D-Day by the numbers: Here's what it took 76 years ago to pull off the biggest amphibious invasion in history

Business Insider via Yahoo ^ | 6/06/21 | Ryan Pickrell

[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...

[Captain Peter Blood]

I am not sure about that. Germany was beaten by brute force and the weather.

[SimpleJack]

D-Day Landing Sites Then and Now: Normandy Beaches in 1944 and 70 Years Later

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/d-day-landing-sites-then-now-normandy-beaches-1944-70-years-later-1450286

[ggrrrrr23456]

... 17 million maps ... This number seems implausible. Did woke Yahoo assign six interns to research this?

[fella]

Not counting the loses incurred while crossing the Atlantic.

[Pappy Smear]

Didn't the Allies have naval superiority in the channel? Couldn't we have just parked some battleships a few miles out, and just shell the crap out of the first couple miles in? And do it for a couple days?

And I'm sure there is some reason we didn't, some rando guy on the internet in 2021 just didn't think that up. But I've never heard a reason why.

[Monterrosa-24]

Naval bombardments alone never worked on small islands in the Pacific. D-Day’s five invasion beaches comprised a lot of geography. The Allies did not want to telegraph the landing sites.

[alexander_busek]

yep. iirc we gave them something like 250,000 trucks.

We gave (lent/leased) them more motor vehicles than were on the roads in the entire U.K. at the time.

Regards,

[algore]

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/06/06/a_woke_d-day_145861.html

If media today were covering D-day

[ebshumidors]

Nah. The communists in the FDR administration turned against Hitler when he invaded Russia. They were all for Hitler up to then. I’ve heard it called the war to save Joe Stalin. I wonder about that.

[Treeless Branch]

Hard to disagree with that if you are a student of history. Still DDay was an amazing and historic operation and success. Germany and the SU might’ve reached a truce had we not been successful.

[Cobra64]

Today, we observe democrats encouraging a non-stop invasion across our Southern border.

[Clutch Martin]

“True in my old math 2021 - 1944 = 77. The author must be using Democrat math where arithmetic is racist.”

The 6 is right next to the 7... probably fat fingered the 7.

And edit feature would help with those pesky fat fingerings.

[Clutch Martin]

Lets see...

(Roughly) 28,000,000 men, women, and children killed in the CCCP during WWII, presumably excluding purges, roundups and other crimes against the citizenry by the soviet.

450,000 US KIA

With the German government reporting that its records list 4.3 million dead and missing military personnel. Another 1 million were conscripts from other countries.

28 million military, including the civilian numbers suggest that the entire soviet union military and civilian populations were engaged in the fight and in the support of countering German advances.

Catastrophically stunning.

[Tallguy]

The entire article reads like a crappy statistical summary. Probably just re-dated from last year & republished without that line being edited.

[21twelve]

It’s been a long time since Mr. Herzog’s AP World History class in 11th grade, but IIRC it was something like one rifle for every four fighters on the Eastern Front.

As soon as a guy with a rifle fell during a charge, one of the others would drop their pitch fork and pick up the rifle. Of course the officers in the rear had guns in case anybody with a farm implement decided not to join the charge.

[Hot Tabasco]

You could be right but it's also possible that the headline is referring to the planning stages which would have started in 1943 or something as simple as a miss print by the publisher....

Hence his opening paragraph which is accurate:

The scale of the Allied invasion that began 77 years ago, on June 6, 1944, was unlike anything the world had seen before or will most likely ever see again. "

[Presbyterian Reporter]

“””I think that yahoo has a “special program” for journalistic retards that write their stories from Wikipedia articles.”””

---

Great comment. I will keep it in mind when I read other stories.

[Captain Peter Blood]

I certainly like to read WW II, but I have been remiss in reading about the Eastern Font war and I intend to read more. I think author Max Hastings has some books on the subject.

[archy]

23,250 US troops fought their way ashore at Utah Beach

MUCH different from the fiasco at Omaha. The amphibious tanks made it ashore, the landing craft with the 70th Armor's dozer tanks landed first, the naval vessels providing direct fire gun support came in so close to the beachhead they nearly grounded, and the whole shebang took place where the Germans didn't expect it by virtue of one of the initial landing craft's lucky navigational error.

And Commander Norman Cota, directing the 29th and First Infantry Divisions, will always be remembered for one other thing:

In a meeting with Max Schneider, commander of the 5th Ranger Battalion, Cota asked "What outfit is this?" Someone yelled, "5th Rangers!" In an effort to inspire Schneider's men to leave the cover of the seawall and advance through a breach, Cota replied, "Well, God damn it, if you are Rangers, then get up there and lead the way!"

"Rangers lead the way" became the motto of the U.S. Army Rangers.