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"1944 D-Day Operation Overlord" redirects to here. For the video game, see 1944 D-Day Operation Overlord (videogame) . The Battle of Normandy was fought in 1944 between Nazi Germany in Western Europe and the invading Allied forces as part of the larger conflict of World War II. Over sixty years later, the Normandy invasion, codenamed Operation Overlord, still remains the largest sea borne invasion in history, involving almost three million troops crossing the English Channel from England to Normandy in the then German-occupied France. It is most commonly known by the name D-Day.
The Normandy invasion began with overnight parachute and glider landings, massive air attacks, naval bombardments, and an early morning amphibious phase began on June 6. The “D-Day” forces deployed from bases along the south coast of England, the most important of these being Portsmouth. The battle for Normandy continued for more than two months, with campaigns to establish, expand, and eventually break out of the Allied beachheads, and concluded with the liberation of Paris and the fall of the Falaise pocket in late August 1944. The Battle of Normandy was described thus by Adolf Hitler: “In the East, the vastness of space will... permit a loss of territory... without suffering a mortal blow to Germany’s chance for survival. Not so in the West! If the enemy here succeeds… consequences of staggering proportions will follow within a short time.”[6]
Allied preparationsImage:Invasion Training in England 03.jpg Invasion training in England - hitting the beach. Image:Invasion Training in England 04.jpg Training with live ammunition in England. Image:Eisenhower d-day.jpg Eisenhower speaks with U.S. paratroops of the 502d Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division on the evening of June 5, 1944.
The planning process was started in earnest in March 1943 by British Chief of Staff of Supreme Allied Commander (COSSAC), Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Morgan with the aid of his American deputy, Maj. Gen. Ray W. Barker. The plan was later adopted and refined starting in January 1944 by SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force), led by General Dwight David Eisenhower. The short operating range of Allied fighters, including the British Spitfire and Typhoon, from UK airfields greatly limited the choices of amphibious landing sites. Geography reduced the choices further to two sites: the Pas de Calais and the Normandy coast. Because the Pas de Calais offered the shortest distance to the European mainland from the UK, the best landing beaches, and the most direct overland route to Germany, it was the most heavily fortified and defended landing site. Consequently, the Allies chose Normandy for the invasion. In part because of lessons learned by Allied troops in the raid on Dieppe of 19 August 1942, the Allies decided not to assault a French seaport directly in their first landings. Landings in force on a broad front in Normandy would permit simultaneous threats against the port of Cherbourg, coastal ports further west in Bretagne, and an overland attack towards Paris and towards the border with Germany. Normandy was a less-defended coast and an unexpected but strategic jumping-off point, with the potential to confuse and scatter the German defending forces. It was not until November 1943 [1] that General Dwight David Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, giving him overall charge of the Allied forces in Western Europe. In January 1944, General Sir Bernard Montgomery was named as commander of the 21st Army Group, to which all of the invasion ground forces belonged, and was also given charge of developing the invasion plan.[7] At that stage the COSSAC plan proposed a landing from the sea by three divisions, with two brigades landed by air. Montgomery quickly increased the scale of the initial attack to five divisions by sea and three by air, reflected in the plans for an additional assault at Utah Beach. (He initially requested landings by four Airborne Divisions, but sufficient transport aircraft to land three divisions only were available.) In total, 47 divisions would be committed to the Battle of Normandy: 19 British, five Canadian and one Polish divisions under overall British command, and 21 American divisions with one Free French division, totaling 140,000 troops. On 7 April and 15 May Montgomery presented his strategy for the invasion at St Paul’s School. He envisaged a ninety day battle, ending when all the forces reached the Seine, pivoting on an Allied-held Caen, with British and Canadian armies forming a shoulder and the U.S. armies wheeling to the right. Image:Soldiers-english-coast.jpg U.S. soldiers march through Weymouth, a southern English coastal town, en route to board landing ships for the invasion of France. About 6,900 vessels would be involved in the invasion, under the command of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay (who had been directly involved in the North African and Italian landings), including 4,100 landing craft. A total of 12,000 aircraft under Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory were to support the landings, including 1,000 transports to fly in the parachute troops; 10,000 tons of bombs would be dropped against the German defences, and 14,000 attack sorties would be flown. The objective for the first 40 days was to create a lodgement that would include the cities of Caen and Cherbourg (especially Cherbourg, for its deep-water port). Subsequently, there would be a break out from the lodgement to liberate Brittany and its Atlantic ports, and to advance to a line roughly 125 miles (190 km) to the southwest of Paris, from Le Havre through Le Mans to Tours, so that after ninety days the allies would control a zone bounded by the rivers Loire in the south and Seine in the northeast. DeceptionIn the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted a deception operation, Operation Bodyguard, designed to persuade the Germans that other points would be threatened as well as northern France (such as the Balkans and the south of France). Then, in the weeks leading up to the invasion, in order to persuade the Germans that the main invasion would really be coming to the Pas de Calais, as well as to lead them to expect an invasion of Norway, the Allies prepared a massive deception plan, called Operation Fortitude. Operation Fortitude North would lead the Axis to expect an attack on Norway; the much more vital Operation Fortitude South was designed to lead the Germans to expect the main invasion at the Pas de Calais, and to hold back forces to guard against this threat rather than rushing them to Normandy. An entirely fictitious First U.S. Army Group (“FUSAG”), supposedly located in southeastern England under the command of General Lesley J. McNair and General George S. Patton, Jr., was created in German minds by the use of double agents and fake radio traffic. The Germans had an extensive network of agents operating in England. Unfortunately for them, every single one reporting about FUSAG had been “turned” by the Allies as part of the Double Cross System, and appropriate agents were dutifully sending back messages “confirming” the existence and location of FUSAG and the Pas de Calais as the likely main attack point. Dummy tanks (some inflatable), trucks, and landing craft, as well as troop camp facades (constructed from scaffolding and canvas) were placed in ports on the eastern and southeastern coasts of Britain, and the Luftwaffe was allowed to photograph them. In aid of Operation Fortitude North, Operation Skye was mounted from Scotland using radio traffic, designed to convince German traffic analysts that an invasion would also be mounted into Norway. Against this phantom threat, German units that otherwise could have been moved into France were instead kept in Norway. The last part of the deception occurred on the night before the invasion: a small group of SAS operators deployed dummy paratroopers over Le Havre and Isigny. These dummies led the Germans to believe that an additional airborne assault had occurred; this tied up reinforcing troops and kept the true situation unclear. Special equipmentSome of the more unusual Allied preparations included armoured vehicles specially adapted for the assault. Developed under the leadership of Major-General Percy Hobart (Montgomery’s brother-in-law), these vehicles (called Hobart’s Funnies) included “swimming” Duplex Drive Sherman tanks, mine-clearing tanks, bridge-laying tanks and road-laying tanks and the Armoured Vehicle, Royal Engineers (AVRE) - equipped with a large-caliber mortar for destroying concrete emplacements. Some prior testing of these vehicles had been undertaken at Kirkham Priory in Yorkshire, England. The majority would be operated by small teams of the British 79th Armoured Division attached to the various formations. The invasion plan also called for the construction of two artificial Mulberry Harbours in order to get vital supplies to the invading forces in the first few weeks of the battle in the absence of deep-water ports, and Operation PLUTO (Pipe Line Under The Ocean), a series of submarine pipes that would deliver fuel from Britain to the invading forces. Rehearsals and securityAllied forces rehearsed their roles for D-Day months before the invasion. On April 28, 1944, in south Devon on the English coast, 749 U.S. soldiers and sailors were killed when German torpedo boats surprised one of these landing exercises, Exercise Tiger. The effectiveness of the deception operations was increased by a news blackout from Britain. Travel to and from the Irish Free State was banned, and movements within several miles of the coasts restricted. The German embassies and consulates in neutral countries were flooded with all sorts of misleading information, in the well-founded hope that any genuine information on the landings would be ignored with all the confusing chaff. In the weeks before the invasion it was noticed that the crossword of the British Daily Telegraph newspaper contained a surprisingly large number of words which were codewords relating to the invasion. MI-5 (the Security Service) first thought this was a coincidence, but when the word Mulberry was one of the crossword answers, MI-5 then interviewed the compiler — a schoolmaster — and were convinced of his innocence. According to National Geographic[2], in 1984 a former student of the compiler claimed that he had picked up the words while eavesdropping on soldiers' conversations around the army camps and suggested their use in the puzzles. This assertion has not been independently verified, and Marc Romano, author of the book Crossworld: One Man's Journey into America's Crossword Obsession, gives a number of reasons for why the story is implausible. There were several leaks on or before D-Day, and one such leak is of major interest. It involved General de Gaulle’s radio message after D-Day. He, unlike all the other leaders, stated that this invasion was the real invasion. This had the potential to ruin the Allied deceptions Fortitude North and Fortitude South. For example, Eisenhower referred to the landings as the initial invasion. The Germans did not believe de Gaulle and waited too long to move in extra units against the Allies. The Allied invasion planImage:Allied Invasion Force.jpg D-day assault routes into Normandy. The order of battle was approximately as follows, east to west: British sector (Second Army)
U.S. Sector (First Army)
Naval participantsThe Invasion Fleet was drawn from 8 different navies, comprising 6,938 vessels: 1,213 warships, 4,125 transport vessels (landing ships and landing craft) and 1,600 support vessels which included a number of merchant vessels. The overall commander of the Allied Naval Expeditionary Force, providing close protection and bombardment at the beaches, was Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay. The Allied Naval Expeditionary Force was divided into two Naval Task Forces: Western (Rear-Admiral Alan G Kirk) and Eastern (Rear-Admiral Sir Philip Vian). The warships provided cover for the transports against the enemy whether in the form of surface warships, submarines or as an aerial attack and give support to the landings through shore bombardment. These ships included the Allied Task Force "O".
CodenamesThe Allies assigned codenames to the various operations involved in the invasion. Overlord was the name assigned to the establishment of a large-scale lodgement on the Continent. The first phase, the establishment of a secure foothold, was codenamed Neptune, according to the D-day museum[3]:
The DefendersGerman preparationsThrough most of 1942 and 1943, the Germans had rightly regarded the possibility of a successful Allied invasion in the West as remote. Preparations to counter an invasion were limited to the construction by the Organisation Todt, of impressive fortifications covering the major ports. In late 1943, the obvious Allied buildup in Britain prompted the German Commander-in-Chief in the West, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, to request reinforcements. In addition to fresh units, von Rundstedt also received a new subordinate, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Rommel was originally intended only to make a tour of inspection of the Atlantic Wall. After reporting to Hitler, Rommel requested command of the defenders of northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands. These were organised as Army Group B in February 1944. (The German forces in southern France were designated as Army Group G, under General Johannes Blaskowitz). Rommel had recognised that for all their propaganda value, the Atlantic Wall fortifications covered only the ports themselves. The beaches between were barely defended, and the Allies could land there and capture the ports from inland. He revitalised the defenders, who laboured to improve the defences of the entire coastline. Steel obstacles were laid at the high-water mark on the beaches, concrete bunkers and pillboxes constructed, low-lying areas flooded and booby-trapped stakes known as Rommelspargel (Rommel's asparagus) set up on likely landing grounds to deter airborne landings. These works were not fully completed, especially in the vital Normandy sector, partly because Allied bombing of the French railway system interfered with the movement of the necessary materials, and also because the Germans were convinced by the Allied deception measures and their own preconceptions that the landings would take place in the Pas de Calais, and concentrated their efforts there. Hitler was especially intransigent in his conviction that an Allied attack would come through Pas de Calais and overruled Rommel - who strongly believed all along that, if he were in Eisenhower's shoes, he would invade through Normandy.[citation needed] Rommel's defensive measures were also frustrated by a dispute over armoured doctrine. In addition to his two army groups, von Rundstedt also commanded the headquarters of Panzer Group West under General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg (usually referred to as von Geyr). This formation was nominally an administrative HQ for von Rundstedt's armoured and mobile formations, but it was to be renamed Fifth Panzer Army and brought into the line in Normandy. Von Geyr and Rommel disagreed over the deployment and use of the vital Panzer divisions. Rommel recognised that the Allies would possess air superiority, and would be able to harass his movements from the air. He therefore proposed that the armoured formations be deployed close to the invasion beaches. In his words, it was better to have one Panzer division facing the invaders on the first day, than three Panzer divisions three days later when the allies would already have established a firm beachhead. Von Geyr argued for the standard doctrine that the Panzer formations should be concentrated in a central position around Paris and Rouen, and deployed en masse against the main Allied beachhead when this had been identified. The argument went all the way up to Hitler, who characteristically imposed an unworkable compromise solution. Three Panzer divisions were given to Rommel, too few to cover all the threatened sectors, and three to von Geyr, not enough for a decisive intervention. (Four others were dispersed in Southern France and the Netherlands, under the tactical control of neither commander). Also, Hitler reserved to himself the authority to move most of these divisions, or commit them to action. On June 6, many Panzer division commanders were unable to move, as Hitler had not given the necessary authorisation, and his staff refused to wake him upon news of the invasion. German defencesThe Germans had extensively fortified the foreshore area as part of their Atlantic Wall defences, believing that the forthcoming landings would be timed for high tide (this caused the landings to be timed for low tide). The sector which was attacked was guarded by four divisions, of which only one (352nd) was of high quality. The other defending troops included Germans who, usually for medical reasons, were not considered fit for active duty on the Eastern Front, and various other nationalities such as conscripted Poles and former Soviet prisoners of war who had agreed to fight for the Germans rather than endure the harsh conditions of German POW camps. These "Ost" units were provided with German leadership to stiffen them. Divisional Areas
Adjacent Divisional AreasOther divisions occupied the areas around the landing zones, including:
Mobile ReservesThe 21st Panzer Division (Generalmajor Edgar Feuchtinger) was deployed near Caen as a mobile striking force. It was so close to the coastal defences that, under standing orders in case of invasion, several of its infantry and anti-aircraft units would come under the orders of the fortress divisions on the coast, reducing the effective strength of the division. The 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend (Brigadeführer Fritz de Witt) was stationed to the southeast. Its officers and NCOs were long-serving veterans, but the junior soldiers had all been recruited directly from the Hitler Youth movement at the age of seventeen in 1943. It was to acquire a reputation for ferocity and war crimes in the coming battle. Further to the southwest was the Panzerlehrdivision (General major Fritz Bayerlein), an elite unit originally formed by amalgamating the instructing staff at various training establishments. Not only were its personnel of high quality, but the division also had unusually high numbers of the latest and most capable armoured vehicles. The landingsWeather ForecastImage:Operation Tonga.jpg British Pathfinders synchronising their watches in front of an Armstrong Whitworth Albemarle. The final factor in determining the date of the landing was the anticipated weather. By this stage of the war, the German U-Boats had largely been driven from the Atlantic and their weather stations in Greenland had been closed down. The Allies possessed an advantage in knowledge of conditions in the Atlantic which was to prove decisive. A full moon was required both for light for the aircraft pilots and for the spring tide. Most of May had seen fine weather, but this deteriorated in early June. Eisenhower had tentatively selected June 5 as the date for the assault, but on June 4, conditions were clearly unsuitable for a landing; wind and high seas made it impossible to launch landing craft and low cloud would prevent aircraft finding their targets. The Allied troop convoys already at sea were forced to take shelter in bays and inlets on the south coast of Britain. It seemed possible that everything would have to be cancelled and the troops returned to their camps (a vast undertaking, as the enormous movement of follow-up formations was already proceeding). The next full moon period would be nearly a month away. At a vital meeting on June 5, Eisenhower's chief meteorologist (Group Captain J.M. Stagg) forecast a brief improvement for June 6. Montgomery and Eisenhower's Chief of Staff (General Walter Bedell Smith) were keen to proceed with the invasion. Leigh Mallory was doubtful, but Admiral Ramsay allowed that conditions would be marginally favourable. On the strength of the weather forecast, Eisenhower ordered the invasion to proceed. The Germans meanwhile took comfort from the existing poor conditions, and believed no invasion would be possible for several days. Some troops stood down, and many senior officers were absent. Rommel, for example, took a few days' leave with his wife and family, while dozens of division, regimental, and battalion commanders were away from their posts at war games. The French ResistanceThe various factions and circuits of the French Resistance (also known as the Maquis) were included in the plan for Overlord. The British Special Operations Executive would orchestrate a massive campaign of sabotage tasking the various Groups with attacking railway lines, ambushing roads, or destroying telephone exchanges or electricity sub-stations. They were to be alerted to carry out these tasks by means of the messages personnels, transmitted by the BBC in its French service from London. Several hundreds of these were regularly transmitted, masking the few of them that were really significant. One famous pair of these messages is often mistakenly stated to be a general call to arms by the Resistance. A few days before D-Day, the (slightly misquoted) first line of Verlaine's poem, "Chanson d'Automne", was transmitted. "Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne"[8] (Long sobs of autumn violins) alerted resistants of the "Ventriloquist" network in the Orléans region to attack rail targets within the next few days. The second line, "Bercent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone" (wound my heart with a monotonous languor), transmitted late on June 5, meant that the attack was to be mounted immediately. Other famous words broadcast by the BBC at 21:00 CET on June 5, were the messages Les carottes sont cuites (The carrots are cooked) and Les dés sont jetés (The dice have been thrown).[9] Josef Götz, the head of the signals section of the German intelligence service (the SD) in Paris, had discovered the meaning of the second line of Verlaine's poem, and no less than fourteen other executive orders they heard late on June 5. His section rightly interpreted them to mean that invasion was imminent or underway, and they alerted their superiors, and all Army commanders in France. Unfortunately for them, they had issued a similar warning a month before, when the Allies had begun invasion preparations and alerted the Resistance, but then stood down because of a forecast of bad weather. The SD having given this false alarm, their genuine alarm was ignored or treated as merely routine. In addition to the tasks given to the Resistance as part of the invasion effort, the Special Operations Executive planned to reinforce the Resistance with three-man liaison parties, under Operation Jedburgh. The Jedburgh parties would coordinate and arrange supply drops to the Maquis groups in the German rear areas. Also operating far behind German lines and frequently working closely with the Resistance, although not under SOE, were larger parties from the British, French and Belgian units of the Special Air Service brigade. Airborne landingsThe success of the amphibious landings depended on the establishment of a secure lodgment from which to expand the beachhead to allow the build up of a well-supplied force capable of breaking out. The amphibious forces were especially vulnerable to strong enemy counter-attacks before the build up of sufficient forces in the beachhead could be accomplished. To slow or eliminate the enemy's ability to organise and launch counter-attacks during this critical period, airborne landings were utilised to seize key objectives, such as bridges, road crossings, and terrain features, particularly on the eastern and western flanks of the landing areas. The airborne landings some distance behind the beaches were also intended to ease the egress of the amphibious forces off the beaches and in some cases to neutralise German coastal defence batteries, and more quickly expand the area of the beachhead. The U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were assigned to objectives west of Utah Beach. The British 6th Airborne Division was assigned to similar objectives on the eastern flank. British Airborne landingsEast of the landing area, the open, flat, floodplain between the Orne and Dives Rivers was ideal for counter-attacks by German armour. However, the landing area and floodplain were separated by the Orne River, which flowed northeast from Caen into the Bay of the Seine. The only crossing of the Orne River north of Caen was 7 km from the coast, near Bénouville and Ranville. For the Germans, the crossing provided the only route for a flanking attack on the beaches from the east. For the Allies, the crossing also was vital for any attack on Caen from the east. The tactical objectives of the British 6th Airborne Division were (a) to capture intact the bridges of the Bénouville-Ranville crossing, (b) to defend the crossing against the inevitable armoured counter-attacks, (c)to destroy German artillery at the Merville battery, which threatened Sword Beach, and (d) to destroy five bridges over the Dives River to further restrict movement of ground forces from the east. Airborne troops, mostly paratroopers of the 3rd and 5th Parachute Brigades, began landing after midnight, June 6 and immediately encountered elements of the German 716th Infantry Division. At dawn, the Battle Group von Luck of the 21st Panzer Division counter-attacked from the south on both sides of the Orne River. By this time the paratroopers had established a defensive perimeter surrounding the bridgehead. Casualties were heavy on both sides but the airborne troops held. Shortly after noon, they were reinforced by commandos of the 1st Special Service Brigade. By the end of D-Day, 6th Airborne had accomplished each of its objectives. For several days, both British and German forces took heavy casualties as they struggled for positions around the Orne bridgehead. For example, the German 346th Infantry Division broke through the eastern edge of the defensive line on June 10. Finally, British paratroopers overwhelmed entrenched panzergrenadiers in the Battle of Bréville on June 12. The Germans did not seriously threaten the bridgehead again. 6th Airborne remained in the line until it was evacuated in early September. American Airborne landingsThe U.S. 82nd (Operation Detroit) and 101st Airborne Divisions (Operation Chicago) were less fortunate in quickly completing their main objectives. Partly owing to unmarked landing zones, radio silence, poor weather and difficult terrain, many units were widely scattered and unable to rally. Efforts of the early wave of pathfinder teams to mark the landing zones were largely ineffective. Some paratroopers drowned when they landed in the sea or in areas deliberately flooded by the Germans. After 24 hours, only 2,500 of the 6,000 men in 101st had assembled. The dispersal of the American airborne troops, however, had the effect of confusing the Germans and fragmenting their response. In addition, the Germans' defensive flooding, in the early stages, also helped to protect the Americans' southern flank. Many continued to roam and fight behind enemy lines for days. Most[citation needed] consolidated into small groups, rallied with NCOs or junior officers, and usually were a hodgepodge of men from different companies, battalions, regiments, or even divisions. The 82nd occupied the town of Sainte-Mère-Église early in the morning of June 6, giving it the claim of the first town liberated in the invasion. While some objectives were met (often with far fewer men than the mission planners intended), many paratroopers were too busy fighting for survival to take offensive action.[citation needed] Sword BeachImage:Infantry waiting to move off 'Queen White' Beach.jpg British troops take cover after landing on Sword Beach. The assault on Sword Beach began at about 0300 hrs with an aerial bombardment of the German coastal defences and artillery sites. The naval bombardment began a few hours later. At 0730 hrs, the first units reached the beach. These were the DD tanks of 13th/18th Hussars followed closely by the infantry of 8th Brigade. On Sword Beach, the regular British infantry got ashore with light casualties. They had advanced about five miles (8 km) by the end of the day but failed to make some of the deliberately ambitious targets set by Montgomery. In particular, Caen, a major objective, was still in German hands by the end of D-Day. 1st Special Service Brigade, under the command of Brigadier The Lord Lovat DSO and MC, went ashore in the second wave led by No.4 Commando with the two French Troops first, as agreed amongst themselves. The 1st Special Service Brigade's landing is famous for having been led by Piper Bill Millin. The British and French of No.4 Commando had separate targets in Ouistreham: the French a blockhouse and the Casino, and the British two batteries which overlooked the beach. The blockhouse proved too strong for the Commandos' PIAT (Projector Infantry Anti Tank) weapons, but the Casino was taken with the aid of a Centaur tank. The British Commandos achieved both battery objectives only to find the gun mounts empty and the guns removed. Leaving the mopping-up procedure to the infantry, the Commandos withdrew from Ouistreham to join the other units of their brigade (Nos.3, 6 and 45), moving inland to join-up with the 6th Airborne Division. Juno BeachThe Canadian forces that landed on Juno Beach faced 11 heavy batteries of 155 mm guns and 9 medium batteries of 75 mm guns, as well as machine-gun nests, pillboxes, other concrete fortifications, and a seawall twice the height of the one at Omaha Beach. The first wave suffered 50% casualties, the second highest of the five D-Day beachheads. The use of armour was successful at Juno, in some instances actually landing ahead of the infantry as intended and helping clear a path inland.[10] Image:Canada JunoBeach 1 RCNCOMMANDO.jpg Personnel of Royal Canadian Navy Beach Commando "W" landing on Mike Beach, Juno sector of the Normandy beachhead. June 6, 1944. By the end of D-Day, 15,000 Canadians had been successfully landed, and the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division had penetrated further into France than any other Allied force, despite having faced strong resistance at the water's edge and later counter-attacks on the beachhead by elements of the German 21st and 12th SS Hitlerjugend Panzer divisions on June 7 and 8. Gold Beach | ||||||||||||
