A Squadron is formed

Wing Commander Guy Gibson was just completing his 173rd trip over Germany; he was 25 years of age and already had a D.S.O. and D.F.C. He was expecting to go to Cornwall on leave when he received a summons to report to 5 Group Headquarters. The commander of 5 Group was Air Vice-Marshal the hon. Ralph Cochrane, chosen by “Bomber” Harris to form the new squadron with Guy Gibson as its Wing Commander. Gibson was told he had four days to form a new squadron based at Scampton and he would not be told the target but was to concentrate on low level flying.

Wing Commander Guy Gibson VC, Commanding Officer of No. 617 Squadron (The Dambusters), May 1943

On March 21st Gibson arrived at Scampton to take over formal command of Squadron “X” (no number had yet been given). He had picked 147 individuals giving him twenty-one complete crews, seven to a crew. They had all done at least one tour and some had done 2 tours. The average age was 22 years old and the D.F.C.’s and other medals marked them as veteran flyers. The next few days were spent re-kitting most of them, sorting out all the equipment for the aircraft and the 101 things necessary to become operational. As he walked into the mess feeling he was winning he was told he was going to command 617 squadron. That was his new number with marking letters of AJ on the planes.

Gibson met Wallis a few days later and Wallis was horrified to learn he had not been told what target he was training for. Security was extremely tight for everyone involved in Project Downwood, from the inventor to the flight crews involved. It was only later Gibson learned of the 3 dams and was secretly relieved it was not going to be the “Tirpitz” that was causing the deaths of many of his friends. All mail was censored and telephones tapped to ensure nothing was given away about the operation that was now only 10 weeks away.

Wing Commander Dann, a sighting specialist, contacted Gibson with an answer to the problems he was having with accurate bombing. There were 2 towers on each dam about 600 feet apart. Using the simple gadget they were able to drop their bombs with an average error of only four yards letting the bomb make 3 skips before hitting the dam wall.

On April 22 Gibson watched with Wallis as a Lancaster dropped a bomb at Reculver and the bomb burst apart as it impacted on the water. This happened several times and Wallis said it was being dropped too high at 150 feet. Gibson agreed, albeit reluctantly, to dropping the bomb at 60 feet. Getting the height correct was now possible.

Using two searchlights beneath the Lancaster, the arcs of the lights touched on the surface of the water when the plane was at the agreed height for dropping, in this case 150 feet which was later reduced to 60 feet.

On April 29 Wallis finished strengthening another bomb and Vickers test pilot Shorty Longbottom flew it to Reculver for another test. At 60 feet and just under 250 mph the bomb dropped cleanly, bounced 3 times and went through the middle of the marker buoys. The stage was set for 617 Squadron to enter the history books.

Operation Chastise

On the morning of May 15 pilots, navigators and bomb aimers were summoned to the briefing room. Gibson introduced Barnes Wallis and Mutt Summer and showed them the 3 models of the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe dams. Wallis told them of the effects that a successful operation would have on German industry. They spent 2 hours learning all they could about the targets, discussing drawbacks and making suggestions on approach, etc. They then went back to their mess rooms for an early night as the raid was taking place the next evening.

The Night of the Raid

At 4.00pm all crews were summoned to the briefing room. Soon all 133 bomber personnel were seated and heard for the first time their intended targets. Gibson told them what he had told the others the previous day, Wallis told them about the dams and what their destruction could do and Cochrane finished with a short crisp talk.

Formation 1 consisting of three waves, taking off with ten minutes between waves:

Gibson
Hopgood
Martin

Young
Astell
Maltby

Maudslay
Knight
Shannon

They were to attack the Moehne and once it was breached those who had not yet bombed would go on to the Eder.

Formation 2: one wave in loose formation:

McCarthy
Byers
Barlow
Rice
Munro

These would attack the Sorpe, crossing the coast by the northern route as a diversion to split the German defences.

Formation 3: would take off later as the mobile reserve:

Townsend
Brown
Anderson
Ottley
Burpee

There followed a lengthy period of waiting, always the worst time before taking off. Gibson spoke to Chiefy Powell asking him to bury his dog, Nigger, at midnight. Nigger had been hit by a hit and run driver the previous day and it was an unusual request from the usual taciturn Gibson but he had it in his mind that he and Nigger might be going into the ground about the same time that evening.

At exactly ten past nine a red Very light curled up from Gibson’s aircraft, the signal for McCarthy’s five aircraft to start. The northern route was longer and they were taking off ten minutes earlier.

The map below shows the optimum routes they were to follow.

They flew at 40 feet above the ground for most of their trip over the European land, nerve racking in its own right. When they sighted the dam Gibson went in first. The bombs electric motor started it turning, the spotlights gave them the correct height and the Bomb Aimer used his wooden sight to gauge the correct distance for dropping. As Gibson lifted his Lancaster after flying over the dam he heard someone say, “Good show, Leader. Nice work.”

The dam did not give way and once the water had settled Gibson told Hopgood to take his turn. M for Mother was hit by flak as it came in for its run, the bomb bounced over the dam onto the power house below and M for Mother spun into the ground before anyone could get out.

P for Popsie was next and Gibson told them he would try and distract the flak by flying across the dam as he made his run in. He dropped his bomb and made it through the flak. When the bomb exploded water was pushed over the top of the dam but it did not give way.

A for Apple was next and this time both Gibson and Martin tried to distract the flak. Digby Young dropped his bomb as accurately as the others but only a high plume of water was seen.

This time he called Maltby in and then continued their distracting run across the dam. Maltby dropped his bomb and as he pulled away Gibson called up Shannon to start his run. When he heard Martin say, “It’s gone.” Gibson turned back over the dam and saw a ragged hole 100 yards across and 100 feet deep had appeared in the dam's face.

Photograph of the breached Möhne Dam taken by Flying Officer Jerry Fray of No. 542 Squadron from his Spitfire PR IX, six Barrage balloons are above the dam

The key word “Nigger” was radioed back to base telling them they had been successful. Gibson told Martin and Maltby to set course for home and Young, Shannon, Maudslay and Knight to follow him east to the Eder.

At the Eder Maudslay went first and had tremendous difficulty because of the hilly terrain to get low enough to release his bomb. After several attempts he finally released it only to see it bounce over the parapet. He never returned from the raid. Shannon was called up next and after a couple of goes finally released his bomb perfectly and managed to get back into the air. But the dam still stood. There was only Knight left and after aborting his first attempt came back-round and placed his bomb exactly right. As the water erupted Gibson turned his aircraft for a look and watched as the face of the dam collapsed and a torrent rush down the valley. The code word “Dinghy” was sent back to base to tell them the Eder had been destroyed and Gibson and the remaining Lancasters turned back to England.

McCarthy was the only Lancaster to get through to the Sorpe. After two abortive runs due to the hilly terrain he was finally able to drop his bomb accurately. He watched 50 yards of the parapet come crashing down and sent his successful code word back to London.

Aftermath

Only 10 planes returned from the raid. 56 young men out of the original 133 were missing. 3 of one craft had parachuted out at a very low height and spent the rest of the war in a prison camp.

Wallis was distraught when he realised how costly the raid had been, “If only I had known, I’d never have started this.”

Later Gibson was awarded the Victoria Cross, Martin, McCarthy, Maltby, Shannon and Knight got D.S.O.’s, Bob Hay, Hutchinson, Leggo and Walker got bars to their D.F.C’s. There were ten D.F.C.’s awarded and twelve D.F.M.’s.

When the King and Queen visited the new squadron they were able to select from a competition Gibson had run on a design for a squadron badge. Unanimously they picked a drawing showing a dam breached in the middle with water flowing out and bolts of lightning above with the motto “Apres nous le deluge”.

Barry

In 1972 I was walking across the Moehne dam in West Germany with my wife and 2 year old daughter. It was a cold winter's day and whether that was the reason I felt a shiver through my body or because I was reliving the thoughts of the men of my age as they roared up the lake towards the dam in an attempt to breach a hole in the massive concrete wall I was standing on, I was not sure. It was 30 years since that heroic day and now, another 40 years later as I recall that day I still feel a shiver when I read about the times leading up to the formation and deeds of 617 Squadron.

An idea begins

Sir Barnes Wallis worked for Vickers, designing new aircraft that would carry the war to Germany. At the start of the war he was attempting to design a replacement for the Wellington. The Warwick was giving him problems with the tail unit and also interfering with his thoughts on how he could bring a quicker conclusion to the war. He did not know much about bombs but was convinced that bigger bombs were the answer. Earthquake bombs would bring the industrial might of Germany to its knees. Unfortunately the present explosive used was useless, the maximum size of bombs was limited to 500lbs and there was no aircraft that could carry 1,000lb or bigger bombs.

Sir Barnes Wallis

He eventually saw that destroying the German’s water sources was a possibility. Germany’s method of producing steel for their war effort required eight tons of water for every ton of steel. There were three main dams that supplied most of this water, the Moehne, the Eder and the Sorpe and they were all situated in the Ruhr. The Moehne dammed the Moehne Lake where the Heve flowed into the Ruhr River and held 134 million tons of water. The Eder dammed the Eder River and held 212 million tons of water. The Sorpe dammed another tributary of the Ruhr River forming Sorpe Lake. The Moehne dam was 112 feet thick at the base, 130 feet high and 25 feet thick at the top over which a roadway ran; the Eder was even bigger. Even the Sorpe made of sealed earth with a central buttress of concrete was pretty formidable.

Whilst reading about their construction in manuals kept in an Engineering Library he was sure he had picked the right answer when he read the engineers assessment of the effects of breaching the dams. It would not merely destroy the hydro-electric power and deprive foundries of essential water. It would also affect other war industries that needed water for their processes, deprive the surrounding population of water services, and breaches in the dams would send water flooding down the valleys disrupting infrastructure. The theory was fine but a 500lb bomb would hardly scratch the concrete and a bomb twenty times bigger would not damage them either.

He had read of concrete piles shattering when they were being piled into the River Thames. It was the ability of water to focus the shock waves that moved him into thinking of exploding a bomb in the water. He calculated that a ten-ton bomb with 7 tons of explosive in an aero-dynamically-designed case of special steel, dropped from 40,000 feet, would reach a speed of 1,440 feet per second, or 982 m.p.h. well over the speed of sound. At that rate it should penetrate an average soil to a depth of 135 feet. Barnes Wallis felt he was well on his way to finding the answer.

Wallis must have been extremely frustrated over the following months. No one wanted to hear about his big bomb theory let alone plough through the reams of backing calculations. However eventually a committee was set up of designers and scientists and a Doctor Glanville of the Road Research Laboratories at Harmondsworth suggested building a model dam and testing the theories with scaled down explosive charges. Over the following months when he could get away from Vickers, Wallis helped build a model dam one-fiftieth the size of the Moehne with tiny scaled down cubes of concrete. The model was about 30 feet long, 33 inches high and up to 2 feet thick and one side was flooded to simulate the lake.

The big problem was that when he actually did significant damage to the model he calculated that scaled up he would need 30,000lbs of the new explosive RDX. This meant with the weight of the necessary special steel to hold the explosive he would have a bomb of 70,000lbs, over 30 tons. The Victory bomber, still only on paper, would only be able to carry a maximum of 10 tons. He was not ready to give up. If he could explode a bomb up against the wall of the dam or maybe several bombs in the same place the damage would be significant but how could he guarantee the accuracy?

He remembered skipping stones over a lake whilst on holiday with the children. Using an old bath tub in his back yard he started experimenting with an elastic band and his children’s marbles. He found he could control the length of travel of the marble by adjusting the tension on the elastic, if he could control a bomb to stop up against the dam and then sink to a pressure-fused height he could ensure all the bombs exploded in the exact same place but he needed to know how large a bomb he needed. After working with Dr. Glanville on another model dam he found a very small amount of gelignite exploding against the wall of the dam shattered the model. When he scaled up the results on paper he found he would need only 6,000lbs of RDX to breach the Moehne Dam. Adding the weight of the bomb’s casing gave you 9,500lbs which was less than 5 tons, well within the specifications of the new Lancaster bomber.

It is amazing how fast government departments can react if an idea looks acceptable.  Professor Patrick Blackett, who was head of an operational research branch listened and said, “We’ve been looking for this for two years.” He went and saw Sir Henry Tizard and told him of the idea and Sir Henry went down to see Barnes Wallis the very next day. He needed to see if Wallis’s idea would work in practise. Wallis had done his homework and said there was a huge ship-testing tank at Teddington where he could work out the exact logistics of the bomb. When asked how they could check the accuracy of the amount of explosive needed Wallis told him of an old disused dam in Radnorshire owned by the Birmingham Corporation. He worked out it should have a fifth of the resistance of the Moehne dam and armed with some RDX he blew a hole 15 feet across and 12 feet deep on the first attempt at Radnorshire.

The following months were spent at Teddington working out how to control the spin of the bomb, its best shape and size so that it would fit in a Lancaster and the fact it needed to be turned backwards just before it was released so a belt drive would be needed to spin the bomb. This had the added advantage that when it hit the dam it would keep turning against the wall of the dam as it slowly sank to the required depth. By the middle of 1942 he had a barrel shaped bomb weighing 5 tons that would skip across water, hit the dam surface and the residual back spin would keep it against the dam as it sunk down the face of it.

A practice 10.000 lbs 'Upkeep' weapon attached to the bomb bay of Wing Commander Guy Gibson's Avro Type 464 (Provisioning) Lancaster, ED932/G 'AJ-G', at Manston, Kent, while conducting dropping trials off Reculver.

The shape of the new bomb, barrel, mine or missile (Wallis was unsure what to call it) can be seen under the Lancaster as can the chain drive for getting the bomb to turn.

Wallis eventually got the go ahead to make 6 half size bombs that could be dropped by a Wellington. Mutt Summers, the test pilot for Vickers and long time friend of Wallis’s would fly the two-engine Wellington with Barnes Wallis as bomb aimer. When the bomb was dropped it hardly bounced at all and burst into pieces. The following day with a strengthened bomb casing they watched the bomb bounce for over half a mile and both Wallis and Summer were giving each other thumbs up all the way back home.

It was Mutt Summer who introduced Barnes Wallis to Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, chief of Bomber Command, a man who distrusted all inventors and was very difficult to convince. He watched the films and said he would not give Wallis a squadron of Lancaster’s based on a lot of theoretical work. Wallis said he only wanted one to prove it in trials first. For the next few weeks Wallis appeared to be getting nowhere until on the 26th February he was summoned to London and told, “Orders have been received that your dam’s project is to go ahead immediately with a view to an operation at all costs no later than May.”

PART TWO of this article will follow shortly!

Barry

There  was old British television comedy show called ‘Dad’s Army’ which gently laughed both at and with the men who joined the Local Defence Volunteers, responding to the call in 1940 by Anthony Eden for a fighting force made up of men over or under military age to help defend Great Britain from invasion. This is a short excerpt from one of the scripts…

*

Nazi Submarine commander: "your name also will go in my book! What is it?
Mainwaring: "Don't tell him Pike!"
Nazi Submarine commander: "So? It's Pike!...You are in the book!”

*

So, was life in the LDV a ‘game’ or was there a much darker aspect to this organisation?

A statue of Captain Mainwaring was erected in Thetford, Norfolk, where most of the TV series Dad's Army was filmed

WRAP writer John, explains:

My Grandfather was a fire watcher living in Brixton, South London, during the 1940s. My Grandmother would tell us how he would leave our house every evening, often with an old bucket, a stirrup-pump and a tin helmet to watch for incendiary bombs and attempt to extinguish them before they got out control.

As children, we would go into fits of laughter as she would describe packing him off with a bottle of cold tea and a couple of cigarettes for his break. He would have been considered too old for active service, but in 1940 the LDV (Local Defence Volunteers) was formed initially to guard the five thousand miles of the British coastline. They were soon to become known to all as the "Home Guard".

These volunteers were at first armed with whatever they could lay their hands on, and in the early days an armband and  broom handle, with or without a kitchen knife attached, was used for rifle drill. Later, all the men were equipped with uniform, rifle and pack… Dad’s Army was born.

Local Defence Volunteer (LDV) recruits learning rifle drill at Buckhurst Hill, Essex, 1 July 1940.

By the spring of 1940, the war in Europe was not going too well for the Western allies, and Hitler’s Wehrmacht looked unstoppable, sweeping across the Low Countries and into France with seeming ease.  The French, along with the British Expeditionary Force under Lord Gort, had been pushed back to the coast of Northern France 10km west of the Belgian border to the beaches of Dunkirk, with the English Channel blocking their retreat. Things looked very dark indeed, with thousands of troops cut off with the sea at their back. Clearly, this was a time for emergency action, which the Ministry of War took quickly. Heeding the advice from the Navy, officials had had been busy commandeering every seaworthy craft along the southern coast of Britain and even beyond.

In a desperate rescue attempt, the Royal Navy put Operation Dynamo into action. Many considered that, even if successful, the lifting of troops off the beaches at Dunkirk would be able to save only a small number. What happened next, however, is history, with more than 330,000 British and French troops evacuated from the beaches by a flotilla of large and small craft, fishing boats and pleasure craft.

Royal Navy destroyers crowded with evacuated British troops, Dover, 31 May 1941.

With the beaches of Dunkirk evacuated and the loss of much of her abandoned heavy equipment in Northern France, the outcome was looking bleak for the defenders of the British Isles. Winston Churchill, the recently installed Prime Minister, was fully aware of the dire situation the country was in, and had privately confided to the Cabinet that the threat of an invasion was very real and imminent.

Churchill had already proposed to the Ministry of War that an underground army with the capability of sabotaging any occupying forces be formed and trained in all forms of espionage with special attention to the assassination of any persons thought likely to be sympathetic to the Nazi cause. Covert preparations had been going on for some months prior to the Dunkirk evacuation, and members of the Home Guard had been secretly identified and approached to volunteer for a top secret organisation, known vaguely as Auxiliary Units, a name unlikely to raise too much attention. All members would be expected to sign the Official Secrets Act and were sworn to total secrecy. None of their family members were to have the slightest idea of the job they were engaged in, and it was made clear to each recruit that there was every likelihood their chance of survival was slim with a life expectancy of less than two weeks.

The new recruits, many of which were farmers or even gamekeepers and poachers, went through a rigorous course of weapon training, bomb making, sabotage, hand to hand combat, and radio communications, as well as being taught to live off the land. This was why familiarity of the local landscape was so important. Eventually, some 3000 men were ready to go to ground, mainly along the coastline but also across the country, and emerge at dark to carry out attacks and acts of sabotage against enemy targets. They were not expected to confront enemy forces of strength in the open; however, smaller groups could be targeted and in case of capture each unit member was supplied with cyanide capsules…clearly they were fully aware of what awaited them in these circumstances.

Well-equipped secret bunkers were dug in hidden areas across southern England. Many were made to look like a small rough dugout , others were counter sprung with tree trunks or branches, but all would have secret entrances to the main larger hideout, and the Auxiliary Units were supplied with the best equipment available, in fact they were the first troops to  be supplied with the new plastic explosives, pen detonators and the  first to be given Thompson machine guns. There was a story that the ministry official who vetted volunteers in one area was the first name on their assignation list should the Germans invade. The reasoning was simple: in the event of him falling into enemy hands, he was in possession of the location of the underground bunkers and unit personnel (this was too great a risk to the operation).

In the event of a German invasion, these ‘Auxiliary units’ would leave their homes to join their units with the likelihood of never returning to their loved ones. The secrecy of the whole operation was so successful that little was known about it for decades after the end of the War, a tribute to all involved.

Auxiliary Units, Operational Base, emergency exit, Wivelsfield

In the years since the War, with the development of more and more of the green belt used for housing etc, some of the Auxiliary Unit bunkers have been recently unearthed and, to the amazement of the locals, many still contained some of the equipment secreted inside many years earlier. In one case, thirty years after the war at a development just across the border in Scotland, the local village had to be evacuated and the nearby rail link to London closed to trains after one of these bunkers was unearthed containing a large amount explosives whilst the bomb disposal squad blew up the cache and made safe the area.

When you remember the men who made up these units would have been too young, too old, or working in reserved occupations, many of them having been chided by their neighbours for not joining the armed forces in active service, it is a remarkable story of remarkable men.

Winston Churchill, one of the world’s great orators, addressed the British public following the retreat from the Dunkirk beaches in a defiant speech that has become one of the most quoted of all time, effectively turning what was a defeat into a morale boosting exercise. He claimed that “We shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills...” Churchill knew that this was no idle boast; the Auxiliary Units were ready to fight back as soon as the enemy began the invasion.

Thankfully, the invasion never came, and the allies went on finally to defeat Hitler’s Nazi regime in Europe and North Africa and these Auxiliary Units were never called upon to make the final sacrifice. What is clear, however, is that they were ready and willing to do so.

In the 1960s, more of this magnificent story came to light, and it remains a tribute to all those involved that so little was known about the formation of “Britain's Secret Army”. It is only in recent years that the men who made up this operation have received the recognition they so richly deserve by being included in the Remembrance Parade at the Cenotaph in London.

In Oct 2013, two nondescript manuals sold at an Eastbourne auction house, which appeared to be an old 1937 calendar and  a countryman's diary from a company called "Highworth fertilizer", were found to be disguised bomb manuals from one of the Auxiliary Units… they sold for £2000 each.

Now their story can be told, and a remarkable story it is too, with many books being written on the subject.

John

For the past few days, events have been held in remembrance of the D-Day landings that took place on the beaches of Normandy on June 6th 1944. This epic event involved more than 150,000 allied troops from Britain, Canada and the USA, plus soldiers from New Zealand, Free French Forces, Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Belgium. This was a major allied invasion, not, as some Hollywood movies like to hint, a purely American one, and it was to turn the tide of the War. A military operation of this complexity and this importance needed to be carefully planned, and tests of the key war material such as landing craft had to be undertaken.

In 1940, the Nazi combined strength made plans to invade the coast of southern Britain, but in spite of mass waves of  attacks from the air and the drafting of huge numbers of barges from around occupied Europe, landing troops safely from the sea onto English beaches was a step too far…thankfully.

British Forces during the invasion of Normandy on D-Day

This shows just how far military thinking had advanced in 4 years, and by 1944, plans were well under way. Not all of the ‘Test Runs’ for D-Day went off smoothly however, and some ended in tragedy.  On 28th April, just forty days prior to the launch of Operation Overlord, 749 young American soldiers already lay dead in the sea near a small sleepy seaside village on the South Coast.

Early in 1944 villagers living in or around the village of Slapton in Devon were given notice by the Ministry of Defence to evacuate the area. Under a cloak of secrecy, hundreds of American troops were shipped into the area for a huge military exercise that turned out to be the rehearsal for the D-Day landings. The coastline along this bay was similar to that of the targeted beaches, so it seemed ideal for a practice, and as secrets were common in Wartime, little was said by the locals about this.

The official story runs that in the very early hours of the morning of 26th April, a flotilla of eight "landing ship tanks" were heading towards Slapton Sands transporting jeeps, amphibious trucks and engineers, to be offloaded onto Slapton beach, just as they planned to do on D-Day itself. It was a calm, clear night, when suddenly out of the darkness came nine German torpedo boats. They had been on routine patrol just off the Cherbourg Peninsula, and had come to investigate the unusual and heavy radio traffic they had picked up. Spotting in the darkness what they thought were a flotilla of eight destroyers, they opened fire with torpedoes hitting three of the landing ships.

Trapped below deck,  hundreds of troops went down with the sinking craft; there had been little time to launch lifeboats, and many who had managed to leap into the cold water were later found to be wearing their lifejackets upside-down, causing them to twist onto their faces in the water, where many drowned as a result, victims of German E-boats.

Military exercises on Slapton Sands, 1944

Some reports later cast doubt on this official account, stating that the American ships and the Royal Navy Torpedo boats had been assigned different radio frequencies that night, and that each group was left ignorant of the activities of the other.

However, more recent work by The Observer newspaper and local historians refer to accounts of those present that day. These eyewitnesses indicate that, as thousands of GIs swarmed ashore from landing craft, they were cut down by bullets fired by comrades playing the role of German defenders, who had for some reason been given live ammunition.

Lieutenant-Colonel Wolf wrote of shots ‘zinging’ past his ear as he watched helpless as "infantrymen on the beach fall down and remain motionless."  A similar tale is told by Jim Cory, a member of the Royal Engineer Regiment at the time. He watched the soldier’s stream from the landing craft only to be "mown down like ninepins. We later found out it was a mistake. They should have had dummy ammunition, but they just carried on shooting."

When the full horrific details began to emerge, the allied commanders turned their concern to the security of the exercise; ten officers among the missing had been closely involved with the invasion plan and preventing any of them falling into enemy hands became a priority.

All ten men were eventually accounted for, and the invasion went ahead on June 6th 1944.

Much has since been written about cover ups and dead troops being hurriedly buried in makeshift graves in the surrounding countryside. In truth, although the exercise was top secret, the bodies of all troops were located and interred in military graveyards, and the whole tragic event was put on record in July 1944 by General Eisenhower's supreme headquarters.

Even so, many people still refuse to accept that hundreds of US soldiers may have been interred in the sleepy Devon countryside 60 years ago. Such scepticism fails to explain the account of former land girl Joyce Newby, who helped to make hundreds of coffin lids at a nearby timber yard in spring 1944. She said they were for victims of friendly fire at Slapton.  Or that of former US serviceman Harold McAulley, who tells of dragging dead soldiers off the sands and later helping to bury corpses - the faces black with oil and burning - in a mass inland grave.

The tragedy of that morning is commemorated on the beach at Slapton Sands, and the losses that day, on the quiet Devon coastline, were more than those lost in the actual landing at "Gold Beach" where 419 men lost their lives.

John