Sunday, April 22, 2001

By Ron Jensen, U.K. bureau

The beach at Slapton Sands in southwest England resembles in slope and texture a spot across the English Channel that has come to be known as Utah Beach.

Somebody noted that fact nearly 60 years ago, and while the beach known as Utah has become legendary, the one at Slapton Sands remains a bit player in the drama of D-Day.

Had it not been for the tragedy that occurred there just a few weeks before the great invasion of France, the English beach would be even less well-known.

It was there, in the early hours of April 28, 1944, that a rehearsal for D-Day code-named Exercise Tiger went horribly wrong when nine German torpedo boats roared from the darkness and surprised the landing ships laden with men and materiel. Three ships were hit by torpedoes. One limped to shore.

One sank in six minutes. The third burst into flames.

In all, 749 lives were lost — soldiers and sailors — in the costliest training incident in World War II. Many of them are buried in the Cambridge American Cemetery at Madingley, England.

The event will be remembered at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 29, at a memorial erected on the beach where many of the bodies of the dead came to rest. The ceremony is planned by the Devon and Cornwall Branch of the Royal Tank Regiment Association.

The association is linked with the 70th Tank Battalion Association in the United States. The 70th lost many men during the tragedy of Exercise Tiger.

The ceremony is held near Torcross, about 30 miles south of Exeter on the coast, which is about 200 miles southwest of London.

Exercise Tiger was a small part of the large rehearsal effort for what remains the largest invasion in the history of the world. The area in southwest England had been evacuated, so the training could be as realistic as possible.

Ships from the Royal Navy, in fact, shelled the emptied British villages to sharpen their eyes for the real thing. Many of the local pubs and hotels still display photos of the damage they suffered due to the friendly fire.

But the events of April 28 are the only reason the training exercises are remembered beyond the now quiet villages and narrow roads of Devon.

At the time, news of the tragedy was withheld. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and other top commanders feared the Germans would connect the exercise to Utah Beach and the upcoming invasion. Also, several American officers in the exercise carried information about the invasion. Fortunately, they either or survived or their bodies were found, calming fears that the German boat crews might have picked up a survivor with information of great magnitude.

The immediate hush-up has led to charges in recent years that the tragedy was covered up. An investigation of the incident did show plenty of blame to go around.

For one thing, there were not enough escort vessels assigned to protect the landing ships from this type of attack. Plus, because of a typographical error, the British and U.S. participants were operating on different radio frequencies.

When a British ship did notice the torpedo boats and transmitted the warning, it was not received by the Americans.

The attack was publicized after the veil of secrecy was lifted in the weeks following D-Day. The story ran in Stars and Stripes.

The U.S. Army’s official history of D-Day, "Cross Channel Attack" by Gordon Harrison, published in 1950, noted the loss of life and ships on page 270.

Other publications, too, have made mention of the ill-fated Exercise Tiger, making it, as one author put it, "the cover-up that never was."

One of the men who died during Exercise Tiger was Leland Simmons, the great-uncle of reporter Ron Jensen. Simmons is buried at Cambridge American Cemetery.

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