PART 1

Preparation

Main objective: to conquer the Norman capital city of Caen

The plan was to attempt to land more than 150,000 soldiers — 6 infantry divisions and armored units — on five beaches along a 100-kilometre sweep of coastline and behind enemy lines.

Five landing zones, with code names: Juno Beach, Gold Beach, Sword Beach, Utah Beach and Omaha Beach

The invasion codenames are still used on maps and signs.

Detail plan was that:

American forces assault two beaches (Utah and Omaha)

British forces attack beaches named Gold and Sword

Canadian division assault a beach named Juno.

A battalion of Canadian paratroopers along with three divisions of British and US paratroopers land behind German lines

the Allies decided that surprise would be their greatest weapon.

During the preparations, the BBC started a competition for French beach holiday photographs. It was a way of collecting intelligence on appropriate beaches.

About 3,200 scouting missions were launched to take photos of important locations.

17 million maps are printed to support the mission.

For safety, training maps are created with fake names.

The US shipped 7 million tons of supplies

Ammunition accounted for 448,000 tons.

The Allies conducted a large-scale fraud campaign to mislead the Germans about the planned invasion targets.

A phantom army of dummy camps, planes and tanks was built to convince Germany that the invasion was coming in the Pas de Calais.

Hitler charged Rommel to finish a 2,400-mile fortification of bunkers, heavy artillery batteries, a million landmines, barbed wire, anti-tank walls, anti-aircraft guns and machine-gun nests – fortification widely known as the Atlantic Wall

Allied have specially prepared vehicles for the assault:

Duplex Drive Sherman "swimming" tanks

Churchill Crocodile flame throwing tanks

Mine-clearing tanks

Bridge-laying tanks

Road-laying tanks

Armored Vehicle Royal Engineers (AVRE)

April 28, 1944: south Devon on the English coast

750 U.S. sailors and soldiers were killed when German torpedo boats surprised one of landing exercises

The Germans knew an invasion was coming, but not when or where

The place of invasion was the most heavily guarded secret on the planet.

Forecast before the invasion was so bad that Erwin Rommel went home to give his wife a pair of shoes on her 50th birthday. He was in Germany when the news came.

Allied intelligence efforts were very successful

The British Special Operations Executive organized a massive sabotage campaigns.

Various groups are tasked with destroying railway lines, destroying telephone exchanges, electrical substations or ambushing roads

The resistance was alerted to carry out specific tasks by several hundred of messages which are transmitted regularly by the BBC in its French service from London.

BBC at 21:00 CET on June 5: transmitted coded instructions:

The carrots are cooked

The dice have been thrown

To be continued...