Operation Royal Marine
Battle of the Netherlands
Maastricht - Mill - The Hague - Rotterdam - Zeeland - Grebbeberg - Afsluitdijk - bombing of Rotterdam
Invasion of Luxembourg
cobblestone line
Battle of Belgium
Fort Eben-Emael - KW line - Dyle plan - Hannut - Gembloux - Lys
Battle of France
Royal Marine - Ardennes - Sedan - Maginot Line - Weygand Plan - Arras - Boulogne - Calais - Dunkirk ( Dynamo - Wormhout ) - Abbeville - Lille - Paula - Fall Rot - Aisne - Alps - Cycle - Saumur - Lagarde - Aerial - Fall Braun
The Operation Royal Marine (also surgery Marine was named) planned for the spring of 1940 Allied military operation in World War II .
The plan proposed by Winston Churchill provided for sea mines to be thrown into the Rhine on French territory , which would drift downstream and act as contact mines to destroy ships and bridges. This should block the Rhine as an economic factor and main traffic artery and hinder the German armed forces in their actions against France. Due to its unusual nature, the plan was intended to divert attention from the planned occupation of Norway ( Operation Wilfred and Plan R 4 ), which had been agreed with France, and was to be carried out together with it. However, the French approval of Édouard Daladier to the British plans was delayed. When the decision had finally been made to conduct Operation Marine independently of Operation Wilfred, the plan for Operation Marine was withdrawn because on April 8 and 9, 1940, it became known that the German occupation units for Norway would be leaving. As of May 24, 1940, the Royal Navy introduced over 2,400 drifting mines into the tributaries of the Rhine, Moselle and Maas. Towards the end of the operation, a small number of drift mines were dropped from Royal Air Force aircraft .
Plans for "ROYAL MARINE operation (fluvial mines in Rhine etc.)" are listed again in Churchill's cabinet documents from the second half of 1944 to the beginning of 1945.
See also
- Balloon bomb - timed, bomb-carrying balloons
Individual evidence
- ^ Major LF Ellis, The War in France and Flanders 1939–1940 , 1954, London: HMSO. Page 52 (accessed January 20, 2010)
- ↑ List of Churchill's cabinet submissions , including PREM 3/375 - ROYAL MARINE operation (fluvial mines in Rhine etc.): May 1940-July 1940 and August 1944-January 1945 on ibiblio.org ( Memento from October 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
Web links
- Operation Wilfred and Plan R4 from April 5 to 8, 1940 on army.mil p.69 (engl.)
- HISTORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR, UNITED KINGDOM MILITARY SERIES, Edited by JRM Butler, THE CAMPAIGN IN NORWAY, By TK Derry, D. Phil (Oxon.), LONDON 1952, HMSO Unpublished Sources: British and German plans before the occupation of Norway, P.24 on ibiblio.org