Fort Eben-Emael Gateway to Dunkirk

After a week off to explore some of the cultural aspects of Europe, Rachel and I visited the Belgian Fort Eben-Emael, just 10 km from Maastricht. The Battle of Eben-Emael was the first ever glider borne assault, and a key event in the Blitzkrieg that resulted in the fall of France, and the retreat of the British at Dunkirk.

The events at the fort did not paint the Belgian army in the best light, and for a long time the story was supressed. These days it is seen as an example of fighting the last war, and a reminder that nothing is unbeatable. However, the annual re-enactments focus on the liberation of the region by the Americans in 1944 as opposed to the initial assault of the fort.

Fort Eben-Emael was built from 1932-1935 and at the time was the largest fort in the world. It was built to protect against a German invasion through the southern Netherlands and protected the 3 bridges that cross the Albert Canal at Kanne, Vroenhoven and Veldwezel.

As part of a post depression works program, the Albert canal was rerouted to remain totally in Belgium and involved cutting through a large hill near Eben-Emael.

The fort was built within the 65m hill with the guns mounted on the top of the fort, and the infrastructure tunneled below.

The Fort had over 5km of tunnels.

On the bottom level there were offices, medical facilities, barracks, a communications centre. officer's mess and massive magazines buried 60m underground.

The fort was powered by diesel powered generators. An elevator delivered ammunition to the second level, where interconnected tunnels led to the 15-gun emplacements on the surface.

Each gun emplacement had a second smaller two-car elevator system (one up one down as a counterbalance). The elevators were electrically powered but could be moved manually with a 4-person crank system.

An impressive and steep staircase accessing the second level.

The fort had many design features developed as a result of first world war failures. The fort was dug out of a rock hill and built using reinforced concrete. The fort was completely self-sustained and could be locked down for an extended period. The fort had an extensive ventilation system that passed air through carbon filled canisters to filter out poison gas. The filtration room would have had many canisters to clean the air for the fort.

The firing positions were spread out, and each one could be isolated, so the breach of one gun system would not result in the fort being over run. The massive steel doors were braced with steel bars and backfilled with sandbags so the entrance could not be breached.

The top of the fort was a large diamond shaped area, 900 x 700 m in size. There were 2 casements facing north toward Maastricht, each with triple 75mm Guns that guarded the bridges across the Albert Canal, 2 facing south to cover the forts in the chain, and twin 120 mm guns on a rotating cupola in the centre of the field. The guns were selected so they could not reach into Aachen, Germany making it clear that it was a defensive, and not an offensive position.

Blockhouse at the entrance to the fort.

Triple 75 mm guns.

75mm Gun from the inside.

The dual 120 mm Gun cupola rotated 360 degrees.

Pop-up rotating cupolas.

There were also multiple machine-gun emplacements in the unlikely event that infantry made it onto the roof.

The fort was considered impregnable when it was built and had a large number of features that would have made it very difficult to attack via a land assault. The fort was the state-of-the-art design, but the troops manning the fort were not as impressive. There were about 1200 soldiers associated with the installation, 200 maintenance, medical and administration staff, and 2 tranches of 500 artillery troops who alternated serving a week on, and a week off located in a village near by. Most of the troops were conscripts with minimal training. The German attack had been anticipated for several weeks, so there had been multiple false alarms, so the poorly trained troops were not at a high state of readiness.

It was essential to the Germans that they take the bridges across the Albert Canal intact, to allow for their armoured Blitzkrieg to swing through the Netherlands and Belgium and overwhelm the French troops and squeeze the British forces.

The Germans had decided to circumvent the Maginot Line on the French-German boarder, so had been planning this attack for several years. They closely monitored the progress of the canal and fort development and regularly over flew the site with commercial aircraft with cameras attached.

The Germans had decided a siege of the fort would result in the bridges being blown long before the fort could be taken, so they decided on an airborne attack. Paratroopers could not be delivered with sufficient quantity and accuracy to ensure the guns could be silenced in time, so they decided on a glider assault. After WWI the Germans had been banned from having powered aircraft in their military, so they had spent a great deal of effort on Glider technology. In fact, Gliding was a demonstration sport at the 1936 Olympics, and many of the German Olympic Gliding team were drafted as Glider pilots.

The DFS 230 Gliders that each carried 9 soldiers and a pilot were used to carry out the assault on the Fort, and the 3 bridges. A total of 42 gliders, and less than 500 men represented the total assault force. At the Fort, 11 gliders carrying 87 troops were assigned to take out the guns.

The gliders were made of metal tubing, and had fabric covered fuselages and wings. The Fort has the carcass of one of the gliders, reconstructed from the gliders that assaulted the fort.

The passengers sat in a single row. The wheels were jettisoned after take-off, and the glider landed on a skid plate. The pilots wrapped the skid plate in barbed wire, as they were concerned about sliding off the top of the fort and into the canal.

Gliders on top of the fort after the attack. The Gliders were 11m long with a 22m wingspan.

All of the soldiers attacking the fort were combat engineers as well as fully trained paratroopers, and they trained for the attack for 6 months with the entire group isolated to maintain secrecy. In order to penetrate the gun emplacements, the Germans used a secret weapon known as a shaped charge or hollow charge. Shaped charges had been invented in the 1880’s but their use in a weapon was a highly guarded secret at the start of the war.

The shape charge focusses the energy of the explosion into a concentrated area and fires a molten plug that allows deep penetration into steel or concrete structures.

The Germans had 50 kg and 11 kg shaped charges for the attack. The photo behind the display shows the small diameter hole that the charge generates.

A photo of the cupola shows the effect of a shaped charge. If multiple charges were used in the same location, holes 60 cm in diameter could be blown in the concrete.

The attack went in at 0400 on 10 May 1940, the Gliders taking off from Cologne, and being released near Aachen, Germany. They glided the last 20 km and simultaneously landed on the Fort and at the 3 bridges. The bridges were all prewired for detonation, so surprise was essential. One alert Belgian blew the bridge at Kanne, but the remaining two bridges were taken intact.

At the fort, the Belgians had warning of an attack, but were slow to respond so the second group of artillery personnel were not part of the battle. In some cases, the ammunition for the guns was not accessible, firing pins had been removed from others, machine guns jammed, and several guns were unmanned as the crews were removing documents from the administration building outside the fort entrance. They had been expecting a ground assault, so thought they would have advance warning of the assault, and never considered the possibility of an airborne attack.

The Germans were very concerned that the top of the fort had been mined, which would have been disastrous for the gliders. One of the stories told was of a number of enterprising young women who established a house of ill repute in the village to service the servicemen. The priest thought the men should have alternate forms of entertainment, so he arranged for a soccer field on top of the fort. The civilian aircraft with cameras overflying the fort noted the soccer fields and were confident the area was not mined.

The Germans had rehearsed their assault for months, so each team quickly carried out their attacks, and the shaped charges proved very effective at taking out the gun positions. They also encouraged the Belgians who were not killed immediately to retreat behind their blast-proofed doors to the interior of the fort. In 15 minutes, the guns that threatened the bridges were silenced. The Belgians were artillery personnel and not infantry, so they mounted only feeble counterattacks, and the German dive bombers slowed down the reinforcements. The Belgian commanded called on the neighboring locations to shell the top of the fort so at one stage both sides were shelling the same guns.

The Germans set off a 50kg shaped charge at the blast doors, that blew the door off its hinges, killed several Belgians, and completely destroyed the elevators and stairways that serviced one of the Gun emplacements.

The explosion also broke a number of quick lime containers used in the toilets, and the smell of chlorine was present throughout the fort. Many WWI veterans thought they were being gassed, and this further demoralized the troops.

No one in high command wanted to be the person responsible for ordering the surrender of the impregnable fortress, so the commanded finally decided on his own to surrender at noon on 11 May. The Germans had lost 6 dead and 20 wounded in the taking of the fort. The Belgians suffered 23 dead and 59 wounded. Hundreds were taken prisoner and spent the rest of the war in captivity. The prisoners were initially isolated so they would not describe the effects of the glider attacks and shaped charges.

The German forces swept through Belgium and the Netherlands, forcing the French to surrender, and the British to be pushed back to Dunkirk, a credit in large part to the first ever airborne Glider assault.

After the war, the fort remained in control of the Belgian Army, but was only used for storage. In the 1980’s a group of survivors of the Battle of Fort Eben-Emael lobbied to turn the fort into a museum. There was controversy, since the Belgians were understandably not pleased that the impregnable fort fell to 87 men in less than 30 hours.

However, since the fort was under Army control, it was completely intact, and had not been looted for scrap metal like most of the other installations. It has been refurbished, and many of the original mechanisms are still in daily use. The fort is a spectacular reminder, that any structure can be taken with knowledge and a dedicated plan, and that no matter how impressive the building, trained, dedicated troops are required to execute the defences.