The COPP men arrived four days ago, presumably to do a non-covert recce to find landing places and help get the Paras ashore quickly. (📸 IWM A 26491) 2/2

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Nor do landings elsewhere escape issues, with tricky or non-existent beach exits and poor beach conditions delaying advance inland.

Once back in the UK, Willmott is soon given the go-ahead to form COPP (📸 IWM MH 22716). /🧵

More about Party Inhuman: ▶️ buff.ly/bx14pSu

Offshore obstacles, soft sand and difficult beach exits – the sort of thing that Willmott's men had been hoping to discover if they'd been given the chance – force closure of Beer Green and all but 200 metres of Beer White (📸 IWM A 12719), causing serious congestion.

As a result of these mishaps, landing American forces end up being scattered along no less than 15 miles (24 km) of coast.

Things in Beer sector don’t get much better after the first waves have beached, either.

Amer manages to flag down and board one of a group of passing landing craft that turn out to be destined for Beer Green Beach.

He does his best to guide them in but some ignore his directions, swerve eastwards and land by mistake on Beer White Beach (📸 IWM A 12731).

With Amer stranded in P.48, the motor launch crew are deprived of their pilot. They do their best but guide the landing craft intended for Beer White Beach way to the south-west, with many even landing in the adjacent Apples sector.

In Beer sector, Donald Amer (📸 Peter Palmer via Simon Hatch) is in sub P.48, which acted as an outer beacon for the task force. He's meant to be picked up by the motor launch that'll guide in landing craft, but with so many vessels around the launch can't find the sub.

The Inhuman men, led by future COPP founder Nigel Willmott, had earlier been forbidden by local senior officers from carrying out 'in person' beach recce, having to rely on periscope observations instead. Perhaps partly as a result, the landings were affected by issues.

Meantime their disappearance doesn't help anxious commanders. Andrew Cunningham (📸 NPG) wrote: "Inshore recce had always been viewed with misgiving as endangering security. [...] Fortunately they kept their heads and imparted no information concerning the projected operation." /🧵

They manage to sink their canoe with its equipment before being hauled aboard, and then when ashore keep tight-lipped during questioning. The secrecy of the imminent landings is preserved, but they're kept under lock and key until liberated by the Allies. (📸 IWM A 12707)

But after leaving sub HMS Shakespeare (📸 IWM A 16328), which will act as an outer marker on the day of the landings, the weather takes a turn for the worse. Lyne and Thomas are left floundering in heavy seas when out of gloom a Vichy French trawler appears.

Lyne wasn't involved in earlier recce of the beaches in Apples sector that he's been earmarked to guide landing craft towards when the landings take place (🗺️ London Gazette). So, like other Inhuman men along the coast, he's out to 'get a feel' for his area.

Thanks to everyone at the sailing club, in particular Léonie Austin, for making it a great day.

And Britain's D-Day Heritage has produced a video of the event that's available on their YouTube channel. ⬇️

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Photos are in the sailing club's online archive, including Hampshire's Vice Lord-Lieutenant, Colonel (Ret) Charles Ackroyd, cutting a cake using a commando knife owned by Harold Goulding, who headed the Special Boat Unit (SBU). (📸 Roy O'Donnell)

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Unknown to the Commandos, Peacock had been captured during the original recce, rather than drowning as feared, and was himself in Rangoon jail when this operation to search for him was carried out. He also survived the war as a POW. (📸 Australian War Memorial 3881237). /🧵

But Marine Aubrey Chappell is accidentally left behind. He spends the next few days variously evading and engaging Japanese troops who are searching for him.

Eventually captured, he spends the rest of the war as a POW in Rangoon jail.

Getting off Ondaw beach is hampered when their landing craft's anchor line fouls its propeller. Peter Young, 3 Commando Brigade's commanding officer (🎨 John Worsley/National Army Museum), is among those left anxious ashore until the line is cut free and the LCP can pick them up.