Secret History: D-Day Disaster
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- Опубліковано 4 чер 2020
- A documentary about the little known story of exercise Tiger, the ill-fated rehearsal for D-Day on Slapton Sands.
Broadcast 1994 as part of the Secret History series.
World War II programmes playlist: • World War II programmes
My neighbour many years ago was a paratrooper dropped into the d day landings at midnight to protect the assault on Pegasus bridge. He said there was rumours at the time that a great number of Americans were killed on an exercise in Devon. This was in the early 80s he was talking about it and he said it wasn’t too much of a secret in June 1944.
My uncle was Dr. Eugene Eckstam (RIP) who is interviewed in this documentary. For most of my childhood, all I knew was that he had been in the Navy in WWII and he was on a ship that was sunk. It was the mid-80s before he was able to tell people about it. It is still hard for me to watch how this tore him up and knowing he could not talk about it for decades.
My. (20) yr. D uncle, "Quarter Master" "Melvin. Robert. Glaze" was killed during ex Exercise. Tiger, on April 27, 1944..(3) yrs before I was born. My. Mom said my Grandmother had a silent breakdown, she just sat and stared at the floor for days they had to give her hands on care. I heard so much about him I felt I knew him, but of course he died before I was born .
My grandfather Barth C. Hansen, (Sergent, Reg 327, A Company of the 101st gliders, purple heart, bronze star and a draftee) was attached to the 4th infantry (i believe) for the landings on Utah. He and his men, during exercise tiger, were wading on to the beach when they heard the explosions and saw the ships burning off the coast. Clearly a tragedy tho it seems he never saw the casualties. The plan for the operation told them that they were supposed to be met by chow and trucks to pick them up after the landing. They waited for "a long time and no trucks" (and no chow) so they knew then the whole thing had been completely screwed up. They were sworn to secrecy of course but after he told my dad anyway long before it was officially public info.
Although a WW2 buff I knew nothing about this until 30 years ago I went to New Year's Eve party at a hotel in Slapton Sands. I went for a walk and to my amazement saw a Sherman tank near the beach; It was a monument put there by the local people and the whole story was written on a plaque there.
It came out in 1987. That was when the first media reports of it appeared.
I believe this tank was brought up to the surface in 1984??? After it had fallen off the back of a landing craft and had been there for 40 years???
Its wild how that happens. Many of us study history and believe that we have a decent understanding of our nations story. Until we later find out that we dont know sh¡t. 🇺🇸
I remember bits and pieces of this horror history, and very grateful for this expose. Stunningly sad, stunning incompetence from Plymouth.
I was on holiday with my parents in Devon in August 1991 and was driving past Slapton Sands and I saw a Sherman tank in a car park my dad turned the car round and we parked the car and went to look at the tank and then I met Ken Small at The tank memorial at Slapton Sands and he told me and my dad about pulling the tank out of the sea and about what happened in 1944, I bought his book The Forgotten Dead which he signed, he came from Hull and he moved to my hometown of Grimsby.
I also visited this beach and tank recently.
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Incompetent leaders cost lives
Bankers wars cost lives.
Competent leaders cost lives too. In war, all manner of things cost lives.
This is sad. My grandfather served in the British Army in WW1 and Canadian Army during WW2. He said the Yanks were great folk and great fighters, but you never wanted them behind or too close beside you. He said navigation and communication and huge fire-power always seemed to be a problem.
The training for the average US soldier was just plain awful. I know at one WW2 vet wrote a book about the "training" they rec'd which was a joke. Basically you learned how to march back and forth on the parade ground, shine your shoes and make your bed.
Parade ground generals in 1944 imitating Napoleon type training.
@@JohnDoe-ee6qs Book title or sub title was something about joke called training thats all I recall. He was on a history documentary tv show years ago.
A great number of the soldiers killed in Exercise Tiger were US Army Guardsmen from Missouri. The Missourians were from the 3206th Quartermaster Company and were aboard LST 531. They counted for 201 of the 749 killed that night. On the courthouse square in the small town of Mexico, Missouri, there is an LST ship's anchor which stands as a memorial to those 201.
I'm guessing it doesn't say what happened/ why it's there?
I live fairly close and whilst it's a beautiful area, I always get a strange feeling driving along the front knowing what happened. Respect to the 201.
Tnx for the info.
May that anchor stay
Peace to your brothers and sons
My uncle Melvin Glaze was killed during exercise tiger he was a quarter master he was from join, Missouri he had turned (20). In Jan. 1944 about three and half months before he died
I live near here.... And have stood next to the sherman tank monument
Retrieved from the sea bed.
It's surprisingly small but has a tall
Silouhette.
The beach at Slapton is shingle
Wide and clear.... But as you enter the water a few yards out it drops almost vertically.
Ww2 items still turn up all across the area.... At a car boot sale at bowden House in Totnes... Relatively close by
Bikers had retrieved from the river
M1 grand clips... 50 cal browning belted ammunition... Dozens of large calibre shells... All were inert.
All dumped by US forces returning home.
Local legend tells of dozens of US
harleys buried at their camp in shaldon forest....cheaper than taking them home.
The harbour slipway at torquay built by American engineers.... And still used to this day.... Their are pictures from 4th 5th June 44 showing columns of US soldiers marching past the clock tower and embarking
On grey ships packing the harbour.
On stripping the wallpaper at a house I bought in torquay....
Underneath was a US Army servicemans name rank serial number and a small message
Written in pencil on the bedroom wall.... Billeted with an English family
Dated late May 1944....who knows what happened to him or to his unit
Under canvas across the road on which is now a tennis court and children's play area.
South Devon is full of the ghosts of war.
Very poignant.
Maybe you can look up that serviceman online... how knows, maybe you can even find some of his relatives. I am sure they would be thrlled.
If wish I can do research on Ancestry/com as I have access to military records. Not all because so many burned up in the warehouse fire in the 70s. I've had some success in finding some info on most searches.
Can you help me learn more aboutwhat and where my paps friend did in ww2?@@LuvBorderCollies
The majority of wartime disasters happen because of poor command decisions, arrogance and complacency. Yet rarely is ever done to punish commanders for there obvious poor choices. to few escorts for the transports? really? would like to see notes on that decision in the command HQ.
Not speaking specifically of this event: It’s easy to throw stones with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. There are obvious examples of bad judgement (McArthur ignoring the risk, and evidence, of Chinese intervention) but without being there, it’s hard to know what ones were poor choices because of bad decisions and what ones were due to incomplete information. War, and strategy, has two living/acting belligerents... both trying to outmaneuver, deceive, and force each other to their will. There is a saying in the Army... “the enemy always gets a vote.” Combat involves taking risk and often rewards being audacious. Sometimes that works for you... sometimes it doesn’t. You act as if commanders always know everything and have unlimited resources. (Hint: We don’t.) Without that, you have to choose where to assume risk. You can never eliminate risk. You also can’t NOT conduct tough/realistic training. That training is often risky. I have seen several Soldiers die in training... every time it was something that had to be trained and the event was a very unlikely occurrence. Could it have been prevented, MAYBE ... but not without detrimentally affecting the value of the training for everyone or wasting a lot of resources for a “one in a million +” event that odds say will never happen. Even so, they are all a tragedy that most commanders wish they could go back and change.
A very good book and where I first learned about Operation Tiger is "The Forgotten Dead" by Ken Small. I just saw it in the library and picked it up. There is a lot of detail but still makes for fascinating reading IMO.
Reg Hannaford was my Grandmother 's butcher in the whole Start Bay area. Lovely place.
Sounds like extremely poor planning and poor security by the organisers of the training, and the errors were paid for by the lives of others. I'll bet none of the planners were on any of the ships or any of the landings.
Well of course the secret was not that this was a screw up exercise, but that they were actually rehearsing amphibious landings in the area. The biggest secret of the war was where D Day landing would occur. They had Patton sitting with a "ghost" army which appeared to be intended for Pas-de-Calais, across the Strait of Dover - not Normandy. If there was any word that could raise suspicion of an amphibious landing heading to Normandy, this would have jeopardized the entire landing operation. So, that was the big secret. It wasn't just a coverup. This was one of those tragedies that was the result of the great difficulties involved in doing joint operations with other countries in the field; which is very complicated and fraught with vulnerabilities. That problem existed in Italy, and continued in France.
In 1984 I had the pleasure of riding my touring bike through southern England and Wales. I wanted to see Devon because of its natural beauty. I rode along the seacoast and saw the large monument to the the Slapton Sands disaster. Paul Fussell wrote about it in his book "Wartime" also, I believe; he was interested in large screw-ups that weren't covered by the press for obvious reasons during the war.
I remember this documentary when it first came out in the UK I live near to where some of this took place it is a very sad loss of good men and other.
If you have anymore Secret History documentaries please upload them
Unbelievable unforgivable incompetence on the part of the commanders.
"The greatest teacher failure is."
---Jedi Grandmaster Yoda, December 15th 2017
'E Boat' was a designation given to any unidentified enemy (German/Italian) naval vessel. An 'S boat' was the German designation for what the Allies would term a fast motor torpedo boat.
Schnell boot
I am so glad I'm watching this on here. If your channel name, and video quality are clues, I'm assuming these are old VHS tapes. And I mean that in a good way. There are so many things in video that at one time was released as movie or documentary that you can not find out there, and they aren't available to stream. So it's great people like you who let this live on. I remember this a long time ago and been searching for it. Here it is. Thanks 🙏
well that was heartbreaking
In 1994 i met a vet who lived thru this, spent hours in the water, and then went on to be in 2nd wave of invasion on d day. He mentioned it, and was shocked when i told him the rest of the story. I had read about it many years before. He was very grateful that i even knew about it. I told him i was grateful to him and his kind
I’m happy for you to have met this very special soul.
Just a devastating and fundamentally unnecessary massacre!
In 1994 I knew a funeral home worker who was going back. He said his was nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof.
After that experience they still sent him in? Pretty callous.
It was aroun# the lat '70s to before Summer '82 when I read in the newspaper(Washington Postt) about it when I was either 13 or 14. That was so sad.
I first became aware of this whilst viewing Foyle’s War. War is not Heck.
There is a novel by Leslie Thomas . The Magic Army. It's a good story and the climax is based on Operation Tiger. Which is called Lion in the book.
I have been to Slapton Sands as a sixth form schoolboy. I have also read a book that pretty much matches this video. Poor admiral! The RN staff and Plymouth should have turfed out enmasse.
God bless all those involved in this great tragety.
The generals : Exercise will be today,get ready,men!
Soldiers : Screw that,just skip the exercise and go with the real thing....our chances are slim either way!
Do their graves at Brookwood not have markers? The war ended just over 16 months later. Surely, the graves could have been marked as these men were the first casualties of D-Day and should be honoured as such.
I can fully understand the need for secrecy at the time of the war, if only for moral purposes, but that doesn't explain the continued secrecy.
The Freckleton disaster occurred on 23rd August 1944 and was barely reported at the time but is now well documented.
There were other tragedies that occurred during those years that also came to light in the aftermath of peace.
Secrecy maintained so the Germans didn't know and then later kept secret in order to cover up ...
I saw a photo of my uncle's grave there whom was killed at exercise tiger. He was on ship 531. On his grave is a white cross with his name, rank and birth day/ death day he was only (20) yrs. Old
Victory is nothing without sacrificing,it's not easy
The shortage of landing craft plagued the US for the entire war.
Very sad, bad communications, poor planning, the government should have told the families their sons were Kia. And left it at that no details.
That's exactly what they did
This was kept secret for many years
@@caractacusbrittania7442 KIA = Killed in Action. They were told MISSING in action causing agonizing false hope.
The corruption if governments when it comes to soldiers is criminally astounding. They done the same cover up in Iraq my orders were this is classified when I asked questions. The exact same Inn Afghanistan
The Germans were watching & listening...
No military intelligence.
British were having a spot of Tea?
@@david-leethompson62 you'd be surprised how good German intelligence is these days 😁
So what? They already knew all about it.
Mk p⁸
Thank you great people for the huge price you pay for our freedom and good way off life we enjoying today
LACK OF COMUNICATIONS WAS UNBELIEVABLE , ON A DIFFERENT WAVE LENGTH , DID NO ONE NOTICE BEFORE OR CHECK ?
Eisenhour wrote as much in relation to this tragedy in his Crusade in Europe biography as he did about the holocaust, in fact just a single page *
He had a ghost writer,
Never knew any of this. Poor buggers.
What a tragedy, some good did come from it with better sea survival training and unified radio channels and small boats to help survivors of sinking vessels on actual D day.
But a terrible way to find out changes needed to be made.
Such a waste of life should never of had happened
read about it the `70's when they started releasing documents and what not about the goings on in WWII been reading about that war ever since.
"What do you do for a job, Karl?"..; " oh,most days, i just do war?".. "And do you find it fulfilling, as an occupation?",..."not as much as i used to, but you know, familiarity breeds contempt, and all that?"..
Such amatures. This is of people who never been in a real battle and could’ve saved lives not being there.
Why is this not called Pre-Day Disaster ???
@@JohnDoe-ee6qs I meant to type Pre - D - Day ...
This tragedy, should not have happened, when you hear the name Bradley and what he said about the situation it is a wonder he did not worry about his men doing their duty
9 E-boats vs. an essentially unprotected convoy of Large Slow Targets.....and the Germans sank 2, damaged 1. Not a good performance.
Eisenhauer: "lost two LSTs". The soldiers on these ships werent important enough to get mentioned.
I'm shocked to know they listed them Mia! Why didn't they just lie about how they died, and list them killed in action?
I can only answer from Iraq. It is easier for the forces to state mia than admit to their severe lack of planning and judgment. Prime example of this is still in ww2. The allies cut off all supply lines to so called death camps for years. That is until they found them just as they planned to enter Germany. How do they fix it. Admit they starved these people or blame Germany. The first action is to put troops on the ground, second is to severe all supplies to troops and troop movement. Just as well the red cross kept meticulous records.
@@justintime1307 I know the Dutch Underground kept the British command informed of activities in the Netherlands(Holland). How much the British command told the US and other allies, who knows. I do know that "someone" sent a couple of fighters over to Holland to strafe and sink a river barge full of milk that was due to leave for Germany.
So if they received and acted on rather small things like one river barge of milk, the Brits certainly knew about the roundups of Dutch citizens to be marched to Germany as slave labor.
I say Brits because that was who the Dutch Underground was in contact with. Again how much was passed on to the US/Allies, don't know.
@@LuvBorderCollies That would not surprise me. The British knew exactly where the wolves layer was as well as the movement of himler and his close party members.
The fact the red cross kept very specific records of trying to supply certain work camps speaks louder than words.
How much more of their history has been fabricated to have us look like the good guys. My grandfather never spoke about what he seen and did. He lost an eye in 44 and got sent home. I never understood why he didn't like to talk until I served in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Iraq. We went through nothing like our grandparents did. I will never tell my own children half of it, all they know is I served. That history is already a lie now
@@justintime1307 The covid lockup gave me extra time to research last year and I discovered an older guy in my hometown was in the OSS in northern NL...Friesland to be more precise. I had no idea he was even in the military. Talked to him many times as he owned the lumber yard. My sister was very best friends with his daughter so we knew him very well.
Unfortunately he passed on about 10 years ago. He was born in Friesland but his parent migrated to the US with his brothers who also were in the US military(which I didn't know either). How I wish I'd known that years ago.! Maybe he would've opened up and talked about his experiences, maybe not.
For a small town of 800 we had a lot of WW2 vets. A number of them had issues of some kind. One who did was the B-24 nose gunner or bombardier saw many of his friends in other B-24s. Worst was the disastrous bombing operation on Schweinfurt and multiple other cities in southern Germany/Europe.
Then he was on several low level attacks on Ploesti oil refinery. Up in the glass he had a ringside seat watching planes with guys he knew smack the ground in a ball of flames. How he survived his 40 or 50 missions....it wasn't his time.
This shit is crazy
Damn generals didn't give a damn who they killed as long as it wasn't them.
Just like WW1.
To much responsibility for Admiral Moon. He did the honorable thing. Now hes with his men.
British debacle... buried and glossed over. Didn't expect that. I expected the people responsible to have been promoted and given medals in the usual English manner.
Old news.
American incompetence.
On the eve of summer yet the water is ice cold ? I believe it !!! look how far north on the globe this area is , No Gulf Stream here in fact the water temp at D Day was still miserable ! The moderately high surf on D Day was too much for the floating Tanks so most of them sunk !
Gulf stream has some effect on western Europe especially near the coast. But its lost a lot its Carribean warmth by then. One of my great grandmothers always hated coming to Midwest USA because of the extremes in climate. It got cold in Holland but nothing like polar cold -25 Fahrenheit or 100+ in the summer. I've monitoring the weather in Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands for some years, and I see how less drastic the temps are in central Norway(away from coast) vs Denmark and west central NL.
So it was not a "D-DAY" disaster at all.
If that happened today some serious heads would roll.
No it wouldn't. I seen things in Iraq that is listed as secret. The same in Afghanistan. Let's just say american troops are perfect at blue on blue.
Wanna Bet ?
Haha
Nope
Nothing happens to idiots now
Think of the coverup of what really happened to that ex-NFL player in Afghanistan, the one who went on to be a Ranger.
My brother being Airborne for years was in a number of lovely cesspools of the world. There's tons of crap happening and sometimes the media is there but the media keeps quiet,.....well, on second thought it depends on who is president...that determines what gets reported.
I've heard of this incident, but I know very little about it.
This one either. 4 DVD docu-series 'Sacrificing Liberty', the deliberate tragedy where USS Liberty survivors were told, 'don't ever talk about this incident again, if you do you'll see prison or else' and they all knew what 'or else' meant. Operation Cyanide.
Seldom covered, little known.
Widely known and covered up.
The "Royal" Navy.
That pretty much sums it up.
What sums it up is what the hell were they doing out thêre in the middle of the night...praticing sea sickness
Fuck up on both sides. Americans bombing their own troops?
What a mess!
If there are 946 dead how many are injured ?
As I was told, 382 were wounded, with 153 too badly injured to ever serve again & were sent home by Christmas of 1944. They were threatened not only with imprisonment if they spoke to anyone about Operation: Tiger, but also with a total loss of any current or future G.I. benefits for the remainder of their lives. I don't know what the tally was for those who were released to participate in the D-Day Invasion, who died either during or following the landings. But they were subject to the same penalties as those who were badly injured & were initially sent stateside
This is standard operating procedure when there's a world class clusterf*ck in the military, the officers don't accept responsibility & everyone else pays the price. It's the same now as it was then.
2,000 died on D Day, incredible
@@SierraThunder One of my cousins did 22 years in the US Navy. When the Iowa disaster happened the upper brass's first response is to dodge blame themselves and then find a scapegoat. Most everyone involved in munitions knew the WW2 made powder bags had to be handled carefully because of deterioration. But this was ignored, overlooked or forgotten that day on the Iowa.
Also from cuz, the US Navy in an average year loses more people to accidents than during the Gulf War.
It was not that big of a screw up. You cannot win them all. Military credit to the Germans for intercepting radio communications, if such was what it was, and having undetected E-boats handy. What are you going to do ? They got something right. It may have been a training exercise but it was a military contingent. The Allies were lucky not to have lost more than 3 vessels.
I agree; D-day was almost miraculous to have gotten the foothold on the beach by sundown the first day, and the success of the decoy operation, having General Patton pretend to organize the "real" invasion, which caused the Germans to withhold the armor from the Normandy beaches until too late. All the armies there were oversupplied with dead weight officers; the US, the British AND the Germans. It was a war, so the families knew bad things could happen, but there were some debacles that were covered up, for sure.
@@DavidSmith-ss1cg The Allies were very fortunate that Hitler screwed up and held back his armor. If Hitler had been out of the picture Normandy would have been a slaughter house.
war is hell
The USA have a listing of so many POW/MIAs for WWII, Korea & Viet Nam; how many were involved in SAS type war.
Unforgivable that the British Navy failed to do their jobs in the Tiger training operation. And all the other unnecessary training deaths were ridiculous too. Poor young men. First, they get drafted, or enlist, then the military kills them during training. Appalling. Makes you wonder how those responsible can go on, looking themselves in the mirror each day. And for our own government to lie to the families of the men killed. Quite the insult.
*Exercise Tiger* - The practice landing in 1944 in Devon England was a travesty. I dont believe any training can get men ready for the actual conditions of total War. But I'm sure out of this incredibly horrible tragic situation that cost so many good Allied men their lives. However, many serious lessons were learned. Which saved many of our allied soldiers lives on game day.
From Wiki;
Exercise Tiger, or Operation Tiger, was one of a series of large-scale rehearsals for the D-Day invasion of Normandy, which took place in April 1944 on Slapton Sands in Devon. Coordination and communication problems resulted in friendly fire injuries during the exercise, and an Allied convoy positioning itself for the landing was attacked by E-boats of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine, resulting in the deaths of at least 749 American servicemen.[1][2]

American troops landing on Slapton Sands in England during rehearsals for the invasion of Normandy
Because of the impending invasion of Normandy, the incident was under the strictest secrecy at the time and was only nominally reported afterwards.
I guess a tuff part for some survivor's would be when all these Hero's come home and tell their war stories and you have experienced something so horrible. U seen some of your own comrades kill your own countrymen and you are sworn to secrecy and have to deal with it all on your own.
Those german attack boats very fast of cóurse but i thought the british air-sea rescue boats were the faster...the boat in McHales navy is one of thêse boát although made under licence in the USA it is as i say british design...it was meant to go to the soviets...after the war it was bought by howard hughs then movie stardom
More dead than omaha beach
the royal navy fell asleep on there watch wtf
34:21 we aren't allowed to know where he got his fame or standing huh?
I hate this!
I think they should have been shadowed but the British MTB's.
They were much more agile and countered the E boats.
A sad video
Were is the secret
Sickening.
👍 👍 👍!!!
so sad
Just an appalling, unnecessary and, worst of all, secreted honour of these hundreds of G. I.s and their families. I'm ashamed of England when I view this*
Please, don’t be. I look at the punishment Britain took and think they fought like Hell and we didn’t have to until later. And besides, you guys have sided with the USA many times when it was not even in your interest to do so. People don’t know that. Let’s all remember when things went way past push, shove into big time fight, we were on the right side. And let’s just remember those guys’ sacrifice for a necessary cause.
A half dozen motor torpedo boats to seaward, or a destroyer or two should have been on station...mind boggles
Hadn't heard of the live fire blue on blue incident....what the...
Those brave men deserve a lot more respect as do their families. It took so long to open up the second front while the Russian soldiers were fighting and dying in their thousands on the eastern front.
@@ljimlewis I hear you and appreciate your reply..
Exercise OH SHIT!
Ref.Seen 3.56sec.
D-Day changed the outcome of the war?
The Russians were on a unstoppable march to Berlin by then.
D-Day did saved France from being a Warsaw Pact member.
Eisenhower and Montgomery should have been the first ones out of the landing craft at Normandy. Nothing less.
Disagree.
God how awful.
Typical A to Z military SNAFU.
Some cave man a million years ago said, never underestimate your enemy.
damn the governmejnt
The most basic training should have covered all these mistakes.
Sailing in the English channel with one escort and not on the same radio frequency. Duh!!
I would prosecute the leadership remains for this giant fuck up!!!
Conscripts @ 4:10 min -bullshit. American GI's were never GD conscripts ! You should revise this pal !
The fabulous result explicitly reach because hydrant densply stamp off a troubled television. rainy, elastic act
D-day was some kind of a holiday compared to what the Russians suffered during this war.