CASUALTY RECORD // April 28, 1944
Exercise Tiger
Estimated casualties — killed, wounded, captured, and missing — by side, with confidence labels per surviving record.
Casualties by side
1 sides catalogued · combined 198–749 estimated
British Army
198–749
Medium-confidence figure
Battle context
Exercise Tiger was a rehearsal for the D-Day landings at Normandy, conducted at Slapton Sands in Devon in April 1944. The exercise suffered serious losses when an Allied convoy was attacked by German Kriegsmarine E-boats, killing at least 749 American servicemen. Coordination and communication failures also produced friendly fire casualties during the exercise itself. Because the Normandy invasion was imminent, Allied authorities suppressed news of the disaster; the incident received minimal reporting and was kept secret for an extended period. The losses represented a significant cost extracted before the actual invasion and exposed vulnerabilities in convoy protection and inter-unit coordination that planners had to address ahead of the June landings.
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