Mulberry Harbour
A Mulberry Harbour was an ingenious type of temporary harbour developed in World War II for use during the D-Day landings. Developed by two Britons, J. D. Bernal and Brigadier Bruce White, under the orders of Sir Winston Churchill, the harbours called for many huge caissons, or barges filled with cement, to be towed across the English Channel and sunk to create a breakwater. This plan was carried out and by June 9, just 3 days after D-Day, two harbours codenamed Mulberry 'A' and 'B' were constructed at Omaha Beach and Arromanches respectively. However, a large storm on June 19 destroyed the American harbour at Omaha, leaving only the British harbour at Arromanches. In the 100 days after D-Day, this harbour, which came to be known as Port Winston, was used to land over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tonnes of supplies providing much needed reinforcements in France.
From a technical perspective, a Mulberry harbour was constructed out of 600,000 tons of concrete between 33 jetties, and had 10 miles of floating roadways to land men and vehicles on the beach. The caissons that were sunk to form the breakwater were towed across the English Channel at only 5 mph. While the harbour at Omaha was destroyed rather quickly, Port Winston saw heavy use for 8 months - despite being designed to last only 3 months. Port Winston is commonly upheld as one of the best examples of Military engineering. Its remains are still visible today from the beaches at Arromanches.
Also see: Operation Pluto
