Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
1944 - OVERLORD
The US Chiefs of Staff did not believe that "minor" operations in the Mediterranean as were within the capabilities of the United Nations would draw German forces from Russia even if they resulted in the collapse of Italy. They believed, that the main effort against Germany in 1943 would have to be made by the Soviet Union. The Joint Chiefs of Staff secured a firm commitment on the size and target date for the cross-Channel operation. The decisions as they affected the plan which would soon be christened OVERLORD provided that "forces and equipment" should be established in the United Kingdom "with the object of mounting an operation with target date 1 May 1944 to secure a lodgment on the Continent from which further offensive operations can be carried out."
During the summer of 1943, a tentative plan of attack that involved a force of from three to five divisions. The bold and revolutionary idea of prefabricating ports in England and towing them across the Channel had been talked about in 1942, but experimentation did not begin in earnest until the summer of 1943. The assault would depend for supply upon the development of two prefabricated harbors, called MULBERRIES, that were to be positioned along with breakwaters composed of scuttled ships just off the invasion beaches. The MULBERRIES would give the Allies a measure of flexibility by allowing them to provision the force moving inland without having to rely upon the immediate capture of an established port.
The question of where to land posed problems. The site would have to be within the range of fighter aircraft based in Great Britain but also on ground flat enough to construct the airfields that would become necessary once the invading force moved off the beaches and out of the range of its initial fighter support. The landing zones themselves would have to be sheltered from prevailing winds to facilitate around-the-clock resupply operations and would have to possess enough exits to allow the invading force to proceed inland with as little difficulty as possible. Similarly, the area behind the beaches would have to include a road network adequate to the needs of a force that intended to move rapidly. Since the region would ultimately form a base for the drive across France toward Germany, a series of large ports would also have to be close enough to facilitate the unloading of the massive quantities of supplies and ammunition that would be necessary to sustain the attack.
The most appropriate location lay directly across the English Channel from Dover in the Pas de Calais region. The area fulfilled many of the Allies' requirements and offered a direct route into the heart of Germany. Since the enemy had recognized that fact, however, and had already begun to construct heavy fortifications along the coast, an alternative had to be found. The most suitable stood farther to the west, along the Normandy coast near Caen and the Cotentin Peninsula. That region contained major ports at Cherbourg and Le Havre and offered a gateway to ports at Brest, Nantes, L'Orient, and St. Nazaire. Allied planners believed that the Germans would undoubtedly sabotage Cherbourg, forcing the invaders to place heavy initial reliance upon the MULBERRIES, but the damage could be repaired and the region itself was less strongly defended than the Pas de Calais.
There was a sometimes acrimonious debate over the value of ANVIL, a plan to invade southern France that Eisenhower wanted to schedule simultaneously with OVERLORD. The invasion's planners considered the attack important and the conferees at Tehran had endorsed it, but the British - particularly Churchill - had never seen its merit. Hesitant at first to cancel the operation because it seemed a necessary diversion for the main effort in the Cotentin, Eisenhower in the end agreed to a postponement. Given the enlarged scope of OVERLORD, no other alternative seemed possible. There were too few landing craft to go around. Although the debate over ANVIL continued, by 23 January 1944 the Allies had settled on a basic plan of attack for Normandy. The Americans would take the western flank closest to Cherbourg while the British operated to the east, on the approaches to Caen.
German strategy for 1944 rested on the realization that decisive offensives could no longer be mounted in the east and that the growing strength of the Western Allies made almost certain a major invasion attempt before the end of the year. The prospective invasion of western Europe presented both the gravest danger to the Reich and the most hopeful opportunity for turning defeat into victory. If the Allies were not stopped at the landings, their attack would carry at once into the heart of Germany; if they were stopped and their beachheads annihilated, it was unlikely that a new attempt could be made for a long time to come, and as many as fifty German divisions might thereby be freed for the struggle against the Soviet Union. On 04 June 1944, two days before the Normandy invasion, the Allies captured Rome.
May 1944 had been the time chosen at Washington in May 1943 for the cross-Channel invasion. With 39 divisions slated to participate in the invasion -- 20 American, 14 British, 3 Canadian, 1 French, and 1 Polish -- the number of US fighting men based in Great Britain alone would double in the first six months of 1944, rising from 774,000 at the beginning of the year to 1,537,000 in the week preceding the final assault. More than 16 million tons of supplies would be needed to feed and supply those men and their allies. Over 54,000 men, including the temporary housekeeping services of the entire 5th Armored Division, were required to establish and maintain installations for mounting the seaborne assault forces.
To mislead the Germans into believing that the Pas de Calais, rather than Normandy, would be the site of the invasion, Eisenhower's staff created a mythical 1st Army Group, with an order of battle larger than that of Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Basing the phantom force near Dover, just across the Channel from the supposed target, Eisenhower assigned Patton, the American general the Germans most respected, to command the phantom army. The Germans became so convinced that the Pas de Calais would be the Allied target that they held to the fiction until long after the actual attack had begun. As a result, nineteen powerful enemy divisions, to include important panzer reserves, stood idle on the day of the invasion, awaiting an assault that never came.
By 1944 Britain's secret services had deprived Germany of its eyes by identifying and either turning or eliminating virtually every enemy agent assigned to their shores. Allied warships had rendered German naval patrols in the English Channel ineffective, and Allied bombers had destroyed most of the German radar units that might have monitored air and naval traffic near the invasion beaches. The Luftwaffe might have made the difference by conducting reconnaissance flights over the coastal regions of Great Britain. The Allied buildup was proceeding at a frenzied pace, mainly in the south of England opposite Normandy. Yet no flights of the sort occurred during the critical early months of 1944.
Between January and June 1944, Allied fighters swept the skies clear of German warplanes and took a heavy toll in pilots. As a result, by June 1944 the enemy lacked both the aircraft and the airmen to mount more than a token resistance to Allied plans. Difficulties in assembling landing craft forced a postponement of the amphibious assault until June, but June 5 was fixed as the unalterable date by Eisenhower on May 17.
Loading of forces began on 30 May 1944, and all troops were aboard by 03 June. The Germans in France had no knowledge of these preparations, since they had mounted no air reconnaissance during the first five days of June, because of bad weather. As troops began to embark for the crossing, on 04 June heavy winds, a five-foot swell at sea, and lowering skies compelled Eisenhower to postpone the assault for 24 hours. Eisenhower felt that OVERLORD was going in with a very slim margin of ground superiority and that only the Allied supremacy in the air made it a sound operation of war. If the air could not operate, the landings should not be risked. A prearranged signal was sent out to the invasion fleet, many of whose convoys were already at sea. The ships turned back and prepared to rendezvous twenty-four hours later.
On the evening of 05 June The Germans intercepted the prearranged BBC radio broadcasts warning the French Resistance of invasion within forty-eight hours and directing the execution of sabotage plans. But the effect of the intercepted warnings to the Resistance on German preparedness was slight.
Shortly after midnight on 05 June 1944 the largest fleet ever assembled began the voyage across the English Channel. The armada consisted of 3,000 small landing craft, 71 large landing craft of various descriptions 9 battleships, 23 cruisers, 104 destroyers, and as well as troop transports, mine sweepers, and merchantmen -- in all, nearly 5,000 ships of every type. The invasion convoys, carrying the combat teams of six infantry division, sailed on the night of June 5-6 from a dozen English ports.
The Battle of Normandy opened on D-Day, 06 June 1944, and continued into the French interior. Approximately 3,000 Americans, British and Canadians were killed in the June 6th invasion of Normandy.
As midnight of 05 June approached, the first of 822 aircraft carrying parachutists or towing gliders, roared overhead to the Normandy landing zones. They were a fraction of the air armada of more than 10,000 aircraft that would support D-Day. Early on the morning of June 6, elements of three airborne divisions jumped into the black sky above Normandy. The airborne troops were its vanguard, and their landings were a heartening success. The American 82nd and 101st airborne divisions, dropping into a deliberately inundated zone at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, suffered many casualties by drowning but nevertheless secured their objective. The British 6th Airborne Division seized its unflooded objectives at the eastern end more easily, and its special task force also captured key bridges over the Caen Canal and Orne River.
Launched against the Normandy beaches, the largest amphibious operation in history involved 176,000 troops. The crossing was uneventful, and all four thousand landing craft were in position by first light. As dawn neared, bombers began to strike up and down the coast, flying the first of what would become, by the end of the day, more than 11,000 sorties against enemy batteries, headquarters, railroad junctions, and troop concentrations. At 0530, the fleet opened fire on the beaches. For the next hour, soldiers boarded their assault craft and started their run-ins as thousands of aircraft roared overhead, bombing and strafing German positions on, and just behind, the beaches.
Then, at H-Hour, 0630, the bombardment ceased and the first assault wave hit the beaches. When the seaborne units began to land about 6:30 AM on June 6, the British and Canadians on Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches overcame light opposition. So did the Americans at Utah. The American 1st Division at Omaha Beach, however, confronted the best of the German coast divisions, the 352nd, and was roughly handled. Although victorious against the first wave of invaders at Omaha, the Germans could do little when the force on the beach began to renew itself. In the absence of much room to maneuver, the American attack was unoriginal, a straightforward frontal assault, but the weight of numbers and the enormous volume of supplies and equipment made the difference. By nightfall, 34,000 men were ashore on Omaha.
By midnight on the 6th, Allied power had prevailed all across the Normandy beachhead, and more than 100,000 men had come ashore. The Allies held a beachhead, however tenuous, on the continent. Meanwhile, the German high command, in the absence of Rommel, who was home on leave, began to respond. Hitler was initially unwilling to release the armoured divisions for a counterattack. When he relented after midday, elements of the 21st Panzer Division drove into the gap between the British 3rd and Canadian 3rd divisions at Sword Beach and Juno Beach and almost reached the sea. By June 12 the beachhead then formed a continuous zone, deepest southwest of Bayeux, where the 5th Corps had driven nearly 15 miles (25 kilometres) inland. With the beaches behind them, the Allies could afford to turn their eyes eastward to the Seine River and beyond.
In one of the worst mistakes anyone made in World War II, Adolf Hitler ordered his commanders to seek a decision in Normandy. Rather than withdraw, the Germans reinforced their units. Seeing the potential for a larger success, US forces planned to trap the bulk of the retreating German forces west of the Rhine, a long encirclement envisioned as a war-winning maneuver. But the American and Canadian armies did not meet at Falaise in time to trap all the Germans, and many escaped to fight again. The battle nonetheless marked the end of the fighting in Normandy, where Allied forces had literally destroyed two German armies. In practical terms, the battle determined the future course of the war. Six weeks of battle had left the Germans disheartened and susceptible to any farther blow the Allies might deliver.
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