Adding injury to insult, some of the dummies were filled with explosives. The spearheading paratroopers, all with particular jobs to perform and special targets to attack, cleared strips for the "one-mission" gliders to land men and equipment.
Some gliders carried light tanks. The glider regiments quickly build landing strips for the troop transports. The location of these airstrips was selected months in advance from aerial photos. The calculations from these photos are so accurate that the number of cubic yards of earth to be moved can be closely estimated.
This careful planning was one reason five airstrips were completed a few days after D-Day. This was an important factor in the rapid advance and the joining up of airborne and seaborne infantry to consolidate positions along 60 miles of coast. While troops were training and great piles of material were accumulating in England, our air fleets were carrying out a plan for strategic bombing of enemy targets. On their "priority" list were submarine pens, aircraft, munitions and armament plants, oil refineries, synthetic rubber factories and all industries producing goods for the Nazi machine.
The Luftwaffe's wings were pinned back in the air and on the ground, according to plan. The result was that on D-Day Allied Supreme Headquarters could estimate the Germans had a maximum of 1, fighters and bombers to combat the 7, Allied planes operating with the invasion forces. The plan worked so well that the weakened Luftwaffe left the sky to the Allie on D-Day. The air attack wound up with a day assault on enemy transportation extending several hundred miles inland from Holland to the Bay of Biscay.
Ninth Air Force fighter bombers and rocket-firing R. Typhoon fighters threw enemy transportation and communications into chaos. American Mustangs, Lightnings and Thunderbolts added "strafe bombing" and "glide bombing" to the familiar technique of dive bombing. In strafe bombing, the fighters come in low and plant delayed-action bombs before pulling up to almost 90 degrees. In glide bombing, the angle of descent is more gradual than in dive bombing and the ascent much sharper. At to miles an hour, the planes are too fast to be tracked by Nazi flak batteries.
The region around Caen was marked on the master invasion plan as the focal point for pre-invasion bombing, but care had to be taken not to tip our hand in advance of D-Day. Twenty-one days before D-Day airfields and communication centers were bombed within miles of Caen.
The next step was a concentrated assault on coastal batteries, set in 30 inches of concrete, along the invasion site. This attack was carried out on the eve of D-Day and repeated 30 minutes before H-Hour. Night and day fighters were used, in the final assault joined by 1, Flying Fortresses and Liberators.
The 11, tons of bombs mentioned earlier, were dropped in this final phase. During the actual landing, fighters covered every beach operation. American Thunderbolts flew high cover, British Spitfires flew low. Night bombers laid smoke screens.
Other planes protected the convoy across 70 miles of channel. One of the greatest problems for the invasion planners was the shipping of gigantic stores of fighting equipment and supplies to England, assembling the equipment and distributing it to coastal depots.
Every one of the thousands of men landed in France required about 10 ship tons of overall equipment, and an additional ship ton every 30 days. The number of separate items needed was about a million. Some of these million items had to be accumulated in millions, resulting in astronomical totals. These supplies, ranging from M-4 tanks, mm howitzers and flame throwers, to bazookas, razor blades, and carrier pigeon free, were moved by ships on a rigid timetable. For two years these supplies flowed steadily to depots scattered over England.
The Army Service units—ordnance, engineers, signal, medical, transportation, quartermaster and others—built up stock piles so large there was no chance of putting many under cover. Fields were blanketed with guns, rocket weapons, amphibious vehicles such as the famous "duck," trucks, half tracks, bulldozers, ambulances.
The only protection from enemy eyes at these open-air depots was camouflage and the fact that daytime flying was too unhealthy for the enemy over England. One Yank protested that if we didn't stop piling up equipment, the island would surely tip. Normandy allowed a gateway to the European continent and an exit from the mainland to the British Isles. Normandy was chosen as the invasion site, but many strategic and geographical considerations were evaluated.
Among them were the nature of the beaches, moon phases and tidal range, sites of airfields, sailing distances from channel harbors, and the selections of ports to be captured. Another major characteristic to research was the strength of German defenses at certain vital points. The Atlantic Wall was a series of concrete fortifications that Hitler had ordered to be built along the coast. Although the wall was incomplete in , it was still a fierce defensive structure. Normandy was favorable when considering the Atlantic Wall because it had many weak sections.
Another geographical reason for choosing Normandy was its location in proximity to the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight had naval ports and railways in southern England that were away from major civilian populations.
This allowed an easier route for the movement of troops and supplies while planning for the invasion. The waterways in the area also provided suitable cover to hide the invasion vessels. The beaches of Normandy were geographically close to the port of Cherbourg as well. This city was deemed essential to capturing supply routes that could help further the invasion once the beaches were overtaken.
After the geographical site was decided, the date of the invasion was the next major decision to be made. The date would be based on moon phases and the weather. The most skilled meteorologists were chosen to help decide the appropriate invasion date. The prevalent issue would be the limitations of long-range forecasting, which first came into play during the North African landings in The Allied army wanted a high tide to shorten the amount of exposed sand as the soldiers stormed the beach.
The Allied navy wished for the water to be low, so that items, such as mines, could be identified and cleared. The Allies determined that a full moon would be needed for a successful operation. The meteorologists decided that the desired conditions were only available for about six days each month as well. Based on all the information gathered by the meteorologist and geologist teams, the date of June 5 was initially selected.
Soon enough though, the weather during the projected June 5 landing seemed to show that air support would be useless and the boat landings would be difficult.
The meteorologists decided that the weather window after June 5 would allow a thirty-six-hour period of suitable weather. The weather was still not perfect the day of Operation Overlord, but it allowed the Allies to gain the footing they needed on the European mainland.
The Allies wanted to give Overlord the best chance for success they could. The planners thought it would be helpful to set up decoy operations to trick or confuse the Germans. The code name for this deception was Operation Fortitude and the operation consisted of many different parts.
The main goal of Fortitude was to convince the Germans the cross channel invasion was to be aimed at Norway or Pas de Calais in Northern France. This was not the first time the Allies used deception to aid in military operations but it would be one of the most successful uses of military deception during World War II.
The Allies supplied this group with faux equipment such as inflatable tanks and gave fake radio signal and movement commands to make the Germans believe there would be a large invasion at Pas de Calais, Northern France.
At night the men would play recordings of airplane engines starting up over a loud speaker. Automobile lights were also attached to carts and men would run up and down fake runways to make it appear like planes were taking off and landing. Fortitude South also wanted to contain information of the actual buildup of Allied troops in Southern Britain preparing for the true invasion. On D-Day 11, Allied aircraft were available to support the landings. They flew 14, sorties and were lost.
Operation Neptune, including D-Day, involved huge naval forces, including 6, vessels: 1, naval combat ships, 4, landing ships and landing craft, ancillary craft and merchant vessels. The armed forces use codenames to refer to military operations. Operation Overlord was the codename for the Allied invasion of north-west Europe. Operation Neptune was the assault phase of Operation Overlord and involved landing the troops on the Normandy beaches.
It began on 6 June D-Day and ended on 30 June By then, the Allies had established a firm foothold in Normandy. The liberation of Paris on 25 August is sometimes used as the end point of the Battle of Normandy. The number of people killed in the fighting is not known exactly. Accurate record keeping was very difficult under the circumstances.
0コメント