I found recently that my mother's cousin had served on the 'lead' Royal Naval ship on D Day and I needed to discover what this might have meant.
The image from the RLC archive shows the Mulberry Harbour in action.
A little research pointed me to HMS Ramillies as possibly the 'lead' battleship. A book entitled Operation Neptune written by Commander Kenneth Edwards offers a near contemporary account published in 1946. The book tells the story beginning with the planning and build up to the action on and around D Day and what happened thereafter.
It was intended at first that the Royal Navy would have the task of providing naval assistance to the whole invading force. In time it became clear that with commitments in other theatres, it simply did not have the ships and so the US Navy joined the enterprise. The Royal Navy certainly did not have anything like sufficient fully crewed ships, for Edwards talks of ship manned by 'passenger' crews, that is sailors who had returned to the UK without their own ships. There were in addition a great many ships of the merchant navy as well as coastal craft, armed trawlers, tugs and ferries.
In a sense the 'lead' ships weren't battleships at all but rather mine sweepers whose task it was to clear passages for the bombardment fleet and then the invasion craft themselves.
The bombardment fleet formed up on the Clyde and, with the delay to D Day of 24 hours had to steam back to use up time. Once across the channel the force first had the task of damaging German emplacements protecting the beaches. This would follow aerial bombardment by the Royal Air Force. Edwards writes that, whilst defensive opposition was not great, the strength of the concrete emplacements was such that only a direct hit in an aperture would have any chance of destruction and this would have normally to await the action of troops moving up the beach. Nevertheless the bombardment did reduce the opposition the landing troops would face.
Landing craft carrying troops, tanks, guns, vehicles and supplies followed the bombardment which would then precede the advancing troops up the beach and inland. Battleship had a range of seventeen miles and so offered cover well inland much to the shock of the Germans. The passage up the beaches varied from beach to beach with Omaha being the toughest. On all beaches the invading forces were met by mines and obstacles as well as gun fire, but they did get through and began the long fight across northern France.
The task of the Navy was now to safeguard the passage of ships bringing supplies and reinforcements. There would be in the region of two hundred crossings a day. Larger craft would be unloaded onto smaller craft for access to the beach.
Gooseberry harbours were created for each beach. These were artificial breakwaters formed by sinking old ships known as blockships which would offer some protection to small craft. As is well known the more substantial Mulberry harbours followed, one for the British at Arromanches and one for the Americans at St Laurent. What I hadn't known was that a gale blew for three days from D Day + 13 which caused massive damage to the American harbour and something like a half of landing craft were lost or damaged. Edwards notes that this far exceeded those damaged by the enemy. It is remarkable that only a week after the storms regularly cross channel supplies were resumed at the same level.
The job for the Navy was not over. There were U Boats menacing supply ships and E boats and armed trawlers protecting German coastal shipping. Then there were the major harbours to be captured beginning with Cherbourg. Two smaller harbours, Port-en-Bessin and Courselles, had been taken early on and were both receiving 1,000 tons of supplies each day.
Once the army was advancing and supply routes secured, the Navy could turn its attention to an arguably bigger challenge, the war against Japan.
No comments:
Post a Comment