D-Day rehearsal disaster

[PM2K]

Hello! Thought I'd ask the historical sages on the board if they can help me fill in the blanks with this one.

I came across a snippet of a documentary mentioning just prior to the Normandy landings, there was a practice run done on one of England's beaches which became a tragic disaster, with many soldiers drowned and/or otherwise killed. The incident, coming so close to the actual invasion, was kept quiet for security and morale reasons.... but it would be decades after the war before any information about it would get out, and the families of the lost soldiers would learn the details.

Anyone able to shed light on this for me? Thanks.

[kham]

Slapton Sands, aka Operation Tiger a colossal balls-up even BEFORE a bunch of E-Boats got into things. Nobody's finest hour, except maybe Germans who had everything going including luck for them. In one sense you could argue with dark humour that the exercise was spectacularly successful as far as a realistic combat simulation....

The suggestion is that it wasn't covered up, it was 'conveniently forgotten' in the flood of D-Day news and beyond. It was mentioned in several papers, and 3 books written later, so there is some merit to that

[PM2K]

Knew I could count on you, Kham! Thanks.

[Duncan Edwards]

Churchill even left it out of his "complete" history of the war.

[Lomax]

Yes, I heard of this some years ago.

It wasn't covered up so much as conveniently forgotten; but became generally known in the seventies. A local Devon man called Ken Small (since deceased) decided off his own bat that a memorial should be erected. A temporary memorial - in the shape of an M4 Sherman recovered from the sea, mounted on a plinth and accompanied by a small plaque - was erected in 1984. Funds are still being sought for something more permanent, listing the names of those killed.