Teignmouth Probus Club’s guest speaker Dr. Harry Bennett (32 years a Plymouth University historian) reminisced about his involvement with the restoration project in Cornwall of the last remaining German WWII Motor Torpedo Boat No. S130. These were very powerful 110 feet long 45 knot F1 racing boats armed to the teeth with torpedoes. This led to the focal point of his talk of where such vessels were ‘in action’ and the mourning for the loss of 749 lives in the pre Normandy campaign preparations held in Lyme Bay late April 1944 called ‘Exercise Tiger’. This event has been a closely kept secret where all involved ‘kept mum’ from the Germans (and everyone else besides). In the 1980’s Interest on what happened at that time erupted with the discovery of WWII American Sherman ‘Swimmer’ Tank offshore from Slapton Sands Torcross South Devon when a ‘local’ Ken Small and team in 1984 recovered the tank from the seabed which can still be seen at Torcross and now part of a memorial to ‘Exercise Tiger’.

Another legacy was the requisition of 30,000 acres behind Slapton Sands with the removal of some 3000 South Hams residents, many never to return to their property, to make way for 15,000 servicemen to prepare for D-Day – all again ‘hush hush’.

Many books and frequent documentaries have been produced with confusing conspiracy theories compounding the legend which our speaker had a hand in researching ‘the truth’ about those times. Lyme Bay looked like the Normandy Utah Beach especially with Slapton Lake behind the shoreline, the ‘perfect’ location for realistic mock action with live ammunition. It did produce casualties. But the big disaster and loss of lives actually occurred 30 miles away, off Portland Bill by a chance encounter by one of 3 German MTB patrols sent from Cherbourg to investigate some ‘unusual maritime activity in the area’ showing up on German triangulated radio traffic. One group chanced upon a small convoy of unprotected landing craft and sank ‘enemy vessels’ with so many casualties. The ‘main event of some 200+ vessels’ was not discovered my Germany.

In all the documentaries no one asked ‘where were the bodies?’ None were found in the Slapton area but were washed up or recovered in the Portland area. All were secretly taken either to Brookwood Military Cemetery Surrey or Madingley Military Cemetery Cambridge but 2/3rds were repatriated back to America. It is only in current times that the relatives of the casualties have now ‘learned what really happened’. The members were spellbound by this interesting piece of local history.

Posted by Press Officer Rick Purnell