OVERLORD 80 Years Ago: Exercise TIGER and The Battle of Lyme Bay, April 27-28, 1944
Spring 1944 saw a flurry of final amphibious exercises for the Allied forces that would assault five beaches in Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Exercise TIGER, at Slapton Sands in Devonshire on England’s southwest coast in April, was the final rehearsal for Force U, destined for UTAH Beach. From the tragedy that would mark its second phase, accounts of TIGER would come to overshadow all the other preparatory exercises for D-Day.
The second day of Exercise TIGER was to include a follow-on landing by eight U.S. Navy landing ships tank. LST Group 32 rendezvoused late on the night of April 27, 1944, in Lyme Bay, off Portland Bill, to form Convoy T-4, under Commander B.J. Skahill, USN. The priority effort to produce, crew, and surge amphibious lift to Britain for D-day was evident in Group 32. All the LST’s in Convoy T-4 were new, in commission only four months. Sailing their ship across the Atlantic Ocean had been the greatest challenge to date that any of their young, recently formed crews had faced. None of the LST’s had been in England more than a month. TIGER was the first time that the ships had operated together as a complete tactical group.
German fast torpedo boats, “E-boats,” had been patrolling the English Channel out of occupied ports on many nights since 1940. Fast and heavily armed for their 100-ton maximum displacement, each E-boat carried cannons, machine guns, and four torpedoes for its two launch tubes. The E-boat crews were seasoned fighters with deep knowledge of combat in the Channel.
The LST’s were packed with troops and fully fueled vehicles. Convoy T-4’s solitary escort was Royal Navy corvette HMS Azalea. On this clear, calm night with a new moon low on the horizon, Convoy T-4 was steaming in a three-mile-long line astern and in radio silence. The convoy commodore and the escort commander had failed to arrange to share a common radio communication frequency, although there had been an opportunity to do so. The LST’s were unable to hear radio communication addressed to them from H.M.S. Azalea or the Royal Navy headquarters in Plymouth. The LSTs’ radio transmissions could not be picked up by their escort.
Nine German E-boats had evaded the Royal Navy’s overwatch of Cherbourg. Putting out into the Channel in darkness, the E-boats made for Lyme Bay in radio silence where, over the previous 24 hours, German intelligence had detected a high level of Allied activity. They had a brief encounter with Royal Navy destroyer HMS Onslow at some distance from Convoy T-4. Onslow radioed an alert to the presence of E-boats. It was heard ashore in Plymouth and by HMS Azalea.
The Royal Navy corvette assumed that the American LST’s in its charge also had heard the warning. Listening on the wrong frequency, the LST’s had heard nothing.
First to be torpedoed, at 0203, was LST 507. As observed from LST 289, “There was an explosion amidships on the starboard side of the 507 with a great flash of flames which seemed to spread instantly from stem to stern.” Aboard LST 507, as later recounted by the ship’s senior surviving officer, navy Lieutenant James Murdock: “All of the Army vehicles naturally were loaded with gasoline, and it was the gasoline which caught fire first. As the gasoline spread on the deck and poured into the fuel oil which was seeping out of the side of the ship, it caused the fire on the water. The bow of the ship entirely separated from the bridge and the sternmost part of the vessel. We on the bridge could not contact the bow at any time.”
The stern section of LST 507 sank forty minutes after the torpedoing while the bow floated derelict. Of the 447 sailors and soldiers aboard, 202 would be listed as dead or missing.
LST 531 was struck by two torpedoes at 0219, sixteen minutes after the E-boats hit LST 507. The resulting fire was instantaneous and fatal to the ship. LST 531’s senior surviving officer, Ensign D.G. Harlander, recalled that: “The ship immediately burst into flames and the Number 1 40-mm gun immediately commenced firing to starboard. All electric power failed, telephones were inoperative, and the engines stopped. Firefighting was attempted but futile….”
Six minutes after being struck, LST 531 rolled over and began to sink. Those still aboard and within shouting distance heard the command to abandon ship. Of 492 soldiers and sailors aboard, only 72 survived.
Sharp, confused action continued. The E-boats were like phantoms glimpsed fleetingly in the night. Two E-boats closed the column at high speed between the third and fourth and fourth and fifth ships from starboard to port. One of these E-boats, firing its guns, dashed at an estimated 40 knots between LST 496 and following LST 511, a bare 15 yards ahead of the latter’s bow and too close for 511 to depress its guns. The 496 fired back at the E-boat only to accidentally strafe LST 511’s deck, wounding many. In the dark, only the E-boat’s wake and the green tracers of its gunfire could be seen for certain.
A fourth ship, LST 289, was hit by a torpedo. Evasive maneuvering probably saved the ship from her sisters’ fiery end. The torpedo exploded in 289’s stern quarter, destroying the ship’s rudders, crew quarters, and one LCVP. The hit started fires and twisted the ship’s fantail and sternmost gun mount upward in bizarre contortion.
The blast of the torpedo blew LST 289’s log onto the steel deck of the bridge. There it lay face down, amid casualties and stepped on repeatedly, during the frenzy of saving the ship. 289’s deck log survives today, unremarked, in the files of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The log’s back cover is stamped with boot prints, each the brown of long-faded blood.
Sailors and soldiers cooperated to master the damage and care for the casualties. Good damage control and seamanship saved LST 289. Engines restarted, the captain, Lieutenant Harry Mettler, USNR, launched the ship’s surviving LCVP’s to provide steering. With its little 30-foot landing craft nudging to port or starboard in substitution for the lost rudders, damaged LST 289 made for Portsmouth, 30 miles away, under its own power. Diverted to Dartmouth and almost making it the whole distance alone, the ship finally accepted assistance from the French tug Ispere.
LST 289 reached safe harbor at 1448. Of the sailors and soldiers aboard, five died, 21 were wounded, and eight were missing in action.
In under an hour, the E-boat attack caused the deaths of 749 soldiers and sailors, many by drowning, and the injury of 300 more while sinking two LST’s and damaging a third. Casualties in the actual assault on UTAH Beach on D-Day, for which Exercise TIGER had been the final rehearsal, would be far lower; 197 killed and injured.
SHAEF determined that among the missing were ten officers fully informed of the D-Day plan. Unknown was whether these men had been killed or possibly plucked from the water by the Germans as prisoners. Fearing for the invasion’s security, SHAEF scrambled to account quickly for every casualty from the E-boat attack. They were successful in accounting for all ten officers. Extraordinary measures were taken to prevent anyone ashore from learning about the attack on Convoy T-4. The D-Day secret remained secure.
Philip Padgett examines history by applying skills developed during 40 years of national security and preparedness research and analysis in the military, government, and the private sector. As Deputy Intelligence Adviser at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, he supported from Washington teams negotiating five international treaties and agreements. Read more >>