Utah Beach
The westernmost of the D-Day beaches, Utah was added to the invasion plans at the eleventh hour so that the Allies would be within striking distance of the port city of Cherbourg. In the predawn darkness of June 6, thousands of U.S. paratroopers dropped inland behind enemy lines. Weighed down by their heavy equipment, many drowned in the flooded marshlands at the rear of the beach, and others were shot out of the sky by enemy fire. One even hung from a church steeple for two hours before being captured. Those who landed, meanwhile, often found themselves outside of their designated drop zones. Forced to improvise, they nonetheless succeeded in seizing the four causeways that served as the beach’s only exit points. On Utah itself, U.S. forces landed more than a mile away from their intended destination, due in part to strong currents. Luckily for them, this area was actually less well protected. “We’ll start the war from here!” U.S. Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the son of former President Theodore Roosevelt, shouted upon realizing the mistake. By noon, his men had linked up with some of the paratroopers, and by day’s end they had advanced four miles inland, suffering relatively few casualties in the process.
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Omaha Beach
Surrounded by steep cliffs and heavily defended, Omaha was the bloodiest of the D-Day beaches, with roughly 2,400 U.S. troops turning up dead, wounded or missing. The troubles for the Americans began early on, when Army intelligence underestimated the number of German soldiers in the area. To make matters worse, an aerial bombardment did little damage to the strongly fortified German positions, rough surf wreaked havoc with the Allied landing craft and only two of 29 amphibious tanks launched at sea managed to reach the shore. U.S. infantrymen in the initial waves of the attack were then gunned down in mass by German machine-gun fire. The carnage became so severe that U.S. Lieutenant General Omar Bradley considered abandoning the entire operation. Slowly but surely, however, his men began making it across the beach to the relative safety of the seawall at the foot of the bluffs and then up the bluffs themselves. Assistance came from a group of Army Rangers who scaled a massive promontory between Omaha and Utah to take out artillery pieces stashed in an orchard, and from U.S. warships that moved perilously close to shore to fire shells at the German fortifications. By nightfall, the Americans had carved out a tenuous toehold about 1.5 miles deep.
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Gold Beach
Owing to the direction of the tides, British troops began storming Gold, the middle of the five D-Day beaches, nearly an hour after fighting got underway at Utah and Omaha. The Germans initially put up robust resistance, but in sharp contrast to Omaha, an earlier aerial bombardment had wiped out much of their defenses. British warships also proved effective. The cruiser HMS Ajax, for example, displayed such pinpoint accuracy from miles away that it apparently sent one shell through a small slot in a German artillery battery’s concrete exterior—the military equivalent of a hole-in-one. On shore, meanwhile, armored vehicles known as “Funnies” cleared away minefields and other obstacles. Within an hour, the British had secured a few beach exits, and from there they rapidly pushed inland. They also captured the fishing village of Arromanches, which days later became the site of an artificial harbor used by the Allies to unload supplies.
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Juno Beach
At Juno, Allied landing craft once again struggled with rough seas, along with offshore shoals and enemy mines. Upon finally disembarking, Canadian soldiers were then cut down in droves by Germans firing from seaside houses and bunkers. The first hour was particularly brutal, with a casualty rate approaching 50 percent for the leading assault teams. In the confusion, an Allied tank inadvertently ran over some of the wounded, stopping only when a Canadian captain blew its track off with a grenade. Other Canadians lacked any tank support at all. After fighting their way off the beach, however, German resistance slowed immensely, and the march into the interior went quickly. In fact, the Canadians advanced further inland than either their American or British counterparts. Though they didn’t quite meet their objective of taking Carpiquet airport, they captured several towns and linked up with the British on adjacent Gold Beach.
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Sword Beach
Around midnight, British airborne troops, along with a battalion of Canadians, dropped behind enemy lines to secure the invasion’s eastern flank, just as the Americans were doing near Utah. Within minutes, they had taken hold of Pegasus Bridge over the Caen Canal and nearby Horsa Bridge over the River Orne. Other airborne troops destroyed bridges over the River Dives to prevent German reinforcements from arriving, and they also took out a key German artillery battery in a bloody firefight. The British then landed on Sword at 7:25 a.m., around the same time as at Gold but before Juno. Although moderate fire greeted them, they soon secured beach exits with the help of the “Funnies.” Moving inland, they connected with the airborne units but faced relatively strong resistance in farmyards and villages. In a late afternoon counterattack, German forces made it all the way to the beach in one location, only to be turned back. The Allies would not be able to unite all five D-Day beaches until June 12.
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Abbaye d'Ardenne
On 7 June dozens of Canadians with the North Nova Scotia Highlanders and the 27th Canadian Armoured Regiment were taken prisoner following heavy fighting around the village of Authie. The Germans took their prisoners to the nearby Abbaye d'Ardenne, an ancient stone church where Colonel Kurt Meyer, one of the 12th SS commanders, had set up his headquarters after D-Day.
Later that night, 11 of the Canadian prisoners of war were taken into the Abbaye's garden and shot in the head. The next morning seven more POWs, all North Nova Scotia Highlanders, were taken outside the Abbaye and shot.
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The executed Canadians were:
North Nova Scotia Highlanders
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Private Walter Doherty
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Private Hollis McKeil
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Private Hugh MacDonald
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Private George McNaughton
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Private George Millar
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Private Thomas Mont
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Private Raymond Moore
27th Canadian Armoured Regiment
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Azeville Battery
The construction of this gun battery commenced in 1941: two years later the guns received a prominent visitor when Erwin Rommel inspected the building site. After his visit work began to expand the installation and the guns that were previously placed in open positions were now built into concrete pillboxes, even though the Germans did not believe that the coast in front of the battery was under threat of invasion. It was not possible to observe the coast from this battery and therefore the fire control bunker was placed at another gun battery in St. Marcouf.
Because the calibre of the four guns was only 105 mm., when the Allies landed on the nearby Utah Beach on 6th June 1944 (D-day) they were firing at maximum range and accuracy was therefore not optimal. Despite this, the Germans managed to keep the Americans on Utah under fire for two days, preventing further advances.
On 9th June the 170 soldiers at battery St. Marcouf surrendered and a massive bombardment of Azeville by Allied warships started. Eventually the battery was attacked by U.S. troops equipped with flame throwers. The garrison surrendered and the fight for Azeville was over.
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Maisy Battery
The Maisy battery is a group of World War II artillery batteries constructed by the Wehrmacht near the French village of Grandcamp-Maisy in Normandy. It formed a part of Germany's Atlantic Wall coastal fortifications and was the principal position of defence for that area. It was responsible for the defense of the sector between theLongues-sur-Mer and the St Marcouf (Crisbecq) batteries. It could target both Omaha Beach and Utah Beach.
The complex was built under strict security by forced labour from Russia, Czechoslovakia and Poland and theWehrmacht run battery was not marked on the Allied D-Day maps which were released to the invasion troops.[2][1]:150,161 Given that the Allied Rangers were not briefed to assault Maisy Battery and were instead sent to attack the empty gun battery at Pointe du Hoc, Sterne suggests that Pointe du Hoc (on D-Day) was used by German defenders as a ruse to lead the Allies away from Maisy.
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The site actually consisted of three batteries, Les Perruques, La Martiniere and Foucher Farm, allied targets 5, 16 and 16A respectively. The battery at Les Perrugues, which was designated by the Germans as WN83, Widerstandsnest 83 (Resistance Nest 83), included six 155-mm First World War French field howitzers. The battery at La Martiniere, designated WN84, included four 105-mm pieces. Four 150-mm pieces were located at Foucher Farm.
The battery is located 1.5 mi (2.4 km) from Pointe du Hoc, a key objective for the US Rangers during D-Day. The battery was garrisoned by elements of the 352nd and 716th Infantry and Artillery Divisions, plus Flak Regiment No. 1 consisting of twelve 88-mm anti-aircraft artillery pieces sent to protect the battery shortly before D-Day on 5 June 1944.
Fouchers' Farm was destroyed by naval shelling from the USS Shubrick (DD-639) on the 7 June 1944. The other two sites remained operational until they were assaulted by the US 2nd Rangers and the US 5th Rangers on 9 June.
The batteries at Maisy were D-Day mission objective Number 6 as given to Colonel James Rudder in his Operation Neptune intelligence and 1st Infantry Divisionorders. However, he did not brief his men to carry out the mission to Maisy.
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Longuees-sur-Mer Battery
The battery at Longues was situated between the landing beaches Omaha and Gold. On the night before theD-Day landings of 6 June 1944, the battery was subjected to a barrage comprising approximately 1,500 tons of bombs, although much of this landed on a nearby village. The bombing was followed from 0537hrs on the morning of the landings by bombardment from the French cruiser Georges Leygues as well as the U.S. battleship Arkansas. The battery itself opened fire at 0605hrs and fired a total of 170 shots throughout the day, forcing the headquarters ship HMS Bulolo to retreat to safer water. Three of the four guns were eventually disabled by British cruisers Ajax and Argonaut, though a single gun continued to operate intermittently until 1900hrs that evening. The crew of the battery (184 men, half of them over 40 years old) surrendered to the231st Infantry Brigade the following day.
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Chataue La Cain
Hawker Typhoon loaded with 60-pdr rockets
During the Battle of Normandy, the headquarters of Panzergruppe West was established in the château at La Caine. On 8 June, the location of the headquarters was revealed to British Intelligence by Ultra. On 10 June, aircraft of the Second Tactical Air Force (2nd TAF) bombed the village. The raid was carried out by40 rocket-armed Typhoons of No. 124 Wing, consisting of numbers 181, 182 and 247 squadrons and No. 245 Squadron of No. 121 Wing, that attacked in three waves from low altitude and by 61 B-25 Mitchells of No. 137 and 139 wings, comprising Nos. 226, 98, 180 and 320 (Dutch) squadrons, dropping 500-pound (230 kg) bombs from 12,000 feet (3,700 m).
No. 180 Squadron, headed by Wing Commander Lynn, (the 139 Wing Commander Flying), led the formation, escorted by 33 Spitfires. 42 Typhoons took part in the operation, eight were fighters armed with four 20 mmcannon and the other 34 also carried RP-3 rockets (sources vary slightly on the number of aircraft on the operation). The Typhoons attacked in two waves thirty minutes apart. The first wave of 17 aircraft from 181 and 247 Squadrons, fired 136 rockets from 2,000 feet (610 m) on the parked vehicles and the château as the Mitchells accurately dropped 536 500-pound (230 kg) bombs on the target.
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The attack destroyed the only German army organisation in the western theatre capable of handling a large number of mobile divisions; the survivors were withdrawn to Paris and not ready to resume operations until 28 June. German command of the sector was temporarily given to SS-Obergruppenführer Sepp Dietrich and the I SS Panzer Corps. An armoured counter-attack against the Allied beachhead planned for 10 June, was postponed for 24 hours and then cancelled. The appointment of new staff under General Heinrich Eberbach, delayed the plans for the German armoured counter-offensive by three weeks and the counter-attack never materialised, as it was overtaken by events. No German suspicions were aroused about Allied code breaking, because a reconnaissance aircraft had been seen before the raid.
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Chateau Creully
From 7 June 1944, the day after D-Day, until 21 July, the square tower housed the BBC war correspondents and their radio studio, whence the first news of theBattle of Normandy was transmitted. From 8 June to 2 August 1944, Field Marshal Montgomery had his tactical headquarters at the château. Prime Minister Churchill visited him there.
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Pegasus Bridge
Pegasus Bridge is a bascule bridge (a type of movable bridge), that was built in 1934, that crossed the Caen Canal, between Caen and Ouistreham, in Normandy, France.
Also known as the Bénouville Bridge after the neighboring village, it was, with the nearby Ranville Bridge over the river Orne, later renamed Horsa Bridge, a major objective of the British airborne troops during Operation Deadstick, part of Operation Tonga in the opening minutes of the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944 during the Second World War. A unit of glider infantry of the 2nd Battalion, the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, British 6th Airborne Division, commanded by Major John Howard, was to land, take the bridges intact and hold them until relieved. The successful taking of the bridges played an important role in limiting the effectiveness of a German counter-attack in the days and weeks following the Normandy invasion.
In 1944 it was renamed Pegasus Bridge in honor of the operation. The name is derived from the shoulder emblem worn by the British airborne forces, which is the flying horse Pegasus.
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Siege of Bastogne
The Siege of Bastogne was an engagement in December 1944 between American and German forces at theBelgian town of Bastogne, as part of the larger Battle of the Bulge. The goal of the German offensive was the harbour at Antwerp. In order to reach it before the Allies could regroup and bring their superior air power to bear, German mechanized forces had to seize the roadways through eastern Belgium. Because all seven main roads in the densely wooded Ardennes highlands converged on the small Belgian town of Bastogne (in German: Bastnach, in Luxembourgish: Baaschtnech) only a few miles away from the border to neighbouring Luxembourg, control of its crossroads was vital to the German attack. The siege lasted from December 20–27, after which the besieged American forces were relieved by elements of General George Patton's Third Army.
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Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force
Eisenhower transferred from command of the Mediterranean Theater of Operations to command SHAEF, which was formed in Camp Griffiss, Bushy Park, Teddington, London, from December 1943; an adjacent street named Shaef Way remains to this day. Its staff took the outline plan for Operation Overlord created by Lieutenant General Sir Frederick E. Morgan, COSSAC (Chief of Staff to the Supreme Commander Allied Forces), and Major General Ray Barker. Morgan, who had been appointed chief of staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (designate) in mid-March 1943 began planning for the invasion of Europe before Eisenhower's appointment.and moulded it into the final version, which was executed on 6 June 1944. That process was shaped by Eisenhower and the land forces commander for the initial part of the invasion, General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery.
SHAEF remained in the United Kingdom until sufficient forces were ashore to justify its transfer to France. At that point, Montgomery ceased to command all land forces but continued as Commander in Chief of the British 21st Army Group (21 AG) on the eastern wing of the Normandy bridgehead. The American 12th Army Group (12 AG) commanded by Lieutenant General Omar Bradley was created as the western wing of the bridgehead. As the breakout from Normandy took place, the Allies launched the invasion of southern France on 15 August 1944 with the American 6th Army Group (6 AG) under the command of Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers. During the invasion of southern France, the 6 AG was under the command of the Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ) of the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, but after one month command passed to SHAEF. By this time the three Army Groups had taken up the positions on the Western Front in which they would remain until the end of the war—the British 21 AG to the North, the American 12 AG in the middle and the 6 AG to the South. By December 1944, SHAEF had established itself in the Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles, France. On February it moves to Rheims and 26 April 1945 SHAEF moved to Frankfurt.
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Ammunition depot
An ammunition depot, ammunition supply point (ASP),ammunition handling area (AHA), ammunition dump, is a military storage facility for live ammunition and explosives
The storage of live ammunition and explosives is inherently hazardous. There is the potential for accidents in the unloading, packing, and transfer of ammunition. Great care is taken in handling weapons so as not to harm personnel or nearby ammunition.
Despite intensive preventive measures, ammunition depots around the world suffer from non-combat fires and explosions. Although this is a rare occurrence, there are devastating consequences when it does happen. Usually, an ammunition depot experiencing even minor explosions in one of its sites/buildings is immediatel evacuated together with surrounding civilian areas. Thus, all of the stored ammunition is left to detonate itself completely for days or weeks, with very limited attempts at firefighting from a safe distance. If the ammunitions are artillary shells and other heavy types, the whole depot site affected is typically levelled.
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Supply convoy
A convoy is a group of vehicles, typically motor vehicles or ships, traveling together for mutual support and protection. Often, a convoy is organized with armed defensive support. It may also be used in a non-military sense, for example when driving through remote areas. Arriving at the scene of a major emergency with a well-ordered unit and intact command structure can be another motivation.
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Fuel Dump
This vast American fuel dump,more than 400,000 five gallon jerry cans of gasoline lining five miles of roadway between the Belgian towns of Stavelot and Francorchamps,lay just one mile from Joachim Piper's gas (petrol) starved panzers after they crossed the Stavelot bridge on Dec 18.The German offense stalled when they couldn't get to the fuel dumps before they were destroyed.
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