The Battle of the Audierne Bay was an engagement between

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

and

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naval flotillas that took place on 23 August 1944, during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. Three Allied warships, which had already established control off the coast of Brittany and were lurking off

Audierne Audierne (; ) is a commune in the Finistère department of Brittany in northwestern France. On 1 January 2016 the former commune of Esquibien merged into Audierne.Mortain counter-offensive had ground to a halt. To the east, US forces took

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on 13 August while British and Canadian forces closed in toward

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from the north, thus initiating the drive to encircle and destroy two German armies inside the

Falaise Pocket The Falaise pocket or battle of the Falaise pocket (; 12–21 August 1944) was the decisive engagement of the Battle of Normandy in the Second World War. Allied forces formed a pocket around Falaise, Calvados, in which German Army Group B, c ...

. As the siege of the Breton ports continued, the focus of the war was quickly shifting further east.German pg. 161 Operation ''Kinetic'' had been set up by the Royal

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; the objective of which was to eliminate the German navy all along the French Atlantic ports.Paterson pg 264 Of three Forces of Kinetic - Force 27 under the command of William Davis, consisting of the light cruiser HMS ''Mauritius'' and the destroyers HMS ''Ursa'' and HMCS ''Iroquois'', departed

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on 13 August to carry out a new patrol along the central section of the

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coast. With the Germans under the command of Marinegruppenkommando West on the move to evacuate by sea, the ongoing ''Kinetic'' had already scored two successes and was finalizing for the naval offensive in the

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to complete the success. On the night of 22/23 August, under orders from naval intelligence the cruiser HMS ''Mauritius'' and the destroyers HMCS ''Iroquois'' and HMS ''Ursa'' were patrolling Audierne Bay between Brest and Lorient and radar soon picked up a large contact heading towards them.

Battles

Davis ordered ''Iroquois''; the ship closest to the contact, commanded by James Calcutt Hibbard to use the

Type 293 radar The Type 293 radar was designed as a short-range aerial-search radar This is a list of different types of radar. Detection and search radars Search radars scan great volumes of space with pulses of short radio waves. They typically scan the vol ...

and relay the information to the rest of the force. Hibbard placed so much confidence in the radar that he decided to direct the opening moves from the Action Information Centre rather than the bridge, and then gave the order to illuminate with

star shell A shell, in a modern military context, is a projectile whose payload contains an explosive, incendiary, or other chemical filling. Originally it was called a bombshell, but "shell" has come to be unambiguous in a military context. A shell c ...

. As a result, ''Force 27'' was able to close undetected and launched a surprise attack on the known convoy which were three ships. At 0213 ''Iroquois'' scored the first hit on a flak ship, which was subsequently set on fire. A second flak ship was quickly destroyed by the heavy guns from ''Mauritius'', while another was set on fire and driven onto the shoals. Only nineteen minutes after opening fire, all three German ships had been put out of action, with two sunk and the third aground and burning. HMCS Iroquois radar plotters Aug 1944 LAC 3587026

HMCS Iroquois radar plotters Aug 1944 LAC 3587026

In a second action two hours later, ''Iroquois'' detected another convoy of four ships departing from the harbour of Brest: an M-class minesweeper, two flak ships and a converted mine-destructor ship, or "

Sperrbrecher A ''Sperrbrecher'' (German; informally translated as "pathfinder" but literally meaning "mine barrage breaker"), was a German auxiliary ship of the First World War and the Second World War that served as a type of minesweeper, steaming ahead of o ...

". Using the radar on ''Iroquois'' again, Force 27 stalked the convoy at long range until 0408, when the German ships were illuminated with star shell. Upon opening fire, the British and Canadians quickly overwhelmed the convoy sinking two vessels and causing two others to collide in the confusion and burst into flames as they raced for shore, with surviving crew members jumping over the side as they went. One of these vessels capsized and sank while the other drove onto the rocks at full speed and exploded. At dawn, Force 27 continued with another sweep around Audierne Bay in order to confirm the destruction of the German convoy. In the process a minesweeper came into view and was pounded with gunfire and driven onto a reef near Port Audierne. ''Iroquois'' finished off the minesweeper with a torpedo, while ''Ursa'' sent on a boarding party onto the other grounded vessel to grab eleven prisoners. The other one hundred and fifty survivors who were able to swim to shore were subsequently taken prisoner by the

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. This was the last part of the action and the force consolidated and reviewed the damage they had caused.

Aftermath

The final tally for the night was eight ships destroyed: one minesweeper driven ashore and heavily damaged, a flak ship, five armed trawlers, and the Sperrbrecher. ''Iroquois'' alone had fired a total of 1,197 rounds of 4.7-inch along with 231 rounds of star shell. Davis in his report attributed the success of the night's action to two principal causes: "some lucky guesses, and the excellence of ''Iroquois radar and plotting teams". Although not known to Davis, it was actually

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intelligence that bore some responsibility for the luck of those guesses. In the last week of August, another naval operation commenced, this time called Operation ''Assault'', during which the cruiser HMS ''Bellona'' patrolled along the Biscay coast from Belle Isle near Lorient to Arcachon Point, south-west of

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. Continuing these sweeps through the remainder of the month, the Royal Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy patrolled off the coast. They sent landing parties ashore on the French mainland and outlying islands to secure them and ensured they were eliminated as potential bases of logistical supply to the Germans. The blockade of these Biscay ports, however, achieved impressive results independent of the campaign on land. By the close of the Operation Kinetic, the combined Allied naval and air offensive eventually resulted in the reorganization of Kriegsmarine forces operating from fortress ports along the coast into Marineoberkommando West.

Citations

Bibliography

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Audierne Bay, Battle of Audierne Bay Audierne Bay Naval battles of World War II involving Germany Conflicts in 1944 Maritime incidents in August 1944