Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe, artillery commander of the 101st Airborne Division, gives his various glider pilots last minute instructions before the take-off on D minus 1.
The following article has some interesting stats, and some thought provoking stuff.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8079965.stm
The fact of air superiority is often taken for granted. That came at a cost, as Jack's pointed out. That air superiority enabled a better chance for the troops and the ships, and for the pounding of the Pas de Calais (
just as a diversion) and Normandy.
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In the previous nine weeks 197,000 sorties had been flown (at a cost of 1,251 aircraft and 12,000 aircrew) and 195,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on German military and communications targets.
It was the biggest, most complex military operation in history; the biggest military deception in history, and the most technologically diverse and innovative in history - never before, or since has so many new technologies been deployed essentially for the first time. Just a list would run for pages - 'Pluto' 'Mulberry', the deception operations of 515 Squadron with their Boulton Paul Defiants (proper electronic warfare) 'Channel Stop' by the Sunderlands of Coastal command and the rocket armed Swordfish keeping the U and E-Boats away, the major use of Horsa and CG-4 gliders including several 'Coup de Main' operations - Mini subs and frogmen mapping and sorting the beaches, as well as better known work. Then there was Patton's mythic army that kept the Germans wrong footed right into the real landings.
My wife's great uncle was one of the RCAF members in the RAF who took off and didn't get back a few days earlier. He was flying for 161 Squadron, the secret agent unit. He and his crew and two agents were all killed.
Lots had been learned from previous operations. Plan 1919 had been forgotten, but makes fascinating reading; the debacles at Slapton Sands, Sicily's disastrous air-landing, and Dieppe all changed Allied thinking the hard way, and resulted in some of D Day's success.
(One of the biggest errors of D Day was the decision taken to reject Hobart's Funnies by the American planners. The lessons of Dieppe had gone home hard to the British and Canadians and armour capable of fulfilling many specialist roles on the British and Commonwealth beaches - a shortage too many Americans paid for with their lives. However that was one of the few points one could, with perfect hindsight, say should have been done differently.)
Much of the work was British:
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It was Britain's last day as a superpower.
No army in the world today could project such force and much of the effort on 6 June 1944 was British - about 60% of the troops landed were UK or Commonwealth (Canadians); the warships were predominantly from the Royal Navy - even the landing craft taking the Americans to Omaha Beach were manned by British seamen - and much of the air power came from the RAF.
No one, would take anything from the American contribution of course. From Eisenhower, at the top to the men who didn't make it out of their landing craft.
But there were many more:
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British, Free French, Belgian, Dutch, Luxembourgois, Czechs, Poles, Greek, Danish and Norwegian naval and military forces all took part, or flew overhead with the vast air armada. Many soldiers from the Irish Republic fought with British units, while some anti-Nazi Austrians and German Jews were involved in the allied deception and intelligence war.
I doubt any part of the Commonwealth was
not represented.
It couldn't have been done without them all.
As ever, it was at the end down to soldiers taking and holding land - as war has been from the earliest days.
Many had laboured to put those soldiers there - for the most part, they had been given the greatest array and most sophisticated equipment known to man, but, in the end, it was down to the courage, discipline and guts of every solider that the day was won.
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Some 209,672 allied soldiers were killed, wounded or went missing, 16,714 allied aircrew lost their lives. German losses were estimated at 250,000.
Additionally, 2,483 Normans connected with the French Resistance were executed before or during the campaign, while as many as 35,000 civilians died (the lowest estimate is 15,000) and 60,000 were wounded in the liberation. This averages out at 6,600 casualties per day for the entire campaign.
A high price for a necassary liberation.
And as a PS, I didn't know this, did you?
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One of the myths of Operation Overlord (the codename for the invasion of France) is it was the biggest seaborne invasion in history. It was not. Nor was it the biggest maritime invasion of World War II. That accolade goes to the 1943 invasion of Sicily - a far greater undertaking than Normandy and one from which many valuable lessons were learned.
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