Washed up Landing Craft-June 8,1944

On June 8,1944 a Landing Craft washed up on the Vire Estuary between Omaha and Utah beach with 6 dead Navy personnel. On board was the whole plan of operations of the VII Corps, which was captured by the Germans.

Does anyone what unit this landing craft belonged to?

 

Thats only mentioned briefly in the Wikipedia entry for "Operation Mincemeat". Where did you hear of it?

 

Where on earth did you hear about that? It sounds a bit weird that the Germans would be able to be on the beach there if it was already secured by allied forces(?)

 

Gentlemen,

This incident is described in two books:

"Last Round Against Rommel: Battle of the Normandy Beach Head" by Alexander McKee (1964)

"Invasion: They're Coming" by Paul Carrell (1960)

I'll quote verbatim from the McKee book.:
"From a water logged landing craft,a derelict of D-day which had drifted ashore on the German held Vire estuary between Omaha and Utah. Cossacks of the 439th East Batallion took a beachmaster's copy of the American VII Corp. "

In the Paul Carrell book, there is more information on the incident. Here it was a shell riddled landing craft with a half dozen dead American Naval officers. One of them had been a Beachmaster and his body was slumped over a case which held the documents.

There can't have been too many Beachmasters

 

Cheers Kaki. Carell is Gospel for me, so it apparently happened

 

question beckons what type of landing craft and on June 8th like mentioned earlier how did the Germans capture these plans off the coastline

something is suspiciously wrong with this event. do we have a numeration fo the craft possibly if anyone knows ?

will just throw this out that the KM Schnellbootflottillen in the area were very active trying to sink anything Allied of any size until nearly pulverized on the 14th of June by B Command Lancs