Sixty years ago today, “Operation Overlord” entered its combat phase as American, British and Canadian troops dropped from the sky in gliders and parachutes, were carried across the sea by a vast flotilla of ships, and struggled from the water into Normandy. The beaches were divided into sections for the purpose of landings and initial operations.
The sections were, from the west, respectively: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno & Sword. American troops would land at the first two beaches and the British and Canadians at the last three. A map of the area is here.
The assemblage of landing craft waiting to carry the troops that morning was massive.
Earlier, Airborne divisions, composed of gliderborne troops and, shown above, paratroopers, had landed in countryside set back from the invasion beaches, with the aim of taking roads, gun emplacements, and disrupting German troop and reinforcement movement inland. Most paratroopers landed well away from their drop zones due to German flak, and gliderborne troops and vehicles were sacrificed to Normandy’s monumentally tall and thick hedgerows.
Machinery had been manufactured in great quantity to clear beach obstacles after the infantry advance. It was carried on comparatively small landing craft which were designed to land right on the beaches and allow these bulldozers and tractors, followed by amphibious tanks, to drive off.
Flail tanks like these would be used to harmlessly clear minefields so that vehicles and reinforcements could cross and establish an Allied beachhead.
On the morning of June 6th, men and equipment were loaded onto LCTs (shown above).
This photo from the US Navy shows troops in the tiny ‘Higgins Boat’ approaching the beaches. These craft were flat–bottomed and were skippered by US Navy Coast Guards. Many were completely swamped, and most ran aground on sandbars, resulting in heavily–laden troops having to jump into deep water and dump their equipment to avoid drowning. Those who were ‘luckier’ faced the scene below.
This scene from ‘Omaha’ Beach shows troops exiting a Higgins Boat and making for the start of the sand. They had in most cases over a mile of water, sand and shingle to cross. The beaches were strewn with steel obstacles, anti–tank and –personnel mines, and were raked by fire from small arms, heavy machineguns, mortars and artillery. Due to the Airborne misdrops during the night, German artillery inland was able to lay precisely–targeted, withering fire on the invasion beaches, and the German gunnery on the beaches themselves was from strongly–built reinforced–concrete emplacements which stood up to direct hits from Allied Navy artillery offshore.
Those who made it across the sand to the shingle and then the cliffs found sights like this (photo: US Navy) every metre of the way. Because of initial German fire superiority over the beaches, many men were killed and vehicles, radios, guns, ammunition, boats, lifejackets, cigarettes, rations, etc. were destroyed before they made land. Exits from the beaches were not established for several hours and some were not ‘open’ even as night fell. This meant that there was nowhere to go, and beaches were sometimes under enemy fire and crowded with Allied men and equipment well into the evening, as seen below.
There is another excellent overview of Operation Overlord at Wikipedia, and a rich selection of info at the BBC World War Two subsite.
The Imperial War Museum's photo search page yields impressive results if you search for the subject: ‘Operation Overlord’ and within the period ‘World War Two’. The US Naval Historical Centre has these pages:
OverviewCrossing the English ChannelThe landings in generalOmaha BeachOmaha Beach IIUtah BeachPointe du HocAnd it all happened 60 years ago today. Those guys who went onto the beaches and dropped from the sky over Nazi-infested Normandy – a lot were killed. Those who lived would be in their eighties or nineties now, or also dead. The D-Day Museum states:
On D-Day, the Allies landed around 156,000 troops in Normandy. The American forces landed numbered 73,000: 23,250 on Utah Beach, 43,250 on Omaha Beach, and 15,500 airborne troops. In the British and Canadian sector, 83,115 troops were landed (61,715 of them British): 24,970 on Gold Beach, 21,400 on Juno Beach, 28,845 on Sword Beach, and 7900 airborne troops.
11,590 aircraft were available to support the landings. On D-Day, Allied aircraft flew 14,674 sorties, and 127 were lost.
In the airborne landings on both flanks of the beaches, 2395 aircraft and 867 gliders of the RAF and USAAF were used on D-Day.
Operation Neptune involved huge naval forces, including 6939 vessels: 1213 naval combat ships, 4126 landing ships and landing craft, 736 ancillary craft and 864 merchant vessels. Some 195,700 personnel were assigned to Operation Neptune: 52,889 US, 112,824 British, and 4988 from other Allied countries.
By the end of 11 June (D + 5), 326,547 troops, 54,186 vehicles and 104,428 tons of supplies had been landed on the beaches.
On estimates only, I work out that if casualty figures, including injuries, are evenly spread for June 6th alone when approximately 10,000 were killed, missing or injured, and 59 ships sunk, it works out that:
c. 7 men were killed or injured per minutec. 5 aircraft were lost per hour (although this does not take into account the massive percentage of air and glider sorties which took place over Normandy in the first 6 hours)c. 2 ships or landing craft were sunk per hour (and this is extremely skewed as most craft were sunk directly after 6am, when the landings first began)And that was all in a day, over a tiny part of France.
Apart from doing google searches for further info, I’d recommend one paperback book. It’s not often I recommend books on this blog, but D-Day by Stephen Ambrose is superb and even if you think you aren’t interested, you will be.
