Lost to Time

by Martin W. Sandler

  Butcher’s concerns about the readiness of the Allied forces were far from his alone, and it was decided that in the months preceding the actual assault a series of mock invasions fully simulating the real landings would be staged. Numerous invasion exercises were held in various places in southern England, with several of them being staged at Woolacomb.

  During these rehearsals, landing craft would attempt to land “invading” troops on coastlines similar to Normandy while artillery and land forces would try to beat them back. The first of these mock invasions, to be held in three phases in January and February 1944, was code-named Exercise Duck. The second, Exercise Beaver, would take place in late March, and the largest—and most controversial—rehearsal would be launched in April. It was code-named Exercise Tiger.

  USS LST-325 IN OPERATION during Exercise Duck at Slapton Sands, England, January 1944.

  The military had deemed simulated invasions necessary not only because of concern over the readiness of the troops and the magnitude of the actual assault but also because the real landings would be unlike anything that had ever been attempted. The landings would not only be larger and more complex, but they would also involve a whole new military tactic. Earlier World War II invasions had been carried out by first sending in infantry and combat engineers, who established a beachhead by clearing away mines and any other human or man-made obstacles to a successful assault. Once the beachhead was established, the armored equipment was sent in. At both Utah Beach and Omaha Beach, which were to be invaded by American forces, the procedure was to be markedly different. The initial assault wave would be made up of engineers and demolition teams. Then a relatively new military weapon—amphibious tanks known as LSTs (landing ship, tank)—would be floated in. LSTs would carry the troops, the battle tanks, and all the other armored equipment. First developed after the British disaster at Dunkirk demonstrated a vital need for that type of ship, LSTs were constantly improved during World War II. They had proved to be key to the successful invasions of Algeria and various Japanese-held Pacific islands.

  The site for Exercise Tiger was carefully chosen, the criterion being a place that closely resembled Utah Beach. And the beach bordering the village of Slapton, Devon, on Lyme Bay, east of Plymouth, fit the bill perfectly. Like the Utah Beach area where the actual invasion would take place, the locale known as Slapton Sands featured a broad gravel beach that fronted a wide expanse of land, which in turn fronted a lake. Like the Utah Beach environs, the area around Slapton Sands was characterized by hedgerows and narrow lanes.

  In November 1943, the villagers of Slapton along with those in neighboring Torcross, Strete, East Allington, Blackawton, Sherford, Stokenham, Blackpool Sands, and Chillington received astounding news. Under authority of the 1939 Compensation (Defence) Act, the British government ordered that 3,000 people, 750 families, 180 farms, and numerous village shops be totally evacuated within six weeks. All household goods, animals, farm machinery and other agricultural implements, and as many crops as could be quickly harvested were to be removed. In return, the British government promised to pay all costs connected with the evacuation, pledged that it would do everything it could to find and pay for accommodations for the evacuees, and would pay for any damages to the villagers’ property incurred during Exercise Tiger operations.

  A RECENT PHOTOGRAPH of the broad beach at Slapton Sands.

  The residents of the area were shocked. After repeated explanations from government and military officials, most came to understand the need for rehearsals for the upcoming vital invasion. But why Slapton and the surrounding villages? Why such a rich agricultural area when the need for homegrown food was greater than ever? But there was no room for argument. The government made it clear that the residents had no choice. The stage was set for Exercise Tiger.

  This notice was posted several weeks before the evacuation:

  NOTICE

  The public are reminded that requisition took effect from 16th November, from which date compensation is calculated. They will not, except for special reason, be disturbed in their possession until December 21st, but from that date the Admiralty may at any time, and without prior notice, enforce their right to immediate possession. It is therefore essential that EVERY PERSON SHOULD LEAVE THE AREA BY DECEMBER 20TH.

  On December 21st the supply of electricity in the area will cease. The present measures for supplying food will not be continued, but will be replaced by arrangements of a purely emergency character. The police stations will be closing during the present week.

  The giant series of rehearsals for Exercise Tiger commenced on April 22, 1944, with the first assault landings scheduled the morning of the twenty-seventh. According to English author Ken Small, who devoted more than twenty years to attempting to unlock the secrets of Exercise Tiger, and others, the initial rehearsal was characterized by the same type of tragic blunders that would mark the entire operation. According to Small, because of concerns over the battle readiness of the officers and troops and in order to simulate real battle conditions, Eisenhower had ordered that live ammunition be fired over the heads and in front of the “invading” troops. But vital errors were made in conveying the radio frequency numbers to be used in establishing communications between the ships that were shelling the beach with live ammunition and the troops that were being landed. The situation was made even more disastrous when the troops hit the Slapton Sands beach a full hour after their scheduled arrival. The result was that dozens of soldiers were killed when the shellings and the landings took place at the same time. And even more men lost their lives when, again because of a lack of communications caused by the radio frequency errors, some fired at one another in mock combat without realizing that their ammunition was live. For years the U.S. Department of Defense denied that these “friendly fire” incidents ever took place. And they were but a prelude to a much greater disaster that lay ahead.

  The stage for that tragedy was set in the beginning of the last week of April 1944, when a convoy of eight huge LSTs carrying thousands of troops in the 4th Infantry Division and the 1st Amphibian Division made their way toward Slapton Sands. Also packed from stem to stern on each LST were tons of heavy equipment, including tanks, amphibious vehicles, trucks, and other military vehicles to be used in the actual invasion. They began plowing their way toward Lyme Bay and Slapton Sands. The eight ships (in order numbered 515, 496, 511, 58, 499, 289, 507, and 531) proceeded in a single line with each vessel some four or five hundred yards behind the ship in front of it. Among the orders that commanders aboard the LSTs had been given was “Attack by enemy aircraft, submarines and E-boats [fast-moving surface vessels carrying either two or four torpedoes, “E” standing for “enemy” in the parlance of British and American sailors] may be expected en route to and in the exercise area.” Even though the probability of such an assault seemed slim, several general alarm drills had been held on April 26 and 27. But although the troops and the sailors had been sent scrambling to their assigned positions, they had received absolutely no instructions about procedures for abandoning ship or what was expected of them in the event of an attack.

  Protection for the convoy was the responsibility of the Royal Navy. Two British destroyers, three motor torpedo boats, and two motor gun boats were assigned to patrol the entrance to Lyme Bay, and several motor torpedo boats were sent to monitor the Cherbourg area, where German E-boats were based. Leading the convoy itself was HMS Azalea, a 205-foot Royal Navy corvette, armed with one four-inch cannon and several anti-aircraft guns. A second British vessel, the World War I destroyer HMS Scimitar, was assigned the task of flanking the flotilla of eight LSTs for added protection.

  A FULLY LOADED USS LST-507 was photographed in Brixham Harbor, England, late in the afternoon of April 27, 1944. Less than twelve hours later, she was torpedoed and sunk in the English channel by German E-boats off Slapton Sands, England.

  Shortly after midnight on the twenty-eighth, just as the convoy was entering Lyme Bay, HMS Onslow, one of the
destroyers patrolling the area, spotted an E-boat racing across the bay. The German vessel was moving too rapidly to be pursued, but the Onslow reported the sighting to British headquarters at Plymouth. Minutes later, the Onslow’s radar detected three groups of E-boats some ten miles outside the Lyme Bay entrance. This news was also immediately conveyed to headquarters, which relayed the information via radio to the Azalea and the eight LSTs.

  The Azalea got the message, but those aboard the LSTs heard nothing. Once again, errors had been made in conveying radio frequencies, and the radiomen aboard each of the LSTs were tuned to the wrong wavelength. For the same reason, the LSTs did not receive another bit of news: the Scimitar had experienced mechanical problems and had put into Plymouth for repairs. Only one destroyer, and a slow one at that, was now protecting the convoy.

  By about 1:30 a.m. on the twenty-eighth, the convoy was well inside Lyme Bay. Aboard the LSTs, preparations were being made for the most efficient landing of troops and the hundreds of vehicles once the beach at Slapton Sands was reached. Suddenly, out of the darkness, nine E-boats appeared. On routine patrol out of Cherbourg, their commanders were startled to see a long line of Allied ships.

  Called Schnellboots (literally, “fast boats”) by the Germans, the E-boats were a special kind of war vessel. Because of restrictions imposed by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles that limited the size of military ships built by Germany, the E-boats were thirty-eight yards long and were powered by three Daimler-Benz engines totaling 6,150 horsepower. This made them extremely fast—ideal vessels for hit-and-run raids. In addition to torpedoes, most E-boats were equipped with two or three twenty-millimeter cannons. Some were armed with either a thirty-seven-millimeter or a forty-millimeter gun.

  TORPEDOES BEING LOADED onto a German E-boat, ca. 1944.

  The E-boats that came upon the LST convoy had left Cherbourg at about 10 p.m. on the twenty-seventh and had been undetected by the British destroyers and smaller vessels responsible for monitoring the area. Later, one of the E-boat commanders, a German lieutenant named Günther Rabe, described what happened in Lyme Bay some three and a half hours later. “We crossed the convoy route without any sign of ships,” Rabe recalled, “and cruised easterly in the inner bay. Shortly before [2:30 a.m.] on the twenty-eighth we saw in the southeast, indistinct shadows of a long line of ships that we did not immediately identify as LSTs. . . . We thought at first they were tankers, or possibly destroyers.”

  As the Germans came within firing range of the LSTs, each E-boat slowed down to ten knots and launched two torpedoes. Manny Reuben, a petty officer aboard USS LST-496, the second LST in line, was on the bridge of the vessel when, as he later recalled, someone shouted, “I can see a bow wave.” Then, as he remembered,

  We all saw it. A speedy craft, low and slender, was indistinctly seen, about 1,000 yards off our port bow, slipping through the silky smooth water. We fired many rounds at it with our standard 40-mm battery but observed no results, although it was clearly outlined by our tracers. The captain zigzagged, trying to keep our stern directed toward flares and a searchlight that flashed off after a few seconds. Our lookout reported a torpedo passing forward of our bow. An excited soldier in a half-track on our deck fired its 50-mm machine gun to the port quarter at what he imagined was an E-boat. It was too dark to tell. His slugs struck LST-511 behind us, causing—I later learned—many severe wounds. We also had several holes slanting upwards, from the low-slung E-boats shooting high at us with their 20-mm and 40-mm cannon. One of these shells hit our galley and another creased my head, knocking me out.

  The cannon fire from the E-boats was doing damage, but aboard his vessel Rabe was surprised that the two torpedoes he had launched had not struck home. For the first time he began to suspect that perhaps the Allied ships were shallow-draft LSTs and that the torpedoes had passed harmlessly underneath them. Aiming higher, he launched two more torpedoes at the last ship in the convoy. “[At 2:30 a.m.],” he later reported, “We saw that we had hit the target. Fire was spreading from bow to stern rapidly, and a dense cloud of smoke rose from the ship.”

  The ship that Rabe had hit was USS LST-507, and the result was something that Eugene Eckstam, a young doctor aboard the vessel, would never forget.

  General Quarters rudely aroused us. . . . I remember hearing gunfire and saying they had better watch where they were shooting or someone would get hurt. . . . I was stupidly trying to go topside to see what was going on and suddenly “BOOM!” There was a horrendous noise accompanied by the sound of crunching metal and dust everywhere. The lights went out and I was thrust violently in the air to land on the steel deck on my knees, which became very sore immediately thereafter. Now I knew how getting torpedoed felt. But I was lucky. The torpedo hit amidships starboard in the auxiliary engine room, knocking out all electric and water power. . . . I checked below decks aft to be sure no one required medical attention there. All men in accessible areas had gone topside.

  The tank deck was a different matter. As I opened the hatch, I found myself looking into a raging inferno which pushed me back. It was impossible to enter. The screams and cries of those many American troops in there still haunt me. Navy regulations call for [closing and locking] the hatches to preserve the integrity of the ship, and that’s what I did. [It was] one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made, and one that gave me nightmares for years—and still does . . . but knowing that there was absolutely no way anyone could help [those below in the tank deck], and knowing that smoke inhalation would end their miseries soon, I closed the hatches. . . .

  We were forced to leave the ship. . . . Gas cans and ammunition exploding and the enormous fire blazing only a few yards away are sights forever etched in my memory.

  LST-507’s nineteen-year-old motor mechanic’s mate, Angelo Crapanzano, had his own vivid memories. When he heard his ship’s guns firing, Crapanzano approached an officer to ask him what was happening. The officer replied, “I guess they’re trying to make it as real as possible.” The officer’s words were hardly out of his mouth when, as Crapanzano later recalled,

  There was a deafening roar, and everything went black. I felt myself going up and down, hitting my head on something. I must have blacked out for a few seconds, but then I felt cold water around my legs. I scrambled up the ladder. The six guys in the auxiliary engine room, just forward of where I was, never knew what hit them. . . .

  When I got topside, I couldn’t believe what I saw: The ship was split in half and burning, fire went from the bow all the way back to the wheelhouse. . . . And the water all around the ship was burning, because the fuel tanks ruptured. And the oil went into the water. . . . We had fifteen Army ducks [amphibious vehicles] and every Army duck had cans of gasoline on them, and all that was going into the water, so it was like an inferno.

  Four ships ahead of LST-507 on USS LST-511, medical officer Clifford Graves looked on in horror as LST-507 erupted into flames. “Suddenly,” he later wrote, “there was [another] explosion. It had a dull sound, as though a great heavy mass had fallen onto a heavily carpeted floor. The LST behind us [531] burst into flames all at once. She seemed to have disintegrated with that one burst.”

  Gazing in horror at USS LST-531, seaman Thomas Holcombe, aboard one of the other LSTs, saw “trucks, men, and jeeps flying through the air.”

  Less than ten minutes after being torpedoed, LST-531 sank to the bottom.

  In the explosions that had destroyed both LST-507 and LST-531, almost every lifeboat had been obliterated. Faced with only one choice, those aboard these ships who had survived the blasts were forced to jump into the waters of Lyme Bay. “Now we’ve got to go into the water,” Crapanzano remembered.

  There were a lot of guys on the front end of the ship, and the tank deck was burning right under them. . . . A lot of guys didn’t want to jump into the water right away. I didn’t want to either. It got so hot on the deck that [our] shoes started smoking, because the tank deck was burning fiercely, and that’s all metal. It’s just l
ike a gas jet stove, and all the heat’s going up to the top deck. . . .

  I run to the railing and I look down and I see all those guys in the water already. Now I say, “what am I gonna do? I’m gonna jump and I’m gonna hit somebody.” Then I’m saying—this is all in a split second—“when I jump in the water how deep down do I go before I come up? Or do I come up right away?”

  [What I know] because in the engine room you had to take readings of a bunch of gauges . . . . was that the reading on the salt water coming in was 43 degrees. What I didn’t know was what 43 degrees felt like. So when I hit the water, it took my breath away, that’s how cold it was.

  Hundreds of the soldiers and sailors from LST-507 and LST-531 died from hypothermia in the frigid water. And there was another terrible problem. Not only had there been no abandon-ship drills conducted on the LSTs as they made their way to Lyme Bay, there had been absolutely no instructions given to the soldiers on the proper way to put on their inflatable life belts. Already loaded down with backpacks and rifles, the soldiers found it easier to put their life belts around their waists instead of under their armpits as they should have done. The horrible result was that their high center of gravity pitched scores of men face down into the frigid water, where they drowned. “The worst memory I have,” crew member Dale Rodman of LST-507 later exclaimed, “[was] setting off in the lifeboat away from the sinking ship and watching bodies float by.” LST-507 and LST-531 were not the only unfortunate vessels in the bay. As torpedo wakes surged past both sides of USS LST-289, its captain, Lieutenant Harry Mettler, began zigzagging his vessel furiously. Just when it looked like the evasive action would be successful, another torpedo was sighted heading for LST-289’s stern. Immediately Mettler ordered full right rudder, but it was too late. As petty officer Martin MacMahon, stationed on LST-289’s deck, later reported, the torpedo struck his ship “like an earthquake.” When MacMahon looked behind him he saw that the entire rear section of the ship was “smashed and curled over the navigation bridge.” Everyone on the bridge had been blown off onto the deck, many of them terribly injured. Miraculously, Mettler was not badly hurt. Observing that the forward end of his ship was free of damage, he came up with what proved to be a brilliant plan. Immediately he ordered that the two small landing craft aboard the LST be lowered and that towlines be attached to them. Although it took hours, LST-289 was eventually towed to shore.