In the small hours of 9 June 1944, three days after D-Day, eight British, Canadian and Polish destroyers intercepted four German warships off the coast of Brittany. In a confused night action two German destroyers were destroyed and the other two escaped damaged, ending the threat of German destroyers to the invasion convoys.
Battle of Ushant
9 June 1944 · 82 years ago
A raid toward the beachhead
Three days after the Allied landings in Normandy, four German warships, three destroyers and the torpedo boat T24, were at sea off Brittany; according to the British official historian S. W. Roskill, they had sailed from Brest late on 8 June, bound for Cherbourg. Against them the Plymouth command sent eight destroyers of the 10th Destroyer Flotilla.1
The flotilla was British, Canadian and Polish: among its ships were the Canadian Haida and the Polish Błyskawica.2
Night action off the Île de Batz
The two forces met in the small hours of 9 June off the north coast of Brittany. Admiral Ramsay's despatch and the Royal Canadian Navy place the action off the Ile de Bas (Île de Batz), and Polish accounts near Ouessant, in English Ushant.3
Of the four German ships, the former Dutch destroyer ZH1 was sunk, and Z24 and T24 escaped to Brest. Roskill judges that the German leader, Z32, "should have fallen an easy prey to the Polish division, but the Blyskawica turned away to avoid torpedoes and so lost contact".4
Hunting Z32 to the rocks
Z32 was run down by the Canadian destroyers and destroyed off the Île de Batz: Roskill writes that she was driven ashore "a blazing wreck", and the Royal Canadian Navy counts her among the ships sunk by HMCS Haida.5
Two lost, two escaped
Ramsay's despatch says the action resulted in "two of the enemy being destroyed and the other two being damaged" and judges that it "virtually ended the threat" to the invasion convoys from enemy destroyers. Roskill agrees: the action "shattered the only German surface force capable of seriously challenging the passage of the Allied invasion convoys". The invasion they were protecting is described in our 6 June page on D-Day and in D-Day, 1944: the longest day on the Normandy beaches.6
Also on this day
Battle of Langensalza
9 June 1075 · 951 years ago
King Henry IV of Germany led his army against rebel Saxon nobles and their followers by the Unstrut near Langensalza in Thuringia. The royal victory was complete and forced the Saxons to submit, shortly before Henry's struggle with the papacy began.
1863: early on 9 June, Union cavalry under Brig. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton crossed the Rappahannock at Beverly Ford and Kelly's Ford and fought J. E. B. Stuart's Confederate cavalry around Brandy Station and Fleetwood Hill, Virginia. Unable to break through, Pleasonton withdrew at the end of the day. The American Battlefield Trust calls Brandy Station "the largest cavalry battle ever fought in North America".7
