I knew now from my reading of The Book that the Normandy beaches presented formidable harbor problems, unmatched in difficulty by any other potential harbor sites, Atlantic or Pacific, in our two-ocean war.
First and worst of the obstacles came the Channel tides—they were tremendous—from high tide to low, a rapid fall of over twenty-one feet. The net effect of so terrific a change in sea level was that at low tide on those flat beaches the waterline rushed seaward a quarter of a mile, twice each day moving the shoreline far out from the beach, leaving only wide stretches of bare sands where a few hours before a ship might comfortably have floated. That Normandy shoreline was like a drop of quicksilver—you couldn’t hold a finger on it in any one spot long enough to let you unload a cargo there.
Next came the tidal currents. The vast quantities of sea water involved every six hours in the changing ocean levels surged in and out the Channel like swiftly flowing rivers running alternately west and east along the coast as the tides ebbed and flowed—baffling currents of amazing strength, of themselves enough to drive a seaman out of his mind struggling to handle his vessel onto or off the beach.
Finally the shoreline itself, wherever momentarily it might be, unprotected by any natural promontories or off-lying islands, was exposed freely to the full sweep of the seas beating in from the open Channel. And the Channel was a restless body of water, notorious historically in fact and fiction for roughness the year round. Small craft, let alone larger vessels, in anything but fine weather would find unloading cargo on those unprotected surf-beaten sands an unsolvable problem.
Those were the major obstacles—in any seaman’s eyes making the beaches untenable for any long-continued cargo handling, even of light materials, let alone of heavy guns and tanks—unless you held a protected seaport on them.
For each of these insurmountable obstacles to any use of those open beaches, Operation Mulberry was to provide in a protected seaport what was needed to surmount them. There, lying off the Selsey sands, shortly to be moved to France, were the answers before me, idiotically purposeless though the whole thing seemed.
Most important of those answers, of course, was the need for shelter from the open seas and the never-ending surf. For that, a massive breakwater was required. Massive breakwaters on open coasts take years to build up-from the sea floor—everyone knows that. But there, despite what everyone knows, were two massive breakwaters, designed to be installed on the sea floor in France, ready for use in a matter not of many years, but of a few days. There before me were the Phoenixs, those obsessions which were fast driving Captain Clark from the verge of insubordination to the verge of breakdown. Phoenixs, code name for the heart of this entire operation—about a hundred of them—those majestic concrete blocks protruding from the surface, staring me in the face like awash warehouses tossed about in insane disarray by some unsubsided flood. Actually, as now I well knew, Phoenixs were the gigantic sections from which shortly were to be formed the breakwaters to be. Each Phoenix section was of itself capable of being made as buoyant as a ship. It was first to be floated up off the bottom on the English side where temporarily it rested awaiting D-day, and then to be towed a hundred miles across the Channel to Normandy, there once again and finally to be sunk. But this time ranged end to end with its mates in a predetermined line a mile off the beachheads, to make an enclosed and sheltered harbor of the area chosen for invasion.
Each of these amazing Phoenixs was two hundred feet long, sixty feet high, sixty feet wide—a tremendous chunk of hollow reinforced concrete divided into watertight compartments and displacing 6000 tons—as heavy as the average Liberty ship, as high as a six-storied building, as long as many a city block. Sunk end to end in two long strings off the French coast, these Phoenixs were to form two separate breakwaters, each two miles long, one on the intended American front, one before the British front—20,000 feet altogether of breakwater. They were to be sunk a mile offshore in water thirty feet deep at low tide. Then, even at high tide, about ten feet of their upper structure would protrude sufficiently above the surface to break the waves and shield the artificial harbor inside them from the Channel seas. Thus they would provide inside them the quiet water in which cargo unloading, whether onto pierheads or from small craft beached on the protected sands, could go on day and night undisturbed by surf or waves.
To get sufficient depth for ships inside, even at low tide, the breakwater line had to be planted nearly a mile offshore. There then would be draft enough inside the breakwater to provide berthing space along each inner Phoenix wall for seven Liberty ships while they unloaded, as well as sheltered anchorage for unnumbered smaller craft.
Next, as the problem to be countered after that of shelter, came those troublesome currents. Something had to be done to break them up. It was provided. A relatively short cross breakwater of more Phoenixs was to be laid at the western end of each harbor, running from the inshore sands outward and perpendicular to the main breakwater, which it was to join at the seaward end. That cross breakwater, short though it was, would act like a cork at one end of the harbor, throttling off the dangerous alongshore rivers.
Finally, but by no means least, there was the pierhead problem—a really acute headache. To keep up with the enormous tonnage of supplies necessary with the limited number of vessels available, there must be a fast vessel turn around on the Far Shore. That meant that all the unloading of tanks and heavy guns would have to be off the bow ramps of LST’s—those strange seagoing monsters which fling apart the immense doors in their bows to open wide their mouths, then drop down the ramps which simulate their tongues, and finally swiftly disgorge from their cavernous stomachs their cargo of heavy tanks, mobile guns, and combat-loaded trucks—all rolling ashore from the LST under their own power in a matter of minutes after the touching down of the ramp.
That is, all this ponderous cargo would roll ashore in a matter of minutes, provided there was a substantial something ashore fixed always at the proper level just above an LST’s bow waterline for it to drop its ramp on, so the cargo could roll off onto it and head landward.
But on the Normandy coasts, there were those precipitous tides and their constantly shifting water levels. With a water level twenty-one feet lower at low tide than at high, there arose instantly a complication to our unloading anything onto a pier, except briefly at high tide.
Any normal pierhead built at the right level to unload an LST at high tide would at low tide tower so high above that LST’s bows that its ramp could not possibly reach up to the pierhead, nor if it could, could any vehicle possibly mount so steep an incline. To this dilemma, there was no answer—except to provide an abnormal pierhead. Operation Mulberry provided exactly that answer—the Lobnitz pierhead—an abnormal monstrosity, if ever there were one. The Lobnitz, a tremendous structure, was a vertically moving pierhead held at a fixed level above the changing surface of the sea. Regardless of the stage of the tide it always kept itself at just the right height above the water for unloading LST’s onto it.
Those Lobnitzs, half a score of them, aimlessly interspersed amongst the sunken Phoenixs, were those factory-like contraptions with that forest of protruding tall black towers, always in groups of four, reaching skyward from them like chimneys. Those square towers (four per Lobnitz, one at each corner) just now rising high into the air, were actually four tremendous steel legs to be rammed downward through the Lobnitz hull firmly into the ocean floor at the chosen pierhead site, to anchor it there. On those stout legs, the movable pierhead itself, always controlled by intricate machinery inside its rectangular steel hull, thereafter rose and fell with the changing tides. Always it maintained its deck at constant height above the changing waters, never immersed deeply enough to gain buoyancy sufficient to allow it to float free, always keeping weight enough on its four legs to hold them pressed firmly down into the bottom sand, anchoring the Lobnitz solidly in position.
And finally, those scores of massive steel arches, intermingled with all else, lookin
g like sections of highway bridges irrationally afloat on the water, crazily pointed every which way? What might they be?
Those, which I knew now went by the code name of Whales, frankly were sections of highway bridges, each one an eighty foot highway truss floating on all but invisible pontoons. Joined together finally on the Normandy beachhead into 3000 foot lengths, they were to form floating bridges running seaward from just above the high-water mark on the beach sands to that point where, well inside the protecting breakwaters but over half a mile out to sea, the Lobnitz pierheads were to be placed. Over half a mile out to sea—quite a distance. So far out from the high tide line, that out there, even at the lowest of low waters in that extraordinary fall of the tide, there still remained at each floating pierhead water enough to berth end on two floating LST’s. So far out, that for 24 hours round the clock, night or day, regardless of the stage of the tide, regardless of weather, there would come rolling ashore over those floating highway bridges from the Lobnitz pierheads a continuous stream of the tanks, the bulky self-propelled guns, the combat-loaded trucks bearing the priceless ammunition and supplies—a continuous stream of all the vast tonnage of heavy equipment with which only the piers, the cranes, and the dock facilities of a major seaport could be expected to cope. And for the lack of which facilities in our hands on the French coasts, the German General Staff knew no invasion could possibly be staged successfully.
There was Mulberry, ready to go—over a million tons of it, to form the two artificial seaports destined for the Far Shore. Thoroughly scrambled in arrangement on the Selsey sands to disguise its purpose, there it rose from the sea—apparently some madman’s nightmare of purposelessness on a titanic scale. What did the Nazis, photographing it from high-flying planes, think it was? Most likely, another British attempt, on a vaster scale than any before, to hoax them? Some new secret weapon, perhaps? Or, God forbid, its actual use? No one on our side knew. But there was endless guessing.
Gradually as I watched and mentally tried to rearrange that jumble into the picture patterns I knew they were to have in France, my state of trance faded. But in its place, there began to come over me a fear which in London I had thought could not possibly have any foundation—it began to sink in on me that Captain Clark’s Cassandra-like forebodings might have a basis.
There, before me, most of it resting on the sea floor, was Mulberry, all right, in all its vastness. Mulberry, adequate undoubtedly to serve as intended as the springboard from which a successful invasion could be launched. But—was Mulberry ready to go? Would it ever go?
Hastily I calculated … 100 sunken Phoenixs … 6000 tons displacement each … 600,000 tons of sunken Phoenixs nestling in the mud on the ocean floor off Selsey Bill … all to be torn free of the bottom when the signal to go was given, ready for tow to the Far Shore … all in the few scant days allowed before and after D-day.
Before me lay the equivalent of raising a hundred sunken cargo ships in hardly any time at all—the equivalent in tonnage of raising ten sunken Normandies—with the time allowed for the job not the two long years that wartime task took all the salvage forces that could be mustered in New York harbor to lift one Normandie only, but a few days only for lifting all ten of them.
Quite an operation. And to be sandwiched in between two inexorable deadlines—one for starting, one for completion—two deadlines, by the exigencies of war squeezed so closely together that the time between them allowed for the lifting job was sliced to such a thinness as to be practically imperceptible as any filling at all in the sandwich.
A Herculean task, no question. The biggest lifting job in salvage history, I didn’t doubt. Odd that it should ever have been given to the Royal Engineers, not to the Royal Navy, for ship salvage is a job for seamen, not for soldiers. How could that have come about?
But all that was now beside the point. The assignment had irrevocably been made. The Royal Engineers had the task and already had grown apoplectic at Captain Clark’s bluntly asserted doubts of their competence to carry it through. What was the fact? Were they incompetent? Or was Captain Clark merely a hyper-sensitive seaman verging on incipient shell-shock under the strain of approaching D-day?
Still, if Captain Clark were right, the invasion was facing disaster.
CHAPTER 6
Considerably depressed by the possibilities, even if remote, of any such contingency, I turned from a survey of what lay at sea to scan the deserted village of Selsey, stretched out along the sands. It wasn’t wholly deserted any more. To the right of a string of boarded-up cottages lay the center of the village with the barbed wire cleared away in that vicinity. There stood some larger buildings.
One of these, once a store perhaps, was quite actively occupied. From the military traffic centered on it, this was obviously headquarters for the British forces at Selsey Bill. I trudged off through the soft sand, wangled my way past the sentry outside, introduced myself—an American Captain from Admiral Stark’s staff in London sent to inspect the progress on Mulberry.
I was promptly escorted in to meet the Naval Officer in Charge—NOIC in British naval slang—a retired Royal Navy four striper, quite an elderly captain. He was back now on active duty and assigned to the command of this newly set up shore post at Selsey Bill.
My welcome by NOIC to Selsey was at best noncommittal. It shortly developed there were already some other American naval officers stationed in Selsey, all assigned to Mulberry, all with rank much junior to mine. But even so, they had not exactly made NOIC’s life so far a happy one—in particular, one Lieutenant Barton, whom (I soon perceived) NOIC would most evidently have been glad to see hanged, drawn, and quartered. The presence now in Selsey, to further complicate the Mulberry situation, of still another American naval officer, this time one with rank equal to his own, did not to NOIC seem any cause for rejoicing.
“What could I do for you?” he asked perfunctorily—a wholly rhetorical inquiry as it immediately turned out. For somewhat bitterly and with no delay, lest I erroneously conclude he might do something for me, NOIC hastened to inform me he was in no position to do anything at all for me concerning my mission, regardless of what its purpose might be. The Admiralty, having assigned him to the command of this God-forsaken strip of sand, had neglected to give him anything to go with it to uphold either his authority or his dignity.
Did I wish to board the Mulberry units sunk offshore? NOIC could not help me—the Admiralty had given him not even so much as a punt to maintain his dignity afloat as a captain in the Royal Navy, let alone to take me or anyone about. However, if I appealed to that Lieutenant Barton of my own Navy, whom I should find somewhere on the beach (doubtless looking like a disgrace to any Navy) Barton might. Barton, it seemed had the only boat in Selsey—and also what few tugs there were about, NOIC added acidly—a complete monopoly on Selsey’s very limited waterborne transportation facilities.
However, should I desire information respecting the Mulberries or their problems, NOIC hastened to pass on that score also—he possessed none. Brigadier Bruce White of the Royal Engineers, or his local subordinates were the chaps to talk to on anything concerning them. NOIC, I soon gathered, felt himself an outcast on Selsey Bill. Here he was, a captain in command of a Royal Navy base established specifically to handle the Mulberries. And it was a question who ignored him the most—those soldiers, the Royal Engineers, in the person of their brigadier and his assistants, who were providing from all over Britain the Mulberry units there being assembled? Or that American Lieutenant Barton, who (possessed of all the signal equipment, the lone boats, and what few tugs there were) had brazenly already usurped NOIC’s authority in receiving the Mulberries and all else relating to their berthing once they appeared on the horizon off Selsey Bill? And NOIC, it seemed, could do nothing about it save to stand on the sands and fume—fruitlessly.
Silently I drank all this in as NOIC ran on. The situation was not heartening. The Admiralty must be scraping the bottom of the Royal Naval barrel when it had to put o
n active duty again so befuddled an aging captain. There was NOIC, a worn-out old warrior, long past the point where anybody seemed to pay any attention to his attempts to command, powerless from lack of knowledge to direct, railing at the situation the Admiralty had put him in.
God help Mulberry! I thought. On the American side, a vigorous enough young captain to command the operation once it was afloat for France, but one who from worry over its ever getting afloat, was already dangerously near the breaking point. And on the British side, as the man who should be actively engaged in seeing that it got afloat, an aging retired captain, apparently past any present usefulness, from his own rambling comments, just a futile old man fuming at a situation completely out of hand!
What this Lieutenant Barton’s job might be in Selsey, I didn’t know—yet. Nor even actually what he was doing there, regardless of whether it was his job or NOIC’s to do it. But, that a mere American lieutenant could, right in an English port, so bulldoze a Royal Navy captain as totally to usurp his authority, as NOIC claimed was happening, was something. It would be intriguing, wholly regardless of any relation to Mulberry, to meet this Lieutenant Barton before I had to return to London.
But right now that must wait. Brigadier Bruce White and the Royal Engineers were what I was in Selsey for. Could NOIC tell me if the Brigadier himself was then in Selsey?
It appeared he probably was not, but he had a Colonel of Royal Engineers stationed there handling affairs—him I could, no doubt, find somewhere. Unregretfully, I bade NOIC goodby, departed in search of the all-important Colonel.
I found him easily enough—one panoramic glance east and west along the Selsey sands was sufficient always to reveal practically anybody in the vicinity. The Colonel exhibited no more enthusiasm on observing my presence in Selsey than had NOIC—undoubtedly he sensed behind me the obnoxious aura of Captain Clark and his irritating doubts. But since he did not mention Clark, neither did I.
The Far Shore Page 4