Eighty years on, whether you call it the “Longest Day” or the “Mighty Endeavor,” D-Day on June 6, 1944, remains perhaps the most significant day for Western civilization in the 20th century.
As outlined by a February 1944 directive from the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, led the largest amphibious force in history as it embarked on a mission to “enter the continent of Europe and, … undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.”
When British Prime Minister Winston Churchill described the invasion of German-occupied France in June 1944, code-named Operation Overlord, as “the greatest thing we have ever attempted,” he hardly understated the scope of the invasion force. On D-Day alone, Eisenhower deployed 175,000 fighting men and their equipment, 5,333 ships and craft, and almost 11,000 airplanes.
As the United States and the U.S. Army now ponder that historic day, several questions remain: Why were the amphibious forces able to secure a lodgment on France’s Normandy coast against such determined resistance? Did D-Day’s outcome justify the immense sacrifice of lives that occurred on those beaches? Eighty years after the war, why do we remember and commemorate this specific day?
Planning the Assault
At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, the chiefs of staff of the U.K. and the U.S., under the direction of Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, approved the initial plan for Operation Overlord. In December 1943, Roosevelt appointed Eisenhower to command the operation. Eisenhower and British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery revised the initial assault plan from three to five divisions in the initial wave and deployed three airborne divisions to protect the assault force. In addition to increasing the assault force, Eisenhower directed the beaches be attacked on a wider front than originally envisaged.
The Normandy coast where the amphibious armada was scheduled to land was divided into five beaches from west to east named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. As land forces commander, Montgomery directed that U.S. First Army, under Maj. Gen. Omar Bradley, assault Utah and Omaha. The British Second Army, led by Lt. Gen. Miles Dempsey, was assigned the easternmost beaches. The fire support plan called for a massive aerial and naval bombardment to destroy German bunkers and obstacles. The invasion commanders believed this combination not only would achieve tactical surprise, but also would overwhelm the defenders.
In the American zone, three regiments of the 1st, 4th and 29th Infantry Divisions would make the initial assault on Utah and Omaha, supported by the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. Both the 1st and the 82nd had been tested in North Africa and the Mediterranean Theater. The rest would experience their baptism by fire on D-Day.
As historian Geoffrey Perret states in Stephen Ambrose’s 1994 book, D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, “Overlord was the supreme task for which the wartime Army had been created. If the division-making machine really worked, it would be possible to take untried divisions … put them into a bottle against experienced German troops and see them emerge victorious.”
Securing the Beachhead
As soon as Eisenhower confirmed his decision to launch the invasion, the Allied fleet weighed anchor and embarked on the treacherous voyage across the English Channel. H-Hour on D-Day in the American zone was 6:30 a.m., and 7:30 a.m. on the British and Commonwealth beaches, due to changing tides. According to plan, the Allied beachhead would be secured by the end of D-Day.
There is a familiar adage in the military community that before the battle is joined, planning is everything, but once the battle begins, plans go out the window. Such was the American experience on D-Day. The airborne drops were widely scattered, with few units landing in designated drop zones. At Utah Beach, the tidal current carried the 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, farther left, so it debarked a kilometer south of where it should have landed. Only the inspired leadership of Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and regimental commander Col. James Van Fleet remedied the situation. Though not at their designated landing site, Roosevelt and Van Fleet gathered their battalion commanders and immediately pushed inland.
At Pointe du Hoc, midway between Utah and Omaha, the 2nd Ranger Battalion initially misidentified the objective and lost valuable time before its assault to silence a German artillery battery. Once the Rangers climbed 100-foot cliffs under fire, they discovered the German battery was not there. First Sgt. Leonard “Bud” Lomell took it upon himself to locate the missing battery and subsequently destroyed it.
Omaha Beach was a different story. The German defenses were far more formidable. Eighty machine-gun nests covered the 5-mile beach. Thirty-five pillboxes and eight large bunkers protected the five routes of egress from the beach. Moreover, Allied intelligence failed to note that German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had moved the veteran German 352nd Infantry Division to Normandy in late March. Consequently, the German defenders were more numerous than Overlord planners had anticipated.
To make matters worse, the aerial and naval bombardment proved woefully inadequate. Most of the amphibious tanks that were supposed to support the initial waves of the assault foundered in the rough surf. Capt. Taylor Fellers’ A Company in the 29th Division’s 116th Infantry Regiment lost 100 men killed within the first 15 minutes after the landing craft lowered the ramps. Thirty-five members of Fellers’ company hailed from Bedford, Virginia. By day’s end, 19 had been killed in action.
Capt. Joe Dawson, commanding G Company of the 16th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division, landed in the second wave. Writing a week after June 6, he recalled, “The first wave lay dead or dying.”
By 8:30 a.m., the invasion at Omaha Beach had stalled.
So, how did the attackers get off the beach? Ambrose credits the U.S. Navy and the infantrymen with breaking the stalemate. Skippers of the naval destroyers risked running aground to provide the only artillery support against the shore batteries the assaulting forces had on D-Day. On the beach, leaders such as Brig. Gen. Norman “Dutch” Cota, assistant commander of the 29th Infantry Division; Col. George Taylor, 16th Infantry Regiment commander; Lt. John Spaulding and Dawson of the 16th; and innumerable lieutenants and NCOs finally broke the deadlock as they led their soldiers to the top of the bluffs.
The Aftermath
When the Allies invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944, France was entering its 1,453rd day of German occupation. As the sun set on D-Day, the Western Allies had deposited over 175,000 American, British and Canadian troops along the French coast. The airborne and amphibious forces had cracked Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler’s vaunted Atlantic Wall. The lodgment was tenuous, but Rommel had been proven correct: “The first 24 hours of the invasion will be decisive … for the Allies, as well as Germany, it will be the longest day,” he had said.
The battle on the five invasion beaches marked the first day of liberation of not only France, but also of Western Europe, from Nazi tyranny.
All told, Allied casualties on D-Day were estimated at 10,000–12,000 killed, wounded or missing. Casualties had been heavy, albeit not as bad as feared. Some 2,500 Allied soldiers were killed, with some 1,000 dead on Omaha Beach alone, where the fighting had been most intense. First Army’s after-action reports counted American losses at 6,603, including 1,465 killed in action, 3,184 wounded and 1,928 missing in action. German losses were undetermined.
Was it worth the cost? Eisenhower and generations of politicians and historians think so.
The consequences of failure stagger the imagination. Military historian Carlo D’Este noted in the 2004 book The D-Day Companion: Leading historians explore history’s greatest amphibious assault, “The most serious repercussion of failure is that the Allies would have lost their precious initiative and the element of surprise, and to re-mount OVERLORD before late spring or early summer of 1945 would have been virtually impossible. For better or worse, OVERLORD was a one-time proposition.”
Had the European war been extended to 1946, the map of Europe would have been altered, with the Soviet Red Army possibly reaching the Rhine River in Germany before the Allied Expeditionary Force could have embarked on a second amphibious assault. With another year of preparation before the Allies could return to France, the German Wehrmacht would have inflicted far more casualties on the invading Allied forces.
Remembrance, Meaning
Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes.” Military organizations, including the U.S. Army, too frequently learn from mistakes identified in a series of after-action reviews. Regrettably, they then forget the lessons from previous conflicts. Beyond the critical importance of detailed preparation and planning, tailoring the force for specific missions and the implications of successful coalition warfare, June 6, 1944, provides the U.S. with a critical challenge as it traverses the 21st century.
On the 20th anniversary of D-Day, Eisenhower returned to Normandy and reflected on what the world had to pay for survival. Speaking to correspondent Walter Cronkite as he gazed over the 9,387 final resting places of so many men and women in the Normandy American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, Eisenhower said, “This D-Day has a very special meaning for me. … In the 20th century, Americans, along with the rest of the free world, came across the oceans to defend these ideals [of freedom and systems of self-government]. I devoutly hope that we will never again have to see such scenes as these. I think and hope, pray, that humanity will learn more than we have learned up to that time. So, every time I come back to these beaches, or any day when I think about that day, 20 years ago now, I say once more we must find some way to work … to gain an eternal peace for this world.”
Why does D-Day still matter? Leave it to the Supreme Commander to remind us that the spirit and the sacrifices of the soldiers, sailors and airmen who fought on D-Day permitted democracies to survive. Only then can we, as Americans, ensure that the sun never sets on the Longest Day.
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Col. Cole Kingseed, U.S. Army retired, a former professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York, is a writer and consultant. He holds a doctorate in history from Ohio State University.