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News1 min ago
After D Day
I thought I posted this yesterday but cant find it so here goes again.
I have been puzzled for years as to the who how and when, the D D ay beaches and seas were cleared of all the debris of war.
Was it left till after, was it cleared during the war?
Who did it and when. There was tons of stuff what with vehicles, arms and boats, and ships as well as the human remains.
I visited the beaches a while back and was really moved by it all. yet nothing can be found about the clean up.
Although everything else has gone, the Mulberry harbour has been left as has some guns left in some places, who decided what and where etc.
So this is a wide ranging question really and I would be grateful for any answers on the subject.......
I have been puzzled for years as to the who how and when, the D D ay beaches and seas were cleared of all the debris of war.
Was it left till after, was it cleared during the war?
Who did it and when. There was tons of stuff what with vehicles, arms and boats, and ships as well as the human remains.
I visited the beaches a while back and was really moved by it all. yet nothing can be found about the clean up.
Although everything else has gone, the Mulberry harbour has been left as has some guns left in some places, who decided what and where etc.
So this is a wide ranging question really and I would be grateful for any answers on the subject.......
Answers
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It was a very slow job. Whilst the services and local authorities generally initiated the clean up no single organisation did it, all sorts of contractors as well as the services were used. Individual business and property owners were left to get on with it themselves and were involved in a rigmarole of war damage claims to obtain partial reimbursement from the government. A lot of left over equipment was dumped into deep natural trenches out to sea, and a lot of buried buildings and installations were left where they were and still exist. Unexploded bombs are even now still being found. It was years before seaside beaches were cleared of mines and barbed wire and started to re-open and then in only very small sections. It was at least ten years before the commencement of clearance and rebuilding of severely blitzed sites in many cities started. And of course food rationing continued for many years after the war. I had lunch in Arromanche the other day and here you can see the remains of the war on the beach with the remains of Mulberry Harbour out to sea, and here is a section of Mulberry washed up on the beach.
The "debris" is still visible this side of the Channel as well. There is a section of Mulberry Harbour just offshore at Littlestone. It was a test section sunk to prove the idea would work. Just a little further down the coast is one of the pumping stations for the PLUTO project that piped petrol to the beachhead. It was camouflaged as a cottage but it's obvious from close up that all the windows and other details are just painted on. There is also a large parabolic concrete dish that was used by the Observer Corps in an attempt to hear the approach of German aircraft. Apparently it worked quite well but was nowhere near as effective as Radar. More generally, beach defences around the UK were "cleaned up" at considerable cost well into the 1950's, not least because a number of Bomb Disposal staff lost their lives or were injured in the process. There is still the occasional floating mine turning up even today and army test ranges are still dangerous because of unexploded ordnance.
Thats very interesting, dundurn. Just down the road here (Kensington) there is a current attempt to demolish a pill box. I say "attempt" because it was built in exceptionally strong Quetta Bond and even with modern demolition equipment is putting up a fine resistance. I oversaw the building of one in the early stages of the war on Hammersmith Bridge - later a bomb dropped nearby and the heavy pill box complete dropped through the bridge! Before I was conscripted I supervised a section of the pipeline from Bristol to storage tanks in the south that fed Pluto - this was a section that passed through Savernake Forest (the feeder pipelines were built much in advance of the final Pipe Line Under The Ocean). For years after the war the UK construction industry was a terrible mess - there were very little or no building materials, let alone men with the necessary skills.
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Very little went as planned at Omaha on D-Day, June 6 1944. Difficulties in navigation caused the majority of landing craft to miss their targets throughout the day. German defences were unexpectedly strong and inflicted heavy casualties on US troops as they landed. Under heavy fire the US engineers struggled to clear the beach obstacles, causing later landings to bunch around the few channels that had been cleared. Weakened by the casualties taken just to land, the surviving assault troops could not clear the heavily defended exits off the beach, causing delays for later landings. Small penetrations were eventually achieved by groups of survivors making improvised assaults, scaling the bluffs between the most heavily defended points. By the end of the day two
small isolated footholds had been won and which were then exploited over the following days to achieve the original D-Day objectives.
However, once the beachhead had been secured Omaha Beach became the location of one of the two Mulberry harbours. Construction of 'Mulberry A' at Omaha began the day after D-Day with the scuttling of ships to form a breakwater. By D+10 the harbour became operational when the first pier was completed, unloading 78 vehicles in 38 minutes.
Three days later the worst storm to hit Normandy in 40 years began to blow, raging for three days and not abating until the night of June 22. The harbour was so completely wrecked that the decision was taken not to repair it; supplies being subsequently landed directly on the beach until fixed port facilities were captured. In the few days that the harbour was operational 11,000 troops, 2,000 vehicles and 9,000 tons of equipment and supplies were brought ashore. Over the 100 days following D-Day more than 1,000,000 tons of supplies, 100,000 vehicles and 600,000 men were landed, and 93,000 casualties were evacuated via Omaha Beach.
small isolated footholds had been won and which were then exploited over the following days to achieve the original D-Day objectives.
However, once the beachhead had been secured Omaha Beach became the location of one of the two Mulberry harbours. Construction of 'Mulberry A' at Omaha began the day after D-Day with the scuttling of ships to form a breakwater. By D+10 the harbour became operational when the first pier was completed, unloading 78 vehicles in 38 minutes.
Three days later the worst storm to hit Normandy in 40 years began to blow, raging for three days and not abating until the night of June 22. The harbour was so completely wrecked that the decision was taken not to repair it; supplies being subsequently landed directly on the beach until fixed port facilities were captured. In the few days that the harbour was operational 11,000 troops, 2,000 vehicles and 9,000 tons of equipment and supplies were brought ashore. Over the 100 days following D-Day more than 1,000,000 tons of supplies, 100,000 vehicles and 600,000 men were landed, and 93,000 casualties were evacuated via Omaha Beach.
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