Operation Astonia was the code name for an Allied attack on the German-held Channel port of Le Havre in France, during the Second World War. The city had been declared a Festung (fortress) by Hitler, to be held to the last man. Fought from 10 to 12 September 1944, the Allied objective was to secure the harbour facilities intact, to deliver supplies to the Allied armies in Continental Europe.
From 26 August, Royal Navy ships and Royal Air Force aircraft carried out a blockade and an extensive preparatory bombardment of the city, which killed over 2,000 civilians and 19 German troops. The land attack was carried out by British infantry, aided by specialist armoured vehicles from the 79th Armoured Division, including Canadian troops. The German garrison of about 11,000 men surrendered on 12 September; the port was badly damaged but it was re-opened on 9 October.
Background
Invasion of Normandy
On D-Day, 6 June 1944, Allied troops landed in Normandy on the north coast of France in Operation Overlord and began the liberation of France. On D-Day, Allied aircraft laid a smoke screen off Le Havre to blind the coastal artillery; a torpedo-boat flotilla and a flotilla of patrol ships sailed from the port, using the smoke for camouflage. The German boats managed to fire 15 torpedoes off the Orne at 05:30, hit and sink HNoMS Svenner and forced several other ships to take evasive action.
On 6 July, Allied ships reported an "unusual object" passing through the Trout line, the eastern flank of the invasion area. Fired on, the object launched a torpedo and sailed away. More unusual objects were seen soon afterwards and were also fired on. The devices managed to sink two minesweepers for a loss of nine sunk and fifteen losses from all causes of the 26 that had sailed from Le Havre; it was later found that they were Neger midget submarines of the K-Verband (Small Battle Units). On the night of 7/8 July, 21 Neger left Le Havre and all were sunk, most of their operators being killed, for one British minesweeper sunk and the Polish cruiser ORP Dragon damaged and scuttled off Sword Beach.
June–August
RAF Bomber Command attacked Le Havre in the evening of 14 June. Twenty-two 617 Squadron Lancaster bombers and Mosquito target markers went first, dropping Tallboy bombs on the E-boat (Schnellboot, S-Boot [fast boat]) pens with one Tallboy penetrating the roof. The Dambusters were followed by 228 more Lancasters and three hours later a second wave of 116 aircraft arrived, with 1,880 long tons (1,910 t) of bombs, hitting the port and anti-aircraft gun positions. The operation was the largest day raid by Bomber Command since the war began.
By coincidence, the anti-aircraft guns at Le Havre had been prohibited from firing to protect Luftwaffe aircraft in the area. The bombs killed about 1,000 marines, demoralizing the survivors and destroying about 15,000 long tons (15,000 t) of shipping. Losses comprised nine E-boats of the 5th Flotilla and the 9th Flotilla sunk, two seriously damaged and one slightly damaged; three of the five torpedo boats in port sunk, twenty minesweepers and patrol boats sunk and nineteen tugs sunk; several auxiliary vessels were also lost and eight other vessels were damaged.
Admiral Theodor Krancke, then Chief of Kriegsmarine Group Command West, called the raid a catastrophe, writing in his war diary, "It will be hardly possible to carry out the operations planned... since yesterday's attack on Le Havre". Some E-boats reached Le Havre in mid-June but by the end of July, only six E-boats on the channel coast were operational. The Royal Navy formed the Support Squadron Eastern Flank, a group of small gun-armed vessels, which came inshore during the day to bombard land targets and patrolled offshore at night. The squadron fought many engagements with E-boats and K-Verband; on the night of 2/3 August, the Germans sent twenty Linsen (explosive motor boat) sorties, over fifty Marder (midget submarines) and several E-boat attacks with new Dackel TIIId circling torpedoes. Most of the German craft were sunk. The night sorties by E-boats transferred to Le Havre after D-Day sank a Motor Torpedo Boat, two Landing Ship, Tank, three merchant ships, two landing craft and two tugs; six E-boats were sunk and ten damaged in the actions.
Festung Le Havre
Le Havre was the most important of the Channel Ports and second only to Marseille amongst French ports for tonnage capacity, having 8 mi (13 km) of quays capable of receiving ocean-going ships. In Operation Maple from early April, British aircraft and ships laid mines off Le Havre and the ports further north, which closed the port for long periods. In early September 1944, German troops of the 15th Army (General Gustav-Adolf von Zangen) occupied a swathe of coastal territory from the port to Bruges, which had been under attack by the First Canadian Army since the start of September.
The port had water on three sides, the Channel to the west, the valley of the Lézarde River to the east, and to the south by the Seine estuary and the Canal de Tancarville. North of Le Havre, the ground rises steeply to high ground as far as the cliffs of Cap de la Hève and the coast to the north. The Lézarde and Fontaine river valleys cut the area into two plateaux, the north plateau being between the rivers and the south plateau to the south and west of the Fontaine, which overlooks the port; 3 mi (4.8 km) inland the south plateau is covered by the Fôret de Montgeon.
The Germans had dug an anti-tank ditch from the Lézarde valley past Montivilliers to the coast at Octeville-sur-Mer, covered by minefields, barbed wire, and concrete defensive positions. At the crest of the southern plateau, two fortified positions covered the town and port entrance and the Grand Clos coastal artillery battery could engage approaching ships. The garrison had 115 guns, plenty of machine-guns and mortars (many of its anti-tank guns were sent to Normandy before September and lost), and ammunition and supplies for 14,000 men for ninety days.
Near Fontaine-la-Mallet lay Strongpoint 8, with several concrete gun emplacements, the first of a series to cover the northern approaches to the port. The minefields and tank obstacles had been hurriedly built and were superimposed on an earlier and unfinished scheme based on strongpoints. West of Strongpoint 8 the ground is unsuitable for tanks but from the strongpoint to the Lézarde the ground is flat and unobstructed, with a gentle 200 yd (180 m)-slope on either side, the plateaux on both sides being at the same height as the strongpoint, which commanded the stream. The anti-tank ditch was V-shaped, 22 ft (6.7 m) wide at the top and more than 12 ft (3.7 m) deep but not continuous.
Crossing the Seine
Allied invasion plans required that the First Canadian Army (General Harry Crerar) on the left flank of the 21st Army Group (General Bernard Montgomery) should cross the Seine downstream of Rouen and turn into the Le Havre peninsula to make northward flanking manoeuvres to capture Le Havre and its railway connections, Dieppe, Calais and Dunkirk, for the Allied supply effort. On the night of 26/27 August, the crossing of the Seine by the First Canadian Army began and Rouen was captured on 30 August. I Corps improvised means to get over the lower Seine, which was not bridged and II Canadian Corps did the same further upriver. The two corps were ordered to capture Le Havre and Dieppe respectively and then clear the coastal belt up to Bruges.
The German 7th Army was ordered to abandon the lower Seine, by 31 August the 15th Army was to hold a line from Dieppe to Neufchâtel; the speed of the Allied advance forced a further German retreat eastwards to the Somme. In Operation Fusillade, Dieppe was entered unopposed by the 2nd Canadian Division on 1 September and the 51st Highland Infantry Division walked into St-Valery, four years after most of the original Highland Division had been forced to surrender there. The Highlanders joined the 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division outside Le Havre on 4 September. As the Canadian Army prepared its attack on Le Havre, the seaward approaches were blockaded closely by the Allies navies from 26 August; the port was the most westerly still in German possession, and the Kriegsmarine tried to run supplies in and get out the ships still afloat. During the next four nights convoys departing Le Havre were attacked and a few ships managed to slip away; nine ships were sunk and by 30 August the port was empty.
Prelude
German defences
On 14 August 1944, Colonel Hermann-Eberhard Wildermuth took command of the fortress and later put the effective strength of the garrison at around 8,000 men, from a total of more than 11,000 personnel. Wildermuth had a Festungs Stamm Abteilung (fortress cadre unit) elements of the 226th Infantry Division and 245th Infantry Division; a battalion of Security Regiment 5, marines and some naval personnel. About 50,000 French civilians remained in the port from the normal population of about 160,000 people. On 9 September, Wildermuth ordered that infantry attacks were to be resisted even with pistols, but when tanks attacked, strongpoints which had no anti-tank guns could surrender; rather than fight to the last man, the garrison was to resist until the last anti-tank gun.
Before the attack, the defenders were given an ultimatum and called upon to surrender; Wildermuth countered by requesting that civilians should be evacuated, given that his orders from Hitler were to hold Festung Le Havre to the last man. According to Wildermuth, many of the civilians were reluctant to leave, even when forced; some Resistance groups opposed evacuation, and there were concerns of a recurrence of the looting that had occurred in 1940. Major E.S. Scott, the 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division GS0 II, who was present at the parley on 3 September and the division intelligence officer, Major D. R. C. Engleheart, said that Wildermuth refused to surrender or to allow French civilians to pass through his lines. He was given 48 hours to change his mind, but still refused. "Any suggestion, from whatever source", Scott said, "that the British High Command vetoed the evacuation of civilians before the battle is totally without any foundation".
Allied preparations
A naval and air bombardment was planned to soften up the Le Havre fortifications. The battleship HMS Warspite and the monitor HMS Erebus, bombarded the port with more than 4,000 long tons (4,100 t) of shells over several days. On 5 September, Erebus was forced temporarily out of action by a hit from the Grand Clos battery, which had one 14.8 in (380 mm) and two 6.7 in (170 mm) guns; the port defences also had 44 medium and field guns and 32 anti-aircraft guns.
The Bomber Command day attack on 5 September was the first of seven raids. On the night of 6/7 September, a similar number of aircraft attacked and another day raid was flown on 8 September by 109 aircraft; a raid on 9 September had to be cancelled because of bad weather but the sorties flown delivered about 4,000 long tons (4,100 t) of bombs. On 10 September, about sixty bombers attacked the Grand Clos battery, followed by a bombardment from Warspite and Erebus, the combined efforts of which put the German guns out of action. Bomber Command returned in the afternoon and dropped another 4,900 long tons (5,000 t) of bombs, as the British divisional artillery and the 4th Army Group Royal Artillery (AGRA) and the 9th AGRA conducted counter-flak bombardments during the raids.
Before the ground attack, the RAF flew 1,863 Lancaster and Halifax heavy bomber sorties and dropped 9,631 long tons (9,786 t) of bombs. The air and naval bombardments killed about 2,000 French civilians and 19 Germans. Subsequent investigation showed that the aerial bombardment succeeded in knocking out only 8 of the 76 German gun positions. The covered positions were very well protected, with up to 3 ft (0.91 m) of reinforced concrete, and even a direct hit might have had little effect.
Allied plan
During the North-west Europe Campaign (6 June 1944 – 8 May 1945), British specialist tanks were held in the 79th Armoured Division (Major-General Percy Hobart) and attached to other units for particular operations. For Astonia, the 79th Armoured Division provided the 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division with the 222nd Assault Squadron RE (AVRE), two Crab squadrons of the 22nd Dragoons and a Crocodile squadron of the 141st Regiment Royal Armoured Corps (141 RAC). The division also had the 34th Armoured Brigade and the 1st Canadian Armoured Carrier Regiment with 44 Kangaroos under command.