THE role played by Largs in the planning for the D-Day landings is set to feature on TV this weekend.

A team from GB News was spotted filming at Largs Museum at the weekend, with the results due to be broadcast on Sunday, June 2.

Largs was a secret base for wartime conferences during the Second World War, when the Battle Conference in June 1943 helped co-ordinate the D-Day landings and the invasion point of the French coast was mapped out.

The Largs and Millport Weekly News revealed those links way back in 1994 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Normandy landings.

We reported: “Most of the townspeople, heads filled with the latest war talk, were blissfully unaware that one of the most crucial conferences in the history of the world was taking place right under their very noses.

“Some noticed more security around Vanduara and Hollywood Hotels along Greenock Road.

"Churchill and General Dwight Eisenhower, Allied Supreme Commander, and later 34th President of the United States of America, visited Largs during the conference.

“The two great leaders stayed at St Phillans, which later became the Manor Park Hotel, between Largs and Skelmorlie.

"The high profile conference talks took place at Vanduara, with Lord Mountbatten later saying that the Largs gathering was one of the crucial points in the preparation of the D-Day landings."

What may be less well known is the vital wartime role played by the Royal Navy ship HMS Largs.

Largs and Millport Weekly News:

Built as French merchant ship in 1938, the ‘Charles Plumier’, for sevice as a banana boat, she was captured by the Royal Navy after the fall of France in 1940 and was used as an 'ocean boarding vessel'.

She was formally renamed HMS Largs in November 1941 and in January 1942 she arrived in the Largs Channel for her christening ceremony.

The ship maintained a close relationship with the the town throughout the war, with the residents of Largs providing her crew with books, cigarettes and other comforts.

HMS Largs subsequently took on the role of a 'combined operations headquarters' ship and was present at almost every significant amphibious landing  operation during the war.

On the evening of June 5, 1944, HMS Largs joined the main D-Day flotilla at 'Piccadilly Circus', the designated collecting point south of the Isle of Wight, before crossing the Channel to assume the role of Flagship of Force "S", controlling the landings on Sword Beach, the most easterly of the five beach-heads.

By the end of D-Day more than 28,000 men had been successfully landed on Sword Beach.

HMS Largs was decommissioned in December 1945 and her commanding officer presented the ship’s White Ensign to the Burgh of Largs.

That ensign is on display at Largs Museum, giving the town a direct link to the historic events of 80 years ago which changed the course of the war.

Thanks to George Newlands, chair of the Largs and District Historical Society for the information.