Exercise Tiger

Exercise Tiger. 22-30 April 1944. , In February 1944, soon after the arrival of Generals Eisenhower and Montgomery in England to lead Operation Overlord, planning for the D-Day invasion accelerated and expanded. To the three Norman beaches already selected as invasion sites, they added two more: Sword Beach, on the eastern flank, and Utah Beach, on the western flank. The Supreme Commander selected Maj. Gen. Joseph Lawton Collins, commander of the U.S. Army's VII Corps, to lead the D-Day landing on Utah Beach. The 4th Infantry Division, with the support of the 1st Engineer Special Brigade (ESB), would spearhead the assault. , , As their participation was a late addition to Overlord, all U.S. Army and Navy personnel assigned to participate in the Utah Beach landing at once began intense training for their amphibious assault on the new beach. With D-Day but weeks away, First U.S. Army ordered Gen. Collins to conduct a full-dress rehearsal (Exercise Tiger) for the invasion of Utah Beach from 22-30 April 1944. The operations plan for Exercise Tiger called the VIl Corps troops to move from their encampments to marshaling areas on the south coast of England, whence they would travel to assembly ports to embark troopships and landing vessels. Exercise Tiger's invasion fleet, designated "Force U" and led by Rear Adm. Donald Moon, would thereupon sail into the waters of Lyme Bay and release embarked personnel on a stretch of south Devon shoreline known as Slapton Sands, On 28 April, D-Day for Exercise Tiger, the first waves of 4th Infantry Division troops would lead VII Corps ashore. Although Exercise Tiger was a rehearsal, the danger of enemy attacks from sea or air was real, and all Force U convoys required air cover and naval escorts for protection. One convoy, Convoy 1-4, comprising eight tank landing ships (LSTs) crammed with 1st ESB troops and equipment slated to land on Slapton Sands in the wake of the 4th Infantry Division, depended upon a single Royal Navy corvette, HMS Azalea, for protection. Not long after midnight on 28 April, a flotilla of German Schnellboote, speedy attack craft armed with two torpedoes apiece, spotted Convoy 1-4 and stole upon it in the darkness. , , At 0200, the Schnellboote crews launched a coordinated, close-range attack with torpedoes and gunfire. Swift and unexpected, it began and ended before HMS Azalea managed so much as a single answering round. Within minutes, U.S. Navy LST-507 and LST-531 disappeared, first in flames and then under water; LST-289 sustained severe damage but did not sink. More than a thousand American casualties resulted, among them some 150 deaths from enemy fire, drowning, or exposure. Two components of the 1st ESB, the 3206th Quartermaster Service Company, and the 557th Quartermaster Railhead Company, were all but annihilated , , That information remained classified long after D-Day, but the immediate lessons drawn from it were neither lost on nor wasted by Operation Overlord's planners, leaders, soldiers, and sailors. That VII Corps would suffer far fewer casualties assaulting Utah Beach than in Exercise Tiger suggests as much. , , In memory of the soldiers and sailors whose sacrifice six weeks before the event. .