Operation Augsburg (ii)

(German city)

'Augsburg' (ii) was a German pair of naval minelaying operations against the coastal shipping lanes off the English south-coast town of Eastbourne (February and March 1941).

The 'Augsburg A' and 'Augsburg B' attacks of 25/26 February and 5/6 March by the torpedo boats Iltis and Jaguar were typical of the operations undertaken in this period by the ships and craft of the German navy’s lighter forces off the UK’s south and east coasts. Such undertakings had been undertaken with relative impunity from the summer of 1940, the torpedo boats and S-boote generally used for these operations usually laying mines but sometimes engaging larger targets with torpedoes.

The effectiveness (but not the intensity) of this German campaign declined with the widespread adoption of the motor gun boat (MGB) by British coastal flotillas, though the Germans feared destroyers and aircraft more than the MGBs, which engaged in only occasional actions with the torpedo boats and S-boote but by their likely presence more generally disrupted the German light naval forces' nocturnal activities.