D-Day Operation Overlord: What Really Happened in History's Largest Amphibious Invasion

On June 6, 1944, the most troops ever gathered from the United States, the UK, France and Canada hit arous expanse of beach in the coast of Normandy. These landing points were Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword beaches that was kept from German intel that would have been slaughter if the Nazi's would have found out, reported CNN

Plans for D-Day

D-Day preparations were made more than a year in anticipation, and the Allies employed military deception, the codenamed Operation Bodyguard, would keep the Nazis wondering about invasion's actual date and where.

The operation was meant to begin on June 5, with the full moon and low tides will correspond with ideal weather, but thunderstorms forced a 24-hour delay.

The invasion itself

The amphibious landings, code-named Operation Overlord, included a massive bombing campaign seeking to destroy German defenses.

Germans were misled to believe that the initial attacks were just a decoy, and that the major invasion will start happening further out on the coast. On June 6, the allies plowed the waters to land at 6:30 a.m. on the five beach heads designated by military planners, cited KMBC.

The US Marines landed in force at Utah Beach on D-Day Operation Overlord, at the base of the Cotentin Peninsular, Omaha Beach, at the northernmost tip of the Normandy coast. The British landed on Gold Beach, joined by the Canadians at Juno, and finally the British at Sword were at the invasion's easternmost point.

At midnight of June 6, all troops controlled their beach heads and went in further from the landing points, after heavy fighting that took its share of casualties on allied troops.

Massive numbers on D-day

The numbers of ships used were about 7,000 with 213 warships including 4,127 landing craft.

The total number of Allied troops counted 24,000 men who were sent to the rear of enemy lines after midnight on the day of the invasion, plus a total of 132,000 troops were on the beach battling for every inch. Normandy's beaches were full of dead men, but a good number survived.

In the air was 12,000 aircraft while 10,000 vehicles brought in by marine's support units and engineers on the five landing beach heads.

Casualties were caused by heavy fire from German positions on the steep slopes that had not been completely destroyed by Allied bombings before the assault.

The dead

D-Day was a success but not without loss for about 4,414 Allied troops were casualties, and 9,000 were missing or wounded. But Germans may have lost a whopping 4,000 to 9,000 men who defended Normandy.

What followed was a push by the army and air forces to conquer German defense quickly, it was 77 days from landing to fighting all the way to Paris.

Despite securing a stronghold on the French coast on D-Day, the Allied forces faced the risk of bombardment by the Germans that could push them back into the sea, noted East Idaho News.

This allowed the Allies to gain total control of Normandy 77 days later and move on toward Paris, which they liberated in August 1944. It all began with D-Day Operation Overlord.

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World War II