“SINKING THE BREAKWATER” BY DWIGHT SHEPLER (NAVY ART GALLERY)
BY J. WANDRES
Just months before the invasion of Normandy in 1944,
“Force Mulberry”—in charge of building, towing, and operating the artificial harbors that would support Operation
Overlord—desperately needed new leadership for its towing
operations. When Edmond Moran, a U.S. naval officer with
extensive towing experience, took over this “British operation,” things began to turn around quickly.
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O
peration Overlord, the World War II Allied invasion of northwestern Europe, has
been called the greatest amphibious assault
in history. There was a dicey period, however, when one weak thread threatened to
unravel the astonishingly innovative artificial harbors, called
Mulberries, that were to provide shelter for the invasion
fleet once it reached the French coast. It had to do, of all
things, with tugboats. Solving the problem originated not
with senior Overlord planners but in the inventive mind
of a very junior captain in the U.S. Naval Reserve.
Preparations for Overlord and its naval component, Operation Neptune, began in early 1943. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was not keen to invade the continent from established ports such as Le Havre or
Cherbourg. He was inclined to do what the Germans believed was impossible: an invasion along a coastline with
no major harbors. Air and ground intelligence pointed
toward the Bay of the Seine on the Normandy coast. There
were a few minor problems: it was a totally unprotected
beach faced with high cliffs. There also was a 21-foot tidal
drop every 12 hours, and the bay’s sandy bottom was severely scoured by currents.
Churchill’s First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound,
made the case for a floating harbor to supply the invasion
force. U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt was enthusiastic
about the novel approach, and out of this consensus the
idea of the Mulberry harbors was born. Mulberry A, off
Vierville-sur-Mer, would serve the U.S. sectors (Omaha
and Utah). Mulberry B, nicknamed “Port Winston,” would
serve the Canadian (Juno) and British sectors (Gold and
Sword) near Arromanches-les-Bains.
The harbors had four main components. A line of “Bombardons,” huge steel floats anchored three miles offshore,
would calm wave action. A line of “Phoenix” concrete
caissons would be scuttled about 9,000 feet from shore,
at six fathoms, as an outer breakwater. At five fathoms
would be the “Gooseberries,” a line of obsolete ships that
would steam under their own power to the Bay of the Seine
to be scuttled as an inner breakwater. These would protect three “Lobnitz” pierheads (named for their inventor).
These resembled modern oil-drilling platforms: each of
their four legs could be lowered independently to the floor
of the bay. The onboard Seabee crew on each would use
diesel-powered hoists to raise and lower the piers’ surfaces
with the tide. Landing ships would off-load their cargoes
on the piers, which connected to “Whale” causeways floating on “Beetle” pontoons that ran to the highwater line.
Construction of components went on in shipyards and waterways along England’s south coast and in Scotland.
Royal Navy Admiral Sir Bertram H. Ramsay was appointed Allied Naval Commander Expeditionary Force in
charge of Overlord. Royal Navy Rear Admiral William
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G. Tennant was responsible for delivering the Mulberry
harbors across the reliably unpredictable English Channel
and for operating them once near the French shore. The
Americans said they would operate their Mulberry A under
Navy Captain A. Dayton Clark, Commander, Task Force
128. Clark was described as “a hard task-master and disciplinarian, [with] considerable experience dealing with the
Royal Navy.”1 Clark, blunt and outspoken, was impatient
with what he perceived was a sense of complacency taken
by Admiral Tennant and his staff. It was a classic clash of
naval cultures. The British tended to keep decision-making and planning at the highest levels; U.S. planners
gave broad policy directives and let subordinates work
out details and solve problems.
Early on, Clark identified three critical questions that
appeared to have been inadequately considered by Admiralty planners. All anchorages in the Solent, the five-milewide body of water between Portsmouth and the Isle of
Wight, had been allocated to the naval armada. Where
would the Mulberry components anchor? In open coastal
waters, it turned out. Where would the flotilla of tugs tie
up and be supplied? They would have to find their own
anchorages. Furthermore, no one had planned training
for the tug drivers. Many would be civilians who never had
towed something like a 204-foot-long, 6,000-ton concrete
caisson that could not be steered or stop itself.
Tennant’s civilian towing “expert” declared that each of
the estimated 125 Phoenixes (about 100 eventually were
built) required for Mulberries A and B would need two
2,000-horsepower seagoing tugs for the cross-Channel voyage. No one, however, had ever undertaken a tow of this
magnitude. In any event, the civilian simply guesstimated
about 500 tugs would be needed for the whole operation.2
U.S. Vice Admiral Harold R. Stark, commander of U.S.
naval forces in Europe, had gone to Washington in December 1943 to plead for more assets. The three-star “Dolly”
Stark was told in plain language by the Chief of Naval Operations, the autocratic Admiral Ernest J. King, that the
United States was, after all, fighting a two-ocean war,
and that he, King, could spare only 25 “towing vessels.”
Eleven turned out to be small harbor minesweepers, with
no towing equipment. Stark was, however, promised two
officers to head up his towing operation. One, a commander, had experience in harbor net and boom security.
The other, a lieutenant who had been a building contractor before being called up, was put in charge of Phoenix
operations. Stark paid a call to Vice Admiral Emory S.
Land, who headed up the War Shipping Administration.
Land introduced Stark to the newly promoted Captain Edmond J. Moran, in charge of the administration’s small vessel procurement. Stark asked Moran what he knew about
towing. It was like asking the Pope about Catholicism.
Besides, Stark knew very well who Moran was.
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Towing the Caissons to Normandy
EXCERPT
FROM THE
U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE ORAL HISTORY BY REAR ADMIRAL EDMOND J. MORAN,
U.S. NAVAL RESERVE (RETIRED)
W
hen I got to London in
mid-April 1944, the invasion planners brought me
to a great room in which there were
a lot of wall maps and simulations of
the beach, including houses and
everything. It seemed like a reasonable thing to do to set up artificial
harbors. Then I went down to a
place where there were a lot of
British admirals and some American
fellows. They told me what they had
to do, and they told me what they
thought the speeds would be, and
they weren’t far out. The problem
was that they didn’t have anybody
on the far shore at Normandy that
could handle these “Mulberry” caissons in a comprehensive way and do
it well. I couldn’t be in both places.
I went to a conference on the subject, and the Britisher whom they
had delegated to be the controller of
the operation went to his boss, and,
referring to me, said, “This guy can
do this job better than I can do it.
Let me out and put him in.”
But his boss said, “This is a British
operation.” So they decided to go to
British Admiral Bertram Ramsay,
who was the senior commander of
the operation. Then Admiral Harold
Stark, the American commander,
COURTESY OF J. WANDRES
Edmond Moran, caught in a pensive
moment at his desk after he was promoted
to commodore in 1944, helped ensure the
success of the Normandy invasion by
getting the Mulberries to the French coast.
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heard from Ramsay that they wanted
me, and Stark said I was to take the
whole thing. He didn’t ask me at all.
He said, “You’re going to do it.” And
Admiral Ramsay confirmed that I
was going to relieve the British captain who was charged with being
controller of the operation.
Moran was born in 1896. His grandfather, Michael
Moran, an Erie Canal pilot, started a towing brokerage
company in New York Harbor in the 1860s. Moran tugboats played a vital role in the Spanish-American War:
under orders of the War Department, they delivered dispatches between Florida and the U.S. fleet in Cuban waters. In World War I, Moran Towing and Transportation
sold tugs to the British. Young Edmond Moran began working for the company as a deckhand but enlisted in the
Naval Reserve at the outbreak of the war, later received officer training, and was assigned to the Naval Overseas Trans-
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All told, we had [about 100] of
these reinforced concrete caissons
to tow to France. Each [of the
largest ones] was 200 feet long, 69
feet beam. When loaded [each] was
about 7,000 tons and had a draft of
about 23 feet. We also brought
over a lot of railroad equipment,
bridge equipment, and pontoon
equipment. On each pontoon was
fitted a pathway for vehicles, such
as tanks and motorcars, and a
roadway for troops.
The first assault took place early
morning on June 6. We [had]
started across with the tows [the
previous morning]. They proceeded
at the rate of five or six knots, and
the distance was approximately 100
miles, coming from the British
ports of Portsmouth, Selsey, and
Plymouth. There were pretty fair
lanes established. The minefields
were swept away, and minesweepers
were at the point of entrance to
the beaches.
The difficulty was to find the precise place where the caissons were to
be dropped on the beach. This required capable navigation by the
civilians who were operating the
tugboats. And, of course, there were
patrols there that would lead them
portation Service.3 He returned to civilian life in 1919 and
resumed working for the company. In spring 1941, he helped
the U.S. Maritime Administration use the newly enacted
Lend-Lease Act to provide replacements for British tugs
damaged during German bombing raids.
Moran reactivated his commission in 1942, advanced to
commander, and began duty as rescue officer under Commander, Eastern Sea Frontier. Moran reorganized the system of rescuing merchant ships and crews attacked by
U-boats. Tugs helped save several ships and crews that otherwise would have been lost.
U N I T E D S TAT E S N AVA L I N S T I T U T E
highest possible pitch,
in, because they were
because we never knew
under constant fire
when we might get an
from the shore batterair raid or we’d get one
ies. The Navy ships
of these buzz bombs. I
were farther out; they
was around with the
were firing and holdpeople. We would send
ing down some of the
our tugs over to Selsey
fire from shore. They
for the kind of craft we
blasted those shelters
wanted to tow, deand the places where
pending on what they
they were sure the
were ordering us from
Germans had their
the beach, the far
heaviest artillery. The
shore, and when the
people who suffered
crews came back we
that first day were the
would give them as
infantry.
Admiral Harold Stark (right), commander of U.S. naval forces in Europe, much as we could in
These big concrete
and Rear Admiral Alan Kirk, the senior U.S. commander of naval forces
the way of relief—incaissons were difficult
for Operation Neptune, inspected the Mulberry at Omaha Beach shortly
cluding good food and
to handle. Each of the
after the invasion. Stark did not ask Moran if he wanted the job of
time off—from the
big tugs took one at a
commanding the tugboats for Force Mulberry—the admiral had said
ordeal that they had
time, and we must
unequivocally,
“You’re
going
to
do
it.”
suffered.
have had about 40 or
Some nights when
50 tugs. A small tug
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there was a bad raid, I
could take six of the
would myself go out on a tug and
operation worked according to plan.
40-foot pontoon bridges—about 480
sleep with the fellows. There was a
Two of the tugs were attacked. A
feet in a tow. The trip across the Engcaptain there whose name was Dan
German E-boat sank one of the tugs
lish Channel took about 24 hours, so
Hayman, a wild guy. He was a great
at night, but there was no loss of
we started putting them in place on
ladies man, and the British had a lot
life. Other tugs were under way and
June 7. Then the tugs went back to
of WRNS around, short for Women’s
picked up survivors. The damage was
England to bring over follow-on
Royal Navy Service. Some of the
much less than we thought would
loads. We used these artificial harbors
British officers got fascinated by difhappen. The tugs came under lots of
for loading until the Allies finally
ferent WRNS. This fellow Hayman
gunfire on the Normandy coast, but
captured the port of Cherbourg [on
wanted to take some of them along.
none were hit because the airplanes
28 June]. I don’t think the assault on
were doing a pretty good job of pro“Nothing doing,” I said. “No women
France could have been accomplished
tecting them and keeping them from
on deck.”
without them. I don’t think there was
surface craft.
He said, “The British got them.”
a possibility of going on the open
I
considered
my
first
job
with
the
And I said, “The British know
beaches without the protection that
tug crews to keep morale at the
what to do with them.”
those harbors afforded. This whole
NAVAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ARCHIVE
His transfer to the War Shipping Administration was
requested by Land, who knew Overlord would need barges
on which to ferry supplies to the Allied expeditionary force.
Land turned to Moran for a solution. Moran considered
using railroad car ferries used in New York Bay and oil
lighters, but thought that if towed individually these might
not make it across the Atlantic Ocean. His solution was
to sink a railcar ferry in a dry dock in the Brooklyn Navy
Yard, float an oil barge on top, raise the dry dock, lash the
two vessels together, and make them seaworthy. The combined strength of the sandwich could survive the ocean,
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and more than two dozen float-barge combinations were
towed to southern England.4
In April 1944, back at his London headquarters, Stark
grew desperate. The situation in Portsmouth seemed like
a rudderless ship drifting toward rocks and shoals. Construction and delivery of the Mulberry components were
behind schedule, and the lack of tugs and their support
and training had not been resolved. U.S. naval planners
“became increasingly uneasy about the prospect of the
components not being completed in time. The truth was
. . . that odds were against completion by D-Day.”5
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prewar entertainment complex with observation tower
Stark described for General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme
and pier at Lee-Upon-Solent, a resort town about 15 miles
Commander, Allied Forces Europe, the mucked-up situawest of Portsmouth. At last, the tug fleet had a place to
tion with the tugs and towing, and asked for Ike’s “guidtie up, even if its skippers initially had to communicate
ance.” Soon afterward, Captain Moran found himself with
with the tower by bullhorn until additional radio chanhigh-priority orders to England to report to Clark and Task
nels were established. Moran and his staff found messing
Force 128. Stark informed Force Mulberry that Moran would
and berthing nearby
take command of all
at HMS Daedalus,
tugboat operations.
Moran arrived in mida Royal Navy air
April 1944.
station.
There were probably
It was not Moran’s
few cheers on Moran’s
style to operate from
arrival, however. An
behind a desk. Having
got his sea legs on
assessment by Clark’s
the decks of Moran
deputy, U.S. Naval Retugs, he immediately
serve Commander Alplunged into 18-hour
fred Stanford, was that
days of visiting tug
“Moran’s assignment as
captains and talking
the overall tug conwith the crews. “His
troller was initially felt
trained mind and seato be a blow to Force
man’s eye caught many
Mulberry, which so
vital defects in the
desperately needed
towing gear,” Stanford
technical towing exwrote. Moran ordered
perience. While it was
The
two
Mulberries
at
Normandy
consisted
of
several
breakwaters
and
a
series
the larger tugs retrofitan exalted job, with
high honor for Cap- of floating pierheads (depicted above in Dwight Shepler’s watercolor “Mulberry ted with more powerat Work”) that could be raised and lowered with the tide. Supplies then were
ful winches and thicker
tain Moran, real help
off
loaded by way of several causeways, such as the one opposite at the Omaha towing hawsers. He
was needed on the
Beach Mulberry at Vierville. On 19-20 June 1944, shortly after this photo
asked for and got orwaterfront.”6
was taken, this Mulberry was destroyed by a fierce storm.
Moran was a quiet,
ders for a Lieutenant
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thoroughly organized
Commander Fred Basindividual. The day he
sett, a Moran expert in
of
Portsmouth,
probably
not
knowing
in
the
port
arrived
seagoing tows of dead weight objects. Moran used a Phoenix
where he would sleep that night, he met with his inhercaisson that had been scuttled off Selsey Bill (i.e., headited staff and heard their complaints, which were legion.
land) east of Portsmouth, had it refloated, and began dusk“Force Mulberry was [seen as] an unwanted orphan even
to-dawn training for the tug crews. He appealed to Land,
by its flag brothers in the American area,” Stanford wrote.
and six more 2,000-horsepower seagoing tugs arrived in
“The prospect of dealing with the King’s [Portsmouth] harPortsmouth.
bour master, the Naval Control of Shipping, and the many
To inspect the many sites where Mulberry components
necessarily time-consuming British procedures . . . was cerwere stashed, Moran requisitioned a small U.S. Army
tainly not attractive.”7
minesweeper as his flagship. The crew and steward on board
became cumshaw experts, so there was always a pot of
Force Mulberry, Stanford pointed out, occupied “two
strong coffee, fresh bread with jam and butter, and hot
small offices in a shack next to the latrine on the North
meals. Moran was only too pleased to have his British counWing of Admiralty House [in Portsmouth]. One telephone
terparts come along on inspection trips, and to enjoy a
line was run in. When communications requirements
hearty meal. “Suddenly, hitherto unprocurable chain and
outran [this], one could walk across the quadrangle to the
shackle, even rare binoculars, appeared from His Majesty’s
signal Wrens in the Tactical School and write a dispatch
Dockyard storehouses, issued on chits signed by Force Mulfor transmission when permitted. It was often quicker to
berry’s most junior officers.”9
drive the 90 miles to London than attempt to use the busy
8
wires.”
The length of the Phoenix breakwaters had to be scaled
Tug Control had no place of its own until a sympaback because not all caissons would be ready by D-Day.
thetic Royal Navy officer told Moran about an abandoned
Clark and Moran almost welcomed this bad news, because
DWIGHT SHEPLER (NAVY ART GALLERY)
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U N I T E D S TAT E S N AVA L I N S T I T U T E
it scaled back the need for tugs. Already, Moran’s crews
learned to tow a caisson with only one seagoing tug. He
also ordered that several larger tugs tow strings of the small
750-horsepower yard tugs to the far shore. This, he reasoned, would conserve the yard tugs’ fuel and increase their
operational time while siting the Mulberries.
NAVAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ARCHIVE
On 5 June 1944, the sky was cloudy with scattered showers. A 10- to 15-knot breeze blew in from the northwest.
At 0415 in the situation room of Southwick House, Admiral Ramsay’s headquarters to which General Eisenhower
had moved his flag, Ike said, simply, “Okay. Let’s go.” The
armada of more than 2,700 ships began steaming from
different staging areas along England’s south coast toward
the far shore and France.
Standing on the bridge of his flagship somewhere off
Selsey Bill, Moran watched the warships depart, followed
slowly by the flotilla of tugboats towing the Mulberry
harbors. He had spent the entire night before visiting the
crews of tugs, Phoenixes, and Lobnitz piers to offer encouragement for the days ahead. He had done all he could
to transform the tug drivers into an integrated command
all pulling their oars in the same direction.
Commodore H. A. “Pat” Flanigan, on Stark’s headquarters staff, wrote to Land at the War Shipping Administration: “Even now when the invasion is started, we can’t
yet tell you what Moran is doing. Be assured, however, that
it is one of the most vital factors in the invasion and one
which was in a good deal of a mess. Moran has brought
order out of chaos and skill and experience to replace [the]
amateurish approach.”10
The first of the 32 Phoenix caissons actually arrived on
D+2, at Omaha Beach at 2200 Zulu on 7 June—eight hours
ahead of schedule. Moran arrived later that day on board
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JUNE 2004
the seaplane tender USS Rockaway (AVP-29). What he
saw undoubtedly pleased him. Despite enemy shelling
and minor problems, the tugs sited the Phoenix caissons
and block ships where they were supposed to be. The Lobnitz pierheads were positioned and connected to the Whale
bridges. The yard tugs served valiantly, racing into the
beach under heavy fire to
throw grappling gear to
stranded and destroyed landing
craft, towing them out of the
way of successive waves. The
USS Cormorant (ATA-171)
towed HMS Sandown back to
England for repairs. The USS
Arikara (ATF-198) towed the
French destroyer La Surprise
into Portsmouth harbor, although the Arikara herself hit
a mine. Her crew kept the tug
afloat by jamming mattresses
into the hole.
Moran was not physically
tall, and the 20-hour days from
mid-May to mid-July seemed to
beat him down a little more.
Even so, he stood tall during
a ceremony in London on 11 July when Admiral Stark
awarded him the Legion of Merit.
Moran returned to duty at the War Shipping Administration and was promoted to commodore (the equivalent
of the modern rank of rear admiral, lower half) in August
1944. In November 1945 he was advanced to rear admiral on the retired list. In a ceremony at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel he was awarded the French Croix de
Guerre and appointed a Commander of the British Empire.
Moran resumed the helm of Moran Towing and Transportation, serving as chairman until 1984. He died in July
1993, at age 96, a year short of the 50th anniversary of
“The Longest Day.”
1
Guy Hartcup, Code Name Mulberry: The Planning, Building, and Operation of the
Normandy Harbours (New York: Hippocrene, 1977), p. 26.
2
Alfred Stanford, Force Mulberry: The Planning and Installation of the Artificial Harbor off U.S. Normandy Beaches in World War II (New York, Morrow, 1951), p. 75.
3
Speech before the Newcomen Society of North America, 3 December 1964.
4
Edmond J. Moran Jr., The Moran Story (New York: Scribners, 1956), pp. 315-17.
5
Hartcup, Code Name Mulberry, p. 51.
6
Stanford, Force Mulberry, p. 108.
7
Stanford, Force Mulberry, pp. 91, 95.
8
Stanford, Force Mulberry, p. 95.
9
Stanford, Force Mulberry, p. 100.
10
Flanigan to Land, June 6, 1944, Estate of Edmond J. Moran, Courtesy of Edmond J. Moran Jr.
Mr. Wandres is the author of The Norden Broadcasts: America’s Ace in
the Hole, a work in progress about the U.S. Navy’s broadcast propaganda in World War II.
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