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The movie Pressure, with Brendan Fraser starring as General Dwight D. Eisenhower, opens with a bloody scene on a beach. But it’s not D-Day, although at first it looks like it.
It’s Exercise Tiger, sometimes known as Operation Tiger, the dress rehearsal for the Normandy invasion that turned the fate of history and World War II. And, as the movie shows in its opening scenes, it went terribly wrong. “What began as a top secret naval operation to prepare US Army and Naval forces for the June 6th D-Day Invasion, would end with one of the highest losses ever suffered in combat by the US Army and Navy in WW II,” the United States Exercise Tiger Foundation says.
What was Operation (Exercise) Tiger? What happened in real life? Is it true that soldiers died by friendly fire as the result of a mistake? How many people died on the beach? “Official Dept. of Defense records confirm 749 dead , 551 US Army and 198 US Navy,” the Foundation says.
Exercise Tiger Was a ‘Disastrous’ Incident During World War II That Occurred at Slapton Sands
According to Wargaming.net, Exercise Tiger was “a training exercise that was supposed to prepare U.S. troops for the D-Day invasion of Normandy,” but it ended up being a “disastrous” moment in the war.
Naval History and Heritage Command explains, “Operation Tiger was a full-dress rehearsal for the Utah Beach landings and was scheduled for 22 to 30 April 1944. The first five days were allocated for loading and embarkation, with the landing of the first echelon (with assault troops) set to take place on 27 April and the landing of a second echelon (with support troops) scheduled for 28 April.”
(Photo by Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images)
The training ground was a gravel beach called Slapton Sands. “Slapton Sands was chosen because of its similarity to Utah Beach and the fact it was deemed as a safe practicing space,” Wargaming.net explained. That’s located in Devon, in England.
According to Beaches of Normandy Tours, some of the men died from friendly fire. “To make it as realistic as possible, Eisenhower even ordered troops to be landing under live fire over their heads on April 27,” the site explained. “Due to uncoordinated changes in timing, many soldiers were killed on the beach by the naval bombardment that was supposed to take place before the landing, thus constituting the first friendly fire accident of the exercise.”
German Torpedo Boats Caused Some of the Casualties During Operation Tiger
The National Museum of the U.S. Navy explains that “training exercises for the Normandy Invasion, also known as Exercise Tiger, began in the Slapton Sounds, England, area starting on December 15, 1943.” Some of the casualties came from German torpedo boats.
“While training in Lyme Bay (part of the English Channel south-west of England) on April 28, 1944, German torpedo boats, which had evaded patrols out of Cherbourg, France, attacked eight U.S. tank-landing ships,” the website says. “USS LST-507 and USS LST-531 were sunk off Portland Bill, England, and USS LST-289 was damaged. This brief action resulted in 198 Navy Sailors and 551 Army Soldiers dead or missing. The final rehearsals for the invasion had the codename of Fabius and were held between May 3-8, 1944.”
According to the United States Exercise Tiger Foundation, “Attacking in the pitch black night, 9 German Navy ‘E’ boats (torpedo) struck quickly and decisively. Without warning LST 507 was torpedoed first. Explosions and flame lit the night. At 0217 LST 531 is torpedoed. It sinks in six minutes. Of the 496 soldiers and sailors on her, 424 of them died. It would be on this ship that the state of Missouri would lose some 201 of its boys of the 3206th.”
How Many U.S. Soldiers Died From Friendly Fire During Exercise Tiger?
That’s unclear. “The first-echelon landings on 27 April were marked by significant confusion and delays. The landings were accompanied by Allied ships bombarding the beach with live ammunition in order to make the exercise as realistic as possible, but delays and communications problems resulted in some troops being landed into the live fire, resulting in deaths,” the Naval History and Heritage Command website says.
“The number of ‘friendly fire’ deaths remains uncertain to this day. Some accounts claim as many as 450 were killed. However, these numbers appeared to be based on after-the-fact recollections of local civilians, who had been evacuated from the area at the time, and are probably conflated with the deaths as a result of the disaster that occurred at sea that night.”
The site added: “U.S. Army records do not indicate landing deaths anywhere near those numbers, which naturally cause some writers to allege a ‘cover up.’ In one case, Rear Admiral Moon ordered an hour delay only five minutes before execution, and not surprisingly many units did not get the word.”
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