PREPARING FOR THE INVASION
Nye Moses was a reserve officer who had graduated from University of Southern California in April of 1943. After graduation he received military training at Northwestern University and was commissioned as an Ensign in August of 1943. He was transferred to Falmouth late in 1943 to assume command of the LCT-540.

Ensign Nye Moses welcomed most of the crew of the LCT-540 that January morning, and many of the men had trained together in Maryland. Ensign Moses laid some ground rules for the crew, and made it clear that he expected every man to do his duty. Period. Each man had been trained for a specific job on the LCT and the size of the crew meant that overall success of the LCT depended on every man performing that duty to the best of his abilities. The crew of the 540 included:

Ensign Nye Moses, Jr. was the officer in charge. Thaddeus E. Jablonowski was the throttle man, and Elmer H. Mueller the helmsman. Working together they got the craft where it had to be. Their duty station was the pilothouse. Irwin E Deeds was quartermaster and also was the 540s radio operator. Lou Mahlman, my dad was a signalman / communications back-up who sometimes kept the ship log. He also was responsible for helping the Skipper identify the beach characteristcs of Easy Red on Omaha. He had a complete set of reconnaissance photographs of 30 miles of the French coastline taken in February of 1944 by a submarine from about 1 mile off-shore. Jerry Gerson Binder was the ship’s cook, who doubled as its doctor and when necessary its funeral director as well. The two gunners were Sherwood Lee Harris and Robert E. Kearney. George W. Neely was a petty officer in charge of the engine room and Jack Willis was the anchor wench operator. Thomas W. McKay, also from the Philly area, was the petty officer in charge of the ramp detail, and the other seaman serving on the 540 included Benjamin F. Shewbrooks, Lawrence Libby, Ursinus "Fats" Lieberman of Stowe PA, Carl Ireland, Willard Newton Carver, Wilmer Thomas Burrows and Raymond R. Mahoney.

Over the next few months the men fell into a routine. They got comfortable with each other, and learned to live with each other. After hours usually meant pinochle in the galley. There was always a game going.

Other than participating in the invasion of Europe, I don’t think the men knew what their specific assignment was to be, or that the 540 would be one in one of the first waves. Throughout January and February, the crew took the 540 through its paces. They practiced loading and unloading. They practiced beaching and retracting. They moved troops throughout the southwest England area. As March began, the preparation moved from craft skills to flotilla skills. The 540 was to participate in four mock invasions to practice working together with the other 35 LCTs in Flotilla 19, which, unbeknownst to any of the crew had already been chosen to play a crucial role in the invasion. The first of these practice runs began on Tuesday, March 7th when at 1830 hours the 540 loaded 17 vehicles and 17 drivers and an Army officer to evaluate the overall effort. At 1925 the 540 arrived at Buoy #6, in the middle of the channel and waited for further orders. And waited. And waited. At 1430 hours on Thursday afternoon, the CO left for a meeting on the USS Chase with the commanders of all of the other LCTs in Flotilla 19 and returned four hours later. They reviewed the game plan for the following day with the crew. It seemed that the navy even had the guys practicing to wait. Finally at 1333 hours on Friday they got underway. Within 24 minutes they had passed into the English Channel. And they continued to travel throughout the night in convoy. On Saturday at 1240 the next day the 540 hit the beach and dropped her ramp. The 17 vehicles pulled onto the beach, and after raising the ramp, she pulled off of the beach, fully unloaded at 12:43. Unloaded in three minutes! The guys were impressive on their first attempt! They tied to LST-335 at 1415, and after loading 16 vehicles, left for the beach 14 minutes later. The 540 hit the beach with its second load at 1442 and pulled off unloaded in 9 minutes. Three times longer than the first load. The Skipper gave the guys hell and told them he expected better. On the third practice run of the day, the crew was able to bring their unloading time back down to 4 minutes, but at a price. I suspect the practice runs were tough on the ship because at the end of the day, the 540 had blown her starboard engine. A new engine was installed by the following Thursday, just in time to participate in the 2nd mock invasion.

A Log entry for that day reads “18:15 hours Moved to Hard and took on army”. They got underway first thing the next morning, and their three mock landings on Friday and Saturday saw the 540 cut their unloading time to an average of 3 minutes, but this time they blew their generator. During the 3 days it took to replace the generator, the Skipper had the men paint the craft.

The third mock invasion began on Wednesday, March 29th when the LCT loaded 15 army vehicles at 0900. They got underway 27 hours later at 1220 on Thursday. By 1400 hours the 540 had taken position in the 3rd port column heading to Torbay. After arriving there at 1740 hours, the crew and army folks onboard the 540 waited for 36 hours before leaving for the transport area at 0640 hours on Saturday morning. After two landings, the 540 was tied to LST 284 at 1830 hours loading for the third time when the LST slacked a line which got caught in the 540’s starboard screw, making steering very difficult. The 540 was ordered to port for repairs. The LCT 540 had now participated in three mock invasions, and the craft had not fared well, having a blown engine, a blown generator, an inoperable screw. The skipper called the men together and continued to harp at keeping focused. While the slack line was not 540’s fault, the problem could have been avoided.

On Wednesday in the first week in April, the 540 tested the weapons system. Calling it a weapons system sounds much better that it really was. The 540 had two 20 mm machine guns. They were they for defensive purposes only... with a top speed of seven knots an LCT did not readily come to mind when thinking about warships. My dad’s duty station during “beaching” was as a loader on the port side machine gun.

The machine guns were there to provide defense against enemy aircraft. They were located one on each side of the ship at mid-ship. Each was located in a circular tub made of quarter inch steel and to about 3 feet high. The port side gun was located on top of the enlisted men's quarters about 10 feet above the tank deck. The starboard gun was located on top of the officer's quarters. Each machine gun was located on a swivel stand in the center of the tub about 4 feet high which allowed the gunner 360° firing range. Two sheets of steel plate, measuring 18” by 24” one on each side of the gun provided a small shield for each crew. Each machine gun was fed by a 100 round magazine, and the loaders job was to replace an empty magazine with a full one as quickly as possible. Dad would often joke about being a six-foot guy in a three-foot tub while most of the crew was safely behind steel plate.

The 540 went out into the Channel to practice fire the 22mm machine guns on board. Sherwood Lee Harris, a good old boy from Oriental North Carolina was the hotshot gunner and Larry Libby was the loader on the starboard gun. They fired three successive magazines not only to practice firing, but reloading as well under live ammo conditions. Then the port crew consisting of my dad as loader and Bob Kearney as the gunner fired three magazines. The 2 gun crews had a competition to see who could fire the three magazines the quickest with the losing loader being the center of attention at the “man overboard” drills to be held after the test firing. Harris and my dad took 4 ½ minutes. 20 minutes after securing the 2 guns, dad was thrown into the cold channel waters by the winning gun crew and the man overboard drill began. When the guns were secured the crew held yet another fire drill.

A few weeks later in mid-April, the 540 was ordered to transport 6 M-4 tanks from one section of the harbor to another. The skipper called the guys together to get them focused on the job at hand. This would be the first time they transported six tanks and loading them into proper position as quickly as possible would be a challenge. The crew was able to load them onto the craft in 10 minutes and unload them in 6 minutes, and while they unloaded in 6, the men thought they could have done better. On April 22nd the Skipper, Carl Ireland, Wilmer Burrows and Willard Carver, the ship’s fire crew left to attend fire-fighting school, returning late that afternoon. The skipper had told the three seamen that he wanted them to present all that was covered in the firefighting school with the rest of the crew the following day, which they did. Because of that impromptu firefighting class for the crew, two crew members; Mueller and Harris would go on to earn a Silver Star 47 days later by using the skills covered on that Friday afternoon in Dartmouth.

The fourth mock invasion turned the training focus from Flotilla to Invasion Force and would be the biggest by far. Allied commanders had planned Operation Tiger as a “dress rehearsal” for the invasion with 30,000 soldiers of the first infantry division participating. The training exercise was to be held on April 27th at a place called Slapton Sands, a local resort beach which had many of the characteristics of Utah Beach including the cliffs which lay behind an expansive beach. A year earlier in 1943, local residents had been evacuated from Slapton Sands area so that the Allies could use it for amphibious invasion practice. Landing craft such as my dad's LCT were to deliver their initial load of men and equipment to the beach and then return to waiting LST to transport additional men, vehicles and equipment from the larger LST's offshore onto Slapton Sands. I don't know how many vehicles and men the 540 to go on in preparation for the Slapton Sands invasion but the logbook had a curiously short entry on April 24th “1715 hrs. Took on the Army”. In typical military fashion shortly after loading the men, the LCT went to the staging area and waited almost 2 full days until the afternoon of the 26th before getting the word to head out to sea to join the convoy heading to Slapton Sands. The 540 slammed onto the beach 1320 hours and pulled off the beach fully unloaded six minutes later. The rest of the exercise was uneventful to the 540 and as they headed back they continued to experience some engine problems and requested and received permission to head to Dartmouth, to have the engines repaired.

However throughout the day the Germans had been listening to the radio chatter around the Dartmouth area and he dispatched 9 E-Boats from the port of Cherbourg to investigate the activity near Dartmouth at Lyme Bay. E-boats are the German equivalents of our PT boats but on a bigger scale. Each E-Boat had a complement of up to 30 sailors, and each carried 4 torpedoes and six mines. E-Boats had a range of 800 nautical miles at 30 knots, and if pressed could hit its top speed of almost 44 knots. At 2 AM on April 28 just after the moon went down visibility was fair and the sea was calm. The German E-Boats found the convoy of six LSTs returning back from the training exercise as they sailed into Start Bay, the westernmost corner of Lyme Bay.

The Germans were effective. At 0207 hrs LST 507 was struck by three torpedoes and the explosion lit the night sky. She went down with 434 servicemen. At 0217 hours LST 531 was hit by to torpedoes and sank in six minutes leaving very little time to launch lifeboats, and taking over 300 servicemen to a watery grave. In all the attack at Slapton Sands resulted in 749 deaths among US servicemen almost four times more than the 197 men killed on Utah Beach on D-Day.

LST 289 was badly damaged in the stern and was able to limp back into port. There were 10 high-ranking allied officers on board the sunken LSTs who had participated in planning for D-Day at the highest levels and who had on their possession the final plans for the actual invasion of Utah Beach. When they were lost with the crews of the LSTs Gen. Eisenhower ordered the recovery of all bodies. The Allies had to make sure that those plans had not fallen into the hands of the enemy and compromised the element of surprise. Military commanders were justifiably concerned about the loss of personnel as well as the loss three LSTs. The loss of the three ships left allied command with no replacement LSTs, which were a critical component of the invasion plans. Any further loss of amphibious ships could doom the invasion. Allied commanders were also worried about the possibility that the missing American sailors have actually been taken prisoner by the Germans who might force them be a reveal secrets about the upcoming invasion. The Allies put full effort into accounting for these missing officers. All 10 had drowned and amazingly all 10 were recovered. As in most things in life there was an official investigation which identified to contributing factors. The convoy had been assigned to escort vehicles a British Corvette, a destroyer from the World War I era, had been damaged in a collision earlier in the day and put into port for repairs. The assigned replacement vessel came to the scene much too late. It's position as a lead craft in the convoy might well have a avoided this catastrophy since the German boats were waiting as the convoy approached. Another contributing factor was a typographical error which put LSTs and their escort vehicles on different radio frequencies. When a British ship spotted German torpedo boats soon after midnight that information was immediately sent to all British ships including the one escort vessel at the rear of the convoy. The American LSTs in the convoy never received work about the German presence, and consequently took no evasive action.

The last mock invasion happened the first week of May. On Monday, May 1st the 540 loaded 12 vehicles, 2 trailers 51 men, and at 1100 hours tied in anticipation of the launch order. Shortly after noon the next day a weather delay was announced. At 12:20 on Wednesday, the 540 got the word to get underway, passing into the English Channel at 12:40. After traveling all night in convoy, they arrived at the transport area at 0600, passed the control vessel at 0745 and hit the beach at 08:26. They took 23 minutes to unload their first load, and skipper gave them hell for taking so long reminding you guys are not going to have any extra time on the beach with German shooting at them. After they reporteded to LST 375 to take on their next load of five trucks, two trailers, and a bus with about 40 personnel they hit the beach and left unloaded in only 3 minutes. It was a great way to end what would become their last practice invasion. The next time LCT 540 would beach would be in Normandy at Omaha Beach.

A few weeks later on the 23rd Ensign Moses was called to a meeting of craft commanders from flotilla 19 where he learned a terrible explosion on May 21st at the West Lock Munitions Facility in Pearl Harbor. A number of LST's and LCT's, loaded with ammunition, and spaced very close together were rocked when LST 353 suddenly exploded. This initial explosion set off a chain reaction which ultimately destroyed LST 43, LST 69, LST 179, LST 480 as well as LST 353. Also destroyed were LCT 961, LCT 963, anD LCT 983. 163 seamen lost their lives in the incident as well. The commanders were advised to take every step to maintain safety around their craft. Many of these LCT would have trucks full of ammunition stored on them in the success of the upcoming invasion could not afford any stupid mistakes. Many of the LCT at Dartmouth would be loaded with explosives in the dayS before the invasion and the top brass wanted to make sure that their ship commanders took every precaution against fire hazard.

The navy brass had also decided that because of the extremely hazardous conditions that were expected during the invasion and to mitigate the risk of casualties, each LCT would be assigned an additional officer and up to 4 additional seamen.

Shortly after this, Ensign Bill Wilhoit, a recent graduate of Georgia Tech and its Naval ROTC program reported for duty as Executive Officer on the LCT-540. Bill joined the crew which had been working together for four months and his task was to learn everything he could as fast as possible. A friend and classmate of his, Scott Kelso was assigned a similar role as a Relief Officer for LCT-538, and be part of the same wave going into Omaha.

The days leading up to the invasion dragged on. The LCTs of Flotilla 11 were tied to T-6, and the crew tried to keep busy prepping the vessel. The only break in the boredom of routine maintenance was the daily General Quarters drill held every day for the last two weeks of May. Log entries showed very little activity during this period. Just waiting. The General Quarters drill was not held on the last Sunday in May, but they did have 3 air raid drills at 1:30 AM, 6:10 AM and again at 7:40 PM. A couple of hours after the General Quarters drill on Monday; a fire alarm was sounded… Rhino Ferry 13 had caught fire not far away. The 540 immediately proceeded to assist in extinguishing the blaze which was under control in about 20 minutes. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday more boredom, more routine work and General Quarters at 1100 hours. Everybody was getting antsy.