Arguably the most important vessels for the invasion of Normandy were the landing ships (LSTs), which, at 4,800 tons each, over 100 metres long, flat-bottomed with a draught of just 4 feet 7 inches when fully loaded, were big enough to deliver the huge amounts of war materiel on which the Allies depended. They could carry eighteen 30-ton tanks and 350 troops, or 2,100 tons of supplies, and sail pretty much straight on to a beach. Giant doors in the bows then opened up, a ramp was lowered straight on to the sand and the tanks and vehicles simply drove straight off.
Colonel Tick Bonesteel had been among those pleading with Don Nelson, the head of the American War Production Board, for more of these precious vessels. During a visit by Nelson to London, Bonesteel had spent almost two days with him in a hotel suite at Claridge’s, convincing him of the urgent need to somehow increase production. Nelson listened. ‘Damn, he did unbelievable things,’ said Bonesteel.2 ‘He almost doubled the production of landing craft.’
Even so, the shortfall of required landing ships and landing craft of all kinds had been the prime reason for moving the original invasion date of early May by a month. Shipping issues had also caused the postponement of the planned invasion of southern France, Operation ANVIL, on 19 April – possibly indefinitely. There was still a shortfall of the all-important LSTs – 236 instead of the 277 reckoned to be needed. This meant calling upon British coasters, smaller freighters that plied their trade around the British Isles. In turn, this put a greater strain on Britain’s inland transport system and came at the discomfort of the British people: OVERLORD had to be the priority. In all, some 1,260 merchant vessels were earmarked for the invasion, including ocean-going vessels, colliers, tankers and personnel vessels.
A staggering array of other landing craft had been designed and built by both Britain and America during the past three years. The evacuation of Dunkirk back in 1940, when there had been none available, and the realization that future offensive operations would require such vessels, had kick-started this new wave of landing craft design and construction. It included other landing ships for infantry, for emergency repairs, for delivering headquarters and even from where fighter aircraft control could be provided. There were barges called ‘Rhinos’ and smaller British-designed LCAs (Landing Craft, Assault) and US LCVPs (Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel), designed by Andrew Higgins in New Orleans and more commonly known simply as ‘Higgins Boats’. There was even an LBB (Landing Barge, Bakery) and an LCT(R) – a floating rocket launcher equipped with a Type 970 radar set, which could fire salvoes of up to a thousand 60lb warheads designed to saturate enemy beaches from 3,500 yards. In all, there were thirty different landing ships and craft, including DUKWs – pronounced ‘ducks’ – amphibious trucks that could carry 3 tons of supplies and travel 6.4 m.p.h. in the water and over 50 m.p.h. on land.
Assembled under Admiral Ramsay’s command for Operation NEPTUNE were a jaw-dropping 7,000 vessels. The Allied invasion fleet included 138 bombarding warships, 279 escort ships, 287 minelayers and 495 gunboats, torpedo boats and other launches. The total number of naval warships was 1,213. Because of the US Navy’s heavy involvement in the Pacific, most of these – some 892 – were Royal Navy, but there were a number of Royal Canadian Navy, French, Dutch, Belgian, Norwegian and Polish vessels as well. In contrast, at the time, the Kriegsmarine, the German Navy, had just three warships larger than a destroyer. In addition to these Allied warships were 4,127 landing craft of all thirty varieties, all of which had to be manned, coordinated and fulfil their allotted tasks where and when they were needed, and, it now seemed, in conditions that would be far from ideal.
It was the largest armada ever mounted. Just organizing it into five different invasion forces and one support force was a phenomenal logistical headache, but to then sail it without being picked up by the enemy and, more importantly, to pass through an English Channel heavily laid with enemy mines and a dense mine barrier 7–10 miles from the coast was a further challenge of unprecedented proportions. How to minesweep enough safe channels effectively was a constant worry during the planning phase. ‘It is a most complicated operation,’ Admiral Ramsay had noted in his diary on 24 March, ‘and however we looked at it we could find no satisfactory solution of how best to sweep the channels for the faster groups & bombarding ships.’3
The answer was to plan for the largest minesweeping operation of the war, with the creation of two clear channels for each of the assault forces which would be marked with Danbuoys – buoys with flags extended on a pole above the surface – spaced a mile apart throughout. Specialist minesweeper ships were dedicated to clearing mines, using what was called the ‘Oropesa sweep’ – a wire with angled blades known as ‘kites’ and ‘otters’ that streamed out either side of the vessel and was kept below the surface by a series of weights and floats. Mines were held in position by cables and weights and floated below the surface; the aim was to sever the cable so the mine would rise to the surface where it would be destroyed by gunfire. Minesweepers could work individually or in formation, which was best for clearing a specific channel. Clearing the invasion channels would necessarily be a highly complex undertaking, involving some 255 minesweepers – an astonishing number – all of which would have to change sweeps at key moments to avoid an unfavourable tide and ensure the swept channels were straight.
Such were the challenges facing Operation NEPTUNE. Meanwhile, in its support, Operation MAPLE had begun forty-five days earlier, with minelayers at work all along the Channel coast. Mines were laid at key points, including off the ports of Cherbourg, Le Havre, Brest and all around the Brittany coast.
All this and so much more had to be planned in minute detail: from the allocation of each ship and landing craft, to the numerous training exercises in the lead-up to D-Day, and then to NEPTUNE itself. The mooring of every ship and landing craft had to be worked out, as well as which troops, which trucks, which tanks and so on were going where. The invasion consisted of five assault forces named after the first letter of the beach to which they were heading, plus a bombarding force and a support force for each beach, preceded by a fleet of minesweepers. The combined forces would head initially for an area south-east of the Isle of Wight – Area Z, known as ‘Piccadilly Circus’ – then the separate forces would head south along their two swept channels, each of which was numbered between 1 and 10.
Planning was in the hands of the staff officers working under Ramsay and the staffs of the Western Task Force under Rear-Admiral Alan Kirk, and the Eastern Task Force under British Rear-Admiral Philip Vian. For all this planning, there were now over a thousand staff in Fort Southwick, the Victorian naval fort built on the 400-foot-high chalk ridge overlooking Portsmouth, while for the control and coordination of the invasion forces – the naval traffic controllers – a further 700 staff occupied Underground Headquarters, an enormous bombproof complex of tunnels and command and control rooms consisting of five 110-yard tunnels and fourteen cross-tunnels of around 55 yards each. Work on it had begun in early 1942 specifically for the future cross-Channel invasion. UGHQ remained a top-secret facility known to very few, with access down a series of steps from inside Fort Southwick.
Much thought had been given to the port facilities, or rather the lack of them, on the other side of the Channel. A key part in the success of the invasion rested on how quickly large quantities of supplies could be delivered to a part of northern France in which the two major ports – Cherbourg and Le Havre – were in enemy hands. Cherbourg was a priority objective, but there was no knowing what state it would be in once captured. While supplies could be taken directly on to the beach, no one thought anything like enough could be delivered there. This would have been even more difficult to achieve back in 1942 when Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten’s Combined Operations organization was first considering Normandy for any future Allied invasion. In a memo to Mountbatten on 30 May that year, Churchill had suggested it might be possible to build floating piers for use from open beaches. ‘They must float up and down o
n the tide,’ he told him, then added, ‘Don’t argue the matter.4 The difficulties will argue for themselves.’
A little over a year later, Commander John Hughes-Hallett, then working at COSSAC, had suggested that if no harbour was available in Normandy then perhaps they should take one with them. Initially scoffed at, he pursued the point, found an ally in the prime minister and so began one of the most outrageous engineering projects of the war: two giant makeshift harbours that could be floated across the Channel and put in place wherever they liked. The ambition for these was extraordinary. A breakwater would be created initially by steaming or towing obsolescent ships to the spot then sinking them. Then huge concrete and steel caissons, hollow so that they could float, would be towed across the Channel, the air removed and then sunk, one next to the other, until a series of harbour walls had been created. Floating piers would stretch out from the coast inside this artificial harbour and be attached to equally floating quaysides that would, as Churchill had suggested, rise up and down on the tide. The design was ingenious, the ambition and vision astonishing, and remarkably, despite quite phenomenal challenges, by the beginning of June they were ready.
Some of Britain’s biggest engineering firms, such as Balfour Beatty, Wimpey and Sir Robert McAlpine, were involved, but as many as 300 different firms were employed for this gargantuan project. In a little over six months, a workforce of 55,000 managed to construct two floatable harbours, each the size of the port of Dover. The largest component parts were the 200-foot-long caissons, code-named ‘Phoenixes’ – these alone used 542,000 cubic yards of concrete and 39,000 tons of steel. Although built all around the country, most of the Phoenixes were constructed along the River Clyde and the Thames, then trialled in Scotland, far from prying eyes; secrecy was, of course, paramount, because should the Germans get wind of what was afoot then it would become increasingly obvious the Allies were planning an invasion where no port existed. On the other hand, the ‘Mulberries’, as the two harbours were code-named, needed to be taken over to France and got up and running just as soon as humanly possible.
The man in charge of this monumental task was Rear-Admiral Bill Tennant, who had been senior naval officer at Dunkirk during the evacuation and who, along with General Harold Alexander, had been the last British serviceman to leave the shattered port in June 1940. He had been serving under Ramsay then, and now the naval C-in-C had brought him in to become RAMP – Rear-Admiral Mulberries and Pluto.
One of those on Tennant’s team was 32-year-old Lieutenant-Commander Ambrose Lampen, a career naval officer who had joined the Royal Navy in 1924 at the modest age of thirteen. So far in the war, he had served in the Mediterranean and the Arctic before being posted in March to Dover with a ‘top secret’ classification. For several days, he hadn’t had the faintest idea what he was to be doing until finally he was presented to Ramsay and given a black book in which were the plans for OVERLORD. ‘Every detail was there,’ noted Lampen, ‘and I felt slightly hot under the collar as I realized the responsibility with which I was now entrusted.’5 Ramsay then told him he was to set up ‘TURCO’ – Turn Around Control – an organization for refuelling and reloading ships returning from the first wave of the assault.
No sooner had he set this up than in early April Lampen was told his team would now be in charge of ‘parking’ the Phoenixes near the coast at Dungeness and Selsey Bill as they arrived from the shipyards. ‘It’s been decided to “park” them – as the saying is,’ Ramsay’s chief of staff told him, ‘before they are towed to the French coast.’6 Before Lampen could reply, he was also told he would be getting an admiral above him whom they needed to employ: Rear-Admiral Menzies, taken off the retirement list. ‘However,’ Lampen was told, ‘there’s no point telling him that TURCO is just a cover, and that he really won’t have anything to do.’7
Throughout much of the rest of April and May, Lampen was at sea for long hours planting the Phoenixes as they reached the south coast. Sometimes several arrived together, which added to the pressure as they had to be planted at high tide; this meant carefully opening valves, letting in water and making sure they sank on to the seabed and were then securely anchored. The principle of lowering them was much the same as for a diving submarine. ‘I became familiar with their idiosyncrasies,’ noted Lampen, ‘and came to regard them not so much as tough concrete castles as delicate half-incubated egg-shells, which would then crack at the least mishandling.’8 In any kind of wind and swell, the difficulties massively multiplied.
With the task successfully finished, he was summoned to Portsmouth to see Admiral Tennant, en route passing by verges crammed with army vehicles in long, unbroken lines. At Portsmouth he was told he would be travelling to Normandy, not to plant more Phoenixes but rather as ‘berthing officer’ for the handling and planting of the blockships – the ‘Corncobs’. These were the old, obsolescent ships that were to be sunk to form a breakwater – or ‘Goosberry’. Lampen was most put out. He had spent two months becoming something of an expert at the difficult task of planting the enormous Phoenixes and now would have a different role in the creation of Mulberry B, the planned British harbour. It made little sense, but there was nothing he could do about it. Instead, he had to acquaint himself with his new team: a mixed force of two British and six American tugs and their crews. They would be towing the blockships unable to cross the Channel under their own steam. No one, it seemed, had thought to provide them with any towing ropes. Time was running out. It was now 2 June and they were due to set sail in two days’ time. A frantic trip to the USN supply officer in Southampton and then to the American naval stores brought Lampen his rope, as well as extra radios and other stores. The invasion might have involved spectacular levels of planning, but right up to the wire some things had been overlooked.
As Lampen had discovered when he drove through Sussex and Hampshire from Dover, there were few corners of southern England that were not filled with troops, Nissen huts, stores, vast numbers of trucks, tanks and artillery pieces. Crammed into the southern shires were millions of American, British and Canadian troops, and those of many other nationalities besides.
At the start of the war, in the dark, distant days of September 1939, the United States had had an army of a mere 189,000 and just 72 fighter planes in what was then the Army Air Corps. In 1939, the US had built a mere 18 tanks of all types. Eighteen! Since then, the growth had been exponential: nearly 60,000 tanks, including 26,608 in 1943 alone. Four million Americans were now in uniform, and nearly 85,000 aircraft were built just in 1943 – considerably more than Germany had produced in the entire war to date. That record looked set to be smashed in 1944. More than 1.7 million trucks had been built already by the US and more than 150,000 artillery pieces.
British war industry had also been more than pulling its weight, with over 28,000 aircraft in 1943, just over 49,000 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs) and nearly 19,000 guns. Admittedly, this colossal arsenal had to fuel a war now raging globally, but it was the invasion of France and the swift defeat of Nazi Germany that was the priority. The Allies were going to bludgeon the Germans into defeat, but not until a foothold had been established in Normandy could they start to ship these huge numbers of men, guns and tanks across the sea in the kind of numbers that would prove unbeatable.
The nub of the matter was that so much depended on the actual invasion and the days that immediately followed – the time when the Allies would be most vulnerable and when the vast majority of troops, tanks, guns and ammunition would still be in England. One of the side-effects of the big war strategy was the differing requirements of the various facets involved. These came to the fore in the discussion about H-Hour, the moment when the troops would come ashore in Normandy. ‘No single question,’ wrote Admiral Ramsay, ‘was more often discussed during planning than that of H-Hour.’9
A number of factors came into play. The naval armada needed to cross the Channel under cover of darkness, which meant the airborne forces would have to be
dropped during the night, but to do so effectively they would need moonlight in which to jump and reasonably clear skies. It was agreed the air forces should bomb targets along the coastline before the men landed, but they needed at least forty minutes of daylight to be able to carry that out effectively. Naval guns also had to be able to see their targets, but then again, the earlier H-Hour was, the greater the tactical surprise and hopefully fewer casualties as a result. Then there were the Normandy tides: it made sense to land on a rising tide so that the assault troops would not be exposed for too long on the beaches. Balancing everything, the best landing time appeared to be about 40 minutes before dawn, when the sun was 12 degrees below the horizon – that is, around four in the morning.
This had been agreed, but then came the discovery that many more beach obstacles had been laid by the Germans, which meant the first assault waves needed to touch down short of them and so at lower tide and with greater distance for the troops to cross. Adding to the complications was the realization that the rocky shoals off Juno Beach would cause major landing problems at anything lower than half-tide. ‘Further discussions about H-Hour,’ noted Ramsay in his diary on 23 May, ‘after realisation of impact of reefs.’ The final compromise was agreed just days before D-Day. The Americans would land at 6.30 a.m., the British at Sword Beach at 7.25 a.m. and at Gold at 7.30 a.m., and the British and Canadians at 7.45 a.m. at Juno.
The only light relief for Ramsay was a game of cricket between his Mess and the Wrens on Monday, 29 May. ‘Made 16,’ he noted.10 ‘Very stiff. Very hot playing.’
Another indication of the astonishing weight and energy being thrown behind the Allied planning for OVERLORD was the extraordinary growth of the Ninth Air Force, which, along with Mary Coningham’s Second Tactical Air Force, was due to play a pivotal role in the invasion and the campaign that followed. The Ninth had been moved to England the previous September from the Mediterranean, although with only a skeleton staff and almost no assets, as these had been largely left behind in Italy for the air forces there. Overall command lay with General Lewis Brereton, but the man in charge of all the Ninth’s fighters in IX Fighter Command was Brigadier-General Elwood ‘Pete’ Quesada, then still only thirty-nine years old, but already with plenty of command and operational experience in the war, a huge amount of energy and an enquiring mind eager to develop air power. Few had quibbled about his appointment to so lofty a position at such a young age.
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