One of the logistical challenges that faced the Allies during the planning of the 1944 D-Day Landings was the whole question of a suitable port on the European Coast that was big enough to take large supply vessels and equipment and could be captured in tact.

A revolutionary solution to this riddle was found in the so-called Mulberry Harbours. The early lessons in respect of assault landings were learnt at the Training Centre at Inveraray on Loch Fyne and as early as May 1942 the plans for floating harbours received the enthusiastic backing of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. “They must float up and down with the tide”, he wrote. “The anchor problem must be mastered. Let me have the best solution worked out. Don’t argue the matter. The difficulties will argue for themselves”.

Trials of several prototypes took place at Garlieston in Wigtonshire in South West Scotland. The results of these trials were the two great Mulberry Harbours, Mulberry A and Mulberry B. These consisted of huge concrete caissons forming breakwaters, enclosing an area of about 1300acres, two miles long and a mile out to sea, within which steel "spud” pierheads were connected to the shore by piers ¾ of a mile long. Not only had the structures to be built but they also had to be towed to assembly points on the south coast and then taken across the English Channel to the beaches of Normandy. Mulberrys were one of the greatest feats of engineering of the Second World War.

The equipment was manned by two specially raised Port Floating Equipment Companies of the Royal Engineers (969^th and 970^th) and by US Navy Construction Companies known as Seabees. The Royal Engineers trained at Garlieston and amongst them were a number of Scots including Glasgow Academy and Glasgow University graduate R J P Cowan. As newly formed companies however many RE units had taken the opportunity to transfer out some of their more problematic soldiers and a number of men of the PFE Companies created havoc in rural Wigtonshire, including the burning of their billet Glasserton House.

Construction of the huge concrete and steel structures was carried out in several places in the UK including Henry Robb’s Shipbuilding Yard at Leith where the design of the units and the co-ordination of the work was under the supervision of Alexander Findlay & Company of Motherwell. Finishing work was done at Newhaven alongside the fish quay. A total of thirteen pierheads and sixteen large pontoons for the Mulberry Harbours were built at Leith. Other construction took place at Cairnryan on the west coast.

Having been towed south, on D-Day + 2, the 8^th of June 1944 the first component parts arrived at the Normandy Landing beaches and construction began. In the early hours of June 14^th, after six days of non-stop work, the first supplies came ashore from the harbours and by D+10 2000 tons of stores and ammunition a day were being unloaded over the piers.