page_title: John Holmes Jellett
section_title: Second World War
hierarchical_section_title: John Holmes Jellett / Second World War
caption_attribution_description: English: The Mulberry artificial harbour off Arromanches in Normandy, September 1944. An aerial oblique photograph of the Mulberry Harbour off Arromanches. Artificial harbours were constructed along the beach shortly after D-Day so that armoured vehicles and heavy guns could be landed.
context_page_description: John Holmes Jellett Officer of the Order of the British Empire, DSc, MA was a British civil engineer. Jellett started his career as a bridge and canal engineer before joining the Admiralty, where he specialised in docks. He made improvements to the Royal Navy dockyards and depots at Chatham, Singapore, Devonport, Gibraltar and Milford Haven in the 1930s. During the Second World War Jellett was responsible for works in Egypt and Malta as superintendent civil engineer for the Eastern Mediterranean. After service in the Mediterranean, he was superintending engineer for Mulberry Harbour B that supplied the allied forces in France after the Normandy Landings. Jellett was appointed an OBE for this work in late 1944. After the war he worked for the Southern Railway and then the British Transport Commission in Southampton Docks. Jellett served as president of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1968–69.
context_section_description: Jellett was promoted to superintendent civil engineer in 1940, working from the temporary Admiralty offices in Bath, Somerset.  He was responsible for motor torpedo boat bases, minefield control towers, sea forts, shipyard and naval armament factories.  In 1942, he was superintendent civil engineer for the Eastern Mediterranean and carried out dredging and widening works on the Great Pass in Alexandria, renovating dry docks and constructing new slipways.  He became superintendent for civil engineering works at the Malta Dockyard in 1943, where he carried out works to repair bomb damage from the two-year Siege of Malta.
  Jellett was commissioned as a Temporary Captain in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in 1944 and appointed superintending civil engineer of Mulberry Harbour B, a temporary concrete harbour built at Arromanches, France to support the Normandy Landings.  He was responsible for siting the blockships and Phoenix breakwaters that protected the harbour.  Mulberry B was in use for five months after the invasion and landed two million men, half a million vehicles and four million tons of supplies for the Liberation of Europe.  Mulberry A, under control of American forces and more exposed to the weather, was wrecked by a storm in late June and abandoned, leaving Jellett's harbour as the main landing point for supplies to the allied forces in France.  In recognition of Jellett's work with the Mulberry harbour he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire  on 28 November 1944.  The citation in the London Gazette referred to his "distinguished service in operations which led to the successful landing of allied forces in Normandy".
caption: Mulberry Harbour B
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