The Invasion of France

Winning the Beaches, June 6–12

In the earliest hours of the morning of June 6, sleepers in southern Hampshire were awakened by the din of hundreds of aircraft passing overhead. They had heard the sound often enough during the past two months, but this time it was louder, nearer, and more continuous. Troop transports and aircraft towing gliders full of airborne troops were carrying thousands of British and American soldiers in a procession which took almost an hour to pass across the coast over the Channel at a height of some 300 feet, while above and around them flew and wheeled swarms of fighter aeroplanes of the Second Tactical Air Force.    

All the sky thundered to their passage and those who heard them pass — and few did not — knew that the day of decision had come. At the end of question hour that morning in the House of Commons, Mr. Churchill, after announcing the fall of Rome to his expectant audience and complimenting General Alexander on his leadership, continued after a brief pause:

“I have also to announce to the House that during the night and the early hours of this morning the first of a series of landings in force upon the European Continent has been carried out. In this case the liberating assault fell upon the coast of France. An immense armada of upwards of 4,000 ships, together with several thousand smaller craft, crossed the Channel. Massed airborne landings have been successfully effected behind the enemy and landings on the beaches are proceeding at various points at the present time. The fire of the shore batteries has been largely quelled. The obstacles that were constructed in the sea have not proved so difficult as was apprehended.

The Anglo-American Allies are sustained by about 11,000 first-line aircraft which can be drawn upon as may be needed for the purposes of the battle... Reports are coming in in rapid succession. So far the commanders engaged report that everything is proceeding according to plan.

And what a plan! This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever occurred. It involves tides, winds, waves, visibility both from the air and the sea standpoint, and the combined employment of land, air and sea forces in the highest degree of intimacy and in contact with conditions which could not and cannot be fully foreseen. There are already hopes that actual tactical surprise has been obtained, and we hope to furnish the enemy with a succession of surprises during the course of the fighting.”

The battle, Mr. Churchill continued, would grow in scale and intensity for many weeks. He could not forecast its course. But he might say that complete unity prevailed throughout the Allied armies. There was complete confidence in their Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, and his lieutenants, and also in the commander of the expeditionary force, General Montgomery. The ardour and spirit of the troops embarking, as he had seen himself, was splendid to witness. Nothing that science, equipment and foresight could do had been neglected and the opening of this new front would be pursued with the utmost resolution both by the commanders and by the United States and British Governments whom they served.

The first official news of the landing had been given out by Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in the following statement:

Communiqué No. 1

Under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces, supported by strong air forces, began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France.

At the end of the sitting of the House of Commons Mr. Churchill made a further statement. Operations, he said, were proceeding in a most satisfactory manner. The landing had been made on a broad front, by British and American — and Allied — troops, and in some cases troops had penetrated several miles inland. The passage of the sea had been made with far less loss than had been apprehended. The resistance of the batteries had been weakened by the bombing of the Air Force, and their fire had been reduced by the bombardment of our ships “to dimensions which did not affect the problem.” The outstanding feature had been the landing of

“the airborne troops, which were ... on a scale far larger than anything that has been seen so far.... These landings took place with extremely little loss and with great accuracy.”

Particular anxiety attached to them since their success largely depended on conditions of visibility on the point of dawn. But while a great degree of risk had to be taken in respect of the weather, General Eisenhower’s courage was equal to all the necessary decisions and the airborne landings and the follow-ups were proceeding with “very much less loss” than had been expected.

Shortly before midnight on June 6 the second official statement was issued from SHAEF. It recapitulated the operations of the last twenty-four hours. Here is a summary:

Shortly before midnight on June 5 the Allied night bombers opened the assault in “very great” strength and continued it until dawn. Between 6.30 and 7.30 on the morning of June 6 two naval task forces, commanded respectively by Rear-Admiral Vian, flying his flag in H.M.S. Scylla, and Rear-Admiral Kirk in the U.S. cruiser Augusta, launched their assault forces at enemy beaches.

The naval forces previously assembled under the over-all command of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay made their departure in fresh weather and were joined during the night by bombarding forces from northern waters. Channels had to be swept through the enemy’s minefields. This operation was completed before dawn, and while the minesweepers continued to sweep towards the hostile coast the entire naval force followed through the channels which they had cleared. Shortly before the assault three enemy torpedo craft, accompanied by armed trawlers, attempted to interfere with the operation, but were beaten off and a trawler sunk. Covered by a heavy bombardment from destroyers and other supporting ships, while heavier Allied ships engaged the enemy’s batteries, silenced some and continued to attack others, the Allied assault craft moved towards the beaches and effected the landings. Airborne landings involving troop-carrying aircraft and gliders “carrying large forces” were also made successfully at many points. The initial landings were successful. Fighting continued.

Allied heavy, medium, light and fighter-bombers continued the air bombardment in very great strength throughout the day with attacks on gun emplacements, defensive works and communications. Continuous fighter cover was maintained over the beaches and for some distance inland and over naval operations in the Channel. Our night fighters played an equally important role in protecting shipping and troop-carrier forces and intruder operations. Allied reconnaissance aircraft maintained continuous watch by day and night over shipping and ground forces. Our aircraft met with little enemy fighter opposition or anti-aircraft gunfire.

Although neither SHAEF in its first communiqués nor Mr. Churchill had mentioned the places where landings had been effected, it was soon known from the German radio and other sources that the Allied forces, British, American, Canadian and some French commando units, had established themselves on a number of beaches and in several small coast towns from the mouth of the River Orne, near Caen, to Quinéville on the eastern coast of the Cherbourg Peninsula, known by the French as le Cotentin. The Americans landed on the western, the British on the eastern coastal sectors. Port-en-Bessin, Vierville, Arromanches and Ouistreham were among the places occupied, often after sharp fighting, on June 6.

The actual landing had been none too easy. The weather had been bad, so bad, indeed, that General Eisenhower, who had already postponed “D Day,” as the day of invasion was called by the staffs, for twenty-four hours, might have been justified in ordering another postponement. But he banked upon a recovery, and it came, although the sea was, if anything, rougher than it had been when the Allies landed on the coast of Sicily. A high proportion of the men in the smaller craft were sea-sick and most were soaked, and some were battered by the waves as they struggled ashore. The most dangerous obstacles to the landing craft were a wide belt of steel obstructions, known as “Element C,” and wooden stakes driven into the sand with explosive charges attached which would be submerged and serve as mines at high tide. But the assault was timed for half-tide when most of these obstacles and traps were visible, and they consequently did less damage than had been expected.

On the beaches the Allied losses from mines were not heavy, for the majority of them had been exploded by the bombs of the Allied aircraft. The German troops manning the defences were of mixed quality. Some surrendered incontinently to the first rush. Some, however, were of a very different type and fought fiercely in concrete blockhouses, machine-gun emplacements and in fortified buildings on the sea-front. In spite of the formidable bombardment from air and sea that preceded the assault, some of the positions had escaped, and from these some of the landing parties came under withering cross-fire as soon as they began to move up the beach. Here new weapons, notably the heavy “Crocodile” flame-throwers, and the special detachments of the R.E. who came quickly up to the aid of the Commandos, and of the American Engineers who supported the Rangers, restored the situation.

So did the tanks and armoured cars which, like our supply vehicles, had been carefully waterproofed so that they could go ashore from the special landing craft with their engines running. They forced the surrender of many strongpoints and they reached the shore so quickly that on no occasion were German tanks able to intervene on the beaches. Some were encountered farther inland, but not enough arrived to prevent the invaders from forcing their way forward to a distance of more than three and a half miles at some points. As for the Luftwaffe, it hardly appeared at all on June 6, and its absence greatly lightened the burdens and the losses of the men engaged in landing supplies on the shore.

But while the losses of the Allies on D Day had generally been light in comparison with expectations, the 1st U.S. Division had suffered very heavily. Five days after the landing General Montgomery told its story to war correspondents. He said that when the division landed east of the Carentan Estuary, where the Vire enters the Seine Bay, they found that sector of the beaches defended by a German field division, not by one of the high-numbered coastal divisions.

“German prisoners said that the division had just moved up to thicken the coastal crust and was ... carrying out coastal exercises when the Americans landed. There was very heavy fighting on that beach for the rest of D Day, and in the evening the leading American troops were no more than 100 yards inland. They were hanging on by their eyelids... the American troops in that sector fought absolutely magnificently... To-day they are over ten miles inland. The situation was retrieved by three things: first the gallantry of the American soldier, who is a very brave man; secondly, the very fine supporting fire of the Allied navies; and thirdly, very good support by the fighter-bombers. The retrieving of that situation and the advance to the present very good situation are among the finest things done in this operation.”

Allied and German Dispositions

Other measures taken by the Allies were not made known until the autumn, although Mr. Churchill on August 2 made some reference to measures which had been taken to solve the problems of the landing on the French beaches of the enormous quantities of stores required by the powerful armies of invasion. During the administrative planning of this gigantic operation it became clear that even if all the French ports from Havre to Cherbourg fell into Allied hands undamaged at an early stage of the invasion, the quantity of stores required for the maintenance of the expeditionary force would exceed the port capacity. It was therefore decided to construct two artificial harbours, one in the British and one in the American sector.

The decision received the approval of the Combined Chiefs of Staff at the Quebec Conference of August 1943, and in September the detailed recommendations of the British and American experts were submitted to the Combined Chiefs of Staff and passed by them. Work began at once.

Here are some details of this immense undertaking. Two prefabricated harbours were planned, each roughly as big as Dover harbour and accommodating the necessary shipping and port equipment. These ports were made up of concrete caissons, floating breakwaters and blockships. Inside these artificial harbours were floating piers, on which coasters could unload direct into lorries. These were fortunately already in hand, thanks largely to the great interest taken by the Prime Minister in these necessary implements of a large-scale invasion.

The caissons were constructed in different sizes to suit various depths of water. Those who saw them leaving Southampton Water compared their appearance to that of a roofless Noah’s Ark. They were towed across the Channel by tugs, great numbers of which were concentrated in our southern and south-eastern ports for this difficult and delicate operation, which their masters carried out with rare skill and courage. Happily very few of them were lost.

The blockships were first to arrive. Some followed, under their own steam, on the heels of the assault forces. They were brought to the appointed places and sunk by explosive charges so as to form five distinct breakwaters, of which two were to form part of the artificial ports. The old ships sacrificed for this purpose included the old battleships Centurion, the French Courbet and the Dutch cruiser Sumatra. All had been successfully sunk according to plan by midnight on June 11. The Admiralty must have been particularly amused to learn from the German radio that the Courbet and a British battleship had been sunk off Normandy by German submarines and E-boats!

By D Day plus 12 — that is, June 18 — the operation was going well. Half the caissons were in position. Heavy moorings had been laid to which the floating breakwaters were attached as they arrived. Bodies of Royal Engineers, and “Seabees” in the American sector, made preparations for the piers. But unfortunately on June 19 a north-easterly gale began and continued for three days with remarkable violence. The American harbour, which was in a more exposed site, suffered most and when Cherbourg was captured work on it was discontinued. The Calvados reef protected the British harbour, which suffered much less damage, though the floating breakwater was broken up and many small craft were cast ashore and a large amount of equipment was lost in transit.

Nevertheless the blockships, the piers already completed and the caissons already in their places saved great loss of men and material, and the harbour, jokingly styled “Port Mulberry” from its code name, was rendering valuable service by the end of June, although it was not completed until later.

The Germans were unquestionably surprised by this development. There is reason to believe that Rommel did not believe that the Allies could land enough supplies for the force which they would require to defeat his Army Group and the reinforcements on which he could count unless and until they had captured Cherbourg and Havre, and that he was also convinced that they would land on some other point on the French Channel coast. These false assumptions may well have led him to hold back troops which were available for a swift attack on the beach-heads until the opportunity had passed.

And so it came to pass that the Allies were in position to build up their strength by sea at least as quickly as the enemy could build up his by land. In fact their build-up was faster. The air power had wrecked his railways in northern France so comprehensively that his mobile reserves were largely confined to movement by road and were sorely harassed and delayed as they moved up to the front. Moreover, the destruction of a number of important bridges over the Seine and the Loire imposed long detours on German transport and armour moving into Normandy from outside the Seventh Army area. This, in conjunction with the spirited campaign of ambush and sabotage opened by the French maquisards of the Resistance Movement, deranged the German timetable.