 | Troops of the US 7th Corps wading ashore on Utah Beach, 6 June 1944. |
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| D-Day, 6 June 1944, was the largest amphibious invasion in the history of warfare. | At the Tehran Conference in late 1943, the Allied leaders agreed that a ‘second front’ would be opened in north-west Europe in May 1944. This would both take some of the pressure off the Soviet Union and provide the means to attack Germany from east and west.
As preparations for the invasion took shape, huge numbers of men and supplies crossed the Atlantic. By early 1944, the bombing war against Germany was delivering results. The Allies felt secure in attacking German-occupied Europe.
On 6 June, they unleased their much-anticipated attack, with amphibious landings on the northern French coast. Starting in the early light and continuing throughout the day, thousands of Allied troops poured onto the beaches of Normandy.
Finally, the long awaited second front in Europe had been opened, and the invasion of German-occupied France had begun. D-Day had been many years in the planning. The Western Allies had worked meticulously to coordinate the largest sea and land invasion in history.
Code-named Operation Overlord, it was vast in scale, involving more than 150,000 troops, nearly 12,000 aircraft and 7,000 naval vessels.
The Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, had a heavy responsibility. He prepared a statement to be issued if the invasion failed, saying: ‘If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.’
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| Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was in command of the German defences in north-west Europe. The Germans anticipated an invasion but had no way of knowing for certain where it would be. Their principal form of defence was the more than 3,200-kilometre-long ‘Atlantic Wall’, which stretched from Norway to Spain.
The wall had weak points, however, and Rommel ordered it to be strengthened. His defensive force was also hardly ideal. Many units were under-strength or contained older men and those on rest from Eastern Europe.
Allied planners had learned from the disastrous Dieppe Raid of August 1942. They knew that the element of surprise was paramount in any cross-Channel attack. As a result, they set about enacting an elaborate deception campaign. It worked – even after the landings in Normandy.
Crucially, the Germans were convinced for several weeks that there would be another, bigger invasion at Calais. This gave the Allies an advantage, as the Germans held back troops in anticipation of a second attack that never came.
The Allies also had vast air superiority over the Germans. In the lead up to D-Day, Allied bomber aircraft attacked key road and rail networks around the planned invasion area.
Shortly after midnight on 6 June, 18,000 airborne troops were dropped into Normandy. Their objectives were to seize key roads and bridges to prevent the Germans from moving troops to meet the invasion. Despite many men landing far from their targets, they achieved most of their aims.
From early morning, Allied ships bombarded German defences along the Normandy coast in preparation for the landings. Almost 5,000 ships carried 132,000 men across the Channel.
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| The landings took place at five points along the Normandy coast. US troops landed at the western-most beaches, code-named ‘Utah’ and ‘Omaha’. British troops went ashore at ‘Gold’ and ‘Sword’ beaches, and Canadian troops at ‘Juno’.
Captain Hugh Collinson describes the experience of landing at Sword beach: 'We were up to our waists in water with bullets whistling around our ears'.
Four of the beaches were secured fairly quickly, with relatively few casualties. But Omaha was more heavily defended, and it was there that the greatest loss of Allied life occurred.
With machine guns positioned on the cliffs high above the beach, the German defenders inflicted concentrated fire on the attacking troops. Despite the heavier losses at Omaha, by the end of the day it was clear that the landings had been an overall success.
Believing the attack to be a distracting cover for the real invasion, the Germans reacted slowly to it, holding back nearby reserves. They missed their chance to repel the Allies while they were at their most vulnerable, during the beach landings.
By the time they were ordered to counter-attack, it was too late. The Allies had managed to get significant numbers of men ashore, although they failed to reach some of their key objectives. Over the following days, they consolidated their position while sustaining the invasions momentum.
By 30 June, over 850,000 men had been landed in Normandy. |
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