TNA ADM 199 792

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CONFIDENTIAL.
Page 14.
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Operation "DYNAMO"
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Narrative of Events.
30/5
Thursday, 30th May. (Continued).
44. At Dunkirk there were no air attacks in the early
morning and all was quiet. Later, when ships began to arrive
in quantity, in view of the massive target presented by a
number of ships alongside the East pier at a time, the S.N.O.,
Dunkirk ordered destroyers alongside only one at a time. At
about 0800 a store ship arrived at Dunkirk with provisions but
no water. This caused so much congestion on the pier that
unloading was abandoned when half complete, and the store ship
filled with troops. A certain amount of water was obtained
from destroyers.
45. During the forenoon the Military constructed a long
pier of lorries with deck planking, into the sea off Bray. This
was an excellent piece of work, but was insufficiently stable
for use by such craft as paddle steamers, nor even smaller
power craft in a lop. It was invaluable later for embarking
troops into small boats. As regards general embarkation off
the beaches, it was later learnt that it was 0 common occurrence
for processions of small boats loaded with troops to be cast
adrift when empty and allowed to float away to seaward, owing
to the lack of sufficient naval ratings as boat-keepers. For
the same reason many of the smaller pulling boats were swamped
and sunk due to overloading by uncontrolled "rush" of soldiers.
Both these faults were remedied later.
46. Matters proceeded smoothly throughout the day owing
to the mist and there being a big smoke cloud over Dunkirk
which prevented the enemy bombers attacking the ships in large
numbers.
In order to increase the rate of embarkation through
the bottle-neck of the East Pier gangway, the troops were
urged to quicken their pace and eventually thousands of troops,
tired and without food and water for days, broke into the
double and kept it up the whole length of the pier for more
than two hours.
47. The attempt to maintain an adequate rate of lift
using only the older destroyers was by now shown to be
impracticable. The destroyers were lifting about 17,000,
personnel vessels about 9500 in the 24 hours. Remaining
vessels were estimated to be worth about 15,000 per day. This
gave a total lift of about 43,000 per day. The situation
called for E lift of at least 55,000 per day. Verbal
representations being made to C.M.S., authority was received
for the return to the Dover Command of the modern destroyers
released the night before.
Accordingly Commander-in-Chief, Nore, at 1531 gave
orders to HARVESTER, HAVANT, IVANHOE, IMPULSIVE, ICARUS and
INTREPID to proceed at once to Dunkirk. Subsequently some of
these destroyers were diverted to the beaches.
48/