Naval Force 'L'

Discussion in 'The War at Sea' started by Trux, Apr 22, 2014.

  1. Bart150

    Bart150 Member

    Thanks, Mike, It seems a crazy system to me. It means you can’t say ‘get your ship to a certain spot at H+9 hours’. To be clear you’d have to say something like‘get your ship to a certain spot at H+9 hours (using the Omaha not the Gold definition of H-hour and assuming the definition isn’t changed)’

    But I don’t feel strongly about any of that. What I’m really interested in is Group L4.

    You say Group L4 sailed from Harwich at H-16 Hours. So what time of day on June 5 was H-16 hours?

    Now there is this complication. The picture I have is the following: In the days before June 5 the LCTs and LSTs of the 22nd Armoured Brigade were loaded up and moored in the Harwich/Felixstowe area. On D-1 they travelled down the Essex coast and into the Thames Estuary to Southend. There they met their escort of warships (which I suppose had come from Chatham) and the complete convoy was assembled (analogously to L1 and L3). So the complete convoy set out from Southend, and it would be interesting to know what the time of their departure was.

    BTW The War Diary of the 4th CLY, which travelled in L4, has them leaving the Harwich area at 0915 on June 5, although it doesn’t mention Southend.

    Anyway, thanks very much for providing some great information so far on this thread.

    Bart
     
  2. Trux

    Trux 21 AG

    Bart,

    For your purpose the time of H Hour is more straightforward. The notional time used in planning convoys was 0630 for the US beaches and 0730 for the British beaches. Thus H-16 for Force L is 1530 on D-1. (Check my sums. I was never any good at Maths.)

    Mike
     
  3. Bart150

    Bart150 Member

    Thanks for that, Mike

    I find the information you have posted extremely valuable. I hope you will not take it amiss if I pose some questions of detail:

    You begin with ‘This thread will attempt to describe Force 'L' and its loading TIMETABLE’ (my stress).
    You say of group L4:
    The group sailed from Harwich at H-16 Hours sailing at 8 knots. It was timed to pass K1 at H+8 hours and reach the Lowering Point at H+16½ hours. 1st Flight LCTs were to beach at H+17½ hours and 2nd Flight LCTs at H+18½ hours. LSTs had to wait for Rhinos.
    From the way you have worded this I take it that all the times you give are the PLANNED times. Is that so?
    Of course, PLANNED time is not necessarily ACTUAL time. For example, the war diary of 4th City of London Yeomanry, part of L4, which records what actually happened to that unit, says ‘arrive at bridgehead and anchor at 2200’, ie H+14½, ie several hours earlier than implied by your timings above.

    Can you define K1 and Lowering Point, please?

    I’m not clear whether the information you give about items loaded is ACTUAL as opposed to PLANNED, but this distinction seems to me of less importance than in the case of timings.
    My understanding is that L4 carried the whole of 22nd Armoured Brigade, which possessed about 300 tanks.
    Suppose I go through your L4 lists and count all the items described as ‘Cromwell’, ‘Sherman’ ‘Stuart’ or ‘Tank’. Will that give me a fairly accurate figure for the total number of tanks the force carried, or have I missed something?

    ‘GS’ comes up a lot in the loading lists; eg
    1 3ton 4 X 4 GS from Headquarters 104 Beach Sub Area.
    What does ‘GS’ stand for?

    You say that the LSTs of L4 had to wait for Rhinos.Where did these Rhinos come from? They are not listed as separate vessels in the convoy, nor as items loaded on any of the LSTs within L4. And how many Rhinos did L4 need?


    Thanks in advance for further enlightenment on some or all of these matters.

    Bart
     
  4. Trux

    Trux 21 AG

    Bart,

    I will do my best. The thread on Force L is really a supplement to the threads on Sword, Juno and Gold which have a great deal of detailed information. and will contain much of the information you want. However since I wrote and posted the information I can probably find it more quickly than you can.

    My main interest is in the operation of the beaches so that 7 Armoured Division to me is just another commodity to be landed and cleared from the beach.

    The sources for all the D Day threads are original documents from the Public Record Office (many thousands of pages). There will be minor differences between the plan and the actuality. Where these are known they are mentioned.
     
  5. Tom OBrien

    Tom OBrien Senior Member

    Bart,

    G.S. is, I think, General Service, and basically means a non-specialist lorry (or 'B' vehicle) which could be used to carry rations, ammunition, fuel, troops, general supplies, etc and was not modified to carry one particular commodity.

    One thing to remember about all these loading tables is that they were subject to regular and up to the last minute amendment - if you want exact statistics about the number of tanks a particular unit had on landing you are probably better off looking in the war diary of that unit and its superior formation.

    Cheers

    Tom
     
  6. Trux

    Trux 21 AG

    Bart,

    The source documents for Force L are planning documents. Force L did not itself report on the actual landing of units, this was in the hands of Forces S, J and G. The Landing Tables and the Orders and Instructions for Force L are dated 24 May, which was as late as the final instructions could be left given the time it took to assemble and load the various ships and craft. The Landing Tables will be accurate for numbers of armoured vehicles. It is known that some units loaded extra and unauthorised small vehicles.

    Buoy K1 marked the entrance to the swept channels. The Lowering Point was initially the point where the LSIs lowered their LCAs. This was some ten miles off shore. Subsequently all groups passed this point and were then directed to a beach or were held until they could be landed or unloaded. From here it still took an hour to reach the beach.

    Regarding time of arrival at the Lowering Position the Landing Tables usually say that the ships or craft should be there BY a certain time rather than AT a certain time. So early is no problem. They usually had to anchor and wait until ordered into the beaches by the beach organisation.

    Rhino Ferries are described in the Sword thread. It was thought that the shallow slope of the beaches would not allow LSTs to beach and unload. Rhino Ferries were powered rafts which could carry the entire load of an LST in two trips. They were to ferry LST loads to shore. Rhino were towed across the Channel by LSTs of the Assault Groups and then remained to unload later arrivals. Some were lost or damaged and the remaining Rhinos were very slow in the heavy seas so that on D+1 LSTs were beached and dried out for unloading. Apparently without ill effects.

    As Tom says GS is General Service (load carrying).

    Mike
     
  7. Bart150

    Bart150 Member

    Thank you, Mike and Tom. I need to do more research before I trespass on your time again and ask anything complicated. I just have one matter worth clearing up right now.

    You say that the ‘Lowering Point’ was some ten miles off shore. I presume you can’t mean that it was literally one point ten miles away from the midpoint of the five beaches (and thus a great deal more than ten miles away from Sword or Utah). Were there five such Lowering Points, one for each beach? Or more? Or was it a line (rather than a point) drawn ten miles from the shore?

    Whatever the answer to the above, am I right in guessing that it was at the Lowering Point that the naval escorts of Force L left the convoy and could return to port?

    Bart
     
  8. Trux

    Trux 21 AG

    Bart,

    Gold and Juno each had two Lowering Positions, Sword had one. They were a precise point laid down on charts and marked by buoys. They were intended to be far enough out to sea to be safe from shore bombardment and close enough for the small craft to make the journey to shore. Of course there were areas close by which had been swept of mines and were available for ships and craft to anchor and wait to be called forward.

    Force L was the British Follow Up Force and contained ships and craft for the three beaches. On arrival at the Lowering Position they became the responsibility of the three naval force commanders, S, J and G. Escorts for Force L would be released at that point but may have been released earlier. The exact organisation changed as the far shore organisations developed.

    Mike
     
  9. Bart150

    Bart150 Member

    Tell me if you disagree, but I understand that the main strategic point of Force L was follows:
    The surprise amphibious assault by a strong force of infantry in the early hours of D-day would in all probability succeed in establishing a bridgehead on the Normandy shore, the planners believed. That was the easy part. But on D+1 and the following days the enemy’s Panzer divisions might move in from other parts of occupied France and wipe out the Allied bridgehead. That was the great danger. Thus it was vital to increase the British armoured strength in the first 24 hours after the invasion. Force L did that.

    Quite how vital was this role? How dramatic a difference did Force L make? Force L brought somewhat more than 300 tanks (I’ve counted). How many tanks were there already, having been landed in the first hours of D-day? Did Force L’s 300 double the available armoured strength of the eastern task force? More than double it? Less than that? Anybody have any idea?

    Bart
     
  10. idler

    idler GeneralList

    The role of Force L (i.e. the armoured part of 7 Armd Div) was not so much to defend the bridgehead as to draw the counterattacking panzer divisions away from it and, more specifically, the American half. They were supposed to head for and beyond Villers-Bocage within the first couple of days. Because of the speed of the German reaction, that initial battle was fought somewhat closer and on a wider front around Tilly (8 Armd Bde) and Carpiquet - the Germans sacrificed the weight of their attack for its speed. The deeper thrust eventually went in a week later and forced the premature deployment of 2 Pz Div who were heading right for the boundary of 2 Br and 1 US Armies.
     
  11. Rough figures from the Landing Tables - 'cruiser'-type tanks, mostly Shermans of all sorts (75mm std, DD & Flail, 17pdr):

    SWORD (First Tide only) - 250
    JUNO (First & Second Tides) - 275
    GOLD (First & Second Tides) - 260

    These do not include the various SP equipments (M10, Centaurs, M7), AVsRE, light tanks or armoured cars.

    Michel
     
  12. Bart150

    Bart150 Member

    Thanks Michel,
    Am I correctly interpreting your figures if I say this?
    Forces G, J and S brought circa 785 tanks.
    Force L brought another circa 300.
    Therefore Force L increased the number of tanks by about 40%.
    Bart
     
  13. Bart,

    Yes, that's more or less so, only that we must use the same criteria and exclude about 40 Stuart and 8 CS tanks. I count about 265 cruiser tanks in Force "L", so the proportion would be one third of the tanks of all three Assault Forces, i.e. the same as any one Assault Force in terms of tanks.

    Also keep in mind that the frontier between Force "J" and Force "L" is rather blurred, with Serials being shuffled between these two Forces until very shortly before D Day.

    And tanks are not everything...

    Michel
     
  14. Bart150

    Bart150 Member

    Thanks, Michel. Clear.
    Bart
     
  15. CommanderChuff

    CommanderChuff Senior Member

    Mike,

    I feel really mean in opening up this thread again after so long and posing another seemingly pointless query, particularly as you have indicated that your main interest is in the landing of the fighting forces on the beaches. However, your kindliness in responding to odd questions as been outstanding in the past so here goes.

    There is evidence that Folkestone was used to load and ship out troops for D-Day. From reading the lists for first waves forces I am assuming that this would be for Force L. The harbour was provided with LCI hards and craft maintenance team. The harbour is identified as a Combined Operations Base, being commissioned on 14/3/43 and paid off on 10/4/45. Some records show that the base was in existence as early as 1/12/42. The local hotel Royal Pavilion was the original South Eastern Railway hotel and is on the dockside, and was taken over as HMS Allenby. Lt Peter Henry Brown was assigned to the RN unit as an small craft helmsman instructor in Oct 1944, and WREN Peggy Stoker was on food stores detail from 1943. She saw landing craft enter the harbour to embark troops in the evening of D-Day and sail away.

    In your records you note that there were no LSI's in the force L convoy, and it also seems that there were no embarkations from Folkestone.

    Please would you be able to do a quick search of your database on Allenby or Folkestone?

    With the grateful thanks of a lesser mortal, David
     
  16. Trux

    Trux 21 AG

    By one of those seemingly frequent coincidences I was looking at some of your posts regarding WD locomotives etc. I am just cleaning, tidying and improving my modest collection of such locos.

    I am fairly sure that Folkestone was not used for the initial waves but was used by the later Shuttle Service. This would mainly be craft returning from the far shore. I will do my best.

    Mike
     
  17. CommanderChuff

    CommanderChuff Senior Member

    Thank you for any help. And to justify my request I have posted some pics of the Folkestone Harbour railway model which I am building.
     
  18. Trux

    Trux 21 AG

    David,

    A superb project. I have toyed with the idea of building a harbour or Mulberry in 1:285 scale. Even that is daunting.

    So far I have only negative reports. Folkestone does not appear in any of the plans for Overlord/Neptune. The British Assault Forces, S, J and G, loaded at the Solent ports with some small craft at other south coast ports. Follow Up Force L loaded at the Thames and east coast ports. All were loaded well before D Day. Folkestone does appear in Admiralty War Diaries but mainly when it was shelled by German Cross Channel guns, presumably one reason it was not used for Overlord/Neptune.

    Operation Fortitude was based in Kent and Sussex. This was the deception operation which gave the impression that the main invasion force was assembling here in order to land near Calais. No real landing craft could be spared for this.

    A possible involvement in D Day is in rescuing personnel from the Liberty Ship Sambut which was sunk by German coastal guns off Dover. Most of the rescue effort was from Dover.

    Folkestone really came into use when the French coast was cleared.

    Still looking.

    Mike
     
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  19. CommanderChuff

    CommanderChuff Senior Member

    Mike,

    The most difficult part of your project is making the decision to start on the harbour of your choice. But having been there myself I can only encourage you to do it now, and stop faffing. It's not that you have anything else better to do after the great work of documenting the Overlord landings.

    Just think of all the mulberry harbour bits you can have floating around, good luck,

    David
     
    Last edited: Feb 2, 2018
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  20. Trux

    Trux 21 AG

    True.

    A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. I have scale plans of all the Mulberry components and all the ships and craft using the harbour. Also a large collection of 1:285 scale vehicles.

    However there is stiff competition from my large collection of 1:76 scale British army vehicles and French Napoleonic figures.

    Is there a tradition of modelling amongst naval persons? Long ago there was John Sandars, a submariner who made very detailed and comprehensively stowed models of vehicles in N.Africa. I also knew a person who described himself as a two and a half ringer in the Andrew on choppers (who needs codes and ciphers). He made or converted models for use on his Scalectrix when on leave.

    Mike.
     

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