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D-Day, June 6, 1944 was the focal point of the greatest and most planned out invasion of all time. The Allied invasion of France was long awaited and tactfully thought out. For months the Allied forces of millions of soldiers trained in Britain waiting for the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, General Eisenhower to set a date. June 5, 1944 was to be the day with the H-hour at 06: 30. The vast power of an Allied Army 2. 5 million strong lay coiled in England, ready to spring across the channel into German occupied France.
Some of the more than 5000 strong armada of ships and small craft of the invasion fleet had already put to sea. On that June morning screaming winds and a downpour of rain threatened to cancel the invasion. General Eisenhower had to make a decision and make it soon. He postponed the attack 24 hours and waited for the weather to clear. If he was to cancel it one more time it would be another month before the tide and moonlight conditions would be once again favorable for both a Seaborne and Airborne attack. Predictions by the staff meteorologist cautiously predicted clearing skies for the next day, 6 June.
General Eisenhower conferred with his generals and admirals. He then thought for a minute, then stood up Of he said lets go. Aircraft bombed German installations and helped prepare the ground attack. The ground forces landed and made their push inland.
Soon Operation Overlord was in full affect as the Allied Forces pushed the Germans back towards the Russian forces coming in from the east. D-Day was the beginning and the key to the fight to take back Europe. The thesis of this paper is that the Allied Invasion of Normandy was the beginning Operation Overlord was in no way a last minute operation thrown together. When the plan was finalized in the spring of 1944 the world started work on preparing the hundreds of thousands of men for the greatest battle in history. By June of 1944 the landing forces were training hard, awaiting D-Day, 1, 700, 000 British, 1, 500, 000 Americans, 175, 000 from Dominions (mostly Canada), and another 44, 000 from other countries were going to take part. Not only did men have to be recruited and trained but also equipment had to be built to transport and fight with the soldiers.
More than 1, 300 warships, 1, 600 merchant ships, 4, 000 landing craft and 13, 000 aircraft including bombers, fighters and gliders were built. Several new types of tanks and Armored vehicles were built. Two examples are the Sherman Crab flail tank and the Churchill Crocodile. On the ground, Britain assembled three Armored Divisions, eight Infantry Divisions, two Airborne Divisions and ten independent fighting Brigades. The United States had six Armored Divisions, thirteen Infantry and two Airborne Divisions.
With one Armored Division and two Infantry Divisions, Canada also contributed greatly with the war effort especially when you look at the size of the country at the time. In the air Britains one hundred RAF squadrons (1, 200 aircraft) paled in comparison to the one hundred and sixty-five USAAF squadrons (2, 000 aircraft). The entire Operation Overlord was supposed to go according to Montgomery's Master Plan which was created by General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery.
His plan was initiated by a command system which connected the U. S. and Britain and helped them jointly run the operation. This plan was to have five Divisions act as a first wave, landing on the sixty-one mile long beach front. Four more Divisions, as well as some Airborne landings, would support the first wave. The beaches of Normandy would be separated into five beaches, codenamed, from west to east Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.
The Americans would invade the two westernmost beaches, being Utah and Omaha and the British and its Dominions would take Gold, Juno and Sword. The Canadians were nearly the entire force to land on Juno beach. The operation was also coordinated with various French resistance groups called the Secret Army. The naval plans were to transport the Allied expeditionary forces, help secure and defend a beachhead, and to help setup a method of constant resupplying of Allied forces.
Operation Overlord, in short, was as follows: The Airforce would be used to knock out German defenses and immobilize their forces. Blowup tanks and other misinformation was used to fool Germans into thinking the invasion was coming at Pas de Calais. The navy would transport the troops while doing whatever it could to help them gain ground, and enough of France would be liberated and held by the Allied forces so that they would not fail by being pushed back into the sea. Utah beach was a stretch of beachfront approximately five miles long and located in the dunes of Varreville. Like most beach attacks that day, the planned attack time was 06: 30 or H hour.
As early as 02: 00 (H- 4: 30) the preparations for attack was being made as minesweepers started working at creating a safe path for Allied battleships, frigates, and corvettes. At about 02: 30 the flagship for Utah beach was in place and the order was given for the landing crafts to be loaded and placed into the water. The four waves of troops were ready to go and the German radar had not spotted any buildup of ships. The first gunfire occurred at daybreak when some ships were spotted and fired upon by coastal guns.
A group of 276 planes, all B- 26 Marauders flew in to drop their payload of 4400 bombs on the targets. Almost all missed and nearly a third fell short onto the beaches and into the sea, far away from their targets. Although some guns were silenced the poor accuracy of the aircraft was costly and would turn out to be only one of the many errors made by the Allied forces. At 06: 30 the first of the troops landed, the 4 th Infantry Division and the 8 th Infantry Regiment missed the correct beach and landed 2, 000 yards away on what turned out to luckily be a less heavily defended beach.
This mix up was blamed on tides, smoke and rough seas. These first troops were all part of the twenty landing craft, each carrying thirty men that made up the first wave. After the first wave came the 32 amphibious tanks. The second wave of troops consisted of 32 craft carrying Combat Engineers and Naval Demolition Teams.
Dozer tanks would make up the third wave. Shortly after the securing of the beach 2 Engineer Battalions arrived. This may sound like all the Divisions made it easily to shore but that is not true. Many of the amphibious tanks were unable to swim through the rough surf and sank. Two out of the three control vessels for the beach hit sea mines and sank and countless landing craft were shelled by German coastal guns. There were also numerous drownings involving troops that were so weighed down by the equipment that they wore that they were drowned in water only six feet deep.
If the soldiers managed to make it to shore they were still faced with devastating German machine gun fire. Fortunately, the beach and much of its surroundings had become the victim of a large sea launched rocket attack clearing some of the German defenses. Once the Division had made it on the beach and secured it they had to start moving inland on their pre- planned missions. The units that landed on the wrong beach decided to start the war from right here.
Most of the landed troops were supposed to secure the areas and push inland, eventually meeting up with the 82 nd and 101 st Airborne Divisions that had dropped behind the enemy on the western flank by St. Mere Eglise in order to work their way to the beach and secure the major crossroads and so that they could be attacked from two angles. The 4 th Infantry Division and 8 th Infantry Regiment that landed on the wrong beaches still continued on with their missions. The 4 th, which was originally supposed to land on the islands of St.
Marcus to destroy coastal guns thought to be there ended up moving inland and linking up with the 101 st Airborne Division. The other Unit that unfortunately landed in the wrong location was the 8 th Infantry. Their mission was to reduce beach fortifications and to move inland. The last two Infantry Regiments were the 12 th and 22 nd. Both units were to work together to secure the northern region of the beach.
The 22 nd was to move northwest clearing beaches and the high ground overlooking them while the 12 th moved inland on their left flank. Unfortunately the 22 nd was unable to make its deep swing into the Northwest. By the end of the day, the only Infantry unit that was able to achieve its objective was the 8 th Infantry, and they landed on the wrong beach. Most of the area was secure except for a pocket of Germans that controlled a small area shaped like a two mile finger on the ridges north of Les Forges. The experimental idea of having two Airborne Divisions drop farther inland had helped make the Utah Beach attack a near success. The Omaha beach area was the largest of all the Normandy beaches at approximately 34, 500 yards in length.
The beach itself had only five passable ways off, creating a challenge for the landing troops and vehicles. Behind the beach were heavily defended bluffs and high cliffs. In order to invade the area, which was defended by twelve German strong points, over 34, 000 troops and 3, 300 vehicles would be involved in the Omaha Beach invasion. The large number was partly because of the fact that beginning in April, of the same year, German military had started to fortify the area in hopes of deterring any invasion from the area. The sandy beaches themselves were free of mines but three bands of obstacles were put into place in order to create impassable obstacles for landing sea craft. First, large gate-like structures called Belgian Gates were built, simply to get in the way of landing craft.
The second band of obstacles were large posts and logs dug into the beach at an angle towards the sea and topped off with a waterproofed landmine also creating a deadly obstacle. The third and final obstacle was farther up the beach, they were large hedgehogs which were mined steel I beams shaped in an X to impede the movement of armored vehicles. Like the rest of the beaches, the planned attack time (H hour) was 06: 30. Many would think that this would be when the death toll would first start to rise but this just wasnt so.
Many men died far from the beach. Two companies of amphibious DD tanks sank because of heavy seas. Included with the 27 tanks that sunk were 11 landing craft that tipped over by rough seas. Most soldiers on these transports drowned because of the weight of the equipment they were carrying held them under the water, and their inflatable lifesavers failed to inflate. Other craft hit mines, losing valuable troops, supplies and weapons. Most of the landing craft hitting the beach were being fired upon by deadly accurate German machine gun fire even when the craft were still over 1, 000 yards away from the beach.
Some even ran aground while still 100 feet from shore. Attempts to improve the situation were made by groups such as the 29 th Division who decided to bring their tanks in on the landing craft. Only 8 of the 16 tanks made it to the beach. Other landing craft either missed their landing area or arrived too late. The lateral current dragged some Infantry units hundreds of yards from their objectives and a few battalions, like the 2 nd Ranger Battalion, arrived 40 minutes after they were scheduled to land. Once most of the craft had managed to make it to the beach the soldiers still faced many problems.
Air strikes that were planned to knock out enemy machine gunners were not successful enough. Most of the troops were pinned behind the sea wall and other obstacles by machine gun fire ahead of them and the raising tides behind them. Tides rose four feet per hour, shrinking the beach by eighty feet in the same time period. Those soldiers who were too injured to walk or crawl drowned as the tide sped up on them.
With soldiers pinned down and not enough vehicles being able to get off the beach other craft were unable to land due to the lack of room. For the first few hours at Omaha Beach things looked grim. No major advances were being made. The real turnaround that day was when a few destroyers actually came in as close as four hundred yards in order to fire at enemy strong points. The risk of grounding the destroyers took and the arrival of tanks, lead to the eventual fall of the German beach defenses.
Once the units could move inland their individual missions were put into place. One of the most important missions put upon any division was the destruction of five French-made 155 mm naval guns at Pointe du Hoc. This responsibility was given to the 116 th Brigade and its two combat teams: The 5 th Ranger and 2 nd Ranger teams. The 5 th met the fate of many Battalions as the landed on the wrong beach. Luckily, the remaining two teams did manage to destroy the naval guns that were capable of attacking ships as far out as 25, 000 yards (22 km) as well as soldiers on both Utah and Omaha beaches. These guns were not in the concrete bunkers, as aerial reconvenes had observed, but were actually located inland several hundred yards.
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