Скачать или смотреть D-day, the Harbor that went to France: The spectacular rise and fall of the Mulberry Harbor (color)

A highly interesting documentary about the construction and destruction of the Mulberry harbor in 1944: restored, enhanced and A.I. colorized!
The construction of the socalled Mulberry harbors was one on the technological miracles that contributed to the success of D-day and the subsequent Battle of Normandy in June 1944.

It was Sir Winston Churchill who realized the need to build an artificial harbour in order for the invasion of Europe to succeed during WWII. As a navy man with decades of experience and as previous lord of the Admiralty he knew too well what could go wrong during beach landings.

Especially the differences between high and low tides in the North of France with sea height differences of 8 meters between ebb and flood, plus the fact that the sea retracts for more than half a kilometer during low tide would make it almost impossible to unload goods during the whole day. In stead the conditions for such would only allow goods unloading during two narrow windows each of about an hour a day.

Young engineer Alan Beckett designed most parts of the artificial harbor.
The highly secret project was dubbed "Mulberry", probably inspired by a mulberry tree that grew in the back garden of his house.

Mulberry was to become a partially floating harbour consisting of the already mentioned artificial breakwater (so called Bombardons), beach heads and mile long floating bridges consisting of pontoons (so called "beetles") connected by bridge elements (so called Whales). At the beginning of each floating bridge would be a pier head that rested on the sea bed using adjustable legs (so called "Spuds"). The height of the pier heads would automatically adjust with the tides.
Each floating bridge (or pier) was about 2 km long, consisting of just over 40 Whales and the same number of Beetles. In total 16km of Whale roadways were manufactured.

In total all the objects that were part of the breakwater formed an 8 km long arc structure. The concrete Phoenix caissons were equipped with anti-aircraft guns and protected from low level bombing by means of barrage balloons.

The first Phoenix was sunk on the 9th of June. The Gooseberry was finished by 11 June.

Up to 40.000 people were employed to construct Mulberry's components at and around Southampton. Although the construction was an all British effort, the actual deployment of the harbor was split into two projects, named "Mulberry-A", run by the Americans and "Mulberry-B" by the British and Canadians. Mulberry-A was assembled at Omaha beach and Mulberry-B at Gold beach.

Two weeks after D-day, on 19 June 1944 a severe storm hit the coast of Normandy which lasted for 4 days. As a result the American Mulberry-A harbor was largely destroyed whereas the British Mulberry-B survived. Here are some spectacular shots of what happened to the bridge elements and Phoenix break walls.

All that remained were twisted heaps of steel. In total 21 of the 28 Phoenixs were destroyed. The Americans decided to abandon Mulberry-A. Some parts that were somewhat useable were towed to the British Mulberry-B side, in particular to be sunk in order to strengthen the Phoenix break walls.

One may speculate why one harbor survived and the other didn't. Some historians claim that Mulberry-A to the West was more exposed to the forces of nature.
However, another important fact should not be overlooked: Mulberry's designer Alan Beckett had designed special light weight anchors that were intended to keep each bridge element in place.

British engineers made every effort to ensure that these anchors did their job and were tightly dug into the sand. The Americans on the other hand did not take this too serious. In stead of using an achor for each bridge element they only deployed one for every sixth element. Also they mixed 60 and 80 meter bridge elements at random.

The British Mulberry-B harbor remained in operation for 10 months, although it was originally only intended to be used for 3 months. During this time it was simply renamed to "Port Winston" in honor of British prime minister Winston Churchill who was the original creative genious behind the plan.

One may wonder whether the floating piers and spud pier heads were really necessary. Fact is that the Americans continued to unload goods on Omaha beach using landing craft on wheels, so called "Ducks" and by using smaller vessels that took their goods on board by cranes from the large cargo ships. More than half of all the goods were brought on land this way.

Thanks for watching!

Source: Archive.org
Music: Howard Harper Barnes

The full (longer) description is added under my Pinned Comment.