Reporting from the Front: War Reporters during the Great War by Brian Best

Author:Brian Best
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sensory World
Published: 2014-04-20T16:00:00+00:00

HMS Campbeltown after ramming the lock gates at St-Nazaire, March 1942. (Bundesarchiv, 101II-MW-3722-03/Kramer)

To obtain full control of the town districts along the waterfront, the Kreiskommandatur of Brest had almost a thousand civilian inhabitants evacuated from the mercantile harbour in April 1942.5 Restaurants and bars had to close, although established firms and traders in the port area were allowed in during the day. Access to the harbour required special approval, documents being checked by sentries at the entrance points. Another consequence of the British attack on St-Nazaire was the immediate transfer of the many naval staffs from the coast into the interior.6 Thus Dönitz was obliged to abandon his chateau at Kernevel near Lorient for Paris. The rest homes for U-boatmen directly above the beaches were not abandoned, but Dönitz ordered their closure until further notice.

In order to protect against any more surprise attacks from the sea, surveillance of inshore waters was stepped up. For this purpose the harbour protection flotillas had to detach all seaworthy boats to the VP-boat flotillas.7 In the spring of 1942 in the west there were almost two hundred of these VP-boats, although only eighty-six were operational.8 This left the harbours themselves unprotected, since there were no substitutes for the boats they had been forced to release. At Brest in May 1942, for example, the harbour protection flotilla had only two boats operational instead of the usual twenty. The Kriegsmarine office at Bordeaux was in charge of requisitions but discovered in their search that in France all suitable boats had already been assigned, apart from some old fishing cutters and unseaworthy craft.9 This meant that from the summer of 1942 the harbour protection flotillas could only keep watch from a few of their waterborne stations.

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