953 nut 55,229 #1 Posted June 6 What made June 6, 1944 D Day In preparation for the D Day landings the BBC ran a competition for French beach holiday photographs. It was a way of gathering intelligence on suitable beaches since recognizance of Nazi held seacoast areas was too dangerous. The term D-Day was used by the Armed Forces to refer to the beginning of an operation. The ‘D’ stands for ‘Day,’ meaning it’s actually short for ‘Day-Day’ What set Operation Overlord apart from other amphibious landings and made it D Day forever was the scope of the operation. It brought together the land, air, and sea forces of the allied armies in what became known as the largest amphibious invasion in military history. The operation delivered five naval assault divisions to the beaches of Normandy, France. It was the largest seaborne invasion in history: 7,000 vessels took part. In addition to those from the UK, D-Day forces included sailors, soldiers, and airmen from the USA, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland and others. The D-Day invasion was actually planned for June 5th, however, the weather was too bad for the ships to set sail. It was therefore postponed until the day after. From March 12, 1944 Britain barred all travel in order to prevent the leaking of the date of the D-Day landings. The Nazis considered Normandy to be one of the least likely places for the Allies to attack. It had one of the furthest crossing distances from Britan and had no sea port. The planners were particular about the timing of D-day. They wanted a full moon, with a spring tide. They wanted to land at dawn on a flood tide, when it was about half way in. That meant there were only a few days that were appropriate. German reaction to the landings on June 6 was slow and confused. The spell of bad weather meant the Germans were caught off guard. Rommel was visiting his wife in Germany and many senior commanders were not at their posts. In addition, the Allied deception plan, Operation ‘Fortitude,’ convinced Hitler that Normandy was a hoax, they leaked fake plans, set up fake camps and sent fake coded radio messages. On the morning of the 6 June, the Allied forces bombed Calais to give the illusion they were readying for an attack. Through the use of the disinformation and decoys British officers convinced the Germans that Allied landings would come later in the Pas de Calais region. The entire German Fifteenth Army division was held there. Such was the success of ‘Fortitude’ that many units were kept away from the Normandy battlefield until July. The French Resistance then cut telephone lines to stop news of the invasion reaching the German High Command. German intelligence wasn’t sure whether the attack was real even as it was taking place! The D-Day landings weren’t a simple matter of invading a series of beaches. They involved breaching Hitler’s Atlantic Wall – a series of ‘impenetrable’ defenses stretching 1,670 miles from Norway to Spain. Much of this wall is still intact. Concrete turret defenses, anti-landing obstacles and more can still be found all across the coast. Royal Navy Commandos and US Navy UDTs prepared to demolish beach obstacles designed to hinder the advance of an invading army. They swam to the landing sites and placed explosives to remove beach obstacles immediately before landings took place. Lacking port access floating docks were constructed to serve as artificial harbors, and transported 7,000 tons of vehicles and goods over them each day. Landing craft of all sizes made the initial assault on the beaches suffering substantial casualties. British and American air-borne divisions landed behind enemy lines, capturing the Caen Canal Bridge - later renamed Pegasus Bridge - to stop German reinforcements. Capturing the bridge was no small task, and re-enactments now pay homage to the paratroopers on special commemorative occasions. On the night of the invasion only around 15% of paratroopers landed in the right place because of strong winds. Now for some interesting trivia about D Day, some sad and some rather humorous. Lord Lovat landed on Sword Beach with his Commando Brigade, accompanied by his bagpiper, Glasgow born, Bill Millin. Millin struck up ‘Hieland Laddie’ as soon as he jumped into the shallows and then walked up and down the beach playing the pipes. German prisoners later admitted that they had not attempted to shoot him because they thought he had lost his mind. Hungarian-born photographer Robert Capa, working for Life Magazine, was the first photographer to land on Omaha Beach, on one of the earliest waves. He took over 100 photographs, but an over-excited darkroom assistant in London melted the majority of them during development. Only 11 were salvaged. Life printed them and said they were blurry because Capa’s hands were shaking with the heightened drama of the moment. Before D-day mini subs crept into the beaches and by night engineers would swim out to take soil samples, then swim back, sleep submerged all day in the subs, then repeat the following evening. The most exotic German prisoner captured by the allies in Normandy was Yang Kyoungjong. He was a Korean that had been conscripted at 18 years old by the Japanese Army in the 1938. He was captured by the Soviets after a Japanese military incursion in 1939. The Russians made him fight the Germans when they were invaded and he was captured and conscripted in turn by the Germans in 1943. Finally he was captured by the Americans on D-day. He then moved to Illinois, where he died in 1992. Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that he would go to sea with the fleet and watch the D-day landings from HMS Belfast. This idea was opposed by many and it took King George VI to stop him, by insisting that if Churchill went, he would also go. Eventually that made Churchill back down. Commonwealth personnel, nearly all British and Canadian, outnumbered the Americans on D-day. Of the 156,000 men landed in France on 6 June, 73,000 were American, and 83,000 were British and Canadian, while the Commonwealth naval contingent was twice that of the Americans. There were five beaches, codenamed, from east to west, Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha, Utah. Casualties varied widely. On ‘Bloody Omaha’ where around 4000 men were killed or wounded, one American unit landing in the first wave, lost 90% of its men. On Gold Beach, by contrast, casualty rates were around 80% lower. The allies put a huge effort into persuading the Germans that the invasion was going to be around Calais, not Normandy. They invented a whole group of armies in Kent, building dummy equipment and placing General George S Patton, who the Germans considered the best allied general, in SE England. The Germans took the bait so much that even after D-day they held many of their best troops in the Calais area expecting a second invasion. Parachute drops in which hundreds of dummies were thrown out of aircraft to confuse the Germans as to where the landings were going to be Stories of how U.S. troops stormed the beaches of Normandy have been legendary for years, with the names Omaha Beach and Utah beach standing out in people's minds. But the invasion stretched out over 50 miles of land, so we couldn't do it alone. Three other beach invasions by Allied troops happened simultaneously: Great Britain and some smaller forces stormed Gold and Sword beaches, while the Canadians took Juno Beach. The small community of Bedford, VA, population 3,000, suffered the greatest percentage loss on D Day. Of the thirty-eight Bedford residents that were a part of the D Day landing twenty of their young men including several sets of brothers gave their lives that morning. 1 11 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
