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| Europe | |
| U.S. GIs in British WWII Disaster Honored | |
| 2004-04-26 | |
| STOKENHAM, England (AP) - Sixty years ago, 749 U.S. soldiers and sailors were killed when their D-Day landing practice was attacked by German torpedo boats off the south coast of England. It was one of the least-known Allied disasters of World War II. On Sunday, at St. Michael's and All Angels church in the coastal village of Stokenham, American and British veterans attended a memorial service for the men of Exercise Tiger, who died in the early morning darkness of April 28, 1944. The eight-day exercise was the U.S. 4th Infantry Division's practice for the D-Day invasions, using the beach at Slapton, near Stokenham, because of its similarity to the Normandy landing sites. The exercise involved 3,000 ships and 30,000 men. Only one British corvette provided escort for the slow-moving convoy of U.S. Navy ships to Slapton Sands. Nine fast-moving German torpedo boats happened upon the convoy, sank two ships and badly damaged a third. The attack killed nearly four times as many men as the division later lost in the D-Day landing, June 6, 1944. The survivors were warned to keep it secret, and the casualties were not announced until nearly two months after the Normandy invasion. Full details were not known until 1974, when the records were declassified. The convoy was lightly guarded and, because of a typographical error, the American ships were on the wrong radio frequency and unable to receive warnings. Because the soldiers were top-heavy in full battle dress, many bodies were found floating feet up. After Sunday's memorial service, the veterans and local residents attended a wreath-laying ceremony at a U.S. Sherman tank that had been lost at sea during the operation. It was recovered in 1984 to become a beachside memorial.
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #6 "nobody does Loyalty and Honor like the British" Nice to know us Brits have changed our reputation ... once we were known as "Perfidious Albion" (for the Treaty of Utrecht, not our finest hour that.) |
| Posted by: A 2004-04-26 11:29:12 AM |
| #5 Than you, nobody does Loyalty and Honor like the British. |
| Posted by: raptor 2004-04-26 10:36:49 AM |
| #4 A poignant reminder that wars are fought by men and men make mistakes. It's just that in war, the price of a mistake is so much higher. One benefit of an all-volunteer force is that the level of training is higher and the number of fatal mistakes correspondingly lower. Even so, "Eternal Father, strong to save... |
| Posted by: RWV 2004-04-26 9:39:54 AM |
| #3 "We had lots of setbacks and mishaps in WWII. Wonder how the media today would have played this?" Poorly. VERY poorly. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2004-04-26 9:00:23 AM |
| #2 With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, Fallen in the cause of the free. |
| Posted by: Howard UK 2004-04-26 8:44:23 AM |
| #1 Penis Jennings, Danny Rather Stupid and Tommy "America's Greatest Degenerate" Brokaw would have gone public with the date of the D-Day landing and masturbated on-air to the Allies' carnage. Traitors NOW would have been traitors THEN. Piss on 'em.... |
| Posted by: Garrison 2004-04-26 12:59:38 AM |