History of Exercise Tiger
LST Group 32, the Plymouth section of the Convoy-T4, consisted of LST 515, 496, 511, 531 and 58. It left Plymouth at 9.45 pm on the night of 27th April 1944 and was joined by the escort vessel, HMS Azela, near the Eddystone Rocks and headed towards Brixham where it was joined by the Brixham section of the Convoy T-4 composed of LST 499, 289 and 507.
The convoy was moving at a speed of 5 knots in a single row, keeping a distance of about 400 yards and stayed in the order LST 515, 496, 511, 531, 58, 499,289 and 507.
On the night of 27th of April, few minutes after 10 pm a group of nine German E-boats set out on a normal reconnaissance mission from their base in Cherbourg into the Lyme Bay area. They followed the usual channel route without any sign of a convoy or ‘enemy’ ships. As they headed towards the Lyme Bay area, they suddenly came in visual contact with the LST convoy. Since they could not see any naval escorts, they quickly positioned themselves for a torpedo attack.
As the convoy approached Lyme Bay it was maneuvering a loop to head back towards the shore. It was here that the E-boats made contact and opened fire. A few minutes past 2 am LST 507 was torpedoed, hitting its auxiliary engine room cutting all electric power.
The ship burst into flames, the fire fighting attempted by the crew proved futile as most of the fire fighting equipment was inoperative due to the power failure. After about 45 minutes or so the survivors of the attack were ordered to abandon ship.
LST 531 was hit by two torpedoes shortly after LST 507 was hit. The ship burst into flames, rolled over and sank in six minutes. Several minutes later LST 289 was torpedoed.
However LST 289 managed to limp back to shore but only after suffering a number of deaths and casualties of its men aboard.
Trapped below decks hundreds of soldiers and sailors went down with the ships. There was little time to launch lifeboats and some of the lifeboats were jammed. Many leapt into the sea, soon many drowned, some weighed down by the waterlogged coats and others who had wrongly put on their life belts around their waists rather than under their armpits. Others succumbed to hypothermia in the cold water. In all 749 American soldiers and sailors died that night, 946 in total during Exercise Tiger.
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