Operation Tiger - collecting the bodies at Slapton Sands
This was a combined American and British D-Day exercise that went sadly wrong¹. Yank soldiers were training for beach landings in LSTs and were being escorted by RN ships and both forces blundered and each endeavoured to pass the buck for the carnage that ensued.
This enemy action involving three or four German E-boats took place on the nights of the 27/28th April 1944 - an exceptionally dark night. At that particular time we were in Portland Harbour and early on the 28th we heard a buzz that German W-boats had attacked a convoy that night and there were heavy casualties. Now W-boats had featured in reports as the latest German secret weapon to cause mayhem and were supposed to be a glorified E-boat-cum-submarine that was capable of submerging until a convoy passed over, then they would resurface, fire torpedoes and guns and disappear fast. There was a special signal (revision) in the codebook that confirmed they existed for us – it read “W BOATS ATTACKING”.
About an hour after the buzz began a flotilla of motor launches including the 303 were ordered to proceed west to the Slapton Sands area to clean up the carnage. On arrival we found hundreds of dead US soldiers floating and bobbing around. Their body movements were being accentuated by a heavy swell. They were fully clad with steel helmets firmly fastened. A large proportion had burnt faces with the hands also badly scorched and we initially mistook them for coloured troops from a distance. Having passed through burning oil-covered sea it would seem a fair number had suffocated and in their death throes had drawn their legs up to their May West life jackets, causing them to hunch up with rigor mortis. We pulled them in with boat hooks and set them on their sides along the rails with their faces facing outboard; we loaded about sixty per boat and returned to Portland.
The action of placing the bodies facing outwards was to avoid the crew having to look at the damaged and grotesque faces. However, this served little purpose as the next boat alongside had done the same and we could easily see the awful visage on those boats.
We had a very close look at these lads and were convinced they had “Rangers” flashes on their shoulders but later accounts and books on the matter said that no “Rangers” were involved, which I dispute to this very day.
American ambulances manned by coloured GIs were waiting to load the bodies and at first they attempted to carry two on a stretcher but that did not work, as the gangplanks were too narrow and encumbered with safety rails. It was rumoured that they were taken to a local field near Portland and temporarily buried to keep it a secret. The total death toll was around 750.
We did two trips that day and it was a very subdued crew that evening with the added warning that it was a complete hush-hush affair and under no conditions were the day’s events to be discussed outside the ship, or reported in letters home. As far as I was aware this was adhered to rigorously.
The discussions on board consisted mainly of discussing whether the life preservers had trapped the soldiers. We talked over how to handle a similar situation, such as, was it possible to swim under a burning sea. No answers were forthcoming…
This enemy action involving three or four German E-boats took place on the nights of the 27/28th April 1944 - an exceptionally dark night. At that particular time we were in Portland Harbour and early on the 28th we heard a buzz that German W-boats had attacked a convoy that night and there were heavy casualties. Now W-boats had featured in reports as the latest German secret weapon to cause mayhem and were supposed to be a glorified E-boat-cum-submarine that was capable of submerging until a convoy passed over, then they would resurface, fire torpedoes and guns and disappear fast. There was a special signal (revision) in the codebook that confirmed they existed for us – it read “W BOATS ATTACKING”.
About an hour after the buzz began a flotilla of motor launches including the 303 were ordered to proceed west to the Slapton Sands area to clean up the carnage. On arrival we found hundreds of dead US soldiers floating and bobbing around. Their body movements were being accentuated by a heavy swell. They were fully clad with steel helmets firmly fastened. A large proportion had burnt faces with the hands also badly scorched and we initially mistook them for coloured troops from a distance. Having passed through burning oil-covered sea it would seem a fair number had suffocated and in their death throes had drawn their legs up to their May West life jackets, causing them to hunch up with rigor mortis. We pulled them in with boat hooks and set them on their sides along the rails with their faces facing outboard; we loaded about sixty per boat and returned to Portland.
The action of placing the bodies facing outwards was to avoid the crew having to look at the damaged and grotesque faces. However, this served little purpose as the next boat alongside had done the same and we could easily see the awful visage on those boats.
We had a very close look at these lads and were convinced they had “Rangers” flashes on their shoulders but later accounts and books on the matter said that no “Rangers” were involved, which I dispute to this very day.
American ambulances manned by coloured GIs were waiting to load the bodies and at first they attempted to carry two on a stretcher but that did not work, as the gangplanks were too narrow and encumbered with safety rails. It was rumoured that they were taken to a local field near Portland and temporarily buried to keep it a secret. The total death toll was around 750.
We did two trips that day and it was a very subdued crew that evening with the added warning that it was a complete hush-hush affair and under no conditions were the day’s events to be discussed outside the ship, or reported in letters home. As far as I was aware this was adhered to rigorously.
The discussions on board consisted mainly of discussing whether the life preservers had trapped the soldiers. We talked over how to handle a similar situation, such as, was it possible to swim under a burning sea. No answers were forthcoming…