User:TCY/Cézembre bombing

Aerial photo of Cézembre, with Saint-Malo in the background, taken by a USAAF plane from the northwest of the island after a bombing raid.

The Cézembre bombing (French bombardement de Cézembre) was an intense Anglo-American air, sea and land bombardment of the small coastal island of Cézembre, off Saint-Malo in northeastern Brittany, during the Second World War, between the August 6 and September 2, 1944

Last pocket of German resistance during the liberation of the city, the island, normally uninhabited, housed a small German garrison and powerful artillery guns.

Cézembre was part of the defense of the Saint-Malo harbour and was fortified by the Germans from July 1942. Its defense and the service of the artillery pieces were ensured by about 400 German soldiers of the Kriegsmarine, joined by Italian soldiers of the First Atlantic Division of Marine Fusiliers in July 1944, who had retreated to Saint-Malo in the face of the Allied advance, as well as by volunteers recruited among the Soviet prisoners of war. Cézembre main guns, crossed with those of Jersey, also protected the access to the ports of Granville and Cancale. The Allies wanted to seize the ports of this coast to ensure the supply of their troops after their breakthrough in the Cotentin during the Battle of Normandy.

The Allied raids started on August 6, 1944, but it was only on August 17, 1944, after the surrender of the city of Aleth, the last German mainland resistance point of the "Saint-Malo Fortress", that the sea, land and air bombing of Cézembre became extremely intense. The bombs dropped by the American air force, some of which were filled with napalm and phosphorus, did not lead to the surrender despite several American proposals in this sense. Admiral Friedrich Hüffmeier had ordered the garrison commander, Kapitänleutnant Richard Seuss, to resist at all costs as long as fire could be carried out from the island. The German forces had difficulty in providing supplies from the Channel Islands, but failed to evacuate the garrison once its ammunition was exhausted.

In a hurry to finish the job, the Allies launched a new intense bombardment on August 31, combining fire from the British battleship HMS Malaya and waves of bombs dropped by Allied aircraft, the final preparation before an amphibious assault. The German garrison was no longer in a position to resist, having lost its supply of drinking water and suffering many casualties. The Italian fighters raised the white flag on September 1. Authorized to surrender, Richard Seuss proceeded to surrender his garrison on the morning of September 2, 1944, while the Americans were preparing to launch their amphibious assault on the same day.

The tormented relief of the island, with more than two thousand impact craters, still testifies today to the intensity of the bombing (nearly 20,000 bombs dropped in less than a month). For a long time, despite several demining campaigns, Cézembre remained classified as a military zone and forbidden to access - except for its beach and its surroundings - because of the presence of unexploded ordnance. In 2018, the Conservatoire du littoral, which has become the manager of the site, was able to develop, after a new demining campaign, a public pathway across the island but entirely separated from the prohibited area by a fence.

Fortifications and garrison

Cézembre map in 2018.

Cézembre is 650 meters long and 250 meters wide at the most1, and reaches an altitude of 38 meters. The island is located 3.8 km north of the beach of Dinard and 4 km northwest of Saint-Malo. The access channels to the port of Saint-Malo all pass not far from the island. Its north-western coastline, facing the open sea and the jagged cliffs, contrasts with the slope of the opposite coastline, which slopes down towards two beaches facing the city. Strong currents complicate navigation around the island.

First fortifications

The island, uninhabited, is fortified at the end of the seventeenth centurie by Vauban, and then several times in the following centuries. In the middle of the nineteenth centurie, the French Navy built two small fortifications to house a hundred men; they included short-range artillery pieces. In the 1880s, the appearance of the Paixhans shells and the tensions with the United Kingdom (whose Navy was equipped with these weapons), led to profound changes and reinforcement of the island's defenses. A battery of four 240 mm guns and three mortars was installed on the south-western side of the island, so as to cover the entire western part of the island. Galleries and ammunition bunkers, dug in the rock, complete this battery. A railroad was laid to supply them from the southern hold, the only ordinary access point. Two lighter batteries, equipped with four 95 mm and four 90 mm guns, installed to the northeast covered the north and east. With the "Entente cordiale" with the British at the beginning of the twentieth centurie, the defensive vocation of the island disappeared.

Fortifications by the Germans during the Occupation

German fire command post in Cézembre.

During World War II, Saint-Malo was occupied by the Germans from June 1940. Aware of the stakes of a possible Allied landing in northwestern Europe, they set about fortifying Cézembre from July 1942, fortifications known as Ostwall. · The island is one of the main defense points of the Festung Saint-Malo, the Saint-Malo fortress, the name given by the Germans to the set of fortifications in and around the Malvinese city (including Dinard and the left bank of the Rance, the pointe de la Varde and various lines of fortifications further inland). The major ports of the English Channel and North Sea were the most heavily defended points of the Atlantic Wall, as the Reich was certain that the Allies would have to quickly try to take a port within days of landing. However, the port of Saint-Malo was of lesser importance than other ports such as Cherbourg, Le Havre, or Brest.

More than ten thousand workers of the Organisation Todt were mobilized to build more than five hundred defense structures within a ten-kilometer radius of Saint-Malo. For Vera Kornicker, author of a book on the bombing of Cézembre, "over-fortified, the island became in 1944 a veritable concrete battleship, a formidable coastal battery".

The Germans razed the remains of the late ninetenth fortifications to build blockhouses, casemates and other artillery weapons. The goal was to set up enough powerful cannons to control the port of Saint-Malo and the Rance accesss, but also access to the Mont-Saint-Michel Bay, crossing fire with that of the Battery Lothringen set up on the island of Occupied Jersey, and support the first lines of defense inland. They used primarily recovery.

Weaponry

A semi-underground bunker in Cézembre.

The Todt engineers divided the island's fortifications into two: those on the southwest and those on the northeast. The casemates housing the soldiers were built in the middle depression of the island.

The remains of a 194 mm gun destroyed by Allied bombing.

Remains of a 194 mm gun in its reinforced concrete tank; on the right, the access to the buried bunker that contained the ammunition.

West of Cézembre, three 194 mm model 1870-77 guns are each installed in a concrete tank. This protection is inferior to that of a bunker, but allows firing in all directions. Their ammunition bunker is organized in a buried bunker. This is supplemented by a four-level bunker, which is both a command post and a firing post. East of the island is defended by three 194 mm Model 1870-1893 guns.

These six guns are former French Navy coastal defense guns, used as land guns during the First World War and seized by the Germans during the Occupation. Each gun weighs 65 tons. Similar cannons were also installed by the Germans at the batterie de la Crêche in Boulogne-sur-Mer. A standardized construction, or Regelbau, was even designed by the Organization Todt to house this type of artillery: plan H686. These servants took shelter in two bunkers near the guns, one of which was built on the site of the Vauban small fort. Unlike those to the west, the bunkers to the NorthEast are not buried and are therefore more vulnerable.

With a range of nearly 18 km, these 194 mm guns can reach the approaches to the pointe du Grouin at Cancale to the east, those of cap Fréhel to the west, and inland to the south as far as Chateauneuf. The six guns have a rate of four rounds per minute. A fire direction station dominates the southeastern tip of the island.

The island's anti-aircraft defense is provided to the west by six French 75 mm anti-aircraft gun model 1932. Also installed are two Flak 38 (20 mm) anti-aircraft batteries, Oerlikon Flak 28 (20 mm) batteries and two Flak 28 (40 mm) guns. A 15 cm SK L/45 gun is intended to fire flare shells. Two 150 cm searchlights are set up at the ends of the island. Few smaller caliber guns, machine guns, and bunkers provide short and medium range defense and prohibit access to the island.

The slipway built in 1914 was raised to facilitate docking at all hours. A machine gun provides access control, all of which is guarded by a casemate, on the southeast plateau.