Normandy Landings

Background

By 1944 the Allies had planned for two years to invade northern France, and General Dwight D. Eisenhower was made supreme commander of the operation, code-named Overlord, with its naval and landing phase called Neptune. The Germans expected the invasion at the Pas-de-Calais, the shortest crossing, and an Allied deception plan encouraged that belief. Instead the Allies chose the coast of Normandy between the Cotentin peninsula and the mouth of the Orne. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had strengthened the Atlantic Wall there with bunkers, mines and beach obstacles, but many of the defending divisions were second-rate. Bad weather delayed the invasion by a day, and Eisenhower gave the order to go for 6 June after a forecast of a short break in the storm. Rommel had gone home to Germany for his wife's birthday.

The Battle

The airborne landings began soon after midnight. On the eastern flank the British 6th Airborne Division seized the bridges over the Caen Canal and the Orne, including Pegasus Bridge, taken by glider troops in a few minutes, and attacked the Merville Battery. On the western flank the American 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions jumped over the Cotentin. Cloud and anti-aircraft fire scattered them widely, but small groups fought their way to the causeways behind Utah Beach and confused the Germans. Among the enemy units they met in the following days was the 6th Fallschirmjäger Regiment near Carentan. At dawn the seaborne landings began. On Utah the US 4th Infantry Division came ashore south of its planned beach, against light defenses, and lost fewer than 200 men. On Omaha the 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions faced high bluffs held by the German 352nd Infantry Division, and many of their amphibious tanks sank on the way in. For hours the troops were pinned on the shingle, until small groups led by junior officers and sergeants worked their way up the draws and the bluffs. West of Omaha the 2nd Ranger Battalion of the US Army Rangers climbed the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc with ropes and ladders, found that the big guns had been moved inland, and destroyed them. The British landed on Gold and Sword and the Canadians on Juno, where specialist armored vehicles helped clear mines and obstacles. A German panzer counterattack reached the coast between Juno and Sword in the evening but was forced back.

Weapons

The American infantry fought with the M1 Garand, the M1918 BAR and the Thompson Submachine Gun, and many paratroopers carried the M1 Carbine. Engineers used the Bangalore Torpedo to breach the wire on Omaha. British and Canadian troops carried the Lee-Enfield Rifle and the Sten Gun. The defenders, including the Fallschirmjäger inland, used the Karabiner 98k and the MG 42.

Aftermath

Allied casualties on D-Day are usually estimated at about 10,000 killed, wounded and missing, of whom roughly 4,400 were killed. Omaha cost about 2,000 or more. None of the beachheads reached all its first-day objectives, and Caen held out until July, but the Germans could not throw the Allies back into the sea. Within a week the beaches were joined into a single front, and the breakout from Normandy at the end of July opened the way to Paris and Germany in the last year of World War II.