Down through the ages the
English Channel has saved Britain from invasion by enemy
forces, as the great Spanish Amada found out to their
cost in 1588. It looked so easy on the map, after all
the Channel is but a few miles wide!
In the early days of World
War II, this same watery barrier had deterred Hitler’s
Nazi troops, isolating Britain and the British as the
German army went on to conquer most of Western Europe.
By 1944 the fortunes of war
had turned somewhat: following successes in North Africa
and southern Europe, it was now the Allied troops who
were planning a return to northwest Europe across this
narrow stretch of water.
The challenge presented to
the Allies however was significant as the Germans had
used their years in France to turn all of the Channel
ports into fortresses, so much so that there was no
question of capturing them in an attack either from sea
or air.
And yet the Allies needed
harbours in order to land the hundreds of thousands of
men and millions of tons of supplies that they would
need if Operation Overlord, the code-name given to
D-Day, was to succeed.
And so the seemingly
ridiculous idea was mooted of using artificial harbours
to land and support what was to be the world’s greatest
invasion. Such was the scale of the operation that two
harbours would be required, each the size of Dover
itself.
The harbours, code-named
‘Mulberries’, would consist of 73 individual
prefabricated concrete blocks which when assembled would
make up the ports, breakwaters and pontoons where ships
could tie-up and unload their precious cargoes. Floating
ramps would be used as roadways to allow the lorries to
be driven directly on to the beaches.
The component sections of
the harbours would be built in ports throughout the UK
and towed across the Channel for final assembly off the
Normandy coast.
The most spectacular feature
of the Mulberry project was the construction of the
huge, hollow blocks of concrete or caissons. Before
being flooded, they each weighed in at between 1,500 and
6,000 tonnes. The largest ones measured sixty by
seventeen metres, and were the height of a
five-storey building.
A total of 40,000 workers
were employed on this gigantic construction project
which required the opening of special building sites at
ports throughout the UK.
Mulberry harbour,
Arromanches Normandy Landing, June 1944 © National
Maritime Museum, London
In the early hours of D-Day
June 6th 1944, an invasion fleet of more than
1000 ships carrying 156,000 men headed towards the coast
of Normandy, and the individual sections of the two
Mulberry Harbours went with them.
Tugs towed the caissons and
sections of concrete and steel pontoons which would make
up the 7 miles of piers and jetties. After assembly one
harbour would support the American sector opposite
Omaha, the other the British and Canadian beaches,
opposite Arromanches.
In the first six days of the
invasion the Allies managed to land a third of a million
men on French soil. However one of the most crucial
logistical problems posed by sending a modern,
fuel-guzzling army across the Channel was the supply of
petrol.
Yet
again those crazy planners had come up with an
equally crazy idea! An undersea pipeline would
carry fuel from the Isle of Wight to Cherbourg.
The
operation was codenamed PLUTO – nothing to do
with the Disney cartoon character, but simply the
initials for Pipe Line Under The
Ocean. The undersea pipeline went into
service in Cherbourg at the start of August 1944.
Eleven
pipelines were laid across the Channel, and by April
1945 a total of 3100 tons of fuel was being delivered
daily to keep pace with the Allied armies’ advance
inland.
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