Disaster Before D-Day: Exercise Tiger

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2022

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The D-Day landings of June 6 1944 were the largest amphibious landing in the history of warfare, and are famed as a major turning point towards Allied victory. But they weren’t without planning and practice. In late April 1944, the Allies launched one of their trial runs, Exercise Tiger, off Slapton Sands in Devon. The aim was a closely choreographed landing, the result was a disaster. For this episode we're digging into our Warfare archives to hear Dr Harry Bennett from the University of Plymouth discussing the players in this trial run, and how it became the Battle of Lyme Bay.

This episode first aired June 2nd 2021.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone I'm your host James Rogers and this is the Warfare Podcast.
0:04.0	It is also the 78th anniversary of D-Day this week as I'm sure you know.
0:09.1	At the beginning of the week we learn about the Green Howards and their incredible push inland up to 10
0:15.6	kilometers on D-Day they're awarding of the VC and in fact that miraculous
0:20.8	landing that went so well it got them off the beaches in less than an hour.
0:26.0	And if you want to watch that documentary, D-Day,
0:29.0	24 hours in Normandy, then you can head over to historyhit.com and you can use the code D-Day
0:36.4	monthly to get 50% off your subscription. Check it out. Now today we're looking into some of the exercises before D-Day because one of the reasons why it was so successful for the Green Howards and D-Day in general was a success
0:52.0	was because the Allies had been planning for years this invasion.
0:56.8	But not just the invasion itself, they had been conducting exercises that made sure that the troops would land together in that combined arms tactic formation and that everything would go smoothly.
1:09.0	One of these trial runs was exercise Tiger of Slapton Sands in Devon. The aim was to closely
1:16.8	choreograph the landings, but the end result was disaster. To hear all about this, we've remastered one of our episodes from a couple of
1:25.2	years ago with Dr Harry Bennett from the University of Plymouth. Harry is
1:29.7	fantastic and he really casts light on this forgotten part of D-Day history.
1:35.2	He discusses the key players, the trial run, how it unfolded, how it turned into disaster,
1:41.2	and how it's become the Battle of Lime Bay. Enjoy. Hi Harry, welcome back to the Warfare Podcast, how you doing today? I'm doing good and hope all your listeners are doing equally as well.
2:05.0	Well, it's almost summer.
2:07.0	Is it almost the end of term there in Plymouth?
2:09.0	No, we continue forever.
2:11.0	We carry on all the time with our quest to go boldly and drive back
2:16.6	the frontiers of knowledge. Wow I'm inspired. Good stuff. Now tell me Harry, we're approaching D day the anniversary June 6th the Normandy
2:26.8	landings but one thing that we often forget is just how much planning and
	...

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