Louis Hyde: Crew Member on PC-1225 During World War II

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Hyde was at his battle station on the flying bridge. The patrol craft were not as tall as the larger ships, so he did not have a bird’s-eye view, but he saw enough. The lookouts had no assigned sector to watch. Instead, they had to maintain a constant vigil over the entire horizon and then concentrate on where the actual danger was.

‘I remember the big ships, especially the battleship USS Texas, firing, but they were far enough out to sea that their firing had no effect on us,’ Hyde said. The patrol craft had been assigned its own target, a pillbox near Vierville. From 6:02 to 6:18, she fired on the designated target.

The DD (duplex drive) Sherman amphibious tanks destined for the eastern half of Omaha were guided by LCC-20 and launched 5,000 yards beyond the line of patrol craft–and promptly foundered. PC-552 spent the next 45 minutes picking up survivors. On the western end of the beach, the location of Hyde’s ship, the tanks were carried directly to the beach, led by PC-568.

At 6:31 the first wave in LCVPs (landing craft, vehicle and personnel) touched down. At 6:45 and 7:05, PC-1225 sent in the second and third waves of LCVPs. During that sequence, additional waves of landing craft went in also. By 8:30, the naval beach master on Omaha Beach suspended all additional landings, but the suspension did not last long.

My father remembers watching the beach. One incident has remained with him since that day. ‘I was looking over the beach area with my binoculars,’ he recalled. ‘Up on the cliffs I saw a German soldier moving. All of a sudden there was an explosion. When the smoke cleared he was gone.’ The U.S. Navy destroyer Shubrick also reported seeing a German walking on the cliffs; her captain figured he was an officer scouting out gun positions. The destroyer fired four rounds at the unfortunate enemy soldier and claimed a direct hit.

‘In between the drifting smoke and dust clouds, I could see the beach area. It was full of carnage, but there was little we could do about it,’ said Hyde. Some of the destroyers closed to less than 1,000 yards off the beach, with only a few inches of water under their keels. The courageous crews of these ships provided the artillery backup for soldiers trapped on the beach and filled in for the lack of tank support.

Before sunset, PC-1225 left its position off the Dog Red Beach sector of Omaha and headed for the Dixie Line. The new position, consisting of destroyers, destroyer escorts and patrol craft, was set up to defend the assault area from German air and naval attacks; the rest of the Allied invasion fleet was inside the line.

Despite the force arrayed against them, the German navy had struck once during the morning, when torpedo boats T-28, Jaguar and Möwe launched 18 torpedoes and sank the Norwegian destroyer Svenner. The British battleship Warspite had returned fire, but the three German vessels returned to their base at Le Havre without serious damage. Additional German air and naval attacks were launched that night. One bomb landed near the fantail of PC-1225, but was too far off to do any damage.

On D-plus-1, PC-1225’s duty as a control vessel was over, but she remained on the Dixie Line. German air and naval attacks continued, mainly during the hours of darkness. The attempts to disrupt the invasion by attacking the fleet would continue for more than a month. Early on the morning of June 9, a German airplane dropped a bomb near PC-1225. Storekeeper Harold Weiss received a cut from shrapnel, but the wound was not serious enough to warrant his evacuation.

The German attacks were not confined to the Dixie Line. On the night of June 6, four E-boats attacked a convoy in the English Channel. By the time the Germans were finished, LST-376 and LST-314 were lost.

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Amphibious Operations, Historical Conflicts, World War II

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