http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=ap/britain_d_day_disasterSTOKENHAM, England - Sixty years ago, 749 U.S. soldiers and sailors were killed when their D-Day landing practice was attacked by German torpedo boats off the south coast of England.
It was one of the least-known Allied disasters of World War II,
On Sunday, at St. Michael's and All Angels church in the coastal village of Stokenham, American and British veterans attended a memorial service for the men of Exercise Tiger, who died in the early morning darkness of April 28, 1944.
The eight-day exercise was the U.S. 4th Infantry Division's practice for the D-Day invasions, using the beach at Slapton
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The exercise involved 3,000 ships and 30,000 men.
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Nine fast-moving German torpedo boats happened upon the convoy, sank two ships and badly damaged a third.
The attack killed nearly four times as many men as the division later lost in the D-Day landing, June 6, 1944.
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Full details were not known until 1974, when the records were declassified.
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