welcome to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Museum it's great to see a sold-out Union theater this is fantastic my name is dr. Samuel wheeler on the state historian of Illinois and you were in for a treat tonight but before we start are there any veterans of d-day here with us tonight service I have the pleasure of introducing tonight's speaker dr. Marc de PUE he's a West Wing graduate retired military officer and holds a PhD from the University of Iowa where he specialized in the military history in 2006 dr. de PUE joined us here at the Presidential Library Museum where he became the founding director of the oral history program he built that program from scratch he set standards for how to conduct and capture oral history interviews as well as established the protocols involved with the hard work of transcribing and annotating thanks to his efforts and the absolute dedication of his team of volunteers and interns all of those interviews are available on our web site free of charge and our program is amongst the elite oral history programs in the country over the past three years I've had the pleasure of working closely with dr. de PUE to be honest for the most part I stay out of his way I let him do what he does because it's fantastic but I have tried to help him shine an even brighter light on their world history program the he and his team have created it and most recently a challenge dr. de PUE to curate an exhibit on world war ii featuring two veterans themselves and the stories they've shared with him over the past 13 years the result it exceeds my expectations and I know what's going to knock your socks off on June 6th one week from today our new temporary exhibit in this great struggle the greatest generation remembers World War two opens it's going to run through January 12 21 I think the world of dr. de PUE and judging from the size of this crowd tonight you do too tonight he's going to talk about one of the most important days of world war 2 June 6 1944 better known as d-day ladies and gentlemen dr. mark defuse that's a lot to live up to I tell you right before I came in here going up and talking with people in the crowd I've got this hat and it says debating society and on the back National d-day memorial the holler fidelity fidelity and sacrifice so hopefully I can live up to that thank you thinking about what it is about d-day and you all here because there's a fascination about that day it ranks right up there I think with Gettysburg with Lincoln's assassination perhaps it's something that captures our imagination and holds on to it and here's the thing that really amazes me about it and when you stop and think about it it is got to be one of the most important endeavors of human history but on that day nobody knew exactly how it was going to turn out it could ended in abject failure and think about what that would have meant the world if it had failed so with that in mind and knowing that we're a week away from the 75th anniversary and most of you have probably seen lots of stuff on the TV or reading in the newspapers and magazines about it already 75 years people are thinking well that might be about the last time the last big anniversary that the veterans themselves will be there and being able to fully impart that so we've got a lot to cover I'll try to move through them fairly quickly here but I do have a slight bias it's more on the American side of things and on the British and the Canadian side most of you might not be too surprised by that so let's get right into it from Dunkirk did yep dunker actually May 10th to 1940 the Germans invade France in the Low Countries and unlike World War one their news their new tactics actually rolled the French and the Brits right up and before you knew it by May 24th they were closing in on the English Channel and most of you know the story about the Germans Halton who gave the general Goering a chance to prove that his Luftwaffe was as good as it was talked up to me and because of that a huge number of British and French soldiers were able to escape at Dunkirk three hundred and thirty-eight thousand plus to include 140,000 French poles and belts and troops the next thing that and you think about it 1940 they leave in disgrace and that's not going to be until four years later that they're able to come back but they did have a significant rate at yet it's another port city a little bit part of us off from comical a and from Dunkirk but they wanted to test them the mettle of the German defenses at the time the goal was to seize a major port that wasn't it to gather intelligence to figure out how the Germans were defending these things and to destroy as much of the defenses they could possibly do and they're gonna have the Royal Air Force lead in and soften up the beaches plus a naval bombardment it ended in total failure only 6,000 most of them Canadians there were 3,000 367 casualties the big chunk of that was over 1800 close to 1,900 of the Canadians who were captured spend the reservoir in prison camps so a total family and you go back the Brits go back and lick their wounds but they start studying and figure out what the problems were and what lessons they could learn from that experience and now they know somewhere down the road they're gonna have to do this all over again and hopefully do it successfully and of course by 1942 the Americans were in in the fight here is the Allied command team to get one of the handouts that highlights that wanted to start off with General Dwight the Eisenhower right here in the center the commander of shape supreme forces Allied commanders so grand headquarters I like its expeditionary force he was the choice in late 1943 President Roosevelt was waiting his options and he only really had two options General George C Marshall right somehow Marshall was well senior daizen higher and Roosevelt really struggled with this for quite a while and he finally decided that Marshall was far too important to him to send him overseas that he couldn't sleep well at night in Marshall was out of the country and he also being a politician whoever would then be the commander shave has a good shot of becoming president United States down the road that's just the way world's about what good things so who was like the Eisenhower most of us don't quite a bit about it he grew up in Abilene Kansas West Point class of 1915 that's the class of the scars fell on something like 57 classmates ended up being generals he had never deployed to Europe during World War one he was stuck back in the United States he wasn't happy about it at all but towards the end of the of the war he started to get involved with the experiment with tanks when they were just in their infancy working with a gentleman by name of George Patton at the time he served under several general officers and almost always as an aide in close affiliate one was Fox Connor was his mentor another one was John J Pershing not bad to have the former commander of the expeditionary forces a mentor Douglas MacArthur a couple times and George C Marshall right before the beginning of World War two he ended up getting first in his class of the command and General Staff College and before that time he had been known as kind of a mediocre student but these generals have you been whether really grooming him for success before that time let me mention a little bit more about Douglas MacArthur everybody knows that name as well they have an interest in relationship MacArthur kept ice and I were close most the time but here's what he ended up saying about ice and Howard later on that's Clark I ever had well I somehow his view of MacArthur I studied dramatics under for Carson so I think Eisenhower got the last laugh on that he commanded a Infantry Regiment in 1939 and then he was involved with the Louisiana maneuvers major maneuvers that the Army did in 1940-41 and then he was posted to the Pentagon who worked in the war class division where he really caught the attention of George C Marshall and was because of that that he within a year or two he'd leapfrog an awful lot of senior officers and now was had this one position as commander safe now very quickly for the rest of the crew Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder Ike deputy right there Royal Air Force officer then you've got Sir Bernard Montgomery and there was a little bit of tension between Montgomery and I sent her because Montgomery didn't think he knew he should have been the commander of this and that some upstart like Eisenhower who haven't even been Germany or Europe during World War one you have no combat experience to speak of it all going up on with in the back you've got Omar Bradley very good friend to advise Powers somebody he trusted then you've got sir Bertram Ramsay he was gonna be in charge of the naval force and that's going to be an incredibly important piece of detail and then you've got Sir Trafford leigh-mallory he is actually the commander of the Air Force I might have mentioned Tedder is the deputy commander of this operation and then you've got Walker Bedell Smith right here who is Eisenhower's chief of staff okay now there's plenty of egos that I've already talked about but there's some more that Eisenhower is gonna have to deal with and I don't want to spend too much time but obviously all these gentlemen have power and influence you've got the president Franklin Roosevelt you've got Winston Churchill who loves to meddle boy does he loved about the person I think is probably the most difficult personality to deal with is Charles de Gaulle who's commander of the Free French forces and an inspiration to the French the rest of the force did defense necessarily so much of them and then of course you've got George Patton and developing the plan then let's stick this a little bit comment-list that's a little bit hard to figure out here's the landing beaches of Normandy but why Norbit why when they did this so let's start with the water first of all everybody knew this isn't really an issue of where but everybody knew that you're going to have to have air supremacy there's the PR area message you basically control the air air supremacy meant that you owned it then the enemy dare even venture into the air so that's key to this whole operation they also look for white beaches where the initial assault and they look for practice that Bonita harbors one of the things they wanted to get was do not try to go after a major Harbor that's where the enemy's defenses are strongest you'll just be decimated there so they had to land someplace else and so then it ends up being either pas-de-calais where the channel is the narrowest or Norman that's the options that they were looking for so what did they pick Normandy well one of them was the be the Benson system that the Germans had up here and by the Calais was by far the strongest and by the time you get in 1944 the Germans recognized a weakness they started to build up the Normandy area especially but it was much weaker there also had nice beaches why that was going to be important also because of the peninsula here near Cherbourg you kind of have a slight protection from the heavy winds that you might have elsewhere and the English Channel is notorious for awful weather so they decided how to kill it excuse me they decided Normandy the next question is when now first of all the Germans figured it would have to be a high time that that's when the Americans that's when the Allies would want to do this because they can get farther in on the beaches they always thought just the opposite they wanted to come in at low tide land the beach land of the landing craft on the beaches and as the tide rises it lists the landed craft and they get those things back off the beach that was the rationale at the time so you want to have a full moon or a near full moon you want to have the tight right and so you end up with June 5th is the ideal date May was too early there's a reason that Eisenhower needed to wait for more supplies so it was either June 5th and it's not June 5th then you had to wait until the 19th of June 19th of 20s so you have a couple days windows for each one of those as you go through here hmm and June 5th ends the day a little bit more about Germany's and a big wall fortress Europe they basically had to defend all the way from the northern tip of Norway all the way down to Spain everything along there is what they had to be dealing with and they have a huge force that they were counting on to do that well over a million men who were manning the western wall the two commanders general GERD von Rundstedt is the supreme commander of the West and his headquarters is in the vicinity of Paris his view and his lieutenants view was that you wanted to husband your resources especially your armoured divisions as close as you to Paris so that it could respond to wherever the attack might come in other words you're well back from the beaches Gerwin drama who was the commander of army group bean who actually had command and most of these beast areas that were to be looking at who can take in the command just a few months before the d-day event and so he was very busy building up the defenses along the beaches because he figured the important place in this battle is going to be on the beaches and the reason for this they have experience in North Africa and he knew the power of the Allied air forces that if you've got tanks on the move and the Allied air forces can find them during a hard way so it would be very difficult for those reinforcements that run Rustin was keeping near Paris to get them into battle make a difference at the right time so he's pushing everything forward as much as he possibly can so then you got bronsted and they got round little disagreeing on things what does Adolf Hitler do he's placed the baby in half has some of the reserves near Paris and some of the Panzer Division C moves forth but then it's important to figure out okay where you put them up in their pas de calais do you keep my back a little bit farther so they can respond to both that's the question that you've got to deal with couple things that Anna Ramos takes a look at here's one of his folks if you leave the Panzer divisions in the rear they will never get forward once the invasion begins and the air power will stop everything from moving and quick quote hunt Bravo as well our friends from the east cannot imagine what they're in for here it's not a matter of fanatical hordes to be driven forward in masses against our line with no regard for casualties and little recourse to tactical craft here we are facing an enemy who applies all his native intelligence to the use of his many technical resources who spares no expenditure of material and whose every operation goes its course as though it had been the subject of repeated rehearsal okay that was Ramos to you with this fortifications on the beaches in concrete and steel pillboxes as much as you can to reinforce especially for your heavy artillery artillery of all sizes of all banks of all countries they replaced they had conquered they hauled over to the western wall backed with infantry that could respond more quickly to Brooks and this was basically a circular or a spherical area that was build up on the side with dirt and concrete and then in the center you would have borders you would have machine guns and other things like that where you'd be able to respond more quickly they laid six point five million mines six and a half million mines along the Atlantic Wall beaches you can see some of the examples of the beach emplacements here you've got barbed wire entanglements you've got hedgehogs you've got the things like this that have color mines those are anti-tank mines that would sit on top and anytime one of the landing crafts would actually hit that then you'd have some kind of an explosion and take out the landing craft the second rate divisions you had there were divisions that would have very young and very old disease our first line troops but in general they perform well and then you have Austin batons that was an interesting connection collection of the federal units and what you have in that case were poles Ukrainians Russians anybody who didn't want to spend the rest of the war in a German prison camp who thought it would be better to serve in the German army and they took advantage of that opportunity and served in the army but they're not necessarily the most reliable they would have German NCOs that were they to be trusted how well would they fight that was the big question the deception plan operation bodyguard was the name of the idea was deceived the Germans on both the time and the place and the specific parts of that piece our operation fortitude that's the southern plan in that centered on the first US Army commanded by George path well there was no harming but he was the commander and the Allies were happy to try to deceive the Germans by false traffic they would have set up headquarters and would pass information back and forth and be a little bit sloppy so the Germans could pick up the radio transmissions or pick up messages they would have things like dummy tanks W landing ground that the Germans could spot and see all to deceive them and to think that the pas-de-calais was where this attack was going to happen the fictitious fortitude north then targets Norway and there was another army for that his headquarters was an Edinburgh Castle up in Scotland same kind of thing radio traffic buildup trying to convince the Germans you're coming that way now they have a couple of bad news the Brits that managed to turn every single double agent there identify every German double agent in England at the time and would feed them false information or in many cases they actually turn them so there's lots of these who are now working for the Brits in their respect and the last piece I want to mention there is the bombing strategy if you're truly going to deceive the Germans you can't spend all of your energy and reconnaissance flights and bombing attacks on the Normandy area they had to spread it around for the several different places that they are planning to attack they keep the Germans off balance where is it going to happen and in general the Germans were assuming that Polly pele would be the most likely location for this invasion finally the Brits especially in defenses on the Americans had a great advantage they had broken the German code and knew most of the traffic so they could figure out what the jerk thought about their own plants that was incredibly important I remember it was like 1975 timeframe that that was made known to the world of it before that time it was still a secret point-blank directive this I mentioned before the importance of the air campaign incredibly important and just very quickly the strategic bombing the galleries the English bombed at night area bombing massive attacks and increasingly they went to fire bombing places like hamburger and burn out the scent of cities they had given up on the notion of one daylight they've given up on the notion of precision bomb and trying to take out manufacturing areas that was not the case for the Americans they tried just the opposite approach they flied in the daytime they went after manufacturing plants especially the Luftwaffe especially the aircraft manufacturers should sing and feel any kind of a fuel planet but is it that closer Eisenhower insisted I want to have total control of the entire four strategic bombers everything well most of the air commanders didn't like that idea at all I went to the wall he threatened to resign and he eventually got control of the entire air force so that the months leading up to the d-day invasion he owned everything and he could concentrate on isolating the battlefield in France primarily one of the other things that was important again they're seeking air superiority there in the is for teaching bombing campaigns the big bombers wanted to have those escort fighters along with them and only one they figured out they have put drop tanks on p-51s and p-47s could they have some kind of fighter support all the way to Berlin attack or wherever they were wanting to bomb well the fighter pilots didn't necessarily like the idea they want a little bit more allowed if they wanted freedom and there was a fight within the air community and finally the fighters won the argument and yes there were the fighters have been accompanied the big bombers all the way to those targets deep in Germany but they also were giving especially these sorties that forty-sevens more latitude to attack targets of their own targets of opportunity and what did they want to go after they wanted to attack Bluff Luftwaffe air bases airfields they wanted to go after airplane sitting on the ground they want to go after trains for every pound on the rails or rail junctions or bridges or things like that so now you have when Eisenhower has total control and you've got that going on plus you've got the medium bombers which are much better to get precision bombing for some of these things and they really PLAs they're a lot of the targets so roads and bridges railroad tracks switches and depots field of artillery concentrations maintenance facilities field commands anything and everything that was a good target here the whole notion was to basically wipe the Luftwaffe out of the skies and isolate the battlefields so that any German reinforcements weren't going to be able to get there and here's a little interesting note if you go after the rail lines especially now you put the tanks on the road and anybody who has some familiarity with tanks what you don't want to do is to drive a tank for hundreds of miles on the road just to get to the bell you much prefer to put them on rail and that's not going to be increasingly difficult to do so the results by early June 1700 rail locomotives 25,000 rail cars eight of the nine bridges over the Seine River had been destroyed and basically it was hard to find the loose loss at all so they had achieved air supremacy let me go back here real quick those stripes that you see on the airplanes that's the invasion stripes they're there because I always learned a hard lesson in Sicily when the 82nd airborne was jumping and they started a fire from the Allies themselves and not quite a few the c-47s out of the so we want to have some way to identify that those are our aircraft French resistance also plays a role there is roughly 350,000 french or in the resistance French men and women variety different groups communists are perhaps the strongest and best organized but you also have Gollust associated with charles de gaulle you also had the panis who are people who are associated with with a tan who was the leader of issue france at the time about a hundred thousand of that three hundred fifty thousand had any kind of weapons to speak of and only ten thousand had enough ammunition to last more than one day but that's not necessarily what you need to have the the underground going for you they were meant to gather intelligence especially find the locations of the enemy units and artillery pieces on the beaches etc they were meant to sabotage and again the french really went after the rail system as well where their favorite tactics was to derail a train in the tunnel and imagine the mess that would cause i'm trying to sort that one out and to attack telephones that's a hard thing for the Air Force to do it's an easy thing if you're on the ground you know exactly where the cables are lying or a ferry so those are things that you can do they're really again to isolate the battlefield now there's a matter of communicating with the resistance anybody who's watched the longest day imagine most of us have can remember those scenes where the French are huddled around the the radios trying to pick up those enigmatic messages that the virtual Center for the new region this was the message that was supposed to be the precursor to innovation it is hot and Suez followed by the dice around the carpet so now the German intelligence officers discretion has what exactly does this mean is every night there be a message like that they don't know what's just the real life okay final question I want to mention here what do you do with the resistance do you really turn them loose and let them attack targets all over the country knowing that there would be an awful lot of retribution that the Germans were known for hauling away ten people for every one German that was killed and executing and recapturing them so there was a real price to be paid if they did that as well as a real price to be paid for all of this tactical bombing of every juicy target they could find in France in both cases the decision was made to go ahead and max it out even though they knew the French would have to pay a price for that the French were ready after four years they were willing to do that logistical preparation this is the part that is always fascinating to give up evening what an accomplishment was and the scale of this thing is just amazing maybe of 1942 that's just a few months after we got into the war in that month twenty four thousand seven ever Americans arrived in England the pace kept picking up after that so that by the time you get to April of 1944 close to a quarter of a million Americans arrived in England so by that time the country is bursting at the seams not just American troops by that time five hundred thousand tons of supplies arrived in just one month five hundred thousand tons that means that we generally have control of the sea as well by that time we've got 100 and a half a million and a half troops in in England and five million tons of equipment and supplies gathered around the southern part of India and just as while you were some others 320 thousand different pieces items of equipment 8,000 aircraft a thousand train locomotives 20,000 rail cars 50,000 vehicles 124 thousand hospital bits tons of petroleum products and they didn't forget anything a generous supply of coffees so by the time you get up to this point the whole southern part of England is one giant supply dump and Eisenhower calls it the greatest operating military base of all time and there's a picture of the field hard to underestimate the importance of having enough fuel another thing that has always fascinated me the landing craft now everybody identifies one line and Grapher we'll get to that a bit but there is a whole array of these one of the most important was a landing ship tank ship means that it can go across the ocean back before the flat bottom that can drive right onto the beach and deliver up to 18 medium tanks 33 Deuce and a half two and a half ton trucks those 18 knots well it's not fast and my god that would be the last kind of ship I'd want to be in the open ocean with no keel to it but they were very important and there was 229 of them available for d-day landing craft infantry any time you heard that hear the word craft that means it's smaller and in some cases the craft sits on the ship the landing craft infantry there's doing her 45 of those available they call it 16 that's not a bad speed and they can deliver it up to 210 troops pounds of each and you see they can go right up to the beach landing craft tanks and it being an LST officer who would tell me about how you get a landing craft tank off the top of the landing ship tank because that's how they would carry them overseas that was quite an operation it could carry three to five tanks for nine trucks only eight knots it's meant for close-in work once you get to the peaks itself this one's going to look familiar landing craft nice it's an early version and 60 to 100 people although I don't know how crammed happy they wouldn't have any kind of luxury with that many people on the trip on this show crowd and Rhino Affairs this is something they did for the d-day landings it's just a big flat bars that's hauled by something else with as much equipment that you can possibly grant imagine that Rhino ferry in rough seas wouldn't be good okay but here's the one that you all recognize the Higgins boat actually in the the multiplexer is landing craft vehicle and personnel and you can see you've got about 36 men crank in there and that's about the maximum capacity it's native plywood with a metal wrap on the front the nice part about it there are any pleat you can drive right up the beach drop the ramp and everybody runs off here's a picture that you might recognize that's kind of what it looked like that d-day you want to hit the beach now it didn't hit the beach did it look a little bit water between here of the beach and what they find out often in the d-day lancing you have sandbars maybe that would be off from the beach part ways it would seem like Nick Browns itself there they drop their amp you think maybe it's just ankle deep water you take a couple steps and before you know it off your chest you're up to your neck with all of this under 80,000 weapons it's about eighty or hundred pounds so here's how one person described not necessarily this but landing craft in general it is a metal box designed by a sadist to move soldiers across water while creating in them such a sense of physical discomfort seasickness and physical degradation and anger has to induce them to land in such an angry condition as to bring destruction devastation and death upon any person or thing inside of hearing it combined the movements of a roller coaster bucking bronco and a camel not the kind of transportation anybody would want it back they also had tanks the jerk though the British learned this from death as well the importance of harbours early Annabelle but you had to have the right kind of armor so a gentleman by the name of general Percy Hobart something of an armor expert it's a great British name English name he came up with what became known as the Hobart funnies in this case you've got a tank I think that's a Sherman with the foil on frontally and the whole notion was you start that flail and you drive across the beach and it hits the mines and explodes the miles so that you're making a path through the minefield here's another one that looks bizarre the whole notion of that was his heavy canvas that was reinforced with the iron rocks you'd lay that down another way to drive across the beach in this soft sand we've got a little bit firmer foundation to it the d7 caterpillar bulldozer that was armored because they knew the importance of having abobo's around a at the beaches can be very crucial to their success these things seen you drop these things in dough dish it's nothing more than the buffalo sticks but you you can get across that dish a little bit more easily there was some more of these novelties as well and the Americans weren't and they were by England quite frankly they just didn't buy into using them at all British did the Americans did not but the Americans had actually both of them had was a duplex Drive Sherman and that's what it looks like so raised that canvas you have some kind of propeller power in the back of them so they can power themselves through the water until you get to the beach and then you transition to using the tracks instead and take the canvas down and you can imagine how seaworthy something like that would be just looking at but that's the what the Americans out before here's another one of the fascinating things that's always amazed you know eyes knew that they would have to have harvest that they couldn't depend on just the ships that they had in landing crafts that they had to support this massive force that they wanted to put on the beaches and then also knew that they weren't going to have heartless based on the fine they had they weren't going to have harbors for weeks and probably when they got to the harbors that the Germans being as efficient as they typically were would have destroyed them to such extent they would have been an unusable for months perhaps so the answer let's build two harbors and then haul them across the English Channel and that's what they did the mulberry harbors and what you see here that the first part of the whole berry harvest once it goes into effect you take old ships across the English Channel discover them and you sync them to make it breakwater something of a harbour then you would take these huge caissons of the head were basically shells of steel and concrete and they actually built these ahead of time sank them close to the the English coast so that they were hidden from the Germans then lifted them up again hauled them across the English Channel and then drop them in the locations where they wanted to have these speeches and once you have that then you have causeways and other things you build the rest of the harbours around that so you can have ships pull up to these mulberries offload and then drive the equipment right out of the beach there are two of these one for the Americans one for the Brits training just a couple of words about training the Americans learned some harsh lessons in North Africa especially at the Kasserine pass the Germans were not to be underestimated by any means and when it got to the actual operations most of the experienced troops were fighting their way up Italy there was only two American divisions that have any experience at all one was the 1st Infantry Division the big red one the other one was the 82nd airborne Israel jumped into Sicily the British had one division that British 3rd it's experience was primarily in that year of 1940 fighting against the Germans in France they were part of the group that got forced out of Dunkirk so most of the troops that are going to be landing at d-day this is their first combat that they're going to be going up against seasoned veteran German troops and they're all new at this game ok intense training and it really picked up by the time you get to April May and they had major dress rehearsals they went from individual levels disk conditioning to squad and then platoon by the time you get up to the end of that timeframe you're talking about the times for gates and that level of operation but you've got to learn all elements of this operation and Eisenhower's convinced that that was saving lives to be very rigorous as much as it possible good many of you are familiar with that phrase early 1942 as I mentioned the first Americans arrived by d-day there's one and a half million American in southern England primarily dealing with this from English on a daily basis so just a quick word about the relations between the Brits and the Americans here's what the Brits and okay Montgomery kind of personifies this they figured that the Americans were neophytes at war they really didn't know what they're doing the prince had to help them out as much as they can they did have a good appointment by the way and they had lots of them and their troops are pretty well conditioned they seem to be well fed as well strong and robust but they oftentimes were another officers in particular sometimes we're kind of send it towards their American cousins well what did the Americans what a guys like Patton think about the risks they thought their commanders were far too cautious no they had experience and that guy that had experience in and Sicily as well and were the Brits cautious well in World War one they had experienced horrendous horrendous casualties that country had been destined they had lost a generation almost and so they were cautious because of that and as much as possible commanders like Montgomery we're going to use firepower and lots of it in lieu of pushing forward being aggressive and putting his troops at risk so there was an element of truth in that respect they were less educated to what the Americans thought less fit what the Americans law but they had better feel real discipline but they seemed to lack a little bit on the initiative that the Americans part of themselves huh but you know not everything was training you did head off time and there is lots of places where the Americans were encouraged to experience life in Great Britain here is one of the places they the pub that was set up specially for them and here's a couple pictures on the inside the kind of thing and the ladies seem to like the games they took to him to the extent that after the war there were 70,000 British War bright sat in the United States 70,000 so were they overpaid you have the Brits definitely knew they were where they over sex well they were over here that's for sure okay very quickly on the organization this is the landing force these are the infantry the assault troops if you're talking power and again you've got this as a handout so Montgomery is the assault force commander the 25th to 21st Army Group commander under him our two armies Bradley the first army Dempsey was the secondary this side of the screening is all British this side are the American so there are two course the 7th Corps under general counts and it's got the 4th division that's going to land at Utah Beach and it's supported by these two Airborne Division's we're going to talk about this all of us in detail and then you've got the 5th corps landing at Omaha Beach with two divisions then you've got the three British beaches gold Juno and that's actually Canadian Beach and sword and each one of those has one division log with it and in the east case there are divisions racked up behind there ready to come in in the second or third day or the second or third week as they go farther into it so this is quickly supposed to escalate here is the assault line that you can see again I won't spend too much time on this the American beaches you talk right through here Omaha fiends riding in here now you see this is a continuous line we'll see you later on that's not quite how order but Omaha Beach of bucks the British Gold Beach the Canadian Juno and then on the other flank you've got the British that's the swordfish in each case you've got the Brits landing over here and the American airborne landing on this side the seal the flanks that was one of the first things that the the airborne were supposed to do it was going to be preceded in all cases for the landings by aerial bombings and by naval bombardment and now what I want to do is to spend some time talking about the plan for Omaha Beach each Beach commander each one of these Force commanders have the option to fine tune their own plan to make it work for them to deal with the circumstances for that particular village but I want to just kind of run through quickly what the plan was for Omaha in main part because no one emphasized how detailed how detailed they were getting these plans a shower for Omaha Beach was at zero 6:30 so for all the military types you understand that language that's 6:30 in the morning free H on small fire control ships move close to continue softening up the beaches so this is the artillery barrage the the naval grudge it's six o'clock remember the landing it's at 6:30 it's six o'clock DD tanks and landing craft tanks with 105 millimeter howitzers go in offshore they start to fire they're actually firing before they even get to the beach and the DD Saints are lost this is the plan at 6,000 yards out remember that picture of the tank with its flimsy canvas signs on it at h-hour 0 6:30 the LC T's land with a tank time so the first thing on the beach at Omaha is supposed to be 10 times at H plus 1 minute that's when the first one infantry arrives that's how fine to him they had this next in were the engineers they were very important the engineers can be crucial to the success they figure and the things that they want them to do is one clear the beach defenses we'll take a closer look at those quickly then clear the minefields and barbed wire obstacles and then clear the seawall blow a hole through the seawall seat and drive your vehicles up through there then you have more infantry more artillery anti-aircraft batteries more engineers coming 8150 another wave of infantry h plus one and ten you have landing craft with heavy artillery arriving on the beach and three hours into the past eight hours you have naval salvage unit and truck companies because by this time they figure they're going to be driving off Omaha Beach I secured the beach it's ready to drive them so again that's just to give you an idea of what they ended to happen let's go back to what's going to happen even with that it's a little bit hard to make this out here is the English Channel here so this is the southern part of England and you can see in the blue where the US forces are marshalling and the red where the English and the Canadians are right here of course then here the pieces that that we landed and you notice that the 29th division that has to go to Omaha has the farthest to go that's quite a length and then training it begins to explain why they have to do things like start loading people up as soon as they needed to so too many men are involved with the marsh line every soldier is giving a new uniform that's impregnated with this chemical that's supposed to protect them from chemical agents that can be go warfare at the time it just stained it was hot it was heavy it was miserable all those uniforms they got great food right before they loaded up on this everybody fed them to the nines anything and everything that was available and then they got on the ships and they waited and they waited and they're waiting they started loading on May 31st remember June 5th is the clambake May 31st was when they started to load and all they once they loaded do they start to get a briefing on what's going to happen because up to that point it's just another trial around what's going on here and this is one of the things that one of the soldiers remember being told the briefer explained that it would be no problem at all because the Air Force was coming over in great numbers the Navy bombardment would be tremendous the rocket ships with fire thousands of rockets it was going to be a waffle nothing to worry about that's what they're talking I think they were even so but as you get closer to the day itself then you've got to start watching the weather a lot of us lately have been watching a lot of where they're trying to figure out when that's going to dry out I think they were probably thinking the same thing sometimes Eisenhower and staff got twice daily weather briefings and it's it got really close it was more frequently frequent than that the father widely reported the real key now was going to be June 4th at 0 400 hours it's 4 o'clock in the morning for you civilians and a meteorologist by the name of Group Captain James Tague a dour Scotsman was have the dubious honor of any weather briefings all the time here is the weather report he gave for June 4th 0 400 hours we are approaching the time that everybody got make a decision one way or another a high pressure system was moving out a low coming in the weather for June 5th would be overcast a stormy with a cloud base of 500 feet to 0 feet with force five winds that was not the weather report they were hoping novels rough seas overcast skies so it starts to go around the room and asking opinions about should we go on June 5th or should we postpone he gets to tether but first the way here's from Montgomery Montgomery says goes absolutely go it gets from Tedder and leave Malorie is two air force officers both of them said though the weather's not good enough for us we have zero ceiling we're not going to be able to see what we're supposed to bomb we recommend we don't go you've got Ramsey over here town waffle he didn't like the idea either he thought they would have a hard time seeing the beaches they would have a hard time to zero in on their targets so he wasn't especially stronger than either so Eisenhower makes the decision we're going to postpone for a day now on the flip side of that what the Germans think they're looking at the same kind of weather reports they're thinking well first of all they're going to come in and high tide but second of all this is awful weather they're not going to do anything we've got a little bit of a breather so a couple things happen some of the senior command decided to have a war game exercise and wrath which is close to Paris so a lot of the regimental commanders now are going to be heading to that war games most of the division commanders and corps commanders and staff are heading to that war game so they're taking themselves in the picture and Robbo now sees an opportunity that go by share shoes and then they'll see his wife on June 6th or birthday and then pick up afterwards and visit Hitler try to un zipper give me more armor and need more tanks so that's what's going to happen there so we're postponed meanwhile the troops are on these ships waiting and wondering what in the world still happen what are the implications if they postpone another day when I have got to bring everything back in a refill take this troop off the ships and wait until the 19th of 20 here's the whole thing up over when everybody is well enough to tighten this that's going to be a difficult call so a couple of comments that they said we didn't know what was going on this is one of the sergeant's but everybody was just cussing and raising Cain about another dry run the lieutenant from the 29th who's sitting in this Harbor with all these ships lined up all nice pretty in a row this presented a sight not to be forget just a wall-to-wall ship's tied up together for a lot of space what a target if only the Germans in though now you've got another rubbery board 2130 hours 9:30 at night on June 4th so this is about a half a day later they gathered in by this time this is a quote from one of the books that were at the wind and rain traveled the windowpanes and the French doors this is a Powell South but diving steps forward and predicted there is a small break in the storm about 36 hours it was going to calm down the weather would be good enough for the bombers and fighters the operator so well that chair goes up in the room I can imposes officers leigh-mallory and Tedder both they're still convinced you need to postpone montgomery still full of vinegar let's go forth and i now spends minutes can you imagine watching night pacing back and forth that would be a lonely man he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders trying to decide should we go or huh and he finally says I am quite certain that the order must be given a little bit of qualification in his voice there but the gears start moving think the orders start going out 3:30 0 3:30 this is old dark thirty in the morning quite frankly he gets another report that 36 Wendel is kind of shortening to about 24 but otherwise it's still going to be a break in the weather and he pulls his subordinates again and then he finally says okay let's go and that was it you have to think that those 24 hours or so that Eisenhower was wrestling with that decision he could very well have been the loneliest guy in the world because it was all essentially yeah when he does that okay let's go part of the experience now is going to be issuing the orders of the day soldiers sailors and airmen of the Allied expeditionary force you are about to embark upon the Great Crusade toward which we have striven these many months the eyes of the world are upon you the hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere March with you in company with our brave allies and brothers-in-arms on other fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe and security for ourselves in a free world your task will not be an easy one your enemy is well trained well equipped and battle-hardened he will fight savagely but this is the year 1944 much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41 the United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats in open battle man-to-man our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground our Homefront have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men the tide has turned the free men of the world are marching together to victory I have full confidence in your courage devotion to duty and skill in battle we will accept nothing less than full victory good luck and let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking most of the troops we see that in writing off a lot of them saved it for the rest of their lives so here's the assembly in the crossing and again some of these they've been on the ships for days already they were already exhausted what a minute didn't fit well and they emptied it all out they gathered in this center area called Piccadilly Circus and then from there the mine sweepers about two hundred and forty five of them started to fan out to get out clearing lanes into the beaches themselves and I've had a couple people mentioned to me that watching this watching this must have been just about the most amazing sight than anybody had ever seen that I would have to agree to be in the air to be in the ground looking at that had to be an incredible sight is what one b-26 copilot said as they look down to this magnificent operation I had the surging feeling that I was sitting on the greatest show ever staged now that's one perspective then I started thinking about another perspective being then a procurement and one of those landing craft had been there for a couple days already knowing that you're soon going to go into combat so you've already gambled away all that invasion script that they issued you before that you probably you attended church services someplace you were sick as you possibly could be you're already exhausted you're soaking wet and on top of that you're going through your baptism of fire and you're wondering to yourself how will I do will I measure up well I let my buddies down well I live I'll survive that was another perspective one more we're thinking about here and that's Eisenhower do you thing last thing he did was to scribble down a note what happens if this was a failure our landings in the Cherbourg Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops my decision to attack at this time in place was based on the best information available the troops the air in the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do if any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone so the day starts with the British airborne landings the objective for the Brits on the eastern flank on the lift will at flank of the landings a couple things first of all they have to take up these bridges or the the Eve's River they have to seize the two bridges over the art canal one of them to look either Pegasus Bridge that we know from watching the longest day and it is a rule 16 so 16 minutes after midnight the first objective is accomplished and that was by troops that were delivered by cleitus but then the paratroopers come in and they are scattered across hell's creation here but they are still able to capture or cut the bridges that they have to and out of a force of the SPO space 600 only 116 could be gathered up soon enough to go after these guns here at Marvel some big guns and after those guys were assaulted 75 casualties but the guns were taken out only to find out they weren't 150 millimeter there are only 75 millimeter guns still plenty dangerous on the opposite side all the way on the west sailing off the western portion of the beaches for the Americans we're both the 82nd and 101st so if you can see this this circle right here is where the hundred first was supposed to land their mission was the take these bridges these bridges right here and to open up this cause ways this is it's hard to see in this map but there's a lot of marshy area that the Germans have deliberately flooded they flooded to prevent the airborne troops from maneuvering to make it much more difficult so there are some cause ways across from Utah Beach that's right here that they were supposed to seize as well that's high during first the 82nd was supposed to capture st. Mary gliese right here this town right here and the western exits the bridge is right over here to seal off the other side so that's the plan but the plan didn't go well at all 860 c-47s flying from England they're supposed to be jumping at 600 feet at 90 miles per hour that was the ideal conditions for the for the airborne troops the pilots haven't had any experience in flying in flack they haven't done any good training for that they really didn't know how to fly a fog and as soon as they got to the coastline they have a deep fog they couldn't see a thing so you've got these tight formations of c-47s what the pilots did they naturally start to spread out and as soon as they finally break in to break out of the fog and get close to the landing sites then they start taking drop fire through flat machine gunfire rifle fire from the Germans and in some cases they would drop down to 50 feet or a hundred feet some cases they would take it up to 2,000 feet they would do anything to avoid all those bullets stepping through there so what you have now is a landing where pretty much every place you can see in snap there were six groups of paratroopers overlapping in fact some of them as we know from him the longest day some of them landed right in the middle of Saint Mary police itself both 101st and 82nd planet there but it's all over the map and it's total chaos and now they're in pitch-dark trying to figure out how they can find a buddy how they can link up what they're supposed to do where's my leadership did I keep my weapons it was total chaos in many respects and here is what soldiers view in fact sergeant Rock there is one of the people who's featured in our exhibit the first day the 508 first 508 jumped in army they lost the entire chain of command not captured not wounded all of them killed Colonel Bachelor battalion commander Captain ruddy the company commander lieutenant sneak but turn leader First Sergeant sniffy Smith the first sergeant and Alvin C Carter my sergeant all of them killed the first day no replacements coming in everybody had to move up one so I went in as a corporal on d-day before the sunset on d-day I'm a buck sergeant called my sword and got killed and I go from one machine-gun squad to four machine-gun squats and they said we yeah we were trained for that we they knew they predicted what 70 percent casualties into Normandy I guess my regiment probably had that many anyway but so we were trained to got not only one but to jump to grades if you had to so anyway I I went from one machine gun to four machine guns and four squats from a squad leader to what's called a section leader what have you the resident Botanica taken officer major he went up to Colonel the company exact first later they took over the count all of us went up one day that was this the first day he mentioned 70% that was the dire predictions of the British especially that they would suffer that high Cassidy's in actuality it was something like 10% if you looked over the entire math but again that's just day one now they're stuck there have a big are weeks of battle after we have you talked to each the aerial bombardment for Utah Beach was done by a 26 s and 820 havoc bombers and these are two engine bombers they quite a lot lower and they were very effective to hit the defensive works the long that Beach plus the name of bombardment especially from the USS Nevada with its 14-inch guns and a fleet of 11 I believe destroyers really pummeled the beach as well and did an effective job here's a quick quote from Lieutenant Cyrus eaglet of the USS Basel they feel it was like the fireworks display of a thousand fourth of July's rolled into one the heavens seemed to open spilling a million stars on the coastline before us each one spattering luminous tentacle like branches of flame in every direction never before has there been any more perfect coordination of firepower than that unloosed up by our air and naval forces on this so-called impregnable coastline which hare Schicklgruber had so painstakingly fortified with every obstacle man is capable of conceiving thanks to the first to watch they take them a lot closer to the beach than was planned because of the rough water that was a wise decision on their part and deliberate in some case by LC T's which can again is a little bit more work of a traveling the tidal currents were such that most of the landing craft didn't land where they're supposed to they were pushed farther to the south by the to the left so when they start to look around and say we're not were supposed to things not looking right they've done lots of study they knew exactly what they were supposed to see and it was a couple people in particular the 2nd battalion a 3rd infantry regiment commander and a gentleman by the name of General Theodore Roosevelt president Roosevelt son was there the 1st to 2nd away right there on the beach and figured we're not where we're supposed to be that's Roosevelt right over here and his comment well we'll start the work right from here and that meant that all of the follow-on ways were going to be coming into the same location on the feet rather than try to reroute everything let's start it from right here and that was a wide decision ironically sadly he wasn't a few weeks later that they think Roosevelt died of a heart attack the engineers quickly went to work and it wasn't too much longer before the troops underground were able to link up with the 82nd division it was supposed to be linking up with hundred first and another linking up with the 82nd and the old carefully is on the 4th division piece that you've got Mohawk Beach takes a couple minutes just explain what we're looking at here here is a cross-section of the beach this is what the troops will be coming in here's low tide and that's basically at 6:30 and what they would be facing so they would be facing all these obstacles here the Germans had placed in their way and some of this they'd have color mines and companies so as the water was rising and you're an Atlantic raft and hit one of these there goes your landing craft the tank mind is just blowing you up the other thing is as the water is rising at first you're going to have this long beach you're under enemy fire for that long beach but you've got a long beach them and more room as the water rises that Beach basically disappears then you've got what they call the shingle and right at the top of this jingle is a sand dune or of the seawall it might be just status as cement seawall and then a shelf that you have here and then this cliff this is the one beach where that's really a distinction that's one of the reasons that Omaha Beach is much different but there are other reasons as well h minus 30 there bombardment by these 17s and liberators British heavy bombers from 20,000 feet they wanted to bring these things in parallel to the coast instead here the Air Force did not we just want to go straight in and they did not by this time they did not want to hit the landing craft that were on their way to the beach so they want to be on the safe side so what happens these 17s and liberators drop their bombs two three up to five or six miles inland and not a single bomb lands on the beach it helps the landing force pretty much you have the same kind of scenario for the support that you're getting from the naval bombardment you have the USS Texas there with 14-inch guns but it's not nearly as effective as it was at Utah Beach so you've got a lot more the defensive surviving on Omaha Beach and you've got this ideal situation that the Germans have for defending the beach so look at that cliff you've got right there now there are some places some ravines off the beach basically five of them and you know you're going to have to go up those if you're going to drive off or fight your way off and of course look what the Germans have done and every single case they've got them heavily defended so the approach of the beach the DD tanks the dual drive tanks one battalion 740s first launches its tanks from five kilometers up and it wasn't long before 27 out of the 30 two tanks sink taking some of the crews with them most of them survived but they're in the water swimming for the lives now only to eventually make it to the beach itself the 73rd are scorning the seven forty third Tank Battalion takes them in much closer and most of them to actually make the beach but out of the 5353 tanks of the four core 743 only 21 of them are still operational a few hours later because they are the main target of the German artillery on the beaches and they are knocked out many cases they're knocked out the landing craft how are they fair a lot of them are swapped you've got these things loaded through the gills they sink even before they get in some of them that don't as I was talking about before they hit a sandbar quite a ways from the beach itself they drop the ramp the soldiers hit the water and the next thing you know in some cases they're over their heads now they're carrying 80 100 pounds of weight with them for all the ammunition and weapons and Bangalore torpedoes and reimu's and everything else you could imagine first thing they do is they start getting rid of as much equipment as they can it's it's either that or they drown so an awful lot of the troops at Omaha Beach get to the beach with nothing no weapon nothing and the first thing they do then is to try to make their way up here excuse me right up here get behind that seawall as much as they can so it's an ugly experience the Germans now are zeroing in on the troops on the beach they're zeroing in on the landgraf as they approach the beach mortars are landing right along here and the seawall itself might think you're hiding behind that seawall but you've got that high arcing fire of the mortise and Deliver there's nowhere to hide quite frankly there's no order to hide and many of us have heard about one of the companies especially the 116th that gives the regiment Company a is coming in on the right side of the beach a lot of the troops from that company or from Bedford Virginia from the 29th division the 29th is a National Guard division and why do those families now soon are going to be getting the telegrams from the War Department telling them that their son is injured or guilt because there is a high number of those troops from the same town of Bedford Virginia ok once they're in then what do you do the goal is to get up those ravines as quickly as you can do you destroy those pillboxes force the issue and to get in behind the beach start moving forward because now wave after wave is going to be coming in after you and it would be nothing but congestion if you don't get it the German obstacles you got minefields you got a concertina wire you've got the clutch themselves that are facing you you've got these pill boxes and all the while you've got rising tide of many cases if you're brave enough you go up to the water's edge and you pull a bunny in with you oftentimes you're saving the dead washing back and forth as well or gruesome injuries that you'd be playing one of the best things that happened there was some of the destroyers that ventured in on their own that got much closer to the coastline taking risk themselves in some of these teller mines so they could provide fire support their 5-inch guns on the destroyers was about the only thing that was working in the Americans advantage at that time the only way that they're taking any kind of fire support at all and that probably was one of the things that made the difference but for many of the troops they get behind that seawall and they just hunker down and waiting for something to happen so this is the critical moment of this battle on Omaha Beach what does the happen in isolated cases you see sergeants lieutenants are captain step forward and take sharps and start getting people to move forward and taking risks in some cases the people who are taking that initiative are killed or injured almost immediately by either sniper fire machine gun or something like that but there's a couple cases that really can stand up I want to emphasize it's the small unit leaders are really making it happen but the one that got all the press is general Norman Cota who is the assistant division commander for the for the 29th division and he starts to organize troops around him and really is pushing them forward I think was Robert Mitchum and played this role in the movie remember that figuring out how you could find somebody who had the gumption to lay down a Bangalore torpedo which is this long pipe lay that under the concertina wire blow that up and make a gap in there so you can rush through that he was the one who made the statement gentlemen we were being killed on the beaches let's go inland and be killed Colonel George Taylor was the commander of the 16th regiment that's one of the residents in the first division here's his famous comment the only people on this Beach are the dead and those are they're going to be dead now let's get the hell out of here inspirational words but there's truth to what they were saying either clear the beach or you're just waiting for the enemy to kill you well by this time Bradley who's offshore in the fleet listening to all this and mind you practically nothing radios work there's practically no communication well what little there is and what they can see it looks like a total disaster at Omaha Beach and Joan Darrow who's the corps commander and general Bradley talk about this Bradley was this close to making the decision let's move all the follow-on forces and land them at Utah Beach or Gulf because this is not working and then you figure okay if that's the case then how am I gonna get these troops off the beach and back and there I control it was about that time at 1046 so 1046 in the morning then he gets a message things look better and Bradley knows that he can stay on the beach but he also makes the decision let's hold back these following on weighs until we've got a little better control because things are bunching up on the beach itself the individual and small unit initiative carried the day very little if any credit can be imported company battalion or regimental commanders for their tactical prowess and or their coordination of action that's major sickening damn you heard that he's giving credit where he thought credit was due point aha that's one that we also know about 30 meter cliff on top of that our battery of guns right here they thought them to be hundred fifty five millimeter battery of guns that could really cause havoc both the landing force in on the beaches themselves so it was important that the Rangers the 2nd Ranger Battalion take that out early in this operation the Rangers are volunteers they are probably the most highly trained soldiers in this whole operation for a whole d-day operation very well conditioned and they needed to be because their job was to scale that cliff get to the top and take out those guns they had ladders they got from the London Fire Brigade they found out the latter horn nearly high enough but they also had specially designed mortars that would watch grappling hooks on the top and hopefully sink to find some good firm terrain on the top and then they could scale the cliff that way they also had the support of the Navy in this case the Navy provided good fire support suppressive fire on the top of the hill to keep the Germans head down otherwise it would have been they're impossible for those trenches to get up they suffer pretty heavy casualties they didn't pull them didn't actually make the beats they got elsewhere but they did get to the top and then they discovered the guns weren't there the Germans had removed the desk as they fought their way inland they eventually found the guns and destroyed them and took them out of action but that's one of the more famous and many of us remember President Reagan's famous speech after the 40th anniversary the boys a point to hop behind on the hobbies after you get through the nightmare self but finally getting off the beast my do you discover then behind Omaha and you talk to a certain extended well is the hetero country the Bocage region of France is what the how the French would say it these hedge rows you can kind of make them out here they could see them and intelligence photos before the war before the invasion but most people think well these are kind of like the hint robes that you have in England the kind of hedgerows were you can easily clear it with a horse and the dogs get over enough oxide it's really not much of an obstacle at all well they get to there and then discover it it's anything but these would be mounds six eight ten feet high of dirt with shrubbery growing solid in there and perhaps you would find a gap in there that the farmers would used so he can get into his field so what did the Germans do they mined those gaps they would set machine guns up on the far side and you slay in the corners they had excellent light machine guns to use they would burgled away on the far side of the the hedgerow so then only a small switch would be exposed you can hardly engage them that way if the tanks trying to get over those said the rose that was a difficult proposition the first place but imagine this is there anything more vulnerable than a tank showing its belly to the enemy and she's starting to clear the top of it this was a disaster for the Americans they did not anticipate at all they finally figured it out they would blow gaps in the other areas of the hedgerow with TNT or they would have specially equipped tanks and see this little gizmo right here those dragon teas but those are made from these obstacles the Germans had left on the beaches but it wasn't until weeks later that they figured this out and there was a long time just what you get done with chlorine one field then you've got another and behind that was another behind that was another the Germans perfected the defensive for that well that gives us to the British beaches how are they doing they went a little bit later and that was primarily because of the title situation that they had the Gold Beach London 735 Juno was at 7:55 and sword was at 7:25 so but an hour later than the Americans were going in most cases that goal was the 50th British division the beach was quite a bit different now we're is go farther to the east they're getting more resort areas more nice homes along the beaches in one case in the city you've got a nice casino that's part of the beach defenses so the Germans used all of that to their bad and go Beach there was a relatively successful aerial and naval preparation and I'm going to hear this a couple times the Brits make good use of these specialised tanks the Hobart funding they worked well the ones that actually made it into the beach they performed the tests they were meant to perform and they were able to advance inland and you can see that they were able to get in eight to ten miles past the beaches itself do you know 3rd Canadian division heavy German defenses along this area now you have these 17s and heavy bombers going in with the same results that you had for Omaha Beach none of these bombs landed on the beach itself and the naval bombardment was slightly less successful the big advantage of the Canadians half they didn't have that huge cliff that they had scale once they got up there they have more flowing through rolling terrain afterwards but the Germans were heavily defended there there was plenty of artillery that survived all of this and the landing craft they last a lot of landing craft going insane so oops at the swimmin or suitcases drown there'd be picked up and hauled back out DD tanks in the funnies it worked well again that was a big advantage the British chef in that particular Beach and pretty soon there was a link up between the Brits and the Canadians between gold and general beaches that leaves only one Beach to go them and that's sort that is on the easternmost flight it's next to the town of oyster hunt I think that's how you pronounce it and this is close to the vicinity where the 6th the British Airborne Division had landed as well so you wanted to take out the guns there there is a some guns right in this vicinity there for Bill and the guns up here at Lahab and these ended up not being much of a factor up here and of course the 6th Airport troops had taken care of this particular battery right here so the man that was fairly successful they suffered not nearly the penikett 50 did either Juno or especially in Omaha Beach and they were quick to be able to get in by 1300 Seaborn commandos had linked up with the troops at the bridges and the pegasus bridge and the other bridge across the horn now this is the only place in the battle that we're going to see is determined German counter-attack and it was by one regiment of the 25th Panzer Division tanks that saw this gap and they drove through the gap between Juno and sword Beach it was not a successful attack for two reasons they had anti-tank guns on both sides but even more important you have plenty of British air cover and attacking those tanks and most of those tanks were destroyed in the effort so Brits were successful 630 casualties they moved in about five miles or so now here's one other thing - we don't have too many Brits in the audience but the British have a tendency sometimes to once they got a certain point boy this is great we missed successful with time 40 deeper the Canadians even thought that was a little bit bizarre but the Canadians and the Brits EPs sort both had five types of company as they want to show us well part of the charm of the British Army - well I guess the German response kind of talked about them to a certain extent on the beaches himself where Bravo intended to fight this battle it was a touch-and-go situation at Omaha Beach and the other beaches it was only a spotty resistance that the Germans were a look with up but remember Rommel wanted to fight the fight right there on the beaches as much as possible and he was right to a certain extent because the Germans weren't able to rally any reinforcements because the beaches have been isolated that's as they thought part of the equation also is the high command and plenty of people up and down the command still thought the main attack was going to be happening of how to collect that this is just a diversionary attack so they're holding back a lot of the reinforcements because of that the senior leadership was absent they had been to this war game Rommel was still in Germany he has to jump in a car and try to get back to the fight and there's widespread confusion not the least because now the American paratroopers might have anywhere close to where they're supposed to be so the Germans are just as confused by that is the Americans ended up man and finally Hitler's own command habits and sleeping habits he'd been up till 3 o'clock morning of the 6th talking to Dave abroad talking to him ler talking about the cinema of all things the German cinema and went to bed and then didn't wake up and nobody dared wake him up until late into the morning so it's something like 1604 o'clock in the afternoon before any Panthers are released and by that time it's daylight anything that starts moving is under risk of being attacked by the by the air force so there are a few contacts at that time finally and what these pictures illustrate well that's it there is a lot of the troops that surrender one of the troops that was captured and maybe a group of them were Koreans you think what drew Koreans doing in Normandy at the time well the Koreans have been grafted into the Japanese army captured by the Soviets drafted into the Soviet Army captured by the Germans on the Eastern Front drafted into the German army and ended up in Normandy that's the casanare you have with these oddball forces of the OspA times and a lot of these were just looking for the first opportunity to surrender in many cases German NCOs paid the price for that too did you have it sometimes kilograms oh they give me the opportunity surrender and for those who understand military history there are a few more dangerous moments in a person's life than that moment when you decide to put your hands up and wonder what the enemy is going to do this touch and go I like this picture because you look at it's as old as kids anyway get this big honkin American soldier this guy right here and this guy right here thinking I'm just about as lucky as you can get and finally having this these poor kids okay so here's the status we're just about done with this here's the status at the end of the day you can see the Brits have made considerable progress in their second but there's still this small gap between you know sword that will soon be closed a more sizable gap between go Beach with the British and Omaha Beach it's really going to be a couple days before that is and then on the opposite side of the river here you've got Utah Beach and the pockets they're pretty small as well and some of that is the air force that's in the air long term situation and by this time you still have plenty of airborne soldiers it just and I'm hoping they can find somebody knows what's going on so limited penetration the beaches but now you've got this situation going on look at all these LSDs that are unloading tanks trucks artillery anything and everything they can all the ships in the harbor and by this time you've got the whole berries that are coming over as well and I set up and really have a more substantial Harbor and even though in Omaha Beach it was touch-and-go they are there to stay 133,000 Sun landed by sea another twenty three thousand plus by air by June eleventh that number had more than double 54,000 vehicles already been lighted at the time think of the scale of this whole thing think about how much planning it would have taken to do that one hundred four thousand tons of equipment and supplies by this time they'd already laid a pipeline between England and Normandy that was part of the plan as well because there's nothing hungrier than an army on the move in terms of vehicles by July 1st there's over a million than it landed in Normandy pushing their way forward still it would be a long time before you can really break out of the Normandy region for two reasons the Americans in the hedgerow area as I've already described it's just a slow slog to go through there get through one hedgerow and then you face another one and it took them a month or more before they were able to finally break out of that area and for the British they were supposed to the plan was called the tank the city of time the first day and the pegasus bridge was right next to just a little bit north of time itself well Montgomery pennant changed his description said my plan was to to fight in time and Hall and focus all the German armor can so that the Americans wouldn't have to face the German army so we will sacrifice we will fight the Germans in Canada and they did and it was until about the 20th of July that they finally were able to seize and and after a massive aerial bombardment that they did that so some Americans have a different viewpoint of what Montgomery's plan was initially but that's how it worked itself I and those are the casualties and I thought it was appropriate then to go back to how important this battle was how much this was the focus of the entire world's attention the time wasn't just Americans wasn't just the eyes the Russians had as much skin in this game as anybody because this is the opportunity to finally believe that of so much of the German force they were facing so to get a sense of how important it was I wanted to play this prayer that President Roosevelt led the American people oh mighty God our sons pride of our nation this day have set upon a mighty endeavor lead them straight and crew give strength to their arms stoutness to their hearts steadfastness in their faith please men are lately drawn from the ways of peace they fight not for the lust of conquest they fight to end conquest they fight to liberate they fight to let justice arise and tolerance and goodwill among all thy people they yearn but for the end of battle for their return to the Haven of home some will never return embrace these father and receive them thy heroic servants into thy kingdom and Lord give us faith give us faith in thee faith in our sons faith in each other faith in our United Crusade thy will be done Almighty God amen a nationwide broadcast well you've all been very patient I went longer than I'd expect it but you think by now I want to figured out it going longer than I would expect it I apologize for that and then thank you for your patience you have any questions put my hand yes sir right here I think is the brother's name was what was it my pilot very interesting I don't know if everybody heard that but his Roosevelt's brand is right there on the beach said at the American Cemetery I've never been there how many people have been to normal Wow hope I got it right that's on my bucket list I definitely need to go anything else yes sir in the back describe this pipeline we'll all came through the pipeline that was petroleum fuels Dona Nobis oil or I would assume as gas link there's even the tanks at that time we're running on gasoline and to be frank about it most of them came over on ships and offloaded in these mulberries are right on the the LSTs that they didn't have maybe about five or 10% that they use the pipeline but I thought it was pretty significant they thought of just about everything on this so on the other hand up here yes sir it's about it's much closer to home Hawk beach because the Rangers that did not land at like the Hawk were diverted and landed on the right flank of Omaha Beach so they supported Omaha Beach and stuff that they were very helpful to get past that of inertia and get those troops moving so I'm probably two or three miles certainly within range because the guns would've been able to fire on anywhere at Omaha Beach yes Eisenhower was in England waiting for the news and again he had to think that his heart was in his throat for most of that day wondering how it was gonna all turn out yes interesting that an operation of that size if you can't see was for the Germans that is one of the most amazing parts about this I think as well but it illustrates a couple of things that those greats have dysfunctional the German chain of command was there in earnest to think that they had not lost their the secret communications as the Brits have figured that out with ultra and how human nature you believe what you want to believe and if Hitler says I think they're coming upon to quell a that by God everybody thinks they're coming up avec le so it is one of the great miracles but it also illustrates the inability of the German to get any kind of good reconnaissance place by this time over England they had some but it was very spotty it wasn't good enough intelligence and the Brits especially exist were masters at the Germans and their plants and everything was riding on that yes in the bath there were lost I don't know what I mentioned I think the number that were participating was five thousand three hundred and thirty three ships and press of various types so if you include crafts they're probably a couple hundred most of those being Higgins boats Landgraf infantry landing craft paints those kinds of things I think there was a couple of destroyers that were lost because they went too far in one I think was taken out from German fire from a naval fire I believe and a couple of head teller mines but very small very small impact the Navy performed superbly in that respect yes the Navy while marketing deep long speeches some of it was a smoke by the time you start to build up the smoke on the beaches you can't release zero one as much as you could I'm not sure I have a good answer beyond that while it varied from beach the beach pardoning well the interesting part yes but it wasn't just one day me they were shipped from a bleep 12 countries there there was the Utah was supported by the Nevada Omaha Beach by the USS Texas and then the bridges obviously supported their own beaches but they had polish they had French they had Belgium they had a smattering of other countries involved with it as well yes two on both side various campaigns go back one slide here and so there's the Cassidy's who knows how many German casualties somewhere between 4,000 and 9,000 killed plenty more who are captured and if you listen to some of the stories about Omaha beast you're amazed that what there's only 2500 roughly that were killed and 7,500 wounded or missing you got to believe a lot of those missing we're killed in those landings as well but really remarkably small numbers are the number of troops involved in what they are undertaking all the way in the back here what about that 2400 number airborne lost 2,400 and then the US carriers released report dealers 2400 killed wounded captured of us airborne yes well that number would include all that any time you're talking about casualty figures it's you know you find numbers that are all over the map and it gets very frustrating to try to end down exactly what's going on I believe that the u.s. casualty numbers are pretty accurate the Allied you see there's a little bit more plus and that the Germans are just who knows how many they lost and one or two more questions perhaps yes these were the numbers for that one day so my my presentation focused on just that one day that's the pacing part of this yeah it's the scale of this the logistics of this the planning that had to go on every single piece of this you know they spent years laying all this up but yeah it's it's quite an accomplishment to think that they were able to accomplish that with global casualties but here's the flip side of that once they are on the beaches these troops were there for weeks for months and once you get past about a month or so the effective strength to a lot of these frontline divisions might be down to 30 40 % and the turnover was horrendous in that respect okay last question all the way in the bathroom it just seems to me that with all the logistics and planning that you said and then on the actual date for all the things that went wrong with that planning it's amazing how it actually came out and I think that has everything to do with the courage the dedication the commitment that everybody who is involved with this at they all were hundred percent all in to success and that showed because of the results they gather enough people step forward and took initiative and Omaha needs to break through the plan was good enough to have worked well enough the Hobart funnies worked well the Air Force did its part to blocked on anything everything that might move afterwards it all had to come together and roll the dice that was successful on we are the beneficiaries because it did so I think what that will close and I think you get forgot [Applause]
