D-Day HISTORYHIT.COM 1 D-Day HISTORYHIT.COM On 6 June 1944, the Allies launched the greatest amphibious invasion in history. Codenamed “Overlord” but best known today as “D-Day”, the operation saw Allied forces landing on the beaches of Normandy in Nazi-occupied France in huge numbers. By the end of the day, the Allies had established a foothold on the French coastline. The statistics for the invasion force involved in the operation are staggering. By midnight on 6 June, 132,000 Allied forces had landed in France, while more than 2 million were eventually shipped there, comprising a total of 39 divisions. Thousands of vessels took part in the operation including 139 major warships; 221 smaller combat vessels; more than 1000 minesweepers and auxiliary vessels; 4,000 landing craft; 805 merchant ships; 59 blockships; and 300 miscellaneous small craft. Eleven thousand aircraft also took part including fighters, bombers, transports and gliders. The invasion force also had the support of around 350,000 members of the French Resistance, who launched hit-and-run attacks on German targets. From Omaha Beach to Operation Bodyguard this eBook explores D-Day and the beginning of the Battle of Normandy. Detailed articles explain key topics, edited from various History Hit resources. Included in this eBook are articles written for History Hit by some of the world’s leading World War Two historians, including Patrick Eriksson and Martin Bowman. Features written by History Hit staff past and present are also included. You can access all these articles on historyhit.com. D-Day was compiled by Tristan Hughes. In October 1941 Winston Churchill told Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten to start thinking about an invasion of Europe: “Unless we can go on land and fight Hitler and beat his forces on land, we shall never win this war” 2 D-Day HISTORYHIT.COM Contents How Did D-Day Unfold? .......................................................................................... 4 The Liberation of Western Europe: Why Was D-Day So Significant? ..................... 6 Who Did the Allies Face in Normandy on D-Day? .................................................. 9 The Crippling Losses of the Luftwaffe During Operation Overlord ........................ 14 Taxis to Hell – and Back – Into the Jaws of Death – The Story Behind the Photograph ........................................................................................................... 18 D-Day: A Tank Commander’s Experience ............................................................ 26 D-Day Deception: What Was Operation Bodyguard? ........................................... 30 The Daring Dakota Operations That Supplied Operation Overlord ....................... 33 US assault troops in an LCVP landing craft approach Omaha Beach, 6 June 1944. 3 D-Day HISTORYHIT.COM How Did D-Day Unfold? The D-Day operation began shortly after midnight with an Allied assault by three airborne divisions – the US 82nd and 101st on the right flank of the American forces, and Britain’s 6th Airborne on the left flank of the British. Seaborne forces were then put ashore on five Normandy beaches. These beaches were codenamed (from east to west) Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah. American forces were aiming for Utah and Omaha, with the former the target of the US 4th Infantry Division (part of the US VII Corps) and the latter the target of the US 1st Infantry Division (part of the US V Corps). Gold beach, meanwhile, was the landing site of the British 50th Infantry Division (part of the British XXX Corps), and Sword the landing site of the British 3rd Infantry Division (part of the British I Corps). The Canadian 3rd Infantry Division (also part of the British I Corps) was tasked with seizing Juno. D-Day was originally planned for 5 June but had to be delayed by 24 hours due to poor weather Successes and Losses The initial air and seaborne landings had mixed results. On Utah, resistance from the Germans was slight and US troops were off the beach by midday. But on Omaha the Americans’ lack of specialised armour meant the Germans were able to pin them down on the beach, resulting in a high casualty count. On Gold and Juno, the specialised armour of the British and Canadian forces enabled troops to get off their beaches quickly. By the afternoon they were moving inland toward Bayeux and Caen. On Sword British troops were able to link up with airborne units that had been dropped further inland. 4 D-Day HISTORYHIT.COM The operation was ultimately successful and marked the beginning of the liberation of western Europe from Nazi control. How many casualties were there? No one will ever know exactly how many people died on D-Day although it is commonly thought that there were around 10,500 Allied casualties (killed, missing or wounded). The death toll alone has traditionally been estimated to be 2,500 but recent research suggests it may in fact be twice as high. The figures are even murkier for German casualties, with estimations ranging from 4,000 to 9,000. Casualties were a mixed picture across the five beaches. On Utah the US 4th Infantry Division landed 21,000 troops at a cost of only 197 casualties. But casualties were far higher on the other US target, Omaha beach. One US unit landing there in the first wave lost 90 per cent of its men. In total around 4,000 Americans were killed or wounded on Omaha. On Gold beach, casualty rates were around 80 per cent lower. The confusion around the death tolls is not unusual; it is often difficult to get accurate counts for a single day of battle or single military campaign. This is largely the result of fighters dying after the day on which they sustained their injuries, as well as just the general fog and confusion of war. And these issues were magnified for D-Day due to the scale of the operation. All information pertaining to the D-Day invasion was marked “Bigot”, a classification even more secret than “Top Secret” 5 D-Day HISTORYHIT.COM The Liberation of Western Europe: Why Was D-Day So Significant? By Dan Snow It was the largest amphibious assault in history. Over 150,000 men were landed on a heavily defended set of beaches on the western edge of Hitler’s vast empire. To get them safely lodged ashore the largest fleet in history had been assembled – 7,000 boats and ships. From giant battleships, which hurled shells at German positions, to specialised landing craft, and block ships which would be deliberately sunk to build artificial harbours. In the skies above 12,000 allied aircraft were available to intercept German aircraft, blast defensive strong points and interrupt the flow of enemy reinforcements. In terms of the logistics – the planning, the engineering and the tactical execution – it was one of the most stunning achievements in military history. But did it matter? The Eastern Front Hitler’s dream of a 1,000 year Reich was under terrible threat in the early summer of 1944 – not from the west where the Allies were preparing their invasion, or from the south where Allied troops were grinding their way up the Italian peninsula, but from the east. The titanic struggle between Germany and Russia from 1941 to 1945 is probably the most appalling and destructive war in history. Genocide and a galaxy of other war crimes were the norm as the largest armies in history locked together in the largest and costliest battles ever. Millions of men were killed or wounded as Stalin and Hitler fought a war of total annihilation. By June 1944 the Soviets had the upper hand. The front line which had once passed through the outskirts of Moscow was now pushing against Germany’s conquered territory in Poland and the Baltic states. The Soviets looked unstoppable. Perhaps Stalin would have been able to finish Hitler without D-Day and an Allied advance from the west. 6 D-Day HISTORYHIT.COM Perhaps. What is certain is that D-Day and the liberation of western Europe that followed made Hitler’s destruction a certainty. Any hope that Germany might be able to direct its entire war machine towards the Red Army came to an end once the western Allies were pounding up the beaches of Normandy. The nearly 1,000,000 German troops Hitler was forced to keep in the west would have made a powerful difference if they had been deployed to the Eastern Front. During the preparation and execution of D-Day, around 17 million maps were drawn up Diverting German divisions In the fighting after D-Day, as the Germans desperately tried to contain the allied invasion, they deployed the greatest concentration of armoured divisions anywhere in the world. Had there been no Western Front we can be certain that the fighting in the east would have been even more drawn out, bloody and uncertain. Perhaps even more importantly, if Stalin had eventually won and defeated Hitler alone, it would have been Soviet forces, not British, Canadians and Americans, that ‘liberated’ western Europe. Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, France and other countries would have found themselves swapping one despot for another. The puppet Communist governments that were installed in eastern Europe would have had their equivalents from Oslo to Rome. It would have meant that Hitler’s rocket scientists, like the famous Wernher von Braun, the man behind the Apollo moon missions, went to Moscow, not Washington….. Far-reaching significance D-Day hastened the destruction of Hitler’s empire and the genocide and criminality that it spawned. It ensured that liberal democracy would be restored across a large swathe of Europe. This in turn allowed countries like West Germany, France and Italy to contribute to the unprecedented explosion of wealth and advances in living standards that became the hallmark of the second half of the 20th century.