British Channel minefields 1940

[sitalkes]

I have a map of the Eastern Mine Barrage but are there any maps available of the British minefields in the Channel in 1940 and are there any details available about them?

[phylo_roadking]

Sitalkes, yes there is, there's a very detailed one that I posted up on AHF several years ago, but I can't remember on which thread

[sitalkes]

OK, I think I found that map in the Seelowe mining thread, it just shows the same as the one in Lavery - just the Dover Strait completely covered in depth. The previous mining thread didn't say much about how much of a threat this was to the invaders - given that the barges had such a shallow draught they could go over the top of any minefield without harm, but the rest of the invasion fleet would have to negotiate any British minefield, even if it was headed by Speerbrechen (sorry can't remember the spelling) and many minesweepers of various types, that would also sweep a passage prior to the ships leaving port. I wonder if any coastal minefields would get caught up in the sausage nets?

[sitalkes]

Just noticed that Brian Lavery (We Shall Fight them on the Beaches p. 152) says that the Admiralty navigation data given to neutrals and regularly updated, included the location of minefields; the Germans then got hold of this information from those neutral countries. I wonder if the Admiralty put in the odd fake minefield in that information.

[Knouterer]

Neither the Germans, nor the British, nor any other belligerent publicized the exact location of minefields - that would make it rather too easy for the enemy to avoid or sweep them. What they did do was declare extensive areas as being dangerous, often even before they had laid a single mine there. Sometimes British and German "declared mine areas" even overlapped as this map from Peter C. Smith's Into the Minefields shows.

[Knouterer]

This map (from v. Kutzleben et al., Minenschiffe 1939-1945) shows the minefields the Germans actually laid in that declared area or Warngebiet west of Denmark (a rectangle of about 60 by 180 nautical miles) at the beginning of the war.

But, as stated, they did not tell neutral countries where these minefields were, they just told them to keep their shipping out of the entire area.

[Attrition]

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/U ... index.html

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/U ... N-I-10.jpg