Today, RAF personnel came together to commemorate members of 21 Base Defence Sector (21 BDS), a little-known British radar unit that landed on Omaha beach and lost several personnel.
Personnel from the Air Command and Control Force, based at RAF Boulmer, attended a ceremony at Vierville sur Mer in Normandy, to lay wreaths at the only RAF memorial on the assault sectors of the Normandy beaches.
The event, which commemorated all the Allied fatalities at Omaha beach, was also attended by the town’s Mayor, local residents, members of the 29th US Infantry Division and French military personnel.
21 BDS was substantially composed of RAF radar controllers and operators, communications specialists, drivers, technicians and mechanics. Their purpose was to protect the American troops from night air attack by establishing a radar warning and Ground-Control Intercept capability as the landings began.
On 6th June 1944, the unit came ashore under heavy shellfire and faced many casualties. Out of 27 vehicles unloaded by four landing craft tanks (LCTs), only eight actually made it to the beach.
A fifth LCT hit a sandbank further out to sea and unloaded its vehicles into about six feet of water, so that they were all promptly submerged. Their occupants only saved themselves by scrambling onto the roofs of the various trucks.
“It is a privilege to be here at Omaha beach to represent the RAF. These units came ashore on D-Day and fought in a bloody and relentless battle. The Airmen and Officers fought alongside the US Army soldiers of 29th Infantry Division, providing Air Cover for the US assault.
It is an incredible and little-known story, which saw the unit awarded four Military Crosses, two Military Medals and a Croix de Guerre; the highest number of gallantry awards won by the RAF in a single operation, outside of the Dambusters Raid.”
Air Commodore Thompson
Commander Global Enablement
Les Dobinson, who was before his passing in 2021, the last surviving member of 21 BDS, spearheaded the campaign to get the memorial erected in 2014.
A detailed account of this story of extraordinary human courage and endeavour in the face of extreme adversity, can be found at the Project Overlord blog.
