsa Bridge: British 6th Airborne Division Landings in Normandy D-Day 6th June 1944 mentions a photo:

"I have read a number of accounts of the wartime actions of these regiments and was most pleased to see so many photographs published here which I had not seen before - especially the one of the German gunboat sunk by a private soldier with a Piat!"

So if anyone has the book take a look to see if the gunboat is shown. My impression is that no boats were actually sunk in this incident.

Regards ...

 

YES, please do!!!

 

Attached is an aerial photograph from a veteran of 92 LAA who was at Pegasus Bridge showing LZ 'W' west of Caen Canal used for Operation Mallard by the 6th Airlanding Brigade on the evening of D-Day at 21:00 hrs.

Far right you can see the 'gunboat' on the far right pointed out by the pink arrow.

Think the photograph was taken early 1944.

brithm

 

Brithm,

That's a good one, it also has a scale. I think my estimation of the width of the canal is all wrong. It seems wider using the scale on Google maps, holding up a ruler to the monitor.

Regards ...

 

Shilleto in his book, The Pegasus Bridge and Horsa Bridge, claims this is the gunboat taken out by Pte Godbold's piat bomb.



The following link (translated) has some confusing information. According to them it could be Vorpostenboote (VP) 212 near the shipyards of Blaineville-sur-Orne, 3.2 km upstream of Pegasus Bridge.

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fsgmcaen.free.fr%2Fnavire-allemand-canal.htm

None of that makes any sense to me as a vessel that size (50.63 metres) would have had more than a crew of two and shown up quite noticeably on aerials of the Pegasus Bridge area. If anything it's more likely to be the ship fired on by Wally Parr with the anti-tank gun in the tobruk south east of the bridge which after being hit made a hasty retreat upstream to Caen.

Regards ...

 

More likely it were converted fishing boats.

 

It certainly fits that description in appearance:

http://www.german-navy.de/kriegsmarine/ships/misc/vorpostenboot/

Regards ...

 

Cee, Nijmegan, I agree. It looks like a requisitioned trawler, possibly a Ubootjäger, UJ sub chaser.
Guy

 

I was more thinking (speculating, this is) of:

 

It seems there is quite a bit of variation in the requisitioned boats of one kind or another (VP, HSB). For the boat hit by Godbold coming upstream from Ouistreham I was thinking it was smaller, more along the lines of a Hafenschutzboote.



Most of the HSBs I've seen, however, are not as sleek as the above and look more like small fishing vessels with the wheelhouse more often than not towards the rear. But I could be barking up the wrong tree?

Later ...

Let's see if I can upload this chart of Kriegsmarine losses on D-Day based on the one found here ( 8+ mbs). Nope, still can't do it - the uploaded file (jpg) is degraded and almost unreadable for some reason?


Regards ...

 

Hey,

To confirm the vessel grounding on the East bank, we can refer to the information about the sappers who came on the boat to inspect it just after the fight. They were from the 249th Field Company RE who patrolled between the bridges.

Extract from "The Pegasus Diaries" Howard and Bates : "Once Captain Neilson and his sappers completed a more detailed inspection of both bridges, they patrolled between the bridges."

Xavier

 

Here's a transcription from the part of Cyril Larkin's interview concerning the encounter with the gunboat. Cyril speaks softly and quickly so I may have missed a few expressions that he tends to squeeze in at the end of a thought.


"Still early in the morning a German gunboat ... well, a river patrol boat that wasn't .. anyway I never saw any armament on it at all. Although some of the stories said that they had come at the bridge and were firing at the bridge, but where I saw it it didn't happen that way. I jumped into my slit trench and fired at the wheel house. I only fired one shot. It was quite a windy morning and I had my rifle down on the soil and with the strong wind I fired just one shot and the wind blew a lot of grit over my rifle so I couldn't pull my bolt back. So I had to push it, butt down, on the bottom of the trench and kick it, the bolt back, with my heel to draw out the spent cartridge and that was the only shot I fired.

But anyway there were other people firing as well. Some of the Ox n' Bucks lads were there, some of our engineers. Claude had a shot or two at it as well. The leading boat just ran aground and eventually the crew came aboard, or came off I should say. But Claude went along and went aboard this German craft, (..?..) like a small river craft. I didn't see any armament on it. There might have been, but they certainly weren't firing, not that I could see anyway. And I think there was only two people aboard, the skipper and someone down in the engine room or somethin'. And they were captured and a bit of boost came from them so we understood. They wondered what on earth we were doing there - why we were there being idiots to come shoot and do what we do."

Regards ...

 

Been looking for any testimony or reports about about the other motorboat being taken out by No. 4 Commando but I have checked No. 4 Commando's War Diary and there is no mention of taking out a boat.

http://pegasusarchive.org/normandy/war_4cdo.htm

Anybody seen anything from a Commando mentioning taking out a boat on the Caen Canal on D-Day?

brithm

 

Hi all,
Did the intelligence services know these gunboats were here before Dday ?
Regards,
Xavier P

 

Very interesting thread. Enjoyed reading it. I have a high resolution copy of the 7th June aerial photo which is too big to post, but attached is a close up of the boat. Measuring by use of the Horsa wingspan, I reckon it's about 14 metres long. It certainly looks the same type at that shown on that later aerial, further up-river on the western bank.

 

There was a "Command of the ships and boats of the Luftwaffe" which operated a large number of different small units. It is conceivable that two of them for "Führer, People and Fatherland" wanted to prevent the invasion...
Luftwaffe-zur-See.de

 

Hi,
Some information about ships who were sunk in Ouistreham on Dday :
Luftwaffe-zur-See.de
Luftwaffe-zur-See.de
Luftwaffe-zur-See.de
Regards,
Xavier P

 

assortment of Hafenschutzboote (HS-Boote) at Bundearchiv
Bundesarchiv - Bilddatenbank
usually tiny cutters of all kind, armed with just about anything you could get your hands on...beggars can´t be choosers ;-)
the depicted one shoud look similar to LEBA 46 (2nd link from Xavier above)