By the spring of 1944 things were looking
grim for Nazi Germany.

Already starved of key resources and under severe pressure in
the East, the Western Allies were now poised to launch their long-awaited invasion of Western
Europe.

And yet Germany’s leader Adolf Hitler was, despite everything, looking forward to D-Day.

His plan was simple reinforce the western defences, launch a furious counterattack and
throw the Allies back into the sea.

After that he could turn his full strength against the
Soviet Union and end the war.

for Hitler the outcome of this campaign would be decisive.

In the previous episode of our D-Day series we looked at the air battle for Normandy.

This time we’re covering the fighting on land that would make or break the operation.

Why were some beaches bloodier than others? Why did German counterattacks fail? And why did
it take so long for the Allies to break out into France? To answer those questions we brought
in the help of the Royal Armouries’ Jonathan Ferguson to look at some of the most important
weapons of D-Day.

But more from him later on.

This is Lieutenant General Sir Frederick E.

Morgan.

You might never have heard of him, but in his role as COSSAC it was Morgan
who wrote the first plan for Operation Overlord – the Allied invasion of Europe.

The Allied Landing site would be Normandy, but with a major deception operation to
focus German eyes on the Pas-de-Calais.

Airborne forces would secure the flanks, while
assault forces would land with Americans on the right and British and Commonwealth forces on
the left.

In lieu of capturing a major port, Morgan also settled on the ingenious solution
of bringing two prefabricated harbours across the channel to supply an Allied breakout.

When Dwight D.

Eisenhower was appointed commander of SHAEF and Sir Bernard Montgomery
commander of the Allied ground forces in December 1943 the responsibility for Overlord
passed to them.

But the only major change they made was to increase the strength of the air and
seaborn landings.

With a wider front the first target would be Caen and after that the port of
Cherbourg.

After surviving the inevitable German counterattack, Montgomery expected the Germans
to retreat to defensive positions on the river Seine within three months of the landings.

But that did not mean that this campaign would be an easy one.

The divisions chosen to carry out
the invasion were augmented with extra units.

Both the British and Commonwealth and American forces
were equipped with duplex drive or DD tanks which would swim to the shore.

While the British were
further reinforced by more specialist armour.

Rather than engage enemy tanks, the tanks
that landed on the beaches were primarily intended to provide fire support for the infantry
by suppressing enemy pillboxes and gun positions.

Many of them would be so-called ‘funnies’
like this one, which were the brainchild of Major General Sir Percy Hobart.

This Churchill
AVRE, short for Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers, was equipped with what was known as a Spigot
Mortar instead of a standard tank gun which enabled it to fire large, high-explosive charges
capable of destroying pill boxes and bunkers.

It could also be fitted with various attachments
that could aid the movement of other vehicles across the beach.

Such as a small box-girder
bridge, a bobbin which was a giant roll of canvas that could be laid over soft sand,
or large bundles of wood known as fascines that could be used to fill trenches and ditches.

As the massive invasion force built up in Britain, including an entirely fake army
group poised to attack Calais, the Germans were building up their defences.

By this point in the war the German Air Force and Navy were largely a spent force.

Thus, the
defence of ‘Fortress Europe’ would fall on the shoulders of the German Army and in particular
Army Group B commanded by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

Rommel believed that Germany’s best
chance of countering an invasion would be to stop the Allies at the water’s edge, at the
much vaunted ‘Atlantic Wall’.

Begun in 1942, it was still far from complete.

But from early
1944 Rommel oversaw a massive strengthening of the existing fortifications adding pillboxes,
gun emplacements, beach obstacles and millions of mines – many of them in the Normandy sector.

The units charged with holding these positions varied as much as the defences themselves.

Though there were 58 German divisions in the theatre by May 1944, many of them were poor
quality garrison troops from which the fittest and most able had been combed to feed the meat
grinder in the east.

Destroying the invaders would come down to the nine Panzer and one
Panzergrenadier division in the theatre, with a total of 1,400 tanks and self-propelled guns.

The
only problem was Rommel had no control over them.

Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, commander of all
German army forces in the west, and General Geyr von Schweppenburg, commander of the armoured
reserve ‘Panzer Group West’, disagreed with Rommel.

They argued for a defence-in-depth
strategy, holding the panzers further back.

Rommel wanted the panzers positioned much
closer to the most likely landing sites.

He knew that the Allies had air superiority
which would significantly restrict movement in the battle of manoeuvre that Rundstedt
and Schweppenburg favoured.

Not only that, but if the Allies were permitted to establish
a beachhead, their vast resources in men and material would ensure that they could wear down
Germany’s finite resources by continuously feeding fresh divisions into France.

In the end,
after the argument had been taken to Hitler, a tactically unsound compromise was reached.

Of
the nine panzer divisions and one panzergrenadier division in the west Rommel would be given
three.

Von Schweppenburg would get four to be held in reserve, while the remaining
three were deployed to the south of France as part of the new Army Group G.

Hitler also
stipulated that Panzer Group West could only be deployed with his permission, which would
prove to be costly for the Germans on D-Day.

D-Day was scheduled for the 5th of June 1944.

But
in the preceding days terrible weather conditions forced Eisenhower to postpone the invasion
by 24 hours.

This was a difficult decision, any delay made it increasingly difficult to
keep the operation a secret.

But over the course of the fourth and fifth meteorologists
predicted a temporary break in the weather and based on this information Eisenhower ordered
that the invasion proceed on the 6th of June.

This is the letter issued to thousands of troops
bound for Normandy on the eve of the invasion written by Supreme Commander Eisenhower.

In it
he says that “the task will not be an easy one” that “the enemy is well trained, well equipped
and battle hardened”.

But Eisenhower also says that he has the “full confidence” in the troops
“courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle” and that “nothing less than full victory” will
be accepted.

For the men who received this letter there was of course a mix of feelings.

But the
mood was captured incredibly well by then Major James Robert Morgan who was second in command of
the British 12th Light Anti-aircraft Regiment.

In this letter to his wife, written on the back of
Eisenhower’s message, Morgan says “I’m looking forward immensely to the next few hours.

At
present I look just like Father Christmas in full equipment with binoculars dangling on my
chest.

Well my darling I’ll soon be back with you both.

Save some of the tomatoes for me and
keep this letter as a reminder of a terrific event in history.

All my love, Jim”.

The first Allied troops into Normandy were British and Canadian Airborne forces of
the 6th Airborne Division.

Landing by glider and parachute to the east of Sword Beach their
main task was to capture and hold important bridges over the Caen canal and river Orne.

Despite scattered landings, they managed to capture their objectives.

But to hold on to them,
the lightly armed troops would have to fend off German armoured counterattacks.

To tell us more
here’s the Royal Armouries’ Jonathan Ferguson.

Hi guys Jonathan here in the National Firearms
Centre here at the Royal Armouries Museum.

And I’m here with the PIAT.

So PIAT stands for Projector
Infantry Anti-Tank.

Common misconception that it’s a big spring catapult thing, absolutely
untrue.

There is a big spring in here.

It’s to absorb the huge recoil of what this really
is which is a Spigot Mortar.

Normally something fired based in the ground, but it’s fired from the
shoulder.

So this idea of harnessing the ‘Monroe Effect’ that’s in here but from a shoulder fired
weapon that’s what makes this thing really quite remarkable and much better than people think
it was.

Although there are some pretty heavy caveats there.

In terms of you’ve got to get very
close, it’s an arcing trajectory, your first hit might bounce off if it doesn’t hit just right.

So one of the most iconic accounts of the use of the PIAT associated with D-Day is at Pegasus
Bridge.

We have Major John Howard of D company, 2nd Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire
Light Infantry.

He relates this story of Sergeant Thornton, ‘Wagger’ Thornton as he calls him,
who essentially saves the day with a PIAT.

He’s managed to get close enough to where he thinks
he’s going to be able to score a decisive hit on the tank, always the problem with the PIAT.

And
just as Howard is about to order the men in with anti-tank grenades to try and kill this thing.

Thornton lets loose with the PIAT bomb and just knocks the tank out outright.

That causes
the Germans to think that there’s anti-tank artillery in play and to stop what they’re
doing and rethink and turns the tide of that the battle at that bridge.

Because they were going
to get annihilated one after the other.

Now that might have been true with the PIAT as well but
it’s punching above its weight and it’s a really almost unique account of a single shoulder
fired weapon turning the tide of a battle.

To the west the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions
were landing on the Cotentin Peninsula behind Utah Beach.

They were to secure the exits allowing the
amphibious troops landing later in the morning to move on towards the vital Port of Cherbourg.

The drop zones were supposed to be marked by elite pathfinders ahead of the main force, who
used special radar transponder beacons known as ‘Eurekas’ to guide them in.

But, by the time
they jumped, a massive cloud bank had formed over the Cotentin peninsula, causing many
of the pathfinders to miss their target, and when they did land many couldn’t get
the ‘Eurekas’ to work.

The result was chaos.

Many of the drops became widely scattered.

For
example, the majority of the 2nd Battalion, 52nd Parachute Infantry Regiment jumped over
the wrong drop zone and then spent most of D-Day trying to reassemble.

However, others that
mislanded were able to improvise and form groups that were a mishmash of units which went on to
achieve their objectives.

One of those to jump on D-Day was 29-year-old Sergeant Floyd Corrington,
an Assistant Squad Leader in the Second Platoon of Dog Company, 506 PIR, 101st Airborne Division.

He was wearing this helmet when his C-47, which also carried his platoon Commander Lieutenant
Ronald Spears, took off for Normandy and was wearing it when he jumped at about 1:20 a.

m.

Little is known of what happened to Corrington after he jumped, but he was reported to have been
killed in action on D-Day.

His helmet was later found near the Hamlet of Basse-Addeville, just
south of Drop Zone C where his unit was meant to land.

Corrington now lies in the Normandy
American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer.

Though the American airborne drops didn’t quite
go to plan they caused chaos and confusion amongst the German defenders and secured the
exits from Utah Beach.

By now the Allied air and sea bombardment of the beach defences had
begun.

The volume of fire was huge, but the results were inconsistent.

The strongpoints
that survived would exact a heavy toll.

On Utah Beach the landings were a huge success.

The troops were accidentally landed well south of their designated landing zone in an area
that was only lightly defended.

Quick-thinking commanders exploited this and by 10:00 a.

m.

all
enemy resistance was cleared at a cost of just 197 casualties.

A few miles east however
the landing at Omaha became a bloodbath.

Of the five Invasion beaches Omaha was
without to doubt the most challenging.

Most of the 6-mile-long beach was dominated by steep
bluffs around 150 ft high which gave the German strongpoints excellent fields of view and fire
over an area littered with mines, obstacles and barbed wire.

The only way through the bluffs were
through five gullies known as exits.

Of course the Germans knew how important they were and these
exits were quite literally turned into deathtraps.

To tell us more, here’s Jonathan once again.

We are looking at the infamous MG42 general purpose machine gun.

So, this was intended to
be a universal machine gun and it served in that role.

It’s in front of me here on its bipod
for use as a light machine gun.

Where this thing has become truly iconic is in the defensive role
and that’s throughout the back half of the war, but especially D-Day and especially Omaha Beach.

So we have belt feed, ideal for sustained fire, for suppressive fire, for defensive fire.

And
to allow for that we have a replaceable barrel system, allowing for a much lower overall weight
and complexity than the old water cool system, which is extremely effective for sustain fire, but
made for a much heavier more awkward gun.

So those two things, plus some very solid engineering, mean
that not very many German soldiers can seriously inconvenience an awful lot of Allied soldiers.

And this is really summed up in the experience of and the claims of Heinrich Severloh who wrote
his memoir, published it in 2000 and he claimed to have killed between 1,000 and 2,000 American
soldiers on Omaha Beach.

Strongly contested numbers, but regardless.

If there are many
like Heinrich, and I suspect there were this, thing is a sort of force multiplier and in
the defensive role they’re able to hold off thousands of attacking Allied soldiers.

Keep
heads down, if they’re not actively killing and wounding people.

If you need a gun for
defensive fire, whatever you think of the MG42, it’s a very capable weapon in that role.

The Allies had planned for a fierce naval bombardment followed by an attack by Allied
bombers that would obliterate the strong defences before the first wave of troops hit the beach at
6:30 a.

m.

But the bombardment was inadequate and the bombers missed most of their targets which
left most of the German defences still standing.

To make matters worse on Omaha, the concept of the
DD tanks that would float and swim to shore ended in disaster.

The 741st tank Battalion disembarked
most of its DD tanks about 15,000 ft out from the shore.

Almost immediately 27 out of 32 tanks
sunk owing to the bad weather and rough seas.

Things didn’t quite go to plan for the infantry
either.

Strong winds and currents put many of the landing craft off course and some got swamped
which drowned the heavily-laden infantry inside.

Other landing craft hit sandbars that forced
the Infantry to wade up the beach in sometimes neck high water, greatly extending the time
that they were exposed to enemy fire.

The situation became so perilous that General Omar
Bradley, commander of the American Ground Forces, briefly considered halting the landings on Omaha
and diverting the assault forces to Utah Beach.

Slowly however small groups of men began to
exploit gaps in the defences and by the evening the situation had finally begun to stabilize.

34,000 troops had landed on Omaha by the end of the day at a cost of over 2,400 men killed
wounded or missing.

By far the highest cost in human life of any of the five invasion beaches.

An hour after the Americans, British, Canadian, and Free French assault troops began landing
to their East on Gold, Juno and Sword beaches.

The 50th division at Gold Beach faced strong
German resistance and though they got well off the beach they failed to take all their objectives.

At
Juno, Canadian forces made the strongest inroads into Normandy of any Allied formation after tough
house-to-house fighting.

And likewise at Sword the initial assault went mostly to plan.

This
bombardment was carried out by the largest naval bombardment fleet of those supporting the five
beaches, so the weight of firepower was immense.

The majority of the DD tanks made it to the beach
and at almost the same time as the infantry giving the latter the fire support and cover that
they needed to move up the beach.

The funnies immediately got to work clearing passages through
the obstacles and minefields, filling ditches and then engaging enemy strong points with their
heavy Petard Mortars.

Though many were hit and knocked out, their surviving crews dismounted
and cleared obstacles by hand.

Within 2 hours of landing 7 out of 8 Beach exits were cleared.

Of course, this is not to say that the assault on Sword was easy.

One of the German strongpoints
on Sword, codenamed Cod, took 3 hours to capture with two of the attacking battalions taking
25% casualties each.

Still though the battle for Sword Beach was relatively quick and by the
end of D-Day nearly 29,000 troops had landed.

During the first hours of the Beach
Landings with the exception of Omaha the Allies generally succeeded in overwhelming
the largely understrength, overstretched, and ill-prepared German defenders.

The big
question was how would the German panzers respond? Incredible as it may seem, the massive Allied
invasion force that was approaching the Normandy Coast on the 5th of June went largely
undetected by the Germans.

Thanks to the poor weather in preceding days an invasion was simply
not expected at the time.

Rommel was visiting his family in Germany, while most senior commanders
in the invasion sector were ironically away on an anti-invasion training exercise when the blow
fell.

The first major counterattack took place on D-Day itself.

That afternoon the 21st Panzer
Division, the only German armoured formation in the area, drove between the British and Canadian
Forces reaching the coast.

But thanks to poor command decisions, confused communications and
the weight of Allied firepower the attack was beaten back.

With the 21st Panzers losing more
than half of their 124 tanks.

The rest of the German armour was under Hitler’s direct control,
but he was asleep until the afternoon having worked late the night before.

When informed
he said to have reacted with glee.

However, both Hitler and Rundstedt still believed that the
landings in Normandy were a faint and that the main blow would come at Calais.

Elements of Panzer
Group West were released for use in Normandy, but by then it was too late.

A full strength
German counterattack would have to wait.

Instead, on D-Day itself the Allies
biggest challenge was supply.

While the Mulbury Harbours were being constructed,
supplies still had to be landed directly on the beaches in vehicles like this DUKW or Duck.

A

Continue reading….
Next »