Prefabricated Ports

To the Allies last week the battle of supplies was still in the urgent stage. To the Germans one of the wonders of the Allied advance was that it could keep going with only one major port (Cherbourg) in partial operation. This week some of the miracle of Allied supplies was explained: the British and Americans had used prefabricated ports, towed across the Channel and set up under the noses of German guns.

It was a long-withheld story of an engineering triumph that made the invasion victories possible. Early in 1943, at Quebec, the Allied chiefs of staff had decided upon the plan: breakwaters, man-made harbors, pierings for two ports as big as Dover, to be set up on the Normandy beaches. Winston Churchill had given one order: "Let me have the best solution. Don't argue the matter. The difficulties will argue themselves."

The solution (by British engineers) was ready by Dday. Sixty old ships (including H.M.S. Centurion, one of the earliest dreadnoughts, and the French battleship Courbet) followed the invasion armada. They were scuttled to form five breakwaters along the French coast, to provide immediate anchorage.

Then came a procession of steel and concrete caissons--to be the walls of the harbor and designed for the various depths of water. These were of huge length and weight (some more than 6,000 tons) and each had to be towed into place from British ports. This part of the job alone required 85 sea tugs (some of them sent from the U.S.) for three days & nights.

Then came the massive pierings--some seven miles of pier equipment, broken down into prefabricated units for towing.

The two harbors--the British at Arromanches, the U.S. at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer--were nearly complete on D-plus-13, when a furious gale struck the invasion coast, all but wiped out the U.S. installation, seriously damaged the British.

More wonders had to be worked. The Americans salvaged some ships and caissons, moved them to be added to the British harbor. When Cherbourg fell, the Americans scuttled more dozens of ships to make a new mole there (TIME, Sept. 25).

This week Lieut. General Brehon B. Somervell, chief of the Army Service Forces, could report on the first 109 days of invasion: the Allies had landed nearly 2,500,000 troops, 500,000 vehicles (at a rate of four a minute, day & night), 17,000,000 ship tons of munitions and supplies (more than twice the total the A.E.F. of 1917-18 had received). The secret of the prefabricated ports was the secret of the miracle of supply.

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