A Brief History
On April 28, 1944, an Allied training mission in preparation for the upcoming D-Day invasion of France went from bad to worse, resulting in a bizarre exercise defeat that was kept secret (kind of) from the public for years. (Typical government modus operandi!)
Digging Deeper
Exercise Tiger as the operation was called began on April 22, 1944 with drills moving men and equipment preparing to embark on invasion shipping. On April 26 the embarkation was complete and the “invasion” fleet of 9 LST landing ships escorted by 2 destroyers, 3 torpedo boats and 4 gunboats sailed for the practice landing beaches at Slapton Sands (Channel coast of England).
The practice landing on April 27 was delayed, though some of the landing ships did not get the word and landed at the original scheduled time. This blunder was critical because the exercise included live fire bombardment of the beach to give the landing troops the maximum real experience of landing under fire. Those landing ships that did not get the order to delay landed their troops who were promptly shelled by the Allied “pre-landing” bombardment, killing an wounding a still unreported number of troops in a deadly “friendly fire” incident, kept secret of course for “morale” reasons (not to cover up blunders by senior officers!).
On April 28, 1944, the exercise continued as another landing force of 8 LSTs escorted by a corvette (coastal patrol boat similar to a cutter) and an obsolete World War I destroyer traveled in a straight line of ships (bad idea, easy to attack) formation to the landing area when 9 German E Boats (bigger and more powerful than a US PT Boat) attacked, taking the Allied ships by surprise.
The destroyer assigned to escort duty had turned back due to a collision with an LST and was not available for the fight. Had she been present, the destroyer may well have destroyed the torpedo boats, as the very name “destroyer” stems from the original mission of the ship, “torpedo boat destroyer.” Compounding the problem, the American LSTs were on a different radio frequency than the escorting British ships and did not know they had lost their main protection.
In the lopsided battle that ensued, American LST-531 and LST-507 were sunk by torpedoes, LST-289 was set on fire (with 123 men dead), and LST-511 was hit with “friendly fire.” The E Boats sowed their deadly oats and quickly fled before the Allies could muster a retaliation, leaving at least 749 dead Americans (sailors and soldiers) behind. Ironically, the units involved in the actual D-Day landing at Utah Beach on June 6, 1944 (the units these ships and troops belonged to) suffered only 197 killed in action by comparison! Along with the friendly fire fiasco of April 27, perhaps over a thousand US military men died, incredible when many people have never even heard of this monumental blunderfest. (Actual number of deaths is not known with any certainty.)
The blunders just kept coming when investigators found many troops had drowned because of putting on their life vest around their waist, with no other way to properly use the vest since their bulky back packs were in the way. This resulted in the men being turned upside down with the heavy packs pulling their heads and upper bodies down with their feet and lower bodies above water. Failure to train on the employment of the flotation devices was blamed. Many other men died of hypothermia when it took an excessive amount of time to pluck them from the cold water. The only good that came of this disaster was making sure radio frequencies were standardized for D-Day, that proper life belt training took place, and plans to recover floating soldiers and sailors in a timely manner were implemented. Otherwise, survivors were sworn to secrecy and though the governments deny a cover up, the baloney that the incident was merely “forgotten” smells like a cover up. Apparently, there was a minor mention in Stars and Stripes and mention in 3 separate books after the war, but never much public acknowledgement of the incident. In 1995 the “Exercise Tiger Memorial” plaque was placed in Arlington National Cemetery and in 1997 a memorial to Exercise Tiger victims was erected in Mexico, Missouri. A Sherman tank recovered from a sunken LST was placed in Torcross Village, England in 1984 with a “plinth” memorializing the dead servicemen of Exercise Tiger and in 2012 a plaque remembering these tragic deaths was placed at Utah Beach in Normandy, France. A Sherman tank stands as a memorial to Exercise Tiger in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Training exercise deaths are always a tragedy, but training is necessary and realistic training is the only realistic way to get properly trained. A certain amount of danger is always involved and lessons learned from mistakes presumably save lives somewhere down the line. In this horrific case, it is questionable if the training casualties were actually productive in the balance. All a part of “War is Hell” and the price men (and now women) pay for the misdeeds and mistakes of politicians and senior officers. Possibly the worst training fiasco in US History, we hope Exercise Tiger is never surpassed.
We at History and Headlines salute the military men and women that risk their lives even in training, and especially in combat. Question for students (and subscribers): If you have any tales of training disasters to share or comments about Exercise Tiger, please include them in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Lawrence, Wendy. Exercise Tiger: The Forgotten Sacrifice of the Silent Few. Fonthill Media, 2014.
Lewis, Nigel. Exercise Tiger: The Dramatic True Story of a Hidden Tragedy of World War II. Prentice Hall Direct, 1990.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="15760 https://www.historyandheadlines.com/?p=15760">1 Comment
I think its interesting how many USA troops had been lost that day and not only from enemy soldiers. Some soldiers had been found drowned in water due to wearing their life vests the wrong way.