Location
Arlington, Virginia
Date
15 Aug 2008, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Abstract
This paper presents an historical account of covert soil sampling operations conducted by the British Royal Navy’s No. 1 Combined Operations Pilotage and Beach Reconnaissance Party on December 31, 1943, near Luc-sur-Mer, France at the beach later given the codename “Sword.” With the tactical goal of determining whether the beach sand would support heavy invasion craft such as tanks, trucks, and bulldozers, this commando-style mission provided the field data by which the Supreme Allied Command established the site for the main landing beaches where the initial assault phase of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy, took place on June 6, 1944. Incorporated into a site characterization lecture, this case study illustrates soil exploration methodology and introduces students to the nature, practice and significance of geotechnical engineering as a profession that can directly influence world events and even the course of modern history.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
6th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 2008 Missouri University of Science and Technology, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Lawson, William D., "Soil Sampling at Sword Beach – Luc-Sur-Mer, France, 1943: How Geotechnical Engineering Influenced the D-Day Invasion and Directed the Course of Modern History" (2008). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 13.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/6icchge/session11/13
Soil Sampling at Sword Beach – Luc-Sur-Mer, France, 1943: How Geotechnical Engineering Influenced the D-Day Invasion and Directed the Course of Modern History
Arlington, Virginia
This paper presents an historical account of covert soil sampling operations conducted by the British Royal Navy’s No. 1 Combined Operations Pilotage and Beach Reconnaissance Party on December 31, 1943, near Luc-sur-Mer, France at the beach later given the codename “Sword.” With the tactical goal of determining whether the beach sand would support heavy invasion craft such as tanks, trucks, and bulldozers, this commando-style mission provided the field data by which the Supreme Allied Command established the site for the main landing beaches where the initial assault phase of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy, took place on June 6, 1944. Incorporated into a site characterization lecture, this case study illustrates soil exploration methodology and introduces students to the nature, practice and significance of geotechnical engineering as a profession that can directly influence world events and even the course of modern history.
