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SIXTY YEARS AGO, in the spring of 1944, England was, for lack of a better description, a massive staging area and aircraft carrier all in one. Some 11/2 million young Americans were taking residence in bivouac areas all over the country.
Living in tents--not that much fun during the chilly and rainy English spring--they trained and waited.
In the midst of this preparation they were all getting edgy for what the British liked to call the "Big Show" to begin: Operation Overlord, the invasion of Europe. Nothing like it had been done before. Sure, we had done amphibious invasions in Africa, Sicily, Italy, and, of course, the Pacific, but nothing compared to D-Day in size and scope. Or, for that matter, sheer daring.
Generally, history paints a portrait of the preparations for D-Day as being relatively incident-free. The enemy was caught unawares, the German leadership just couldn't believe we would attack at Normandy, and nothing could rival the tenacity of the men at Omaha and Utah beaches as they overcame obstacles and determined enemy fire.
This is all true, but there is one story, left out of the telling at the time, and for good reason, that sometimes is forgotten. It's not necessarily glorious. A lot of men died, and it almost cost the Allies that critical element of surprise they needed so desperately to succeed.
For any amphibious operation to succeed, rehearsal is a necessity. An amphibious landing is a magnificently choreographed operation, and there is no substitute for practice. Of course, even then, things will go wrong. However, if the officers and men have an idea, however notional, of the sights, sounds, and experiences they will face--at least those that can be duplicated short of actual combat--they will be that much better prepared. That was the idea behind a practice landing, scheduled for the morning of April 28, 1944, called Operation Tiger.
The troops that were to participate in the practice landing were not frontline assault troops. They were combat-support personnel who included combat engineers, railroad engineers, chemical decommissioning experts, ordnance disposal experts, and mapmakers. They were critical to the success of the invasion, but they hadn't trained the same way as the regular combat troops, and to this point, they hadn't done a practice landing. That's why the Army thought it would be a good idea if these men were just as prepared for an amphibious landing as those who would be the first ashore on D-Day. Some 5,000 men were scheduled to participate in the exercise.
They would do their practice landing at a place called Slapton Sands in England. It looked amazingly like the Normandy coast, and it was an easy jaunt for the Landing Ship Tanks (LSTs) from Plymouth and Dartmouth that would deliver them there to go ashore early the next morning.
That night, on Lyme's Bay, the weather was unusually clear. However, about 1 a.m., as the LSTs were making their way to the beach, they were attacked by German E-Boats, whom no one expected to see so close to English shores.
The E-Boats are like the Navy Patrol Boats that John Kennedy piloted in the Pacific. They are light, some 70 feet long, can reach 40 knots, carry torpedoes and heavy machine guns, and can usually make smoke for a quick getaway. They are perfect for hit-and-run attacks. And that's exactly what they did on that morning.
The official Army account, written immediately after the war, says the LST flotilla was hit by just two E-boats. Subsequent histories suggest as many as nine. No one is really sure. But what started out as an exercise became a disaster. The attack didn't last long, and the LSTs, all loaded with men and equipment and ill-equipped for any serious naval combat, suffered badly. Torpedoes sank two, and a third had to be towed back to shore by its own landing craft.
It would take weeks to sort out the losses, but the Army finally reported the loss of 749 sailors and soldiers. Operation Tiger would be the most costly training incident of the war. Along with being a bad omen and a terrible loss of life, it also presented a serious security risk that the Army had to keep quiet.
While historians would later call the Army's handling of the attack a "coverup," they forget that everything about D-Day was shrouded in secrecy. The last thing the Allies wanted was the reporting of an incident that would have revealed our order of battle--the troops and equipment we planned to use--and perhaps have given the Germans a hint as to where we would land. And the loss of so many men in what the Army called an "accident" would hurt morale.
But none of that was solace for the men who died or for the units that effectively ceased to exist. For many it was a nightmare that would stay with them forever. A cousin of mine, now in his mid-80s, participated in the rescue effort at Slapton Sands. He is normally an outgoing and talkative man. But, when it comes to Slapton Sands, he has little to say--just that bodies kept washing ashore for days.
The men lost that night, though not frontline troops, were nonetheless critical to post-D-Day operations. Without these units, engineers, who would find their numbers heavily depleted during the D-Day assault, and they remained in short supply for quite some time as they tried to fulfill duties originally assigned to the men lost in Operation Tiger.
Slapton Sands, while a disaster, did teach the Allies lessons. It reinforced the understanding that the Germans could strike at will, and that proper escorts for our landing ships were necessary. As a result, added plans for naval escorts and air cover to protect the D-Day Armada were drawn.
Perhaps Slapton Sands should have a larger place in D-Day history. War is about miscalculations, surprises, and terrible losses when they are least expected.
Yet this loss did not deter us. Instead of recoiling, we learned from it, and a little more than a month later, the Allies launched the most successful and history-making of all amphibious landings.
DAVID KERR, a congressional aide, lives in Stafford County.