History Learner wrote: ↑12 Apr 2020, 00:01
Allied minesweepers were able to do it in eight days in November IOTL of 1944, so I see no reason why they couldn't achieve this by the end of September in ATL 1944 with a month to do what they did IOTL a week.
Um, no. The whole point of the Canadians clearing Cadzand, Breskens, and Wakcheren was to eliiminate the batteries there that wanted to poke holes in the YMS and MMS that did most of the clearing.
Clearing operations actual began 2 November after it was reported - incorrectly - that the batteries at Knokke had been captured. Instead, Force B from Harwich was forced to withdraw under fire. Force A from Queensborough had four YMS hit by shellfire and also withdrew.
On 3 November, the Knokke Battery was finally taken, but operations came under fire from batteries at Flushing and di not achieve much.
On 4 November (when most actually count the sweeping began), sweeping continued in bad weather, which continued the next day, hampering both German fire and sweeping operations. On 7 November sweeping was suspended due to the weather.
8 November, sweeping started again, but one YMS was sunk by a mine...all of 23 mines were cleared.
9 November, weather halted sweeping in the estuary again, but sweeping did go on at the waterfront in Antwerp, where 13 mines were cleared.
By 18 November 206 mines had been cleared, but another YMS was damaged and forced to return to England.
Sweeping from 19-20 November found no mines, so on 21 November the port was declared open...except on 22 November 9 more mines were swept and the port was closed again. So the channels, already swept 15 times were swept another 5 times through 25 November to ensure all delayed action mines had been swept.
On 26 November the port was opened again...and 3 YMS were damaged by an exploding mine in the "swept" channel.
BY 27 November 234 mines were swept...and between 28 November and 3 December 28 more mines were cleared.
On 7 December a Liberty ship was damaged by a mine in the channel and was later scuttled by the RN.
On 11 December, a MMS was sunk by a mine.
On 18 December a second Liberty ship was sunk by a mine.
On 29 December a MMS was sunk by a mine.
So it was 4-21 November, or 4-26 November, depending on your POV, that the sweeping operations took...and none of it could have begun if the batteries had not been cleared first.