Battle of Eben Emael 10 - 11 May 1940 - introduction

[HoustonGD]

Easy 5/5 STARS!

[conrad4ever]

my word! they must have been hammered! what with all the problems and mistakes they might as well have waved nazi flags and let the germans walk in!

[alanheath]

I can't get over the stupidity of the commander. However I think the situation was worse than I mention here - there are some documentaries on you tube which describe it better than I do!

[haller136]

I think that you find the same reason by the french forces, the commanding officers seems to think that since 1914 nothing was changed. The Belgians are already nine months in a alertsituation in the fort, and it's sure they don't exercice really much on paraattacks. A part of the soldiers don't sleep in the fort, and there are not much and not good anti aircraft guns. The english , french , belgian and dutch troops has not learned much about sept. 1939.

[alanheath]

Very few of the troops actually slept in the fort - and the failure to warn them was due to the CO using his gunners who had to fire warning shots with blank shells to remove his filing cabinets.

I appreciate that perhaps no-one had thought of a para attack but had the defences been ready then the fort would not have fallen so quickly.

[haller136]

You have right, but i really don't know it was helping so much, the top of the fort was really not enough defended with machineguns in pillboxes. And i think more important was that the germans use new explosives, and their first target was to destroy the cupola(to each price) of the biggest guns of the fort. So when they are destroyed, it doesn't matter of the fort is falling or not.

[alanheath]

I absolutely agree that no-one knew of the force of the new explosives. It is also true that the roof of the fort (which can be seen in another video I placed here) did not have anti glider or plane traps. But I think the machine guns would have been adequate if they had been manned and regularly serviced. Only around 500 rounds were fired before the guns jammed. The machine guns on the roof were captured WW1 German models, adapted for use by Belgian ammunition.

[haller136]

And on the same time, there was also another disaster, the bridges of the albertcanal are not destroyed. Same paraattacks there. And the fort could not destroyed anymore. And the britisch and french attacks on the bridges were also a disaster. Big lost of planes and pilots witthout succes. I don't know you saw the bridges like they are now, but when you has, you could see that it was not easy to cross the canal.

[alanheath]

I have got film of the Albert Canal (see the playlist I prepared) as well as over the Maas - Meuse. There is a lot of water here!