Allan Beckett

In September 2011 a stained glass window dedicated to Allan Beckett was installed in St Peter's church, Oare where he is buried. The south facing three light window was designed by artist Petri Anderson and features a Mulberry tree in fruit together with depictions of a Whale floating roadway and a Kite anchor.

Allan Beckett's work is commemorated by a memorial dedicated to him in the town of Arromanches-les-Bains. Unveiled by Mr Patrick Jardin, the Mayor of Arromanches, on 6 June 2009, the 65th Anniversary of the D-Day Landings, the monument features a bronze bas relief portrait of Allan by the artist Richard Clarke beneath a full-sized replica of the Kite anchor. The monument is located adjacent to a preserved Whale bridge span.

As senior partner from 1983 he oversaw all the engineering aspects of a huge contract to build a new port at Dammam in Saudi Arabia. Closer to home there were the design and construction of complex Thames flood defences for north Kent, including the Dartford Creek barrier. In official retirement from 1989, he acted as a consultant to the marine consulting engineering practice Beckett Rankine where his son Tim Beckett and Sir Bruce White's grandson Gordon Rankine were directors.

A keen and adventurous yachtsman from boyhood, he also designed and had built 'Pretty Penny' in 1979 – a new yacht made of non-corrosive cupronickel (copper-nickel alloy) – still one of the very few in the world.

After being demobbed Beckett joined Sir Bruce White, Wolfe Barry and Partners as chief engineer. There he was responsible for projects in India including Mazagon Dock, the Tata locomotive works, the Bombay Marine oil terminal and a self-scouring lock gate to cope with heavily silt-laden waters at Bhavnagar. In the UK he built factories for Bibby. In 1959 he became a partner in the firm, and developed techniques for mini-hydraulic model studies which were used for designing the new port at Muara in Brunei as well as major port expansion work at Aden, Harwich and Cardiff.

Allan Beckett married his wife Ida James in 1949. She survives him, with his two sons, Michael (1950) & Tim (1953) and his daughter, Sian (1957) and his eight grandchildren.

The character Major Young in the 1947 historical novel Het verjaagde water by A. den Doolaard, about the recovery works after the inundation of Walcheren, is based on Beckett.

His contribution to the Mulberry was to design the floating roadways which connected the pierhead to the shore, and a system of anchors. The roadway had to be strong enough to withstand constant wave action which, as occurred in the appalling weather of June 1944, was much more severe than anticipated. Beckett's design, which had been tested in the severe conditions of Scotland in winter, survived the storm which struck on 19 June 1944, and raged for three days.

7 June 1944 was D+1 (the day after the start of Operation Overlord); Allan Beckett set out for Arromanches, the site of the British Mulberry, as technical adviser in the field to Montgomery's 21st Army Group. After a day and night at sea, he supervised the installation of the anchors, and over the next few days gave technical advice on installing the Whales.

The notion of the Mulberry harbour had come from Winston Churchill, determined never to repeat the 1915 debâcle of the amphibious landings over open beaches during the Gallipoli Campaign. On 30 May 1942, with an invasion of the German-occupied Continent only a distant dream, he had prepared a minute for the chief of the Combined Operations Headquarters, headed: Piers for use on beaches.

Beckett thought the legs an unnecessary complication for a floating bridge. "If you think you can do better, you must make it clear before next Monday when I shall be revisiting the War Office," said Everall. By 2 July 1942 Allan had prepared a sketch drawing of a floating roadway, consisting of a torsionally compliant lozenge-shaped bridge span. He had a tin plate scale model made of one full span and part of an adjacent span to show a junction using spherical bearings. Everall took this model to his meeting at the War Office and returned exultant. "Beckett," he said, "they want six spans built right away, I have promised that you will produce fabrication drawings by the end of the week."

He read civil engineering at the University of London and was then apprenticed to Sanders and Forster, steelwork and structural engineers from 1930–33. From there he moved to the bridge department of consulting engineers A. J. Bridle until the war began. He volunteered for the Royal Engineers in January 1940 and, after basic sapper training, was at the time of the Dunkirk evacuation engaged in trench digging, watch duties and manning a searchlight at Folkestone Harbour. He also assisted in the sinking of the block ship SS Umvoti across the harbour's entrance. Commissioned in 1941, he was sent to King's Newton, near Derby, to work for Lieutenant-Colonel W. T. Everall, a specialist on the rapid construction of railway bridges for battlefield use. In this position, he gained valuable experience in assembling light steel bridging.

Allan Harry Beckett MBE (b. 4 March 1914, East Ham, London Borough of Newham, United Kingdom, d. 19 June 2005, Farnborough, London) was a civil engineer whose design for the 'Whale' floating roadway was crucial to the success of the Mulberry harbour that was used in the Normandy Landings. Starting the war as a sapper digging trenches on the South Coast at the time of the Dunkirk evacuation, Allan Beckett came to play a significant role in the success of the Mulberry harbour used during and after the Normandy landings of June 1944.

Allan Beckett was born on 4 March 1914 in East Ham, London; the eldest of three children of George William Harry Beckett and his wife Emma (née Stokes). Allan's father was a professional soldier in the Royal Field Artillery and was proud to be one of the 'Old Contemptibles'. London Borough of Newham have placed a blue heritage plaque on the house in Montpelier Gardens where the family lived. Allan's first interest was mechanical engineering – he was a keen model maker, building intricate model boat engines when a teenager. However his father persuaded him to study civil engineering at university as the career prospects were better.