D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

sweep deeper into France to attack any German fighters attempting to take off from airfields closer to Paris. American P-47 Thunderbolts and RAF Typhoon fighter-bombers, meanwhile, would hunt inland along the approach routes, ready to strafe any columns of German troops advancing to reinforce the coast.

The D-Day air offensive was another multinational operation. It included five New Zealander, seven Australian, twenty-eight Canadian, one Rhodesian, six French, fourteen Polish, three Czech, two Belgian, two Dutch and two Norwegian squadrons. Other units from these Allied countries were assigned to ‘anti-Diver’ missions, attacking the V-bomb launch sites in northern France.

The air chiefs’ lingering fears about visibility were justified. The cloud ceiling was about 4,000 feet and their aircraft normally bombed from over 10,000 feet. The mission of the American heavy bombers attacking at dawn was twofold: to destroy their targets, but also to make bomb craters on the beaches ‘to provide shelter for ground forces who followed us in’.

Soon after 01.00 hours, the assault troops were given breakfast. The US Navy was generous to a fault. On the Samuel Chase, the cooks gave them ‘as much steak, pork, chicken, ice cream, and candy’ as they could eat. Other ships provided ‘wieners, beans, coffee and doughnuts’. Royal Navy ships offered little more than corned-beef sandwiches and a tot of rum from a great big earthenware jar, ‘as if it were Nelson’s navy’, observed a major in the Green Howards. Many sailors volunteered their own rations for the soldiers going ashore. On the Prince Henry, taking the Canadian Scottish regiment, sailors made sure that the soldiers had an extra two hard-boiled eggs and a cheese sandwich to take with them. Wardroom staff, attending on Royal Navy officers, saw no reason why standards should slip at such a time. Ludovic Kennedy, on board the headquarters ship HMS Largs, was surprised by the impression that ‘we might have been alongside the jetty in Portsmouth. The white tablecloth was laid, and then along came a steward saying “porridge or cereal this morning, Sir?”.’

As soon as breakfast was over, soldiers in the first wave began to get their kit together. American troops cursed the fatigues with which they had been issued. They had been impregnated with a foul-smelling chemical which was supposed to counteract the effects of gas. American GIs called them ‘skunk suits’. But the main problem was the weight of all their equipment and ammunition. They felt almost as ungainly as the paratroopers when they were called forward. The overloading of soldiers in the first wave to hit the beaches was to prove fatal for many. Sailors, who did not envy them their fate, joked away to keep their spirits up. They made ribald remarks about the condoms fastened round the muzzles of their rifles to keep them dry. One US Navy officer wrote of soldiers ‘nervously adjusting their packs and puffing on cigarettes as if that would be their last’.

Having cleared channels to the landing beaches, the screen of minesweepers turned back, making the signal ‘Good luck’ to the destroyers which passed them to proceed towards their bombardment positions. It seemed miraculous that the fragile minesweepers, whose likely losses had so concerned Admiral Ramsay, should have achieved their task without a single casualty. An officer on the Hunt-class destroyer HMS Eglinton wrote, ‘We crept still further in, amazed at the relative silence of the proceedings.’ Ahead of them were two midget submarines, X-20 and X-23, ready to provide markers for the British beaches. The postponement of the invasion to 6 June had forced them to stay submerged for a long time in appallingly cramped conditions.

An officer of the US Rangers stayed on the bridge of HMS Prince Baudouin, a Belgian cross-Channel steamer. He had posted two of his snipers, one on each side. Their task was to watch for floating mines as they approached the French coast. Around 04.00 hours, the captain announced over the tannoy, ‘Attention on deck! Attention on deck! British crews report to their assault boats.’ The Ranger officer decided that he preferred the British ‘Attention on deck!’ to the US Navy’s ‘Now hear this!’

Inevitably, such a huge fleet could not remain unseen for long. At 02.15 hours, the headquarters of the German 352nd Infanterie-Division, which was spread along the coast, had received a call from the Seekommandant Normandie in Cherbourg stating that enemy ships had been sighted seven miles north of Grandcamp. But the confusion caused by all the paratroop drops seems to have distracted attention away from the main threat to the coast. The dropping of the exploding parachute dummies had even led to a whole regiment from the 352nd Infanterie-Division being sent off on a wild-goose chase. It was not until 05.20 hours that the garrison on the Pointe du Hoc reported the presence of twenty-nine ships, of which four were large, perhaps cruisers.

Task Force O off Omaha, which they had sighted, in fact included the US battleships Texas and Nevada, as well as the monitor HMS Erebus, four cruisers and twelve destroyers.[5] Two of the cruisers, the Montcalm and the Georges Leygues, formed part of the Forces Navales Francaises Libres. Montcalm, the flagship of Contre-amiral Jaujard, flew the largest tricolore battle ensign that anyone had ever seen. The only British influence on the bridges of French cruisers came in the form of duffel coats and steaming mugs of cocoa as their officers tried to study the shore through binoculars. For French sailors, as for French airmen, the idea of bombarding their own country was deeply disturbing, but they did not shrink from their task.[6]

The Eastern Task Force off the three British and Canadian beaches, Sword, Juno and Gold, consisted of the battleships Ramillies and Warspite, the monitor HMS Roberts, twelve cruisers, including the Polish warship Dragon,[7] and thirty-seven destroyers for close support. When they opened fire, ‘the whole horizon appeared to be a solid mass of flames,’ wrote Generalleutnant Reichert of the 711th Infanterie-Division, watching from the coast.

The Western Task Force lost a destroyer, the USS Corry, to a mine, and the Eastern Task Force suffered a similar loss, but to a torpedo attack from a German E-boat. At 05.37 hours, while the smaller vessels headed towards their bombarding positions, the Norwegian destroyer Svenner was hit amidships. A small flotilla from Le Havre had approached under cover of the smokescreen laid by Allied aircraft to the east of the fleet to shield it from the Le Havre batteries. The Svenner broke in half, its bow and stern halves lifting out of the water, forming a V, then she sank rapidly. Five other torpedoes ran on, narrowly missing the Largs and the Slazak, both of which managed to take avoiding action just in time. Two warships raced to rescue the crew from the water. HMS Swift alone took on sixty-seven survivors, but thirty-three men had been killed in the explosion. Swift herself was sunk by a mine in the same waters eighteen days later.

The landing ships also moved in to their offshore positions. A US Navy lieutenant who commanded an LST (landing ship tank) headed for Gold beach with British troops slipped below for a moment to look at the radar plot. ‘The screen was literally filled all over with little pinpoints of light,’ he wrote, ‘ships everywhere 360 degrees from the centerpoint of where we were.’ When he returned, the senior British officer on board put a hand on his shoulder just before he addressed the ship’s company over the tannoy. ‘Most of my men,’ this colonel said, ‘have seen the worst of desert warfare and a good many of them were in France and evacuated through Dunkirk. So I’d advise you to go easy, go quick, and don’t get dramatic or emotional.’ The young American followed his lead and ‘made a very simple announcement’.

At 04.30 hours on the Prince Baudouin, the waiting soldiers heard the call: ‘Rangers, man your boats!’ On other landing ships there was a good deal of chaos getting the men into the landing craft. Some infantrymen were so scared of the sea that they had inflated their life jackets on board ship and then could not get through the hatches. As they lined up on deck, an officer in the 1st Division noticed that one man was not wearing his steel helmet. ‘Get your damn helmet on,’ he told him. But the soldier had won so much in a high card game that his helmet was a third full. He had no choice. ‘The hell with it,’ he said, and emptied it like a bucket on the deck. Coins rolled all over the place. Many soldiers had their field dressings taped to their helmet; others attached a pack of cigarettes wrapped in cellophane.

Those with heavy equipment, such as radios and flame-throwers which weighed 100 pounds, had great difficulty descending the scramble nets into the landing craft. It was a dangerous process in any case, with the small craft rising and falling and bouncing against the side of the ship. Several men broke ankles or legs when they