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The Battle of Normandy was fought in 1944 between German Forces and the invading Allied forces as part of the larger conflict of World War II . '''Operation Overlord''' was the Codename for the Allied invasion of northwest Europe, which began on June 6 , 1944 , and ended on August 19 , 1944 , when the Allies crossed the River Seine . Over sixty years later, the Normandy Invasion still remains the largest seaborne invasion in history, having involved almost three million troops crossing the English Channel from England to Normandy. ''' Operation Neptune ''' was the codename given to the initial assault phase of ''Operation Overlord;'' its mission, to gain a foothold on the continent, started on June 6 , 1944 (commonly known as D-Day ) and ended on June 30 , 1944 . The primary Allied formations that saw combat in Normandy came from Canada , the United Kingdom and the United States Of America . Substantial Free French and Polish forces also participated in the battle after the assault phase, and there were also contingents from Belgium , Czechoslovakia , Greece , The Netherlands , and Norway .Williams, Jeffery. ''The Long Left Flank''. The Normandy invasion began with overnight Parachute and Glider landings, massive Air Attacks , Naval Bombardments , and an early morning Amphibious phase began on June 6 . The "D-Day" forces deployed from bases along the south coast of England, the most important of these being Portsmouth . The battle for Normandy continued for more than two months, with campaigns to establish, expand, and eventually break out of the Allied Beachhead s, and concluded with the close of the Falaise Pocket and the subsequent Liberation Of Paris in late August 1944. The Battle of Normandy was described thus by , Simon & Schuster, 1995 ALLIED PREPARATIONS , 101st Airborne Division on the evening of June 5 , 1944 .]] After the 1941 German Invasion Of The Soviet Union , the Red Army had done most of the fighting against Germany on the European mainland. In a joint statement with Stalin , the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill had announced the "full understanding" was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a Second Front in Europe in 1942.Churchill unofficially informed the Soviets in a memorandum handed to Molotov that the resources necessary for an invasion were lackingEddy Bauer, Spelet vid konferensbordet, p 44, Bokorama - ISBN 91-7024-017-5 - 1983. However, the announcement had some effect in an order by Hitler in which he ordered preparations for an Allied descent on Europe. The British, under Churchill, wished to avoid the costly , for an invasion in 1942, and Operation Roundup, for a larger attack in 1943, which was adopted and became Operation Overlord, although it was delayed until 1944. The planning process was started in earnest in March 1943 by British Chief of Staff of Supreme Allied Commander ( COSSAC ), Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick E. Morgan with the aid of his American deputy, Maj. Gen. Ray Barker . The plan was later adopted and refined starting in January 1944 by SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force), led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower . The short operating range of British fighters, including the '' and the Normandy coast. While the ''Pas de Calais'' offered the shortest distance to the European mainland from the UK {Link without Title} , the larger, flatter beaches12, and the most direct overland route to Germany, it was the most heavily fortified and defended landing site. Consequently, the Allies chose Normandy for the invasion. In part because of lessons learned by Allied troops in the Raid On Dieppe of August 19 1942 , the Allies decided not to assault a French Seaport directly in their first landings. Landings in force on a broad front in Normandy would permit simultaneous threats against the port of Cherbourg , coastal ports further west in Brittany , and an overland attack towards Paris and towards the border with Germany. Normandy was a less-defended coast and an unexpected but strategic jumping-off point, with the potential to confuse and scatter the German defending forces. In November 1943 {Link without Title} General Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander Of The Allied Expeditionary Force , giving him overall charge of the Allied forces in Western Europe. In January 1944, General Sir Bernard Montgomery was named as commander of the 21st Army Group, to which all of the invasion ground forces belonged, and was also given charge of developing the invasion plan.Nigel Hamilton, ''Montgomery, Bernard Law'', Oxford Dictionary Of National Biography (2004) At that stage the COSSAC plan proposed a landing from the sea by three and May 15 Montgomery presented his strategy for the invasion at St Paul's School . He envisaged a ninety day battle, ending when all the forces reached the Seine , pivoting on an Allied-held Caen , with British and Canadian armies forming a shoulder and the U.S. armies wheeling to the right. , a southern English coastal town, en route to board landing ships for the invasion of France.]] About 6,900 vessels would be involved in the invasion, under the command of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay (who had been directly involved in the North African and Italian landings), including 4,100 Landing Craft . A total of 12,000 aircraft under Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory were to support the landings, including 1,000 transports to fly in the parachute troops; 10,000 tons of bombs would be dropped against the German defences, and 14,000 attack Sorties would be flown. The objective for the first 40 days was to create a Lodgement that would include the cities of Caen and Cherbourg (especially Cherbourg, for its deep-water port). Subsequently, there would be a break out from the lodgement to liberate Brittany and its Atlantic ports, and to advance to a line roughly 125 miles (190 km) to the southwest of Paris , from Le Havre through Le Mans to Tours , so that after ninety days the Allies would control a zone bounded by the rivers Loire in the south and Seine in the northeast. Deception In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted a deception operation, Operation Bodyguard , designed to persuade the Germans that areas other than northern France would be threatened as well (such as the Balkans and the south of France). Then, in the weeks leading up to the invasion, in order to persuade the Germans that the main invasion would really take place at the Pas de Calais, and to lead them to expect an invasion of Norway, the Allies prepared a massive deception plan, called '' Operation Fortitude ''. Operation Fortitude North would lead the Axis to expect an attack on Norway; the much more vital Operation Fortitude South was designed to lead the Germans to expect the main invasion at the Pas de Calais, and to hold back forces to guard against this threat rather than rushing them to Normandy. An entirely fictitious First U.S. Army Group ("FUSAG"), supposedly located in southeastern England under the command of General Lesley J. McNair and General George S. Patton, Jr. , was created in German minds by the use of Double Agents and fake radio traffic. The Germans had an extensive network of agents operating in England. Unfortunately for them, every single one reporting about FUSAG had been "turned" by the Allies as part of the Double Cross System , and appropriate agents were dutifully sending back messages "confirming" the existence and location of FUSAG and the ''Pas de Calais'' as the likely main attack point. Dummy tanks (some inflatable), trucks, and landing craft, as well as troop camp facades (constructed from scaffolding and canvas) were placed in ports on the eastern and southeastern coasts of Britain, and the '' Luftwaffe '' was allowed to photograph them.The Allied Forces even went as far as to broadcast static over Axis accessible radioways and convinced Germany to expend efforts to try to decode white noise,further leading Germany away from the upcoming Normandy invasion. In aid of Operation Fortitude North, Operation Skye was mounted from Scotland using radio traffic, designed to convince German traffic analysts that an invasion would also be mounted into Norway. Against this phantom threat, German units that otherwise could have been moved into France were instead kept in Norway. The last part of the deception occurred on the night before the invasion: a small group of SAS operators deployed dummy paratroopers over Le Havre and Isigny. These dummies led the Germans to believe that an additional airborne assault had occurred; this tied up reinforcing troops and kept the true situation unclear. On that same night, two RAF squadrons ( No. 617 Squadron and No. 218 Squadron ) created an illusion of a massive naval convoy sailing for the Cap d'Antifer (15 miles north of Le Havre ). This was achieved by the precision dropping of strips of metal foil. The foil give a radar return mistakenly interpreted by German radar operators as a fleet of small craft towing barrage balloons. |
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