D-Day — Normandy Landings
The Allies landed 156,000 men in Normandy on 6 June 1944 in the largest amphibious operation ever attempted. The planning had run for two years and the essential problem was that an invasion needs a port and every port was fortified, so the Allies brought their own — two artificial harbours towed across in sections, and a fuel pipeline laid under the Channel. The deception was as elaborate as the operation. Fortitude created a fictional army group in Kent under Patton, with inflatable tanks, false radio traffic and double agents feeding Berlin a landing at the Pas-de-Calais, and it worked so well that German armour was held there for weeks after the real landing. The weather nearly cancelled it. Eisenhower postponed by a day and then went on a forecast of a brief break, which the German meteorologists missed; Rommel was in Germany for his wife's birthday. Airborne divisions dropped after midnight and scattered badly, which confused the defenders as much as the attackers. Four of the five beaches were taken at moderate cost. Omaha was not: an infantry division landing against a full-strength German division on cliffs, with the swimming tanks launched too far out and sunk, and some 2,400 casualties in a day. Around 4,400 Allied troops died on 6 June. The breakout took seven weeks of hedgerow fighting, and the Normandy campaign cost both sides far more than the landing. Paris was liberated on 25 August. The Soviet view of the date is worth registering. The Red Army had been fighting the bulk of the German army for three years by June 1944 and had asked for a second front since 1941, and Bagration, launched a fortnight later, destroyed more German divisions than Normandy did.
- Year: 1944 CE
- Category: Military
