Sterne, Gary Slapton Sands

The Missing Men. The Lost Documents Behind the E-boat Action

In April 1944, just before the Normandy landings, a convoy of American landing craft sailed along the south coast of England. In the dead of night, German torpedo boats attacked, and within minutes ships were sunk, hundreds of US soldiers were dead, and the Allies suffered their heaviest losses in the lead-up to the invasion. The tragedy was quickly buried under the secrecy laws of wartime, but rumors persisted for decades. Were all the bodies recovered? Or did some of the missing remain hidden, buried in the fields of Dorset? Author Gary Sterne has spent years uncovering hidden truths about the Normandy campaign. A chance encounter with a veteran put him on the trail of the Slapton Sands mystery. Through meticulous research and the discovery of long-forgotten British, American, and German documents, he has reconstructed the events of that night in unprecedented detail. For the first time, the fate of all those missing is revealedtheir names and what truly happened to them. This work solves an 80-year-old mystery and sheds new light on one of the most tragic and mysterious episodes of the Second World War.