June Carter
Colonel Coke
About 1944, after the invasion of Sicily and Italy, in which he took part, Colonel Coke (then Major) observed trials of experimental equipment at Hayling Island Sailing Club. He watched as an amphibious tank, too heavy for Langstone Bridge and intended for shipment by landing craft to Portsmouth, stuck in the craft’s doors and sank. He saw a shooting-stick device tried out which was intended to test beach consistency. The tester would sit on the stick’s seat to note how far it sank. He recalls that while a rather fat lieutenant commander did these tests with Sir Malcolm Campbell, he himself (Colonel Coke) could not stop laughing as he imagined how useful this device would be to those who landed on the defended beaches of France in the dark.
Many ingenious ideas at this time led to useful developments which smoothed the way of Allied invasions, particularly the D-Day landings. Others needed a lot of hought to make them usable, or were abandoned as impracticable.
During early 1944 on Hayling Island, work on the caissons for the Mulberry Harbour continued apace. When ready to be launched, the first caisson was raised from the supports, using wooded wedges drawn together by bolts. It was moved, inch by inch, to the slipway and levered onto the launching cradle, again by wedges. Everyone concerned was enormously relieved when over 3,000 tons of green concrete had been moved successfully without breaking up.
The testing time for Mr Mitchell of Portchester came when the caisson was launched, as he was to be on it with a salvage pump, ready to pump if water was taken on, to prevent the caisson from sinking. After it had been moored in the Langstone Channel, the rest of the caisson was completed.
R.A. Beachill of Copnor started work as an apprentice electrical engineer in January 1944. Remarkably, his first job, having not long left school, involved work on the caissons on Hayling Beach. Temporary power cables were to be supplied to the work site via small pylons made up of scaffolding tubes. He was on site for approximately three to four months and saw the job through to completion.
He also tells of a mainly Irish workforce and of extremely hard working conditions. January and February were bitterly cold, the site was totally exposed and there was no shelter while working. The men with whom apprentice Beachill worked were billeted in one of the disused holiday camps and were brought daily to the site by bus.
He was present for the launch of four caissons at the end of March or beginning of April 1944. Three launched successfully but the fourth would not float properly. He was personally involved in frantic efforts to remedy this.
A night shift was started and a small number of floodlights was installed, in spite of a total blackout being in force. The problem appeared to be a faulty scuttling valve which allowed water to seep in, even when tightly closed; consequently, several compartments were awash with water. A Royal Engineers diving team was called. They were to work, under water, inside the caisson, as they could not get at the underside while the barge was aground.
Young Mr Beachill was asked to do night shift as duty electrician and was responsible for switching off the floodlights should there be an air raid alert which, he recalls, happened quite often. They installed a transformer and when the switch was thrown the lights went to “dim” for two minutes, to allow the workmen to get off the caisson and to walk along temporary staging to the shore. Then the lights went out, leaving the caisson in total darkness. Because of the lighting, the site was a very obvious target, so the army provided a battery of six Bofors light anti-aircraft guns for local defence. These were on the shore just to the left of the caissons, each one surrounded by sandbags. They opened fire several times on low-flying planes.
One night, while on duty, Mr Beachill was asked to climb on to the caisson as the diver working on it was not satisfied with the lighting. It was very murky under the water at about 2.00 a.m. and the diver was working deep inside the caisson in about 15 feet of water. Apprentice Beachill managed to fix up a wandering lead with a floodlight dangling on the end and clambered down an ordinary wooden builder’s ladder until his feet were inches from being immersed, to hold the light at water level shining downwards. He did so, he says, for what seemed like an eternity.
But the problem was never solved. The caisson almost floated but whenever the tide was running, it would shift several yards at a time, scraping along the bottom of the harbour. This caused more problems because electrical cables were stretched tightly across the water, held by insulating cleats clamped on to the caisson. When the caisson shifted, the cables snapped and live cables lay beneath the water surface.
Southwood Road, Eastoke: contemporary postcard
B. G. Turner of North Hayling says his father-in-law was employed by Portsmouth Dockyard, one of a team of about 40 who worked on a Hayling caisson which must have been the one described above by R.A. Beachill. He was told that half tree-trunks were placed under the caisson, it was winched and rolled forward only to break in the water.
Former Marine Stan Truman of Tavistock says he and colleagues were laying bets, as the caissons grew a few feet higher daily, on what they were. It seemed incredible that so much concrete would float.
In spite of tight security, a South Hayling girl, later Mrs Grace Townsend, watched caissons being launched. She was invited to do so from their home by the family of her friend Jos. They were both 17. Grace recalls the launches as big events but with only the workmen and officers present. She remembers the caissons as great big things, has no idea how they floated but says there was a lot of grease on which they slipped down when launched into the water. She assumes something pushed them. About three caissons were built at the time and they were made of reinforced concrete with iron bars inside. Nobody was allowed on the ferry during a launch but she found it interesting to watch.
As well as the Mulberry Harbours, Hayling Island saw much of the concentration of more straightforward materials and manpower, which took place all over Hampshire, as the build up to D-Day gathered pace.
Captain Alec J. Wale, RN, of Alverstoke, Gosport served in the 30th Supply and Repair Flotilla of landing barges which formed up in Langstone Harbour in early 1944 and sailed from there on the evening of 5th June. He believes the other “S and R” Flotilla also formed up at Langstone and there were a number of smaller landing craft (LCMs) there too, manned by Royal Marines.
The barges were Thames lighters fitted with engines and modified to provide accommodation for personnel. They carried the means to provide logistic support. For instance, LBEs carried technical specialists and maintenance equipment for emergency repairs. Others carried, respectively, fuel, water and hot food. These craft provided immediate support to small craft in the beach area immediately following the Normandy landings. His flotilla was part of Sword force.
The administrative offices for all this were in the Royal Hotel. Ratings lived in holiday chalets and the 30th Flotilla officers lived at Swaythling, a house half-way along Southwood Road, which they found comfortable. Six officers were looked after by four Wren stewards with a large chalet on the beach across the road to act as a bar and lounge. After a few weeks they moved to the Suntrap School, opposite the coast guard station. In the evenings they would walk along the beach to the Honky Tonk (now called the Inn on the Beach).
The late H. S. Berry, formerly an Able Seaman of the 4th Landing Barge Vehicles Flotilla, recalled that his skipper was Pat Osbourne and that the flotilla used the Royal Hotel mess. But his enduring memory of Hayling was that all the toilets in the Suntrap School, where his flotilla was housed, were really too low for use by sailors. He was there up to and including the invasion of France, then posted to the Far East. I gather the crowded conditions at the Suntrap in war-time grated a good deal on a number of the men who