David Wragg - Operation Neptune: The Prelude to D-Day

First published 2014

This paperback edition published 2022

The History Press

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David Wragg, 2014, 2022

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ISBN 978 0 7509 5481 5

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This is the BBC Home Service and here is a special bulletin read by John Snagge. D-Day has come. Early this morning the Allies began the assault on the north-western face of Hitlers European fortress.

The very term D-Day has a ring to it, even seventy years and more after the Allied invasion of France. Sometimes referred to as either the Normandy landings or Operation Overlord, it is still known popularly as D-Day, even though there have been many D-days elsewhere, designating the launch of many operations.

It is impossible, however, to overstate the importance of the Allied invasion of France on 6 June 1944. It was not the end of the Second World War, not even of the Second World War in Europe, and those who thought that Germany would be forced to surrender by Christmas were soon proved wrong. There was much hard fighting ahead, but the balance of power had changed completely and could not be reversed. Germany, which had seemed unstoppable in 1940 with the Allied defeat in the Battle of France, the humiliation of the withdrawal from Dunkirk, all following on from the fall of Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium, was now facing a combined British, American and Canadian assault aimed directly at the heart of its strength.

One of the big developments of the Second World War was that assault was no longer over the ground, and even when landings were involved, they were not entirely from the sea. Airborne assault had already proved itself in the invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940. At Crete, where the Germans landed 17,530 men despite heavy losses amongst paratroops and air-landed troops, it was the airborne assault that saved them as the Royal Navy retained control of the seas, despite the losses suffered to Axis air power. Yet Crete was a close-run thing for the Germans, facing British, Commonwealth and Greek forces evacuated from the mainland totalling 35,000 men. What swung the balance in favour of the Germans was that the British and Greek forces had left behind their artillery and anti-aircraft weapons back in Greece, as well as their vehicles and their radios, so they lacked communications, transport and anything other than light weapons.

Operation Overlord was not simply going to be the biggest amphibious assault ever; it was also going to be the biggest airborne assault ever. It was going to have the largest fleet ever providing covering fire and mine clearance, as well as protection on its flanks from attacks by U-boats and E-boats. The latter had already enjoyed their first blood when by chance they happened on an American amphibious exercise and attacked and sank many landing craft.

Leaving nothing to chance in training the troops, a major exercise, Operation Tiger, was scheduled to run from 22 April to 30 April 1944, with 30,000 troops, who would be exposed to the use of live munitions so that they got used not simply to landing on a beach, but to the sounds and smells of warfare. The exercise was not without incident, with a case of friendly fire on 27 April, but the following day nine German E-boats evaded British patrols and found a convoy of eight landing ships, LSTs, in Lyme Bay. The ships were sailing in a straight line, which made attack easier, and had just one corvette as an escort. In the ensuing battle, two of the LSTs were sunk and one was badly damaged before the attackers withdrew unscathed, leaving 946 men dead and another 200 wounded.

To allow room for such a massive invasion force, the landings had been divided into five landing zones or beaches, each with its own code-name, with US forces taking Omaha and Utah beaches to the west of the British and Canadian forces landing on Gold, Juno and Sword beaches. To many, choosing Normandy for the invasion rather than the Pas-de-Calais, much closer to the English coast, might seem perverse, but short as the channel crossing might have been, it would have been too short of space and congested, with the ships providing easy targets, while the beaches of Normandy offered easier landing grounds.

Originally planned for 5 June 1944, Operation Overlord was delayed by a full twenty-four hours because of the weather. A severe storm had blown up, fortunately detected in time by the meteorologists advising the operations commanders, who took the decision to order the delay. It is doubtful if their thoughtfulness was appreciated by those taking part in the landings as, while the storm may have blown over, the sea took much longer to calm down. For those who feel the first touches of mal de mer as soon as their feet touch the deck of a ship, the poor seaworthiness of flat-bottomed landing craft was something from beyond their worst nightmares. These creatures rolled and pitched, water slopped over the sides and onto the decks, and the helmets of those unfortunates aboard saw more use as receptacles for vomit than as protection from shrapnel and bullets.

True, the Germans had already lost North Africa, then Sicily, and were hard-pressed to stop the Allies advancing through Italy, Rome having fallen just two days earlier, on 4 June. Yet, there was the barrier of the Alps and much of northern Italy from just south of Florence in which to hold the Allies. Advancing through Austria meant facing many natural obstacles, and a population that included many supporters of the Nazis. Between France and Germany, the natural obstacles were much less severe and France had a border with Germany. Despite this, it was not to be a clear road through to Germany: even breaking out of Normandy was to prove more difficult than the Allies had first thought.

D-Day was a cataclysmic event: the turning point in the war. It put the Germans under pressure. The code-name Operation Overlord was well chosen. This, at last, was the Second Front that the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had been demanding almost since the German invasion of the Soviet Union under the banner of Operation Barbarossa.

The assault was conducted by both air and sea, and the maritime element was so important that it required its own operation and its own code-name, Operation Neptune.