D-Day

david scott - Rachel Rose
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_landings

D Day(Operation Overlord)
Operation Overlord or better know a ``D Day,`` was the Allied invasion of Normandy. The landings started on Tuesday June 6, 1944 at 6:30 AM British Double Summer Time. D-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated.

The invasion happened in two phases, an airborne landing of 24,000 British, French,American and Canadian airborne troops and an aggressive land invasion of allied and armour divisions on the coast of France, the invasion started at 6:30 am. To confuse the Germans from the real landing areas, operation Glimmer and taxable were put in to place.

"The armed forces used codenames to refer to the planning and execution of specific military operations. Operation Overlord was the codename for the Allied invasion of northwest Europe. The assault phase of Operation Overlord was known as Operation Neptune. Operation Neptune began on D-Day (June 6, 1944) and ended on June 30, 1944. By this time, the Allies had established a firm foothold in Normandy. Operation Overlord also began on D-Day, and continued until Allied forces crossed the River Seine on August 19, 1944."

Weather

Only 10 days each month were good for launching the operation: a day near the full moon was needed both for lighting during the hours of darkness and for the spring tide, the former to illuminate navigational landmarks for the crews of aircraft, gliders and landing craft, and the latter to provide the deepest possible water to help safe navigation over defensive obstacles placed by the Germans in the surf on the seaward approaches to the beaches. A full moon occurred on 6 June. [|Allied Expeditionary Force Supreme Commander] [|Dwight D. Eisenhower] had carefully selected 5 June as the date to approach. The weather was okay during most of the month of May, but worsened in early June. On 4 June, conditions were not okay for a landing; wind and high seas would make it impossible to launch landing craft from larger ships at sea, and low clouds would prevent aircrafts from finding their targets. The Allied troop convoys were already at sea and were forced to stay away and shelter in bays on the south coast of Britain for the night.

The Allies

There were 80km`s of beach was divided into 5 sectors. The Americans invaded Utah and Omaha, the British took Gold and Sword and the Canadians took Juno. D-Day was the largest amphibious invasion ever, it had over 160,000 troops landing, 5000 ships,50,000 vehicles and 11,000 planes. Canada had 14,000 troops in the beach invasion, 450 paratroopers and the navy gave 10,000 sailors and several ships. The Destroyers hammered the beach head before the land invasion in an attempt to soften up the defenses(tank stoppers, barbwire, bunkers) and they also bombarded behind the beach to try and eliminate troops heading inland.

German Defenses

Hitler had ordered the fortification of the Atlantic wall which was an intricate system of fortifications along the western coast of Europe between 1942 and 1944. The German`s didn`t know what part of the coast the Allies were going to invade on, so they had to cover all of it in anticipation. Rommel had the wall fortified with several tank top turrets, huge systems of barbwire and thousands of mines to fight off landing crafts. The defences used an interlocking firing style, so they could protect areas that were receiving heavy fire. They had large bunkers, sometimes intricate concrete ones containing machine guns and large-calibre weapons. Their defence also integrated the cliffs and hills overlooking the beaches. The defenses were all built and refined over a four year period.