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Re: Operation Sonnenblume
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dak69
Re: Operation Sonnenblume - Chapters V and VI
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May 22 07 6:59 AM
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Nothing is simple (Allied version)
On the other side of the Mediterranean, the actions intended to prevent the transit had also many difficulties to start. Will the job be done by the Resistance or by a squad from Army Special Forces ? And where ? Eventually, a solution emerged : it was not necessary to destroy these submarines ; delaying their transit long enough so their arrival at Toulon would be to late for the Germans in regard of the future landing in Southern France was enough. Submarines at various states of assembly in the yard would not be a threat for the landing forces Halting the convoy one month or better two somewhere along the Canal du Rhne au Rhin should be sufficient. On these premises, a plan could then be built, with the help of documentation found on the Faculty of Geography in Algiers (some maps and descriptions coming from Napoleon III years), and with the assistance of a Civil Engineer working for the Canal du Midi, who joined Algeria in July 1940. The outline was the following : the two locks at both ends of the highest section of the Canal, just near the border between Alsace and the rest of France, will be blasted, in combination with the destruction of the main water supply at the same location. With the time which will be needed to achieve the repairs, and with only a little remaining water supply, the emptied section would take weeks, especially during the summer, to refill. Either the Germans will wait, either they will make an U-turn and use the other way (return to Strasbourg, then Canal de la Marne au Rhin, then Canal de la Marne la Sane). In both cases, they would lose at least six weeks. Of course, more the German convoy will be close to the break point, better this would be.
Another point had to be resolved. Which men could do that ? Resistance in Alsace was embryonic, for multiple reasons, the first being the germanisation de facto of the province. The Alsatian Resistance could only pass some information, and bring a little help to the rare volunteers who wanted to make the long and perilous travel to North Africa, through Switzerland, south of France and Spain. But she was a lot stronger in the Doubs and Territoire de Belfort departments, under French administration. It was therefore decided that the Resistance will have to give the needed logistical support, the sabotage itself being carried by a commando of Special Forces, which could easily take refuge in Switzerland if needed, the Swiss border being only about 12 miles away from the locks location.
Finding the members of the squad was not difficult, volunteers were plenty. Among them was Joseph Bilger, native of Pfetterhouse, Alsatian little town located at both the Swiss border and the limit of the Territoire de Belfort. He had left his town in June 1940, had crossed Switzerland and had succeeded in joining Marseilles to arrive in Algeria. At the end of January, the specific training for this mission started for the commando..
On the way from the Baltic to the Riviera...
Monday 1st March 1943, in the early morning hours, nine river tugs departed from Kiel, with 27 barges in tow, each carrying submarine hull. Their departure took without difficulty, according Klaus Fleishmann diary : All was ready, inspected, checked and double-checked. I had no particular emotion when the convoy started, because of another concern : the following week, I had to go myself at Toulon, to prepare and later supervise all the complex operations involved with the upgrade process of the compressed air circuits. As these modifications where not part of the initial design, earlier I will prepare them, smoother will them occur. This fist part of the transit, first through the Kiel Canal, then through the Kstenkanal, the Ems-Dortmund Kanal and finally the Rhine to Strasbourg occurred without any trouble.
But the convoy could not remain unnoticed for long. The Mosquitos from the RAF PR Squadron and the aerial photography interpretation department were knowing their job. 6th of March, a shot taken two days earlier pointed out 27 barges perfectly aligned in three rows at Bremerhafen. The 10th, a new picture, taken this time at Dortmund the day before, removed all the remaining doubts. The first informed was Ian Fleming, and, obviously, the second one was his secretary, Mrs Henderson :
- You remember the German submarines captain who made a tourist travel through the best part of eastern France wine countries last year ?
-        The chap who was a passenger on motor torpedo boats ? Of course yes. Using such open sea boats on canals demonstrates again the poor taste of the Huns !
-        Well, it seems probable that he his on the same travel again, but this time with his submarines
-        That looks so ridiculous, Mr Fleming. Are you sure ?
-        As I cannot imagine the German invading Switzerland by underwater way, I have no other explanation to offer.
-        Well, at least, in India, such an eccentric story would have been impossible.
-        I have to agree. Elephants would certainly be put at work to carry submarines on their backs in that lovely country. Now, may I ask you to connect me with my honourable counterpart of Frogs Naval Intelligence, here in London ?
The 11th, Algiers was brought up to date. The 12th, decision to start Operation Nemo was taken. The squad was ready. One of his members, wounded during the training, had been replaced by a second Alsatian, Franois Sifert. With Joseph Bilger, he started immediately to discuss only in his mother tongue. It would be particularly stupid to be betrayed by speaking French on Alsatian soil.
March 13th, the German convoy entered Strasbourg Rhine harbour. The submarines were quickly unloaded and fitted on their float frames, after thorough checking of their watertightness. The 14th, by evening, the whole flotilla was ready for the travel on the Canal du Rhone au Rhin.
Peter-Erich Cremer had not been unemployed : The days preceding the departure of our flotilla from Strasbourg were exhausting. With my two assistants, KptLtn Franz Klein and ObLtn zur See Hans Fromm, we had to deal with a mass of practical items, whereas the protection the Heer had to give our convoy was still unsatisfactory for me, despite the many meetings and discussions which had already taken place. The day before the departure from Strasbourg, I held an ultimate briefing with my men :
- Messrs, before our start tomorrow, I have several things to say to you, and I would not like to have to repeat them ! You know the stake of our mission, and since several weeks, even several months for some, you work there for his success. Thanks to your competence, all the technical aspects were solved and I am sure, if incidents of such nature would occur, you could face and resolve them. But what will made us succeed above all, is the discipline ! And I expect that you will be irreproachable on this subject. As the KL Klein will explain it to you, the passage of each lock will be directed by an ensign or a midshipman. And I will hold these young Messrs personally responsible for any deviation of the regulations on this occasion : I want nobody, I repeat nobody, in the Cafs de la Marine that the French have built nearby each lock, in order to quench their thirst or worse. And do not believe that I tell you that to bother you; its only for the safety of everyone. The slackened attitude that some could have taken during the locks passage training time here in Strasbourg would be fatal in French territory, after Montbeliard, where it will be necessary to be cautious upon each person, everyone could have very good reasons to hold a grudge towards us.
The smiles that some were believed to display disappeared quickly. But, at this time, I was unaware of my optimism. Klein spoke then:
- I will point out the main legs of our journey. The first part of the cruise will end in Mulhouse, and three days will be needed for that. Tomorrow, we will only make about 30 km (20 miles), in order to have enough time to well rehearse the procedures when passing the locks, even if they have been repeated here in Strasbourg with a tug and empty barges. With our whales in tow, this will not be as easy. Each tug will tow two submarines till Mulhouse, and the locks will be crossed in single line. Each tug master will receive a detailed sheet of instructions for each lock crossing, including all the hooking, unhooking and pushes that he will have to do. Each officer in charge of a lock will also receive an instruction sheet. If any problem occurs on a boat, a workshop truck of the Kriegsmarine will be nearby to fix any mechanical trouble. As you have seen, there are marks on the floats. If the water reaches these marks, a waterway occurred on a submarine. In this case, call the workshop truck in order to pump the water and make an emergency sealing. If a problem with the operations of the locks occurs, the Engineering will take care of it. You have a radio set on each tug, use it !
Klein had done a remarkable work, just as Fromm, more particularly in charge of the catering. It was necessary to feed a good hundred people, without counting the men of the Engineering, and it was not with the store-rooms of the tugs, just good to heat the so-called coffee, that it would have been possible. For the accommodation, each tug boat had eight berths as tight and uncomfortable as those of a Type II. That also was part of the training ! "
Monday March 15th, in the morning, the convoy left Strasbourg, the brass band playing again to salute the departure. The crossing of the first lock, located downtown, attracted a crowd of bystanders, who benefited from this unusual show till mid-afternoon. At this hour, the first boats were already at Erstein, the stop for the following night. It was with great relief that PE Cremer saw arriving the last of his boats at nightfall :
Finally, all happened very well this first day. Outside a battery breakdown on a tug and a small waterway on a badly sealed piping hole on the U-817 hull, and temporarily fixed from inside while waiting for a more definitive repair from the outside in Mulhouse, no incident took place that day. The discipline has been respected, the frustrated faces of some (not always !) young persons at the locks being the best proof. I used this short moment of respite to renew acquaintance with the inspector of the navigation who has made the first part of the travel with us on the S-Boats a few months earlier. Unfortunately, I forgot his name. The conversation went rather quickly on the harbour master, Paul Kuntz, which I could only praise for all his efforts :
-        Without him, we never departed. He did a remarkable organizational work.
- However, he answered me, he was in big trouble.
- I know. I saw a clearer rectangular mark on the left wall of his office... If I understood well, he had visit...
- Yes, confirmed the inspector, somebody informed the Gestapo that he had not very Aryan artistic tastes... But the worst is that he is very concerned by the fate of its two sons, from where he is without news since... a lot of time.
- Ah, I said, believing to understand. Hard, for a father. They are in the East, I suppose.
- Exactly. In the East.
It was only after the war, by meeting Paul Kuntz again, that I understood the remarks of my interlocutor. For me, the East meant the Russian Front, but for him, the East was the Far East. The two sons of Paul Kuntz were serving in the Marine Nationale, one on the Strasbourg, the other on the Dunkerque, and their father was aware of the presence of these ships in the Pacific. That knowledge enabled me to better understand the rest of the events.
But this evening like the precedents, I sent to the Admiral Doenitz a report saying in substance that all happened well"
The following day, March 16th, Peter-Erich Cremer gave command of the convoy to his assistant and went to Belfort in order to explain one more time what it was advisable to do to protect his boats.
"An Opel of the Wehrmacht picked me early in the morning, at 7 hours, and we arrived at the citadel of Belfort at 9 a.m., after a drive on deserted roads, stopping only once, at the crossing of the old before 1914 border, where again customs officers and a large Feldgendarmerie checkpoint were active. The meeting, organized in a rather sinister room (the Heer never rolled out the red carpet for me), was chaired by a colonel coming from the garrison of Belfort. A young captain from the infantry regiment of Mulhouse, wearing a Ritterkreuz, was also present, as well as junior officers of the various units concerned with what the Heer was obstinate to name the "watching" of my convoy. The colonel spoke the first :
-        As you perhaps know it, even on your boats, the Reich is currently delivering a very decisive and without mercy fight in Russia against the Bolshevik ogre, and all the efforts of the Wehrmacht must absolutely be devoted to achieve victory against Stalins legions. Order of the Fhrer ! We have no resources to waste for secondary tasks.
That started badly. But more was to come:
- I have here in Belfort only the strictly needed manpower to guard the Swiss border and watch the main communication axes, and your canal is only a small part of that. The whole country is calm. I really cannot imagine why Berlin charged me with such a chore. But in any case, my responsibility starts only at the border with Alsace. On the other side, its not my job ! Its for the guys of Mulhouse. They have plenty people here, but, as usual, nobody asked their anything.
- I fear that you do not have all the information, Sir, answered courteously the young captain. Our regiment is currently packing in order to return in Russia, leaving only one training company in Mulhouse. But it is with pleasure that I place it at the disposal of the Kriegsmarine, on Alsatian soil.
A company of greenhorns at basic infantry training for 40 km ! A man every 200 meters, at the best. They could as well remain sleeping in the barracks The colonel began again, a bit less briskly:
- I think that it will be necessary to concentrate our assets at the most probable location of an attack, i.e. between the limits of Alsace and Montbeliard. It is there that the Swiss border is the nearest, and the possible terrorists will probably flee in that direction. It will be at this place that we will not only prevent their action while keeping watch over your boats, but also capture them.
I exposed then my own point of view:
- Sir, we have to deal with two risks : the destruction of the boats and that of the canal. If one or two boats are damaged, by mines or an attack with explosives, we leave them on the spot and we continue with the others. On the other hand, if it is the channel which is damaged, we must make an U-turn or await for the repairs, which, in both cases, will delay us several weeks and will undoubtedly make us arrive at Toulon too late for the operations considered. As your assets are limited, I would prefer that you devote them to the guard of the channel rather than to the monitoring of the boats. This guard of the channel must include the locks and all the bridges which span over it, because a broken down bridge falling in the canal would be a double catastrophe. And this guard must advance with my convoy, anticipating it by approximately 24 hours.
- Kapitnleutnant, you are one of our best submariners, your Ritterkreuz proves it. But on the firm ground, I have much more experience than you. Believe me, if an attack occurs, it will take place where I say. I will thus securing this zone, but to please you, I will include in the mission of my men the monitoring of the bridges and the locks. Nobody will be able to approach their, you have my word ! And, to counter any possibility, the deployment will start even today.
The young captain took then the word again.
- I can position my men where an incident on the Alsatian side would be the most prejudicial for you, i.e. in the locks staircase of Valdieu. Even if they are just good to hold a rifle, their presence should be enough to discourage any approach.
- Thank you, Captain. I will therefore see you in Mulhouse tomorrow evening. Sir, can we now examine what is intended between Montbeliard and Besancon ?
(...)
I had well understood that I would not obtain anything more. On the 60 km between Mulhouse and Montbeliard, instead of a force advancing with the convoy and protecting only the critical points during the necessary time, I had a static guard on two zones alas non-contiguous, and undoubtedly requiring more men. It was better than a sentinel every 100 m as that had been considered two weeks earlier, but that was not yet enough to reassure me completely. The future was to give me reason... At the time to return to my boats, I crossed the young captain who was also going to return. I noticed that he limped slightly and he answered me with a large smile : " To remember Smolensk ! The surgeons made miracles, but some days, I can hardly walk. This is why I do not go back to Russia, at least not immediately, because if the situation worsened, they would send me there even with crutches ! "
I returned to my submarines at the evening. They were now 40 km before Mulhouse, and no incident had occurred during the whole day. That, combined with the less close-minded attitude of the Heer, finishes by putting a little optimism back in my mind. I informed Admiral Doenitz of this evolution of the position of the Heer, to which it was undoubtedly not foreign. "
March 17, in the afternoon, the convoy arrived at Mulhouse, or more exactly at LIle-Napoleon, in his immediate suburbs. A surprise awaited Peter-Erich Cremer and his men...
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