The Battle for the French port city of Cherbourg and the Contentin peninsula was a lengthy affair. This article appears in: September It was the storm that forced the battle. On June 19, , a massive gale hit the English Channel, sweeping in from the west, hitting the gigantic artificial harbors the Allies had built on their D-Day invasion beaches. By daylight on the 20th, the artificial roads and piers had disappeared under waves that reached eight feet high.
For three days, the storm tore at the British breakwaters off Arromanches and the American ones at St. Laurent-sur-Mer, destroying the American harbor entirely and badly damaging the British piers. More than , tons of supplies were destroyed, and ships lost or beached. First Army and later the 12th Army Group, visited the battered artificial harbor, he wiped sea spray from his eyes and kicked the sand in frustration.
Each day the deficit mounted until we fell thousands of tons in arrears, especially in ammunition. In the meantime, ammunition would be rationed, if necessary. The losses were greater than anything the Germans had been able to inflict on the Normandy beaches with their V-weapons, bombers, and midget submarines, and the Allied offensive now seemed stalled. The Americans were down to two days of ammunition, and the British were three full divisions short.
Only a fifth of the planned quantities of supplies could be landed on the remaining artificial harbor on the British invasion beaches. A replacement harbor was urgently needed. The nearest one was Cherbourg. Without it, the invasion of Normandy might fail. The capture of Cherbourg had been a central factor in the planning of the invasion of Normandy since the site had been chosen in The famed harbor had been used by Atlantic freighters and passenger liners ranging from tiny coal boats to the massive Titanic.
The latter ship had been preying on Union merchant shipping in the English Channel. Now, with its piers, docks, and cranes, Cherbourg was the logical first target port to be seized after the Allies came ashore in Normandy on D-Day, June 6.
