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Contents 1 1942 2 1944 2.1 History 2.2 Aftermath 2.3 Memorials to the victims 3 See also 4 External links 5 Footnotes

Exercise Tiger was the code name for two military exercises held in the United Kingdom during the Second World War:

• The first, conducted in 1942, was an Army-level exercise by Commonwealth forces and the largest ever held in the UK up to then.
• The second, in 1944, was a full-scale rehearsal for the D-Day invasion of Normandy and led to the deaths of almost one thousand American troops as a result of both blunders by the Allied forces and enemy attack by German boats.

In April 1941, when General Montgomery became commander of South-Eastern Command in the UK, he conducted the largest military exercise to date in the UK, Exercise Tiger, in May 1942, a combined forces operation involving 100,000 troops. Troops participating in Tiger noted that it was particularly gruelling for the infantry involved, who marched over 100 miles during the course of the exercise.^[1]

A second exercise by the same name was also conducted in 1944; this was an eight-day practice run for the Utah Beach landings of the D-Day invasion. During the Exercise, an Allied convoy was attacked, resulting in the deaths of 946 American servicemen.^[2]

In late 1943, the British Government told 3000 local residents in the area of Slapton that they must evacuate their homes as part of the war effort. Some of them had never left their villages before.^[3]

Landing exercises had started in December 1943. Exercise Tiger was one of the larger exercises that would take place in April and May 1944. The make up of Slapton Beach was selected for its similarity to Utah beach, namely a gravel beach, followed by a strip of land and then a lake.

The exercise was to last from 22 April until 30 April 1944, at the Slapton Sands beach in Slapton, South Devon, United Kingdom. On board nine large Tank landing ships (LSTs), the 30,000 troops prepared for their mock beach landing.

Protection for the exercise area came from the Royal Navy. Two destroyers, three Motor Torpedo Boats and two Motor Gun Boats patrolled the entrance to Lyme Bay and Motor Torpedo Boats were watching the Cherbourg area where German E-boats were based.

The first practice assaults took place on the morning of the 27 April. These proceeded successfully, but then early in the morning of 28 April, German E-boats who had left Cherbourg on patrol spotted a convoy of 8 LSTs carrying vehicles and combat engineers of the 1st Engineer Special Brigade in Lyme Bay and attacked. One transport caught fire and was abandoned, a second sunk shortly after being torpedoed, a third was set on fire but eventually made it back to shore. The remaining ships and their escort fired back and the E-boats made no more attacks. The attack caused over 600 casualties, compared to only about 200 in the Utah Beach invasion. 638 servicemen were killed - 441 US Army and 197 US Navy personnel.^[4] Many servicemen drowned in the cold sea waters whilst waiting to be rescued. Soldiers unused to being at sea panicked and put on their lifebelts wrongly. In some cases this meant that when they jumped into the water, the weight of their combat packs flipped them onto their backs, pushing their heads underwater and drowning them. Dale Rodman, who travelled on LST 507, commented "The worst memory I have is setting off in the lifeboat away from the sinking ship and watching bodies float by."^[5]

Of the two ships assigned to protect the convoy, only one was present. HMS Azalea, a corvette was leading the nine LSTs in a straight line, a formation which later drew criticism since it presented an easy target to the E-boats. HMS Scimitar, a World War I destroyer and the second boat which was supposed to be present, had checked into Plymouth for minor repairs. The American forces had not been told this. When other British ships sighted the E-boats earlier in the night and told the corvette, its commander failed to tell the LST convoy, assuming incorrectly that they had already been told. This did not happen because the LSTs and British naval headquarters were operating on different frequencies.^[6] Also, British shore batteries defending Salcombe Harbour had seen silhouettes of the E-boats but had been instructed to hold fire so the Germans would not find that Salcombe was defended.^[7]

When the remaining LSTs landed on Slapton Beach, the blunders continued. The British heavy cruiser HMS Hawkins shelled the beach with live ammunition, following an order made by General Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, who felt that the men must be hardened by exposure to real battle conditions.^[8] British marines on the boat recorded in its log book (the only log which has since been recovered from any of the boats) that men were being killed by friendly fire. "On the beaches they had a white tape line beyond which the Americans should not cross until the live firing had finished. But the Marines said they were going straight through the white tape line and getting blown up".^[9]

As a result of official embarrassment and concerns over possible leaks just prior to the real invasion, all survivors were sworn to secrecy by their superiors. Ten missing officers involved in the exercise had Bigot-level clearance for D-Day, meaning that they knew the invasion plans and could have compromised the invasion should they have been captured alive. As a result, the invasion was nearly called off until the bodies of all ten victims were found.^[10]

There is little information about how exactly individual soldiers and sailors died. Various eyewitness accounts detail hasty treatment of casualties and unmarked mass graves in Devon fields.^[11]

Several changes resulted from mistakes made in Exercise Tiger:

• Radio frequencies were standardised; the British escort vessels were late and out of position due to radio problems, and a signal of the E-boats' presence was not picked up by the LSTs.
• Better life vest training for landing troops.
• New plans for small craft to pick up floating survivors on D-Day.

The casualty statistics from Tiger were not released until August 1944 along with the casualties of the actual D-Day landings themselves.

There is still very little documentation in official histories about the tragedy. Some commentators have called it a cover-up, but the initial critical secrecy about Tiger may have merely resulted in longer-term quietness. In his book The Forgotten Dead - Why 946 American Servicemen Died Off The Coast Of Devon In 1944 - And The Man Who Discovered Their True Story, published in 1988, Ken Small declares that the event "was never covered up; it was 'conveniently forgotten'".^[12]

With little or no support from the American or British armed forces for any venture to recover remains or dedicate a memorial to the incident, Devon resident and civilian Ken Small took on the task of seeking to memorialise the event, after discovering evidence of the aftermath washed up on the shore while beachcombing in the early 1970s.

In 1974, Mr. Small bought from the US Government the rights to a submerged tank discovered by his search efforts. In 1984, with the aid of local residents and diving firms, he finally raised the tank, which now stands as a memorial to the incident. (See the picture, middle right) The local authority provided a plinth on the seafront to put the tank on, and erected a plaque in memory of those men killed (bottom right).

Ken Small died of cancer in March 2004, a few weeks before the 60th anniversary of the Exercise Tiger incident.

In 2006, the Slapton Sands Memorial Tank Limited (a non-profit organisation, one of whose directors is Mr. Small's son Dean) are seeking to establish a more prominent memorial listing the names of all the victims of the attacks on Exercise Tiger.^[13]

• Battle of Normandy
• World War II European Theater
• World War II

• Exercise Tiger at The Naval Historical Center
• Exercise Tiger U.S. Memorial Site
• Slapton Village Tiger Page
• Detailed account of Exercise Tiger and of Ken Small's role
• An extensive research about the event
• History of Exercise Tiger from the West Virginia State Archives
• Biographies of West Virginians Killed During Exercise Tiger
• Slapton Sands Memorial Tank website