The Tanks, Ships, and Aeroplanes That Made D-Day

D-Day was the largest amphibious assault in history. The key staging post for the invasion was the Solent, a stretch of protected water home to vast dock facilities only 100 miles from the Normandy beaches. The remains and wrecks of this vast enterprise are still being discovered. Get my bearings, I'm taking to the air with pilot John Russell in his Cessna 172 amphibian. Hi John. Hi Dan, nice to see you again. What a machine, it flies and it floats. Absolutely, I like water but I don't like sailing for two hours to get from one place to another. So we're standing on a runway used in D-Day. Absolutely, obviously been recovered a little bit but yes the original runway. And what was the job of the aircraft stationed here in 1944? This airfield was really a Royal Naval Air Station but for D-Day they used it as the base for all the air spotting Spitfires and Seafires. There was 101 Spitfires, three squadrons of Mustangs in support and an RF flight of Thunderbolts as well. In all they did 453 sorties on D-Day alone. It was the highest number of sorties from any airfield in the south of England. I guess that's because this is basically as close as you can get to Normandy in Britain. It is and that's why it was so busy, just sort of 70-80 miles due south and they just had relays of Seafires and Spitfires. They were flying before dawn taking off on this runway? That's right, they had relays of aircraft going over. They would take 30 minutes to get there and with some drop tanks fitted they had 45 minutes on station and then 30 minutes back and this went on throughout the whole day. 453 flights in the course of the day and on top of that you had the Mustangs that were supporting and doing ground intruder stuff just behind the beaches as well. There were men taking off from there that were fighting on D-Day. Those Mustang pilots were actually attacking German targets on the ground? Yes that's right, just after six o'clock in the morning. So sleepless night, painting the planes in their new D-Day colours? Yes, the high command had problems because if you told the crews to paint them too early and the Germans got wind of it they'd possibly copy them. I mean that's not the ideal preparation for a day of flying and fighting. It was very difficult but there again this was war. The whole area was just a massive breeding ground for troops and aircraft. Each airfield that we're going to look at would have had 150 odd airplanes on them. There were 150 here all parked around. Bournemouth Herne would have had six squadrons sitting on it and two Mosquito squadrons as well, so 160 aircraft there. I'm hoping the best way of seeing this kind of historical geography is from the air? Yes, I think you're right. That's the only way to see it now so why The Hulmsley South had six squadrons on it. Three Spitfire squadrons, three Typhoon squadrons and two Mosquito 9.9 squadrons that were over there. Can we just get a sense of how many squadrons of aircraft must have been deployed here for D-Day? 12 airfields with an average of about 150 on each one. Some caravan parks now. Yeah, caravan parks and horses grazing. The Thunderbolts churned up Livington so much they had to be sent to Herne. This was earlier on in sort of April when it was very wet and then they put all this wire mesh down and they managed to get them back in there for the Typhoon D-Day but they didn't show up at all. They used that wire meshing over in France Wow. Of course just to the north here of Bournemouth zone were the transport ones, Stoney Cross, Tarrant, Rushton. These are the ones that carry all the gliders and the paratroops. The night before D-Day as all these aircraft took off from here it would have been a thundering noise. The entire coastline would have hung. That's right. Right, let's see if we can find Livington for you. So there's the hangar, yes? Yeah. And you think this is the original Second World War hangar? It was one of them, yes. Wow. Wonderful. This is RAF Livington and was that a grass strip? Yes, they were the grass strips now after the P-47s dug them up on the corners. That was all wire mesh and they never put a concrete runway in. Again, they almost couldn't be closer to the sea. They were at best able to save all the fuel they could. Every drop of fuel was vital I guess. Anytime you've got too much fuel is when you're on fire. Yeah. I mean, there's Beaulieu Airfield, there's RAF Livington. I mean, these airfields were almost cheek by jowl. You can see it really clear, the outlines of the runways. Like an obscura of the landscape. You just don't get a sense of this unless you're up in the air. It's perfect. And so this river would have been absolutely chock full of landing craft. And many of these big houses down here were overtaken by the officers and the three French, the three Poles. Each airfield had two runways at least. In case you want wind direction. They sold wind direction. There was a takeoff and landing every 45 seconds on D-Day from this place. Every 45 seconds? Yeah. And we've got to imagine, I suppose, this Solent here would have just been absolutely rammed with boats and ships of all different shapes and sizes. There was an airstrip right here on Needs Oil Point. Yeah, let's look at Needs Oil Point. It's very little a bit obvious now because it's been all returned to agriculture. I can't believe they put an airstrip here. It's like a marsh. Two runways. Yes, they did a lot of clearance to get rid of the surface water as well. We're flying along the east-west runway now. There's not much left now. There would have been airstrips all down this coast here. This would have been the most concentrated area of air activity on planet Earth in 1944. Never done an invasion like that. With a glass water landing, you have to do it at a certain speed. It's certainly the most dangerous water to land in. I mean, it's totally featureless there now. That was perfect. Good. That was amazing. One way to see it for sure, but to get the detailed view, let's check it out by water. The man I need is historian Stephen Fisher. He knows every inch of this landscape and we're going to be using another very different amphibian. Hi Stephen. Hi Dan. That's some landing craft you've got there. It's the history hit way. So I've been in the air, I've been in the sea, but I want to see what's left of D-Day from down here and you're the man to do it. Thank you. Well, we're in the perfect place. I mean, this is Stokes Bay, Gosport. This was a D-Day embarkation beach. So back in 1944, landing craft all out at sea and then loads of activity on the shore. Landing craft coming in and tanks embarking on their vessels ready to cross over to Normandy. But this wouldn't have been alone, I mean, we're talking almost the whole of this North Shore. Basically, the entire Solent was a massive parking area for landing craft and vessels before they went over to Normandy. Masses of embarkation from Portsmouth, Gosport, Southampton and the New Forest. So it was very, very busy in 1944. What are you going to show me now? Well, there's quite a lot here, but there's some even more fantastic sites to see in other parts of the Solent. So I thought we'd go and have a look at some really good artifacts and some really good remains. Let's do it. Right, get a life jacket. Here we go. All right, Stephen, where are we off to? Well, I thought we'd head to Poole. There's a couple of interesting things to see. Okay. So we're coming into Poole Harbour now, quite a narrow entrance. Large elements of Force O, who were bound for Omaha Beach, actually gathered here and there was a small amount of embarkation in Poole itself, mainly for supplies and all of the vessels that are going to follow the immediate landing waves. And why you brought me here today, what's the excitement? Here, there's some rather surprising survivors from D-Day that I thought you might quite like to see. That's what I like to hear. So am I going in here on the right? Yep. Turn right at Brownsea Island and we'll find our way up there. Okay, let's go. There's a lot more than I was expecting. Three separate vessels. So we've got two landing craft tank mark four, one up there and another one here and then here in front of us. Looking at it really closely, it looks like it's a landing barge vehicle. Almost certainly would have been at Normandy as well. There's a lot of forensic and diagnostic detail that we can see on these and you can clearly identify them as landing craft and a landing barge. These were used extensively at Normandy, not in the assault waves. They followed over later in the day and then they did valuable work as a shuttle service between the boats offshore and taking stuff onto the beaches. Right at the front, you can see one of the landing craft ramps. So that's the first landing craft that's gone right in against the shore. Then the second landing craft, this one here, you can see it's ramped just there, it's gone in right behind it and from the capstan you can see that's pretty much the stern of that landing craft. It's obviously pushed right up against it so it's essentially a wall. I can't believe these are D-Day veterans just lying around rusting. Yeah, in the middle of Paul Harbour. Does anyone know these are here? A few people who recognize them for what they are do, but pretty much, you know, they're tucked into this marina. Most people don't really see these and they wouldn't recognize them as landing craft unless they were to have a really good look. But, you know, you really have to know what you're looking for to see it. The capstans are well preserved, aren't they? The capstans are really well preserved and they're held up above the water because, of course, the capstan's taking a lot of the weight from the kedge anchor which is this, you know, the vital function of a landing craft to pull it off the beach. And so they were... The kedge is at the back. That's right, yeah. So they were bolted into the vessel itself and right down to the lower part of the hull, hence the huge metal stanchion that they're stood on. So they're held up well above the... You can see that. And that's actually interesting because that's deck level where the capstan is. So you can see how much the vessel has collapsed around it. That's the original height of the aft deck. We know that there are a number of landing craft here towards the very end of the war, 1945, and a colleague of mine, Danny Lovell, has managed to find out that three landing craft were sold to a local boatyard, J Bolson Limited, who were just up the harbour. In fact, I've got a photo of them. You can see the landing craft just here. So this is Bolson's boatyard and you can see the landing craft actually moored off them. So they obviously bought a number of them. Now, some of these landing craft have actually been used to run supplies and pick up scrap metal from France and bring it back over to Poole Harbour where it was loaded onto trains and taken to Wales. This photograph is 1948. Then by 1950, this postcard that Danny Lovell managed to find me. See, we suddenly got these two landing craft down in the corner, creating this this seawall. There was no marina back then? No, no marina. So all of the marina's been built around here. There was a much more open space at the time. So this was a necessary sort of windbreak to actually be able to moor vessels in this area. They were in decent nick back then. They're in very decent nick. Yeah. So you can see, interesting, the funnel on the stern one, this one here. But what's really interesting is it's missing all of its bridge section. So most of the upstanding features of it have obviously been removed. This one, you can see the tank deck really well preserved and the coaming still around the side of it. And you can just see this dark little shadow between the two. That's the landing barge vehicle. You've done all this detective work. Are you able to say with any certainty which landing craft these might be? Yes. The forward one, very handly, was photographed. And it's in this book by John Hillier about Poole after World War II. And there they are. Oh my goodness. Shortly after they were deposited here. And you can see this is the forward landing craft. Here's the stern one. And they're right on the bow, the pennant number LCT728. LCT728, you can just make out this little badge on her bridge. So that's the iron division symbol. That's the symbol for 3rd Infantry Brigade. That means she was at Sword Beach. Now, she was actually in group 10. So the 10th wave of landing craft to land on Sword Beach on D-Day. She went in about two hours after H-hour, so about 9.30. And she had a bit of a torrid time, actually. She tried to beach, but the first vehicle to come off of her then stalled on the ramp. So they had to pull away and then go back into the beach. And then the same thing happened again. The third vehicle to come off jammed on the ramp. And so they had to pull away so they could try and find another area so they could unload the rest of the vehicles. In fact, she had to beach four times in total to get her entire load off and onto the beach. She was there for about an hour before she unbeached. And all of this time, of course, she's under fire from mortar and artillery further inshore. So although the main beach had been cleared by now, they're still taking lots of fire from other positions along the coast. But she managed to unload all of her vehicles successfully and then returns to Portsmouth, where she then picks up another load and starts going back across the English Channel on this constant shuttle service, unloading more troops and vehicles for the buildup in Normandy. I just can't believe that we're a nation that prides itself on our historic ships. And there's a vessel here at D-Day under fire, just rotting away in this harbour. Yeah, it's almost sad to see, but it's an amazing, fascinating archaeological relic. You know, just to see these just sat here is really odd. And like you say, we do pride ourselves on our maritime heritage, but this is part of the nature of a lot of the D-Day remains. There were 800 of these landing craft tank of Normandy, and they didn't really have any function after the war. So many of them were repurposed in this way, in this sense as a breakwater. There were a number of vessels, as I said, that were engaged in this shuttle service, picking up scrap metal after the war. Unfortunately, we have a memoir from John Baker, who served on LCT 940 during the war and at D-Day. And he found out from an associate after the war that 940 was one of the vessels on that shuttle service, picking up the scrap metal in France. And somebody wrote to him and told him what had become of LCT 940. And right at the end, he mentions that LCT 940 was paid off at Lake Shipyard in Poole, where now the Royal Marines are based, and finished her days as a breakwater with another LCT at the end of New Quay Road, Hamworthy, in Poole Harbour. So that is almost certainly 940. Well, look, she's now probably somewhere under the Brittany Ferry Terminal. No, she's not. Right, still here. Isn't that wonderful? Still just visible. And look at that last line of his book, the craft that served us so well in the maelstrom of war, ended her days peacefully in Poole Harbour. I hope my book does justice to her life and will keep her memory alive for a few more years. It certainly has. We'll head east back to Solent now. There's a little sight of Beaulieu I thought it might be nice to have a look at. I love the Beaulieu River. While we're passing, Stephen, we're pretty much over those sunken tanks now, aren't we? Yeah, so this is where the 4th, 7th Dragoon Guards tanks are. The six Valentine DD swimming tanks that were lost in Exercise Smash. After Exercise Smash, Dragoon Guards then went to Leap, where they landed at the Embarkation Hard there and then moved into their new camp. They practiced, they trained, and then they came back here for Exercise Smash 3 later in April, and a complete success. The next time they left for an Embarkation Hard Q2 at Leap was to go to Normandy. I guess the point of Exercise Smash is this beach was there to, well, mimic one of the D-Day landing beaches. Exactly, so Studland Bay was playing host to Gold Beach for all of the infantry and tanks that would be landing here because it bears many similarities, and also the terrain in land gave them a chance to practice actual deployment off of the beach and establishing a beachhead. And was this the largest live fire D-Day dress rehearsal that was conducted? The largest in terms of live fire was probably Exercise Tiger further down the coast, but the largest in terms of overall deployment was definitely Exercise Fabius. In fact, there were seven Exercise Fabiuses all condensed into the first week of May, which was, if you like, an almost complete dress rehearsal for the sailing of all of the fleets across to Normandy. I guess the scale of the undertaking was so huge that the preparation matched that. Exactly, they needed to make sure that everything was going to work smoothly on the actual day, and so that required huge amounts of preparation, huge amounts of practice to make sure they got it right. And every time they conducted these exercises, they learned something that made sure that they did actually get everything right when it came to embarking the armada for D-Day itself and then landing them in Normandy. I've dived on one of the wrecks down here because obviously that day, not all the tanks made it onto the beach. How many are there down here? Remind me. Well, there are six tanks that sank, unfortunately with the loss of six lives as well. Apparently there are in fact seven wrecks on the seabed, so there's one from potentially another exercise that wasn't recorded in the logs. Those guys were incredibly brave, driving floating tanks into the beach. I mean, those things aren't designed to swim. No, no, they're not. The fact they managed to make them swim at all, I think, is a testament to engineering. But as you say, incredible bravery to actually want to crew one of those things going into a beach under fire. Well, the landscape's been really messed about with here, hasn't it? It has been, yeah, and it's quite an old site. It used to be an oyster bed, but in 1944, the War Office took it over, they cleaned it out a bit, and then they built a cofferdam across the entrance right where we are here, and then they drained it, and they used it to construct components of Mulberry Harbour, the beetles. These were the floating concrete pontoons that supported the piers, so once they'd finished completely building them, they could then release the cofferdam, flood it again at high tide, and then they took them and towed them out into the Solent, ready to transport to Normandy. Every corner of this landscape, every little nook and cranny, every little inlet was just militarized, wasn't it? It must have been like one giant armed camp. Yep, most of the New Forest was, and then all around the periphery of the Solent, Southampton and Portsmouth were all marshalling and embarkation areas. Every available space was getting used, and they needed to, because the effort required to successfully not just land in Normandy, but also stay there, needed this amount of work. So Stephen, this has always been a mystery to me, this wreck here. You often see it, but I've never known anyone who knows what it is. There are a number of different landing craft flotillas placed on this river, and they did lose quite a lot of their number as well, and looking at it, it's the right size to be a minor landing craft. Interestingly, I cannot see any armour plate on it, so it's just timber. Okay. That suggests it might be a landing craft personnel. So ideally, if we can get a little bit closer, we might be able to identify it. That mud looks a little bit soft, but do you reckon we can jump onto it? I'm game. All right, well, let's give it a go. Yes. All right, let's try and get this anchored somewhere. Tell you what, Steve, whenever I'm with you, we almost die in the mud. It's just the way things roll, Dan. Look at this. Wow. There's even a bit of the engine still in there as well. Definitely 100% a landing craft. I'm fairly certain I know what type as well. Really? Yeah. There's some very easily identifiable features over at the bow. I want to see you go first. You're the marsh whisperer. Oh, isn't this magical? It is. It's absolutely incredible. It's obviously not in the best condition, but there's enough there for us to be able to identify exactly what type of landing craft this is. We've got a couple of diagnostic features. We've got these two circular holes. Would that be the coxswain looking up through there? These are actually machine gun positions. Okay. So that instantly marks us out as a landing craft personnel, which is a Higgins boat. These were the boats that were designed by Andrew Jackson Higgins. He designed his Eureka boat in the 1920s. And then in the 1930s, the US Marine Corps decided it might make quite a good landing craft. And so did the Royal Navy actually in early 1940s. But the US Marine Corps suggested to him, why don't you put a ramp at the front? And so on some of his earlier boats, he literally just chopped off the bow and put a six foot wide ramp at the front. So it became a proper landing craft. But the US Bureau of Ships for the United States Navy had other ideas. They thought they knew how to do this better. And they gave the designs for this landing craft to Chris Craft, another boat builder. And they suggested a much narrower ramp, a three foot wide ramp. So just so an infantryman could just get off with his kit. Yeah. And this is what they produced. And so it became known as the landing craft personnel ramp. But to be honest, it wasn't the best design because this is so narrow, only one infantryman at a time can get off. Whereas with the wider ramp that Higgins put on, six foot wide, you get two or even three people off at the same time. So that design evolved to become the Higgins boat, the LCVP that we all know from D-Day. This design, the landing craft personnel ramp, it was used early in the war, 1942, out in Asia and Operation Torch on the North African coast. But by 1944, it had become a little bit redundant. That said, a number of them did go to Normandy. They were used as the tenders for the much larger landing ship tank, the huge landing vessels. So this could still be a D-Day veteran? It could well be. But I suspect it's more likely identity is of one of 476 ancillary flotilla. So in 1944, a number of these had been gathered in, like I said, out of frontline service, so an ancillary flotilla, and they were used as the trot boats for HMS Mastodon, which was here in Exbury House on the River Bewley. And they were mainly piloted by Wrens, Women's Royal Naval Service, who would operate from Gilbury Pier, just behind us. And they would use these as a ferry service to take crews out to their landing craft out in the Solent or on the Bewley River. So it's almost certainly one of 476 flotilla, or one of the boats that came and joined it towards the very end of the year, when there was a huge number of these vessels all taken out of frontline service. 80 years old now. How long do you think it will be here in this recognizable shape? We're so lucky to see it like this. Bits of it have collapsed at the stern already. The transom has fallen off, I think, not massively long, to be honest. It won't be long before these sides go, the framing is very rotten. So these will collapse, and then it'll become a single level wreck. And it'll be far harder to recognize. It'll eventually become covered in sediment, just like the keel is here. It's a huge privilege to see it. It is, absolutely. It's a little bit drier here, a little bit safer, because I don't really want to get mud all over this. This is a copy of ONI-226, the Office for Naval Intelligence. And this is their 1944 guide to every type of amphibious vessel that the Allies operated in the Second World War. And we can have a look at the landing craft personnel ramp. You can see the very distinctive circular gunner's positions, and then right between the middle of them, there's the ramp. And on the regular landing craft personnel, you don't have a ramp at all. There's a regular ship spout for a planing hull. There's absolutely no mistaking it. It's definitely one of these. You can also see how narrow it is. So there's two troopers there, struggling to get out. So it's an evolution of the landing craft personnel, but yeah, put that ramp at the bow, and it becomes the landing craft personnel ramp. Amazing. What's next? Really nice embarkation site at Leap Beach. Yes, sir. Heading there now. Now that is the way to land on the D-Day embarkation beach. It certainly is. Well, we've got two different sites at Leap. It's unique, really, because it's got this Mulberry Harbour construction site, and then over there, it's got the embarkation hard. Right, let's go and check the hard out first. Okay. On a monumental scale, it feels like you've got a Greek or a Roman ruin here, doesn't it? Yeah, it's a huge expanse of concrete, but it's very functional. So in the early part of the war, 1940, 1941, and 1942, the Royal Navy is building hundreds of landing craft. But the trouble with landing craft, just like 7074 is, all of the way of loading and unloading them is across the bow ramp. So at the front of the vessel. So you can't take a landing craft to somewhere like South Hampton Docks and hope to be able to get vehicles on and off it without a crane. So what you need is for the landing craft to have a beach, just like it's supposed to beach in occupied territory so the vehicles can drive off. You need a beach in this country so the vehicles can drive on. The trouble with beaches is they're sandy or they're shingly and vehicles bog down in them. So what you really need is a concrete beach, or what we'd call a hard. So in 1942, combined operation starts building dozens of these embarkation hards. And they're really quite simple. We have this concrete apron that we're stood on. The vehicles will drive along a purpose built access road to reach here. Then they can use this to reverse onto the landing craft. The really complicated bit of these structures is the intertidal area, because of course your concrete isn't going to set quickly enough before the tide comes back in. In fact, you really need to allow concrete to set for about four weeks. So that was solved by a rather ingenious mechanism by Lieutenant Colonel Vassal Steele Webster of the Royal Engineers, and he created these beach hardening mats. Pre-fabricated concrete blocks that could then just be laid in the intertidal area. Really like chocolate squares. Yeah, and they got that nickname during the war, chocolate blocks, because yeah they do have that very obvious look to them. You can see all of them scattered around there. These ones were all broken up. At low tide you can see some of them still in situ down beneath what is now the water line. They're surprisingly hardy. They remain intact. Some of these are quite badly broken up and eroded, you can see, but some are still in almost mint condition. So this is just a giant ramp that the tanks, our vehicles, were driven down onto the boats. Yep, the landing craft would come in from the sea, they would drop their ramps down, and then the vehicles would just reverse onto them. But by making it all of concrete, it's much more efficient. You can load up a landing craft in less than an hour. So these structures, despite their simplicity, were absolutely vital to making sure that the entire invasion fleet could load up on time, on schedule, and then be ready to sail for the invasion. Who embarked from this spot? So several units embarked from here, principally the AVREs, bound for Gold Beach. So that's Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers and the Westminster Dragoons. You probably know them better as Hobart's Funnies. So the Sherman flail tanks with a rotating drum at the front to blow up mines. The Royal Engineers Churchill AVRE tanks, which carried fascines, or carpet layers. Ones that had large mortars on their turret as well to take out pillboxes. The ones that were bound for Gold Beach, both Jig and King subsectors of Gold Beach, all embarked here on the 2nd and the 3rd of June. They were also joined by the Royal Artillery, self-propelled guns that would be on some of the leading landing craft, and they would actually fire their guns as they ran into the beach. So the men using this hard would spend three or four days at sea and then would go into the beaches? Exactly, yeah. For many of those men, this was the last bit of British soil they would ever touch. It was, absolutely. This is the last time they would actually be on the ground. Some of them, of course, didn't even manage to set foot on Normandy, so this was the last time they stood on any ground at all. Down here, right in the middle of the hard, we've got the foundations for the pier that extended right down the centre of it. So there were five timber dolphins, they were called, stretching out to sea and then these were joined by scaffolding to create a continuous pier. But here at Leap, where the currents are quite strong, the sterns of the landing craft could quite often be swept out by the tide. So they built two more dolphins out there just as a means of helping to brace them, stop them from swinging away. So that's what those are for, okay. And then over here, the landing craft, of course, can berth against these bollards. This is just where they'll tie up, basically. There were four, so two in the centre and then ones on either side at each end of the hard as well. Those ones have been removed. And this hard slowly being eroded back into the sea? Sadly, yeah. I mean, it's inevitable, really. That's what's happening the coast all around the country. But we do still have an incredible relic of D-Day here on our own shores. So back behind the hard, of course, you have all of the staff that need to be accommodated, working on this hard. So there's building bases for offices, the hardmaster's office, and a water tank made in brick just there. Here, we've got the primary Mulberry Harbour construction site, and this bit is probably the most important part because this is where the caissons were launched into the water after they'd been completed. Wow. The construction site is over there, and six of these huge phoenix caissons were constructed over on those platforms. Then they were winched very carefully on rails. This could well be one of those rails. Then they were supported on keel blocks. The rails were turned, and then it could be repositioned to slide down rails into the sea here. At this point, the phoenixes weren't actually complete. They would be far too heavy to actually launch in this way. So they built the lower part of them, the floating part. After they were afloat in the water, they then towed around to Southampton, and they were finished building up the structure on top. Then they were ready to take over to France. So have you identified where the bits of Mulberry Harbour that were built and launched here actually ended up in Normandy? Yeah, not all of them actually ended up in Normandy. One of them made it as far as Shoreham, which was the gathering station for all of these components, but it developed a leak, and it was left there, and it's still there on the seabed today. But the five others made it across to Normandy. Two were at the United States Harbour, Mulberry B, which was destroyed in the great storm. Three were at Arromanche, and there's still remains of them visible at low tide there today. Really? Yeah. What an amazing link between Arromanche, right in the heart of Gold Beach in Normandy, and Leap here. Most people think of D-Day as being something that happens in Normandy, but everything starts somewhere, and in the case of D-Day in particular, it starts on the south coast of England, and primarily here in the So there's little places like Leap that have this really strong connection with the embarkation site and the construction of Mulberry Harbour. Today you've got these dog walkers, picnickers, sunbathers. Little do they realise that they are doing all those things surrounded by history. It's one of the best examples of a D-Day industrial heritage site that we have on the south coast of England. So there's all sorts of little details, not all of them we can actually explain, but you'll find interesting things in the concrete like this. It's actually somebody's name here. Oh my goodness. T. Staker 802. So presumably a name. I'm not sure what the 802 might be. I wish we had more information. Put the date on next time, buddy. So in that first week of June 1944, this would have been absolutely heaving with activity. Yeah. They were still finishing off some of the Phoenix caissons, and then over here at the embarkation hard, you've got constant activity as they load more vehicles and troops onto their landing craft. And then stretching all the way down the coast to Southampton, I guess, as well. Yeah. So Southampton, of course, was a major point of embarkation. Lots of activity there. You have a landing craft collecting point at Calshot Spit. So all of the landing craft that are coming into the Silent to be allocated to their duties are gathering there and being sent off to their various destinations. And then a little bit further along this beach, halfway between here and Calshot, there's also another embarkation point, a highly secretive one called Tank Park Beach. It only appears in a couple of the orders, but it was specifically allocated to the DD swimming tanks. Two units embarked, the 4th 7th Dragoon Guards and the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry. And they both did it up at this very secretive little bit of beach up there. And there's not really any remains. They didn't create a special hard for them because it was just a single use for the DD tanks. As far as I can work out, the only reason that they did this was to separate the DD tanks from all of the other units that were embarking because they were so highly secretive. So they wanted to embark them further away from prying eyes. Maybe the civilian laborers who were building the Phoenix caissons just here. And those DD tanks performed very well on the DD beaches. They did, yes. So both the Dragoon Guards and the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry got ashore and provided very vital support for the invasion forces on Gold Beach. Well, shall we embark on our little vessel, shall we? Yeah, let's find some more sites. Yeah. Where are we off to next? Well, there's some concrete archaeology at Langston Harbor. Let's have a look at that. So this is a Phoenix caisson and these were the walls of the harbor, if you like. So they built sufficient of these to create a complete harbor wall off Aramanche and also the A harbor at the American Omaha Beach, which was destroyed in the storm. The idea of this is you build enough of them in segments, float them over to Normandy and then literally just build a harbor wall with them. So it's a huge concrete monolith, but hollow, as you can see, and designed to float. Once you get it over to Normandy, you literally just open the valves and sink it in place and hey presto, harbor wall. How many of these would be in a Marlborough harbor? Of these Phoenix caissons, they built nearly 170 before D-Day, but then they carried on building more of them after D-Day as well so they could reinforce Aramanche. So in total, they built more than 200 of these. These harbors they're building are kind of on the scale of Dover Harbor. It's enormously ambitious. It was much larger than Dover Harbor and that's why you needed all of this concrete. The ideal place to build these of course is in dry docks, but there simply weren't enough dry docks available on the south coast, which is why they started building them on beaches here at Langston and also over at Leap and at Stokes Bay in Gosport. You really get a sense up close just how gigantic they were. Yeah, and this one isn't even finished. The full size of the walls isn't actually complete on this because it was damaged during construction. The safest thing to do is to launch it, get it out of the way. It's remained here ever since as a sort of monument to D-Day. I've always admired the the Mulberry Harbor in position on the D-Day beach at Aramanche. I've never known there's loads of pieces close to home. And there's several along the south coast of England. There's some that are sunken, there are several that are actually exposed at low tide and some of them are scheduled. And if we go back to the harbor entrance, I can show you where it was probably built. There's a lot of Second World War building work going on on this shore, a lot of concrete. There is. So we've got a little bit of 1940 over there. There's anti-tank blocks. Anti-invasion defenses. Yeah, because this would have been an ideal place for a landing. And this is an ideal place to prepare for our own invasion. So the entire east bank of the entrance to Langston Harbor was taken over for construction of the Mulberry Phoenixes. We can definitively locate the footage of one of these Mulberry caissons launching from the ferry boat in the background just over there. It's the only place where they were building these Phoenix caissons on the beach that actually matches that location. Most of those buildings were requisitioned because this just became one giant construction site. So they're making bits of Mulberry Harbor here. Yeah, right on this shore and then dropping them straight into the harbor in front of us. And that one up there, of course, is the one that didn't quite make it. It's nice to be working so close to the pub. Certainly not inconvenient. Well, we've seen a ruined landing craft. I thought it might be nice to see the proper thing. Let's do it. Oh, it's just the scale of it is extraordinary. It is huge, isn't it? So 59 meters long. It's the same length as HMS Victory. A stunning achievement. What a restoration. It's a brilliant piece of work. The National Museum of the Royal Navy and Portsmouth City Council and D-Day Story have done a fantastic job on it. And of course, all the partners who made it happen. It's a fantastic achievement to get a landing craft back to its original D-Day appearance. But it's so special for us because we've just seen those wrecks in Poole Harbor. Now that it just makes so much sense. I can see all the features. Yeah, you can see all of the individual bits that we could see on the wrecks in Poole. And you can actually see them in position as they were on the complete landing. From out here, you really get a sense of how flat bottomed it is. It must have rolled terribly in that channel swell. Absolutely. It's completely flat underneath, which is ideal for getting it onto a beach. But it makes it an absolutely terrible seagoing vessel. They've all been seasick. I must say, it just gives you shivers walking in over the bow ramp, doesn't it? This is the closest you're going to get to the look of a D-Day vessel. Exactly. Yeah. And there's nowhere else in the world where you can walk onto a landing craft tank and have tanks on the tank deck. I'll take you up to the bridge and we'll have a good look around. Wow. Open bridge. Look at this. You'd feel the elements up here, wouldn't you? You would indeed. Yeah. I love it. Compass in here. The skipper would choose his bearing with the compass and then just shout the instructions down below. It's quite primitive. It is a very basic type of vessel. I guess they had to build so many of these in such a short amount of time. Yeah, they did. And there are 800 landing craft tank of different marks at D-Day. But there were more than 3000 of them built throughout the Second World War. So, yeah, they have to be basic so you can get as many of them produced as possible. It's so wonderful having looked at so many wrecks and remnants of D-Day to now see this absolutely pristine example of what one of them would have looked like. It's a really well preserved and restored example. And it really gives you a sense of what the soldiers would have arrived on at the end of all of this embarkation and getting ready. This is where they then end up before they sail across to Normandy. I must say, we talk a lot about the tank crews rightly so incredibly brave for the driven off onto the beach, but you're pretty exposed to enemy fire. It would have been scary up here. Yeah. So this is the nerve centre of the vessel, the bridge. This is where all of the commands come from. So the officers will be here along with some of the ratings. You've got the two machine gun positions there as well. And then the rest of the crew are also going to be very busy at the very bow of the vessel as you come in, where they lower the ramp. So they're going to be incredibly exposed to fire there as well. Let's talk about this landing craft. Do we know exactly where it left from here in the Solent? It didn't actually sail from the Solent, it sailed from Felixstow. So it was part of Force L, which is the immediate follow-up wave that would arrive on the beaches, Sword, Juno and Gold in the afternoon. But as it happened, the weather delayed it a bit. It didn't get there until quite late at night. And so it landed its tanks on the morning of the 7th of June. So this vessel arrived on D-Day, but those tanks wouldn't roll off the beach until the following day. No, they had to spend a quite rough night waiting in the anchorage just off Gold Beach. Some of them under the illusion that the beaches haven't yet been secured and they were going to have to make a combat landing on the morning of the 7th. And I've read some accounts, the crews were being so seasick, weren't they? Some of the D-Day landing craft crews, even though they'd been at sea for years, many of them reported that they had the most violent seasickness they'd had in their careers. And then of course the army, who aren't used to spending long lengths of time on a landing craft. They've spent almost 36 hours on a landing craft and many of them were pretty ill. It's funny, I'm very happy to be on here now, but for a lot of the men in those tanks, they probably couldn't wait to get off. Exactly. Most of them wanted nothing more than to get off the front of this vessel and onto the beach. You get a fair number of tanks in here. So on the Mark III landing craft, you can get 10 tanks on the tank deck, so there's plenty of space there for armour, but it would be incredibly cramped. With two tanks immediately alongside each other, there's barely space to actually walk down the side of the vessel. So for the crews of the tanks that are waiting to disembark, they had to spend several days on this landing craft, waiting up at Felixstowe before they sail, and then sailing across the channel. Was it sitting on top of the tanks or inside the vehicle? Yeah, anywhere they can find. They were throwing up tarpaulins between the tanks, so they had a shelter to sleep under at night, some of them sleeping under the tanks. But they need to be able to move around on this vessel because the heads are right at the very bow, so they need to be able to squeeze between the tanks just to get to the basic conveniences. Anti-aircraft gun? Yeah, so this is an Oerlikon 20 millimetre and there's one on each side of the bridge, and this is its primary means of anti-aircraft defence. There's a couple of rockets down on the bow, so the Heath Robinson contraption that could be used to try and ward off bombers, but I'm not sure they were ever used, whereas the 20 millimetre really was the primary means of defence. So it's not just a lumbering transport ship, it's got some teeth? Yeah, it's a warship at the end of the day. It has a very special function, which is amphibious operations, but it needs to be completely self-sufficient. So its own armament, and then the crew accommodation, the galley, everything needs to be on board to make this a functioning vessel. Did they have to fire any enemy aircraft? When Force L arrived off of Gold Beach on the evening of the 6th of June, yes, there was an air raid in progress, and lots of the sister vessels reported firing at enemy bombers. So in all probability 7074 did as well. Oh, pretty cramped in here. Ah, the helm, this is where the ship was steered from. Yeah, so this is the coxswain's position. If he hasn't got much of a view, all he has is that porthole right in front of us, and if they're locked down and under fire, that'll be closed, and all he's got is this tiny vision slit just here. But he's protected, well, he's got some protection here. He is, this is the only armoured part of the vessel, so there is a little bit of protection here, but even so, he's very exposed. This is the tallest part of the vessel, it's the bit that any enemy gunner is going to aim for. And on the first waves of D-Day, do we have accounts of people in this position being killed and injured? Yes, in fact, the landing craft that 7074 ended up next to on Gold Beach was hit several times in the bridge and in the wheelhouse area, and there are numerous casualties from it. If not that landing craft out, it never went to sea again. We all think of those attacking infantrymen and the tank crews who suffed on D-Day, but for these naval officers and ratings, it was a dangerous place to be as well. To get that army ashore, the vessel needs to be right on the beach, and of course, they're the first targets that the enemy guns are going to see, so they're opening fire on the vessels before the infantry and tanks have even got off. So it's pretty cramped coming through these passageways, but there you've got the captain's cabin, his own little private space. Then here, practically the same size, you've got the galley, and that's where they prepare the food for the entire crew. And then through here into the war room. So just the officers were allowed to use this room? Yep, every Royal Navy warship, no matter how small, will always have a war room for the officers. They get their own private space, and 7074 is no exception, so this is the war room. Quite possibly the captain and the first lieutenant both stayed in here, and then the forward cabin would have been used for something else. So where did the crew sleep? The crew slept below in their mess deck, so they have a fairly small space right next to the engine room. I recognize this, the capstan. Yeah, so this is an essential part of the vessel, because any landing craft, after its beach, needs to be able to get itself off. So they throw an anchor over the stern, and then they use the capstan to winch themselves back towards that anchor. So they just put their engines you know, hard and stern? It wouldn't quite be enough to drive them off necessarily, so this way they can pull back on the anchor they've dropped, and that'll winch them back off the beach. And on the wrecks that we saw, these have survived pretty much intact. Yeah, they're an integral part of the vessel, so they're not just connected to this deck, but the supports go right through to the very bottom of the hull. It's so great to see an example that's been restored, having seen them with seagulls roosting in them. Yeah, so at least this one gives you a much better idea of exactly how it would have functioned. That's the engine room? You're kidding! That's where they ate and slept? That's right, yeah. And where we're stood here, this is actually the engine space. There's no engines on board today, this vessel's never going to go to sea again. Right behind the engines, and separated only by a metal bulkhead, is where the crew ate and lived and slept. And these doors that we've just come through wouldn't have existed back in 1944. The engine room was only accessible through a hatch from the ceiling, and so was the mess deck through its own separate hatch just behind the wardroom. How many crew would like to live down here? The normal complement of a landing craft is two officers, who have the wardroom to themselves, and possibly even the captain's cabin, and ten ratings, who would have all had to share this small space. Ten men? Yeah. So that's it in terms of space, because now we're back on the tank deck, and this is where the tank crews have to live. They get very little space of their own, but the crew as well, barely have any accommodation to speak for themselves. It's just a concentrated mass of armour and humanity. Yeah, it's got one simple function, and that's to transport the army to the beaches. But they were very effective at that. As well as the vessel itself, one of the other things that we really wanted to try and record was the tanks that it carried over. And we were lucky enough to actually uncover the stories of some of the tanks that were taken by 7074 to Normandy for D-Day. This isn't the actual tank that was on 7074, because it was actually blown up in France, but it's marked up in exactly the same markings as one that we know was on board when it landed on the 7th of June. It's commanded by Major Dennis Wells of the 5th Royal Horse Artillery, and he was in an observation post tank, a Sherman, but it actually had its gun removed and replaced with a wooden barrel, and that meant there was loads of space inside the turret for a little command headquarters. And he was a forward observer for the Royal Artillery, so he could go ahead with tank formations and spot for artillery targets, and then radio back to his formation. But it got blown up? Yes, so it was knocked out in a little village called Villers-Bocage on the 13th of June, and he was actually knocked out by a German tank ace called Michael Whitman. Oh, that's a very famous tank engagement. So you'll actually find lots of photographs of this tank in Normandy having been knocked out by Michael Whitman, and we were able to identify it through this little code number that was painted on the front of the tank, 3517. That's the loading number for 7074. So once we were able to match that number to 7074, we knew that this tank had been on board. Great bit of detective work there, Stephen. It's nice little finds to be able to actually match some stories of the tanks that have been on board, as well as the vessel itself. It's just a beautiful restoration. Really proud of it. Stephen, you've given me such a sense of just how extraordinarily busy this piece of sea would have been back in the first week of June 1944. It absolutely was. Without a body of water the size of the island, D-Day just can't happen. As well as the massive ports of Portsmouth and Southampton, and all the facilities they have with them, the Isle of Wight creates this brilliant bit of sheltered water to anchor literally thousands of ships. Of the seven task forces that sailed on D-Day, three of them departed from here. The other four were scattered along the south coast and up on the east coast of Felixstowe. The scene here in that first week of June 1944 would have been just extraordinary. You hear lots of accounts from people on the shore saying it looked as if you could walk to the Isle of Wight, and it really would have, because of the number of buoys and trots all along here for the landing craft and moor act whilst they wait to sail. So it was literally ram-packed. So not for nothing was it described as the greatest amphibious assault of all time. It really was, and it's testament to the planning and the organisation that we'd developed over several years of war in order to make sure that it could actually work. Well thank you Stephen, I feel like I've explored a lot of D-Day heritage. Hi there, I'm Dan Snow, and if you love history you know that History Here is on a mission to bring the past to life. Every week we travel the world to film original and in-depth documentaries, and now History Here has launched a YouTube membership to give you access to even more films released weekly. You heard it here first, folks. Join now to make sure you never miss out on exclusive documentaries on topics like newly discovered shipwrecks or the clash of gladiators. We cover all periods from Pompeii to D-Day. Click the join button below this video and see for yourself what History Here has to offer. We can't wait to have you join the team.