Commemorative Visit Historical Background
for Primary Schools
The D-Day Landings in Normandy
On 6 June 1944 the biggest combined naval, military and air operation
ever seen took place. Code-named Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings
saw Allied forces mount a daring invasion of Nazi territory, along the
Normandy coast in France. The operation marked the start of the
campaign that led to eventual Allied victory in Europe.
Page
1. What was D-Day?
3. Preparations
5. The Weather
6. Defences
7. D-Day in the air
D-Day at sea
8. The D-Day landings
10. Casualties on D-Day
12. How is D-Day remembered today?
13. D-Day glossary (explains what words in bold on mean)
What was D-Day?
Words in bold are explained in the D-Day Glossary at the end.
What was D-Day?
D-Day was the first day of the Second World War military invasion
code-named Operation Overlord, when the Allies landed in Normandy, in
Northern France. It was one of the biggest combined military operations
ever attempted.
What does the ‘D’ in ‘D-Day’ stand for?
The „D‟ in D-Day simply stands for Day. The terms D-Day and H-Hour
were used by military planners to stand for the day and hour of the start
of a forthcoming operation, where the exact date and time were still to
be confirmed or were top secret.
What was the goal of D-Day? Did it work?
The goal of D-Day was to defeat Nazi Germany by attacking from the
west. Forces from the Soviet Union had been fighting the Nazis in
Eastern Europe since 1941, and D-Day established a long-awaited „second
front‟.
It was a key turning point in the course of the war, and led to eventual
victory by the Allies in Europe in May 1945. The war against Japan in the
Far East, however, continued until Allied victory was won in August 1945.
When did D-Day take place and why do we remember it today?
D-Day took place on 6 June 1944.
In June 2004 we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings,
and remembered all those who gave their lives to liberate Europe, and to
protect the future security and democracy of the Allied countries.
Who planned D-Day and who took part?
In 1941 the Soviet Union and the USA had joined Britain in the „Grand
Alliance‟ against Hitler. Their leaders met in 1943 to plan their strategy.
The leaders of the Allies were:
Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister
Franklin D Roosevelt, US President
Josef Stalin, Soviet leader
1.
It was agreed that Britain and the USA would launch a cross-Channel
attack on occupied France in spring 1944. The Soviet Union had been
demanding a „second front‟ in the west since July 1941 and plans for the
invasion had been underway since the Allies were pushed out of France by
German forces, and many troops were evacuated from Dunkirk, in 1940.
Joining Britain and the US on the assault on occupied territory were
Commonwealth troops from Canada. Some troops from Poland and France
were also involved in the preparations for D-Day. Both Poland and France
were currently under Nazi occupation, so only a few Polish and French
troops had managed to escape to or been evacuated to Britain earlier in
the war.
The total number of troops who landed on the Normandy beaches on D-
Day was over 132 thousand men.
2.
Preparations
Words in bold are explained in the D-Day Glossary at the end.
Lots had to be done to prepare troops and equipment for D-Day.
Information had to be gathered and detailed plans of the invasion made.
The success of D-Day depended on this careful preparation including:
Production - producing huge numbers of weapons, ammunition and
equipment.
Q: Were there any factories in your area that made important
materials and supplies for the war?
Q: Who do you think worked in the factories after many of the
usual factory workers joined the armed forces?
Invention - inventing special equipment to help forces land safely on the
Normandy beaches.
An earlier Allied raid on occupied territory (at Dieppe in 1942), which had
failed, and cost the lives of many Canadian troops, taught the Allies how
difficult it was to get armoured vehicles and troops ashore. Special
armoured vehicles and temporary harbours were therefore developed to
support the infantrymen landing on D-Day.
Q: What sort of problems do you think the Allies faced when
trying to land hundreds of troops onto beaches? (Think about the
sort of terrain, and how beaches might be defended.)
Some clever solutions to the problems of the beaches were:
The amphibious Duplex Drive (DD) tank.
The "Crocodile" flame-throwing tank.
The "Crab" minesweeping tank.
AVRE (Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineer) tanks equipped with a
spigot mortar and special devices for crossing obstacles.
"Bobbin" carpet layers, which carried a reinforced matting to unroll
on sand or loose shingle to give other vehicles a surface to cross.
Hobert‟s “Funnies" (developed by Major General Sir Percy Hobart).
Specialised armoured vehicles that proved crucial to the success of
the landings but were never tested in combat until D-Day itself.
3.
“Mulberry Harbours”. Two temporary floating harbours towed in
sections across the Channel soon after D-Day. Parts for the
harbours were built in different parts of the UK and submerged
off the south coast to hide them until the troops in Normandy
were ready for them.
Intelligence - collecting detailed information about German defences,
terrain and weather conditions.
This was called intelligence. It allowed detailed maps and models of
Normandy to be made before D-Day took place to help the planners
choose the safest places to land and the best routes to take inland.
There were many ways of gathering intelligence, including:
Aerial reconnaissance showing the layout of German defences.
Missions of the Combined Operations Pilotage Parties (COPP) under
the cover of night surveying beach landing sites.
Pre-war postcards and holiday snaps of France, sent in by the
public, providing further valuable information.
Code - decoding encrypted German messages that had been made using
Enigma machines.
Since 1940 British intelligence staff had been able to de-code secret
German Enigma coded messages at a top-secret headquarters called
Bletchley Park, in Buckinghamshire (today you can visit Bletchley Park for
a tour to find out what went on there). Intelligence reports based on
decoded German messages were code-named Ultra and were of great
importance to the commanders in charge of planning Operation Overlord.
Deception - supplying false information to the Germans to draw their
attention away from the real invasion site.
Bodyguard was a plan concocted in 1943 and designed to deceive and
confuse the German command. Dummy tanks and vehicles and fake radio-
traffic, together with false information fed to the Germans by a double-
agent (a Spanish-born spy known as Garbo), made the Germans believe
that the Allies were planning to invade either in Scandinavia, or near
Calais, east of the real Normandy landing sites. This made the Germans
move their forces to defend the wrong areas. Ultra reports helped the
Allies monitor German movements and see if their deception was working.
4.
The Weather
Words in bold are explained in the D-Day Glossary at the end.
How important was good weather for D-Day?
The decision about the best time to launch an invasion relied on studies
of the tides, the phases of the moon and weather records.
As well as reasonable conditions at sea and a favourable tide to aid the
landing of infantry forces by sea, the safety and success of air
operations also depended on good weather, good visibility and bright
moonlight for Horsa Glider and parachute landings in the very early hours
of 6 June, and for the 14,000 air support sorties flown by Allied air
forces on D-Day.
Meteorological reports from land, sea and air crews were crucial
throughout the course of the war, providing information to troops waiting
to advance or attack. They were often dangerous missions over enemy
territory providing secret encrypted reports to military planners. See:
http://www.iwm.org.uk/dday/pdfs/DDayWeather.pdf
(For more about the role of the Met. Office on D-Day.)
D-Day was originally planned to take place on the night of 5 June, but a
severe storm caused it to be delayed until 6 June. The storms meant that
the sea was rough and that the tides on 6 June were especially high,
hiding some of the beach obstacles that the landing forces had hoped
they would be able to see and avoid or destroy on their way to dry land.
The temporary Mulberry Harbour at St Laurent, which was meant to
supply US forces, was severely damaged by a storm on 19 June The
second Mulberry Harbour at Arromanches (designed to supply British and
Canadian forces) survived, and was used to unload 11,000 tons of stores
per day!
5.
Defences
Words in bold are explained in the D-Day Glossary at the end.
How did the Germans defend Normandy against the possibility of
invasion by Allied forces?
To defend coastal areas against a possible Allied invasion, the Germans
built huge fortifications known as the Atlantic Wall. They included
concrete pill boxes, bunkers, mines, beach obstacles and gun positions;
low-lying terrain was also flooded to make it difficult for invading forces
to move inland. The German commander Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
strengthened the defences facing the English Channel. Some six and a
half million mines were laid and over 500,000 beach obstacles installed.
In the Normandy area, the defences were manned mainly by the German
716th Infantry Division, which included a number of Polish and Russian-
born conscripts (remember, Russia and Poland were both fighting against
Germany at this stage in the war). However, one of the beach landing
sites – Omaha, where many American soldiers lost their lives - was
defended by the battle-hardened German 352nd Infantry Division who
were on an anti-invasion training mission on 6 June and put up very tough
resistance.
6.
D-Day in the air
Words in bold are explained in the D-Day Glossary at the end.
In the early hours of 6 June three Allied airborne divisions (the US 82 nd
and 101st Airborne divisions and the British 6th Airborne Division) landed
troops by parachute and Horsa Glider to seize and protect the areas
surrounding the invasion beaches. They blocked roads and held causeways
across flooded plains, captured bridges at important river and canal
crossings and attacked German gun batteries.
D-Day at sea
The naval element of Operation Overlord under Admiral Sir Bertram
Ramsay was code-named Operation Neptune. By June 1944 nearly 7,000
warships, landing craft and other vessels were assembled in the ports of
southern England. Minesweeping cleared safe routes across the Channel,
and on D-Day itself as well as bombarding coastal defences, the two
naval task forces landed two British, one Canadian and two American
divisions on the Normandy beaches.
After the first landings naval forces ensured that supplies to the
beaches were maintained. Many landing craft were sunk or damaged but
by nightfall the Allies had put over 132,000 troops ashore.
7.
The D-Day landings
Words in bold are explained in the D-Day Glossary at the end.
Utah Beach
Utah saw the first beach landings of D-Day, by American infantrymen. A
strong current swept the first wave of men over 2,000 yards south of
their target into the most lightly defended sector of the entire
Normandy front. At 6.30am they came under light fire, but all except
four of its 32 amphibious “DD” tanks successfully reached the beach. The
US 101st Airborne Division had successfully secured the causeways
across the flooded low-lying land behind the beach and the tanks and
infantry were able to move inland.
Omaha Beach
The broad beach code-named Omaha was the most heavily defended of all
the invasion beaches. Massive Allied air and sea bombardments were
largely ineffective here and the American troops faced stiff resistance
from experienced German forces training in the area. Casualties of over
50% were suffered by many of the American infantry companies landing
at Omaha, but by the evening American soldiers were firmly ashore.
Gold Beach
Gold Beach was not heavily defended by German forces because the air
and sea bombardments had successfully damaged German strongholds.
This was fortunate for the British troops approaching Gold Beach,
because the high winds of the previous night‟s storm created an unusually
high tide which rapidly submerged beach obstacles before they could be
destroyed. Those landing on Gold Beach had advanced ten kilometres
inland by the evening of D-Day, and although they had not cut the Caen-
Bayeux highway or linked up with Americans from Omaha Beach as
planned, they had joined up with Canadians from Juno Beach to the east.
Juno Beach
Juno Beach was assaulted by the Canadian 3rd Division. It was heavily
defended with gun emplacements and formidable beach obstacles. Rough
seas delayed the landings and the first wave of Canadian infantry
suffered heavy casualties. More tanks had been allocated to Juno Beach
than others because of the terrain although many of them never made it
ashore. There were more "Funnies" designed to help the infantry over
the seawall, through the barbed wire and across the minefields. Beyond
the villages lay flat, open country with almost no opposition. At the end of
8.
the day the Canadians had penetrated deeper into France than any other
division.
Sword Beach
Off-shore shoals and heavy defences around Ouistreham port
considerably reduced the width of the landing area on Sword Beach. The
British landing troops‟ main D-Day objective was to capture the city of
Caen ten miles (fifteen kilometres) inland, but high tides resulting from
the bad weather, and stiff German resistance, delayed their advance and
prevented much of the supporting armour getting ashore in time to help.
Congestion on the narrow beach as the tide advanced and gunfire from
strong German defences inland increased the number of casualties.
9.
Casualties on D-Day
Words in bold are explained in the D-Day Glossary at the end.
How many casualties were there on D-Day?
The casualty figures below refer to troops killed, wounded or missing.
Utah Beach
23,250 men landed at a cost of under 250 casualties.
Omaha Beach
34,000 US troops landed on Omaha Beach, where the German resistance
was strongest, and 2,000 casualties were suffered - a high proportion of
the total for D-Day.
Gold, Juno and Sword beaches
75,000 men were landed on Gold, Juno and Sword, at a cost of around
3,000 casualties.
Total allied losses on D-Day
In all the Allies suffered approximately 10,200 casualties on 6 June
1944, including those landing on the beaches, and air and sea support.
This figure was lower than had been expected, but each death
represented a sad loss for families and comrades.
Total losses in the Battle of Normandy
D-Day was the first day of the Battle of Normandy, which finished
almost 11 weeks later on 20 August 1944.
Of the approximately 2 million Allied forces involved in the Battle
of Normandy 36,976 were killed, and 172,696 other casualties were
sustained.
Of the approximately 1 million German forces involved, 240,000
were killed or wounded, and a further 200,000 were missing or
captured.
(Source: Martin M. Evans, Battles of World War II, Airlife: Shrewsbury, 2002)
How were the casualties looked after on D-Day?
Army medical personnel landed with the troops and treated the first
casualties of D-Day. Wounded men were given first aid that would help
them to survive the journey back across the Channel to Britain in
returning landing ships.
10.
Military hospitals around Britain were on standby to receive the wounded.
Once the Normandy beachhead had been secured, field hospitals were
set up in Normandy and the women‟s nursing services crossed the Channel
to care for the casualties in France. Some doctors and nurses worked on
hospital ships that brought the wounded back to Britain.
Members of Princess Mary‟s Royal Air Force Nursing Service, known as
„Flying Nightingales‟, were among the first medical staff to be flown out
to Normandy. They specialised in nursing casualties being evacuated by
air.
11.
How is D-Day remembered today?
60 years after D-Day, many veterans who took part in the Normandy
Landings returned to France for 6 June 2004 to mark the 60th
Anniversary of D-Day. Most of them are now in their eighties but they all
remember that day. There was a service attended by the Queen at
Bayeux War Cemetery where many of the D-Day casualties are buried.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission runs the cemetery.
Q: What do you know about the role of the Commonwealth War
Graves Commission – what can you discover about them on the
internet? (See www.cwgc.org to find out.)
In Normandy in June 2004 there was also be a march-past by veterans
and a ceremony on the cliff tops at Arromanches. Many heads of state
attended the event, including the President of the United States, Mr.
George W. Bush and the Queen of England, and they all rose to stand as a
mark of respect as the veterans marched by.
Similar events were held in Normandy for the 50th Anniversary of D-Day
in 1994. Even more veterans were able to make the journey ten year ago.
Lots of other people in towns, cities and villages throughout the UK, and
in other countries, also remembered the actions of those who fought on
D-Day. There was a lot of media coverage about the events on television,
radio and in the newspapers – do you recall seeing any of it? Look out for
more Second World War related pieces in the newspapers and on
television in the next few months, as yet more commemorative events will
take place to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the war.
Q: Do you think we should continue to remember D-Day and the
other events of the Second World War in years to come? If so,
why should we? In what ways can we commemorate these events?
12.
D-Day glossary
Aerial reconnaissance
Reconnaissance is finding out about an area before a mission takes place -
also called „recce‟. Using aircraft to fly over an area to find out about the
enemy is called aerial reconnaissance.
Allies
The countries fighting together against Nazi Germany and Japan in the
Second World War.
Amphibious
The DD tanks were designed to be amphibious which meant they could
work whilst in the sea and still work when they came out onto dry land.
Bunkers
A bunker is a safe stronghold where troops can hide from enemy fire and
defend themselves.
Casualties
Troops killed in action, wounded, captured or missing are usually included
in casualty numbers.
Commonwealth
The Commonwealth is a „family‟ of countries that share much in common
and aim to work together. Initially the members all had the United
Kingdom‟s King or Queen at their head but today most are independent.
The Queen remains the head of the Commonwealth as an organisation
Conscripts
In 1939 the British government declared that all young men between 18-
41 had to enlist for military service unless they were, for instance, in a
job essential to the war effort. They were therefore „conscripted‟ for
armed service instead of volunteering. The age limit was later extended
to 51. At the end of 1941 conscription for women aged 19-30 (later
extended to 50) was introduced for the first time in Britain, for civilian
(non-military) war work or military support. Nazi forces also used
conscripted men.
Cross-Channel
The English Channel separates England from France; many boats crossed
it during D-Day.
13.
D-Day
The first day of Operation Overlord 6/6/1944.
Democracy
A fair system of government that allows all adult citizens to vote for the
government that they want. It gives people a say in all matters.
Double-agent
A spy who pretends they are working for one side when in fact they are
feeding information about that side back to the enemy.
Encrypted
In a form of coded language.
Enigma
A German machine used to translate messages into complicated code
before they were sent.
Evacuated
An evacuee is someone who is removed from an area of danger by others.
Allied troops were evacuated from Dunkirk in France in 1940. Many
children in British towns were evacuated to the countryside during the
Second World War too.
Field hospitals
In wartime temporary field hospitals are set up close to the front line to
treat the wounded as quickly as possible. Many medical advances have
been made as a result of field hospital medicine.
Hitler
Adolf Hitler was the leader of the Nazis and all of the German forces in
the Second World War.
Horsa Glider
Horsa Gliders were towed across the Channel behind planes and then
released to land on enemy territory – gliders have no engine power.
Infantrymen
Foot soldiers (as opposed to air or sea troops).
14.
Intelligence
The military term for important information that can be discovered
about enemy actions or hostile territory, to help make informed plans.
Liberate
To liberate means to free – many French towns and cities were liberated
by Allied troops in the Battle of Normandy and subsequent advances.
Meteorological
Meteorological‟ means to do with the weather.
Mines
Highly explosive devises hidden on land or floating in the sea to stop
troops advancing.
Minesweeping
Minesweeping tanks searched for and cleared German mines before
infantrymen advanced.
Nazis
Followers of the political party in power in Germany at the time of the
Second World War, known for its intolerant and inhumane policies.
Occupied France
For much of the Second World War France was „occupied‟ by and under
the control of the Nazis.
Occupied territory
A country or area „occupied‟ by a hostile force.
Operation Neptune
The naval element of Operation Overlord.
Operation Overlord
The codename for the Allied invasion of mainland Europe, starting with D-
Day‟s landings.
Pill boxes
„Pill boxes‟ were small concrete defensive gun emplacements that looked a
bit like their name.
15.
Sorties
A sortie is a military term for a mission outing. It comes from French -
„sortie‟ meaning „exit‟.
Soviet Union
The country known as Russia today used to be the leader of a group of
other countries in that part of Europe known as the Soviet Union.
Spigot mortar
A type of weapon that could be used to combat German tanks. It was
designed to be cheap and quite easy to produce so lots of them were
made.
Strategy
A strategy is a detailed plan of action.
Terrain
The type of land and the natural surroundings.
16.