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Command: Modern Operations (2019)

Duration: 22:57

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Wangerooge is one of the islands of the Wadden Sea and the easternmost of the inhabited East Frisian islands.

Its proximity to the strategically important fairways of the ports of Wilhelmshaven and Bremerhaven gave the island an important role within the German Bight.

To protect the important fairways, the island was fortified and equipped with heavy and medium calibre guns. The heaviest guns had a calibre of 305 millimetres. For their protection additional anti-aircraft gun emplacements were built. The island was also an important outpost in the German air defence and a decisive part of the so-called Kammhuber line and several radar positions were set up on the island with which approaching enemy aircraft could be detected at a distance of 400 kilometres.

At times about 5000 men of the navy and the air force were stationed on the island, mostly young anti-aircraft helpers and old, disabled soldiers. Towards the end of the war the island was declared a fortress by Hitler and the crew and the civilian population prepared it for defence. For this purpose the more than 100 bunkers on the island were equipped with additional machine gun positions and flamethrowers, more than 10000 mines were laid and defensive positions were built on the beaches. Thus the island's defenders awaited the attack of the Allies.

The initiative for the large air attack on the island came from the headquarters of the Canadian troops, as they had been given the order to conquer the heavily fortified island. Field Marshal Montgomery joined the demand to prevent the expected large losses in case of an attack. In retrospect, the military sense of the attack is doubted, as the firepower of the batteries was much less than expected. Many of the guns had been removed in the years before and some of them had been transported to Spain. Many of the threatening looking guns therefore only consisted of wooden dummies. In total there were only 4 sea target guns ready for action.

Around 14 o'clock the divided bombers took off from their bases in the south of England towards Germany. 308 Halifax bombers, 158 Lancasters and 12 Mosquitos took part in the attack. Target of the attack were expressly the military installations and not the civilian population. At 16:47 air raid sirens were sounded on the island. Only when the mosquitoes marked the targets over the island did the defenders realize that they were the target of the attack. At 17:00 the flak started to fire but showed no effect and most of the guns fell silent soon after the attack started.

Already at 17:16 the attack was stopped, because the commanding officer did not see any sense in a continuation in view of the destruction on the island. 6000 bombs had turned the island into a crater landscape. More than half of all residential buildings had been destroyed and many military installations had been hit. 131 German soldiers, 121 forced labourers, 6 female naval aid workers and 21 local women and children had lost their lives.

The guns themselves, to which the attack had actually been aimed, were however ready for action again after a few hours and the commander of the island refused to surrender and called on the population of the island to resist decisively. Also the invasion attempt failed to take place and still on the day of the surrender some of the remaining anti-aircraft batteries fired on attacking allied low-flying aircraft. On 4 May 1945 Dönitz signed the partial surrender of the German forces in northern Germany and the weapons on Wangerooge were also finally silent.

On May 11th the first Allied soldiers reached the island and on May 20th the island was occupied by Canadian soldiers. The remaining bunkers on the island were blown up immediately. Only the command bunker hit during the bombing was sealed together with the remains of the 20 soldiers and declared a war grave.

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