During my vacation I had the opportunity to visit the great fortress of Eben Emael.
I think you all heard about this fortress but if not, I'll give an introduction. I will post pictures in a later post:
In the 1930'ies, the Belgians created the Albert canal, up north, close to the Dutch city of Maastricht. At one point they had to carve through the St. Pietersberg (St Peter's mountain), a hill made of chalk. This resulted in a deep cutting in the chalk, with walls 60 m high. The Belgians thought it would be a good idea to make it into a big fortress. After all, the lack of fortresses in that particular area in the previous war enabled the Germans to push through, north of Liège. The big walls of the canal would serve as a tank-wall and the canal itself would be a big tank-ditch. To make the fort, the Belgians drilled 5 km of tunnels in the chalk, deep under ground which connected 17 bunkers, loaded with canons. The fort is a triangle of 600m wide and 750 meters high. It was considered to be the biggest and most powerful fort in the world at the time, impregnable and big problem for the German army.
The Germans did not know how to solve this problem, until the Belgians helped them. Feeling secure at 35 km from the border (ample of warning) they build a soccer-field on top of the fortress and started playing there. The Germans concluded that soccer on the fort meant there were no mines on top, so they could land there with gliders. They devised an ingenious plan to use a small group of highly trained pioneers, who would use gliders to land on top of the fort (don't have to climb a 60m wall) and use a new secret weapon (hollow charges) to blast their way in and neutralize it. It had to be done by surprise, before declaration of war and before the main force would cross the border. The strength of this glider group would be 11 aircraft, each containing 8 soldiers.
On may 10th 1940, at 04.20h this plan was executed. 2 gliders did not reach the target (1 would arrive 2 hours later), 2 attacked dummy positions, so only 7 gliders with 56 Germans arrived on top of the fort. They managed to destroy the guns and scare the crews into hiding at the lower level within 20 minutes. The Fortress now was deaf, blind and powerless. Meanwhile they blasted their way into the turrets and bunkers and where sheltered from Belgian artillery fire and their own Stuka's. They beat off 2 Belgian counterattacks and later that day the fortress surrendered. The road to the rest of Belgian was open.
The attack on the fort is significant for a couple of reasons.
- This was the first major attack with pioneers using hollow charges against a heavily fortified position
- It was the first attack only made with gliders
- It was the best example to show that the time of fortresses was really over, they had no chance against a more modern kind of war.
- It was a major blow for allied moral. Beating a such a powerful fortress within 20 minutes with a handful of soldiers was unheard off. Many soldiers wondered what kind of devils this Wehrmacht soldiers were to pull off such a trick.
I think you all heard about this fortress but if not, I'll give an introduction. I will post pictures in a later post:
In the 1930'ies, the Belgians created the Albert canal, up north, close to the Dutch city of Maastricht. At one point they had to carve through the St. Pietersberg (St Peter's mountain), a hill made of chalk. This resulted in a deep cutting in the chalk, with walls 60 m high. The Belgians thought it would be a good idea to make it into a big fortress. After all, the lack of fortresses in that particular area in the previous war enabled the Germans to push through, north of Liège. The big walls of the canal would serve as a tank-wall and the canal itself would be a big tank-ditch. To make the fort, the Belgians drilled 5 km of tunnels in the chalk, deep under ground which connected 17 bunkers, loaded with canons. The fort is a triangle of 600m wide and 750 meters high. It was considered to be the biggest and most powerful fort in the world at the time, impregnable and big problem for the German army.
The Germans did not know how to solve this problem, until the Belgians helped them. Feeling secure at 35 km from the border (ample of warning) they build a soccer-field on top of the fortress and started playing there. The Germans concluded that soccer on the fort meant there were no mines on top, so they could land there with gliders. They devised an ingenious plan to use a small group of highly trained pioneers, who would use gliders to land on top of the fort (don't have to climb a 60m wall) and use a new secret weapon (hollow charges) to blast their way in and neutralize it. It had to be done by surprise, before declaration of war and before the main force would cross the border. The strength of this glider group would be 11 aircraft, each containing 8 soldiers.
On may 10th 1940, at 04.20h this plan was executed. 2 gliders did not reach the target (1 would arrive 2 hours later), 2 attacked dummy positions, so only 7 gliders with 56 Germans arrived on top of the fort. They managed to destroy the guns and scare the crews into hiding at the lower level within 20 minutes. The Fortress now was deaf, blind and powerless. Meanwhile they blasted their way into the turrets and bunkers and where sheltered from Belgian artillery fire and their own Stuka's. They beat off 2 Belgian counterattacks and later that day the fortress surrendered. The road to the rest of Belgian was open.
The attack on the fort is significant for a couple of reasons.
- This was the first major attack with pioneers using hollow charges against a heavily fortified position
- It was the first attack only made with gliders
- It was the best example to show that the time of fortresses was really over, they had no chance against a more modern kind of war.
- It was a major blow for allied moral. Beating a such a powerful fortress within 20 minutes with a handful of soldiers was unheard off. Many soldiers wondered what kind of devils this Wehrmacht soldiers were to pull off such a trick.
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