Necessary Sacrifice? Disaster Before D-Day

Disaster Before D-Day: Unravelling the Tragedy at Slapton Sands by Stephen Wynn

Pen and Sword Books

Pp. 131

On the 27^th and 28^th April, 1944 a training incident at Slapton Sands, Lyme Bay, Devon, named Operation Tiger, was undertaken as a practice for the D-Day Landings. The site was chosen because of its topographical similarity to Utah Beach in Normandy. Due to friendly fire, miscommunications, ill-fitting life jackets, and undetected German E-boats, the exercise resulted in the tragic loss of 749 United States Army servicemen and 198 United States Navy personnel. Naturally there was secrecy at the time, as the training had to be kept hidden from the Germans or it would spoil the surprise of the D-Day landings, but it is still not a well-known incident.

The logistics for this exercise were considerable. If Slapton Sands were to be used for this exercise, the nearby village and surrounding area had to be evacuated, which meant “3,000 people from about 750 homes, farms, shops and pubs that made up the villages in the prescribed area, all had to be moved out.” One of the problems was overcrowding: where were they going to put everybody? Plymouth, Weymouth, Exeter and Torquay had been heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe; children and entire families had been evacuated to the countryside because it was considered safer; “by the beginning of 1944 there were tens of thousands of American soldiers dotted around the south-west of England involved in training exercises.”

“During the original planning of the exercise nobody had foreseen that Royal Navy might need to get in touch with the US Navy, so it was a situation that had never been addressed. They were operating on two different radio frequencies.” Consequently when the commanding officer delayed the timing of the exercise by an hour, this was not communicated to those involved in shelling the beach with live ammunition and the ground forces firing live rounds over the incoming troops – General Eisenhower believed that live ammunition was as an important factor set to harden the troops to the harsh reality of a naval bombardment. Originally these incidents had been planned an hour apart, but they ended up taking place simultaneously.

Two Royal Navy vessels should have been protecting the convoy of seven American landing craft, but one of them had been accidentally rammed the day before and was being repaired. Once again, this was not communicated between navies and so the convoy only had one escort, and the German E-boats were able to nip in unimpeded and fire torpedoes upon it: the LST-507 caught fire and was then abandoned (with 71 deaths); the LST-531 sank after suffering torpedo strikes (with the loss of 114 lives); the LST-289 was set on fire but managed to reach the shore; and the LST-511 was damaged by friendly fire in the resulting chaos and confusion. Many other servicemen drowned, waiting to be rescued. “It is believed a number of men died during Exercise Tiger because they were wearing their lifebelts incorrectly; some were also faulty. In fact, most of the casualties that died off Slapton Sands on 28 April 1944 did so from either hypothermia or drowning.”

One of the big remaining questions is whether the entire incident was deliberately covered up, and Wynn has tried to find answers. He explains that in 1954 the Americans officially confirmed the deaths from the E-boat attacks and there are personnel lists available of those killed in the incident. “But I have not seen a similar admission in relation to the friendly fire incident that took place on 27 April 1944, nor have I ever seen a list of those who died or how many there were.” This may begin to stray dangerously into conspiracy theory territory, but he tries to lay out the facts as he sees them.

While these ideas may be far-fetched, he talked to many “ordinary people” while researching his book and heard similar stories from Americans and British alike. He questions how there can be so many people who remember the events of 27 April 1944 if they never took place, as stated in repeated denials by official bodies.

Wynn approaches this episode from a military viewpoint with great respect and logical considerations but without hyperbole or excess emotion. He lists the name and ranking of all the men killed and missing, creating a sombre picture of death and warfare. There were many unfortunate deaths in the training exercises that were meant to prepare troops for the D-Day landings (Normandy invasion – Operation Overlord) of 1 May 1944, but, Wynn argues, these preparations doubtless also saved countless lives and brought the war to a close earlier than otherwise. He concludes “that the sacrifices made during that time, whether by the hundreds of young men who lost their lives during the training exercises, or the hundreds of people and families who left their homes so that American soldiers could train there, was worth it. If these sacrifices hadn’t been made, and lessons hadn’t been learnt, then the world might have had a totally different look to it today.”