Posted on 06/06/2021 5:27:37 PM PDT by Libloather
The Allied invasion of Normandy, France on June 6, 1944 was the largest amphibious invasion in history. The scale of the assault was unlike anything the world had seen before or will most likely ever see again.
By that summer, the Allies had managed to slow the forward march of the powerful German war machine. The invasion was an opportunity to begin driving the Nazis back.
The invasion is unquestionably one of the greatest undertakings in military history. By the numbers, here's what it took to pull this off.
Around 7 million tons of supplies, including 450,000 tons of ammunition, were brought into Britain from the US in preparation for the invasion.
War planners laying out the spearhead into continental Europe created around 17 million maps to support the operation.
Training for D-Day was brutal and, in some cases, deadly. During a live-fire rehearsal exercise in late April 1944, German fast attack craft ambushed Allied forces, killing 749 American troops.
D-Day began just after midnight with Allied air operations. 11,590 Allied aircraft flew 14,674 sorties during the invasion, delivering airborne troops to drop points and bombing enemy positions.
15,500 American and 7,900 British airborne troops jumped into France behind enemy lines before Allied forces stormed the beaches.
6,939 naval vessels, including 1,213 naval combat ships, 4,126 landing ships, 736 ancillary craft and 864 merchant vessels, manned by 195,700 sailors took part in the beach assault.
132,715 Allied troops, among which were 57,500 Americans and 75,215 British and Canadian forces, landed at five beaches in Normandy.
23,250 US troops fought their way ashore at Utah Beach as 34,250 additional American forces stormed Omaha Beach. 53,815 British troops battled their way onto Gold and Sword beaches while 21,400 Canadian troops took Juno Beach.
The US casualties for D-Day were 2,499 dead...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
“””D-Day by the numbers: Here’s what it took 76 years ago to pull off the biggest amphibious invasion in history”””
Obviously the author of this story is a graduate of an institute of higher learning with an advanced degree in ‘new’ mathematics. I believe it was 77 years ago.
The invasion of Sicily in 1943 was also substantial, in that it involved about 150,000 troops, 3,000 ships and more than 4,000 aircraft.
Beat me by two minutes...
Okinawa deserves a look too. For instance the Battle of Okinawa involved more ground troops, landing on the beach-heads than Normandy.
Fixed it.
Ummm...that was 77 years ago, not 76.
Left on their own the Soviets would have lost to Germany. Presuming a battle only between Germany and Russia.
Dad told me about meeting the Russians.
“Here they come, driving Studebaker trucks.”
yep. iirc we gave them something like 250,000 trucks.
Sherman tanks too, believe it or not.
Yes! We gave them a whole bunch of stuff from tanks down to cans of spam.
Had a buddy of mine who would always insist it was the Russkies who won the war, and who certainly paid the greater butcher’s bill when it came to the dead and wounded.
To which I’d always reply they damn well better have ended up with the sh*tty end of that stick, since it was the stinking Ribbentrop-Molotov pact that allowed the Nazis to gain the momentum to get the upper hand in Europe in the first place.
My uncle was part of that.
He said they were all terrified and not one of them expected to make it out alive.
He just passed about a year ago. Made it into his mid-ninties.
“Left on their own the Soviets would have lost to Germany. Presuming a battle only between Germany and Russia.”
Very true. But some people seem to have an agenda, so reality is “flexible.”
The Soviets were thrilled when Hitler was invading France and bombing Britain, they even gave Hitler a lot of material for his war machine during those years. Even in the 1941 May Day Parade, six weeks before the Operation Barbarossa started, Nazi and Soviet Generals were in Red Square saluting each other.
True in my old math 2021 - 1944 = 77. The author must be using Democrat math where arithmetic is racist.
And meanwhile on the Eastern Front!
Very True, The Eastern Front is the forgotten part of the war and brutality of it stuns the imagination.
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