The D Day Planning

6th of June marks one of the important days in the world history. It was the day when the tide of the world war 2 was turned and marked the decline of the Nazi hold on the Europe. The military operation was Operation Overload - a carefully planned military operation for allied troop assault on the french coast of Normandy. It was the largest seaborne military operation involving over 85000 troops.

Long criticized by Stalin for not relieving the pressure on the U.S.S.R. by invading northern Europe, Roosevelt and even Churchill, who favored peripheral campaigns, understood from the start that an invasion of France would ultimately be necessary to defeat Nazi Germany. Planning for a cross-Channel operation began in 1942 and accelerated with the Mediterranean successes of 1943. The Italian campaign faltered partly because the Americans insisted on concentrating troops and materials in England for a Channel crossing. The Soviets launched a huge mid-1944 ground assault against the Germans partly to facilitate the Anglo-American landings.

Operation Overlord was in fact one of the most carefully planned and spectacularly successful military operations in history. An elaborate ruse involving General Patton and a phantom army in Britain confused Berlin as to the probable landing site, leaving Normandy defenses thin and Hitler reluctant to commit reserves even as the landings were occurring. The British and Canadians ran into important panzer divisions, but even these were only accidentally in position while resting and refitting from fighting on the Eastern Front.

The Allied beach targets conformed to the areas of troop buildup in Southern England, which in turn reflected the fact that the American area was close to the Atlantic approaches for the U.S. soldiers and equipment required to assault Fortress Europe. The two American beaches were on the Atlantic (western) end of the invasion area across from the American embarkation ports; the three British and Canadian beaches were on the European (eastern) end, across from their respective ports. Beach assignments in turn largely determined the paths of advance toward the Reich, with the British and Canadians moving north along the coast and the Americans sweeping inland and north to avoid crossing the supply lines of their Anglo-Canadian allies.

The landings on June 6 were a masterpiece of amphibious warfare and combined arms, in part because of experience gained in the Mediterranean theater. Predawn air drops on either end of the beachhead area helped sow confusion and prevent German flanking maneuvers. Precision naval gunnery helped reduce German seaward gun emplacements. Destroyers screened the ends of the Channel to prevent U-boat penetrations. Allied air power kept the skies largely free of Luftwaffe fighters, already scarce from losses in Russia and Italy. Specialized landing craft ferried troops and equipment (from telephone wire to filing cabinets to mortars) and provided covering fire. Specialized tanks (with flails to explode land mines, carpet rolls to provide traction on sand, and the like) supported the landings.

By day's end, 125,000 troops were ashore. Casualties—some 9,000, fewer than half of them dead—were light for so large and complex an operation. The biggest losses came in the morning hours at Omaha Beach, where Americans of the 1st Infantry Division, the famed "Big Red One," encountered crack German infantry after being dropped prematurely into the surf. But the invaders were onshore to stay, and by June 12 they had linked up in a continuous 40-mile beachhead that both permitted full lateral movement and provided a narrow space for further reinforcements 850,000 men, 150,000 vehicles, and 600,000 tons of supplies by the end of the month.