RESEARCHING THE REAL EVENT

Order of Battle – What actually happened?

After taking Sword Beach as part of Operation Neptune on the 6th June, the British set their eyes on the French city of Caen, as it had multiple strategic advantages for the Allied forces. The defending German forces understood this and made sure to reinforce their held positions. Point 213 at Villers-Bocage was strategically significant as it provided an effective high level observation of the area – the Allies were eager to take it, and the Germans were desperate to hold it.

An Sd.Kfz. 251 half-track. One was spotted fleeing Villers-Bocage by the advancing 7th Armoured Division.

The British advance into Villers-Bocage began on the morning of the 13th June, and other than a few German reconnaissance vehicles including a half-track (which fled without engaging) there was no resistance. However, as the British continued their advance through the town, they were being watched by the Tiger tank of Michael Wittmann. He was just as surprised by their advance as they were about to be – his Tiger was spotted by Sergeant O’Connor of the 1st Rifle Brigade, and it was here where Wittmann’s tank rampage commenced.

“Never before I have been so impressed by the strength of an armoured column rolling past…” – SS-Obersturmführer Michael Wittmann

The first casualty of the battle was a Cromwell tank at the rear of the column which prevented the British from retreating, forcing them into the town. A Sherman Firefly was destroyed next, and Wittmann pushed through into the town via the main road. In this space of about 15 minutes, 14 tanks, 15 transport vehicles and two anti-tank guns had been destroyed. The Tiger’s advance was halted when a 6pdr anti-tank gun shot at the track and immobilised it, after which Wittmann and his crew fled.

The battle did not end here, as the 101st SS Panzer Division arrived to secure the town. Combat continued into the streets, where a group of Tigers were ambushed by British anti-tank guns, Sherman Firefly tanks and a Cromwell which knocked out five Tigers. Even so, the town was overrun by German infantry and the British units decided to retreat under the cover of artillery support.

“Saw a remarkable sight this evening: tremendous procession of our four-engined bombers ﬂew overhead, and dropped their loads just beyond front line (around Villers?)” – Sergeant Trevor Greenwood, 9th Battalion Royal Tank Regiment

On the night of the 14th of June, Villers-Bocage was bombed by Lancaster, Mosquito and Halifax bombers of the Royal Air Force to cover the 22nd Armoured Brigade’s withdrawal. One Tiger tank is known to have been destroyed.

In another raid on the 30th June, Lancaster formations bombed Villers-Bocage a second time as part of Operation Epsom. Although heavily damaged, the town was eventually liberated by the 1st Battalion Dorset Regiment on the 4th August, 1944.

“Avro Lancasters carpet bomb a road junction near Villers Bocage, Normandy, France through which the 2nd and 9th SS Panzer Divisions were expected to move to carry out an attack on the junction of the British and American armies. The daylight attack, by 266 aircraft of Nos. 3, 4 and 8 Groups, was carried out at 4,000 feet to ensure that the target indicators dropped by the Pathfinders were seen and 1,100 tons of bombs were dropped with great accuracy.”
“CL 344”
“Part of AIR MINISTRY SECOND WORLD WAR OFFICIAL”
Royal Air Force official photographer

Key Events

The details of the Battle of Villers-Bocage are very in-depth and logistical, to an extent that is hard to replicate in a short cinematic documentary without being confusing to an audience. Here I have attempted to summarise the battle in short bullet points so the key events are covered and make sense to a more casual audience.

British convoy advances into Villers-Bocage without resistance.
A German half-track is spotted but there is no engagement.
Wittmann begins attacking the convoy, destroys a Cromwell at the rear preventing a withdrawal.
Wittmann destroys multiple British vehicles.
6pdr immobilises Wittman’s tiger and he retreats to safety.
101st SS Panzer Division arrives, Germans advance into town
Tiger division is ambushed, five Tigers are destroyed (one shot by a Firefly after shooting through a window and another disabled from the rear by a Cromwell. Short duels).
Town is reinforced by German infantry and British retreat under artillery support.
Villers-Bocage is bombed by the RAF on the 14th and 30th June, but remains under German occupation.
Town is liberated on 4th August.

Weapons of War – what was used in the battle?

A wide variety of vehicles were operated by the British units at Villers-Bocage during the battle, including Sexton SPG (self-propelled gun) vehicles and M10 tank destroyers. However, only those with more prominent roles in the battle will need to be represented in the stop motion segments and will therefore require miniatures of the vehicles. These vehicles and weapons can be seen below.

Tiger I – multiple of these heavy tanks were present at Villers-Bocage, and one was commanded by Michael Wittmann himself for most of the battle.

Panzer IV – this particular variant is the F2, armed with a 75mm KwK 40 ant-tank gun with a longer barrel than previous variants. Many were part of the German retaliation at Villers-Bocage.

Ordnance QF 6pdr anti-tank guns - used extensively by the British forces in the battle. Although incapable of destroying Tigers, a shot to the tracks could prevent them from moving anywhere; such was the case with Wittman’s tank in the battle.

Cromwell tank - many that were knocked out during Wittman’s attack.

The M3 Stuart - a light American tank that was additionally used by the British. Several were present at Villers-Bocage.

Sherman V – these famous American tanks were also used extensively by the British. At Villers-Bocage many were classified as OP (Observation Post) tanks, and some were even fitted with fake muzzle brakes.

Sherman Vc Firefly – a British development of the Sherman, fitted with the powerful QF 17pdr anti-tank gun. While this made the tank more capable of countering German heavy tanks, this modification made the vehicle more cramped as a result of the larger gun taking up space.

Wittmann’s Tiger

Like many tank commanders and crews of WWII, Wittmann operated multiple tanks during the Second World War. The most famed vehicle he served in was the Tiger I heavy tank, armed with a powerful 88mm gun that made it a formidable opponent on the battlefield; so formidable, in fact, that when the Allies first encountered it they had to develop specific tactics to counter it since many of their own tanks were incapable of facing it at the time.

Throughout the Normandy campaign Wittmann commanded many different Tiger tanks, numbered 205, 222, 212 and 007 chronologically. Of the various Tigers used in the Battle of Villers-Bocage (including 205, 212 and 222), it is disputed by historians as to which ones Wittmann did and didn’t use; some, like 212, were borrowed from other tank commanders when his own tank, 205, was disabled.

However, I have decided to represent Wittmann and his Tiger throughout the production as Tiger 007 – although this Tiger wasn’t even present at this battle, it has become known as Wittmann’s most famous tank, possibly because it was the final tank he fought – and died – in (Wittmann was killed on August 8th, 1944). Therefore, it should be more recognisable to the audience and enables them to identify Wittmann’s presence, an integral part of the battle in itself, more easily when his tank is shown on screen.

Research Among Peers – Wartime Knowledge

To provide some primary research I organised a survey aimed at peers regarding public knowledge of the Battle of Villers-Bocage, the Normandy campaign and the Second World War in general.

As I expected the results indicated there is very little public knowledge of the Battle of Villers-Bocage, but there is still a strong interest in the subject of the war in general; particularly regarding the Eastern Front (the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union). Exposure to knowledge of the war also appears to be primarily from the media outside of schoolwork, primarily through films and video games.

Professional Practice

To produce Bocage I have looked at various examples of professional practice that have had similar aims of either recreating moments of the Second World War, or presenting them to an audience through actual footage. One example of a production I have looked at is the BBC docudrama miniseries Dunkirk (Alex Holmes, 2004) which combines historical footage with re-enacted scenes to tell the story of the Dunkirk Evacuation in 1940. I aim to use the stop motion sequences to recreate the events of the Battle of Villers-Bocage in a similar manner.

In addition to this, I plan to integrate actual photographs and video into the stop motion sequences where possible; my main chance of doing this will be during Wittmann’s rampage against the Allied armour, where I’m intending on replicating historical images of tanks and surroundings with the miniatures, and cutting from the miniature battle sequence to the photographs of the real tanks in the actual battle. This is a technique used in They Shall Not Grow Old (Peter Jackson, 2018) to show graphic images of dead soldiers in World War I in between artwork to show a chaotic battle in the trenches. This technique enables the production to resonate with the audience more by reminding them that what they’re seeing is the aftermath of actual warfare, and the miniatures are simply being used to recreate events that aren’t seen on screen.

For the prologue of the production I had to create background to give a degree of context to the audience as to when, how and why the British 22nd Armoured Brigade were at Villers-Bocage. I figured the best way to do this was to use archive footage of the D-Day Landings, alongside small descriptions giving facts about the situation before the battle. This is a technique that was used in the opening of A Bridge Too Far (Richard Attenborough, 1977) which explained the buildup to Operation Market Garden, the campaign in September 1944 around which the film is set. Interestingly, A Bridge Too Far’s opening prologue also talks about the Normandy campaign, which made it even more useful as a source of inspiration.

I’ve also looked at various examples of how armoured warfare has been portrayed in more creative industry-level films and television, both in more recent years and in older productions. I plan to use these creative techniques and apply them to the stop motion sequences to further engage the audience, and make the battle sequences as immersive as they can get with the use of miniatures. To do this effectively, I have to look at which films portray tank battles more accurately than others.

The first film I looked at was Fury (David Ayer, 2014), a film which is centred on a Sherman tank crew in the last months of World War II. While the film is praised for showing the grim reality of war and how atrocities and war crimes were committed by both the Allied and Axis forces, the film is generally disliked by historians and enthusiasts for inaccurate depictions of tank battles compared to how they would be carried out historically; one particular scene shows a Sherman convoy being ambushed by a German Tiger I. While the visuals are to a very high standard, the film is criticised as German tank crews were instructed to attack the lead tank, with exceptions made for tanks with larger guns such as the Sherman M4A3E8 ‘Easy Eight’ and the British Sherman Firefly, because they were more of a threat.

This is an inaccuracy that was also depicted the video game Battlefield V (Electronic Arts, 2018), as part of a cutscene in the cinematic story ‘The Last Tiger’. In the opening scene, tank commander Peter Müller destroys a British Churchill tank at the rear of the column – but interestingly in relation to the Battle of Villers-Bocage, historical sources point to Wittmann breaking tank crew doctrine by attacking a Cromwell at the rear of the British tank column, just like in the game cutscene. However in further historical context it is believed he did this to force them into the town, where they would be cornered into close-quarter combat.

Next, I decided to look at an older film which prominently features tanks in combat, the war comedy film Kelly’s Heroes (Brian G. Hutton, 1970). While the scene is light-hearted and less gritty than the previous examples (a common trait of older war films produced before Saving Private Ryan), it uses various unique camera angles and perspectives that I hope to emulate in my own production. The film also stays away from using the ‘shaky-cam’ technique that was pioneered in Saving Private Ryan – while this makes the scene less chaotic it makes shots clearer and easier for the audience to understand what is happening. Additionally, while not impossible the shaky-cam technique would be more time-consuming and difficult to replicate in a short stop motion production.

Since the older war films such as Kelly’s Heroes, war films have become far more violent and tonally serious than they used to be, and this was largely pioneered by the success of Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998). To this day it remains one of the most historically accurate and immersive war films among both historians and film critics, to the extent that Normandy veterans who viewed the film in initial screenings were disturbed by the incredibly violent scenes; a testament to the film’s authenticity. It’s as a result of this that I certainly had to look at how this film achieved this high standard.

Firstly, the film has a noticeably bleak colour grading compared to other productions, which was a technique deliberately used by Janusz Kamiński to give the film a grittier, more serious feel. The technique was retained for other war productions by Spielberg, including Band of Brothers (HBO, 2001) and The Pacific (HBO, 2010) and countless other war productions aiming to recreate this dull tone for themselves. I also aim to use this technique to give my production the same effect.

Inspiration was also taken from more informative factual productions, such as the ongoing YouTube series World War 2 (TimeGhost, 2018-ongoing) hosted by historian Indy Neidell, as well as historical accounts of battles uploaded by historian and author Mark Felton. I have also taken inspiration from other documentaries, particularly World War II in Colour (World Media Rights, 2009).

In addition to this, I edited a basic graphic sequence using Premiere Pro to feature in the production. It showcases a map of Normandy and the Allied invasion, represented by flags moving inland to show the five landing beaches taken by each Allied country. The swastikas represent the German defensive positions around Caen, which makes it more clear to the audience why the 22nd Armoured Brigade (represented by a third British flag splitting from Sword Beach) was tasked with going further inland through Villers-Bocage.

To create this graphic, inspiration was particularly taken from those used in military history documentaries such as World War II in Colour (World Media Rights, 2009) as well as the iconic intro to comedy series Dad’s Army (BBC, 1968-1977) which summarises the British evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, a factor in the formation of the Home Guard units that the show is based on.

The intro of iconic war comedy Dad’s Army (BBC, 1968-1977), a source of inspiration for the map graphics used to depict D-Day and the continuing advance into Normandy, as shown in Bocage.

Bibliography

Video + Audio

Reichsrundfunk Interview with Michael Wittmann – a rare recording of an interview with SS-Obersturmführer Michael Wittmann on the evening of the 13th June 1944, the same day as the Battle of Villers-Bocage. It was recorded by SS war correspondent Dieter Menninger for the Reichsrundfunk, the public broadcasting network of Nazi Germany.

https://youtu.be/gFtFfHGmgJA