Mulberry harbour
Mulberry harbours were two temporary portable harbours developed by the British Admiralty and War Office during the Second World War to facilitate the rapid offloading of cargo onto beaches during the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Designed in 1942 and then built in under a year in great secrecy, within hours of the Allies successfully creating beachheads following D-Day, sections of the two prefabricated harbours and old ships, to be sunk to create breakwaters, were being towed across the English Channel from southern England and placed in position off Omaha Beach (Mulberry "A") and Gold Beach (Mulberry "B").
Mulberry harbour
Arromanches and Omaha Beach, Normandy, France
June 1944
March 1945
Temporary portable harbour
Military equipment, stores and personnel
Beach
The Mulberry harbours solved the problem of needing deep water jetties and a harbour to provide the invasion force with the necessary reinforcements and supplies, and were to be used until major French ports could be captured and brought back into use after repair of the inevitable sabotage by German defenders. Comprising floating but sinkable breakwaters, floating pontoons, piers and floating roadways, this innovative and technically difficult system was being used for the first time.
The Mulberry B harbour at Gold Beach was used for 10 months after D-Day, and over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tons of supplies were landed before it was fully decommissioned. The still only partially-completed Mulberry A harbour at Omaha Beach was damaged on 19 June by a violent storm that arrived from the north-east before the pontoons were securely anchored. After three days the storm finally abated and damage was found to be so severe that the harbour had to be abandoned and the Americans had to resort to landing men and material over the open beaches.
Background[edit]
The Dieppe Raid of 1942 had shown that the Allies could not rely on being able to penetrate the Atlantic Wall to capture a port on the north French coast. The problem was that large ocean-going ships of the type needed to transport heavy and bulky cargoes and stores needed sufficient depth of water under their keels, together with dockside cranes, to off-load their cargo, and these were not available, except at the already heavily defended French harbours. Thus, the Mulberries were created to provide the port facilities necessary to offload the thousands of men and vehicles, and millions of tons of supplies necessary to sustain Operation Overlord. The harbours were made up of all the elements one would expect of any harbour: breakwater, piers and roadways.
Sections of Phoenix caissons are located at:
Beetles are located at:
Other artefacts around Garlieston include:
At Southampton, Town Quay, a short section of 'Whale' roadway and a buffer pontoon, now derelict, used after the war for Isle of Wight ferries, survive between the Royal Pier and the Town Quay car ferry terminal.[45]
German equivalent of Mulberry[edit]
In the period between postponement and cancellation of Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of the United Kingdom, Germany developed some prototype prefabricated jetties with a similar purpose in mind. These could be seen in Alderney, until they were demolished in 1978.[46]