D-Day Supply Mulberry A and B

As a ex-engineer I am interested in the back story of D-Day, the engineering requirements and solutions really were extraordinary. This is a small piece that I put together for my Facebook page, French Wargames Holidays @l’hotel de Hercé.

DDay plus 1, while the foothold was expanding in France, the supply planning swung into full action, 132 tugs departed england on the evening of the 6th of June with the parts for the two mulberry harbours.

Mulberry A team, the US construction seebees had a hard time at Omaha, still under fire and the port location was full of obstacles that required explosives to remove.

Mulberry B team, British No 1 construction and repair group started to work quickly at Arromanches.
The first task was to survey the location of the caissons and pier heads, then mark them with buoys.

The first components to arrive were the blocking ships, scuttled in overlapping patterns to avoid wave penetration and excessive scouring.

The LST pier heads and Whale roadways were in place by the 9th and heavy vehicles started using them on the 14th.

The harbours arrived off the coast and by the 13th, Gooseberry 1 at Utah was unloading ships, followed by Gooseberry 3 at Arromanches, 4 at Courselle (Juno) and 5 at Ouistreham (Sword).

The bombardons strings were in place by the 17th.

The Phoenix departed England on the 10th and by the 18th 75 were in place, one was damaged by a tug during a night collision.

Ten days after the landings the harbour was almost complete. Then on the 19th a great storm hit Normandy and lasted for three days, Mulberry A at Omaha was completely wrecked and abandoned except for some pier heads and whale roadways. I watched a documentry some time agao and it seems that at Mulberry A, quite a number of instructions by the construction team particularly the overlapping of the blocking ships and the anchor points for the Phoenix units was ignored or missed.

Mulberry B 10 months after D-Day, and over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tons of supplies were landed before it was fully decommissioned.

cheers

Matt