Why did the Allies wait until 1944 to invade France?

Answer 1

You just don't grasp the logistics involved -

Planning, training troops and mounting an invasion of that scale was an incredibly collossal task.

The Allies first had to train enough soldiers to land on the beaches and defeat about 350,000 heavily dug in, experienced German troops. - They had to follow this up with immediate armour support as the Germans had 4 Panzer Divisions in the area (potentially about 1,200 tanks) - So apart from troop landing ships, the Allies had to have Tank Landing Ships and their follow up support. - In those days it took about 10 trucks of fuel, spares and ammunition to support a single tank in action!

They landed about 175,000 troops and 320 tanks the FIRST day - can you imagine supplying food for all those soldiers every day. -To say nothing about ammunition and spare weapons. Follow up supplies arrived in increasing numbers every day for over a month.

Apart from all this the Allies had to have air support in the form of fighters to kill German fighters, rocket carrying Typhoons and Thunderbolts to kill German tanks and bombers to hit German troop formations. The Allied air forces flew over 14,000 sorties on D-Day alone.

The landing ships had to have Naval cover and Battleships to give supporting gunfire. The fleet when ready was over 11,000 ships in total. - Can you begin to imagine where on the English coast to moor and load that many ships ? There were 7 big Battleships, and over 80 cruisers and destroyers, some coming all the way from Scapa around Ireland the weeks before invasion.

The whole affair was an absolute marvel of planning, timing, ingenuity and finally bravery to carry out and succeed as it did.

- And you owe your freedom today to those men -