Operation Neptune

by Kenneth Edwards

  By January, 1944, the administrative planning was already fairly far advanced, not only as regards the preliminary work, but in relation to the actual facts and figures of invasion. This was because by that time three main questions had been settled.

  It had been decided that the invasion should take place in the bay of the Seine.

  It had been decided that the invasion would take place early in June, 1944.

  It had been decided that the strength of the initial assault would be five divisions, with an immediate “follow up” of two divisions. These were the three concrete facts upon which it had been possible to press forward with the detailed administrative planning. An invasion is a gigantic operation in which all three Services are intimately concerned. In enabling the actual landings to take place the part of the naval forces is of paramount importance, but in the administrative planning stage the Navy must wait upon the Army. Only the military authorities can say what strength they consider essential, in men, equipment and stores, for the initial assault, the “follow-up,” and the subsequent “build-up.” Such decisions are, of course, made on the highest staff level, but once they have been made the naval and military planning staffs have to work together, and, in conjunction with the shipping administration, solve the problem of how the military commander is to be provided with all that he needs.

  In solving these problems there have, of course, to be many compromises, for it is not in the nature of things that military ideals, shipping resources and naval operational considerations should match without difficulty. Here again, the initiative is with the military authorities. Given the three concrete facts regarding the invasion of Normandy enumerated above, the military Quartermaster-General’s department produced what is known as the “Q Appreciation.”

  The “Q Appreciation” set out in detail the requirements of the military invading force in men, vehicles, equipment, ammunition, stores, rations and everything else that the fighting soldier would need. It formed the datum on which the administrative planning was carried out—a form of agenda for the hundreds of meetings at which every facet of the problem was minutely scrutinised, and mutually acceptable and feasible compromises evolved. The “Q Appreciation” was by no means concerned only with the far shore; in fact one of its main functions lay in dealing with the transport and assembly problems in this country and in ensuring that troops and cargoes were available at the right times at the ports where they were to be embarked.

  In the administrative planning for the invasion of Normandy the object which had to be continually borne in mind was to synchronise the initial assault with an organisation capable of providing a smooth flow of reinforcements and supplies. Lack of “smoothness” in this flow would inevitably have produced “peaks” and “bottlenecks.” Both would have been wasteful of shipping space, which it was essential to economise to the utmost. On a “peak” there would have been ships lying idle off the beaches, waiting their turn to unload, while in a “bottleneck” ships would have been lying idle in British ports waiting for cargoes.

  The movement of modern armies, with their very heavy equipment, and arms which are quick-firing and, therefore, prodigal of ammunition, are matters requiring immense and widespread organisation.

  The Allied military high command for Operation Overlord, during a meeting in London. Seated from left to right: Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur W. Tedder; General Dwight D. Eisenhower; General Bernard L. Montgomery. Standing from left to right: Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley; Admiral Sir Bertram H. Ramsay; Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory; Lieutenant General Walter Bedell “Beetle” Smith, Eisenhower’s chief of staff.

  It is an organisation, moreover, which has to be flexible and adaptable in order to meet unforeseen requirements or events. It must also be able to continue to function over a long period, during which the needs of the troops will inevitably fluctuate. It is all very well to say that there should, if the planning be good, be no unforeseen requirements or events. No man can plan his enemy’s actions as well as his own. The most the greatest planning genius can achieve is a flexible organisation which takes into consideration every interference by the enemy or by the weather which can reasonably he expected, makes due allowances for meeting these, and still retains a degree of flexibility in reserve with which to meet the unexpected.

  Steps had, of course, been taken over many months to build up in Great Britain a great invasion army and the vast accumulation of stores, vehicles and food that it would need on going into action. But these were in camps and dumps far from the ports at which they would embark for the invasion of France. An organisation had therefore to be evolved which would provide for the arrival of the men, vehicles, equipment and stores in the vicinity of the port of embarkation at the right time.

  The task of organising this fell into four phases:

  1. Formations, and all their requirements, would have to be concentrated in areas reasonably close to their embarkation ports. This would mean that large areas would have to be denuded of their normal military population; otherwise there would be bad overcrowding in certain areas and secrecy would thereby be jeopardised.

  2. Once concentrated, and as close as possible to D-day, the troops would have to be moved into marshalling areas, where they would be divided into assault troops, first reinforcements to be kept as a floating reserve at sea off the beaches, and “follow up” troops. Then they would have to be split up into unit parties and loads for the various craft to be employed, having due regard to the principle that every load should be a “balanced” load of troops of every category needed for the initial assault, and with enough stores of the types required by the categories of troops employed during the initial assault period.

  3. The embarkation of the assault troops, the “floating reserve,” and the “follow up” wave, and the initial stages of the “build-up.” In all of these the principle of “balanced” loads would have to be rigidly observed, for there could be no guarantee that these would not have to be put ashore under the same conditions as the first assault wave.

  4. The force, having secured the beachhead, would have to be sustained and steadily built up by a harmonious and uninterrupted flow of reinforcements of men, material, ammunition and stores. In this phase the principle of “balanced” loads for every individual ship and craft could be ignored, but the need for a “balanced” delivery at the beachhead would remain a paramount consideration. Precautions would have to be taken to ensure that no act of God or the King’s enemies could produce a situation in which one day’s deliveries could lead to a glut of ammunition, forming a dangerous surplus, while the fighting men had nothing to eat.

  To produce a steady flow of goods may at first sight seem a comparatively easy task. To a great extent it is what the distributive organisation of Britain does year in and year out, in peace as well as in war. But a vastly different set of circumstances ruled. In the first place the weight and volume of the material to be moved was enormous; and it would have to be moved first over an internal transport organisation already working to capacity. Secondly, the great weight of material and equipment would require, to a considerable extent, specialised rolling stock for its transportation. Thirdly, it would have to be moved quickly and within a short period in order that dumps of too great size and vulnerability should not be built up within easy reach of the Luftwaffe, thereby disclosing our intentions to the enemy and inviting retaliatory action.

  Then there was the question of men. Even in peace time the transport system within Great Britain suffers from “rush hours.” The assembly of the troops required for the first waves of invasion promised to produce a far greater “rush” traffic, and one which would be sustained over a much longer period. Moreover, troops have to be fed in transit and at their destinations, and the transport of their rations alone creates problems.

  As an illustration of the need for absolute accuracy in administrative planning, particularly as regards transport, it may be noted that the addition of 50 men to the n
umber to be carried in a particular troop train may have disastrous effects. Those 50 extra men will mean the addition of an extra coach to the train. With all the transport working to capacity, as it was before D-day, the addition of one coach to the train might well have made the train too heavy for the locomotive to pull—at least at the speed required to keep to a complicated but inflexible time-table. Thus those 50 men might have thrown out of gear a whole series of complicated movements, not only of railway transport, but also of ship-loading.

  These initial problems are primarily military in cause if not in character, but they are all intimately connected with the planning of the maritime side of the expedition, for the arrival at the port of embarkation is but the first stage of the journey to invasion.

  For the initial phase of invasion the ships can be “pre-loaded” that is, they can embark their troops and cargoes before the operation commences and be ready to sail at a moment’s notice. This simplifies the initial problem, so far as the first wave of the assault, the “floating reserves” and the immediate “follow-up” are concerned; but pre-loading can only be used within a very limited time factor. To keep large numbers of laden ships lying in anchorages within striking distance of an enemy coast is to invite enemy action which may prove disastrous. It may also give the enemy invaluable clues pointing to the intentions of such concentration. It will certainly lead, after a very short time, to a deterioration in the physical and mental well-being of troops cooped up in crowded troopships, for there can be no question of disembarking them for exercise. The requirements of secrecy make it imperative that ships once loaded for an operation should be “sealed”—that is, they must have no communication with the shore.

  It was for the maintenance of the invasion force, once successfully put ashore in France and in building up its strength, that the working out of time-tables and of schedules of the needs of the troops was of paramount importance. For the first wave of the assault, ships and landing craft were to be “pre-loaded” before the operation began. Their collection and loading, so that the fighting man should want for nothing even if a certain number of ships were sunk, was a difficult matter, but it was simple by comparison with the maintenance problem. For this, ships could not be “pre-loaded,” for they would have to work a “shuttle service” backwards and forwards across the English Channel, and their tasks would only end with the end of the war.

  The first steps in working out the maintenance problem was to predict, in the light of past experience, the probable needs of an expanding force, having regard to the estimated nature of the operation, in terms of both probable rate of movement and expected severity of the fighting. In launching an invasion in force against territory held by the enemy for four years this would seem to be “anybody’s guess.” But it was no guess. It was an estimate carefully worked out by the staff of the Force Commander in the light of the numbers of men, tanks, guns and vehicles which it was hoped to land day by day, and in the light of all available intelligence of the terrain and the disposition and strength of the enemy. The quantity of rations required was a simple calculation, but estimates of the probable expenditure of ammunition of each category, and of petrol, demanded highly expert judgment.

  As the requirements for assault and for maintenance and “build-up” began to crystallise, steps could be taken to fit these in with the available shipping and loading facilities.

  It had already been decided that coastal ships of small size and draught should be widely used both in the initial stages and during the “build-up.” This decision, however, involved other problems. How much coastal shipping could be diverted to invasion duties without placing an intolerable strain on internal transport or depriving essential services of their necessary supplies? How many loading berths suitable for these ships were available at or near the main “invasion ports”? All this, of course, had to be dovetailed into the routeing arrangements for the various ships and convoys so that they could be given the maximum of naval and air protection during their voyages.

  Thus the size, positioning, and routeing of the great fleet of ships of vastly differing characteristics was gradually determined. Then this had to be interpreted in terms of potential discharging capacity at the beachheads, with due allowance for possible loss or damage by enemy action or delay by weather. Allowance also had to be made for refuelling the ships themselves, and since they were of no homogeneous type or standardised performance, every ship had to be treated as a separate entity.

  Small wonder that it was not until a very large number of elaborate calculations had been made, checked and re-checked, that it was possible to arrive at even an approximate figure of the numbers of men and tonnage of stores which could be brought to the vicinity of the beachhead on the heels of the assault. Even then, the rate of discharge depended to some extent upon a further factor—the carrying capacity from ship to shore of the DUKW’s, barges and other ferry craft, all of which had to be procured and many adapted in advance.

  The maintenance of one division of troops in face of the enemy demands a supply in the nature of 300-400 tons a day. We have seen that it was laid down as the immediate object of the invasion of Normandy that the lodgement in France was to contain a force of 26-30 divisions with a reinforcement by “follow-up” divisions at the rate of 3-5 divisions a month. This, be it noted, was the lodgement and the force estimated to be required “from which further offensive operations can be developed.” Thus in the early stages of the invasion the overseas supply problem was for the delivery of between 8,000 and 12,000 tons of stores a day, irrespective of “build-up.” Moreover, this commitment was to have a monthly increase of between 1,000 and 2,000 tons a day, to say nothing of the task of transporting the “follow up” divisions themselves.

  Here was a problem in sea transport of greater magnitude than had ever before been considered in relation to any operation of war. It was immediately obvious that it could not be attempted unless there was exercised the most rigorous economy in shipping space and shipping time, so that every ton of shipping should be used to the utmost of its capacity, not only on each voyage, but in carrying out the maximum possible number of voyages in any given time.

  The necessity for meeting these essential requirements produced the most detailed control of shipping that has ever been known. It was a control which concerned the actual loading of the ships, and the previous planning of their loading, as well as their movement at sea.

  To say that the last thing put into a ship is the first thing to come out may seem obvious, but it is a truth which becomes really important only when dealing with the problems of invasion. The armies ashore would have to have “first things first,” and that meant that the loading end of the cross-Channel ferry service would have to work on a basis of “first things last” as far as individual ships were concerned.

  Another complication was the principle, to which reference has already been made, which has come to be known as “balanced loading.” Basically, this is merely a means of ensuring that the soldiers get what they want when they want it. It means that a ship carrying motor transport must also carry the crews of the vehicles and the fuel for the vehicles. It means that if guns of a certain type are in one ship a supply of ammunition for those guns must be in the same ship. It means that steps must be taken to make sure that a shipload of engineers shall not travel with, say, field kitchens, and that cooks and bakers shall not be embarked with mine-clearance and bridge-building equipment.

  “Balanced loading” would seem to be mere common sense in dealing with an overseas operation in which ships are liable to be sunk, yet it is an exact science which was developed as a result of most bitter experience. The latter dates back to the Norwegian campaign, when our troops were hanging on to the port of Namsos in face of continual and virtually unopposed air attack which set town, dumps and forest on fire. An immediate supply of anti-aircraft armament was essential if a desperate situation was not to become catastrophic, and guns and ammunition were rushed across th
e North Sea. In that sudden emergency “balanced loading” could not be undertaken, so the guns were sent in a ship suitable for their embarkation and disembarkation, while the ammunition for those guns was sent in a ship the holds of which were suited to the carriage of such cargo. Unfortunately, however, the ship carrying the ammunition fell victim to enemy attack just before reaching Namsos. The result was that the hard-pressed troops and Royal Marines received a great many guns which were quite useless because the ammunition had been sunk in transit.

  Thus the principle of “balanced loading” came into being—to prevent recurrence of such a tragedy. Some guns and an adequate supply of ammunition for them must be shipped together in the same ship, so that the loss of a ship will lead only to a reduction in the effective supply, and not render the whole supply ineffective.

  Between principle and execution, however, there is a world of difference. The organisation of “balanced loading” had to reach right back to the sources of supply, and a great many alterations had to be made to ships to enable it to be carried out. A ship may be very suitable for the carriage of vehicles but have no accommodation for their drivers and crews, and be unable to carry petrol in a way which would not endanger the safety of the vessel. Similarly, a ship may be suited to carry ammunition but unable to carry guns because her derricks are incapable of handling their weight.

  The only way of overcoming the difficulties was by making certain structural alterations to the ships, and the shipyards were for many months flooded with work which was essential if “balanced loading” was to become practicable. It was decided that “balanced loading” would be the rule throughout the early stages of the invasion, but few people realised the immensity of the task which had to be carried out in order to bring this about. It was very far from being a simple matter of designing and ordering the necessary alterations to the ships selected, for the work had to be dovetailed into other shipbuilding and ship-repairing work. Nor was it merely a case of ordering different items to be delivered every few hours at different ports. Armoured fighting vehicles cannot be carried in ordinary railway trucks or ordinary lorries; nor can guns be carried in passenger coaches. Thus the whole system had to be carefully fitted in with the internal as well as the external transport systems, and particular care had to be taken to ensure that insistence upon “balanced loading” would not lead to any undue accumulation of certain types of rolling stock or of road transport vehicles in any particular area, for this could lead only to a subsequent “bottleneck” in the whole system of the “build-up.”