He wasn’t long in searching, and quickly picked out a troop of three enemy A13 Cruiser tanks, their forward hulls and turrets protruding from the cover of a treeline off to the south-west. Part of a squadron from the British 1st Armoured Division, two of the tanks fired again, this time at Schmidt’s Panthers, and once again the solid shot of their 2-pdr guns ricocheted or shattered against the German panzers’ superior frontal armour.
“Cruising panzer… three-fifty metres…!” He cried, the turret already turning as Wisch anticipated his command. “Load hohlgeschoss… middle target has antenna!” A long radio antennae indicated the tank in question was almost certainly a commander’s vehicle, and was therefore a priority target.
“Hohlgeschoss loaded…!”
“Befehlspanzer acquired…!” Wisch confirmed his aim on the enemy command tank as the turret’s traverse halted once more.
“Fire…!”
Wham! An 88mm HEAT round hurtled away as the Panther shook once more. The A13’s armour was just 38mm thick at best, and that was nowhere near enough as the hollow-charge anti-tank round caught the nearest of the British cruisers low on its turret face, just above the mounting ring. There was a bright flash upon impact, and the entire turret was suddenly spiralling high into the air at the head of a fiery tail as the shattered hull ‘brewed up’, sheets of flame roaring from the gaping wound where it had once been. None of the four-man crew got out alive, and its colleagues were similarly destroyed seconds later as two more of Schmidt’s Panthers fired and blew them to pieces. The tree line would continue to burn for some time.
Alerts of enemy infantry came through a moment later, and they turned their turrets in the warned direction to discover a series of previously-undetected trenches nearby, north of the rail line. Infantry attacks could be deadly to a closed-down tank – one of the reasons armoured vehicles went into combat with their own infantry support wherever possible – and as they brought their guns to bear on the new targets, a suicidally-brave British infantryman leaped from the nearest of the trenches and let fly with a No.76 anti-tank grenade, shot down just a second later by the coaxial machine gun of the tank at which he was aiming.
“Infantry close in… load kartätsche! Where the fuck are our bloody frontschwein?” Schmidt called the warning to his crew, at the same time voicing a protest at the lack of support as the grenade, no more than a half-pint glass bottle filled with white phosphorous and benzine, shattered against the rear of Panther-324’s hull. Fire instantly engulfed the rear of the turret and its engine deck, the hissing phosphorous depriving the tank’s diesel powerplant of oxygen and stalling it almost instantly. A stalled tank on fire was a fatal combination, and Schmidt radioed its crew to bail out.
Spurred on by momentary success as they watched the panzer crew abandon their vehicle, a dozen men burst from their trenches armed with grenades and bayonet-tipped rifles, charging forward and intent on doing similar damage to other nearby tanks. Schmidt’s main gun had a clear shot as the crew of Panzer-324 dived for safety, and he gave the order to fire the loaded canister round. The air around the charging Tommis was instantly filled with hundreds of lead balls the size of large bullets, and at a range of just fifty metres or so there was little chance for the grapeshot to spread. None of the exposed British survived the blast, most literally disintegrating under the multitude of impacts.
An SH-6C gunship swooped in out of the sky a few seconds later, hammering the trenches with cannon fire and rockets and silencing whatever enemy might still be hiding within. The moment the firing from above had ceased, a pair of Marder IFVs lurched to a halt at the edge of the smoking trenches and disgorged two squads of shock troops to secure the area.
“Bravo to our glorious grenadiers,” Schmidt growled sarcastically, mostly to himself but gaining a smile from the other men in the tank all the same. “Better late than never, as always…!” The remarks were through tight lips and partially-clenched teeth, but lightened the tension a little nevertheless.
He caught sight of Lötzsch, Panther-324’s commander, standing close in to the burning tank with a fire extinguisher and ignoring the phosphorous, flames and enemy fire as he worked desperately to save his panzer from serious damage. The platoon commander allowed himself a thin smile of his own as he turned his attention back to scanning the area for enemy targets: the man was an excellent NCO, and had shown a good deal of courage… if he and his tank survived, Schmidt would make sure he got the iron cross for that act of bravery.
Another moment or two, and someone on the southern edge of the widening beachhead had picked out another cluster of anti-tank weapons and infantry further to the south-west. Orders came in over the radio, and Schmidt and his Panthers were moving off and firing again.
Behind them on the beach, successive waves of hovercraft continued to pour in as the troops already on the ground began to push north and south and expand the embarkation area to make room. Flak vehicles, self-propelled guns and rocket artillery joined the men already on the ground, although the Wirbelwind AA vehicles would find more use for their quartets of 23mm cannon against ground targets that day than the non-existent RAF. They took casualties as the defending enemy began to concentrating their forces, but those losses were comparatively light all the same, and the seemingly endless stream of men and armoured vehicles continued to arrive as attack planes and gunships howled overhead, firing their cannon and releasing bombs and rockets with impunity. Although the battle in that area would continue into the morning, in truth it had already been won.
The men of 7RTR and the rest of the 1st London Division could hear the muffled sounds of artillery, and see the eerie flashes of explosions as they lit up the grey cloud that skirted the eastern horizon. Battle reports from the local area command were sketchy at best, partly due to the requirements of censorship, and partly because they simply didn’t have better information. The gravity of the situation was nevertheless clear enough and chilling in the extreme. Engagements with enemy paratroopers had been confirmed right along the Kent and Sussex coast during the night, and there were now reports of a large landing force on the beaches near the Romney Marsh. Davids had heard of plans to flood the marsh and set it alight with oil, should invaders land, but it seemed the enemy force there had already secured the beaches with little or no opposition. By all accounts, German paratroopers had already seized control of many key strategic points in that area, and many of the planned invasion defences had either failed or had been rendered significantly less effective as a result.
Their dug-in position across the A20 were less than a dozen kilometres from the nearest beachheads, and a good deal closer than that to some of the pitched battles that had been fought against fallschirmjäger earlier that morning. As such, they expected to see action at any moment… depending on how fast the beach defences collapsed. As it happened, the defences at Smeeth were provided a few hours grace as the bulk of the 3rd SS Shock turned north and pushed up the coast, slamming into the outnumbered but well dug-in defenders around Hythe and Folkestone. The resulting engagements were short, but were also particularly intense as mechanised troops were forced to dismount their IFVs and engage British defenders in vicious house-to-house fighting. Both towns had fallen within hours, and the Wehrmacht had eventually held the field of battle, but the victory had come at a higher cost. The 3rd SS lost a number of tanks damaged or knocked out, and took heavy casualties among their grenadiers, although their enemy was ultimately wiped out entirely in return.
Civilian casualties were also incredibly high, as many hadn’t considered evacuation until the last moment, and had subsequently been caught up in the invasion itself. Many had been killed or wounded by bombardments from the division’s self-propelled rocket launchers and artillery guns as they reduced huge sections of Folkestone to rubble prior to any advance. What remained of the city was little more than a smoking ruin, but the division’s first major objective had been reached, and Folkestone’s port had been captured basically intact. Freighters
and transports would arrive within the hour carrying more troops, armoured vehicles and supplies.
With enemy resistance in the area finally crushed, the 3rd SS was ordered to dig in and await resupply and reinforcement by the rest of Von Rundstedt’s Army Group A as it steamed toward them across The Channel’s narrowest point. The division had also linked up with sections of the 1st Fallschirmjäger near West Hythe during their advance, and as the fighting there subsided, news reached the division commander that the paratroopers were in danger of losing their hold on the vital Lympne airfield, ten kilometres inland from Folkestone. Schmidt was immediately given orders to take 3rd Company west along the Hythe Road at full speed to provide heavy armour support against any counter-attack. As the intensity of the fighting near Folkestone began to wind down, the eyes of the Wehrmacht area commanders turned inexorably toward Dover; the next vital objective on their list.
Much like the rest of the area commands in Southern England, the local British HQ at Dover Castle had placed the city defences on immediate alert as ‘codeword Oliver’ had been broadcast, just before dawn. Luftwaffe air activity had been intense, with fighters, attack aircraft, transports and heavy bombers constantly passing overhead in both directions, yet there’d rather unexpectedly been no attacks on Dover itself… something that hadn’t gone unnoticed by the local commanders. They were grateful for the small respite, all things considered, as many of the soldiers ostensibly manning defences there that day were instead tied up acting as glorified police officers, forced into vain attempts at controlling a mass exodus of the civilian population.
Like numerous other towns along the coast, many of the town’s residents had decided to remain until the last moment in the ill-considered opinion there’d be ample time to evacuate, should the need arise. Of course, now the invasion warnings had finally come, the huge majority were now attempting to leave at the same time, clogging the streets and lanes leading west into the countryside with masses of terrified people, many of whom were also trying to bring what seemed on the face of it to be their entire life’s belongings into the bargain. Roads were jammed by every imaginable form of transportation. Cars and trucks, motorcycles and bicycles, horses, drays, hand-drawn carts… all were squeezed together as a chaotic sea of human beings forced its way slowly out of the city.
The High Street and Maison Dieu Road were at a standstill as they headed north-west toward the London Road, the A2 and the relative safety of Canterbury beyond. Castle Hill Road was also gridlocked heading north toward Deal, as were most of the city’s cross-streets as confusion and panic reigned. No one dared take the risk of making an escape to the south-west. Rumours that were based on a good deal of solid truth were already circulating of enemy landings on the Romney Marshes, and that an armoured division had already taken Hythe and was pushing down on the outskirts of Folkestone, just twelve kilometres away. The stories were backed up by the dull thud of distant artillery from that direction, and few were willing to risk suicide by taking the Folkestone Road that morning.
The lack of aerial attention came to an end perhaps an hour after the 3rd SS had hit the beaches near St Mary’s Bay. Seeräuber medium bombers and the ubiquitous S-2Ds were among the first waves to hit the town, sweeping in from across the water at extremely low level before hitting the docks and surrounding areas with bombs and cannon fire. Their intelligence prior to the attack was excellent, and many gun emplacements and defensive positions believed to have been well hidden were destroyed in that first attack.
The retreating aircraft also served to distract the defenders on the ground, and as they fired back in retaliation, the streams of tracer reaching into the sky gave away their positions to the gunships of III./SHG1 as the insect-like helicopters powered in from The Channel in the wake of their fixed-wing colleagues. Splitting into pairs, they formed into wide, ‘figure-8’ flight patterns as each helicopter took its turn to dive in, engage with cannon or rockets, then climb away again, circling around to come back onto their target as their wingmen made their own attack runs. Fires burned around the entire harbour, and towers of thick, black smoke streamed up into the sky to taint the lighter grey of the clouds above.
The gunships continued their assault for the better part of fifteen long, gruelling minutes, during which time many of the original twenty-four had been forced to terminate their attacks and head east once more as their ammunition ran out. As the remaining aircraft of III./SHG1 finally turned away and made their way back toward the French coast in loose formation, they were passed by their colleagues from II Gruppe, flying in the other direction. Strung out in a long line, two-dozen of the SH-6C Drache helicopters drew to within a few thousand metres of the Port of Dover before a single order from their commander brought them all to a complete halt. Another moment or two and they were joined by a single NH-3D utility helicopter, which aligned itself to the southern end of the formation and also assumed a stationary, holding position. The line of aircraft was clearly visible to observers on the Western Heights, below the Drop Redoubt, and it was a sight that instilled much foreboding as the choppers hovered in place as if waiting for something to happen… which was exactly the case.
Gustav first shell struck completely without warning, within minutes of the appearance of the second wave of waiting gunships, the seven-tonne armour piercing round landing perfectly on target. The southernmost of the two guns at Battery 672(E), Gustav had fired upon the huge and complex fortifications that stretched across the top of Dover’s Western Heights, many of which were connected by a maze of secret tunnels.
The northernmost section contained the Drop Redoubt, a large, pentagon-shaped fortress dug into the top of the hill and surrounded by a deep, dry moat, built with the purpose of protecting the port from landward attack. Its last official garrison had been withdrawn around the turn of the century, but a squad of Royal Commandos had secretly taken up residence there following the outbreak of war in 1939, tasked with the sole duty of destroying the harbour in the event of an invasion.
The shell struck the outer fortress at the southern end of the moat, quite close to a protruding casemate known as Caponier 2. It easily penetrated the brick and earth walls, punching deep into the earth below, and the subsequent explosion, although relatively small in comparison to the guns’ high-explosive rounds, was still sufficient to create a substantial camouflet beneath the Redoubt’s southern corner. The ground disappeared beneath that part of the structure, collapsing into a crater several metres deep and taking a large section of Caponier 2 and the adjoining fortress wall with it. As the detonation occurred underground, there was surprisingly little smoke or flame, but a thick plume of dust rose into the sky nevertheless, billowing upward as solid fortifications were reduced to useless rubble.
Observers aboard the hovering NH-3D relayed some minor adjustments, and Dora fired second 7-tonne shell a moment later that fell forty metres north-north-west and tipped a similarly large section of wall and fortification into the western side of the dry moat in a pile of dust and debris. Gustav’s second shell struck four minutes later, followed soon after by another shell from Dora, both of which landed inside the central walls of the Redoubt, sending larger sections of the 150-year-old fortress tumbling into deep underground craters and leaving the entire area partially obscured by spreading clouds of dust and smoke.
What was less apparent to the external observer was the damage also being wrought to the complex maze of secret underground tunnels that criss-crossed the entire area beneath the Western Heights, and linked the Redoubt with the Citadel and Centre Bastion complexes. The terrible subterranean shockwaves produced by just those four shells were powerful enough to collapse many tunnels in the immediate vicinity and seriously weaken many others at far greater distances to the point of being unsafe. All of that was collateral damage however, as the initial purpose of the shelling had been to neutralise the commando squad stationed within the Redoubt and prevent them interfering with the integrity of the harbour below. The fire mission
had been a complete success in that respect: those few men inside the fortress who’d not been killed in the first blast had certainly been wiped out by the following three.
In the fifteen minutes that followed, the next six shots from Battery 672(E) shifted their aim to the port area itself. This time, both guns again fired the same proximity-fused ‘airburst’ shells they’d used to good effect on the beach defences earlier that morning… this time, those same shells were instead targeted at high-density urban and commercial city areas. Still not completely recovered from the damaged suffered during the artillery duel of weeks earlier, Archcliffe Road and Limekiln Street again felt the huge guns’ wrath as blasts rocked the area, demolishing entire blocks of houses and leaving just empty, rubble-strewn landscapes in their wake. Hawkesbury, Bulwark and Snargate Streets suffered similar fates, the smoke and fires that ensued adding to the dark haze of blackness already collecting over the port area as a result of the air attacks.
The shelling of the town had been intended to serve several purposes. Firstly, it’d helped to spread panic and terror throughout the crowds clogging the congested streets heading out of the city, which not only tied up desperately-needed troops and kept them away from their defences, but also helped to prevent the approach of any reinforcements that might seek to launch a counter attack in the hours to follow. Secondly, it’d also helped subdue any defenders still within the port area who’d managed to survive the bombings and rocket attacks and were still in hiding awaiting a chance to strike back. Lastly, the bombardment also directly aided the masses of troops now heading directly for Dover with the intention of capturing the harbour intact. The cliffs around Dover had made a hovercraft assault impossible, and something quite different had been required to solve the problem of getting troops on the ground quickly to secure the port. As had been the case further south at Folkestone, supply vessels and transports were also enroute for Dover and due to arrive within a few hours, but the task of paving the way and providing them with safe harbour fell to the newest combat units of the Waffen-SS: 1st SS Flieger Division.
England Expects (Empires Lost) Page 84
