Urg. Publishers have done it again. After using Czech soldiers in 1945 Belgium to illustrate D-Day, they've now illustrated the 1942 British/Canadian Dieppe Raid with... US soldiers landing from USN LCVPs in 1944.
I'm pretty sure I don't need to explain Operation Jubilee, but just in case, it wasn't a US operation, a only a few Rangers and aircraft were present. Equally, the version of the Higgins Boat LCVP that we are all most familiar with had not yet come into service. 📷@WWIImuseum
Here's the actual picture. It's easy enough to find online, and naturally is often used to illustrate D-Day. In fact the LCVP is from USS Cepheus (AKA-18), which only ever served in the Mediterranean and Pacific theatres. The background discounts Normandy anyway.
From the uniforms and hills, the Med seems the most likely bet, and most captions describe it as training on the North African coast for Operation Dragoon.
Looking more closely at the image reveals an interesting detail. Evidently the image of someone falling in the surf isn't heroic enough for a book cover, so Photoshop has been liberally used to remove a few men, as well as the entire background.
Surely someone working this closely with the image would have spotted that these are US infantry? Unless of course they had no knowledge of the subject matter and hadn't read the book? And therein probably lies the problem...
Publisher's bonkers insistence that they know better on titles and cover images is putting profit over accuracy, and is ultimately damaging to history. The frustrating belief that any old picture of a landing craft can illustrate an amphibious op is especially frustrating.
In this case, as in the D-Day example, it also unfairly maligns other conflicts, stories and nationalities. This isn't new, but let's be honest, putting US troops on the front cover of a book about Dieppe is a new low. @VikingBooksUK should be embarrassed and ashamed.
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One of the questions on the @Wehaveways livestream 2 weeks ago was about the Landing Vehicle Tracked (LVT), or Buffalo, and why they weren’t used at Normandy. So I thought it would be handy to explain one major reason they couldn’t be deployed.
In a nutshell, we simply didn’t have the amphibious lift capacity to get large numbers of LVTs across the Channel. They needed to be carried by larger landing craft & ships, but the only ones suitable were already allocated for other vehicles – tanks and trucks. 📷IWM B5258
The Royal Navy (for it was they that led Neptune) had evolved its amphibious forces along the lines of separate landing ships/craft for infantry and for vehicles. The LVT, being a vehicle for carrying infantry, didn’t fit very well into that model.
Prince Philip's war service is usually summarised as getting a Mention in Despatches at the Battle of Cape Matapan and saving HMS Wallace at Sicily. But I feel this overlooks so much more, and occasionally errors creep in, so here we go.
After completing officer training at Dartmouth, on 23 February 1940 the 18 year old midshipman joined HMS Ramillies at Colombo. He would spend most of 1940 with the venerable battleship and the cruisers Kent and Shropshire. 📷 IWM A8858
Early in 1941 he joined the battleship HMS Valiant in the Mediterranean. The Royal website confusingly claims that Philip joined HMS Valiant at the age of 17, which isn’t really possible. It appears he joined her in January 1941, at the age of 19. 📷IWM A12126
Shells fall around HMS Glasgow during an artillery duel with shore batteries around Cherbourg on 25 June 1944. During the battle of Cherbourg she sustained 2 hits, but only minor damage. 📷IWM A 24306
The Royal and US Navy's involvement with the Battle of Cherbourg is usually reduced to the bombardment carried out to support the US advance into the town. But Cherbourg is a port and, as such, had been of considerable interest to the Allied navies for some time.
As part of their effort to clear the Channel in advance of the landings, Coastal Forces regularly intercepted S-boats sailing from the port, and even patrolled within 5 miles of it. As D-Day approached they mined the port's approaches. 📷IWM FL15328
The D-Day map at Southwick house, showing the state of the amphibious assault on Normandy at 7.25am on 6 June. The big white stripe across the English Channel is a German minefield – ten safe channels were cleared through it by RN and RCN minesweepers just before the landings.
But that wasn't the end of the minesweeper's work. Immediately after the assault, the same flotillas went to work clearing the spaces between the channels and sweeping clear channels between the anchorages off the beaches.
But the Luftwaffe & Kriegsmarine were fighting back, laying new mines in the Bay of Seine almost nightly. In June alone, bombers attacked the anchorages off the beaches every single night except one, dive bombing ships & laying mines. 📷Dive bomb damage on HMS Bulolo, IWM A24001
US Patrol-Torpedo Boat PT 509 (left) stands by USS Tide after she struck a mine off Utah Beach on 7 June. Two months later, PT 509 would herself be sunk. 📷Naval History and Heritage Command 80-G-651677
One flotilla of PT boats participated in D-Day & 2 more became operational very soon afterwards. Operating from Portland the 33 boats worked alongside the more numerous Motor Torpedo Boats of the Royal Navy & Royal Canadian Navy in the English Channel. 📷Library & Archives Canada
Portsmouth Command fielded no less than 14 flotillas of Coastal Forces during the Battle for Normandy. Their boats shielded the flanks of the invasion forces on D-Day and guarded the swept channels to the beaches for the weeks afterwards. 📷IWM A24047
A German pilot abandons his Linse explosive motor boat. In theory it would now be radio controlled from a control boat following close behind, who would pick up the pilot. In practice, these boats were virtual suicide weapons used in the Battle of Normandy.
The Linse was one of a number of single manned weapons developed in 1943 and 1944 that were rushed to Normandy in the wake of the D-Day landings. Another was the Neger, a tiny submarine actually made from a torpedo, with an armed torpedo slung underneath it.
The Neger couldn’t dive – it’s Perspex dome just broke the surface. A slightly larger version, the Marder, eventually replaced it at Normandy. The stretched upper torpedo had space for a diving tank, allowing it to submerge. 📷BillyHill