>> male narrator: It's the greatest invasion machine of World War II. Thousands of ships and aircraft, millions of tons of steel and concrete, and tens of thousands of Allied soldiers dropping from the skies and storming the beaches of Normandy. They overcame the Atlantic Wall and nature itself in the greatest assault the world had ever seen. The hardware that triumphed on the longest day. <i> Machines of D-day</i> next on <i> Modern Marvels.</i> [dramatic music] ♪ ♪ 12:16 a.m., June 6, 1944. D-day. Four years of trial and error have trained the men and built the war machine that would throw themselves against Hitler's Atlantic Wall. Ever since the blitzkrieg of 1940, Europe was under the iron heel of Nazi jackboots. Now the operation that would drive them out was in motion. Each element of this invasion machine went through intensive research and development to make sure it would perform its job perfectly. The first unit to spring into action was the Allied airborne force. Highly trained paratroopers prepared to leap from their aircraft into the night sky over Normandy. >> Sound off for equipment check. >> A-okay. >> So we knew exactly what we were doing. And stand up, hook up and then check equipment. And I would check the equipment of the man in front of me and check my own equipment. >> Okay. >> Ready, jumpmaster. >> Stand in the door. >> The idea was to get out of that plane. We were like--what's it called? An airborne shuffle? You had your knee in the next guys behind, and you were shuffling out so that when you landed you were close together. >> narrator: Carrying the first wave of paratroopers on D-day was the C-47 transport aircraft. >> Well, outside of the Model T Ford, I think the C-47 was one of the great inventions of the millennium. >> narrator: The man behind this incredible aircraft was Donald Douglas. Asked by TWA to develop a passenger airliner to rival Boeing's models, his design was superb. Streamlined and wide-bodied, the fully developed aircraft took to the skies over America in 1935 as the DC-3 passenger airliner. The aircraft revolutionized air transport. Fast and powerful with an outstanding safety record, the DC-3 soon came to the attention of the U.S. Army Air Force and entered service only 16 days after Pearl Harbor as the C-47. It was the ideal military transport aircraft and served all over the world. Now it was crucial to the airborne troops in the early hours of D-day. >> It was the responsibility of the crew of the C-47 to make certain that the paratroopers were dropped as close to target as possible. And even a delay of three or four seconds in turning on the green light would have thrown them off their designated target zone. [engine thrumming] [suspenseful action music] ♪ ♪ >> Go. >> Go, go, go, go, go, go. [explosions] >> Out we went, and the war is on. [parachute flapping] thud! >> narrator: On D-day, more than 1,000 C-47s carried 23,000 airborne troops into action. The ideally placed door in the C-47 meant that a full load of 20 paratroopers could leave the aircraft in just 10 seconds. The cargo-carrying ability of the aircraft was also improved when this door was enlarged. This meant that heavy equipment and even wounded men on stretchers could easily be loaded aboard. >> We would haul litter, patients, gasoline, ammunition, food, medical supplies. Anything that had to be hauled to get to where it was destined to go in a hurry, the C-47 did it. It was so dependable for so many jobs. It was just a flying truck. >> narrator: Everything depended on whether or not the paratroopers could protect the flanks of the landing beaches and capture the routes needed for the advance inland. But the paratroopers could only carry light equipment and were vulnerable to armored attack. The Allies needed to find a way to get artillery and antitank guns right onto the drop zones. The answer to this problem was the glider. Two types of gliders were used by the Allied airborne divisions on D-day. The British Horsa was 67 feet long, built almost entirely of wood, and carried 25 troops or a 6-pound antitank gun. The smaller American CG-4 Waco had a fabric and plywood fuselage over a metal framework and could carry a jeep or 15 men. The cheap lightweight construction of both designs meant that they could easily be towed by the C-47. If necessary, two Wacos could even be towed at the same time. The pinpoint accuracy of these simple throwaway aircraft also made them ideal for special missions on D-day. As U.S. paratroopers hit the ground in the American sector, 50 miles away, two gliders carrying men of the British 6th Airborne Division led by Major John Howard were about to show what gliders could do. In what has been described as one of the greatest flying achievements of the war, they located the vital Orne Canal bridge in the pitch dark and swooped in to crash-land at 100 miles an hour. >> Then there was a great scramble to get out, because, you know, the last thing you want be when you just landed close to a guarded bridge is to be sitting in a wooden glider. Almost as soon as we cleared the glider, Major Howard, typical of him, he was up on the bank of the canal saying, "Come on, boys. This is it, come on!" And we all charged after him. >> narrator: The German defenders were totally taken by surprise. >> By the time we got to that end of the bridge, they had decided it was not a good place to be staying around. We scattered to either side of the bridge up and down the canal bank and took up all round defensive positions. >> narrator: As this actual photo taken on D-day shows, the capture of the Orne Canal bridge blocked the German route to the D-day invasion beaches. The men of the glider force were the vanguard of 150,000 troops who landed in Normandy over the next few hours. But after this promising start, things began to go badly for the airborne invasion. Cloud banks over the drop zones caused the C-47 transports to veer off course, and heavy antiaircraft fire broke up their formations. The paratroopers of the American airborne divisions were scattered all over the Cotentin Peninsula while vital heavy equipment was lost in swamps and rivers. Over the next few hours, small groups of men began to band together. Dick Winters was a young officer of the 101st Airborne and one of the first men on the ground on D-day. [clicker sounding] He worked with another paratrooper to determine exactly where they were. >> We exchanged greetings. And in coming down the road, he had been smart enough to stop at a stone marker. The stone marker said St. Mere Eglise. I was able to orient the map very quickly, because the planes were coming in, and they were flying from west to east. He had told me St. Mere Eglise is that town up there. There was St. Mere Eglise on my map. I knew exactly where I was. >> narrator: Winters and his men then began to secure the vital road exits from Utah Beach. By 3:45 a.m., a huge fleet of C-47s had taken the airborne divisions to Normandy. 1,300 aircraft and 800 gliders had carried 23,000 men, 110 jeeps, and 500 artillery pieces to drop zones deep behind enemy lines. The C-47s were now the paratroopers' lifeline, bringing in vital supplies and reinforcements until they could link up with the troops landing on the beaches. But the day had only just started. More men and more machines were about to roll into action. >> All of your heroic airborne guys dropping on the Cotentin Peninsula and heroically walking through the night, they are only part of a very big, complicated system. >> narrator: Unless every single man and machine did their job to perfection, D-day would end in chaos. >> narrator: 6:00 a.m. on June 6, 1944. The largest invasion fleet the world had ever seen appeared in front of stunned German soldiers manning bunkers along the Normandy coast. 60 miles of ocean packed with nearly 6,000 ships and craft of every shape and size. >> [speaking German] >> When the landing fleet arrived, it was unbelievably huge. We said, "It can't be real." So many ships. And the horizon was black with ships. We said, "We can do nothing now." >> We were actually treading through in daylight, these hundreds and hundreds of vessels all in straight lines, a number that you couldn't have imagined. You'd look ahead and see these lines stretching right to the horizon. >> narrator: Seconds after appearing out of the mist, the invasion fleet announced its arrival with a terrifying bombardment. [cannon fire] Like clockwork, the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers each added their contribution to the weight of metal smashing down on German beach fortifications, a storm of 15-inch, 8-inch, and 5-inch shells. Joining these conventional fighting ships were new craft designed especially for this day: rocket ships. Their decks were crammed with racks holding hundreds of rockets tipped with 5-inch warheads. A barrage from a single rocket ship could pulverize hundreds of yards of beach, shredding barbed wire entanglements and obliterating minefields. Under the cover of the bombardment, assault troops prepared to cross the last miles of sea to the shore. >> We climbed over into the landing craft, and we were, you know, 10, 11 miles out. And the--the sea was rough. And that's when everybody got wet and cold. And you're getting seasick. >> narrator: The machines that carried men like Bob Slaughter to their destiny on the beaches of France spent years in the making. Without them, an amphibious landing, one of the most complex and dangerous operations in war, would have been impossible. >> Not only do you have to deal with the land, not only do you have to deal with the sea; but in amphibious operations, you have to deal with the interface. You've got to cross the line between the two. >> narrator: The first major amphibious landing in modern times dates back to World War I. In 1915, Britain used its naval power to bypass the deadlock of trench warfare on the Western front in France with an assault on Turkey's Gallipoli Peninsula. Thousands of men stormed the beaches to destroy the gun positions blocking the route to the Black Sea and Russia. The assault was a disaster. >> No one had thought through how you do these kind of operations, how you coordinate the naval gunfire, how you coordinate the naval landings. They didn't have the equipment, so you're essentially jerry-rigging the equipment for the landings. And none of the troops had been trained for it. >> The British Army, the Australians, the New Zealanders are all lined up on the beach, coming ashore in small boats, and being shredded by Turkish machine guns and artillery. So the story of Gallipoli is kill, kill, kill. And it's the Turks doing all the killing. >> narrator: Gallipoli made a strong impression on military planners in America and Britain. Both countries saw the potential of amphibious warfare if only technology could catch up. Up to the early 1930s, infantry still had to land on beaches by jumping out of boats and wading ashore. By World War II, Allied designers realized that a brand-new machine was needed, a machine that could carry troops across that deadly divide between land and sea. >> They need boats that are designed to come into shallow water, come right up to the beach, and get the cargo off quickly. And the Americans, among other places, turned to people whose job it is to design and build river craft. >> narrator: In 1938, the U.S. Marines first tested a new shallow draft boat capable of landing troops and small vehicles. Made by a New Orleans based maverick boatbuilder, Andrew Jackson Higgins, it was an early version of the landing craft that became the backbone of the D-day invasion. Britain too was developing specialized landing craft to carry troops and vehicles, but these early craft were slow and awkward. And before they could be fully developed, Europe was once again engulfed by war. In 1940, Britain's tiny force of landing craft was destroyed not in landing, but in evacuating troops from Dunkirk. Yet only a few weeks later, Winston Churchill ordered amphibious raids on occupied France to begin. A new organization was set up to coordinate these raids and to develop the machines they needed. Newly trained forces of commandos would carry out these missions in what would become known as combined operations. These early commando raids were mere pinpricks against the Nazi war machine but were key to working out every possible problem before D-day. Meanwhile, the U.S. pushed ahead with its own landing craft designs and amphibious invasion techniques. The basic landing craft that carried the assault divisions on D-day was about 40 feet long, weighed 13 tons, and carried 30 infantrymen. The secret of this successful assault landing craft was the flat bottom, which stopped it from getting stuck on shore, and a ramp bow that allowed troops to disembark quickly before they became easy targets for enemy guns. In the United States, they were known as Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel, or LCVP. Britain used a similar design tested in early commando raids called the Landing Craft Assault, or LCA. >> The LCA was quite a good sea boat. It was low in the water, and it was specifically designed to come in at night as a surprise attack. >> But they were wider than the LCVP. They were a little bit lower, and they had more armor on 'em. It was probably a better landing craft than the LCVP. The LCVPs were made of plywood. These were steel. >> narrator: When they left their mother ships on D-day, the landing craft headed to the beaches in long columns. Over the last few hundred yards, they spread out to form a line or wave so that all their troops could hit the beach at exactly the same moment. To break up the wave formation, the Germans constructed thousands of obstacles along the beaches of France. These could rip the bottoms out of landing craft or blow them and their human cargo to pieces. At dawn on D-day, the coxswains of 2,400 LCAs and LCVPs knew that they were heading straight for a killing zone. Every man had to use all his skill to avoid the obstacles and get his troops safely ashore right on target, or the first critical moments of the invasion would be a disaster. Commanding 18 LCAs of the first wave on Omaha Beach was Lieutenant Jimmy Green. >> We had the easiest wave, I think, because we cleared the obstacles. The second and third waves landed, actually, in amongst the obstacles. Some of our craft were hit and disabled. Of our 18 LCAs, we lost 6. >> We didn't know whether we were going to land right in front of a German pillbox or a gun emplacement or what. And I remember telling the rest of them. I said, "We're gonna catch hell." >> As they went up the beach, the Germans opened up with their machine guns and wiped them out. I think there was something like two wounded survivors when the second wave went in. >> narrator: The terrible casualties did not slow down the pace of the invasion. Each successive wave reaching the beach added to the overwhelming buildup of troops who hurled themselves against the German defenses. But this was only the very tip of the Allied spearhead, and it could still be blunted by a heavy attack on land-- and above all from the air. If the invasion was to be a success, the D-day machine had to win control of the skies over Normandy. >> narrator: Mid-morning, June 6, 1944. Allied aircraft patrolled the skies high above the beaches, where thousands of troops were pouring ashore from landing craft. This was the most vulnerable moment of the entire invasion. If the German air force attacked now, they could cause chaos on the beaches. >> Because an amphibious operation is so vulnerable to air attack, it is a necessary precondition to any amphibious operation that you have control of the skies overhead. >> narrator: Although fighter aircraft dominated the skies on D-day, the story of the destruction of the Luftwaffe began months earlier with the heavy bombers of the U.S. 8th Air Force. Their mission: to destroy the Luftwaffe on the ground. >> Every target that we had was German aircraft factories, either the engine factories or the planes themselves. It had something to do with the German air force. >> narrator: Though the bombers caused severe damage, German fighters made them pay a heavy price. [gunfire] >> Listen, I'll tell you those fighters, sometimes it just looked like a swarm of bees. They would catch you at different spots until you got to the target. You were very fortunate if you got through it and didn't get something hit. >> narrator: To take on enemy aircraft that attacked bombers on their way to targets, a high-performance, long range escort fighter was desperately needed. Rolls-Royce engineers tried fitting a low-level American fighter called the P-51 with their famous Merlin engine. The result was the best Allied fighter of the war, and it would prove crucial to the D-day invasion. The new and improved P-51 Mustang not only had extraordinary performance at high altitude but, fitted with extra fuel tanks, had the range to escort heavy bombers to distant targets. Arriving in Britain at the end of 1943, the new Mustang squadrons were just in time to support the bombers led by 8th Air Force commander General Doolittle in the run-up to D-day. >> General Doolittle said, "Now is the time for us to go after the fighters." The bombers had done their job. They destroyed the main targets. And they say, "From now on, we're going to go get 'em." And, of course, then it was dog-eat-dog. Everybody was going after every damn thing that moved. >> We always attacked. We always attacked, no matter how many. And it shortened the war. >> narrator: In the months leading up to D-day, more than 2,000 German fighters were destroyed in grueling air battles, crippling the Luftwaffe's ability to control the air over Europe. >> I didn't dislike the Germans. I hated the son of a bitches. So that took care of a lot of my problems. Because if I thought I could get one, I would do a certain number. If I figured I could get 1,000, I'd have done a hell of a lot more. >> narrator: With the Luftwaffe decimated, the next preemptive strike for the invasion could begin. A bombing campaign against the French railway and road system began so that German reinforcements wouldn't be able to reach the Normandy beaches. >> They had us knocking out bridges and communications and trains south of the invasion. Now, the idea there was to prevent the Germans from bringing the troops down south up around to fight our boys when our boys went in. And we stopped 'em pretty good. >> narrator: To back up the bombers, fighters like the Mustang were assigned the task of attacking the trains themselves. [gunfire] [explosion] In a single day, 46 locomotives were destroyed and another 32 damaged. On D-day, as the invasion fleet neared the shore, a squadron of Marauder bombers came in at low level just ahead of the first wave. >> The day that we hit, we went up and dropped 500-pound bombs in front of the cliffs, not on the Germans. We dug foxholes with bombs to where when our troops came in they could dive down in a hole and protect themselves. >> narrator: Beyond the beaches, 33 squadrons of fighters flew inland, attacking German airfields and paralyzing attempts to strike at the invasion fleet. >> We were authorized to go down on the deck. And then you had a lot of fun there. Anything that moves, just shoot it. So we used up our ammunition, most of it, before we come back home. [gunfire and explosion] >> narrator: Without the work of the Mustang, the thousands of men who had fought their way onto the beaches from landing craft would have been sitting ducks for the Luftwaffe. By mid-morning, the aerial component of the invasion machine dominated the skies overhead. On this extraordinary day, with the waters off the Normandy coast full of targets, the best Goering's once mighty Luftwaffe could do was a single brief sortie by just two fighters. In contrast, 3,000 Allied aircraft flew more than 14,000 missions in support of the troops below them. Yet on the beaches, those troops were still under German artillery fire. More tanks, artillery, and vital supplies were needed to establish a bridgehead. The next wave of machines, amphibious craft and tank landing ships, began to move to the front of the battle line. Without them, the D-day machine would grind to a halt. >> narrator: Midday, June 6, 1944. Allied assault troops have successfully landed on the beaches of Normandy. They now needed vital supplies to help them push further inland. Coming in just behind the assault waves was one of the strangest craft to appear on the Normandy beaches: the DUKW, also known as the Duck. For driver Stanley Dobson, D-day was not what he had expected. >> Nobody told you that--what it was going to be like when you got there. I remember looking over there at the sand dunes. At the time, we were unloading the Duck and saw the infantry actually fighting to take a cottage. I heard this--what I thought was the sound of bees and suddenly realized that it was machine gun bullets coming whizzing over the top. [bullets whizzing] You suddenly realize, "What am I doing here?" >> narrator: The amphibious Duck was a revolutionary design and answered another vital Allied need for a vehicle that traveled on land as easily as it navigated at sea. In 1942, the U.S. Army realized that even with a successful landing craft to get troops ashore, there would be a delay getting supplies forward to the front line. What they needed was another machine that could carry those supplies from transport ships inland to supply dumps. Leading yacht designer Rod Stephens was chosen to design this new vehicle. In just 38 days, he and his team transformed a standard army truck into an amphibian by adding a boat-shaped hull and a propeller. >> It was built for whatever you're going to use it for, whether it be land or sea. You didn't have to worry about where you're going. You know you'll get there, so-- It's just simple engineering when you get down to it. It may seem complicated to some people. But in theory, most of it is simple. >> narrator: The Duck could unload equipment from the heavy transports at sea and carry it inland right to its target. On D-day, the astonishing versatility of the Duck was vital to the success of the Allied landings. While the Duck carried urgently needed supplies to the troops already in action, waiting offshore were larger transport craft carrying the thousands of tanks, guns, and trucks that had been stockpiled in Britain for the invasion. They would make all the difference to the fight on the beaches, but they needed a completely different kind of craft to get them ashore. As early as July 1940, Winston Churchill sent a note to the minister of supply: The response in November of the same year was the landing craft tank, the LCT. Early models could carry five tanks, but later versions held double that number. With a crew of 12 and a speed of 11 knots, they provided the heavy lift necessary to carry tanks right up onto the beach. But to carry both troops and tanks in larger numbers, the only solution was the much bigger Landing Ship Tank, or LST. The vast majority of LSTs were built in the dockyards of America. These 4,000-ton ships had two decks with room for 20 Sherman tanks and 200 troops. Just as important, they could act as mother ships for the assault landing craft, carrying them on the upper deck and lowering them into the water like lifeboats. And like the smaller landing craft, the LSTs had flat bottoms with a ramp and bow doors. They could land right on the beach to unload their cargo. >> The Landing Ship Tank is so mind-bogglingly useful that everybody wants one. In fact, they want a few hundred of them. The LST is the most popular girl at the dance, and her dance card is full. >> narrator: Builders worked around the clock to roll out more than 1,000 LSTs. Though demand for them came from the Pacific as well as Europe, planners knew that they were essential for D-day. Even the date the invasion was launched depended on these priceless vessels. >> The availability of amphibious landing ships dictated the tempo of the war in the European theatre. The Americans wanted to go cross-channel in 1942. They were persuaded out of that simply because we didn't have the landing craft to go cross-channel. >> narrator: Off the Normandy beaches, the LSTs lowered their bow ramps to allow Ducks to drive straight onto their cargo decks for more supplies. In a few hours, the LSTs themselves would be able to land on the beaches to unload. But this was a slow process, and the beached LSTs were easy targets for gunfire. The only way to speed up the unloading process was to have a fully functional port. Knowing that a port was essential to an invasion of France, British combined operations planners executed a large scale commando raid to test defenses around the French port of Dieppe two years earlier. >> Now, we ran into a convoy about half an hour or so before we were supposed to land. The port was then alert, was well-defended, and all hell was let loose. [cannon fire] The tanks put ashore weren't able to get off the beach, because they didn't have any grip. And it was a complete disaster. It's something which I'd rather forget. But it did teach us a lesson not to attack a port. >> narrator: The tragedy of Dieppe was a major setback. Out of a raiding force of 6,000 men, more than 3,000 were killed, wounded, or captured. The Germans were now alert and expecting the Allies to attack a port as part of any invasion. Allied engineers had to find a solution to the port problem, or the D-day invasion would be impossible. >> You can't get large quantities of supplies ashore from transport ships onto a beach. So if you are not sure of getting or holding an existing port in working condition, you've got to bring your own. >> narrator: Taking a port to France was such a radical solution to the problem that many believed it was pure fantasy. Mervyn Walter was the young brigadier chosen to turn fantasy into reality. His ultrasecret project would go down in history as Mulberry. >> To design the pieces for two great harbors, to construct the pieces for the two harbors all over the United Kingdom, to assemble the pieces on the English south coast, to tow the pieces one by one through 100 miles of German-infested sea to the French coast. That was the operation which was codenamed Mulberry. >> narrator: Each Mulberry harbor had to enclose an area as large as New York's Central Park and handle as much shipping as a major port. Within the harbor walls were pier heads, which were essential features of the Mulberry. This was where the LSTs would discharge the cargo that would be the deciding factor in the success of D-day. Mounted on legs that extended to the seabed, the platform between the legs was raised or lowered with the tide. From the pier heads to the shore were steel roadways. Each span connected to the next with flexible joints that allowed them to follow the movement of the waves. Altogether, some 10 miles of floating roadway would be needed. To create the sheltered water for a harbor, breakwaters were built out of 147 enormous concrete boxes called Phoenix caissons. Able seaman Ken Bungard was amazed by his first sight of a caisson. >> The first thing I saw was a huge office block with no windows, no doors standing by the quayside. In fact, it was 60 foot high, 60 foot wide, and 200 feet long. And it looked like a giant egg box. It did not occur to us at that time that this thing floated. And we were amazed at the tug that was tied up to us suddenly started pulling, and we moved. >> narrator: More than 22,000 men worked around the clock on the caissons. Astonishingly, they were completed in only nine months. Mervyn Walter's work was at the heart of the D-day invasion. >> The British chiefs of staff wrote this: "The Mulberry project is so vital that it must be considered the crux of the whole operation. And it must not fail." >> narrator: By early afternoon on the Normandy beaches, the LSTs and the Ducks were working desperately to get supplies ashore. Now the prefabricated Mulberry harbors took center stage. Without a steady flow of heavy equipment, the men who had fought and died on the beaches would have fought in vain. But would this huge revolutionary apparatus stand up to the pounding waves off the Normandy coast? >> narrator: 2:30 p.m. on D-day. The Mulberry fleet, the anchor of the invasion machine, churned toward the Normandy coast. Engineers were already ashore marking out positions for the harbor's massive components. First to arrive were 63 obsolete battleships and cruisers and worn out merchant ships making their final voyages to France. After being towed into position, they were sunk to form breakwaters off the landing beaches. At the same time, the crews of the Phoenix caissons were crossing the channel on their lumbering concrete vessels. >> There is one thing I have never forgotten to this day, and that was, of course, the sound of the waves banging against the side of these caissons. It was like a huge drum. It was a huge "boom, boom, boom" going on all the time. [deep booming sounds] >> narrator: Once into position, the crew aboard each caisson opened the valves that allowed the sea to rush in. Thousands of tons of concrete settled on the seabed in carefully marked sites to form the outlines of the two harbors. Finally, looming over the horizon came the strange shapes of the pier heads, ready to put down their legs and form the mooring point for the floating roadways. At these pier heads, the transport ships unloaded their troops and supplies directly onto trucks. They then took them along the roadways and across the beaches to supply areas inland. The Naval construction battalions at Omaha Beach, the Seabees, and the Royal Engineers at Arromanches on Gold Beach worked day and night to get the harbors ready. >> The harbor itself was about the size of Dover harbor. And considering how long it took to build it, it was quite a remarkable feat. >> narrator: In an incredibly short time, both Mulberry harbors were completed. The heavy supplies--tanks, trucks, bridging and airfield construction equipment-- all started to dock. Most of this heavy equipment was unloaded at the vital LST piers. >> The landing ships could come onto the end of the roadway. The doors opened, and the tanks just ran ashore. And they ran ashore from two levels. And we were able to discharge a complete landing ship tank in 40 minutes, whereas it took 6 hours on the beaches. That was the difference between a port and the beach. >> narrator: Within the sheltered waters of the two harbors, hundreds of landing craft could beach. Simultaneously, hundreds of Ducks scurried back and forth, keeping up a constant traffic of smaller loads to and from larger merchant vessels offshore. It seemed as though the Mulberry project was working perfectly. But then disaster struck. [lightning crashes] On June 19th, one of the worst gales in memory threw up huge waves against the prefabricated harbors and shipping massed offshore. >> When the gale came, we had something like 200 craft moored inside the harbor taking refuge. Every so often, one of them drew its anchor and started to wander. They would be taken in charge by a tug, would prevent it from rolling onto the long floating roadways, which were so vulnerable. And we even had to sink two ships to prevent them going on the road. >> narrator: With supplies slowing to a trickle, the advance inland had to be suspended while the storm pounded on. It seemed as though the Overlord invasion machine was stopped in its tracks. As the seas finally subsided, the damage to the Mulberry harbor at Omaha Beach was immense. The concrete caissons crumbled under the pounding of the waves. And even worse, ships disabled by the storm were driven into the harbor like floating battering rams. Whole sections of floating roadway were hurled onto the beach along with the wreckage of landing craft and small ships. In the midst of the destruction, the Ducks rose to the challenge. They worked their way around the wreckage, drove out to the ships, whether they were beached or floating, and then went inland to unload right where supplies were needed. In no time at all, the remains of the Mulberry A at Omaha were salvaged to repair the almost intact Mulberry B at Arromanches. Supplies started to flow again, and the vital heavy equipment used the Mulberry, while the beaches handled the increasing flow of troops. >> Fire! [gunfire] >> narrator: Savage fighting held back the enemy while the supply buildup went on. C-47 transport aircraft continued to provide the armies with supplies and acted as flying ambulances to get the wounded back to hospitals in Britain. At the same time, squadrons of Allied fighter-bombers dominated the battlefield. [explosions] The Allied armies, tanks, infantry, and massed artillery drove forward to liberate town after town. [crowd cheering] 2 1/2 million troops, 1/2 a million vehicles, and 4 million tons of supplies were delivered to France. It was an achievement unparalleled in history. Two words sum up the D-day machine's performance: mission accomplished. >> You know what the great hero of Normandy was? The one thing that made it all work? There isn't one. Normandy is an example of a system of systems. It is an example of many little moving parts brought into a single system through careful coordination. The level of coordination in both time and space was the largest effort ever undertaken by mankind. >> However small our part was, a very small cog in a very large machine, afterwards we began to feel very proud of what we'd done. >> The landing craft they developed and the cooperation that existed between the three services came to fruition on D-day. >> Well, I think as far as the Duck's concerned, if we hadn't had the Duck, we wouldn't have had Normandy. It's as simple as that. >> These pilots and crew of the C-47 would go about anywhere and do anything. They were just wonderful people and very courageous. >> We all knew our job, and we performed as best we could. Every crew member on every aircraft in our outfit did a tremendous job. >> The missions of the P-51 were more or less cut and dry. It's probably a horrible thing to say, but I got a hell of a good kick out of it, particularly when you're winning. >> narrator: Ingenuity, imagination, and sheer hard work by dedicated teams had created one of the most complex and sophisticated war machines in history. The D-day machine, a machine of men and metal, pushed the boundaries of engineering and defined freedom over 60 years ago. [bells ringing] Captioning by<font color="#00FF00"> CaptionMax</font> www.captionmax.com
