The Mastery Behind D-Day

 

The code name given to the Allied invasion of France in June 1944 was Operation Overlord. The main commander of the operation was General Dwight Eisenhower. Ari Marshall Leigh-Mallory, Air Marshall Tedder, Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, and Admiral Bertram Ramsey were the other senior commanders involved in Operation Overlord. This landing involved logistical landing procedures that had never been dealt with before. The goal for the Allies was to have landed a vast amount of men and equipment by the end of D-Day.

Although the Pays de Calais was the best choice for the landing as it was closest part of France to Britain, it was also well defended by the Germans. The risks for landing on Normandy were much higher but the shore line would work for the massive landing of equipment and soldiers. The logistics behind the execution of Operation Overlord were a first in history. The plan was a closely held secret. The goal was to fool the enemy into thinking Pays de Calais was the main target not Normandy.

For the invasion, 6,000 ships were required for the D-Day invasion. In the first three days, Operation Overlord was slated to move over 100,000 men and 13,000 military vehicles. One of the components of the plan included the movement of an artificial harbor to that landings could be handled with more ease after the beaches had been taken. In all, Overlord moved a total of three million men in 47 divisions, moved by 6,000 ships with coverage by 5,000 fighter planes. Major casualties only occurred at Juno and Omaha Beach. This was proof of wow well planned the whole operation turned out to be.

Following an extensive bombardment of the assault areas, the Allies launched a simultaneous landing of U.S., British, Canadian and French forces on five separate beaches code named:

Sword Beach (British)
Juno Beach (Canadian)
Gold Beach (British)
Omaha Beach (American)
Utah Beach (American)

An interesting side note is that the “D” does not stand for "Deliverance", "Doom", "Debarkation" or similar words. In fact, it does not stand for anything. The “D” is derived from the word "Day". “D-Day” means the day on which a military operation begins. The term "D-Day" has been used for many different operations, but it is now generally only used to refer to the Allied landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944.