Operation Queen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Operation Queen | |||||||
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| Part of World War II | |||||||
 The ruins of Jülich after heavy aerial and artillery bombardment |
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| Combatants | |||||||
 United States United Kingdom |
 Germany |
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| Commanders | |||||||
| Omar Bradley |
Walther Model |
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| Strength | |||||||
| 100,000 soldiers | 40,000 soldiers | ||||||
| Casualties | |||||||
| ? | ? | ||||||
| Siegfried Line Campaign |
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| Moerbrugge - Market Garden - Nancy - Hurtgen Forest - Crucifix Hill - Aachen - Scheldt - Metz - Queen |
| Western Front (World War II) |
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| France - The Netherlands - Dunkirk - Britain - Dieppe - Villefranche-de-Rouergue - Normandy - Dragoon - Siegfried Line - Market Garden - Aintree - Scheldt - Hurtgen Forest - Aachen - Bulge - Colmar Pocket - Plunder |
Operation Queen was a joint British-American operation during World War II at the Western Front between Aachen and the Rur river in November 1944.
Contents |
[edit] Prelude
After the allied invasion in Normandy in June 1944, American and British forces had driven the German armies out of France and began advancing on the German border. In order to reorganize the supply routes and assault forces, the Allies stopped before the Westwall for some time. The German defenders made ample use of this breather and managed to consolidate their stricken forces which had suffered heavy casualties, and often morale breakdowns as well, on the retreat. As a further measure, the whole area behind the Westwall fortifications was heavily entrenched; towns, farms and villages were converted to little fortresses connected by trenches, and tank obstacles and extended mine fields also added to the defence. As the Allies moved into Germany, the swift push towards Berlin came to a sudden halt. Despite the heavy superiority in personnel and armament and their almost total air superiority, their push towards the Rhine became increasingly slower as the Germans tied them down in a bloody trench war. German resistance was particulary stiff in the vicinity of Geilenkirchen, Alsdorf and Würselen west of the Rur river, where heavy fighting went on for weeks which inflicted severe casualties on both sides. Allied attempts to outflank the German defensive position by a push through the wooded hills of the Hürtgenwald ended in disaster. The frontal assault broke on the stiff German resistance in a well-fortified, mountainous and woody area where the attackers could not bring their air superiority and advantage in numbers to bear, and heavy counterattacks and bad planning resulted in heavy casualties. All this broke down Allied morale, as the soldiers had hoped the war would be over by Christmas and now had to put up with the heaviest fighting they had yet encountered.
[edit] Planning the offensive
The Allied High Command planned a big offensive in the area of the 9th US Army together with the 1st US Army and parts of the British Second Army against the Rur, and intended to establish bridgeheads at Linnich, Jülich and Düren; the eventual target was to reach the Rhine and establish bridgeheads at Krefeld and Düsseldorf to secure further advance inside Germany after the winter. A great number of American and British strategic bombers were to conduct a series of tactical assaults in the area to cut supply lines and destroy enemy infrastructure, and also attack the enemy defenders themselves inside their positions. The entire operation was codenamed Operation Queen. The 8th US Air Force was to bomb the fortifications around Eschweiler and Aldenhoven, while the medium bombers of the 9th US Air Force were assigned to the second line of defense around Jülich and Langerwehe. At the same time the RAF Bomber Command was to hit the traffic centres Jülich and Düren hard; the smaller towns of Heinsberg, Erkelenz and Hückelhoven were designated as secondary targets. Initially the start of the offensive was set on November 10, but because of bad weather it was delayed to November 16. The ground offensive was to begin immediately after the air raids, so the defenders would have no time to reestablish supply routes and communications.
Unfortunately, this particular slice of the frontline was guarded very heavily. Apart from the strong defensive positions on the frontline itself, the German 5. Panzerarmee with considerable tank and artillery forces was close behind. Although it was nowhere near full strength, it still was the strongest enemy force along the Western Front and able to provide heavy defensive support.
[edit] The offensive
[edit] Air raids
On November 16, 1944, between 11.13 and 12.48 hours, the US bombers conducted their attacks. 1,204 heavy bombers of the 8th US Air Force hit Eschweiler, Weisweiler and Langerwehe with 4,120 bombs, while 339 fighter bombers of the 9th US Air Force attacked Hamich, Hürtgen and Gey with 200 tons of bombs. At the same time 467 Halifax- and Lancaster-Bombers attacked Düren and Jülich; 180 further British bombers hit Heinsberg.
The raid on Jülich was particularly fierce. French and US military maps still showed it as a fortress, which it had ceased to be in 1860. The Allies hoped to destroy the alleged heavy fortifications by smashing the whole city, as had been done before in Normandy. Between 15.28 and 15.50 hours the attackers dropped:
- 4000 lb.: 75
- 2000 lb.: 361
- 1000 lb.: 1,945
- 500 lb.: 1,613
a total of 3,994 bombs with 1,711 metric tons, plus 123,518 firebombs, dropped individually or in clusters to 106 pieces.
The city was completely destroyed, and burned for several days; roads and railroads, industry and infrastructure including the bridge across the Rur were wiped out together with the lives of an estimated 4,000 citizens and soldiers and about 97% of all buildings. Düren was also utterly destroyed, and Heinsberg took heavy damage as well.
[edit] Ground offensive
At 12.45 hours the 1st and 9th US Armies finally attacked after 80 minutes of artillery barrage from more than 700 barrels and supported by strong tank units. Despite the thorough preparations, the cut supply lines and the heavy numerical superiority, the weakened German defenders stood their ground despite severe losses and only fell back very reluctantly; the Allied offensive gained ground very slowly and the attackers suffered heavy casualties. One reason for this was that the carpet bombing had not damaged the defensive positions severely, as most of it was ill-aimed and hit only what was already destroyed and the defenders were already dug in. Secondly, the loss of the artillery support was in many places balanced out by the presence of tanks which were expertly dug in and used to stop the attacks. Although the remaining German artillery could hardly aquire targets because the spotters were blinded by smoke grenades, they had worked out sophisticated fire plans in advance and so managed to hit important targets all the same. On the first day, the American advance was practically nonexistent in many places, and over the next thirty days, the going was also extremely tough. The Americans had high initial casualties by minefields which had been overlooked or not expected at all, contributing heavily to the slow advance. After two days, the initial push was halted everywhere and the battle turned into dirty trench fighting once more.
During the next few weeks the heavy fighting on the west bank of the Rur continued, and the Americans managed to reach the river itself eventually, but they had to take every single heavily defended village, town or even farm one by one. The only notably success was the capture of the town of Linnich and a major tank battle in the vicinity in which the Americans prevailed but lost many tanks. Although they reached the river, they failed to establish bridgeheads on the other side because of the stubborn resistance by German ground troops in their entrenched positions, heavy enemy artillery fire, bad weather that brought flooding, deep mud and denied air support plus occasional attacks by German aircraft. Heavy rainfall and subsequent flooding and deep mud restricted attack operations and favoured the defenders, all too often attacks that were initially successful were thrown back by enemy counterattacks. At the same time, the Americans started an advance in the area of the Hürtgenwald which encountered similar difficulties; however, the attacks were so hard that German high command rated them as a threat to the already staged and preparing Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein – if the US armies had reached the Rur dams or crossed the river further downstream, this would have jeopardized the high-risk offensive. To counter this, the Germans released part of the reserves of artillery units and ammunition that were supposed to go to the attacking armies to hold the line, with some success. Although the remains of the German units were quite weak and lacked ammunition and fuel, they succeeded in holding the line not least because of their excellent defensive positions and the devastating artillery fire, which the Americans were not able to silence due to bad weather that hampered flight operations. Although the Germans had virtually no artillery reconnaissance any more, they had worked out fire plans for the region in advance and managed to hit important targets without spotters. During this time, the Germans also used railway guns for fire support. In the nights before the start of the Battle of the Bulge, a great amount of artillery and combat units were withdrawn to the south in order to participate in the assault. As the German offensive started and caught the Allies by surprise, the push to the Rhine had to be abandoned for the time being in order to halt the enemy assault; until February 1945, the American forces did not manage to cross the river.
[edit] Result
All in all, Operation Queen was more or less a complete failure. Although the Allies managed to take the western shore of the Rur for the most part, they failed to crush the enemy defences and cross the river swiftly. Instead, they were involved in heavy fighting inside confined towns and between trenches and minefields, which enabled the defenders to multiply their strength and make the attackers pay for every step of advance. That way, the Germans achieved their objective of thwarting an Allied offensive crossing the Rur, although they paid a hefty price for it, and so kept the staging ground for their own offensive intact. With the start of the German offensive towards Antwerp, the American attack had to be halted. Only in February 1945, the Allies finally managed to cross the Rur, but then the road to the Rhine was clear.
[edit] References
- Helmut Scheuer: Wie war das damals? Jülich 1944-1948. Verlag des Jülicher Geschichtsvereins, 1985, ISBN 3-9800914-4-9
- Hans Karmp, Rurfront 1944/45, Verlag Fred Gatzen, ISBN 3-923219-00-8
