THIS IS FINDON
VILLAGE
www.findonvillage.com created
by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex,
U.K.
WERE
THE MYSTERIOUS MULBERRIES SEEN FROM FINDON?
Copyright Valerie Martin 2004
Originally published in the Findon News in June 2004
Tony
Hammond was a schoolboy residing in Findon during the dark days of the Second
World War. He lived in East Preston (still within sight of
Cissbury Ring above Findon) before he died in the winter of 2006.
He e-mailed me on Christmas Eve 2001, and wondered if
wartime enthusiasts visiting my website would be interested in a new
display at the Pagham Harbour Visitors' Centre. This contained information about the
artificial harbours constructed off Selsey prior to D-Day, known as Mulberries.
I
was intrigued because those Mulberries have always been somewhat of
an enigma to me. Tony explained all and sent details and I continued to
do some investigations on my own into the mysterious Mulberries.
During the early days of planning the invasion of Normandy,
Allied forces commanders knew that no major port could be captured intact.
Any invading armies would have to disembark thousands of tons of equipment and
supplies
each day to enable the army to move forward. The only answer was to
construct two artificial harbours to enable cargo ships to unload quickly and efficiently.
In June 1943, the British Army Royal Engineers were given the
project of developing and constructing the required gigantic prefabricated harbours,
each two miles long and one mile wide (code name: Mulberries).
There was a long list of fascinating code names used for the
various components. These included
PHOENIX A concrete breakwater in
sections.
LEVIATHAN A ship which filled the Phoenix units
with sand to give them extra weight.
CORNCOB An old merchant ship sunk as a breakwater.
SPUD PIER The landing wharf at which material was
unloaded.
BEETLE The pontoon on which the Whales were supported.
RHINO The power-driven pontoon on which cargo was brought ashore.
This shows the familiar
Portslade shoreline with giant sized pipes in readiness for the anticipated
trials.
The Mulberry
Harbours came off the drawing board taking the shape of six miles of flexible
steel roadways (code-named Whales) that floated on steel or concrete pontoons
(code named Beetles). All cloak and dagger stuff this and there were many
prototypes.
This was called the Soft Lilo and was the
forerunner of the Bombardon floating breakwater unit. It is
shown here under construction at the Southampton Docks just along the coast from
Findon.
Eventually the
Whales were fitted with personnel cabins and anti-aircraft guns.
I believe I am right in stating that there was a
local Mulberry inventor who attended the nearby Lancing College. His name
was Ronald Hamilton and he was 15 years old when the First World War began.
A broken right arm which had become crippled when he was still at Lancing,
prevented him for playing sport at the college.
Ronald died in 1953 but he had a son, Peter,
who if he is still alive would be about 80 now I guess. It appears
that Peter worked alongside his father on some of the experimental Mulberry
projects. (Peter was at Eton in the early 1940s).
Has anyone come across him, because he would have some interesting stories to
tell.
The above prompted Edward Allhusen to email me
at the end of April 2008.......
I have just stumbled
across your Mulberry website.
Ronald Hamilton was my cousin and he had two sons Peter a clergy man who
died about 15 years ago and David the younger who died just before him.
Ronald was indeed involved with the mulberry harbours but specifically
with a landing site.
I have just made an acquaintance with someone in the village of Churt in
Hampshire to whom I sent the following and it may also be of interest to
you.
I did not see mention of the landing field in your web site and would be
interested to know if any of your other contacts an add more to this.
Ronald Hamilton was an inventor who lived at Chinton Cottage Churt,
Amongst other things he invented the electric razor and, somewhat
surprisingly, The Tote.
During the war he was employed as a boffin creating all sorts of gadgets
for the military and when DDay was being planned there was a need for an
instant airfield beside the Mulberry harbours that were towed across to
Arromanche. They needed to be able to land conventional aircraft in the
few days before they captured the first airfield inland.
The options were either to build masses of seaplanes or find another flat
place and the only flat place was the sea so Hamilton devised a sort of
'carpet' that could be rolled out across the water for use as a runway.
The problem was that if a heavy aircraft dropped onto a solid sheet of
'carpet' it would pull the sides in just as would happen if you laid a
handkerchief on water and dropped a stone onto it. So it had to be in
sections that could withstand the initial impact and then instantly
transfer the pressure to the next section thus distributing the weight and
hopefully keeping the whole structure flat.
Hamilton worked out that hexagonal shapes would be best and created a mock
up using six sided biscuit tins. These he wired together and then dropped
stones onto them to see how the pressure was transferred and how flat it
all remained.
The thing was then constructed and tested for real but I believe that very
rough seas in the channel prevented it being used as much as was
originally planned. I wish I could remember what it was called - some name
like Honeycomb I think. I have seen a photograph of it but can see no
mention of it on Google.
He tested his model on the stream that flows over the ford near Chinton
Cottage in Churt . Frensham Ponds were, I believe, drained in the war as
they provided guidance for enemy bombers.
Edward Allhusen, Moretonhampstead, Devon.
|
The flexible steel roadways
mentioned in my early narrative above were
to terminate at pier heads (code named Spuds) anchored to the seabed so that the
pier heads rose and fell with each tide.
These structures
were to be sheltered from the battering sea by lines of 146 massive submerged
caissons (code name: Phoenixes). These were laid end to end to form two
giant breakwaters which would take the pounding, one at the British landing
point and one at the American. Each string
of Phoenixes formed
one Mulberry. An anti-aircraft gun emplacement topped each Phoenix.
The two Mulberries were to be
positioned along with breakwaters composed of scuttled ships just off the
invasion beaches. Well, that was the idea. Could
it be done? Would it work?
It can not be
imagined now but Selsey on the Sussex coast was a forbidden area during the war.
From January
1944, no visitors were allowed to enter the village and the residents were
issued with passes and were prohibited from the Park Lane - Pagham harbour
environs. The Royal Artillery had already set up several batteries of heavy anti-aircraft
guns in an arc around the north-east corner of Selsey and Church Norton.
From Selsey
mysterious work could be seen progressing on strange looking structures.
These grew larger and larger each day and could be
seen rising out of the water. It makes me wonder if they were visible on a
clear day from the summit of Cissbury Ring above Findon but perhaps that is too
much to hope for.
Peter Archbold (now
living in Ashburton on the South Island of New Zealand) told me in June 2003
that he can remember seeing "strange objects" being towed past Worthing towards
the Isle of Wight when he was in the Home Guard and serving at the Coast Battery
at the end of Grand Avenue 1943/4. He thinks they were probably
Phoenix Units.
A
distance of some 90 miles across the English Channel to Normandy.
The peculiar giant
objects were eventually to be towed away by an armada of small tugs to an inlet
near Lee-on-Solent to await their voyage to Normandy. It was still a while
before the locals became aware that Selsey had been one of the main assembly
lines for two of the artificial harbours used in the invasion of Normandy.
A Phoenix off
Selsey.
On June 4th/5th,
1944 the tugs began quietly towing the Phoenixes at 3 or 4 knots towards
Normandy. The tugs halted in mid-Channel for a while
when the invasion was postponed for a day, and on 6th June they anchored next to a
battleship about 4 or 5 miles offshore. The battleship continued to relentlessly
shell the beaches day and night.
| A Whale or pontoon
bridge/causeway stretching away into the distance and used to connect the pier heads to the shore. These were towed
across the English Channel from England by barges. |
A
Phoenix being towed to its final destination
by a tug.
Two days after
D-Day, 6th June 1944, a fleet of 89 derelict merchant ships that had been
damaged beyond repair, were scuttled parallel to the shore of Omaha Beach (the
main American invasion point), and off Arromanches, (the larger of three landing
points for British Commonwealth armies). Explosives blew their bottoms
out and they sank in 12 ft of water and formed the required mile-long
breakwaters (code name: Gooseberry). Floating breakwaters, narrow steel floats,
200 ft. long, (code name: Bombardons) were moored outside the Mulberries to help
break up the surging of the incoming waves.
A wartime harbour tug positioning a Phoenix off Normandy.
Here is a fascinating
photograph depicting very nicely the cross-section of a Bombardon floating
breakwater unit.
|
Phoenixes at anchor. Each Phoenix provided quarters for its own crew, 2 Bofor guns and 20 tons of ammunition. |
When completed, each
Mulberry was about one mile long, and stood about
30 feet above sea level at low tide, 10 feet above sea level at high tide. Seven
Liberty ships at a time could tie up at a Mulberry to unload their cargo on to
landing craft.
The above is a photograph of the cruel sea depicts the Bombardon breakwater in position
at Arromanches.
As far as I can make out, several sections of the Bombardon made up a Phoenix
unit.
The two harbours built at Selsey
were known merely as Mulberry A and Mulberry B. Now that did surprise
me. I would have thought they should have highfalutin code names, but no,
just plain Mulberry A and B. They were
both in use by 19th June 1944 and operational but neither were 100% complete.
A Mulberry in position
off the Normandy beach.
Mulberry A was
intended for use by the US forces and was established off Omaha beach. A
devastatingly fierce storm then hit the Channel between 19th and 23rd June 1944. Winds of up to 32 knots piled up gigantic swelling waves that tore loose the breakwater's
sunken ships and caissons and carried away the floating bridges and pier heads. The three-day storm destroyed the American Mulberry. It had been in use
for less than 10 days.
Showing the general location of the Mulberries in position.
Mulberry B
survived. It had been
established at Arromanches at
Gold beach (once a quiet village in peace time) where it was used by the British troops. Here it was
sheltered by the nearby Calvados Reef, and suffered less in the storm. Nevertheless, salvaged parts of the U.S. harbour helped repair the British one, which soon reached its 7,000-ton-per-day
capacity for the Allies.
 Here is a good general
bird's eye view of the busy scene at the British-built Mulberry B, invasion harbour at Arromanches. |
|
Oblique view of Mulberry B (this time looking towards the
south-west).
|
Two and a half million men, half a million vehicles and four million
tons of supplies were landed on French soil through the artificial harbour at Arromanches. There are scant remnants of
Mulberry B still to be seen at Arromanches to remind us of the far off days when
they were constructed on the Sussex coastline.
Thanks to the late
Tony
Hammond, who was a schoolboy living at Hermit Terrace in Findon during the
Second World War, and started me off on this quest, I now know all about the mysterious Mulberries and
the part that the Sussex coastline played in their
construction and so, now, do you.
Here's a link to
see the real Mulberries....
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=23489
In January 2003, I
received an e-mail from Roy Collins with memories of the Mulberries
10th January 2003.
I have just found your item, on the Mulberry Harbours,
my Father and his best friend were members of the Royal Engineer
(Railway construction Unit) they worked on the building of the units and
went over to France to place them at Arromanches.
They helped to build the unit in King George 5th dry
dock in Southampton Docks, before it was towed to Selsey. They were
with it at Selsey for some time which was quite convenient, as Dad was
courting my Mum at the time and she was billeted nearby as she worked at
Prilly Hard Gosport making Shells.
Dad was allowed to go and see her the night before
they sailed, by a kind hearted Officer, the motor bike he used would not
start and he only just made it back to the loading ramp in time to throw
the machine onto the ramp and jump aboard as they sailed.
Dad and his friend helped assemble the harbour in
France, but instead of coming home they stayed with a REME field Company
right to the End of the war, they came Home in 1945 and he married Mum
and settled in Southampton, were he still lives, sadly Mum died last
March.
Dad's name is Frank Collins and his mate is Tommy
Chandler, how they became mates is another wonderful story and they
remain mates to this day.
They took me all round the places they been while they
were involved in the construction of the Harbour, even to houses they
had been billeted in, and ditches they slept in.
I took them back to Aromanches 1994 and they were able
to show me were they came ashore and the route they took out of the
village, the places they had camps on the way to Bayeau and to Caen, the
way they remembered was wonderful to see, their sadness was a privilege
to share.
Hope this is of interest to you.
Roy Collins
|
10th May 2004.
Mulberry Harbour project.
Having just found your website regarding the Mulberry
Harbour project its a great shame you did not attend the Mulberry Harbour
Stone Blessing on May 6th at Pagham marking 60 years to the day that the
Phoenix Caissons arrived.
Attending were TID Tug crews (Tug Invasion Deployment),
a crewman from HMS Aristocrat, a converted paddle steamer that escorted
them across the channel and the widow of the officer who commanded the
Royal Engineers here at Pagham. After it appeared on BBC TV that
night further contacts have come forward.
The Selsey aspect was where the American Port
Construction Unit was based (known as Seabees).
It was there huge water pumps that refloated the
structures.
The Caissons left at dawn on June 6th, and not before.
Ken Rimell
|
|
13th June 2004
Hello Valerie,
I found your excellent website researching the Mulberry Harbours. You are
right to call them the 'Mysterious Mulberrys' as their full history is
still waiting to be discovered.
My friend David (copied in) and I run a website about a WW2 concrete barge
at Canvey Island Essex that was used in the Mulberry defenses. This giant
barge stood proudly on a quiet beach since the end of the war, but was
demolished without warning last year by the local yatch club as they
considered it an 'eyesore'.
Our website
www.concretebarge.co.uk attempts to put together her history and that
of other wartime concrete barges. There is plenty of annecdotal evidence
of her involvement in the Mulberry harbour, but so far no documents or
photos have been found.
My reason for contacting you is that co-incidentally one of these barges
appears on your shipping pages (The Findon at Charlton Buoys)....under Yet
Another View of Findon.
After WW2 these sturdy concrete barges were used for many purposes -
buoys, platforms, houseboats, breakwaters etc.
Andrew Jackson
|
| 25th August, 2004
Hi Valerie:
Ronald MacArthur sent me "Selsy Life" and I have quickly reviewed your
site.
It is nice to see some attention finally being made to the beginning of
the Mulberry project.
Everybody knows what happened after they were towed to the Far Shore!
My grandfather, RADM Edward Ellsberg, was the US naval officer who showed
the Royal Engineers (1st) how to raise the Phoenixes.
I think some information about the problems the Royal
Engineers faced would be a nice addition to your website.
Churchill was directly involved and switched the task to the Royal Navy
after reviewing the site with my grandfather. Otherwise....I
am afraid the Normandy Invasion would not have taken place.
Churchill's involvement is, as far as I have been able to determine,
untold in the history books, and his diary covering this period has
disappeared. This is a key point in WWII history!!
My grandfather wrote a book about Selsey and the Invasion, The Far Shore.
Unfortunately it is hard to find, but sometimes pops up on eBay (it's
there in paperback, too). I am about to republish it with new
material, including photos...probably early next year. I have a
website for my grandfather http://www.edwardellsberg.com and there you
will find his letters to my grandmother covering his tour of duty prior to
and after the Invasion.
Ted Pollard
|
| 21st December 2004
Valerie,
Now that you are on to Mulberries again I thought you
might be interested in these pictures.
They appear to be to have been taken from a great height
but are in fact photographs of scale models made during the war by a
special department of the RAF.
This department was based at Medmenham Bucks and
employed the skills of model makers and artists ( Stanley Roy Badmin) to
create highly detailed models of enemy held territory for use by the
allied forces.
|
From: GENERAL DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, SUPREME
COMMANDER,
ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE,
To: THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR AIR.
14th June 1944
On behalf of the troops who have had occasion to use relief models
in connection with operations now in progress, I desire to express
my sincere appreciation for the whole-hearted co-operation and
diligence with which the demands of this headquarters for relief
models have been met.
During the past five months there have been transmitted to you
numerous requirements for relief models considered collectively
represent a construction programme of great magnitude. These
requirements have been met in accordance with exacting time
schedules in spite of the difficulties occasioned by unavoidable
alterations in the programme and readjustment of priorities.
I should be pleased to have you convey to the members of your staff
concerned and to the British and American Model Making Section my
commendation for a task well done. It is appreciated that they must
have been upon to work long hours and still maintain high standards
and accuracy and workmanship. May they feel that theirs is a real
contribution to our ultimate victory.
|
I don't have any details of the pictures but no doubt
somebody will recognise the harbour. This testimonial says it all.
Tony.
Tony Hammond, East Preston, West Sussex. |
In September 2008, I received the following email from Neil
Kermode....."Mulberry.....I came
across your site and can add a few other shades to the picture to add further
depth to your excellent researches.
1. The reason they were called Phoenix units was because they would rise
again. The units were designed to be constructed to full height on land and
then when ready launched sideways and the towed out to deep water off the
British coast and sunk out of sight all in one night. This was in order to
hide them from possible aerial reconnaissance whilst the fleet of these things
was built.
Once D-Day was imminent they were
re-floated, fitted out with the guns and towed over to France.
Not all of them re-floated and there are a few stuck in odd locations. There
are two off Worthing that are popular dive sites because of the marine life
they now house and one is on the sea front at Portland.
2. The Bombardons were designed to be floating breakwaters out to sea of the
other structures. In fact they were apparently a disaster and when their
moorings broke they came ashore like battering rams.
Interestingly enough there is also a
suggestion that they were instigated partially as a means of keeping the navy
engaged. Apparently the Navy top brass were miffed because the Mulberry
project was Army led, and as a means to placate them they were given the
Bombardons and towing duties.
They apparently also nearly took too much
steel to build and I have seen it suggested that there was more in the
Bombardons than the rest of Mulberry.
Anyway, hope these snippets add to your excellent site.
Neil Kermode, Orkney"
HERE'S AN INTERESTING REVELATION DISCOVERED in October
2009.......Doug Attrell of Goring near Findon went in search of relics of local Mulberries that had
adrift and been abandoned on their journey down our coastline during
wartime. He reported back....
click to enlarge Doug's photograph
"Above is a Beetle Pontoon on the beach at nearby Aldwick
just west of Bognor.
I got some photos of it this morning but unfortunately the
tide was on the way in & the light was all wrong. I'll have to go
back at low tide to get better ones, perhaps later this week if the weather
holds."
"I wish I'd known about these relics before. I've only recently become interested
in the subject & a lot of them have disappeared. I found something on the
pontoon at Aldwick saying that Arun council were planning on breaking it up The
local kids use it as a diving platform which was considered dangerous by those
blasted Health & Safety people. I suppose they have to watch out in case
something happens & they're sued for millions of pounds. This was dated 2006 so
it seems they didn't go through with it".
"Apparently a larger section of a Mulberry is visible at low
tide at Pagham. I realise this has nothing to do with Findon but know of your
interest in the Mulberries.
I must visit Pagham some time as there's some sort of museum
down there dedicated to the Mulberries".
MORE FROM DOUG....The one at Pagham is a caisson which is a much bigger section.
Fifty of these were sunk in Pagham Harbour to hide them from German
reconnaissance aircraft They had problems trying to to refloat one so they
left it where it was. I'm not sure if this is the one the divers call the
Outer Mulberry or if there are two".
RELICS OF
MULBERRIES.....from ex-Findonian, John Greves of Walton on Thames in Surrey....."Mulberry Harbours...Hard to believe the
size of these units and the quality of the concrete .... our visit to Arromanche
1985".
click to enlarge
AND A BIT MORE FROM DOUG......"Hi
Valerie.... Aldwick Beach, Beetle Pontoon..... I went back there yesterday to
try for better photos with mixed results. I found a nice photo showing how they
were used.
http://www.submerged.co.uk/mulberry8big.jpg
The huge object in John's photo
is a Phoenix caisson like the one lying off Pagham. I intend taking
a trip down there before long to check it out. It's a long way offshore so I'm
not sure how much of it is visible from the beach at low tide".
Continue if you
would like to read about
Preparing for D-Day in Findon.
THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE was launched
by Valerie Martin in January 1999 and will grow to be a historical record of life in Findon, West Sussex, U.K.
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