Exercise Tiger (1944): The Deadly D-Day Rehearsal at Slapton

Exercise Tiger was a rehearsal for the D-Day landings held at Slapton Sands in Devon, England, in late April 1944. In the early hours of 28 April German fast attack boats surprised a convoy of American landing ships in Lyme Bay, sinking two and damaging others. Around 750 American servicemen were killed, more than died at Utah Beach on D-Day itself, making it one of the deadliest training disasters of the Second World War.

Background: rehearsing for Utah Beach

As the Allies prepared for the invasion of Normandy, the troops assigned to Utah Beach, the US VII Corps led by the 4th Infantry Division, needed somewhere to practise. Slapton Sands, a long shingle beach backed by a freshwater lagoon called Slapton Ley, closely resembled the Utah sector.

In late 1943 about 3,000 residents of villages in the South Hams area, including Slapton, Torcross, Strete and Blackawton, were ordered to leave their homes so that the area could be used for live-fire training. Exercise Tiger, held from 22 to 30 April 1944, was one of the largest rehearsals, involving some 30,000 troops.

The friendly-fire landings

The main landings took place on the morning of 27 April. To accustom the troops to the noise of battle, live naval gunfire was planned to strike the beach before the landing craft arrived. The timetable was delayed by an hour, but not all landing craft appear to have received the change. Some historians believe that a number of soldiers were killed by shellfire as a result, although the scale of these deaths is uncertain and disputed.

The E-boat attack

The worst disaster came the following night. A convoy of eight tank landing ships (LSTs), designated T-4 and carrying engineers, quartermaster troops and vehicles of a follow-up wave, was moving through Lyme Bay towards Slapton. Its only escort was the corvette HMS Azalea; a second escort, the destroyer HMS Scimitar, had been damaged in a collision and had returned to port without a replacement being sent.

At about 2 am on 28 April, nine German E-boats (fast torpedo boats known to the Germans as S-boats) from Cherbourg found the convoy. They torpedoed LST-507 and LST-531, which sank quickly, and set LST-289 on fire; LST-511 was damaged by friendly fire. The LSTs and their British escorts were using different radio frequencies, which hampered warnings, and many soldiers wore their life belts incorrectly around the waist, so that they were tipped head-down when they entered the cold water.

The E-boats, from the German 5th and 9th Schnellboot flotillas, escaped without loss. British warships and aircraft were patrolling the Channel that night, but the attackers were not intercepted, and rescue vessels did not reach many of the men in the water until after daybreak. Most of the dead drowned or died of hypothermia rather than from the explosions themselves.

The toll and the secrecy

The commonly cited death toll is 749 men, 551 soldiers and 198 sailors. Among the missing were ten officers who held “Bigot” security clearance, meaning they knew the invasion plans. Fearing that one had been captured, the Allies searched the waters until all ten bodies were recovered, confirming that the plans for Normandy had not been compromised.

Survivors were ordered not to discuss the disaster, and the dead were not publicly identified at the time. The losses also left the Allies short of landing ships just weeks before the invasion. Lessons were learned: life belt training was improved, radio frequencies standardised, and more escort and rescue arrangements were made for D-Day.

For the evacuated villagers, the return was slow. Many found their homes and farms damaged by months of training, and some did not get back until late 1944 or later. A memorial on the beach at Slapton, presented by the US Army in 1954, thanks the people of the South Hams for giving up their homes.

Myths and facts

Myth: The disaster was covered up for forty years. The deaths were kept secret before D-Day, but a press release in the summer of 1944 mentioned the losses, and official histories referred to them after the war. The event was little known because it was overshadowed by the invasion itself, not because it was officially hidden.

Myth: The dead were secretly buried in mass graves in Devon. This claim has circulated since the 1980s, but no such graves have been found, and the official record shows that the recovered dead were buried in military cemeteries.

Legacy

Interest grew in the 1980s, largely through Ken Small, a local guesthouse owner who spent years researching the disaster, located a Sherman tank lost on the seabed off Torcross and arranged for it to be raised in 1984. The tank now stands beside the beach as a memorial to the men who died. Commemorations at Torcross and Slapton continue, and the story is now told alongside that of the Normandy landings and the deception plan of Operation Fortitude.

Timeline

• 1943, December: About 3,000 South Hams residents are evacuated.
• 1944, 22 April: Exercise Tiger begins.
• 1944, 27 April: Main rehearsal landings at Slapton Sands.
• 1944, 28 April, about 2 am: German E-boats attack convoy T-4 in Lyme Bay.
• 1944, 6 June: The VII Corps lands at Utah Beach.
• 1984: Ken Small raises a Sherman tank off Torcross as a memorial.

Why it matters

Exercise Tiger showed how costly even rehearsals for D-Day could be. It led to practical changes that saved lives on 6 June 1944, and it is now remembered as a tragedy that should not be forgotten.