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D-Day, the 6th of June 1944, the day of the Allied landings
on the coast of France and the commencement of the campaign to free
German occupied Europe, was one of the most historic days of the 20th
century.
On
that early summer morning the focus of the long awaited preparations
and the battle itself was on the south coast of England, the
English Channel and the beaches of Normandy where five great assault
forces assembled, crossed the dangerous Channel waters and landed.
Assault Force ‘S’ at Newhaven, Shoreham and Portsmouth, destined for
SWORD beach; Assault Force ‘J’ at Portsmouth destined for JUNO beach;
Assault Force ‘G’ west of Portsmouth destined for GOLD beach;
Assault Force ‘O’ at Poole, Portland Bill and Weymouth destined for
Omaha Beach and Assault Force ‘U’ at Brixham, Dartmouth and Salcombe
destined for UTAH beach. The force comprised 156,000 men, 6000 vessels
and 9,900 aircraft made up primarily of Americans, British and
Canadians, of which almost half the total was British.
It
was an awesome, inspiring and amazing site but behind this great
Allied effort is another story, the forgotten story of Scotland and
D-Day. For such a force to the assembled, supplied, equipped, trained
and made ready it required an enormous preparatory effort and it was
in that effort that Scotland played an often secret, largely unknown
but considerable part.
The preparation began after the fall of France in 1940. It is
difficult now to appreciate just how vulnerable Britain was that
summer with Nazi Germany occupying Europe from Norway to southern
France making the whole of Britain vulnerable to attack from enemy
aircraft and from seaborne invasion. Nowhere was exempt, least of all
Scotland.
Scotland’s part in D-Day falls essentially into seven categories:
Convoys and Military Ports
Key to the resupply of the beleaguered islands and the long term
preparations for the reconquest of Europe were trans Atlantic convoys,
the “Atlantic Bridge”, bringing in food, supplies, men and equipment
from Canada and the USA, the latter remaining technically neutral
until December 1941. Huge convoys of ships comprising Royal Navy and
Merchant Marine vessels, many of them “Lend/Lease” ships from the
USA, regularly assembled in the Clyde and in the deep waters of Loch
Ewe ready to run the gauntlet of the Atlantic and the German U Boats.
The authorities however envisaged the possible total destruction by
air raids of Britain’s main west coast ports, Liverpool and the Clyde
and they therefore set about building emergency deepwater ports from
scratch at alternative sites. Two of these ports, Faslane and
Cairnryan, Military Ports Numbers 1 and 2, were built in Scotland.
These two ports were constructed in record time using military labour,
mainly men from the Royal Engineers and the Pioneer Corps. At
Cairnryan seven miles of railway were constructed in eighteen months
and although Cairnryan never worked to full capacity, both facilities
handled incoming men and equipment destined for the invasion force.
Training
 For
the landings to be successful and for breakout from the bridgehead on
the French coast to be achieved the men of all three services not only
had to be equipped they also had to be trained. It was to be training
like no other, rigorous, realistic and relentless and much of it took
place in Scotland.
Barracks, drill halls, training camps, anchorages, airfields and
billets in Scotland were occupied and used to the maximum. Land and
houses were requisitioned.
One of critical elements was the tactic of Assault Landing from the
sea using the combined force and skills of all three services. The
whole operation and all of its component parts had to be practiced and
rehearsed in detail. Training for the landings began with what were
called “dry shod” exercises where the troops “disembarked” from
vehicles on to an imaginary beach start line and then assaulted a
series of concrete and other obstacles under fire, often live fire.
One such training area for these “dry shod” exercises was Sheriffmuir
near Stirling where some seventy metres of concrete wall was built
with defensive positions and machine gun posts surrounding it to
simulate Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.
Troops then progressed to full-scale “wet shod” exercises which
increased in realism and danger as the months progressed. 17,000 men
of the 3rd Assault Division who were assigned to SWORD
beach trained in Scotland in 1943 and the winter of 1943/ 1944. They
began in Galloway, progressed to the Divisional Battle School at
Moffat, moved to the Combined Training Centre (CTC) Inveraray and
practiced their assault landings at Loch Fyne, Dorlin, Kilbride, Eigg,
Rhum and Kentra Bay, with the Field Artillery Regiments practicing
live firing of their 105mm howitzers over the bows of the LCTs
(Landing Craft Tank) on to the island of Inchmarnoch.
After reconnaissance, it was found that the area around Nairn and
Forres on the Moray Firth, and at Inver on the Dornoch Firth, bore a
remarkable resemblance to the Normandy beach areas where the landings
were to take place. In the late autumn of 1943 the civilian population
was cleared from these areas, livestock sold and crops removed before
seven full scale 3rd Division practice assault landings and
firing practices took place. For these, the troops, guns and tanks
embarked into LCTs on the beach below Fort George and were taken by
sea to the area off Wick before turning south for landfall, the length
of the journey and the freezing north east coast seas more than
simulating the actual cross Channel conditions on the day. At least
one man is known to have been killed during these exercises but there
were no major casualties similar to those of the US forces at Slapton
Sands. The remains of two Duplex-Drive DD “swimming” tanks still lie
on the seabed off Burghead and north of Findhorn Bay.
Much of the 3rd Division’s planning was done at Dunphail
House and the Divisional Battle School was located at Aberlour House.
The last full scale exercise for the 3rd Division was held
on the night of 17th/18th March 1944 when the
Division began to move south for the real thing. Other practice
assault landings took place in the west on the beaches of Arran,
amongst other places.
Aircrews trained on the numerous airfields in Scotland. Port Edgar,
HMS Lochinvar, trained mine sweeping crew; Tobermory Bay, HMS
Western Isles, under the command of the formidable Vice Admiral
Sir Gilbert Stephenson, trained convoy crews; amphibious warfare and
aircraft carrier training was based in Largs; HMS Osprey at
Dunoon and HMS Nimrod at Campbeltown were anti submarine
training bases; radar training was carried out at Sherbrooke House in
Glasgow; Royal Marines of the Special Boat Section trained at Fort
William and at Holy Loch; the main Combined Operations Base was at
Inveraray with a further centres at Castle Toward on the Cowal
peninsular and Rosneath; Royal Naval Commando formed at Coulport House
in the Firth of Clyde, HMS Armadillo at Glenfinart near
Ardentinny and at Inveraray, and they also trained at HMS Dundonald
near Troon; the Commando base was at Achnacarry. The list for all
three services is almost endless but the above does serve to show how
important Scotland was in this training and preparatory phase of the
D-Day operation.
The 52nd Lowland Division were particularly and
deliberately visible both as part of their training and as part of a
major deception plan. Designated a Mountain Division, the 52nd
trained with Norwegian troops and Indian muleteers in the Highlands of
Scotland this training culminating in two huge Divisional exercises,
GOLIATH 1 and GOLIATH 2. Polish and Czech troops trained in Fife and
the Borders.
Destined to play a key role in the D-Day landings were the Midget
Submarines or X Craft whose daring crews, along with the crews of the
“Chariot” Human Torpedoes, trained in considerable secrecy in
Scotland. Their depot ships were HMS Titania, “Tites” as she
was known throughout the submarine service, and HMS Bonadventure.
In early 1942 Titania was sent north to establish the secret
base “Port D” at Loch Erisort near Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis
while Bonadventure anchored in Loch Cairnbawn and was code
named Port HHZ. Training areas and shore bases included Loch
Striven, the Kyles of Bute Hydropathic Hotel, named HMS Varbel,
and Ardtaraig House, Varbel II.
It
was X20 under the command of Lieutenant Kenneth R Hudspeth, Royal
Australian Naval Volunteer Reserve and X23 under Lieutenant George B
Honour, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, who on Friday 2nd of
June 1944 began Operation GAMBIT. Their task was to secretly position
themselves at the mouth of the River Orne off the Normandy beaches and
to provide the vital beach navigation markers for the incoming
invasion fleet. The landings were delayed due to the terrible weather
in the Channel but, finally, in the early hours of Tuesday 6th
of June the invasion began. These two tiny, cramped X Craft had spent
seventy-six hours at sea, sixty-four hours of that submerged. Hudspeth
and Honour were both awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
Manufacture and Industry
Scotland’s contribution to D-Day also drew on her manufacturing and
industrial base. It was the Clyde built paddle steamed Talisman
that was the HQ ship for the Mulberry Harbours and large sections of
the Mulberrys themselves were tested and made in Scotland. Trials for
a floating, sectional pier and harbour system with breakwaters which
could respond to the tide and enable to Allies to land on the shallow
shelved beaches in France where there was no major port, first took
place at Garliston in South West Scotland. Eighteen pier heads were
made by Alex Findlay & Company of the Parkneuk Works in Motherwell and
many of the “Hippo” sections were made by Henry Robb at Leith and
finished at the pier now made famous by Harry Ramsden’s Fish and Chip
Shop. Over one hundred Scottish firms were involved in the sub
contracting arrangements of this massive undertaking.
Sections of PLUTO, the cross Channel fuel supply system, ships,
landing craft, navigation equipment, precision instruments, uniforms,
aero engines, ammunition, armour plating, hessian, catapult and towing
hawsers (made at the Brunton Works in Musselburgh) and the X craft
built on the Clyde are examples of Scotland’s contribution, which
along with timber, coal, distilling, farming and fishing all helped to
make the assembly of the massive invasion force possible.
Intelligence and
Meteorological Information
 The
North also played its part in the intelligence war before D-Day. There
were a considerable number of Scots working at Bletchley Park on the
Enigma material. Y Stations which intercepted the German signals, such
as that at Dirleton supplied to Bletchley the endless pages of
seemingly meaningless groups of random letters for decoding. These Y
Station operators never really knew the importance of this tedious and
demanding work and none breathed a word about it until at least thirty
years afterwards.
For a cross Channel operation on such a scale in early summer accurate
meteorological intelligence was also vital. The incoming frontal
systems from the Atlantic and the dangerous and unpredictable nature
of the English Channel made accurate forecasting as important as the
tides and the phase of the moon. In 1944 the only way to obtain this
meteorological information was by Meteorological Reconnaissance
Sorties flown by specialist RAF Squadrons. Two of these Squadrons were
based in Scotland, 518 Squadron based on Tiree and 519 Squadron based
at Skitten near Wick. Between the 4th and the 6th
of June 1944 these Squadrons flew fifteen sorties along set paths and
following set heights, codenamed RHOMBUS, RECIPE, BISMUTH and MERCER,
covering the sea area around Holland, Norway, Iceland and the North
Atlantic. The information that these flights provided was instrumental
in the decision initially to delay the landings and then finally to go
ahead in spite of the bad weather.
Deception
 An
important part of D-Day planning was the deception operation in
support of the landings. Operation OVERLORD was the codename for the
landings and the deception plan was called FORTITUDE. Plan FORTITUDE
was masterminded from London Controlling Station, Norfolk House in St
James’s Square by the Eton and Oxford educated barrister Roger Hesketh.
From the outset it was appreciated it would not be possible to hide
the movement of troops, ships, landing craft and planes but the plan
aimed to convince German Intelligence that not one landing but at
least three were being planned and that there were going to be a
number of diversionary attacks. FORTITUDE therefore set out to
persuade the Germans that there were to be possible landings in
Norway, Pas de Calais and the Bay of Biscay and that German reserves
would have to be deployed accordingly.
Plan FORTITUDE was divided into two parts FORTITUDE NORTH and
FORTITUDE SOUTH. The northern element, a potential invasion of Norway,
was Scotland’s and Northern Ireland’s part in this complex deception
and in Scotland it was commanded by a Grenadier Guardsman General Sir
Andrew Thorne based in Edinburgh. There were three methods used in
implementing FORTITUDE NORTH, wireless deception, physical deception
and special means, or double agents, all trying to create the idea
that there was a battle ready Fourth Army, comprising British,
American and Norwegian forces, assembling and training in Scotland for
attacks on Narvik and Stavanger.
But the Fourth Army did not exist as such. The 52nd Lowland
Division at Dundee, the Norwegian Brigade at Callander, the 55th
British Infantry Division in Northern Ireland, the 113th
Independent Infantry brigade in the Orkneys and the American XV Corps
in Northern Ireland were real enough but one British Division, one US
Division, three US Ranger Battalions and the whole of the Fourth Army
structure was fiction.
Wireless traffic to simulate the activities of the Fourth Army was
generated by Number 5 Wireless Group, US 3103 Signals Service
Battalion and CHL Naval WD units. Traffic was recorded in advance and
transmitters adapted so that one transmitter simulated six and one
wireless truck was therefore able to transmit the radio traffic of a
whole division.
Physical deception was also important. The 52nd Lowland
Division being particularly visible during their arduous mountain
training in Scotland. Surplus shipping assembled off Methil in the
Firth of Forth in the second week of May 1944. Some of the physical
deception was however truly deception.
Masterminded by Colonel Sir John F Turner, Royal Engineers, Day Decoys
(K Sites) and Night Decoys (Q Sites) were established throughout
Britain early in the war to deceive enemy bombers and reconnaissance
aircraft. Much of the design and building of these sites and the dummy
aircraft was done by Sound City Films at Shepperton Studios whose
General Manager was Campbeltown born Scot Norman Louden. Simulating
factories, railway yards, docks, urban layouts, airfields and the
effect of incendiaries, the K sites, QF (Q Fire), QL (Q Lighting) and
SF (Special Fire or “Starfish”) sites were built in many parts of
Scotland. There were for example four Starfish sites around Edinburgh
and nine in the Glasgow and Lanarkshire area. Specifically for the
purposes of the D-Day deception plan dummy Boston and Spitfire
aircraft were displayed at Peterhead, Fraserburgh and Fordoun.
Special Means or double agents were also a key element of FORTITUDE
NORTH. A number of agents were involved but two in particular stand
out in the Scottish context, Roman Garby-Czerniawski codenamed BRUTUS
and Juan Pujol codenamed GARBO, known to the Germans as BENEDICT. In
respect of Scotland their task was to persuade German Intelligence
that large Allied troop numbers were training in Scotland and that an
attack on Norway was planned.
BRUTUS was a Polish officer who persuaded the Germans that they had
turned him but, in fact working for the British, it was he who relayed
to German Intelligence the main outline of the battle formation of the
fictitious Fourth Army in Scotland. GARBO’S part
was more complex. Recruited in May 1941 GARBO was the cover name for
a Spanish born double agent and political idealist Juan Pujol. Pujol
convinced the Germans to the end that he was the hub of a network of
at least twenty-seven German agents all of whom, except GARBO himself,
were entirely fictitious. Two of GARBO’S “agents” worked in
Scotland, “3” a Venezuelan of independent means and “ 3(3)” a Greek
seaman deserter. As part of the intricate web of deception both of
these agents reported on activity in the Forth and Clyde, on shipping
lying off Methil in April 1944 and on landing exercises in Loch Fyne
in May 1944.
While there is debate as to how successful all of this actually was,
the proof has to be the fact that the Germans did keep large numbers
of troops in Norway, they are believed to have overestimated the
Allied divisions by about 50%, they did hold back reserves after the
Normandy landings took place unsure if it really was a feint or not
and, above all, the Allies did succeed, not only in the landings but
also in the all important breakout. For his outstanding work Pujol
received the MBE and a gratuity of £15,000. After the war he lived in
Venezuela and was only after many years persuaded to return briefly to
Britain when he had an audience at Buckingham Palace with Prince
Philip who, on behalf of the Nation, was able to formally express
the Allies’ gratitude to him. Pujol died in 1988.
Background Support
No
great venture such as D-Day was of course possible without a massive
national effort. It was to be another year before the war ended and
while the attacks took place Scotland still had to function and be
defended and guarded. Air, sea and coastal rear defence continued to
work around the clock, the 52nd Lowland Division, the Poles
and the Czechs left for the battlefields but the Home Guard stayed to
watch key points and installations releasing fighting men for the
battles in Europe. The members of the Women’s Land Army, the Women’s
Timber Corps, the Women’s Royal Volunteer Service, the Red Cross, the
Police, the Fire Brigades, the Bevin Boys and the factory, munitions
and farm workers all contributed in their way to making the invasion
possible.
Effects and Follow up
D-Day also had its repercussions on Scotland in respect of the follow
up to the operation. Prisoners of War from the continent in their
thousands came north and many of them occupied the very camps that
the Allied invasion force had trained in prior to leaving. Gosford
House at Longdiddry for example housed 3000 German Prisoners of War
and an overflow camp had to be established at Amisfield. Many Scottish
hospitals received and treated battle casualties from the beaches and
Scottish fire crews were recruited to form special units to help deal
with the restoration of key services to destroyed French towns. And
there were social repercussions too. Scotland’s now vibrant
Polish/Scottish community stems directly from the wartime days when
the Free Polish Army came north to train capturing the hearts of a
large number of Scottish girls. At the same time isolated communities
in the west and the far north were suddenly opened up by the
hundreds of young men and women from all over the world who arrived to
serve at such stations at Tiree, Skitten and Twatt.
While
the service men and women may have long gone, Scotland still lives
with the physical remains of their camps, harbours and airfields, a
constant reminder of a vital part played in making D-Day possible. |
