World War II: The Normandy D-Day Invasions

World War II has been considered one of the most horrendous tragedies to ever occur in history. The millions of casualties and lives lost constantly reflect upon what man’s capabilities are. One significant and major part of the war would be the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944. The intention of invading Normandy was to force Germany to have a three sided war, one in France, one in Italy, and one in Russia. This invasion of Normandy eventually started the shrinking of the Nazi Empire to where the war finally ended in May 1945. The Normandy landings would not have been as successful if it was not for what the gliders and paratroopers had done before the planned D-Day invasions took place, capturing and seizing important areas around the beaches

Pointe du Hoc was one of the two main densely populated batteries in the Normandy area. The area consisted of four batteries with each barrel being around 15 cm and was considered a threat to the adjacent beaches, Utah and Omaha as they were able to shoot distances up to 13 miles. Having bombed Pointe du Hoc countless time, the shells were quite inaccurate due to the fact that the planes that bombed went at an opposite angle and travelled in the same direction of the planes. This task eventually took two days to be relieved despite the high numbers of casualties being around 65%. (Normandy Journal). However, in the long run, the bunkers and batteries were proven useless as the ones located at Pointe du Hoc were not only incomplete, the guns also were moved back half a mile to protect them from the bombing (Maisy Battery). Apart from Pointe du Hoc, another densely populated area that was full of batteries was Long-sur-Mer. The batteries at Long-sur-Mer were eventually proven useless just like the ones in Pointe du Hoc since the batteries guns were placed inside of thick concrete bunkers and were refrained to a 150˚ view to shoot from. Batteries were mainly long range guns, they required help from the people at the sea coast to direct them with the power and angle at which they wanted them to hit a target. Long-sur-Mer posed a potential threat to the

There were many procedures before and after D-Day that allowed the Allies to win Normandy, however the two main reasons they were able to win Normandy were the capturing of Pegasus bridge to provide a crossing of the canal and river before they arrived in Caen and the taking of the batteries in Pointe du Hoc and Long-sur-Mer since the guns shot up to 13 miles in distance and could have been a potential threat to the nearby beaches. D-Day is probably the most well known day in the history of WW2 and is still a scar to the men who fought on that