Portland

Diary of the War – June 1944

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D-Day 80

Modern colour photograph of the ends of two concrete Mulberry Harbour structures at sea, exposing their respective staircases, with a ship visible in the gap between them.
Two Phoenix caisson components for a Mulberry Harbour can still be seen at Portland, Dorset, where they were towed post-war. Listed Grade II
© Des Blenkinsopp 2019 CC-BY-SA 2.0 https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6173674

Eighty years on from the launch of Operation Neptune on 6 June 1944, the largest seaborne invasion in history, we take a look at those craft which, for one reason or another, did not make it to the landing beaches of Normandy, but which do form part of a tangible heritage of D-Day around the southern coasts of England.

An invasion of this scale required considerable preparations, in assembling the fleet, in meeting the conditions they were likely to find geographically and militarily, and in meeting the needs of the invasion forces once the assault on Normandy began in earnest.

A key problem for the invasion forces was the issue of landing supplies in a hostile environment until French ports could be recaptured from the occupying forces. To overcome this problem, the ‘Mulberry Harbours’ were prefabricated concrete units to be towed across the Channel and assembled at Omaha and Gold, two of the five designated landing beaches. ‘Phoenix’ caissons were built to be sunk in great secrecy off the southern coasts of England to be refloated and towed across once the invasion was under way to build the Mulberry Harbours, supported by subsidiary units such as ‘Whale’ pontoons.

Not all of the Phoenix caissons could be refloated to serve their purpose, and a number of these survive at the spot they were sunk 80 years ago. They are charted in southern English waters from the Bristol Channel in the west via the English Channel facing the Normandy coast to the Thames Estuary in the east. The remains of these Phoenix units form a counterpart to the remains of the ‘as built’ Mulberry Harbours on the opposite side of the Channel. (The Portland caissons shown at the top of the blog are slightly different, in that they came back as part of a return group post-war.)

Modern colour photograph: aerial view of two sunken caissons just visible to centre right, emerging from a large expanse of murky grey-green water. A small beacon lies atop one, marking them out as a navigational hazard.
Aerial view of sunken Mulberry Harbour caissons in the Thames Estuary, off Southend-on-Sea, Essex.
© Simon Tomson 2022 CC-BY-SA 2.0 https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/7244874
Modern colour photograph of 8 sections of Mulberry Harbour in a bright blue sea, in various states of decay and angles from each other, no longer a coherent harbour assemblage.
Remains of the Mulberry Harbour at Arromanches-les-Bains, Normandy.
By Хрюша – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4770875

The invasion began during the night of 5-6 June. LCT(A) 2428 was a Mk V Landing Craft Tank (Armoured), which, as the description implies, was intended to carry tanks which could roll off directly onto the beach to provide covering firepower. This function would itself attract fierce return fire, so to that end the vessel was fitted with protective armour plating, hence the (Armoured) suffix.

Contemporary monochrome pen and ink drawing seen from the bridge of a landing craft under way, with the ramp being unloaded and tanks being readied for departure as the craft nears land in the distance.
A Landing Craft Tank at sea, 1944 (Art.IWM ART LD 4180) Edward Ernest James, 1944
Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/14233

LCT(A) 2428 was laden with Centaur CS IV tanks and Caterpillar D7 armoured bulldozers as she began to make her way over to Normandy. In the early evening of 5 June she broke down and anchored near the Nab Tower, to the east of the Isle of Wight. The vessel began to capsize following damage ‘sustained by weather to double bottoms on starboard side aft’ according to a military report, and shed her lading, although fortunately without loss of life. However, she remained afloat after capsizing, posing a navigational hazard, and the only remedy was to sink her by gunfire.

LCT(A) 2428 therefore lies some distance from her cargo of tanks and bulldozers, which now lie as an assemblage off Selsey Bill, Sussex – two wreck sites from one event. The remains of the tanks and bulldozers form a Scheduled Monument: read more about the scheduled site and discover more about the Landing Craft 2428 project.

Contemporary black & white photograph of a landing craft tank, ramp down, to left, temporary harbour infrastructure to right, and in the right distance, a steamer waiting offshore.
LCT Mk V 2291 (FL 7138), similar to LCT(A) 2428 but without the armour plating, discharging a bulldozer into a Landing Ship Dock. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205120579

An operation at the scale of Neptune required air cover and air support. The wooden Horsa glider, a personnel carrier which could be towed to deploy troops by air, came into its own in seaborne invasions on D-Day and in other theatres of war. Like the Landing Craft Tanks, some of the gliders moved off for their own specific operations on the night of 5 June 1944, while others took to the air during D-Day itself.

Among them was Horsa Mk I LH550, bound for Landing Zone N at Ranville, Normandy, which slipped tow for reasons unknown, and ditched into the sea off Worthing, West Sussex, apparently without loss of life. Unlike the Mulberry remains or LCT(A) 2428 and her cargo, the last resting place of Horsa LH550 is unknown.

Contemporary watercolour sketch of grey aircraft, cockpit facing to the left of image, the fuselage broken at right, with its tail propped up against the wing. The wing has black and white invasion stripes.
A Horsa glider lying in a field with the rear end and tail fin resting against the left wing, giving some idea of how the Horsa wrecked off Worthing might have appeared, although in fact the rear compartment was intended to be broken off on landing:
preparatory sketch for ‘Crashed Gliders: the landing zone at Ranville, 1944’
(Art.IWM ART LD 6322) Albert Richards Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/22870

Convoy ETM-1, comprising American Liberty ships, sent to Britain under the Lend-Lease programme, and their escorts, left the Thames Estuary on the morning of D-Day en route to Normandy. The convoy moved south towards the Straits of Dover when one of their number, the Sambut, was struck by fire from German positions at Cap Gris Nez. War matériel by its very nature is usually hazardous, and cargo vessels laden with such dangerous cargoes extremely vulnerable. Sambut‘s cargo of petrol cans and vehicles caught fire, which led to an explosion of the gelignite she also carried, and it was impossible to save the ship, her crucial supplies, or, unfortunately, a quarter of the personnel on board. (Read our D-Day 70 blog for more detail on the loss of Sambut.) The loss of Sambut was captured on film in real time by another ship in the same convoy, and the reminiscences of a survivor of the 92nd Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment of the Royal Artillery who was on board, recorded 50 years after the event, are also in the collections of the Imperial War Museum (Reel 2, 05:50 onwards). It is a well-documented wreck and is known and charted.

In the breadth and diversity of the craft that were lost on 6 June 1944 within English waters – aircraft, land vehicles, cargo ships and floating harbour structures – we glimpse a little of the scale of the invasion. We recognise, too, the archaeological remains of a single day in history on this side of the Channel, linked to their counterparts lost the same day on the Normandy beaches, memorials in concrete, wood, and steel.

Diary of the Second World War – January 1943

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A fairly quiet month – apart from the weather

January 1943 was a fairly quiet month in terms of shipwrecks in English waters: 8 ships were recorded as lost, of which one, Bolbec, was refloated in September 1943.

There were a few ships lost to war causes: first, patrol trawler HMT Kingston Jacinth was mined with considerable loss of life off Portsmouth on 12 January. Two wooden sailing Thames barges were lost to mines off Burnham-on-Crouch on the Essex coast: on 13 January, Ailsa struck a mine on the edge of Foulness Sand off the Essex coast, although fortunately her crew were saved, and on 28 January, Resolute, bound from London to Ipswich with wheat, struck a mine off Holland-on-Sea. When the lifeboat arrived on scene the crew found only wreckage, but the master had been picked up by another barge and was transferred to the lifeboat, although the mate was lost with the vessel. It sounds as if the barge had been blown to smithereens by the explosion.

Two groups of Thames barges moored on the river, with their sails furled. Behind them lies an industrial landscape of chimneys and dock cranes on the far bank of the river.

Thames barges moored at Greenwich, taken by photographer S W Rawlings between 1945-1965. He was the photographer for the Information Office of the Port of London Authority, recording the working river in the postwar period. S W Rawlings Collection, AA001107 © Historic England Archive

The cargo vessel Longbird collided with the Beltoy off the north-east coast while sailing independently for Hull with foodstuffs on 16 January 1943, having parted convoy on her ‘northabout’ voyage round the Scottish coast from the Clyde. She was a fairly unusual vessel type, having been launched as a steam naval gunboat in 1919, but sold into commercial service in 1920 and converted to a cargo vessel.

The 7-ton Landing Craft Personnel (Medium) No.17 or LCP (M) No.17 was lost off the Isle of Wight on 5 January, cause of loss unclear. There does not appear to have been anything exceptional about the weather, but loss even in fairly calm conditions is not unknown.

It was a different story for our other wrecks this month, where the weather appears to have been the major factor accounting for their loss. Firstly, the cargo vessel Wyetown foundered in ‘heavy weather’ off the Suffolk coast on 14 January, while bound from Hull for Ipswich, consistent with the gale warning issued for London and the east coast at 01.45am earlier that day. (1)

On the last day of the month HMS Bloodhound, a pre-war motor torpedo discharge vessel built by Vosper of Portsmouth in 1937 was wrecked at her station off Bincleaves, Portland.

Historic aerial photograph taken only four years after our wreck, showing Bincleaves groyne, one of the breakwaters enclosing Portland harbour, from the east, looking towards the land, with small harbour craft dotting the water. To the right, outside the groyne, the water is fast-moving and agitated, within the groyne on the left, much calmer: a breakwater captured doing its job. If wrecked within the groyne, the water must indeed have been turbulent that day.
© Historic England. Aerofilms Collection Historic England photograph: EAW010943 flown 24/09/1947

Bloodhound was an interesting small experimental vessel, with a fascinating background. She had been part of ‘stone frigate’ (shore establishment) HMS Vernon, Portsmouth, as part of the Admiralty Torpedo, Mining and Electrical Training Establishment, based on the old Gunwharf (now the Gunwharf Quays development). Vernon was dispersed after air raids on Portsmouth, the Establishment being based at Roedean School for Girls for the rest of the war, and Bloodhound sent to Portland.

The wreck of HMS Bloodhound occurred in severe weather, with a gale warning issued for points on the SW coast at 6am on 30 January; a further prediction was a ‘south to southeast gale, veering southwest to west, severe at times especially on parts of the coast, beginning to moderate tonight’. (2)

Not only were there few wrecks for January 1943, detail on the ships involved is sparse and/or widely dispersed among sources, not helped by wartime censorship of sources we would normally rely on, such as newspapers. As Wyetown and Bloodhound demonstrate, weather data helps to fill the gap for vessels not lost to war causes.

Footnotes:

(1) Daily Weather Report of the Meteorological Office, Air Ministry, London, Wednesday 14th January, 1943, No.25638 https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/IO_5245f1c2-b185-42e0-99d5-3aefd5c4acaf/

(2) Daily Weather Report of the Meteorological Office, Air Ministry, London, Saturday 30th January, 1943, No.25654 and Sunday 31st January, 1943, No.25655 (Met Office Digital Library and Archive, Daily Weather Report January 1943 https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/IO_5245f1c2-b185-42e0-99d5-3aefd5c4acaf/

No.69 Diary of the War No.4

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HMS Hood

The loss of HMS Hood, built 1916, and sunk in 1941, by shells from the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen in one of the Royal Navy’s worst disasters of the Second World War, is well-known. Less well-known is her predecessor of the same name, built in 1891 and disposed of on 4 November 1914.

Aerial view of Portland Harbour from the south-west. © English Heritage, reference 24688_028
Aerial view of Portland Harbour from the south-west, showing the gap between the breakwaters nearest the viewer: last resting place of HMS Hood. © English Heritage, 24688_028

Disposed? Surely a country at war needed all the warships it could get? The answer lies in her history and in the exigencies of war. Hood was the least functional of the Royal Sovereign-class warships, built in 1891. She was let down by her low freeboard (the side of the ship between the waterline and deck) which left her ill-equipped for rough British weather in rough British waters and serving principally in the Mediterranean or in static roles in home ports.

After three months of war the full scale of the threat at sea was not yet apparent. Most of the war losses in English waters between the declaration of war to 4 November 1914 were 27 ships sunk by mines, but the emerging picture worldwide was sobering:

Loss to Mines 3 August-4 November:

22 British ships for 24,609 tons; 4 Allied ships for 3,019 tons; 22 neutrals for 27,008 tons

Surface ships 3 August-4 November:

64 British ships for 189,229 tons; 5 Allied ships for 10,140 tons; 1 neutral for 3,804 tons (1)

One British ship had already been sunk by a U-boat off Norway on 20 October, the first recorded loss to U-boat activity, and on 31 October, HMS Hermes, Hood’s contemporary from the 1890s, fitted out as an experimental seaplane carrier, had been torpedoed in the eastern Straits of Dover.

This was a sign of things to come: British naval bases began to look vulnerable to submarine and torpedo attack. Portland, in the English Channel, followed Scapa Flow, Orkneys, in having blockships sunk for their protection. HMS Hood was scuttled for this purpose beside the entrance to the South Ship Channel between Portland’s inner and outer breakwaters, to prevent an attack on the base – where she still lies, a century after she was scuttled. She is now a well-collapsed wreck on which diving is now forbidden.

Sinking HMS Hood paradoxically extended her usefulness in a wartime role. Physically, she partially bridges the gap between the breakwaters. Conceptually, this use of Hood is also a link between the shore installations of naval and harbour infrastructure and the ships that used them, by transforming a ship into structure.

(1) Sourced from Lloyd’s War Losses 1914-18, pp1-5