Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Kriegsmarine Coastal Artillery




Coastal artillery was the responsibility of the Kriegsmarine, and most of the weapons employed in this manner were captured or obsolete weapons, their role was a defence against invasion, rather than proper coast defence against naval attack many of these guns were mounted in defensive works of either turrets or casemates

Uniforms
Generally the branch of service color for Coastal Artillery and land-based KM units issued feldgrau uniforms was gold. Officers sidecaps had gold piping, the soutouch for enlisted me was also gold in color until the soutouch was done away with in 1941 or 1942.

Shoulderboards were of the older style square mitre-design rather than the rounded ends of WH, SS and LW personnel and did not have any piping on them. They were in feldgrau or bottle-green and had either the winged shell or crossed anchors motif on them - either embroided for non-commissioned men or raised metal insignia for officers.

Collar Litzen was the standard three bars, with the center bar white, and the shorter bars either side being golden.

There are exceptions. The Officers Visor cap and the NCO's Visor sometimes had bottle-green piping (not gold as you might expect) and sometimes feldgrau piping.
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Marine Artillery Units were trained as ground artillery. There are several accounts of Naval Artillery Forward Observers during the Market Garden operation. Coastal batteries were used against ground targets all the way up the French coast, that is, if they could be turned towards the landward side.
Also, something to keep in mind, Naval Artillerymen are trained to hit moving targets such as ships, not much of a stretch to hit relatively stationary ground targets and the like such as a battalion area or a road junction. Coordinates, angles, grids, and trajectories are calculated much the same and a big shell is a big shell regardless of the target...

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