'Operation Neptune'
'Operation Neptune'
The decision is made for the times for 'H-Hour' and the suitable days for 'D-Day'
Vice Admiral Brian Schofield was an eyewitness to the secret preparations for D-Day, being the commander of HMS Dryad, the Royal Naval shore establishment at Southwick House which housed General Dwight Eisenhower’s Supreme Allied Headquarters.
Operation Neptune was the naval part of Operation Overlord, the complex plan to transport the invasion forces across the Channel for the Allied invasion of Europe. Operation Neptune - The Inside Story of Naval Operations for the Normandy Landings 1944 is a key reference for understanding the events of June 1944. In this excerpt from his classic account, Schofield explains how the plans came together in the final two months:
Final Preparations
On April 2, 1944, Admiral Ramsay issued a provisional copy of his orders for Operation Neptune to certain selected authorities. In view of their complexity, they were arranged chronologically and not separately for each force, and they were necessarily voluminous, totalling more than 1,000 pages of typescript. This fact occasioned some comment amongst the US members of the staff.
"The planning methods of the two navies were also very different," writes Admiral Morison. "The British were accustomed to making detailed plans at top level; the Americans to issuing broad directives to lower echelons who were encouraged to work out their own details."!
But this was no ordinary operation and when it is remembered that the movements of every one of the several thousand ships involved had to be co-ordinated and linked to a timetable, and that it was essential for each to know what the other was doing, then it seems that no other system would have worked, since nothing could be left to chance or individual whim.
The orders went to the printers on April 10; two weeks later they were distributed and a limited number of authorities were instructed to open them, the risk to security thus entailed being considered acceptable. It was appreciated that the Commanding Officers of some of the smaller ships taking part might be overwhelmed when in due course they were ordered to open their copies of the orders, hence arrangements were made for them to be briefed by staff officers familiar with the contents.
MOVE TO BATTLE HEADQUARTERS
On April 26 Admiral Ramsay and his staff moved from London to their Battle Headquarters at Southwick House in the middle of the operation area. This early Victorian mansion, nine miles from Portsmouth and lying in a park of some 360 acres behind Portsdown Hill, had been requisitioned a few months previously to house the Navigation and Fighter Direction School, which had been bombed out of its home in the dockyard. The author had just assumed command of the establishment when, in January 1944, he was visited by General de Guingand, Chief of Staff to General Montgomery, who informed him that he had been charged with finding suitable headquarters from which to launch the invasion.
After the General had seen the facilities available in the park and the house he expressed himself satisfied that it was an ideal situation, especially as the Army units would not be arriving until the trees came into leaf and there would then be ample cover in the woods for their tents and caravans.
It was agreed that Admiral Ramsay and the Naval Staff who would arrive first, should occupy the house, while the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, and his staff, together with General Montgomery and the staff of 21 Army Group, would be accommodated in the park. In March the Navigation School was transferred to the RN College, Greenwich, though the Fighter Direction School remained, and work went ahead with the conversion of the rest of the establishment into a Battle Headquarters.
This involved the requisitioning of local houses as WRNS Quarters, the laying of power cables and teleprinter lines, the erection of numerous Nissen huts and even the sinking of a well to augment the inadequate water supply. Hardly a day passed but some new requirement had to be met but, with the willing co-operation of all concerned, when the Commander-in-Chief arrived and his flag was broken at the head of the flagstaff specially erected for the purpose outside the front porch, all was ready.
The long drawing room, panelled with mirrors, had been converted into an operations room and covering the east wall was a huge relief map of the invasion area and the English Channel. To safe- guard this secret, all the windows of the room had been completely blacked out and only Commanders in Chief and their Staff and Wren Officers acting as plotters, had access to it.
The map had been erected some days previously by a dockyard carpenter, who arrived with it in sections wrapped in black hessian in a small RN van, and this white- haired little man had been entrusted with one of the most closely guarded secrets of all time.
The stage for Operation Neptune was set, but as yet neither D-day nor H-hour, the date and time when the first troops would land on the beaches, had been decided. It had been agreed that the landings should take place between 12 minutes before and 90 minutes after sunrise, and three to four hours before High Water; also there had to be moonlight during the night before for the paratroops which were due to begin landing soon after midnight.
These requirements limited the choice of days during the month of June to 5 to 7, or 18 to 20, with a strong preference for the earlier period.
As the time of High Water at the various beaches varied by as much as one and a quarter hours, the earliest being at Utah and Omaha, it was not possible to synchronise H-hour for the five assault forces.
On May 1 a meeting took place at Supreme Headquarters at which the situation revealed by the latest air photographs of the beaches was considered. These showed that the enemy was pushing his lines of beach obstacles farther out to sea and, as Ramsay insisted that they must be dealt with when they stood in not more than two feet of water, this involved an adjustment of H-hour and gave added preference to June 5 and 6 with June 7 only acceptable in case of absolute necessity.
In the event, due to a 24 hours' postponement, further adjustment of the H-hours was necessary, and those finally decided upon were:
Utah and Omaha beaches 0630
Gold beach 0725
Juno beach 0735 - 0745
Sword beach 0725
The provisional fixing of D-day somewhat in advance of the actual assault was necessary because sailing orders had to be issued to some of the blockships anchored off Oban by D minus 8 days. At the same time provision was made in case the weather on the day selected proved unsuitable and ships were required to reverse course and put into emergency ports.
© The Estate of Vice-Admiral B B Schofield 2008, 'Operation Neptune - The Inside Story of Naval Operations for the Normandy Landings 1944 '. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.
