[ealgeone]

just in case anyone has forgotten we invaded Normandy to free the world of an oppressive regime who believed in racial superiority.

[real saxophonist]

My dad was a 22 year old LT (j.g.) in charge of an LCT on Utah Beach. He had an Army engineer company with bulldozers and TNT.

Those 88s depicted in "Band of Brothers" were firing on HIM.

[kickstart]

The war against the Axis Powers was on many fronts. My father fought in Italy from Anzio to the Po River Valley. The fighting in Italy did not end until one week before the formal German surrender.

[Honorary Serb]

To the liberators of the Normandy beaches on D-Day: Memory Eternal!!!!

[wita]

Four thousand four hundred fourteen of the bravest of the brave but the list is fluid as research continues.

https://www.history.com/news/d-day-casualties-deaths-allies

[TMN78247]

Fwiw, my dad was “in B-17s” & on D-Day was on a bombing/strafing mission “behind the beaches” to try to stop the beaches being reinforced by the Germans.
(He passed away at age 56 from a heart attack & when I used to ask him about his USAAC service, he always said the same thing, “I didn’t do anything very important”. = That response was TYPICAL of most WWII veterans.)

Yours, TMN78247

[CarolinaPeach]

What a debt is owed.
Incredible.

Peach

[CarolinaPeach]

What a debt is owed.
Incredible.

Peach

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Disorganization, confusion, incomplete or faulty implementation of plans characterized the initial phases of the landings. This was especially true of the airborne landings which were badly scattered, as well as the first wave units landing on the assault beaches. To their great credit, most of the troops were able to adapt to the disorganization. In the end, the Allies achieved their objective.

I went on a tour of Normandy last year. The salient reason for the "badly scattered” nature of the airborne landings was the weather - compounded by the effectiveness of German AA and the (combat) inexperience of the C-47 pilots.

It’s well known that the weather was marginal for the operation as planned, and that Eisenhower gave the go-ahead on 6 June 1944 only because the alternative looked even worse. But the consequence of the weather was that flying in formation as planned became impossible; there were so many C-47s in the airspace that loss of visible contact made their pilots desperate to avoid midair collisions.

And that many planes just naturally made noise which put the German AA commanders on the alert. On top of that, each C-47 flew more than one mission - so that incessant roar overhead continued all night, and the C-47’s entirely lacked any advantage of surprise.

The tour guide asserted, additionally, that even if each glider was used only once it would have been cheaper as well as more effective to use gliders to the exclusion of the expense of training and attempting to accurately deploy paratroopers. An interesting and very possibly accurate critique IMHO. At least the troops that made it to ground safely would do so in group at at least the squad level instead of individually.

As to the assault on the beaches, Utah beach was effectively bombarded using Martin Marauders, and it was not nearly as strong a natural defensive position as existed on Omaha Beach. The intended aerial bombardment of Omaha Beach was negated by the Navy’s insistence on rules which guaranteed perfect ineffectiveness. Understandable from the Navy’s POV, if you consider the “friendly fire” potential of B-17 strikes on ships - but the upshot was that no bombardment of Omaha Beach and its defenses occurred. And because the battleships found themselves dueling with strongly entrenched naval artillery, naval bombardment of Omaha beach also did not occur.

In fact the only naval fire support for the troops on Omaha Beach was provided by destroyers who were initially forbidden to undertake that mission. A Destroyer captain saw that the assault on Omaha was failing, and he disobeyed orders by closing into harm’s way and deploying his 5” guns against the Omaha defenses as best he could. The result was successful enough that the naval command countermanded the original order and directed all available destroyers to do likewise.

The upshot was that the American assault on Omaha succeeded only at the right flank of the German position, and from there was able roll up the rest of the defense of the beach. Prior to that, the division frontally assaulting that position was practically defeated in detail - to the extent that that division was never able to recover full effectiveness.

[Palio di Siena]

My father is still alive.
He dropped out of high school - joined the navy when the war started.
Was assigned to the CB’s - went in on D-Day plus 1 - June 7.
Went across Europe constructing pontoon bridges.
Ended up in Bremerhaven.