Operation Overlord

D-Day at Normandy

Codenamed Operation Overlord but often referred to as D-Day, the June 6 1944 invasion of five Normandy beachheads would prove to be the largest seaborne invasion in the history of human warfare.

Confident that an Allied invasion attempt of Nazi-occupied Europe would come somewhere on the western seafronts facing Great Britain, from 1942 to 1944, Hitler built a coastal defense and fortification system known as the Atlantic Wall, which spanned 1,600 miles of coastline, from Belgium to the northern border of Spain.

Operation Bodyguard

In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted a substantial military deception plan known as Operation Bodyguard, designed to mislead the Germans as to the date and location of the main Allied landings.

While the original D-Day invasion was set for June the 5th, bad weather forced General Dwight D. Eisenhower to delay the operation by 24 hours, which nearly triggered a further delay of two weeks, since the invasion planners had strict requirements that coincided with the phase of the moon and subsequent high tides associated with a full moon—conditions that aligned on only two days per month.

The amphibious landings were preceded by extensive aerial and naval bombardment, followed by the landing of 24,000 Airborne troops shortly after midnight on June the 6th.

Allied Forces Advance

Allied infantry and armored divisions began landing on the coast of France at 6:30 that same morning, spanning a 50-mile swath of Normandy beachheads known as Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The men landed under heavy fire from Nazi gun emplacements overlooking the beachheads, which were strewn with land mines and metal tripods, which further slowed the Allied troop advances.

Comprised of eight Allied navies, the invasion fleet was made up of 6,939 vessels, including 1,213 warships, 4,126 landing craft, 736 ancillary craft and 864 merchant vessels. Around 156,000 Allied soldiers and paratroopers landed at Normandy on June the 6th, while a total of 1.5 million troops would flood into Europe via the Normandy beachheads by the end of the week. 10,500 Allied troops would be killed, wounded, missing or made a prisoner of war by the end of the first day, while the Germans would suffer a nearly equal number of losses.