The D-Day Invasion: The Normandy Invasion

It was early in the morning when the largest seaborne invasion began and was underway. The invasion started on Tuesday 6, 1944, and the invasion was carried out by the allies and their aim was to capture Normandy during operation Overlord in World War II. This decisive plan was planned from the beginning of May, but the actual invasion was planned for the day of June 5th, but this plan was shot down because of the bad weather that was occurring. Within this invasion there were thousand of troops and vehicles in use. For the allies there were 156,000 Allied troops, 5,000 ships and landing crafts, 50,000 vehicles, 11,000 aircrafts, and 13,000 paratroopers with only 50 miles of Coastline. The Normandy coastline was controlled by 5 divisions. The

In January 1944 General Dwight Eisenhower was made the commander of Operation Overlord, in the months and weeks before D-Day the Allies carried out a massive deception operation intended to make the Germans think the main invasion target was Pas-de-Calais rather than Normandy. This plan had multiple steps that had to occur chronologically to ensure an Allied victory. Each one of the steps involved in the invasions had different codenames. “The first phase, the amphibious invasion and establishment of a secure foothold, was named Operation Neptune. Second, to gain air superiority, the Allies needed to ensure a successful invasion, the third was where the Allies undertook a bombing campaign known as Operation Pointblank, which targeted German aircraft production, fuel supplies and airfields. These elaborate deceptions were codenamed Operation Bodyguard” (WIKI). All of these operations were undertaken in the months leading up to the invasion to prevent the Germans from learning the timing and the location of the

The naval invasion began at 6:30 a.m. The British and the Canadians captured the beaches of Gold, Juno, and Sword. The United States captured Utah and Omaha, even though they faced heavy resistance. Approximately 2,000 American casualties occurred during the storming of Omaha, but by day’s end approximately 156,000 Allied troops had successfully stormed Normandy’s beaches. Some estimates, approximate that 4,000 Allied troops lost their lives, with more than 1,000 wounded or missing in action. “By June 11th, the beaches were fully secured with over 326,000 troops and more than 50,000 vehicle and some 100,000 tons of equipment had landed at Normandy” (History). The troops faces were colored with cocoa, sheathed knives were strapped to their ankles, tommy guns strapped to their waists, bandoliers and hand grenades, coils of rope, pick handles, spades, rubber dinghies hung around them, and a few personal oddments, these are the things that a soldier would have worn on the battlefield during the storming of Normandy. The American airborne landings began with the arrival of the pathfinders at 00:15, navigation was difficult because of a bank of thick cloud, resulting in only one of the five paratrooper drop zones being marked on the map. “To avoid flying over the invasion fleet, the planes arrived from the west over the