Exercise Tiger (1944)

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The Exercise Tiger (1944) ( English for: Exercise Tiger ) was a joint military maneuver carried out by British and American forces during the Second World War at Slapton Sands in Devon, England on the English Channel . Allied troops finally trained here at the end of April 1944 for the Normandy landings ( D-Day ); therefore the operation was kept secret until August 1944.

Communication and coordination problems led to a first misfortune. After the time of landing had been postponed, the British Navy shot at prematurely landed US soldiers on the morning of April 27 at Slapton Sands. Far more devastating was an attack by nine German speedboats under the command of Bernd Klug . They sank two of eight second wave landing craft off Lyme Bay on the night of April 27-28 and damaged another one, killing 946 US soldiers.

Training of landing operations

At the end of 1943, the British government decided to set up training locations for D-Day and, for example, designated a. Slapton Sands, a beach between the villages of Torcross and Slapton in Devon. The US forces who were to land on Utah Beach took part in exercises there, as it was very similar to the conditions of Utah Beach: a gravel beach followed by a strip of land and then a lake (the Slapton Ley). Approx. 3,000 residents of the Slapton area were relocated for this.

Landing exercises began in December 1943. Exercise Tiger itself was a final major exercise that took place between April 22 and April 30, 1944 under the command of the VII Corps. The exercise covered all aspects of the real landing. Two bridgeheads should be created and held. A total of 25,000 soldiers and 2,750 vehicles took part in the Tiger landing maneuver (Exercise) with the Zeeland troops.

Invasion training on the British coast - maneuvers with real ammunition

Nine US tank landing ships ( Landing Ship Tank , LST) took part in the exercise and it was live ammunition distributed to the soldiers.

The Royal Navy should guard or shield the whole exercise at sea . The British fleet included two destroyers and two motor torpedo boats that guarded the entrance to Lyme Bay (near the island of Portland ). Motor torpedo boats also patrolled the coastal area around Cherbourg , where German speedboats were stationed. In the first phase of the exercise, coordination and loading skills should be trained. On April 26, the fleet cast off from its ports of departure Plymouth and Dartmouth and ran east. After a subsequent turn, she now drove west towards Bruxham. This was used to train coordination on the high seas. The fleet was due to reach the Devonian coast at dawn on April 27th.

The friendly fire incident

When landing, real ammunition should be fired over the heads of the soldiers. The idea behind this was that the soldiers should get used to the noise and smell of war. This was due to a direct order from General Dwight D. Eisenhower to harden his men. The British cruiser HMS Hawkins was supposed to bombard the beach with real ammunition. A certain period (6:30 a.m. to 7:00 a.m.) was set for this. Between 7:00 and 7:30, helpers would have examined the beach and at 7.30 the soldiers would have landed.

However, numerous DropShips were delayed and US Admiral Don P. Moon decided to postpone the landing to 8:30 a.m. This message was passed on but not received by all units. As a result, some troops landed at the originally planned time and were fired at by British ships, causing losses to be deplored.

Speedboat Attack - Battle of Lyme Bay

In the early morning of April 28, German speedboats attacked in Lyme Bay under the command of Corvette Captain Bernd Klug . Of the two ships that were supposed to protect the convoy of invasion ships, only one was present. The corvette HMS Azalea led the nine LSTs in a tight line. This formation was later criticized for being an easy target for German boats. The second ship that was supposed to be present, the HMS Scimitar, had collided with one of the LSTs, sustained considerable damage and was on its way to Plymouth for repairs. The LSTs and the British Naval Headquarters had different radio frequencies and the Americans were therefore not informed.

British ships that had sighted the two German boats informed the corvette and assumed that the Americans overheard, which was not the case. British batteries defending Salcombe harbor had sighted the Germans but were not supposed to open fire so as not to show that Salcombe was being defended. At least one of the LSTs was equipped with a radar system and reported two unknown ships approaching. These were mistakenly believed to belong to their own convoy.

The German boats had left Cherbourg on the evening of April 27th. They had noticed the brisk radio traffic and they had finally spotted the convoy . They attacked between 1:30 a.m. and 2:04 a.m. and sank two LSTs. Soldiers of the 1st Engineer Special Brigade of the 4th Division of the VII Corps were on these: LST 507 was attacked with torpedoes and then set on fire. LST 531 was hit and also burned. Both later sank. LST 511 was hit twice by torpedoes, but they did not explode. Around 2:10 p.m. another torpedo hit destroyed the crew quarters, the rudder and the rear guns of LST 289. LST 289, however, was able to reach Dartmouth around 14:30 p.m. on its own.

Other LSTs went up to speed, escaping another attack. The LST 515 turned back according to army reports and saved some survivors.

Victim

Most of the casualties were on LST 531. Only 290 of a total of 744 soldiers and 282 seamen survived. There were 13 dead and 22 wounded on board LST 507. The 1st Brigade lost 413 soldiers and had 16 wounded. The 3206th Quartermaster Brigade had been formally wiped out. Of the 251 officers and soldiers, 201 were killed or wounded. Other companies reported 69 deaths. There is no complete list of victims, but the records report at least 749 dead and more than 300 men, some seriously wounded.

The USS-LST-511 was hit by friendly fire . In total, the US Army lost 749 soldiers - more than when it actually landed on Utah Beach. In addition, 198 members of the US Navy died.

The British Royal Navy recorded no losses.

Consequences for the Allied side

The incident was kept secret and all witnesses were urged to keep silent in order to protect the impending landing in Normandy. After the German attack, however, ten Allied keepers of secrets were missing. They were informed of the exact invasion plans and since the Allies feared that some might have been captured and successfully interrogated, some measures were taken to further secure the operation in Normandy: The landing sections in Normandy were precise with regard to German troop reinforcements observed and activities around the Pas de Calais increased to increase the likelihood of the Germans being mistaken that the invasion would occur there. The ten drowned officers could, contrary to some probability, be found during the laborious search for the victims.

Numerous changes have been made:

  • Uniform frequencies
  • Improved life jackets
  • Improved rescue options for soldiers who went overboard

The number of victims was only published in August 1944. Also in August 1944, after the successful landing in Normandy under his command, Admiral Don P. Moon committed suicide for unknown reasons during an invasion of the Cote d'Azur .

German side

The German officers Korvettenkapitän Götz von Mirbach and Korvettenkapitän Bernd Klug were mentioned and highly decorated in the Wehrmacht report of April 28th.

Commemoration

The Slapton Sands memorial plaque reads:

“Dedicated by the United States of America in honor of the men of the US Army's 1st Engineer Special Brigade, the 4th Infantry Division, and the VII Corps Headquarters; and the US Navy's 11th Amphibious Force who perished in the waters of Lyme Bay during the early hours of April 28, 1944. ”

“Dedicated by the United States in honor of the men of the 1st US Army Special Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, and VII Corps Headquarters; and the US Navy's 11th Amphibious Forces, which disappeared in the waters of Lyme Bay in the early hours of April 28, 1944. "

Ken Small, who grew up locally, wrote the book The Forgotten Dead - Why 946 American Servicemen Died Off The Coast Of Devon In 1944 - And The Man Who Discovered Their True Story (The Forgotten Dead - Why American Soldiers Died Off The Coast Of Devon In 1944 - and the man who discovered her true story) and published it in 1988. In the 1970s he had searched the beach for the clues that had surfaced before. Ken Small wrote that the event was not covered up, but simply forgotten. Charles B. MacDonald , author and former deputy chief historian at the United States Army Center of Military History, wrote that the event was mentioned in The Stars and Stripes magazine during the war . In fact, the event was mentioned in Captain Harry C. Butcher's My Three Years With Eisenhower (1946).

In 1974 Ken Small bought a tank of the American 70th Tank Battalion from the US government, which sank in the bay and was recovered there . In 1984 he set it up as a reminder of the soldiers who died for their homeland. He was supported by private donations and the local authorities. The US government later honored him for his initiative. Small died of cancer in March 2004 - a few weeks before Exercise Tiger's 60th anniversary.

In 2006, Slapton Sands Memorial Tank Limited (a nonprofit led by Small's son Dean) placed a plaque in Devon bearing the names of the soldiers who died. In 2012, a plaque was also erected on the wall of a former German flak bunker on Utah Beach in Normandy, commemorating these victims on the other side of the canal.

An M4 Sherman tank commemorates the victims of Exercise Tiger at Fort Rodman Park in New Bedford , Massachusetts .

In 1997, the Exercise Tiger Association set up an LST anchor for Exercise Tiger veterans in the city of Mexico , Missouri .

Literary processing

  • Francis Cottam dealt with the event in his novel Slapton Sands
  • Exercise Tiger was the subject of Kate Ellis ' book The Armada Boy (1999).

watch TV

Web links

Commons : Exercise Tiger  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f Kenn Small and Mark Rogerson. The Forgotten Dead - Why 946 American Servicemen Died Off The Coast Of Devon In 1944 - And The Man Who Discovered Their True Story . London: Bloomsbury. 1988. ISBN 0-7475-0309-5 (engl.)
  2. a b "The disaster that could have scuppered Overlord" ( Memento from January 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  3. Savill, Richard. "Last of torpedo survivors remembers brave buddies" - The Daily Telegraph - London - 25/04/2004 (engl.)
  4. ^ South Devon Evacuation 1944 . Exeterflotilla.org. November 16, 1943. Retrieved April 28, 2014.
  5. Slapton Line: Slapton Monument Rededication ( Memento from May 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) - Devon County Council - devon.gov.uk - Updated March 9, 2007 (Engl.)
  6. Stokes, Paul. "Veterans honor 749 who died in D-Day rehearsal" - The Daily Telegraph - London - April 29, 1994
  7. A training maneuver with 749 dead? In: Tages-Anzeiger from April 27, 2019
  8. ^ Ian Dear, Michael Richard Daniell Foot: The Oxford companion to World War II . Oxford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-19-860446-7 , p. 787.
  9. Jan K Herman: Battle Station Sick Bay: Navy Medicine in World War II . Naval Institute Press, 1997, ISBN 1-55750-361-3 , p. 191.
  10. see en: S-class destroyer (1916)
  11. HMS SCIMITAR (H 21) - Old S-class Destroyer
  12. Sven Felix Kellerhoff : The exercise that ended in a catastrophe . In: Die Welt , accessed on April 23, 2016.
  13. ^ Exercise Tiger at The Naval Historical Center
  14. ^ Exercise Tiger Roll of Honor
  15. Articles in the World
  16. ^ A b MacDonald, Charles B. "Slapton Sands: The 'Cover Up' That Never Was," Army 38, no. 6. (c / o Naval Historical Center ) - June 1988. - Pages 64-67.
  17. Jones, Claire. The D-Day rehearsal that cost 800 lives on BBC News online May 30, 2014
  18. ^ Butcher, Harry C., My Three Years with Eisenhower - with an estimate of 300 to 400 victims on April 28
  19. Jensen, Marvin: Strike Swiftly! The 70th Tank Battalion from North Africa to Normandy to Germany . Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1997. ISBN 0-89141-610-2 and Roberts, Charles C .: Armored Strike Force, The Photo History of the American 70th Tank Battalion in World War II . Lanham, Maryland: Stackpole Books, 2016. https://www.amazon.com/Armored-Strike-Force-American-Battalion/dp/0811717658
  20. ^ Exercise Tiger Remembered
  21. ^ Exercise Tiger Memorial