Table of contents for D-Day in D-Day

In the early hours of 6 June 1944 the largest land, sea and air operation in history got under way in northern France, as more than 150,000 Allied troops began the invasion of German-occupied Western Europe. Failure was not an option. Inside we tell the remarkable story of D-Day, from the months of meticulous planning and preparation that made it possible, to the invasion itself and the fierce fighting that followed as the Allies fought to liberate France. We celebrate some of the heroes of Operation Overlord, speak to D-Day veterans as they share their experiences, and discover the Allied leaders who conceived, shaped and executed the ambitious plans. We look at the role the French Resistance played in the run-up to and during the invasions and how the German…

As well as planning on what might be considered the ‘macro scale’ for D-Day, units had to plan on the micro scale too. Nowhere was this more true than for the engineers who would accompany the assault troops onto the beaches of Normandy. The landing would have three phases: the assault phase, an initial dump phase (where ammunition and other supplies would be left on the beach for subsequent waves of troops) and a maintenance dump phase. The first two phases would take place on D-Day itself. In the US 1st Army, allocated to Utah and Omaha beaches, Engineer Special Brigades were charged with supporting the assault infantry. One quarter of the men that landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day were engineers. In the first phase of the landing, special…

The training sessions for D-Day were meant to be realistic, but not this realistic. Exercise Tiger was one of the largest of these rehearsals, but also the most catastrophic. The mock invasion took place on Slapton Sands, Devon, on 28 April. It was the perfect location to practise, such were its similarities to the Normandy coastline. Landing craft packed with US troops headed towards the beach in a simulated assault as the exercise began. However, it wasn’t a secret that the training was taking place and nine German E-boats had slipped into the bay undetected. As the small attack craft opened fire, the results were catastrophic. Many soldiers did not know how to use their lifejackets and many drowned or froze to death in the water. An oversight in planning…

One of the most monumental undertakings in military history–let alone World War II–Operation Overlord, for all its scale, was in fact a slave to Mother Nature. Following a series of delays due to adverse weather conditions, the go-ahead was finally given for Operation Overlord to commence in the first week of June 1944. As midnight approached on the night of 5 June, airfields across Southern England erupted in an explosion of noise as three airborne divisions (the British 6th and US 82nd and 101st) took to the skies in 1,200 aircraft and made for France. D-Day was underway. Overlord was to be an assault aided by aerial and naval support. At around midnight on 5 June an airborne armada of over 2,000 American, Canadian and British planes began bombing hundreds…

From airfields across Britain, hundreds of transport planes stretched into the skies and turned for the coast of France in the predawn hours of 6 June 1944. They carried nearly 20,000 airborne troops, the vanguard of the Allied invasion of Nazioccupied Western Europe. While Operation Overlord was fraught with risk on land, sea and air, its airborne element was perhaps the most perilous of all. Prior to D-Day, Air Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, commanding Overlord air operations, was so concerned that he recommended in writing to Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower that the airborne element be scrapped. He warned that half the planes and 70 per cent of the gliders could be lost with intolerable casualties. Nevertheless, Eisenhower decided the airborne phase of Overlord was worth it. The insertion of paratroopers and…

Six kilometres (four miles) west of Omaha Beach loomed the 30-metre (100-foot) high cliffs of Pointe du Hoc. Allied reconnaissance had determined that the Germans had placed a formidable battery of six 155mm howitzers there, capable of bombarding both Omaha and Utah beaches. To deal with the threat that countless air raids had apparently failed to eliminate, 225 men of the 2nd Battalion, US Army Rangers, were ordered to scale the cliffs and silence the guns on the morning of D-Day. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James Rudder, the Rangers trained extensively for perhaps the most hazardous mission of any Allied ground troops on 6 June 1944. Although the mission appeared suicidal, the Rangers borrowed scaling ladders from the London Fire Brigade and employed grappling hooks attached to long…

General Bernard L Montgomery, commander of Allied ground forces for Operation Overlord, stepped into Normandy early on the morning of 7 June 1944, also known as D+1. He was quick to stress, along with his senior commanders–Generals Omar Bradley and Miles Dempsey of the American First and British Second Armies–that the need to keep the Germans off balance was critical. With varying degrees of success, Allied troops had fought their way off the five D-Day invasion beaches during the previous 24 hours. Through the night they had cleared the way as best they could for reinforcements and the offloading of supplies and equipment that would be needed for further operations. They had also sent patrols across the countryside, scouting for German troop concentrations or preparations to retaliate. Now, Montgomery reiterated,…

“THERE WERE THOUSANDS OF SHIPS AND LANDING CRAFT, BATTLESHIPS, DESTROYERS, AIRCRAFT FLYING OVERHEAD… THE NOISE WAS UNBELIEVABLE. WHEN THE NAVY STARTED BOMB ARDI NG… IT WAS HORRENDOUS” 6 June 1944. Nearly 7,000 vessels containing 132,000 ground troops cross the English Channel to take part in the Allied invasion of Western Europe: the largest naval, air and land operation in history. Nothing less than the liberation of a brutally suppressed continent is at stake and after years of intense planning, failure is not an option. Five assault beaches on the Normandy coast must be taken, including one primarily reserved for Canadian forces: Juno Beach. However, in the vanguard of this sector is a 20-year-old British member of the RAF Beach Squadrons. Sitting in the cab of his truck and laden with…

The message arrived over the airwaves on 1 June 1944, courtesy of the French service of the BBC. It was a warning for the French Resistance to prepare en masse. Running contrary to the Allied predilection for carefully disguised codes, it said simply: “The moment of battle is approaching.” All over France, members of the Resistance, German security forces and ordinary citizens huddled around radios waiting to hear what might come next. Could the moment of liberation be nigh? The confirmation came four days later on 5 June as personal messages rang across radios all over France, asking the Resistance to spring into action. The messages were sent countrywide so that the enemy would not know the identity of the primary landing grounds. In Normandy, the Allies’ true destination, the…

“THE SPEED AND MANOEUVRABILITY OF TANKS, WHICH COULD STEM AN ATT ACK UNTIL INFANTRY ARRIVED, WOULD BE PIVOTAL” Hitler knew that an Allied attack in the west would decide the war. If he could repel an invasion, it would take the Allies years to rearm and to rebuild their armies. He would then be free to unleash all his fighting power in the east for a final showdown with Russia. The Eastern Front was proving intolerable and his armies there were close to breaking point. Between July 1943 and May 1944, the war in the east had seen the destruction of 41 divisions. By June 1944, he had 59 divisions in Western Europe. If the Allied landings were quashed, he could send these against the Russians, while, he figured, within…

As Allied forces stormed ashore along the Norman coast of France on 6 June 1944, all ready to begin the arduous campaign to liberate Western Europe from Nazi occupation during World War II, the primary D-Day objective of the British 3rd Infantry Division was the port of Caen. As one of the largest cities in Normandy, Caen was a communications hub at the centre of a major road network, connected to the English Channel through a canal. Its seizure would anchor the left flank of the Allied perimeter and deny the defending Germans the advantage of the river and canal, which would otherwise present major obstacles to inland expansion of the D-Day beachhead. General Bernard Law Montgomery, commander of Allied ground forces in Normandy, envisioned the capture of Caen within…

“ORDERED TO SPREAD ‘ALARM AND DESPONDENCY’ AMONG THE GERMANS, THEY DID JUST THAT. IN ONE ATTACK ON 25 AUGUST, THEY AMBUSHED A GERMAN CONVOY WITH A HUGE ROADSIDE BOMB BEFORE MOPPING UP THE SURVIVORS WITH SMALL-ARMS FIRE” OPERATION COONEY A French SAS operation that entailed inserting 18 small sabotage teams by parachute, Cooney’s aim was to isolate Brittany by cutting its railway lines within 48 hours. The mission began on 8 June and forced a battlegroup of the German 275th Division heading towards the beachhead to abandon the railway and take to the road, arriving 48 hours behind schedule. OPERATION TITANIC Commanded by Lieutenants Poole and Fowles, Titanic comprised four men and its mission was to create a diversion just behind the Normandy beaches prior to the arrival of the…

“SOME VILLAGERS IN THE VOSGES CONSIDERED THEMSELVES FRENCH, BUT OTHERS HAD GERMAN BLOOD, AND WERE ONLY TOO WILLING TO PASS ON INFORMATION TO THE NAZIS” With Operation Wallace having run its course, Roy Farran had hoped to lead his men east to link up with another 2SAS mission, codenamed Loyton. But word reached him that the Nazis, determined to stop the Third Army advance towards Germany, had brought in reinforcements who were well dug-in along the east bank of the Moselle River. Additionally, the Americans, in their dash across France, had stretched their supply line to breaking point. Instead Farran led his squadron to Paris to enjoy a week’s leave in the French capital. The men on Operation Loyton, meanwhile, were involved in a deadly game of cat and mouse…

1940 OPERATION DYNAMO ■ 4 JUNE 1940 ■ THE FRENCH PORT CITY OF DUNKIRK Operation Dynamo, the ten-day effort to evacuate soldiers of the French Army and the British Expeditionary Force from the continent of Europe at the port city of Dunkirk, concludes with the rescue of nearly 340,000 troops from annihilation or capture by victorious German forces following their invasion of France and the Low Countries on 10 May. Dynamo involves scores of small civilian watercraft as well as military vessels and succeeds beyond expectations as planners expected to evacuate only about 30,000. The Battle of France ends in shattering defeat, and the Allies do not return to Western Europe until D-Day in 1944. 1942 ROOSEVELT RECEIVES OPERATION ROUNDUP PLAN ■ 1 APRIL 1942 ■ WASHINGTON, DC US Army…

As well as the raid on Dieppe, various other smaller scale operations (including a landing at Anzio in January 1944) provided valuable experience in the build-up to D-Day, and significant rehearsals for amphibious landings were staged. They would prove that even rehearsals could go badly wrong. One such rehearsal took place in the Pacific, where the Americans were preparing for an amphibious assault on the Solomon Islands in 1942. The US Army’s amphibious warfare doctrine had been laid down in a 1938 paper, but almost no training had been undertaken. Suitable beaches on Fiji were selected for practice landings and extractions on 28 and 30 July. Problems included the fact that most of the landing craft used did not have front ramps, so heavily laden Marines had to clamber over…

“HITLER MADE THE DEFENCE OF THE WEST A PRIORITY AND WANTED A DEFENSIVE BELT OF 15,000 STRONGPOINTS. HIS INVOLVEMENT HAD EVEN SEEN HIM PERSONALLY DESIGN PILLBOXES” By any measure, the Atlantic Wall was extraordinary. Stretching almost 2,700 kilometres (1,700 miles) from Spain in the south to the Netherlands in the north, the Wall’s construction required enormous quantities of concrete–some 17 million cubic tons. It would also incorporate about 1.5 million tons of precious iron. A huge labour force worked to build the Wall, under the direction of Organisation Todt, the Third Reich’s construction agency. Adolf Hitler had made the defence of the West a priority, in late 1942, and had ordered that ‘Atlantikwall’ be built as part of the effort to prevent the Western Allies from ever returning to the…

Known as ‘flying coffins’ by the men who boarded them, gliders were used throughout WWII when stealth was required. Coming in a range of shapes and sizes, well-known models included the American Waco GC-4A and the British Horsa, the latter of which was capable of transporting small vehicles or up to 25 troops. Over 3,600 Horsas were manufactured during the war, each one had a 27-metre (88-foot) wingspan, weighing over 3,600 kilograms (8,000 pounds) when empty and piloted by a crew of two. Almost 400 British gliders saw action on D-Day, including both the Horsa and the heavier Hamilcar, which was built to deliver a tank or up to 40 troops. Due to the lack of parachutes on board, glider pilots faced a foreboding task: land safely or die trying–there…

On the eve of their deployment to France, paratroopers of the 502nd PIR, 101st Airborne Division, received a distinguished visitor at Greenham Common airfield. General Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander Allied expeditionary force, had come to wish them well. With the burden of command weighing heavily on his shoulders, Eisenhower grinned and greeted the men, moving easily and with confidence among them. He asked one of them, whose face was blackened with camouflage, where he was from. “Michigan!” the trooper chimed. “Oh yes! Michigan,” the general grinned. “Great fishing there–been there several times and like it!” Eisenhower worried mightily about the paratroopers, and the rest of the invasion host as well. Years later, in his memoir Crusade in Europe, he wrote of the airborne encounter: “I found the men in fine…

INLAND 82nd Airborne Division ‘All American Division’ Commander: Major General Matthew Ridgway Objective: Secure left flank and rear of VI Corps 101st Airborne Division ‘Screaming Eagles’ Commander: Major General Maxwell D. Taylor Objective: Secure left flank and rear of VI Corps…

Throughout the Normandy campaign, the French Resistance was active–cutting communication lines, destroying bridges and killing Germans at every opportunity. As the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich made its way to Normandy from the south of France, it was harried by Allied air strikes and harassed by the emboldened underground. Oradour-sur-Glane, a tiny village in west-central France, lay in the path of Das Reich, and when the 4th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment Der Führer, under the command of Major Adolf Diekmann, entered the village on 10 June, the officer was bent on reprisal. Apparently, resistance fighters had kidnapped an SS officer, and revenge for the crime was to be enacted on Oradour-sur-Glane. Diekmann ordered the murders of 642 men, women and children in the village. The men were prodded to outbuildings…

“BILL STIRLING WAS AGHAST WHEN HE READ THE OPERATIONAL INSTRUCTIONS. IT WAS A SUICIDE MISS ION, AND A TYPE OF WARFARE FOR WHICH THE SAS WAS NOT TRAINED” When David Stirling was granted permission to expand the SAS in September 1942, he appointed his brother, Bill, as commanding officer of the second regiment. Bill was the eldest of five children, and David’s senior by four years. The siblings shared a similar military background (Scots Guards and commandos) but differed in personality. One wartime SAS officer who knew them both, Anthony Greville-Bell, recalled: “I was very fond of Bill. He was a very deep, intelligent and well-read man. Bill was cleverer than David. [He] was more charismatic and more physical, the younger brother, and was outwardly very good at dealing with…

The inability to achieve a quick breakout following the successful landings on D-Day caused concern among Allied commanders and has led some historians to question whether too much emphasis had been placed on simply getting ashore. D-Day had certainly presented an immense challenge, but breaking out of the defensive cordon set up by the Germans was proving equally hard. The failure at Villers-Bocage had left Montgomery with a major problem. The Germans had brought up units to plug the gaps in their line that the Allied general had tried to exploit, and whispers about Montgomery’s performance were starting to grow. Monty himself believed that VII Armoured Corps was underperforming and suspected they resented being given hard fighting, having already ‘done their bit’ in the Mediterranean Theatre. Villers-Bocage had marked the…

Controversy has swirled over the failure to capture all of the German units trapped in the Falaise Pocket, at the closing phase of the Normandy campaign. There is no doubt that the pocket could have been sealed with more effective and coordinated action from the Allies, but it is unclear exactly what that would have achieved. Throughout the war, the Germans had shown themselves to be masters of escaping from encirclements. One of their greatest strengths was their calm acceptance of the situation and determined reaction. Given the desperation of their position following the Allied breakout, it is reasonable to suggest that any German units completely encircled would have fought with even more ruthlessness to break free. Casualties on the Allied side would have been inevitable. Recent analysis of the…

“AMONG OTHER ACTIONS, HALCYONS RESCUED 14,000 SOLDI ERS FROM DUNKIRK AND TOOK PART IN 78 CROSSINGS DURING THE ARCTIC CONVOYS” Between 1934-39 the Royal Navy commissioned 21 oil-fired minesweepers that became designated as Halcyon-class ships. The navy had first deployed improvised minesweepers during the Crimean War but the technology developed rapidly during WWI when Flower-class minesweeping sloops were introduced. By the 1930s the Halcyon-class minesweeper was being developed. These vessels had a weight displacement that was 175 tonnes less than their Grimsby-class sloop counterparts as well as being six metres (20 feet) shorter. Because of the nature of their work, the minesweepers needed to be both small in size and have as shallow a draught as possible. Consequently, to save weight the ships were only provided with the most basic…

“IN ORDER FOR AN INVASION TO SUCCEED, SEA LANES WOULD NEED TO BE SECURE, BASES WOULD NEED TO BE SET UP, MEN AND MATERIEL AMASSED AND STRATEGIC TARGETS IN GERMANY BOMBED” On 4 June 1940, the evacuation from Dunkirk was completed. The British Expeditionary Force had lost more than 66,000 men, but almost a quarter of a million had been snatched from the clutches of advancing German units. It did not mark the end of Britain’s involvement on the Continent in the early months of the war–there were still British soldiers fighting alongside the remnants of the French Army, and 60,000 more were sent back to France after the evacuation from Dunkirk, forming a second British Expeditionary Force. It was a futile gesture, as General Sir Alan Brooke found the…

Western Europe had been under German occupation for four years when the decision was made to punch a hole in the Atlantic Wall. World War II was entering its final stages and the Allies believed that the time was right to grasp a foothold in France and begin the liberation of Western Europe from the grip of National Socialism. The plan for D-Day was to land a task force on the French coast, where the Atlantic Wall–a system of defences featuring machine guns, artillery and fortifications that stretched from Norway to Spain–was at its weakest. The British high command was adamant that any invasion would not be a repeat of the failed 1942 attack on Dieppe, a miscalculation that had resulted in 3,000 Allied soldiers being cut down by German…

“After some modifications and extra pilot training, the B-26 began to realise its potential as a bomber that could turn the tide of the war” MARTIN B-26G MARAUDER’ ROLE: HIGH-PERFORMANCE TWIN-ENGINE MEDIUM BOMBER NATIONS SERVED: USA, UK, SOUTH AFRICA, FRANCE LENGTH: 17.7M (58.3FT) WINGSPAN: 21M (71FT) MAXIMUM SPEED: 458KM/H (285MPH) MAXIMUM ALTITUDE: 6,035M (19,800FT) RANGE: 1,770KM (1,100 MILES) CREW: 6/7 MEN ENGINES: 2 X 1,930HP PRATT AND WHITNEY R-2800-43 ARMAMENT: 11 X .50-CALIBRE BROWNING MACHINE GUNS BOMB LOAD: 1,814KG (4,000LB) Coming in almost 20 variants, the B-26 was the workhorse of the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) bombing operations of World War II. First introduced in 1941, 201 Marauders were ordered straight off the drawing board with no time to build and test a prototype. Part of President Roosevelt’s…

LCVP HIGGINS BOAT LENGTH: 11.03M (36.2FT) SPEED: 22.5KM/H (14MPH) CAPACITY: 36 TROOPS/A 2,721KG (6,000LB) VEHICLE/3,674KG (8,100LB) CARGO ENGINE: 225HP GRAY DIESEL ENGINE/HALL-SCOTT PETROL ENGINE ARMAMENT: 2 X .30 CALIBRE BROWNING MACHINE GUNS NUMBER MADE IN WWII: 23,398 PROVING A POINT Higgins’ designs were constantly rejected by the US Bureau of Ships. In 1942, to see which vessel was best, a challenge was concocted to carry a 30-ton tank through rough water, and the Higgins boat proved its worth. THE GATES TO HELL The exception to the wooden construction was the metal ramp. As the primary defensive panel of the LCVP, once it was opened the soldiers would be exposed to direct attacks from the front. ENTRY AND EXIT To get into the Higgins boat, the soldiers would climb down a…

As Britain prepared for D-Day, it had to overcome a multitude of problems in order for the operation to succeed. The beaches of Normandy and beyond were covered with both natural and man-made obstacles that would work in the enemy’s favour. To combat this, a variety of unique tanks, known as Hobart’s Funnies, were specially designed to give the Allies an advantage and ensure victory would fall in their favour. DD TANK Nicknamed ‘Donald Duck tanks’, this Sherman model was an amphibious swimming variant. The tank used a flotation screen and was powered to move through the water by a propeller. The DD tanks were rather fragile in rough seas, and in one instance during the Normandy landings, 27 of 29 tanks sank before reaching the shore. FLOTATION SKIRT An…

“ONCE THE LAST OF THE RESISTANCE HAD BEEN OVERCOME, THE SAS VANISHED INTO THE FORESTS, LEAVING BEHIND A SCENE OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION” The first major mission into Occupied France was code-named Houndsworth, and involved A Squadron. Their task was to cut the railway lines between Lyon and Paris, train the numerous local groups of Maquis and generally make nuisances of themselves. The boys in A Squadron considered themselves a cut above the rest of the SAS brigade. They were veterans of the desert, a few–like Johnny Cooper, Jeff Du Vivier, Reg Seekings and their commanding officer, Bill Fraser–were even ‘Originals’, among the 66 men recruited by David Stirling in 1941. But it was one of the recent additions to the squadron, Captain Ian Wellsted, who got Operation Houndsworth underway…

WHEN AND HOW DID YOU JOIN THE SAS? In 1943, my battalion was posted to the Orkney Islands to guard against German raiding parties. Nothing happened and eventually in January 1944 the battalion was disbanded. We were given the choice of joining the Commandos, Parachute Regiment or the SAS; I chose the SAS, nor really knowing what they did. WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? I was interviewed by the commanding officer, who was Paddy Mayne, and once accepted, I was ordered to Darvel in Scotland where 1SAS was based. I later found out that I was one of only 30 from 300 to be chosen by Mayne. By the time we’d finished the parachute training at Ringway, the number was down to about 15 men. CAN YOU DESC RIBE SOME OF THE…

It is a beautiful summer’s day in August 1944 and six ships of the Royal Navy are sweeping the area near Le Havre for mines. Despite the dangerous task the warm weather is a welcome relief for the recent veterans of the notoriously cold Arctic Convoys. Some are so relaxed that they sunbathe on deck, but a formation of aircraft appears out of the sun and suddenly dives towards the flotilla. This would be an alarming situation if it were the enemy, but the sailors are more alarmed to see that these are Hawker Typhoons of the Royal Air Force and without warning the fighter-bombers attack their own ships. Explosions erupt everywhere and vessels begin to sink. Many men have to abandon ship but to make matters worse German shore…

“BELIEVING IN D-DAY AS AN INEV ITABILITY, WITH THE ONLY QUESTION BEING ONE OF TIMING, SOFTENED THE BLOWS OF REPEATED DE FEATS IN THE EARLY YEARS OF THE WAR” The statement scribbled down by Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D Eisenhower was simple: “Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.” The statement was written on the evening of 5 June (although Eisenhower was so preoccupied that he mistakenly noted the date as 5…

Despite the daunting prospect of landing troops on the beaches of Normandy, Allied planning and logistics were so impressive that the operation never really looked like failing. Even amid the carnage of Omaha Beach, a foothold was established. Had certain events gone differently, however, things might have played out in a whole new direction. For all the planning and training, there were potential weak spots. It would probably have taken a combination of mishaps for D-Day to have completely failed, but they are not far-fetched events, and had the Allies been turned back from the beaches, the consequences would have been dire. Here, military historian David Smith considers how D-Day might have failed, and what the fallout from such a failure might have looked like. What if D-Day had failed?…