Mulberry Harbour: The secret project that made D-Day possible

  • ITV News Meridian's Derek Johnson spoke to those involved in the creation and use of Mulberry Harbour

The Allies faced a seemingly insurmountable hurdle on D-Day, how to land tonnes of supplies and heavy vehicles needed to push their Armies forward.

There had been failed attempts to capture French harbours that were in control of the Nazis, something that put invasion plans in a spin.

Until planners came up with an ingenious idea to build there own harbour and take it with them.

The original blueprints for what was known as the Mulberry Harbour are on display at the Royal Engineers Museum in Gillingham, Kent.

Sections of the Mulberry harbour still remain today Credit: ITV News Meridian

The remains of the gigantic portable harbour, brought across the English Channel in pieces, can still be seen off the French coast.

Rebecca Nash, Director of the Royal Engineers Museum said: "Almost every dockyard in the UK was involved in building some part of this harbour, they built two harbours, roughly one and a half times the size of Dover Harbour.

"Enormous, enormous construction that kept that army invading France resupplied."

Mulberry was so secret that not even the people building the pieces knew what it was.

  • Dorothy Nash unknowingly witnessed Mulberry being built

Dorothy Marsh worked at one of the places where the hollow blocks were being put together. She said: "The chippies had to go into the dockyard and build great big wooden crates.

"We couldn't think why they were being built, but what they were doing, they were tipping concrete into those crates and they were actually building Mulberry Harbour.''

Even the people towing the pieces were baffled, like Peter Orlando, a radioman on a US tugboat on D-Day.

He said: "They were huge blocks of cement that were sunk in a line to sort of protect that area that turned into a landing area. But then that was it, that they had that name, Mulberry, and you'd never guess what they were talking about.

"We used to tow those things around. We used to pick them up and tow them like they were nothing."

Mulberry allowed large ships to anchor and offloaded millions of troops and millions of tonnes of supplies Credit: British Pathé

George Worroll from Maidstone drove onto the beaches on D-Day and was later asked to test the roadways on the harbour before it went into use.

He said: "I had to motorway down it, a big thing, and reverse on it and turn round and come back off of it again, that's all they wanted me to do. They wanted to know if it was workable."

Although the second American harbour sank in a storm, Mulberry was a miracle of engineering.

Mulberry allowed large ships to anchor, offloaded millions of troops and millions of tonnes of supplies. D-Day could not have taken place without it.

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