Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings (56 page)

T
HE
C
AMPAIGN FOR
C
HERBOURG
, J
UNE
19–25, 1944

The commander of the German defenders, General Karl von Schlieben, requested permission from headquarters to withdraw his forces into the prepared defenses about the city. That was obviously the correct military move, but Hitler insisted that there must be no retreat, and von Schlieben dutifully ordered his men to fight “to the last man and the last bullet.” That did little to slow the American advance, and despite the storm that battered the ships and the artificial harbors off the beaches, the three American divisions made rapid progress. By June 21, as the storm abated, the Americans were poised to begin a general assault on the city. That afternoon, Collins broadcast a formal request for surrender in several languages, essentially warning von Schlieben that if he did not capitulate by nine o’clock the next morning, his forces would be annihilated. Collins did not expect an answer, and he did not get one.
⁵

Shortly after 9:00 a.m. on June 22, the Allies initiated a massive aerial assault on the city’s defenses. Four squadrons of RAF Typhoons and six squadrons of RAF Mustangs bombed and strafed the German defenses. They were followed by twelve groups of fighter-bombers from the American IX Tactical Air Command. Once again the results of the air assault were disappointing. As on Omaha Beach, the German fortifications proved stubbornly resistant to aerial bombing. Moreover, the fluidity of the front lines outside Cherbourg and the proximity of friend to foe meant that Allied troops occasionally found themselves the target of Allied bombs. Men in both the 9th and 4th Divisions complained angrily that they had been strafed by friendly aircraft. Collins himself very nearly became a casualty when Typhoons strafed a position not a hundred yards from him. But if the bombing did little physical damage, it did depress the morale of the defenders. A large portion of the soldiers in von Schlieben’s command were non-Germans who had been forced into service from one or another of the subjugated countries of eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union. They knew that they were cut off from support, and few of them embraced von Schlieben’s call to fight to the death. As von Schlieben himself noted, “We are asking rather a lot if we expect Russians to fight in France for Germany against the Americans.”
⁶

Still, the defenses of Cherbourg remained formidable. The city and its harbor sat in a kind of bowl surrounded by a series of ridges that commanded the lines of approach. On the western side of the city was the old Citadel, and on the east was Forte des Flamands. In the center was the powerful Forte du Roule, built on a high bluff overlooking the city. Between these strongpoints, the Germans were dug deep into the ground. The Americans would have to target each defensive position individually, with the infantry maintaining a steady covering fire while engineers crept around to the flanks with satchel charges. It could be done, but it would take time as well as lives, and time was now of the essence. Von Schlieben had received orders to begin destruction of the harbor facilities as early as June 10, even before the campaign for Cherbourg began. Hitler told him that it was his duty “to defend [Cherbourg] to the last bunker and leave to the enemy not a harbor but a field of ruins.” Von Schlieben’s objective, therefore, was not so much to defend the city as to delay its fall long enough for his engineers to thoroughly destroy the harbor facilities. Every day that the Germans remained in control gave them another day to continue their ruthless sabotage.
⁷

To speed the fall of the city and minimize damage to the harbor, Bradley asked Ramsay if the Navy could use its long-range guns to target the German strongpoints. The biggest guns that Collins had were 155 mm (6-inch) artillery pieces, and he did not have enough of them. But the Navy had 8-inch guns on the heavy cruisers, and 12- and 14-inch guns on the battleships. Perhaps the Navy could hit the German positions from seaward.

Though Ramsay was less than enthusiastic about pitting ships against coastal fortifications, he asked Kirk to work up a plan. Two months before, in the wake of Exercise Tiger off Slapton Sands, Kirk had urged Ramsay to use the American battleships to destroy the German E-boat pens at Cherbourg. On that occasion, Ramsay had turned him down, and the decision had provoked some bitter words and lingering resentment. Now Kirk saw this as a chance to show what those big battleships might have done—and still could do—to hardened German defenses.
⁸

FOR THE NAVAL ASSAULT
on Cherbourg, Kirk formed Task Force 129 under Rear Admiral Morton Deyo, the fifty-seven-year-old career officer
who had commanded the bombardment group off Utah Beach on D-Day and who bore a passing resemblance to John Wayne. Deyo divided his task force into two groups. Group One, under his direct supervision, included many of the same ships he had commanded on D-Day: the battleship
Nevada
, the heavy cruisers
Tuscaloosa
and
Quincy
, and the British light cruisers
Enterprise
and
Glasgow
, plus six destroyers. Group Two, with Rear Admiral Carleton F. Bryant in command, consisted of the battleships
Texas
and
Arkansas
plus five destroyers. Their overall mission was not to capture Cherbourg or even to smash it up. After all, the whole point of the campaign was to seize the port facilities intact—or as intact as possible. Rather, their job was to support Collins’s ground attack by eliminating some of the hardened defensive positions and suppressing the enemy’s heavy guns.

To do that, Deyo proposed first to attack the German coastal batteries that protected the seaward approaches to the harbor. Allied intelligence reported that these consisted of twenty concrete casemates housing guns that ranged in size from 155 mm (6 inches) all the way up to 280 mm (11 inches), and for the security of his command, these would have to be suppressed before the ships could turn their attention to the landward defenses. The Germans had only four of the big 280 mm guns, all of them in Battery Hamburg behind Cap Lévi, about six miles east of the city, and they would be the responsibility of Bryant’s two battleships. Many of the smaller 6-inch guns were clustered around the village of Querqueville, three miles west of the city, and Deyo expected that his cruisers should be able to take care of them. Once the coastal batteries were silenced, the task force would take positions off the city to respond to call-fire requests from Collins’s men ashore. Deyo planned to stay there for at least three hours, from noon to 3:00 p.m. on June 25.
⁹

At almost the last moment, however, Bradley and Collins decided that they did not want Deyo’s ships to shoot at all except in response to specific requests from spotters ashore, and even then, they were not to fire more than two thousand yards inland. Recalling the friendly-fire casualties during the air assault three days before, Collins wanted to ensure that none of those big 12- and 14-inch shells came crashing into his own front lines, which were now less than a mile from the city. As Deyo put it, employing the passive voice, “Concern was felt lest we fire into our own troops.” In addition, Bradley and Collins decided that the Navy ships should fire for only ninety minutes, not the three hours Deyo suggested.
¹⁰

T
HE
N
AVAL
B
OMBARDMENT OF
C
HERBOURG
, J
UNE
25, 1944

Deyo objected to these restrictions, noting that they left the initiative entirely to the Germans and, at the outset at least, made his ships passive targets. Collins relented to the extent that he agreed the ships could shoot back if they were fired on, as long as the Navy gunners were sure of their targets. Of course, that still left the initiative to the defenders, and while Deyo remained unhappy, he had no option but to carry out his orders. He was to show up off the city at noon on June 25, establish radio contact with fire-support parties ashore, and respond to requested call fire. He could defend himself if fired upon, as surely he would be, but otherwise he was to wait for instructions. He was to stay for only ninety minutes, then withdraw.
¹¹

The ships assembled at Portland on June 22, just as the Channel storm was dissipating. That storm added a certain urgency to their mission, since the damage sustained by the Mulberry harbor off Omaha Beach seemed to make the capture of a full-sized seaport even more urgent. Kirk impressed upon Deyo and Bryant that “it was necessary to capture Cherbourg with the utmost dispatch.” The ships got under way in the predawn darkness, between four and five in the morning, on June 25. The sun rose as they crossed the Channel, and in the aftermath of the storm, the day dawned clear and bright over a sea one witness recalled as being “like a piece of glass.”
¹²

There would be no stealth in this attack. The whole operation would take place at midday under bright sunshine. The only cover for the big ships would be provided by the accompanying destroyers, which were to “dash between the cruisers and battleships and the beach and lay a thick smokescreen.” The men went to general quarters at nine-thirty that morning, and an hour later the two task groups approached the shore separately, slowing to five knots in order to follow the British minesweepers to their firing positions. Deyo’s
Nevada
group took up its initial position in Fire Support Area #1 about twenty-eight thousand yards (sixteen miles) due north of Cherbourg. At noon, he moved up to Fire Support Position #3, only twelve thousand yards from the city. Meanwhile, Bryant’s
Texas-Arkansas
group moved into Fire Support Area #2, east of Cap Lévi.
¹³

Despite the restrictions imposed by the Army, Deyo and Bryant were confident of success. They were certainly aware that guns ashore had a number of inherent advantages over guns afloat. Shore batteries sat on a stable firing platform; they did not have to maneuver or worry about their engines being hit; and of course they were much less vulnerable since they constituted a smaller target, were often protected by thick walls of steel and concrete, and could not sink. These were the factors that initially fed Ramsay’s reluctance to accept the assignment. Yet in the twelve months prior to D-Day, U.S. Navy gunners had grown increasingly confident, not only in their ability to put heavy ordnance on target but also in their superiority over shore batteries—even batteries of large-caliber guns. At Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, and elsewhere, Allied naval guns had demonstrated their ability to suppress and even dominate the shore batteries of the defenders. This new-found confidence would be severely tested at Cherbourg, however, mainly because the four 280 mm guns in the Hamburg Battery were bigger than any the Navy had faced so far, they were housed in heavy concrete and steel casemates, and they were manned by sailors from the German navy, the Kriegsmarine, who were equally confident of their ability to sink ships.
¹⁴

The Allied ships were all in position by noon. Because of the requirement to withhold fire until the Army requested it, the Germans opened the battle, firing on the ships of Deyo’s Group One from the batteries in and around Querqueville at 12:06. From the very first salvos, the German gunners proved to be remarkably—even alarmingly—accurate. The first salvo straddled the destroyer
Murphy
(DD-603), and one 6-inch shell hit the
Walke
(DD-723). That shell shattered the
Walke
’s glass windshield on the open bridge and sent large pieces of broken glass flying almost the entire length of the ship. A sailor manning a 40 mm mount amidships was outraged when the glass shards flew past him, and he hollered: “Those dirty———are shooting glass at us!” Only minutes later, shells landed all around the USS
Quincy
, and HMS
Glasgow
was hit twice. The
Nevada
herself was bracketed by a three-gun salvo, with one shell landing only a hundred yards off her starboard quarter. At 12:09, just three minutes into the battle, the deck officer on the
Nevada
noted dryly in the ship’s log: “Enemy is getting the range rapidly.”
¹⁵