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D-Day

History of the Allied landing on Normandy on 6 June 1944 and the following campaign to take Cherbourg and break out of the beach head.

3,775 Questions

What does D 1-19 FA third Platoon stand for?

3rd Platoon, D Battery, 1st Battalion 19th Field Artillery Regiment which is a US Army unit.

I googled it. It is currently located at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. It is a Field Artillery training unit for soldiers after basic training. It is a part of the 434th Field Artillery Brigade. A soldier assigned to this unit is either a trainee or a trainer/support person.

What does the d stand for with pounds and pence?

d = dinarius (basic Roman currency unit for almost 2000 years)

British currency was based on the Roman 'dinarius' of which there were 240 dinarius (240d) to the pound which consisted of 20 shillings each composed of 12d (12 pennies) to the shilling. A Crown was 5 shillings (5/-) and a halfcrown was 30d (2/6d). A Guinea was 21/- (21 shillings).

Where is the country of Normandy?

Normandy is no longer a country. It's a region in the northwest of France.

When and where were the first paratroopers use?

Surprisingly paratroopers were first thought of before airplanes or even parachutes were even invented. One of the first men to come up with the idea of dropping men from the sky was Benjamin Franklin. "Where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defence [SIC], so that ten thousand men descending from the clouds might not, in many places, do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them?"(1) Benjamin Franklin 1784. Even though Benjamin was a great inventor, this idea was never fully used until World War Two. In World War Two the Germans, Russians, and the French had created entire Regiments of the people. However for America and Brittan it took the great mind of Winston church hill to state "We ought to have a corps of at least 5,000 parachute troops… I hear something is being done already to form such a corps but only, I believe, on a very small scale. Advantage must be taken of the summer to train these forces who can none the less play their part meanwhile as shock troops in home defence [SIC]."(2) In 19?? (find out) These two men influenced the world with simple words.

Paratroopers have a fairly recent yet fascinating history. The Germans were the first country to create an actual parachute regiment. In 1935 they used Junkers 52s as the planes to drop the troops. The Germans approached this technique as a form of Lightning Warfare "Blitzkrieg," Though the Germans were the first to create a regiment of Paratroopers the Russians were the first to use them. In 1936 the Russians sent 1,200 men by parachute to reinforce the lines the enemies were even impressed by their maneuvers. The Russians named these troops "Locust Warriors," Not to be underdone the Germans used them to attack a fortress in Norway on March 12, 1938, and on May 1940 they were dropped to capture several air basses in Oslo and Stavanger. This was the first time they were used to attack a target. By this time France created a whole Regiment because of the success this style of combat was having. However it was too late for them they were out of the war almost as soon as the Regiment was created. On the other hand America and Brittan were very skeptical of the Paratroopers. Fortunately Major William Lee headed the first American Platoon of paratroopers in 1940. Finally after several demonstrations America and Brittan both created groups of paratroopers about 9,000 strong. For these warriors they created a special camp called Fort Benning, in Georgia. This camp had a parachute school where they would learn to jump. This is only a glimpse of the paratroopers around the World War Two.

Its fairly hard to actually make an exact point on when they started. It all depends on what form of development your talking about.

What was the code name of the D-day invasion of Normandy?

Operation Overlord. the entire Battle sequence is, however popularitly referred to from it"s target date of D-Day- June 6, l944. D-day- the day the battle was initiated. then you had D plus One, etc in the chronicles as the larger Breakout campaign expanded- such target areas as St. Mere Eglise ( which tragically, means Holy Mother Church!) St. Vith, etc.

Did us won D-day?

The Allies did win D-Day, as they gained a foothold on the German ground in France.

Why D-Day was a success?

Good planning, good intelligence, excellent luck in having the Nazi's believe a deliberately planted subterfuge about where the landing would be, overwhelming material and ordinance support, the previous decimation of the Luftawaffe (which was nearly impotent by the time of D-Day), and above all else, the extreme bravery of the invading armies.

Why do you think the allied forces chose to invade five different beaches instead of one or two beaches?

The allied forces chose to invade 5 different beaches because they needed alot of room for the millions of people coming in to help the invasion.

When and where did d day occur?

it happened in July 1947 in Toronto Canada

How did D-Day turn the tide in Europe?

Once the Normandy beachhead was established - and the unbroken supply line it allowed back to England - Germany was caught in a noose that merely tightened over the next eleven months.

D-Day was the "beginning of the end" for the Nazi war machine.

How did the operation overlord compare to the landing at Anzio?

Both were amphibious attacks on an enemy coast. But a lot of planning went into Overlord, while the Anzio landings (Operation Shingle) were mounted very hurriedly, with little in depth planning, and with a strategic goal that amounted to wishful thinking. The Allied staff in the Mediterranean had considered mounting an operation along the lines of Anzio, to break the bloody deadlock on the Cassino front ninety miles south of Anzio, but had discarded the possibility, mainly because they could not anticipate having sufficient resources to carry through the operation. Overall planning called for making the landings in southern France, on the Riviera, the Mediterranean coast of France, at the same time as the landings in Normandy. This was going to require the transfer of an entire corps of three very veteran and experienced US infantry divisions from Italy, but more importantly, was also going to require that most of the LSTs in Italy be assigned to support the southern France landings, or moved to England to take part in the Normandy landings. LSTs were Landing Ship, Tanks.

These were the largest of the numerous specialized landing vessels the US Navy developed during the war, large enough to carry a fully armed and equipped infantry company, or a dozen tanks, and able to drive their flat-bottomed bows right up onto the beach to discharge their load. There were never enough LSTs to meet the world-wide demand, and many an operation was delayed or never took place because LSTs for it could not be had. (The Normandy landings were delayed for a month, from May to June 1944 due to weather, but the bright side of that was the invasion force would benefit from the extra month's production of LSTs). In the face of these facts the planners in Italy could not find enough men or LSTs to make an operation like Anzio, even though most Allied leaders agreed it would be a good thing to make an amphibious "end run" in Italy to break the deadlock at Cassino.

At this juncture fate took a hand, in the person of Winston Churchill, who went on a personal inspection tour to Egypt and the Middle East, where he caught the flu. While he was in bed recuperating, he revived the idea of a landing behind German lines in Italy. The whole "plan" was thrown together in about two weeks. There were several problems with the "plan", fairly clearly seen with hindsight. The first was, the landings were in the wrong place. If an amphibious attack was to be made, the place to do it was NORTH OF ROME. Anywhere north of Rome. Not south of Rome. Landing north of Rome, if the landings succeeded in causing the Germans to evacuate their forces to the south of the beachhead, would cause Rome to fall into the laps of the Allies as an extra fruit of the operation. But landing south of Rome, as the Allies did at Anzio, meant even if the Germans to the south at Cassino broke off and withdrew, Rome still had to be captured. Of course, eventually the Allies did cause the Germans to withdraw from the Cassino front - it just took four and one half months, and then the Allies did capture Rome, and it was the first time in 2000 years Rome had been captured from the south.

Another problem with Churchill's plan was that the initial landing force was too small, all part of his airy optimism characterizing the entire scheme - it would only take a relatively small force, it would be over quickly so the vital LSTs would be free in time for the simultaneous landings in southern France with Overlord (then scheduled for around the first week of May). Only two divisions were in the initial landing force, one British, and one American. The American division was probably the best the US had, Army or Marine, in the entire war, but Anzio was to be its costliest campaign of the war. This was the 3rd Infantry Division, veterans of North Africa, Sicily and southern Italy. It was the "3rd ID, Reinforced" for the Anzio operation, having with it three of the four battalions of Darby's Rangers (the second battalion had been removed to England to attack Pont du Hoc on the Normandy D-Day), the joint American-Canadian First Special Service Force ("The Devil's Brigade"), and the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion. So, with the "Reinforcements" there were an additional seven battalions to the US component, or 7/9th of the rifle strength of a division, roughly. But still this was not enough, because of the goals of the operation at Anzio. The German forces at Cassino depended on two highways runing south out of Rome for their supplies, Highway 7, near the landing beaches running near the coast, and Highway 6, which was about 25 miles inland. So even a bit of cursory thought would reveal that this initial landing force of two divisions - even if one of them was "Reinforced" - was going to have to take and hold a perimeter of more than fifty miles, if it was to successfully interrupt the flow of supplies to the Germans in the south, and cause them to withdraw.

As it worked out, the landing force never did get to Highway 6, though after the breakout from the beachhead in late May (after four months of punishment) they did get close enough to hear the German traffic moving north on it, before Mark Clark ordered them to turn left and make straight for Rome, for fear the British (despite their promises) would try to steal the glory of capturing Rome from him and the US 5th Army. Another problem with this whole "strategic" notion of the Anzio campaign was that there were ample side roads available, further east than Highway 6, used successfully by Germans fleeing from the south, which could have been used to supply the Cassino front if the Germans wanted to keep fighting there, so even successfully capturing both Highways 6 and 7 by the landing force would not necessarily have resulted in achieving the goal of forcing a German withdrawal from the south.

The Anzio landings were easy at first. The Germans had not expected that the Allies would be so foolish as to land there, of all places, so the Anzio-Nettuno area was undefended, with only part of an engineer battalion on the scene. For long weeks though, until Allied strength in the beachhead was built up, there were not sufficient troops to form an actual front line - all that could be managed was a string of strong points.

Other problems at Anzio included that the entire beachhead was within range of German artillery, and since the entire beachhead was also ringed by hills, all held by the Germans, they had excellent observation to direct and correct their artillery fire, which made it swiftly fatal to try to move around in the beachhead during daylight. Far from withdrawing, trembling with fear at this bold Allied move, the German commander in Italy, "Smiling Albert" Kesselring, activated a new Field Army HQ and brought in troops from as far away as Yugoslavia, and within a week had the beachhead tightly hemmed in. There was no question of the landing force reaching its goals, way out there at Highway 6; the question was whether they would be annihilated and driven back into the sea, and it was a very near thing, heavy German attacks in early February coming very near to accomplishing just exactly that. So many, many more Allied divisions had to be fed into the fight, at first just to hang on, and then to build up sufficient strength to make a breakout, and the LSTs had to be kept in Italy as the sole lifeline of supply for this ever growing force. (Churchill said, somewhat disingenuously since the slender landing force was his idea, that he had hoped to fling a wildcat ashore, and instead had beached a whale).

Eventually of course, the Germans in the south did withdraw, Rome was captured, but at a heavy cost. And the southern France landings had to be delayed two and one half months, until August 15. One silverlining to that delay was the German forces which had been on the Riviera coast in early June had by mid-August departed for Normandy, so the southern France landings were not heavily opposed. This all was the result of poor planning, poor selection of a landing place, over-optimistic assumptions as far as achievable goals and German reactions.

What were the two sides of the battle of D-Day?

The Germans vs. the Allies.

The Allied countries that took on the invasion were America (Utah and Omaha beaches), Britain (Sword and Gold beaches) and Canada (Juno Beach).

Although it is most commonly reported Omaha beach invaders faced the heaviest defence, the Canadian Juno beach actually had heavier defence and higher casulties. Juno Beach was reported to have had nearly none of the defenses wiped out by the coastal bombardment.

All 5 beaches were guarded by German Nazi soldiers.

Why it D-Day significant?

D-day was a plan to put a hole in the Atlantic Wall, exposing France to the Allies, in which they retook Europe from the Germans.

How might the outcome of WW2 have changed if the D-Day invasion had not been successful?

By the time the D-Day invasion occurred, Adolf Hitler was becoming more and more unstable in his thoughts and actions. He had visible signs of Parkinson's, and has been posthumously diagnosed with schizophrenia, drug addiction, and manic depression.

This was a psychotic man who had enormous power.

He was actually very pleased with the (beginning) D-day invasion because, as he said "we could never have taken the British in their own country, but now, they have come to us!".

Because the D-day invasion was a success for the Allied forces, Hitler realized that his troops were being over-run, and thus, began to realize that the war was coming to an end, and he was not the victor he thought he would be.

The failure of D-day for the Allied forces would have meant an invasion of England, and possibly even America!

There were U-boats that were approaching America, and Hitler and his scientists even had more advanced weapons that were in development to utilize. He also had recently come into possession of the American "mint" plates, which could have flooded America with counterfeit money, thereby destabilizing our entire economy, which would have been a disaster of epic proportions.

What invasion took place on June 6 1944?

Normandy Invasion took place June 6th 1944n D-day Landings

Who were the significant people involved in the invasion of Normandy?

Americans: Dwight D. Eisenhower and Omar Bradley. British: Bernard Montgomery, Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Arthur Tedder, Miles Dempsey and Bertram Ramsay. Germans: Gerd von Rundstedt, Erwin Rommel, Friedrich Dollmann, Hans von Salmuth and Wilhelm Falley.