Operation Queen
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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.
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[edit] Background
After the Allied invasion of 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 extensive mine fields 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 particularly 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 poor planning resulted in heavy casualties to Allied forces. These factors affected 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 Allied High Command planned a large offensive in the area of the 9th U.S. Army together with the 1st U.S. Army and parts of the British Second Army against the Rur, intending 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 advances 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 to attack the enemy defenders inside their positions. The entire operation was codenamed Operation Queen. The 8th U.S. Air Force was to bomb the fortifications around Eschweiler and Aldenhoven, while the medium bombers of the 9th U.S. 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 of 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 for November 10, but because of bad weather it was delayed until November 16. The ground offensive was to begin immediately after the air raids, allowing the defenders no time to reestablish fortifications, supply routes and communications.
The area chosen for the attack was guarded very heavily. Apart from the strong defensive positions on the frontline, 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] Offensive
[edit] Air raids
On November 16, 1944, between 11:13 and 12:48, the U.S. bombers conducted their attacks. 1,204 heavy bombers of the 8th U.S. Air Force hit Eschweiler, Weisweiler and Langerwehe with 4,120 bombs, while 339 fighter bombers of the 9th U.S. 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 British bombers hit Heinsberg.
The raid on Jülich was particularly fierce. French and U.S. 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, the attackers dropped: seventy-five 4,000 lb bombs; 361 2,000 pounders; 1,945 1,000 pounders; and 1,613 500 pound bombs. A total of 3,994 bombs with 1,711 metric tons, plus 123,518 firebombs, were dropped individually or in clusters of 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, the 1st and 9th U.S. Armies attacked after 80 minutes of artillery barrage from more than 700 barrels, supported by strong tank units. Despite the thorough preparations, with the destroyed supply lines and 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, since most of it was ill-aimed and hit only what was already destroyed and the defenders were already dug in. Secondly, the loss of German 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 acquire 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 extremely tough. The Americans had high initial casualties in 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 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 eventually, but they had to take every single heavily defended village, town or even farm one by one. The only notable 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 the American troops reached the river, they failed to establish bridgeheads on the other side due to 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. 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 determined that the German high command rated them as a threat to the already staged and preparing Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein (Watch on Rhine) – if the U.S. 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 their reserves of artillery units and ammunition that was supposed to go to the attacking armies to hold the line before the Rur, with some success. Although the remains of the German units were quite weak and lacked ammunition and fuel, they succeeded in holding the line due to their excellent defensive positions and the devastating artillery fire, which the Americans were not able to silence because of bad weather that hampered flight operations. Although the Germans had virtually no artillery reconnaissance, 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 large amount of German 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 by the Americans in order to halt the German assault. The American forces did not manage to cross the Rur river until February 1945, after it was flooded by the German destruction of the upper river dam.
[edit] Aftermath
Operation Queen was a failure. Although the Allies managed to take the western shore of the Rur, 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. In this way, the Germans achieved their objective of thwarting an Allied offensive crossing of the Rur, although they paid a terrible price for it, and so kept the staging ground for their own offensive intact. With the start of the German offensive towards Antwerp (Battle of the Ardennes), the American attack on the Rur had to be halted. Only in February 1945 were the Allies finally able to cross the Rur, by 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
