As the orange rays from Lake Ontario’s setting sun filter through the glass windows of the tugboat’s elevated steel pilothouse, one can almost see her crew. Their faces, slightly blurred by time, are still fixed in anxious rigidity. As they pass around the binoculars, each man leans forward slightly, in a vain attempt to magnify the view. One is biting his lip while another holds his mouth agape in dazed amazement, scanning the beaches dead ahead. Their hearts are pounding; the confluence of fear and courage are palpable.
Unfortunately, their story stops there. That unknown crew sailed into the fog bank of history after participating in one of the most momentous events of the modern world: the D-Day invasion.
The vessel they sailed on, however, is now owned by the Port of Oswego Authority in Oswego, New York, where the H. Lee White Maritime Museum oversees it as a cultural asset, working on its restoration and maintaining public access.
According to historian Charles Dana Gibson, it was one of only about six in its class of the U.S. Army’s large tugboats participating in Operation Overlord; it was known then as the LT-5 Major Elisha K. Henson.
Initially setting out from the English coast on June 6, 1944, the Henson was delayed by strong winds, arriving off the coast of Normandy in the early morning hours of June 7.
Michael R. Pittavino, curator of the maritime museum, tells us what happened next:
“They beached the barges which were combat-loaded with ammunition, chock full of various munitions for tanks, rifles, etc. They beach those right up on shore as a contingency. The command, in their pre-invasion process planning, had said ‘Okay, we’re going to build these Mulberry harbors … but what if they fail? Then the ship-to-shore logistics is completely cut off.’"
According to Pittavino, the Henson’s participation in Operation Mulberry was critical to the initial invasion phase of Operation Overlord.
Operation Mulberry had facilitated the construction of great artificial harbors (or DIY harbors), historically referred to as “Mulberry harbors,” composed of sunken concrete caissons known as “Phoenixes,” blockships known as “Gooseberries,” and a line of floating breakwaters called “Bombardons.”
Writer Ken Ringle reported that preparation of the Mulberry harbors had sucked up “every bit of available steel and concrete in a Great Britain already reeling from wartime shortages,” but that it was brought to fruition in almost total secrecy—despite obvious physical visibility.
According to the BBC, the prefabricated harbors (known as Mulberry A in the American sector and Mulberry B in the British sector) were “built over six months by around 55,000 workers from 210,000 tons of steel [and] 1,000,000 tons of concrete. They still stand as one of the greatest civil engineering feats of modern times.”
However, as curator Pittavino reminds us, a violent storm blew in on June 19 (D-Day plus 13), and by the 22nd, the American’s DIY harbor at Omaha Beach was largely destroyed. Pittavino tells us:
“It never got repaired, and at that point there’s evidence from Command and various [sources] to suggest that they actually began to feel the pinch of ammunition on the front lines, and without that [additional] ammo, things may have turned out differently.”
The additional ammo he’s referring to came from those loaded barges the tugs had already led up high on the beach and “out of the way of the regular landing spots” as a contingency plan. According to Vice-Admiral Alan Kirk, former head of American Naval Forces at Normandy, it was General Omar Bradley who crafted the brilliant backup plan in case “the weather got so bad that the little boats that were supposed to take it in couldn’t carry it.”
And so it was that commandeered car ferries from New York, Boston, and Baltimore harbors were filled to the brim with “machine gun ammunition, ammunition for anti-tank guns and anti-aircraft guns, and 105s, bazookas, 155s, and so on”—the ammunition that got towed with the help of tugboat LT-5 Henson. Vice-Admiral Kirk wrote, “So this reserve ammunition was available and, by God, when the great storm came in mid-June, it saved our bacon. A very well-conceived idea of Bradley’s and very well executed.”
Writing for the magazine Sea Classics in the 1990s, historian Charles Dana Gibson summarized it this way:
“The six U.S. Army LT tugs, of which the LT-5 was one, which by virtue of their cargo that they, with their civilian crews, towed to Normandy in June 1944, may well have saved an American army from a decisive defeat."
The legacy of Henson and its crew doesn’t end there, however.
Naval History Magazine tells us that the Henson “bloodied the enemy … when, on 9 June 1944, her group of ships was attacked by German fighters. Henson Navy gunners downed one, earning the vessel the distinction of being the only Army tug in the European Theater of Operations to do so. … On her stack, she proudly displays her ‘kill mark’: the silhouette of a fighter plane and swastika. Her twin .50-caliber guns still point skyward.”
In 1946, the tug’s name was changed to the John F. Nash and was an operating vessel for the Buffalo District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for many years before being offered for sale by the General Services Administration (GSA). Soon after being acquired as surplus by the Port of Oswego Authority, a former director for the maritime museum, Rosemary Nesbitt, successfully lobbied for the tug to be designated a National Historic Landmark, which was achieved in 1991.
Sadly, the names of its valiant D-Day invasion crew remain a mystery to this day, and her logbook has disappeared. Pittavino suggested that one of the reasons they’ve never been able to identify the crew may be related to the 1973 National Archives fire.
According to the National WWII Museum, “In 1973 a devastating fire in the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) destroyed about 17 million military personnel files. A loss with long-lasting repercussions, it affects our understanding and knowledge of many individual WWII stories.”
Perhaps we don’t really need to know their names because their identities are carved into the hearts of our American spirit. Besides, for some of us, when we rub our eyes, we can still see their faces on the other side of the pilothouse glass, and we give a wave of thanks.
