1944
Operation Tiger Disaster
In preparation for D-Day, the western Allies’ invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe, tens of thousands of troops had to be trained in amphibious assaults. Previous attacks launched from the sea had often proved to be catastrophic: at Gallipoli in 1915 the British forces struggled to get off the beach; at Dieppe in 1942, Canadian raiders showed how difficult it was to assault a port; in 1943 during the invasion of Sicily American paratroopers were dropped into the Mediterranean far from land. Planners for the Normandy landings were intent on applying these lessons to the forces that would be landed on June 6.
In April 1944 a massive landing exercise, dubbed Operation Tiger, took place on the south coast of England. It proved to be almost as deadly as the invasion itself. On April 27, poor coordination between American and British units resulted in “friendly fire” falling on troops as they hit the beaches. Hundreds were killed. The next day, German E-boats, fast attack craft (shown above), attacked Allied landing ships sailing to Operation Tiger in the English Channel. One of the two British destroyers that were to be escorting the helpless LSTs had already collided with one of them and returned to port for repairs but, again, bad communication with American forces meant that no replacement had been sent.
The E-boats had a field day: two LSTs were torpedoed and sunk and one was set on fire; another was damaged by — you guessed it — “friendly fire”. Altogether 749 American soldiers and sailors were killed in that encounter. By contrast, the actual D-Day casualty total for the American landing on Utah Beach was only 197 dead.