Operation Eclipse (iii)

'Eclipse' (iii) was the British overall plan for the capture of major German ports such as (from west to east) Emden, Wilhelmshaven, Bremerhaven, Hamburg, Kiel, Lübeck and Wismar by General H. D. G. Crerar’s Canadian 1st Army and Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey’s British 2nd Army of Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery’s Allied 21st Army Group in the last weeks of the war with Germany(April/May 1945).

Bremerhaven was taken on 26 April and Hamburg on 3 May, and the British advance to Lübeck and Wismar before the end of hostilities was of notable importance as it prevented Soviet forces from reaching Denmark and thereby establishing ice-free naval footholds on the south-eastern corner of the North Sea.