Royal Mail has been widely criticised for planning to release a stamp marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day using an image of US troops landing in what was Dutch New Guinea, almost 8,500 miles from the Normandy beaches.

The stamps, priced at £1.25 each, were due to be released in 2019 as part of a ‘Best of British’ collection.

Captioned ‘Allied soldiers and medics wade ashore’, the image was supposed to depict the amphibious landings on the coast of northern France on June 6, 1944. However, after being previewed on social media, many observers pointed out the geographic error.

One commentator on Twitter called it a “disrespectful sloppy blunder” while another said: “Having worked 3 years for Royal Mail, this does not surprise me at all”. Another tweet pointed out that the Royal Mail had released a series of stamps in 1994 commemorating 50 years since the landings, with correct imagery.

The image, an official US Coast Guard photo, appears on the website of The National WWII Museum, an American site containing thousands of photographs and oral histories of the war.

It first appeared in the July 1944 edition of ‘All Hands’ magazine and clearly states it shows troops carrying stretchers from a landing craft at Sarmi, Dutch New Guinea - now part of Indonesia - on May 17, 1944.