Posted on 04/29/2003 5:34:59 AM PDT by SAMWolf
Page 3
©2000, Aaron Elson
Lou Putnoky: Just before the Southern French invasion, Admiral Moon committed suicide aboard our ship. He was the highest-ranking serviceman to commit suicide during World War II. But it was kept very quiet, because they didn’t want the enemy to know. He shot himself with a .45. In fact that’s documented in a book. There’s an incident that happened in April of 1944, just before the Normandy invasion. It was the final training exercise. The name of it was Exercise Tiger, and a book was written about it by a British author. His name is Nigel Lewis. It’s very enlightening. And it was kept quiet for many, many years.
Aaron Elson: Were you participating in it?
Lou Putnoky: Yes. Our admiral, and our task force was involved. The reason why this was hushed up was because the British fouled up. See, the British, it’s a hard thing to say – they’re good sailors, but the one thing that trips up the British is tradition. They get involved in these little traditional things that are extremely dangerous to warfare.
There were about five LSTs coming over, and one of their escorts had gotten into a little bit of an accident and had a little hole in the bow, and they radioed back to their base. You see, the British answered to the British admirals. It was a strange coalition that took place. Because of pride and tradition, it got to be very touchy, so you had to use kid gloves. They called their admiral, and their admiral told them to come on back, and nobody told Admiral Moon. So they go back to port, and it left this whole group of five LSTs exposed.
Now these LSTs were only a short distance, maybe 80 miles from the French coast. And there were these E-boats – an E-boat is over 100 feet long, they’re narrow boats equipped with two torpedoes and 40-millimeter and other machine guns and cannons, and they could do about 25 knots. So they went out on the prowl, and they were devastating some of our shipping lanes, because they would sneak in, torpedo a couple of ships and then leave. They were black; you couldn’t see them, and in the confusion of darkness …believe me, the confusion during war is the thing that kills you.
So they picked off and sunk three of our LSTs that were loaded with troops. Altogether we lost in the neighborhood of 750 men.
And they kept this so quiet. We knew aboard our flagship that something was going on in the distance, but we were getting it in dribs and drabs. I didn’t find out until I read the book. I knew that there were a couple of LSTs, only because of what the radio operators had picked up. And the radio silence is very, very strict during a condition like this, and everything is in code. You can’t get this kind of information until after, and this was kept quiet for in the neighborhood of 40 years. It’s one of the biggest disasters of World War II.
Exercise Tiger: The Dramatic True Story of a Hidden Tragedy of World War II
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