Battle of the Corinth Canal
Battle of the Corinth Canal | |||||||
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Part of the Balkans Campaign during World War II | |||||||
Nazi Germany's attack on Greece | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Axis Germany |
Allies Greece United Kingdom Australia New Zealand | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Alfred Sturm Hans Kroh |
Edward Lillingston[1] | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
Germany:
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Greece:
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Casualties and losses | |||||||
Germany: |
Allies: unknown number killed or wounded; | ||||||
Many Allied personnel, approximately 10,000, were subsequently taken prisoner, while awaiting evacuation.[citation needed] |
During the
Background
Greece entered the
Preparations
The German attack on the
The attack plan would consist of German Fallschirmjäger assault engineers seizing both ends of the canal in a surprise glider assault while both battalions of the 2nd Fallschirmjäger Regiment were to parachute to the north and south of the bridge in order to neutralize any stationed Allied forces at the canal.[4]
The air assault forces consisted of:
- 80–100 Bf 110's
- unknown number of Ju 88's
- 15 Ju 52's
- 20–30 Ju 87's
- 2nd Fallschirmjäger Regiment under command of Lt. Teussen
- 6th Company under command of Hauptmann Gerhart Schirmer
- 230 gliders under command of Lt. Wilhelm Fulda
- 52 Fallschirmpionere (paratrooper pioneers) under command of Lt. Häffer
German soldiers complement: 800[5]
The Battle
In the morning hours of 26 April 1941, the defending Allied forces at the Canal bridge were submitted to a surprise attack in the form of machine gun fire and a high altitude bombing of the Canal Zone from German
This attack force took off in gliders at 5 am along with five assault groups of three Ju-52s each following them in a "V" formation. They arrived at their destination at 7.25 am and aided by clear and bright skies, the gliders began their descent. Suddenly the gliders were under enemy fire as it seemed that two enemy anti-aircraft batteries had survived the earlier bombing and were still stationed along the southern end of the bridge. One of the gliders was hit and fell from a height of about 8 meters.[6]
Despite the resistance of the British troops, a group of 54 paratrooper engineers managed to land near the canal and both battalions of the 2nd Fallschirmjäger Regiment reached their intended positions at the north and south ends of the bridge. Their arrival was immediately met with Allied machine gun and rifle fire as the German troops had landed several hundred meters away from the bridge in a valley, which forced them to take cover after freeing themselves from their parachute.[7]
The paratroopers under the command of
After their attack on the anti-aircraft batteries, Lieutenant Teussen’s Platoon used British military vehicles which were left behind by the retreating British to capture the town of Corinth. Shortly after the paratroopers entered the town, the civil and military authorities surrendered in order to insure the well-being of the civilians. After capturing Corinth, Hauptmann Schirmer ordered Lieutenant Teussen to act as an advance guard and to press ahead with his platoon towards Nauplia. The Canal itself fell into German hands shortly after noon.[7]
In the meantime, the German paratroopers had removed the Allied demolition charges and had piled all of them in the middle of the bridge in order to be disabled later. When suddenly an explosion rocked through the Canal as the bridge collapsed into it. A stray round set off the pile of charges and blew the center out of the bridge, dragging down the engineers and any paratroopers who were still on her. War reporter Sonderführer Ernest von der Heyden was also killed in the explosion, his camera was recovered afterwards from one of the Canal banks. The bridge's destruction allowed the Allies to escape without a German pursuit, but they were forced to abandon valuable equipment during their retreat.[8] The British also sunk an 80 ton wooden lighter on the canal's western end.[9]
Aftermath
The battle ended up wounding 158 German soldiers with 63 being killed in action and 16 missing in action. Allied casualties remain unknown but the Germans claimed to have taken 921 British and Australian soldiers as well as 1,450 Greek soldiers alongside 12,000 other Allied troops as
The blame for the destruction of the bridge is thought to lie with the inexperience of the German engineers, particularly their commanding officer. Considering that he had ordered to pile up all the explosive charges on the superstructure of the bridge instead of throwing them out of harms way which resulted in those charges blowing up when they were impacted by a stray round.[8]
Italian and German military engineers began working on clearing the canal on 2 May. The first Italian supply convoy managed to pass through the canal on 16 May, arriving at
Having secured the Corinth Canal, Italy and Germany began importing oil from their ally, the Kingdom of Romania by way of the Bosporus.[13] Closing the canal to Axis shipping would force Axis ships to travel around the Peloponnese, thus exposing them to Royal Air Force bombers and Allied submarines based in Egypt and Malta.[14] The German intervention into the North African campaign further increased the canal's importance as Pireaus became a major center of Axis logistics. Allied command estimated that 90% of German seaborne reinforcements to North Africa traveled through the canal.[15] The canal subsequently became the target of numerous Allied sabotage operations.[16][17]
Footnotes
- ^ Lt Col. E. G. G. (Edward) Lillingston (UK) was nominally the senior officer, although official histories suggest that the battle was a series of small actions, led by junior officers, such as R. K. Gordon (New Zealand) and J. S. Jones (Australia).
- ^ a b "Corinth Canal Korinthos". tracesofwar.com. 1999. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
- ^ Dear & Foot 1995, pp. 102–104.
- ^ a b "CHAPTER 19 — THE CORINTH CANAL". victoria.ac.nz. 2016. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
- ^ Alexiades 2015, p. 69.
- ^ a b "TARGET CORINTH CANAL 1940–1944". naval-military-press.com. Archived from the original on 29 June 2020. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
- ^ a b c "Schirmer, Gerhart". tracesofwar.com. 1999. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
- ^ a b c "When paratroops filled the sky". neoskosmos.com. 7 April 2017. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
- ^ Alexiades 2015, p. 72.
- ^ Alexiades 2015, pp. 72–73.
- ^ Plowman 2013, pp. 73–75.
- ^ Stefanidis 1993, pp. 64–95.
- ^ Alexiades 2015, p. 79.
- ^ Alexiades 2015, pp. 94–95.
- ^ Alexiades 2015, p. 141.
- ^ Alexiades 2015, p. 133.
- ^ Gyftopoulos 1990, pp. 82–85.
References
- Alexiades, Platon (2015). Target Corinth Canal 1940–1944. Barnsley: Pen and Sword Military. ISBN 9781473827561.
- ISBN 9780198662259.
- Gyftopoulos, Dimitris (1990). Μυστικές Αποστολές στην Εχθροκρατούμενη Ελλάδα 1941-1944 [Secret Missions into Occupied Greece 1941-1944] (in Greek). Athens: Dodoni. ISBN 9602480378.
- Plowman, Jeffrey (2013). War in the Balkans: The Battle for Greece and Crete 1940–1941. Barnsley: Pen and Sword Military. ISBN 9781781592489.
- Stefanidis, Yiannis (1993). "Macedonia in the 1940s". Modern and Contemporary Macedonia. 2 (1). Thessaloniki: Papazissis: 64–103. ISBN 9789602607251.