The minutes of the Sub-Committee's meetings show that initially it was envisaged that bubble breakwaters would be used, then blockships were proposed, and finally, because not enough block ships were available, a mix of blockships and purpose-made concrete caisson units were used. White, brother of Sir Bruce White, to advise on the location of the harbours and the form of the breakwater the Sub-Committee's first meeting was held at the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) on 4 August 1943. An Artificial Harbours Sub-Committee was set up under the Chairmanship of the civil engineer Colin R.
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The need for two separate artificial harbours – one American and one British/Canadian – was agreed at the Quebec Conference in August 1943. With the planning of Operation Overlord at an advanced stage by the summer of 1943, it was accepted that the proposed artificial harbours would need to be prefabricated in Britain and then towed across the English Channel. Preparation Phoenix caissons under construction in Southampton in 1944 The harbours were made up of all the elements one would expect of any harbour: breakwater, piers and roadways. Thus, the Mulberries were created to provide the port facilities necessary to offload the thousands of men and vehicles, and millions of tons of supplies necessary to sustain Operation Overlord. The problem was that large ocean-going ships of the type needed to transport heavy and bulky cargoes and stores needed sufficient depth of water under their keels, together with dockside cranes, to off-load their cargo, and these were not available, except at the already heavily-defended French harbours.
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The Dieppe Raid of 1942 had shown that the Allies could not rely on being able to penetrate the Atlantic Wall to capture a port on the north French coast. After three days the storm finally abated and damage was found to be so severe that the harbour had to be abandoned and the Americans had to resort to landing men and material over the open beaches. The still only partially-completed Mulberry A harbour at Omaha Beach was damaged on 19 June by a violent storm that arrived from the north-east before the pontoons were securely anchored.
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The Mulberry B harbour at Gold Beach was used for 10 months after D-Day, and over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tons of supplies were landed before it was fully decommissioned. Comprising floating but sinkable breakwaters, floating pontoons, piers and floating roadways, this innovative and technically difficult system was being used for the first time.
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The Mulberry harbours solved the problem of needing deep water jetties and a harbour to provide the invasion force with the necessary reinforcements and supplies and were to be used until major French ports could be captured and brought back into use after repair of the inevitable sabotage by German defenders. Designed in 1942 and then built in under a year in great secrecy, within hours of the Allies successfully creating beachheads following D-Day, sections of the two prefabricated harbours and old ships, to be sunk to create breakwaters, were being towed across the English Channel from southern England and placed in position off Omaha Beach (Mulberry "A") and Gold Beach (Mulberry "B"). Mulberry harbours were two temporary portable harbours developed by the British Admiralty and War Office during the Second World War to facilitate the rapid offloading of cargo onto beaches during the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944.