|
|
Battle
of Dunkirk
The Battle of Dunkirk lasted from around May 25 to June
3, 1940. After the Phony War, the Battle of France began
in earnest on 10 May, 1940. German armour burst through
the Ardennes region and advanced rapidly driving north in
the so-called "sickle cut". To the east the
Germans invaded and subdued the Netherlands and advanced
rapidly through Belgium.
The combined British, French and Belgian forces were
rapidly split around Armentičres. The German forces then
swept north to capture Calais, holding a large body of
Allied soldiers trapped against the coast on the
Franco-Belgian border. It became clear to the British
that the battle was lost and the question was now how
many Allied soldiers could be removed to the relative
safety of England before their resistance was crushed.
From May 22 preparations for the
evacuation began, codenamed Operation Dynamo, commanded
from Dover by Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay. He called for
as many naval vessels as possible as well as every ship
capable of carrying 1,000 men within reach. It initially
was intended to recover around 45,000 men of the British
Expeditionary Force over two days, this was soon
stretched to 120,000 men over five days. On May 27 a
request was placed to civilians to provide all shallow
draught vessels of 30 to 100 feet for the operation, that
night was the first rescue attempt. A large number of
craft including fishing boats and recreational vessels,
together with Merchant Marine and Royal Navy vessels,
were gathered at Sheerness and sent to Dunkirk and the
surrounding beaches to recover Allied troops. Due to
heavy German fire only 8,000 soldiers were recovered.
Another ten destroyers were recalled for May 28 and
attempted rescue operations in the early morning but were
unable to closely approach the beaches although several
thousand were rescued. It was decided that smaller
vessels would be more useful and boatyards were scoured
for suitable craft, gathering them at Sheerness, Chatham
and Dover. The Allied held area was reduced to a 30 sq km
block by May 28. Operations over the rest of May 28 were
more successful, with a further 16,000 men recovered but
German air operations increased and many vessels were
sunk or badly damaged, including nine destroyers.
On May 29 there was an unexpected reprieve, the German
armour stopped its advance on Dunkirk leaving the
operation to the slower infantry, and the Luftwaffe
(Hermann Göring, then in great favour with Adolf Hitler,
had promised air power alone could win the battle) but
due to problems only 14,000 men were evacuated that day.
On the evening of May 30 another major group of smaller
vessels was dispatched and returned with around 30,000
men. By May 31 the Allied forces were compressed into a 5
km deep strip from La Panne, through Bray-Dunes to
Dunkirk, but on that day over 68,000 troops were
evacuated with another 10,000 or so overnight. On June 1
another 65,000 were rescued and the operations continued
until June 4, evacuating a total of 338,226 troops aboard
around 700 different vessels.
Until the operation was complete the British prognosis
had been gloomy, with Churchill warning the House of
Commons to expect "hard and heavy tidings".
Subsequently the British Prime Minister referred to the
outcome as a "miracle" and exhortations to the
"Dunkirk spirit" - of triumphing in the face of
adversity - are still (occasionally) heard in Britain
today.
Text is available
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
|
|
|
