What is a artificial harbour/ mulberry harbour?
Mulberry was the name for a series of huge pontoons and caissons floated across the chanel after D-Day and then sunk to form breakwaters and Quays for landing equipment and personnel. There were actually two harbours, codenamed Mulberry ‘A’ and ‘B’ , at Omaha Beach and Arromanches, respectively. However, a large storm on 19 June destroyed the American harbour at Omaha, leaving only the British harbour which came to be known as Port Winston at Arromanches. While the harbour at Omaha was destroyed sooner than expected (due to it not being securely anchored to the sea bed), Port Winston saw heavy use for 8 months—despite being designed to last only 3 months. In the 10 months after D-Day, it was used to land over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tonnes of supplies providing much needed reinforcements in France Bits of it are still there – you can see them on Google earth!
