Today, June 6, is “D-Day,” the anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy and acknowledged as the greatest amphibious invasion in history. This is one of those days that should commemorate an event that should never be forgotten.
Three years before D-Day — in 1941 — Winston Churchill told Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten to start thinking about an invasion of Europe. Churchill said, “Unless we can go on land and fight Hitler and beat his forces on land, we shall never win this war.” In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with General Dwight Eisenhower and informed him that he would be commanding the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.
All information pertaining to the invasion was marked “Bigot,” a classification higher than “Top Secret.”
The operation generated lots of pretty impressive — some almost unbelievable — stories and statistics….
Eisenhower smoked up to four packs of cigarets (Camels) a day in the months leading up to D-Day.
During the preparation and execution of D-Day, about 17 million maps were drawn up.
The objective of the D-Day operation was to breach the Atlantic Wall, a series of coastal defenses built by Nazi Germany between 1942 and 1944 that ran from Norway to the Franco-Spanish border. In early 1944, Nazi Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was tasked with strengthening the wall. Over 1.2 million tons of steel and 17 million cubic meters of concrete were used in building the wall’s defenses and included 92 manned radar sites. By the time of the Allied invasion on 6 June, more than 5 million land mines had be laid in northern France. Hitler wanted 15,000 concrete strong points to be manned by 300,000 troops — a task that proved impossible to achieve.
To be sure his men wouldn’t let out secrets ahead of D-Day, thirty pretty members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, dressed in civilian clothes, were sent into pubs where soldiers were training. They were tasked to do all they could to discover the men’s mission. None of the men gave anything away.
The deception plan to keep the Germans guessing as to when and where the invasion would take place was called “Operation Bodyguard.”
The Allied invasion force sailed to a rendezvous area in the millddli of the English Channel nicknamed “Piccadilly Circus.” From there they sailed to the invasion zones.
About 7,000 vessels of all shapes and sizes were used by the Allies on D-Day, including 139 major warships, 221 smaller combat vessels, more than 1,000 minesweepers and auxiliary vessels, 805 merchant ships, and 300 miscellaneous small craft. Over 4,000 landing craft were used to transport the invasion force onto the beaches of Normandy.
The oldest Allied battleship in action on D-Day was the USS Arkansas — commissioned in 1912.
73,000 US troops and 83,000 British and Canadian troops crossed the English Channel on D-Day.
The weather forecast was so bad that Erwin Rommel, the German commander in Normandy, felt so sure there wouldn’t be an invasion he went home to give his wife a pair of shoes for her 50th birthday. He was in Germany when the news came of the invasion.
Shortly after midnight on June 6, about 24,000 US, British and Canadian airborne troops began landing in France — only one in six Allied paratroopers landed in the correct place.
Allied aircraft dropped 7.2 million pounds of bombs on D-Day.
The Allies landed on five beaches in Normandy — code named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.
The first building in France to be liberated during Operation Overload was a cafe next to Pegasus Bridge.
Within 100 days of D-Day, 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles and 4 million tons of equipment and rations had been unloaded in France.
In order to continue supplying fuel to the invasion armies, the so-called “Pipeline Under The Ocean“ (PLUTO) was laid. The pipeline delivered allied fuel directly from England to France. US tanks were consuming an average 8,000 gallons of fuel per week at that time.
Allied casualties on 6 June have been estimated at 10,000 killed, wounded and missing in action: 6,603 Americans, 2,700 British, and 946 Canadians. Total German casualties on D-Day are not known, but are estimated to be between 4,000 and 9,000.
All this interesting to read about today, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the significance of D-Day and should remember those responsible for helping to win “the war to end all wars.”
I’ve quoted Stephen Ambrose on D-Day before, but it bears repeating…..
“At the core, the American citizen soldiers knew the difference between right and wrong, and they didn’t want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed. So they fought, and won, and we, all of us, living and yet to be born, must be forever profoundly grateful.”
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