Exercise Tiger was a D-Day training exercise. Exercise Tiger took place on the beaches of Slapton Sands to simulate the landings that were to take place along the Normandy coast.
During the Training at Slapton Sands over 3000 people were evacuated in an area of 46 square miles along with their belongings and animals. It was important they were evacuated as if D-Day was going to be a success it had to be completely confidential. Another reason for their evacuation is that the army were using life ammunition to recreate the live hostility of the landings.
Exercise Tiger is also debatably most known for the training exercise that went horribly wrong and cost hundreds of lives. On the 23rd of April 1944 there was a full scale simulation of D-Day called Exercise Tiger. Steve, a survivor of the tragedy gives his account of what happened.
"My assault craft was making its was towards Slapton Sands I heard a scrape underneath the ship and the next thing I know I heard GQ. and I thought to myself my gosh their making this thing pretty real. Next thing I know I got hit, I got torpedoed. Auxiliary engine room. I was under attack by German torpedo boats."
The German boats had been spotted by the English ships but because of a simple administrative error the radio warning never made it to them.
"We were on the wrong frequency.They knew the E-boats were approaching us but they never let us know that we were in danger. Just before I jumped in to the water I turned to a fellow sailor and said well either your going to freeze to death in the water or your going to burn to death on this ship. He choose to burn to death. Before I passed out from the cold I just remembered my mother cradling me in her arms. But that's the last I remember before I passed out."
The rest of the convoy was immediately ordered back to port but one of the captains of a ship disobeyed orders and went back to look to survivors. That ship managed to pick up 132 survivors including Steve, who had been in the sea for over four hours.
"When I woke up a sailor was shaking me and waking me up and he said you know your a lucky person you were piled with the dead and had frost at the mouth but we took you off the pile and we worked on you."
The official death toll for the 28th of April 1944 was 749. But despite the tragedy at Slapton the training exercises continued and the disaster was kept secret until the successful D-Day landings. And despite what happened Steve still took part of the D-Day landings. Ironically more soldiers died during Exercise Tiger than D-day its self. But it is still important to remember without the training hundreds more would have died.
It was another 44 years before a tank from the wreckage of Steves boat was retrieved and now stands as a memorial at Slapton Sands.
