I waited a bit to post about D-Day due to, well look at the "tag"

[BURN_Miner]

I waited to see if anyone would post about it or even knew about this incident. Anyway, I found a nice video about D-Day itself which encompasses which Countries participated in the actual invasion and the brunt of the casualties. While it does state that the majority of the troops that landed in Normandy were from the U.K., Canada and the U.S.A., it most certainly doesn't leave out nor take credit from Australia, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, New Zealand, Norway, Poland and The Netherlands.

 

12 Nations in total coming together to fight Germany. - source

 

 

Exercise Tiger: A mock invasion of Normandy held in April, 1944 to prepare for the actual invasion in June.

 

However, here is the training accident that happened in the weeks prior to D-Day. On April 27th and 28th, 1944, the casualty number is according to the official memorial, 639 United States service members comprised of several branches, mainly Navy and Army lost their lives in the same training operation, but in two separate incidents. The first incident was on April 27th, 1944 due to a "live fire" training incident. This "live fire" training incident ended up becoming a "friendly fire" training incident with rumors of casualties being around 450 servicemen (unconfirmed total).

 

The second incident came the next morning on April 28th, 1944 during The Battle of Lyme Bay. Nine German "E-Boats" attacked the convoy that was to be partaking in the mock Normandy invasion. The convoy was supposed to be escorted by a compliment of at least 2 Destroyers, however 1 had a collision and needed to be repaired. It's replacement was underway, but did not make it on time. The convoy of 8 LST's  suffered heavy damage having 2 LST's sunk by torpedo's, one was set on fire was able to make it back to shore, but had lost over 100 personnel and another was damaged by Friendly Fire.

 

"Unofficial Total" is rumored to be closer to 800 deaths in this incident, with again the "Official" total stating it's 639. The Documentary below is one of many I have watched and each, while informative, at least to me, gives me a moment of pause with regards to National Security. I fully understand and support the secrecy "at the time", but the families even now (the date of the documentary I listed) had been left for so long without answers.

 

Politics aside, agenda's, conspiracies, money, pride, all that, believe me I know. I've truly have had it happen to me and almost in the same capacity. So I'm not so naive as to think a "full disclosure all the time" is good, but the length of time after the war for these people. Well, all the families wanted was closure.

 

Anyway, sorry for the digression, but I wanted to bring to light these other brave men the made sure D-Day could in fact happen. They are often forgotten as the World only remembers "one day" at a time, but not what it took to get there. The logistics, the mistakes and yes, the losses.

 

 

[Edselman]

Wow, I can picture Ike sitting at his desk face palming just like that picture of the Star Trek guy.

[dangerhamster]

The tragedy of Exercise Tiger is well remembered over here. We've visited the memorial site several times and it's hard to reconcile the events of 1944 when looking out over the peaceful waters of the bay (it's not always wet and windy over here). http://www.exercisetigermemorial.co.uk/