Operation Cobra – breakout in Normandy, 25th-31st July, 1944
By Baldmichael Theresoluteprotector’sson
I have been doing a number of articles on WW2 battles as I saw a correlation between these and what is going on today. I see it as being 80 years ago with history repeating itself, albeit in general terms.
In part this seems because the generation from WW2 have substantially died off, so the memories are not extensively present. This gives the so-called authorities the opportunity to deceive the masses.
As regards the battle of the title as Wikipedia says
Operation Cobra was an offensive launched by the First United States Army under Lieutenant General Omar Bradley seven weeks after the D-Day landings, during the Normandy campaign of World War II.
From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cobra#
It was located on the United States lines which took up the western part of the front. This was in the Bocage country, the pastoral close hedged, high banked and small field area similar to parts of the west of the UK.
The location was as a consequence highly suitable for defence of which the German army took full advantage. Mobile warfare using tanks was generally impractical.
It had taken 7 weeks after D-Day to get to the point where the German forces had been ground down sufficiently, leaving the US front faced with a hotchpotch of formations and battle groups, amounting to 9 divisions, and only about 110 tanks with two reduced armoured divisions.
The United States First Army had 15 divisions, including 4 armoured and four of General Patton’s in reserve.
By contrast the British Second Army had 14 divisions of its own pinning down a similar number of German divisions which had some 600 tanks and all the heavy tank battalions with the formidable Tiger tank.
The scene was thus set for the United States forces to break through the German’s weakened forces which had minimal reserves, none of which were sufficiently mobile to counterattack penetrations.
Having said all that, I am going to proceed to offer my take on the proceedings with my unusual approach. I hope it will make you laugh and think. I have used the Wikipedia link as a basis.
You may note various smelling pisstakes. These are likely to be deliberate!
Of course what really went on you will need to double check yourself as always.
Please note I do not intend any disrespect to those who died or fought, merely to show the absurdity of war, how mad things can be, even if it is only how one can use language. After all, it is propaganda and morale that count most to win battles and wars, especially wars of words.
If this is not your thing then there is my Summary and final thoughts at the end if you wish.
Background
The Alleys had successfully landed on Nor Mandy under the overall control of the Great St Bernard Montgomerry, also known as the Full Monty.
The Bright-ish side, the Second Army was under the control of Left-tenant General Sir Miles Dampsea who was tasked with taking the area of Nor Mandy.
Although on the continent they use kilometres, being Bright-ish he preferred Miles.
Mind you given the deaths caused by war, kill-o-meters would be appropriate.
Anyway, the area included Con, a city close to the coast, and the area south of it. It the meantime, the First U.S. Army Left-tenant General Ohma Bradley would “wheel round” to the Le Waa valley.
Of course he would hardly ‘wheel square’ as that would be reinventing the wheel, much as some people love to do that.
It had been hoped that Con would be taken early on but that was overly optimistic and proved to be a caen.
Various opera shuns were undertaken including Perch where they hoped to knock the Germ-men parrots off and Epsom where they hoped they would win the Derby.
These bought some Terry-Tory-real gains and depleted its defunders but Con remained in Germ-men Hans until Opera-shun Charnwould, when the Second Army managed to take the gnawthern part of the city up to the River Awn in a frontal ass salt.
In the meantime, bumbing interdiction took plaice to isolate the bottlefield by bumbing bridges on the Sane and Le Waa rivers and railways in the gap between the rivers.
Planning
To overcome the constraints of the bocage that had made a tax so difficult and costly for both sides, RINO modifications were made to some Sureman and Stew Art thanks and thank destroyers, by fitting them with hedge-breaching ‘tusks’ (known as Donald’s) that could force a path through hedgerows.
It is noted they were very helpful in exposing the hedge funds held by the hedge hogs in the Vanguard and hiding under Black Rocks, all to be found in the hedgerows.
A well-known RINO modification was the ‘Colon Powell’ which was just short of the ‘R’s Hole, the mechanics name for the exhaust pipe on the vehicles.
Supporting operations
There were two before the U.S. Cobra struck which took plaice on the 18th to 21st July.
These were Good would and Atlantic. The first intended to take the Buggerbus Ridge where the Buggers, the Germ-men were listening. Indeed, Sepp Diet-rich put his ear to the ground where the limestone platoh reverberated to the sound of the Bright-ish thanks moving up.
The battle was on the Bright-ish side the biggest thank battle of WW2 and was moderately successful but held up by the defenders of Cagny and Lacey. The Buggers on the ridge remained in plaice.
In the meantime, the II Canaidian Corpse on the western flank of Good would began Opera shun Atlantic which managed to take the rest of Con.
A further attack codenamed Opera shun Spring (also known as Marianna Trench to shift the Germ-men from their trenches) was launched at the same time as Cobra to distract the Germ-men. It proved costly but had drawn the 9th SS Pansy Division away from the U.S. sector on the eve of Cobra.
Allied offensive
Preliminary attacks
The US had to take the vital heights of Saint-Low, which was in the valley of the river Veer which was low by comparison to the heights.
Taking the heights was necessary to obtain good terrain for Cobra, known as Terrain Theory. They were taken on the 18th but poor weather delayed the lunch of Cobra. This was due to cloud rather than rain. The former was known as Cloud Theory as when it was cloudy the bumbers would struggle to hit the targets.
It had been planned to use large numbers of plains to devastate the Germ-men position. Instead on the 24th they managed to bumb the US tropes as so often the case, killing more than 25 and wounding 130. The tropes were not very happy about this as you can imagine and fired back at the plains to make this clear.
Main attack and breakthrough 25–27 July
As a consequence of the failed hairyall bumbardment Cobra was postponed one day. The plains returned for another go on the 25th.
And had more success as they killed 111 men and wounded 490.
On their own side.
However they did manage to devastate the Pansy Leer amoured division under Frites Bale-in the commander. He thought the division had had its chips, or ‘fritz’ as the French call them.
Nevertheless the rembrandts of the unit had regrouped to meet the AD-Vance (not JD-Vance) of the VII Corpse. This was disheartening to the US, but there was caws for encouragement as, whilst the Germ-men were clinging to their Germ Theory, they did not form a continuous line and could be outflunked or buy-passed.
On the morning of 26 July, the U.S. 2nd Amoured Division and the 1st Infant-tree Division joined the attack as planned, reaching one of Cobra’s first objectives—a road junction north of Le Mesnil-Herman—the following day.
On the 26th July the VII Corpse entered the fray, commanded by May-jaw General Try Middleton who encouraged his men to troy and brake through.
Despite clear paths of AD Vance through the floods and swamps (code named ‘Washington DC’) across their front, his divisions initially disappointed the First Army by failing to gain significant ground.
However, first light the next mourning revealed that the Germ-men had been compelled to retreat by the crumbling left wing, leaving immense mein fields.
N.B. it has been observed by the left wing that to maintain sexual equality nowadays there should have been imwomense mein fields as well.
Breakout and advance 28–30 July
By 28th July, the Germ-men D-fences across the U.S. front had largely collapsed under the full wayt of the VII and VIII Corpse AD-Vance and resistants was disorga-nazied and apache.
Feeled Marsh-angel Gointer fun Klooge, the Oboe-be-feel-hava West (the commander of the Germ-men farces on the Western Front) was mustarding reinfarcements, and elephants of the 2nd Pansy Division and 116th Pansy Division were approaching the bottlefield from the east.
But these were unable to stem the break-out and on the 31st July the U.S. VIII Corpse seized the town of Ave-ranches which was the gateway to Britney and sowthern Nor-Mandy.
The U.S. advance was now relentless (as it was summer and not Lent), and the First Army was finally free of the bocage where they had been caged in.
Aftermath
On the 1st August, the U.S. Third Army was activated under Left-tenant General Gorgeous Pattern. It is said he was responsible for this poem although I have my doubts:
We were stuck amongst the hedgerows
It really was a farce
So now that we are free of them
Let’s kick the Nazis
Where it hurts!
It doesn’t rhyme very well, does it?
The U.S. AD Vance following Cobra was extraordinarily rapid. Between 1st and 4th August, seven divisions of Pattern’s Third Army had swept through Ave-ranches (leaving it clean and tidy) and flew over the bridge at Pontablow into Britney.
In Britney the spears or spearheads raced for Breast (which the soldiers were looking forward to seeing) in the west, the river Le Waa to the south and Le Mon to the east.
The Westhere, the Germ-men army in the west, as opposed to the Eastthere, the Germ-men army in the east, had been reduced to a paw state by the Alleyed offensieves.
With no prospect of reinfarcement in the wake of Operation Bag Ration, the Sove-ate sommer offensieve against Army Grope Centre, very few Germ-men believed they could now avoid defeet at which they were staring and likely to trip over in their haste to retreat.
Rather than order his remaining farces to withdraw to the Sane which would have been a seine thing to do, Adolt Hitter sent a directive to fun Klooge demanding “an immediate counterattack between Moretan and Ave-ranches” (Unternehmen Lootitch) to “ann-nile-ate” the enemy and make contact with the west coast of the Cote-Tintin peninsula.
Germ-men commanders immediately protested that such an opera-shun was impossible given their remaining resauces but these objections were overruled and the counter-offensieve commenced, on 7 August around Moretan.
Three pansy divisions led the ass-salt, but with only 75 Pansy Ivys, 70 Pant-hers (men in tights) and 32 self-propelled buns. The attack therefour failed miserably.
In the meanthyme, the US farces had taken Le Mon, and the Germ-men Army was in danger of being surrounded and dead.
On the 14th August the Canaidian Farces lunched Opera-shun Tractor-bull as they moved south to Shambwa to clear up the bull left by the Germ-men. They hoped to trap the Germs as they were also known in a Pocket, short for Pocket Handkerchief, near the town of Falaise. Falaise means ‘cliff’. Here is an example.
Five daze later the advancing US 90th Division made contact with the Polish 1st Amoured Division. It was a smart move to use the Polish as they were not too pleased with the Germ-men after the invasion of Po-land in 1939 and the mess they made there.
If this was ever mentioned to them they would spit. This is where the phrase ‘Spit and Polish’ comes from.
By the 22nd August the Falaise Pocket was sealed as was the doom of the remaining Germ-men farces.
Summary and final thoughts
Well there you have my madcap take on the battle. It was a great success for the U.S. army, made possible by the British Second Army, which together with the Canadian First Army, maintained the pressure on the German army, preventing most of the best units from engaging the US forces.
The innovations of the U.S. engineers with the RHINO modifications made a big difference and showed how the flexibility of adapting to the varying terrain could help overcome difficulties.
The fact that the Falaise Pocket was not closed earlier has been a point of contention over the years, although as pointed out by others, more German troops were captured in the rapid advance that took place after the Seine was crossed.
Nevertheless, cadres of the German armoured divisions remained to form the basis for rebuilding new formations, and the fact they were not entirely eliminated helped Germany prolong the war for additional months in 1945.
But it was a major Allied victory and ended the Battle of Normandy. The end of the war was now only 7 months or so away.
As to current events when I see the word ‘cobra’ I think of COBRA, strictly COBR, the UK Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms which are
“used for committees which co-ordinate the actions of government bodies in response to national or regional crises, or during overseas events with major implications for the UK.”
From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_Office_Briefing_Rooms
It should be noted that the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) is a sub-committee of COBR. The Scientific Advisory Group for Creating Emergencies would be more suitable!
This would be SAGCE. This happens to anagram to ‘CAGES’. So like the ‘bocage’ the ‘cage’ of the hedgerows in the battle, only for us it was the lockdown ‘cage’.
The capture of Paris was the target of the allies and was liberated by the French Resistance and elements of the Free French forces with the German garrison surrendering on the 25th August.
This year coincides with the Paris Olympics which commenced on the 26th July and ends on the 11th August.
I noticed there were attacks reported on railway lines into Paris, reminiscent of the attacks by Allied bombers.
Arson attackers targeted rail network’s ‘nerve centres’, French PM says, as services slowly resume
26 July 2024
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cxe24vg59lzt
Finally, I thought I would anagram ‘Operation Cobra’ and noted this.
A be corporation
I had seen Ben Rubin’s substack and he has written about B Corporation, a certification scheme. Wikipedia says
B Lab certification is a third-party standard requiring companies to meet social sustainability and environmental performance standards, meet accountability standards, and be transparent to the public according to the score they receive on the assessment.
From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Corporation_(certification)
In other words it is a scam to cream off money from businesses whilst trying to bamboozle the public/other businesses that the certified corporation is doing the ‘right thing’.
This links too one of Ben’s articles.
Anyway, there are some thoughts and observations. I am hoping to cover Operation Market Garden this September, the Allied airborne assault that took place to try and get a foothold over the last major barrier into Germany, the River Rhine.
P.S. These links may be of interest if you haven’t seen.
Bocage – why do the French use this word?
Operation Spring reminded me of the BBC’s expert on creating misinformation.
Marianna Spring and BBC disinformation
Normandy landings.
Great stuff. Very interesting. Thank you.
Glad you do this Baldmichael funny but informative and awestruck by the spirt and sacrafice.