For educational purposes
View the famous D-Day landings of 1944 from the ships of the Allied invasion fleet and from the positions of the German army as it tried desperately to defend the beaches of Normandy.
View the famous D-Day landings of 1944 from the ships of the Allied invasion fleet and from the positions of the German army as it tried desperately to defend the beaches of Normandy.
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00:00You
00:30In
00:53the early hours of June 6, 1944, Allied airborne troops began boarding the aircraft that were
00:59to take them to battle.
01:24As they dropped from the skies over Hitler's fortress Europe, these men had the grim satisfaction
01:30of being the first Allied troops to set foot on enemy-occupied soil.
01:35They were the vanguard of one of the largest military operations ever mounted.
01:48Operation Overlord, the Allied campaign to liberate Northwest Europe, really had a double
01:52significance.
01:54Militarily, it represented the death knell for the German cause in the Second World War.
02:00But politically, it was also extremely important.
02:03Had the Allies either stumbled at the first hurdle on the 6th of June, 1944, or at some
02:08time later on in the campaign, the map of Western Europe would have looked very different
02:14from that with which we're familiar with today.
02:17From a technical point of view, though, Overlord is tremendously important because this was
02:22the first time that so many people and so much equipment was picked up and moved over
02:31the sea and dropped on shore against fierce opposition, ever.
02:36Nobody had ever run an operation of this scale before.
02:46The night of the 5th and 6th of June, 1944, the tension in Eisenhower's headquarters,
02:52the tension at No. 10 Downing Street, was absolutely incredible because both Churchill
02:58and Eisenhower knew that there was a real possibility of this operation ending in total
03:03catastrophe.
03:04On the evening of the 5th of June, Eisenhower typed up two memoranda.
03:09One was to announce that D-Day had been successful.
03:12The other that D-Day had been a failure.
03:28Today as a memorial service is held for the paratroopers who helped secure the Normandy
03:33bridgehead.
03:34You can find amongst the headstones the grave of Private E. S. Côté.
03:41Sadly, he was among the first casualties in the Great Invasion of Europe.
03:46He had died to liberate Rondeville, the first town in Europe to fall into Allied hands.
03:57On this occasion, we've got three airborne divisions, we've got the British 6th Airborne
04:01Division and the American 101st and the 82nd, and they were going to drop on either side
04:06of the invasion bridges, the east and the west, left and the right.
04:09The concept was, fly the air landing brigade in and drop the paratrooper battalions in
04:17to take specific objectives to make it possible for the Allied landings to come in unmolested,
04:27or preventing the Germans from counterattacking over certain bridges.
04:33Certain bridges were knocked out to stop the Germans using them.
04:41Even today, Operation Overlord still ranks as the largest and most complex single military
04:47operation ever staged.
04:52In the first wave, there were more than 75,000 Canadian and British troops and 57,000 Americans
05:00as they assaulted the beaches of Normandy.
05:07The codenames of those beaches have become beacons in military history.
05:12Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.
05:21On D-Day, approximately 156,000 Allied troops landed from the sea or dropped from the air
05:28into Normandy.
05:30That's approximately five divisions coming ashore on the beaches with three brigades
05:35and a further three airborne divisions.
05:38Defending against them, it's very much harder to be certain of the exact size of the German
05:43forces, but added up, it comes out at about five divisions, one of them armoured plus
05:49a brigade.
05:50So in terms of land forces, the Allies are stronger, but not vastly stronger.
05:59On the other side of the Channel, the Germans knew that the invasion was coming.
06:04They had made considerable efforts to prepare what Hitler optimistically called the Atlantic
06:09Wall, a line of defences intended to assure the protection of the coast from the Arctic
06:15to Spain.
06:17Work had actually begun on the Atlantic Wall in 1942, but by early 1944 it was still not
06:24complete.
06:26There were numerous concrete gun emplacements and blockhouses which dotted the coastline,
06:31but it was certainly not a continuous line.
06:35In late 1943, the famous desert veteran Erwin Rommel was personally appointed by Hitler
06:42as Inspector General of the Atlantic Wall defences.
06:47One of the main elements of Rommel's defensive strategy lay in a massive belt of anti-tank
06:52mines along the entire length of the coast, which, in places, stretched to a depth of
06:57half a mile from the shoreline.
07:01This first line was intended to be backed up by an additional belt of mines up to five
07:06miles deep, sighted further inland.
07:11Herr Paemmoller was one of the men who helped set up the defences.
07:41It has been calculated that this grandiose scheme would have required 200 million mines
08:07to complete.
08:09Despite the more limited resources actually available to him, Rommel still boasted that
08:15the beaches would become what he described as a zone of death.
08:21The problem with the Atlantic Wall was the same as the problem with the Maginot Line.
08:27Once you get past the chain of fortifications, all of the effort and expenditure, all of
08:34those gun barrels that had been mounted in those fortresses, instantly become useless.
08:42Nobody really expects defence lines to actually stop and attack dead.
08:48The defence lines are there to actually slow down the attack, maybe by 24, 48 hours, something
08:53like that, to allow you to move your reserves up so you can then put in the counter-attack.
08:59When it came to the choice of the actual invasion beaches, the number of locations
09:04was limited by the availability of fighter cover which could be provided from England.
09:09An attack on Holland was also ruled out because of the difficulties of capturing a sea port.
09:16The logical choice, of course, was the Pas de Calais area, which was only 22 miles across
09:22the channel from Dover.
09:24This was also the shortest sea crossing.
09:28It was also obvious to the Germans, and it was here that the very heaviest defences of
09:33fortress Europe were concentrated.
09:41The final choice then fell upon the remaining option, which was the Normandy coast.
09:47Normandy was far enough from the obvious route to have a decoy effect on the Germans, but
09:53at the same time it was still well within fighter range and was considerably less well
09:58defended than the Pas de Calais.
10:01Additionally, if Cherbourg could be captured early on, it would provide an invaluable port
10:07for bringing in the supplies which would be required for the massive body of men which
10:11would be necessary for the campaign in Europe.
10:15Quite clearly, if one was going to supply such large numbers of personnel with all the
10:20diverse needs of 20th century armed forces, then an all-weather port facility was absolutely
10:27essential.
10:28Relying upon traffic across the beaches or relying upon the mulberry harbours that the
10:33Allies constructed and took with them to Normandy was a partial recipe for logistics success,
10:40but certainly not a sufficient one.
10:43As soon as he was appointed to supreme command, General Dwight D. Eisenhower set up his headquarters
10:50at Bushy Park in London's western suburbs and gathered together the very best of Allied
10:56commanders that he could find.
10:59Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder was the deputy supreme commander, Air Chief Marshal
11:05Sir Trafford Lee Mallory was given command of Allied air forces, and Admiral Sir Bertram
11:11Ramsey was in charge of the sea forces for the invasion.
11:15On land, command fell to General Sir Bernard Montgomery, who was to command the forces
11:21on the ground.
11:24Inevitably, the colourful figure of Montgomery attracted a disproportionate level of interest.
11:31There was some controversy almost from the start of the operation.
11:35The initial plan had originally envisaged a three-division operation, which would have
11:39entailed landing around 100,000 Allied troops.
11:44For the cautious Montgomery, it soon became obvious that this would need to be revised
11:49to five divisions, to guarantee success on D-Day.
11:55The overall plan for the invasion of Fortress Europe, codenamed Operation Overlord, called
12:01for the British and Canadian forces to seize the eastern beaches with the Cairn Canal on
12:07their left flank.
12:10These beaches were codenamed Sword, Juno and Gold.
12:15The bridge over the canal was to be seized in a bold airborne operation, designed to
12:20protect the British left flank.
12:25Despite the best efforts of Hollywood to present Overlord as a purely American undertaking,
12:31the Americans were actually fewer in number than the British and Canadians, and therefore
12:36were to assault only two beaches in the west.
12:39These were codenamed Omaha and Utah.
12:44Once again, the American flank was to be protected by a parachute drop on the town of Saint-Mère-Église.
12:53The planning for D-Day progressed carefully throughout 1943, and secrecy was vital.
13:00If the Germans had got wind of it, even 48 hours beforehand, D-Day would have been a
13:07catastrophe.
13:08There would have been nothing to have prevented the Germans diverting their forces, very,
13:12very substantial forces in the Pas-de-Calais to the Normandy area.
13:16There was a huge deception plan to convince the Germans that the invasion was going to
13:21be in the Pas-de-Calais.
13:22The Germans always believed it was going to be there, and we continued to allow them to
13:27think that way.
13:30We did not know that we were going into Normandy until I was handed sealed orders on the ship
13:39in which I was before sailing.
13:43As a direct result of the experience gained in the disastrous Dieppe raid in 1942, an
13:48ingenious variety of armoured assault vehicles were designed to assist in the real attack
13:54on Hitler's Atlantic wall.
13:58The most important of these was a special adaptation of the Churchill tank, which had
14:03its main gun replaced by a massive 290mm mortar known as a petard.
14:10This could fire a huge explosive charge known to the troops as the flying dustbin.
14:16The massive explosion was intended to blow apart concrete defences.
14:23For crossing larger obstacles such as sea walls, the Churchill tank could also be adapted
14:29to carry a box girder bridge with a span of 30 feet.
14:36In the event that the soft sand of the beaches would prove too difficult for tanks to cross,
14:41yet another variation on the Churchill was developed.
14:45This one carried what was known as a bobbin.
14:49This was usually a huge roll of canvas or some similar material, often reinforced with
14:56bars of tubular steel and it was wound around a drum and this drum is then fixed onto the
15:00front of the tank.
15:03In principle what it could do was unreal this thing, drive over it as it went along and
15:08leave a pathway behind it.
15:13The Allies also developed two main variants of the trusty Sherman tank.
15:18The first of these was the duplex drive or DD swimming tank.
15:24This used a collapsible canvas screen and a propeller mounted on the back of the tank
15:29to allow the vehicle to swim ashore and reach the shallow water where they could neutralise
15:34enemy anti-tank positions.
15:38To clear a path through the minefields there was a special variant of the Sherman known
15:42as the crab.
15:44It was a flail tank which carried a mechanical device designed to beat the area in front
15:49of the tank, using steel chains which would explode any mines in the path of the vehicle.
16:00While Allied plans progressed smoothly, on the German side of the Channel the situation
16:05continued to deteriorate.
16:11As Supreme Commander, Adolf Hitler constantly dabbled in every aspect of the forces at his
16:16command and he had a habit of reserving powerful formations for his personal control.
16:24As a result, the situation in France was a particularly complicated one.
16:30The nominal Commander-in-Chief was von Rundstedt, who controlled Army Group B, responsible for
16:37northern France and Belgium, and Army Group G, which was responsible for southern France.
16:44But Rommel, in command of Army Group B, enjoyed the favour of Hitler and had been appointed
16:50Inspector General of the entire Atlantic Wall defences, with special responsibility for
16:56the entire coastal defence line, so in practice could not be overruled by von Rundstedt, even
17:02though von Rundstedt was his superior.
17:07To further complicate matters, three of the panzer divisions operating within Rommel's
17:11area of influence were allocated to a separate formation known as Panzer Group West.
17:18This powerful grouping was designated as an army reserve and could be deployed only on
17:24the express authority of Hitler himself.
17:29Adolf Hitler believed in struggle, that the strongest man, the strongest beast would emerge
17:37from a natural process of struggle, and he organised the Nazi state that way, so that
17:43the German command structure is not set up to cooperate with itself, it is set up as
17:48a series of competing structures which are meant to fight each other.
17:54And they did this so well that they defeated themselves as well as the Allies defeating
17:57them in Normandy.
18:01Rommel believed that the only chance for defeating the Allied invasion was to fight on the beaches
18:06and drive the invasion back into the sea.
18:10Rommel therefore wanted the armoured reserves as close to the beaches as possible for a
18:15quick counter-attack.
18:17Von Rundstedt, however, disagreed with Rommel's strategy.
18:22Rundstedt reacted to the threat of Allied invasion in Normandy in a sound, conventional
18:28German staff-college way.
18:31Let the Allies come ashore, let them get inland where they can be encircled, and then destroyed
18:39in the traditional German battle of annihilation.
18:42And Rundstedt's concept required that the armour be held back, far away from the beach,
18:50so that once the Allies are ashore, they can be punched with a heavy fist of armour.
18:58Now Rommel disagreed fundamentally.
19:01He said, Rundstedt, you don't understand that if you don't have air superiority, you cannot
19:07count on being able to have that big battle of annihilation.
19:11Without air superiority, for instance, that big armoured fist of yours is going to be
19:17destroyed on the railway tracks back in Paris by Allied air.
19:21You can't do it, says Rommel.
19:25The struggles in the Wehrmacht hierarchy were merely the start of the problems for
19:29the Germans on D-Day.
19:33The German forces, already thinly spread, were further weakened by the needs of the
19:38Russian front.
19:39Hitler constantly took German divisions away from the task of defending the Atlantic wall
19:45to shore up the crumbling front in the east.
19:50From 1941 through to 1944, about two-thirds of all the German war-fighting resources were
19:57being tied up in the war against the Soviet Union.
20:01In consequence, many of the divisions which were dispatched to the Atlantic wall were
20:06poor quality, and in some cases, actually comprised of troops who would otherwise have
20:11been considered unfit for service.
20:17Although the German forces could deploy a small number of highly experienced, well-supplied
20:22divisions, they also had a large number of units which were understrength, poorly equipped,
20:28with poor transport.
20:30As much as 10% of Rommel's Army Group B was not even composed of German nationals.
20:39In the front lines on D-Day, the proportion of non-Germans may have been as high as 25%.
20:46These were men who were volunteers from various countries occupied by the Germans, or prisoners
20:51of war who had enlisted in the German army.
20:55They came mainly from the Asiatic republics of the Soviet Union, and were simply used
21:00as cannon fodder in the front line of D-Day.
21:10The momentous decision of which day to choose for D-Day rested on the shoulders of the Supreme
21:15Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
21:19He originally selected D-Day as 5th June, the day when the tides best suited the invasion.
21:29During the D-Day landings, and for up to 20 miles inland, the Allied forces could rely
21:35on the massive guns of the Allied battleships, which were capable of firing devastating barrages
21:41of heavy artillery fire against the German forces.
21:50In the opening days of the Normandy campaign, the Allies could rely upon the support of
21:55nine battleships, 23 cruisers, and 73 destroyers.
22:05Cyril Thames was aboard the Allied fleet as the bombardment began.
22:09More than 55 years later, he can still vividly recall the effects of the shelling.
22:16We were bombarding Normandy.
22:19We were anchored off Le Havre, and we were bombarding 20 miles inland, a place called
22:29Caen.
22:30And we were being controlled gunnery-wise by a spotter plane, 20 miles away.
22:36I don't know what the Germans thought, I'm sure, but it certainly riled them up when
22:42we put a few shells amongst them.
22:46One other area where the Allies enjoyed undisputed superiority was in air power.
22:53From April 1944, they had been conducting bombing operations against French targets,
22:59including railway marshalling yards and bridges.
23:04On D-Day itself, 5,000 Allied fighters filled the sky and swept away the 119 German fighters
23:12which opposed them.
23:15With the air superiority of 50 to 1, rocket-firing typhoons of the Allied air force had a field
23:22day, combing the terrain behind the Normandy beaches for any sign of movement on the ground.
23:29By midday on June 6th, 1944, Allied fighters were completely unopposed, and in many instances,
23:37the pilots could no longer find a target.
23:43Allied air superiority naturally affected the whole conduct of the battle.
23:47It meant that German reinforcements were slow getting to Normandy.
23:52Allied air superiority meant that once the Germans realised that the main invasion was
23:57in Normandy, they had then got to start moving their armour, their Panzer divisions, up to Normandy.
24:04Allied air superiority was going to prevent that, or certainly help to prevent that, because
24:09the Germans found themselves in the predicament of having to move troops and tanks by night.
24:14If they moved by day, they were just taken out by the typhoons and the American fighters,
24:20the tank-busters.
24:22I remember once we went out on a recce, where the railway crossed the road, the railway
24:29crossing, and four Panther tanks had been knocked out by typhoons, and they were on
24:36the railway line, they'd been travelling up the railway line, and they were really wicked,
24:41those typhoon rockets.
24:42We used to sort of give up a cheer every time the typhoons came.
24:50Newsreels of the period showed German vehicles covered in branches in an attempt to disguise
24:56any vehicle movements from the air.
25:00The crews constantly scanned the horizon for the first signs of the British fighter-bombers,
25:05which made any movement on the ground an extremely hazardous undertaking.
25:15To offset the many disadvantages which faced the German troops fighting on the ground in
25:20Normandy, they did enjoy some real advantages over the Allies in terms of experience.
25:29Many of the Panzer divisions which would be used to face the Allies had a strong core
25:34of battle-hardened, experienced troops who had already seen four years of brutal warfare.
25:41This experience gave them the mental toughness which would serve them in great stead during
25:46the coming battle.
25:51In among these divisions were some very formidable formations, such as the SS Leibstandarte
25:57and the Panzer Leer Division.
26:00The Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, the first SS Panzer division, was a formation which,
26:07like other SS units, was very, very well stocked.
26:14Because the SS had its own chain of command and because Heinrich Himmler was so close
26:21to Hitler and so personally powerful, the SS divisions like the Leibstandarte Adolf
26:27Hitler were very well supplied with people, they were very well supplied with tanks, well-fed,
26:35well-fuelled, compared to the rest of the German army.
26:41Like so many of the German armoured formations committed to the fighting in Normandy, the
26:46Panzer Leer, or Demonstration Division, was an extremely capable fighting formation.
26:51It was well equipped with something like 200 tanks, many of the modern Panthers, which
26:56were probably superior to most of the Allied tanks at that time.
26:59In addition, it was made up of personnel drawn primarily from training establishments.
27:05So these were officer and NCO cadres and specialists who had extremely prolonged experience
27:12on fighting on, for example, the Eastern Front. So these were very capable personnel.
27:19The Hitler Youth Division was virtually unique in the history of warfare. It was composed
27:25of utterly fanatical, ideologically dedicated young Nazis with an average age of 18.
27:33This division was formed in October 1943, and it was known as the Hitler Youth Division,
27:41the 12th SS Panzer Division, as it became. It was an exceedingly dangerous division,
27:49because it was composed of young men who were fanatics, and young men of 16 and 17 who could
27:56not conceive of death. Not only are they fearless, but when they are fighting for a cause that
28:02they believe in, men of that age can be utterly ruthless. They have no capacity to empathise.
28:12One area in which the Germans had a real advantage was in the quality of their tanks.
28:23Not only were the crews hugely experienced and battle-hardened by years on the Russian
28:28front, the tanks themselves were far better than those used by the Allies. In particular,
28:35the Tiger, Panther and the new King Tiger tanks could all engage Allied tanks at much
28:41longer ranges than those at which the Allies could fight back.
28:49The German tanks came from the German tradition of precision engineering and excellent design,
28:58and they were technically brilliant, the German tanks. And by 1944, many of them were armed
29:05with 88mm high-velocity guns which could punch through Allied tanks like a hot knife through
29:12butter.
29:18If one talks to a veteran of the Northwest European campaign today and asks them questions
29:24about their armour and the quality of their armour, you are likely to get a very, very
29:28angry response indeed. And I have actually seen veterans at conferences get up and say
29:35that the manufacturers of British tanks who received medals at the end of the Second World
29:40War, if they had any decency at all, would have actually sent their medals back.
29:47On June 1st, when the first meeting to discuss the weather forecast for D-Day was held, the
29:53outlook was not good, and it deteriorated during the next three days.
29:59Finally, at 4.15am, after much deliberation, the order was given to postpone the invasion
30:07until June 6th. Harvey Pierman recalls the uncertainty which surrounded the decision
30:14to go.
30:15They put us on the boats a couple of days before, and then they postponed the landings,
30:20and we were rolling about on these landing craft for a couple of days before they decided
30:25to take off because of the weather. And when we got out in the channel, there were minesweepers
30:32on each side of us, escorting us over to Normandy. And I think we were on the landing craft nearly
30:4024 hours on the crossing, which is about 100 miles across to Normandy from Southampton.
30:49H-hour in the British sector was fixed at 7.25am on June 6th, with the US forces in
30:56the Western sector going in 50 minutes earlier at 6.35am.
31:03In the early hours of the morning, the drone of aircraft engines could be heard overhead.
31:09About 750 heavy bombers carried out a concentrated bombing attack, designed to soften up the
31:15German positions in the coastal area.
31:21As dawn broke on D-Day, the fires started by the heavy bombers acted like beacons for
31:26the incoming ships. The coast of France was clearly visible when the heaviest air blow
31:32of all was struck immediately before H-hour.
31:36Flying fortresses and liberators of the US 8th and 9th Air Forces, covered by an umbrella
31:42of fighters, unloaded 2,000 tons of bombs on the British and American beaches.
31:49The complete absence of the Luftwaffe at this time must have been grimly suggestive
31:54to the stunned German defenders of things to come.
32:02One of those who could not stand the strain was a German artilleryman, Herr Hesselbart.
32:08He quickly surrendered to the Allies on D-Day.
32:20You can train better through a certain bravery and you can compensate for an oversight.
32:26But if this oversight was so huge, then you can't do anything.
32:31And the next day the Americans attacked and on this day I had the opportunity to run over.
32:38And that was this bad feeling, hopefully no one falls on your head now.
32:43And that was the worst.
32:50Herr Hesselbart was not the only one with problems that day.
32:54The German 7th Army came under the command of General Dollmann,
32:58but he himself was absent from the invasion area on June 6th at a planning meeting.
33:04To further complicate matters, Rommel, his direct superior,
33:08had also chosen this precise time to go home on leave to visit his wife.
33:15With Hitler retaining personal control of Panzergruppe West,
33:19the net effect of the confusion was that only the 21st Panzer Division
33:23was available to perform a counterattack against the Allies on June 6th.
33:29The big armoured counterattack force that the Germans had in France
33:34was in the hands of the Führer.
33:37And everybody knew that the Führer didn't like being woken up in the middle of the night.
33:44And when it came time to actually use the armoured counterattack force,
33:49nobody would go in to wake the Führer.
33:52And as a result, the Germans could not put their armoured counterattack in in a timely fashion.
34:00Once the bombers had done their work, the bombarding ships opened up.
34:04British Hunt-class destroyers raced in to engage in close duels with any surviving shore batteries.
34:11The final close-up punch before the assault troops poured ashore
34:15was delivered by rocket-firing craft.
34:19Despite the massive advantages, the Allies did not have everything their own way.
34:24Along the entire 50-mile front, appalling weather hampered the landings.
34:31Enemy fire from bold survivors added to the confusion.
34:43The hardest fighting on the whole length of the beaches
34:46came in the American sector, and on Omaha Beach in particular.
34:51The American Omaha landings began to go wrong from the very start.
34:57The attacking forces which made the assault, the 16th Regimental Combat Team 1st Division
35:03and the 116th Regimental Combat Team 29th Division,
35:07were confronted by violently rough seas and hidden underwater obstacles
35:12which tore many landing craft apart.
35:15Lashed by huge waves and withering German shellfire,
35:20only two of the 32 amphibious tanks launched actually made Omaha Beach.
35:27The most spectacular failure were the swimming tanks, the DD tanks.
35:31On certain sectors, I would cite particularly some of the American beaches,
35:36they launched too far out, they launched into very bad seas and across wind,
35:40whereas the British and Canadians were heading straight into it,
35:43and they certainly lost a lot of tanks and a lot of men.
35:48By one of the few strokes of misfortune that befell the Allies on that fateful day,
35:54the Americans found themselves confronted by strong and determined German forces
35:59ranged along the top of the high bluffs which overlooked the beach.
36:04Omaha Beach was a very difficult beach to land on.
36:08A lot of the other beaches in Normandy
36:12were being defended by low-grade German troops.
36:17However, there was a veteran unit which had been sent to the area,
36:23the 352 Infantry Division, and the 352 Infantry Division were good quality troops,
36:29they were veterans of operations in Italy,
36:32and they had been sent to Normandy, to a quiet area,
36:35to recuperate and build up more combat strength.
36:39And it just happened that on the day that the Americans land on Omaha Beach,
36:46they were doing an exercise, and the exercise was
36:50everybody prepare for an invasion by the British, Canadians and Americans.
36:55The chaps who were coming ashore in the landing craft were put out to sea,
36:58something like 12 miles out to sea.
37:02That was three hours in a landing craft, a flat-bottomed boat.
37:06Men were violently sick, they were violently ill,
37:09they were terrified, they were frightened.
37:11As they got closer inshore, things got worse,
37:15and the Germans were just sitting on the bluffs above Omaha Beach.
37:18And the Germans never fired a shot until the landing craft came into shore,
37:23and the ramps dropped as the Germans opened fire.
37:29It was obvious to ships lying offshore that some very hard fighting was going on,
37:34and that the Americans were finding it very difficult to get a foothold.
37:38The battle on Omaha Beach on the 6th of June
37:41appeared to be going so badly by lunchtime,
37:44that Omar Bradley, who was on a command vessel further out in the Bay of the Seine,
37:48actually came very close to ordering the attack on Omaha to be suspended.
37:53If this had happened, there would have been a great gap
37:55in the Allied invasion front between Utah Beach,
37:58where the American 4th Division had landed very successfully,
38:01and the Anglo-Canadian beaches much further to the east.
38:07Finally, two British destroyers moved in close to pound the German positions,
38:12and the beleaguered troops were able to move off the beach.
38:16But this victory had been achieved at a fearful cost.
38:20Over 4,000 dead and wounded troops were left behind.
38:26On the extreme flank of the Allied landings at Utah Beach,
38:30the Americans enjoyed considerably more success,
38:33although, ironically, it started with what was potentially the seeds of failure.
38:39As the hundreds of craft made for the shore hidden by a smokescreen,
38:43they were intended to be shepherded by patrol craft PC 1176,
38:48which would guide them to the appropriate beach.
38:51Unfortunately, the patrol craft hit a mine and was completely destroyed.
38:58As the other craft carried on to the shore,
39:01they drifted into an offshore current and were carried downstream,
39:05two kilometres too far to the south.
39:10Fortunately, this mishap actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
39:15Once ashore, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the son of the President,
39:20soon realised that the beach that he had landed on was far less defended
39:25than the beach which had originally been assigned to them.
39:29Roosevelt urged the troops to move as quickly as possible inshore
39:33to overcome the light German defences.
39:36In a sector which had been expected to cost many lives,
39:39the 8th and 22nd Infantry Regiments lost only 12 men.
39:45Beaten and battered by the elements they may have been,
39:48but the men of the US 4th Infantry Division on Operation Overlord's westernmost beach
39:54were able to link up with the troops of the 101st Airborne Division
39:58to secure the beach.
40:00By this stage, the American 101st Airborne needed help.
40:04Rommel had ordered that any likely drop areas
40:07in the immediate vicinity of Carentan were to be flooded.
40:12When the airborne troops did land,
40:15they were so looted down with equipment
40:17that when they landed on the beach,
40:19they were able to get to the beach
40:21without being hit by the enemy's artillery.
40:24When the airborne troops did land,
40:27they were so looted down with equipment
40:29that when they landed in the swamps of the Carentan Peninsula,
40:33a lot of them were weighed down by their equipment
40:36and they drowned
40:38because they were unable to pull themselves out of the swamp.
40:41And because they were so scattered across the French countryside,
40:45their buddies weren't there to help them.
40:48In addition, possible drop zones were heavily sown with anti-personnel mines
40:53which also caused heavy casualties among the American paratroopers.
41:01The Canadian and British troops who began the invasion
41:04in the centre of Gold Beach at 0725 hours
41:07were met by elements of the 716th German Static Division,
41:12a numerically inferior and poor quality outfit
41:16which were no match for the highly motivated Allied troops.
41:21The British 231st Brigade Group
41:24and 69th Brigade Group of the 50th Division, however,
41:28met ferocious opposition from elements of the veteran German 352nd Division.
41:37Inevitably, some pockets of German resistance escaped the amazing bombardment
41:42because many of the concrete pillboxes went deep underground.
41:48At many points, therefore, the dash across the sands
41:52had to be made in the face of rifle and machine gun fire.
42:00It was afternoon before the German guns,
42:02having resisted all infantry assaults,
42:05were silenced by Allied artillery.
42:12It took the entire day for the Allies to secure their position
42:16on the Gold Beachhead.
42:21By nightfall, the British attacks had managed to push inland
42:25for a distance of approximately five miles.
42:33At Juno Beach, an offshore shoal delayed the landings
42:37by 7th Brigade Group and 8th Brigade Group
42:40of the 3rd Canadian Division by ten minutes.
42:43The rough seas hurled the Canadian troops onto the beachhead,
42:47which had been reduced by the very high tide
42:50to only a hundred yards wide at its narrowest point.
42:54Treacherous rocks and reefs were also a constant danger to the assault craft,
42:59which exploded with alarming regularity.
43:03EXPLOSIONS
43:09After much hard fighting against the German 736th Grenadier Regiment,
43:14the Canadians made steady progress,
43:17and the afternoon saw the 3rd Canadian Division
43:20and the 50th Division firmly established ashore.
43:24In Normandy landings on D-Day,
43:26I was attached to the 3rd Canadian Division,
43:29and we were landing the troops, the Canadians, on the beaches.
43:34When we got there, there were a lot of Canadians,
43:37they'd fought their way ashore and, you know, that sort of thing,
43:41and we'd dropped them.
43:43We came on the second tide,
43:45and a lot of the bodies were still on the beach
43:48with their hands sticking out of the sand, you know,
43:51and we kind of had to move them,
43:53otherwise we'd have run over, well, some of them was run over, you know.
44:00EXPLOSIONS
44:05With all objectives achieved,
44:07the way had been paved for the leading elements
44:10of the British 7th Armoured Division, the famous Desert Rats,
44:14to make their landings on Juneau Beach
44:16during the late afternoon of 6th June.
44:20On Sword Beach, the landings were preceded by a British action
44:24which led to the famous battle at Pegasus Bridge.
44:28What we had to do at Pegasus Bridge
44:30was to get a force of paratroopers or air-landing soldiers
44:35directly onto the bridge to seize it,
44:38to actually prevent German reserves
44:41from moving up from the south-east and crossing the Orne.
44:46Now, bear in mind, paratroopers have already dropped
44:49and they're fighting out on the flanks.
44:51They have to be reinforced.
44:53You have to get men to them, you have to get supplies to them,
44:56you have to get reinforcements to them,
44:59and it was necessary to capture these two bridges intact
45:02so that the seaborne troops would come inland
45:05and very quickly link up with the airborne troops.
45:10The glider-borne troops of 6th Airborne Division
45:14managed to land their gliders almost on the bridge.
45:18They landed on the east bank of the bridge
45:21right up beside the bridge abutments,
45:23and as a result, they could just walk right onto the bridge
45:26and hold it so that when the Germans counterattacked,
45:30the British troops were already there holding the bridge
45:33and the British left flank was safe.
45:42On Sword Beach, the British 8th Brigade Group of 3rd Division
45:46landed amid the chaos with orders to link up
45:49with the 6th Airborne Division at Pegasus Bridge
45:53and to advance more than 10 miles inland
45:56to capture and secure the strategically vital city of Caen.
46:01This objective was to be achieved
46:04within the first day of the D-Day landings.
46:07Their progress was slowed
46:10by the ever-growing numbers of men and armoured vehicles
46:13on the narrow beaches,
46:15struggling to break out into the open country beyond.
46:22Determined German resistance and the swell of the seas
46:25further delayed the Allied advance.
46:28To make matters worse, they were also met by tanks and infantry
46:31of the 21st Panzer Division,
46:34part of Rommel's Army Group B reserve,
46:37which had been thought by Allied intelligence
46:39to be in a different part of Normandy.
46:42The 21st Panzer Division represented
46:45the only substantial armoured reserve available to the Germans
46:48on 6th June 1944,
46:51and its counterattack potential was quite significant.
46:54However, its counterattacks were very badly mismanaged.
46:58Orders were countermanded,
47:00the initial deployment of the division was rather poor and spread out,
47:04so that when the attacks did finally go in
47:06on the afternoon and early evening of 6th June,
47:09they went in in a rather sporadic, ineffectual,
47:12unconcentrated fashion.
47:15However, a battlegroup from the 21st Panzer Division
47:18did manage to exploit a gap
47:21between the British and Canadian forces
47:24and actually reached the coast at Lyons-sur-Mer
47:27at around 7 o'clock on the evening of June 6th.
47:32No reinforcements, however, were available,
47:35and the German forces were forced to fall back
47:38into positions just north of Caen.
47:41The fighting on that day had cost the division 25% of its tanks,
47:45and there was worse to follow.
47:50Caen, of course, had been an objective for D-Day itself,
47:53and at this stage no one could possibly have suspected
47:57that it would take another six weeks
47:59before the town fell into Allied hands.
48:03But the main objective for D-Day had been achieved.
48:06The Allied army was ashore.
48:08The writing was now on the wall for Hitler's thousand-year Reich.
48:36To be continued...