On June 6, 1944, the Allies led a landing operation off the coast of Normandy, France, to liberate it from German armies after nearly 4 years of occupation. This landing came after repeated demands by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to open a second front against the German army in order to reduce the load on its forces on the Eastern Front.

In addition, the Allies, mainly the Americans and the British, gained a foothold in northwestern France to facilitate the process of the liberation of France and progress into Germany.

But before landing in Normandy, the Allies led months of training and maneuvering to simulate such a landing. Among these exercises, history is reminiscent of the "Tiger" training, during which a catastrophe occurred and approximately 300 American soldiers were killed by "friendly fire".

During 1943, the British evacuated some 3,000 residents from the cities of Slapton, Street, Turcross and East Ellington in South Devon to provide a suitable location for their ally - the United States to train in a military operation simulating landings in Normandy.

The British chose these areas because their area was very similar to that of the Normandy coasts.

In addition, the Allies began completing the Tiger exercise on April 22, 1944, about two weeks before landing in Normandy, during which they switched to using landing gear full of soldiers and tanks in addition to live ammunition, where warships were asked to use their cannons to simulate beach bombing.

On April 28, 1944, the unexpected happened. Taking advantage of the darkness of the night, nine German submarines approached the Bay of Lime, in the English Channel in the south-west of England, to intercept eight American landing craft in the area and attacked them with a number of torpedoes.

The German attack led to the sinking of two landing craft and killed about 700 American soldiers, who died by drowning or as a result of the cold water that lowered their body temperature, and in addition the rescue crews were late in arriving.

Despite this naval disaster, the training operation, which was delayed by the German attack, continued with the survivors, who were initially mistakenly led towards the Salfton coast during an evacuation from the German attack area. During these maneuvers, British battleships bombed the coast with live ammunition, only to be surprised by the American soldiers who survived the massive British shelling.

In addition to the 700 soldiers killed in the German attack, the British bombing of Slapton Beach killed more than 300 American soldiers with friendly fire.

During the remainder of World War II, the Allies hid the bombing and friendly fire incident, which killed American soldiers, in order to maintain the morale of the soldiers days before the landings in Normandy. Everyone has been waiting for many years for information about what happened on April 28, 1944, on Salfton Beach.