Battle of Normandy

battle_name=Battle of Normandy

Prelude

Allied preparations

After the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa), the Soviets had done the bulk of the fighting against Germany on the European mainland. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill had committed the United States and United Kingdom to opening up a "second front" in Europe to aid in the Soviet advance on Germany, initially in 1942, and again in spring 1943.

Related Topics:
1941 - Operation Barbarossa - Soviets - Franklin D. Roosevelt - Winston Churchill - 1942 - 1943

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Rather than repeat the head-on frontal assaults of World War I, the British, and Churchill in particular, favoured attacking the peripheries of western Europe and allowing the insurgency work of the SOE to come to widespread fruition, while making a main Allied thrust from the Mediterranean to Vienna and into Germany from the south. Such an approach was believed to also offer the advantage of creating a barrier to limit the Soviet advance into Europe. However, the U.S. believed from the onset that the optimum approach was the shortest route to Germany emanating from the strongest Allied power base. They were adamant in their view and made it clear that it was the only option they would support in the long term. Two preliminary proposals were drawn up: Operation Sledgehammer for an invasion in 1942, and Operation Roundup for a larger attack in 1943, which was adopted and became Operation Overlord, although it was delayed until 1944.

Related Topics:
World War I - Insurgency - SOE - Mediterranean - Vienna - Operation Sledgehammer

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The planning process was started in earnest in March 1943 by British Lieutenant General Sir Frederick E. Morgan. His plan was later adopted and refined starting in January 1944 by the SHAEF, led by General Dwight Eisenhower.

Related Topics:
March - Frederick E. Morgan - January - SHAEF - Dwight Eisenhower

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The small operating range of Allied fighters, including the British Spitfire and Hawker Typhoon, from UK airfields greatly limited the choices of landing sites. Geography reduced the choices further to two sites: the Pas de Calais and the Normandy coast. While the Pas de Calais offered the shortest distance from the UK, the best landing beaches and the most direct overland route to Germany, it was for those reasons the expected invasion point, and thus the most heavily fortified and defended. Consequently, the Allies chose Normandy for the invasion.

Related Topics:
Spitfire - Hawker Typhoon - Pas de Calais - Normandy

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Largely because of the lessons learned in the disastrous 1942 Canadian raid on Dieppe, the Allies also decided not to directly assault a French seaport in their first landings. Landings in force on a broad front in Normandy would permit simultaneous threats against the port of Cherbourg, coastal ports further west in Brittany, and an overland attack towards Paris and towards the border with Germany. Normandy was a less-defended coast and an unexpected but strategic jumping-off point, with the potential to confuse and scatter the German defending forces.

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It was not until December 1943 that General Dwight Eisenhower was named as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, effectively giving him overall charge of the Allied forces in Europe. In January 1944, General Sir Bernard Montgomery was named as operational commander for the invasion ground forces.

Related Topics:
Dwight Eisenhower - Sir Bernard Montgomery

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At that stage the plan required sea landing by three divisions, with two brigades landed by air. SHAEF quickly increased the scale of the initial attack to five divisions by sea and three by air, reflected in the plans for an additional assault at Utah Beach. In total, 47 divisions would be committed to the Battle of Normandy: 26 divisions of British, Canadian, Commonwealth and free European troops, and 21 American divisions.

Related Topics:
Divisions - Brigades - Utah Beach

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About 6,900 vessels would be involved in the invasion under the command of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, including 4,100 landing craft. 12,000 aircraft under Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory were to support the landings, including 1,000 transports to fly in the parachute troops. 10,000 tons of bombs would be dropped against the German defenses, and 14,000 attack sorties would be flown.

Related Topics:
Bertram Ramsay - Landing craft - Trafford Leigh-Mallory

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The objectives for the first 40 days were to:

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• create a beachhead that would include the cities of Caen and Cherbourg (especially Cherbourg, for its deep-water port);
• break out from the beachhead to liberate Brittany and its Atlantic ports, and to advance to a line roughly 125 miles (200 km) to the southwest of Paris, from Le Havre through Le Mans to Tours.

The three-month objective was to control a zone bounded by the rivers Loire in the south and Seine in the northeast.

Related Topics:
Loire - Seine

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In order to persuade the Germans that the invasion would really be coming to the Pas de Calais, the Allies prepared a massive deception plan, called Operation Bodyguard. An entirely fictitious First U.S. Army Group was created, with fake buildings and equipment, and false radio messages were sent. This made the Germans think that the Allied army was more than twice the size it really was. Well known Lieutenant General George Patton was even mentioned as the unit's commander. The Germans were eager to find the landing location, and had an extensive network of agents operating throughout Southern England. Unfortunately for them, every single one had been "turned" by the Allies as part of the Double Cross System, and was dutifully sending back messages confirming the Pas de Calais as the likely attack point. To keep the pretence running for as long as possible, the deception was continued into the battle, with air attacks on radar and other installations in the area. With the Germans fooled, Hitler ordered "Case 3," Rommel's elite Panzer division to defend the Pas de Calais, thinking that a much larger assault was coming, and ordered his generals to ask him before mobilizing them. By the time Hitler recieved word that the Assault on Normandy had begun, it was too late to stop it.

Related Topics:
Operation Bodyguard - George Patton - Double Cross System

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Another deception, Operation Skye, was mounted from Scotland using radio traffic, designed to convince German traffic analysts that an invasion would be also mounted into Norway, or perhaps Denmark. Against this phantom threat, German troops that otherwise could have been moved into France were instead sent to Norway. A smaller but effective deception, Operation Titanic, was carried out by 6 SAS commandos early on D-Day. Rubber dummy paratroopers and sound effects confused the enemy and took reinforcements away from the landings.

Related Topics:
Operation Skye - Operation Titanic - SAS

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Some of the more unusual Allied preparations included armoured vehicles specially adapted for the assault. Developed under the leadership of Major-General Percy Hobart, these vehicles (called 'Hobart's Funnies') included "swimming" Duplex Drive Sherman tanks, mine-clearing tanks, bridge-laying tanks and road-laying tanks. Some prior testing of these vehicles had been undertaken at Kirkham Priory in Yorkshire, England.

Related Topics:
Percy Hobart - Hobart's Funnies - Duplex Drive Sherman tanks - Kirkham Priory - Yorkshire

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The plan also called for the construction of two artificial Mulberry Harbours in order to get vital supplies to the invading forces in the first few weeks of the battle in the absence of deep-water ports, and Operation PLUTO (Pipe Line Under The Ocean), a series of submarine pipes that would deliver fuel from Britain to the invading forces.

Related Topics:
Mulberry Harbour - Operation PLUTO

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Allied forces rehearsed their roles for D-Day months before the invasion. On April 28, 1944, in south Devon on the English coast, 749 U.S. soldiers and sailors were killed when German torpedo boats surprised one of these landing exercises, Exercise Tiger.

Related Topics:
April 28 - Devon - Exercise Tiger

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German preparations

In November 1943, when Hitler decided that the threat of invasion in France could no longer be ignored, Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel was appointed Inspector of Coastal Defences, and later commander of Army Group B, the ground forces charged with the defense of Northern France. Rommel was of the firm belief that the only way to defeat an invasion was to counterattack the beaches as early as possible with armour, and wanted at least some armour placed close enough to the beaches to deliver an immediate counterattack. But Rommel's authority was rather limited, since he was not the overall commander of German forces in the West; that title was held by Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. And Rundstedt—supported by the commander of Panzer Group West, Geyr von Schweppenburg, who was, in turn, supported by Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, the Inspector General of Armoured Troops—favoured concentrating the Panzer divisions farther inland so that the primary enemy line of advance could be determined, and then a counter-attack in force could be launched to blunt it.

Related Topics:
Hitler - Generalfeldmarschall - Erwin Rommel - Armour - Gerd von Rundstedt - ''Panzer'' - Heinz Guderian - ''Panzer'' divisions

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The operational debate reflected the differing experiences in the war of the key decision-makers. Rundstedt and Guderian gained the bulk of their command experience when the Luftwaffe controlled the skies over the battlefield or, in the vast expanses of the Eastern Front, where neither side was able to claim air superiority over the entire front when these two commanders last had a combat command. Rommel's experiences, however, were vastly different, and would turn out in hindsight to seem far more applicable. Rundstedt and Guderian apparently never considered Allied airpower in terms of the Luftwaffe's heyday in 1939–1941, of which Allied air power was now several magnitudes greater. Rommel, however, having fought the Allies in the Western Desert Campaign under a decidedly unfavourable air power disparity, knew the stark reality of the Allied tactical bombers' capabilities.

Related Topics:
Luftwaffe - Air superiority - Western Desert Campaign

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In attempting to resolve the dispute, Hitler split the six available Panzer divisions in northern France, and allocated three directly to Rommel. The remaining three were placed a good distance back from the beaches, and could not be released without the direct approval of Hitler's operations staff. The air defences of the north French coast comprised just 169 fighter aircraft, since airfields in northern France had been seriously pummelled by incessant Anglo-American air attacks.

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Uncertainty about the Allied landing place also upset German plans. In order to sustain an offensive, the Allies would have to take a deep-water port, or land at Pas de Calais and simply use the shorter shipping route to make up for the slower offloading. This being the case an invasion would have to take place near Brest, France, Cherbourg or le Havre, the only ports within easy shipping and aircraft range of bases in England. (In retrospect Brest was rather unlikely; it was out of range of the RAF, heavily defended due to the large U-Boat bases there, and far from the interior of France.) This meant that the forces would almost certainly be landing near Cherbourg-le Havre or Pas de Calais (which are only a short distance from each other), yet the German forces were spread throughout western France to counter an invasion at many different points.{{fn|1}}

Related Topics:
Brest, France - Cherbourg - Le Havre - RAF - U-Boat

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Rommel inspected the shoreline defences, known as the Atlantic Wall, and ordered many improvements before D-Day. Some bunkers were still under construction when Allied forces landed.

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The Allied invasion plan

The order of battle was approximately as follows, east to west:

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• British 6th Airborne Division, comprising 8th and 9th Parachute Battalions of 3rd Parachute Brigade and the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, airlifted and delivered by parachute and glider to the east of the River Orne to protect the left flank.
• 1 Special Service Brigade comprising No.3, No.4, No.6 and No.45(RM) Commandos landed at Ouistreham in Queen Red sector (leftmost). No.4 Commando were augmented by 1 Troop and 8 Troop (both French) of No.10 (Inter Allied) Commando.
• British 3rd Infantry Division and the 27th Armoured Brigade on Sword Beach, from Ouistreham to Lion-sur-Mer.
• No.41(RM) Commando (part of 4 Special Service Brigade together with Nos.46(RM), 47(RM) and 48(RM) Commandos), landed on the far right of Sword Beach.
• Canadian 3rd Infantry Division, 2nd Armoured Brigade and No.48 (RM) Commando on Juno Beach, from Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer to La Rivière-Saint-Sauveur.
• No.46(RM) Commando at Juno to scale the cliffs on the left side of the Orne River estuary and destroy a battery. (Battery fire proved negligible so No.46 were kept off-shore as a floating reserve and landed on D+1).
• British 50th Division and 8th Armoured Brigade on Gold Beach, from La Riviere to Arromanches.
• No.47(RM) Commando on the West flank of Gold beach.
• U.S. V Corps (U.S. 1st Infantry Division and U.S. 29th Infantry Division) on Omaha Beach, from Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes to Vierville-sur-Mer.
• U.S. 2nd and 5th Ranger Battalion at Pointe du Hoc (The 5th diverted to Omaha).
• U.S. VII Corps (U.S. 4th Infantry Division plus others) on Utah Beach, around Pouppevile and La Madeleine.
• U.S. 101st Airborne Division by parachute around Vierville to support Utah Beach landings.
• U.S. 82nd Airborne Division by parachute around Sainte-Mère-Église, protecting the right flank.
• Activities by the French resistance forces, the Maquis, helped disrupt Axis lines of communications.

Prior to the battle, the Allies had carefully mapped and tested the landing area, paying particular attention to weather conditions in the English Channel. A full moon was required both for light and for the spring tide. D-Day for the operation was originally set for June 5, 1944, but bad weather forced a postponement. The weather on June 6 was still marginal, but General Eisenhower chose not to wait for the next full moon. This decision helped catch the German forces off-guard, as they did not expect an attack in such conditions—so much so that, on June 4, Rommel returned to Germany for his wife's 50th birthday.

Related Topics:
English Channel - Spring tide - D-Day - June 5 - 1944 - June 4

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The 82nd Airborne had originally been tasked with dropping further west, in the middle part of the Cotentin, allowing the sea-landing forces to their east easier access across the peninsula, and preventing the Germans from reinforcing the north part of the peninsula. The plans were later changed to move them much closer to the beachhead, as at the last minute the 91 Luftlande Division was found to be in the area.

Related Topics:
Cotentin - 91 Luftlande Division

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Codenames

The Allies assigned codenames to the various operations involved in the invasion. Overlord was the name assigned to the establishment of a large-scale lodgement on the Continent. The first phase, the establishment of a secure foothold, was codenamed Neptune. According to the D-day museum http://www.ddaymuseum.co.uk/faq.htm#overlord:

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:"The armed forces use codenames to refer to the planning and execution of specific military operations. Operation Overlord was the codename for the Allied invasion of north-west Europe. The assault phase of Operation Overlord was known as Operation Neptune. (...) Operation Neptune began on D-Day (6 June 1944) and ended on 30 June 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 19 August 1944."

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German defenses

The Normandy defenses were under the command of the German LXXXIV Korps (Erich Marcks), German Seventh Army (Friedrich Dollman). The order of battle in the landing area was approximately as follows, from east to west.

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• German 21st Panzer Division (Edgar Feuchtinger), comprising the 22nd Panzer Regiment (partly with old French tanks), 200th Assault Guns Battalion, and the 125th and 192nd Panzer Grenadier Regiments. This veteran panzer unit (although during rearming) was located in the Caen region, and formed part of Rommel's panzer reserve.
• German 716th Static Infantry Division (Wilhelm Richter), comprising the 441 Ost Battalion, 726th and 736th Infantry Regiments. This coastal defense division protected the coastal area of the Omaha, Gold, Sword, and Juno landing zones.
• German 352nd Infantry Division (Dietrich Kraiss), comprising the 914th, 915th, and 916th Infantry Regiments (only 2 battalions per regiment). This regular infantry division defended the Omaha landing zone, and city of St. Lo.
• German 6th Fallschirmjäger Regiment (Frederick von der Heydt). This was an elite parachute regiment belonging to the German 2nd Fallschirmjäger Division. Defended Carentan.
• German 91st Air Landing Division (Luftlande – air transported) (Wilhelm Falley), comprising the 1057th and 1058th Infantry Regiments. This was a regular infantry division, trained, and equipped to be transported by air (i.e. transportable artillery, few heavy support weapons) located in the interior of the Cotentin Peninsula, including the landing zone of the American airdrops.
• German 709th Static Infantry Division (von Schlieben), comprising the 729th, 739th (both with 4 battalions, although 4th were Ost), and 919th Infantry Regiments. This coastal defense division protected the eastern, and northern (including Cherbourg) coast of the Cotentin Peninsula, including the Utah beach landing zone.
• German 243rd Static Infantry Division (Generalleutnant Heinz Hellmich), comprising the 920th (2 battalions), 921st, and 922nd Infantry Regiments. This coastal defense division protected the western coast of the Cotentin Peninsula.
• German 30th Fast Infantry Brigade, comprising of 3 bicycle battalions.

The Germans had extensively fortified the foreshore area as part of their Atlantic Wall defences, causing the landings to be timed for low tide. It was guarded by four divisions, of which only one (352nd) was of high quality (in fact, the only quality was from a cadre of 321st Division—the core of 352nd). The other defending troops included Germans who, usually for medical reasons, were not considered fit for active duty on the Eastern Front, and various other nationalities such as Soviet prisoners of war from the southern USSR who had agreed to fight for the Germans rather than endure the harsh conditions of German POW camps.

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The 21st Panzer division guarded Caen, and the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend was stationed to the south-east. Its soldiers had all been recruited directly from the Hitler Youth movement at the age of sixteen in 1943, and it was to acquire a reputation for ferocity and war crimes in the coming battle. Some of the area behind Utah beach had been flooded by the Germans as a precaution against parachute assault.

Related Topics:
12th SS Panzer Division ''Hitlerjugend'' - Hitler Youth

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