15 July 1941 Part 2

15 July 1941 Fifteenth Army requests guns, cadres and island batteries

Editorial note: Island-related requests extracted from a wider Fifteenth Army letter.

[Scan 0233.jpg] Copy. Fifteenth Army Headquarters, Ia/Staff Artillery Officer no. 131/41, top secret. Army headquarters, 15 July 1941. Reference: discussion by the Army Staff Artillery Officer with Army High Command/Inspectorate 4 in Berlin on 7 July 1941. Subject: strengthening the artillery defensive power of coastal divisions. To Army High Command/Inspectorate 4, first copy; Army Group D for information, second copy.

[Scan 0234.jpg] d) Four complete coastal artillery batteries of 15 cm or larger calibre, fully manned, with a range of at least 20,000 metres. One each is intended for Jersey and Guernsey. The other two are to be employed on the mainland, on the west coast of the Cherbourg peninsula opposite the Channel Islands, under Army Coastal Artillery, Colonel Zutavern.

e) A cadre of one officer, two NCOs and fifteen men for Equipment Battery 351. This battery has valuable modern French 10.5 cm guns and is consequently employed in an important sector, but its artillery regiment, belonging to a thirteenth-wave division, cannot fully man it. f) Three batteries of 3.7 cm antiaircraft guns to strengthen the islands’ presently slight antiaircraft defence. One battery each is intended for Jersey, Guernsey and the embarkation port of Granville.

g) The gun mountings for the three 22 cm batteries, 470, 471 and 472, going to the islands must permit traverse through 360 degrees. The Army accepts the delivery delay quoted by Krupp. h) Two engineers or fortress engineer officers to direct and supervise installation of the reinforcing batteries on the islands. The Army will submit in a few days an exact list of unloading stations for the requests under a)–h). For Army Headquarters, acting Chief of the General Staff, signed [signature].

German Army High Command records, T-78 Roll 317. Supplied English translation T78_Roll_317_English_Translation.docx. Source images: 0233.jpg, 0234.jpg.