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Show NEWS ftt w ? . - .4 i ( US .""l 1 ' . ' . ' :r Hilltop Times r'" ..7---- 1 .May 31, 1991 r i ' , ' vurT'- - -hi 'si J.." r . Beginning of the end This striking panorama of the invasion on June 6, 1944, was made from a hillside during the conquest of y !4! I . .tft - .... .v" 'Wtbjfc Ok ..... 1 Courtesy Photo 0)n6)(oiyo g(J(o PflGIg) three possible days for the invasion, he had chosen the fifth so that if there was a postponement he could launch the assault on the sixth. But if he orOn Tuesday, June 6, 1944, possibly the most critdered the landings for the sixth and then had to canical event of World War II took place. The Allied cel them again, the problem of refueling the invasion of Normandy began, and the fate of Europe returning convoys might prevent him from attackdepended on its outcome. ing on the seventh. There would then be two alterA gutsy decision and masterful deception were natives. "He could postpone until the next period among the ingredients that accounted for the success of this, history's greatest amphibious operation when the tides were right, June 19. But if he did and mightiest Allied undertaking. Although popu- that, the airborne armies would be forced to attack the landing portion of the plan in darkness June 19 was moonless. The other allarly called d was Operation Neptune, and the over- ternative was to wait until July, and that long a all invasion effort was Operation Overlord. postponement... was too bitter to contemplate," Mr. Planning by the British for such an invasion had Ryan said. begun in September 1941. Gen. D wight EisenhowA brook in tho weather er, appointed supreme commander of the Allied ExThe meteorologist's next report was that a new peditionary Forces on Dec. 24, 1943, arrived in London in January to begin final preparations for weather front was expected to move up the channel June 6. The rains would stop, the winds would the massive thrust into northern France. Cornelius Ryan, in The Longest Day, quotes Presi- decrease slightly, and the cloud cover would rise just dent Eisenhower's orders as, "You will enter the con- enough for bombers to operate. President Eisenhower polled his principal subortinent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other dinates and then decided to proceed with the invaUnited Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed sion on June 6. He confirmed it at a final briefing after midnight. Airborne troops were to begin their forces." The logistics were enormous. As Mr. Ryan said, drops in the first minutes after midnight, June 6, "There were so many troops that it took some followed by seaborne American troops landing at 54,000 men just to service American installations." 6:30 a.m., and within the next hour, depending upon tidal conditions, by British and Canadian troops. The decision was irrevocable. And the operation was Exhaustive supply effort a go. The numbers staggered the imagination. HistoriHowever, just keeping the entire operation secret an Charles MacDonald wrote, "The south of Eng- from the Germans was In fact, Alland became a bulging warehouse: artillery, lied troops for weeks had even been isolated in the antiaircraft guns, ambulances, trucks, tanks, bull- English countryside behind barbed-wir- e enclosures dozers, observation planes, laundries, hospitals, field and watched by some 2,000 counterintelligence kitchens, locomotives, railroad rolling stock, even agents until they were to climb transport gangways. dental fillings." According to Mr. MacDonald, "The deception inAmong their facts, historians Don McCombs and volved during Operation Overlord was a plan on a Fred Worth tell that the initial assault across the scale the world had never before known." e A major part of the deception rested on the GerEnglish Channel into France involved 185,000 troops, 18,000 paratroopers, 13,175 aircraft, man's mistaken expectations that the landings 4,066 landing ships, 745 large ships, 20,000 vehicles would take place farther north in a place called the and 347 minesweepers. The British, Canadians and Pas de Calais. It was situated along the coastline Free French would land at Gold, Juno and Sword nearest England and the route most traditionally beaches on the northeast base of Normandy Penin- crossed into Germany. The Allies fed this belief with a plan designed to sula; to their west, the Americans would land at convince the Germans that Overlord was only part Utah and Omaha beaches. On May 8, President Eisenhower designated June of an even larger invasion effort. Naval demonstraOn the night of June 4, however, his tions off the channel coast, false messages, dummy 5 as staff weather officer advised that the next day installations and other signs of impending coastal would be overcast with high winds and a cloud base assault kept the Germans in a continual state of too low for flying. Conditions were so unsettled, he alert and alarm. For example, continued Mr. MacDonald, under said, he couldn't forecast beyond the next 24 hours. Mr. Ryan wrote of President Eisenhower, "Of the Operation Fortitude, a fictitioua.American force was by F. Peter Wigginton American Forces Information Services D-Da- y "D-Day- ," code-name- mind-bogglin- ship-born- D-Da- y. the Cherbourg Peninsula in France. Balloon barrages float overhead to protect the landing ships from low flying enemy strafers. Headed inland are long parades of trucks loaded with troops and supplies. g. supposedly assembled just across the channel from the Pas de Calais. Dummy troop installations, false radio traffic, dummy landing craft at the mouth of the Thames River, huge but unoccupied tent encampments, dummy tanks all contributed to the deception. Basic also to the deception was the fact that British intelligence had broken the German communications code. "Ultra" was the name for information obtained from German radio broadcasting in that code. With this intelligence, the Allied high command knew what the Germans were thinking and planted false information to reinforce an existing wrong view or to create another, added Mr. MacDonald. The Germans learned the British intended to broadcast the first line of a poem to alert the French resistance that the invasion of France was imminent. The second line of the poem would signal 48 hours' notice. Yet few German commanders believed that intelligence. "Why would the Allies announce over the radio in advance when they were coming?" skeptics asked. Poetry in motion Although the Germans intercepted both lines of n the poem, Mr. MacDonald said Field Marshal Rommel refused to put much stock in the information, because he also had weather officers, and e winds were churning up the channel at the Er-wi- gale-forc- time. Nevertheless, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt decided that even if the assault was a diversionary attack, it had to be defeated. Around 4 a.m., he ordered two panzer divisions to prepare for counterattack. He told the high command in Germany of his plan. Word immediately came back to halt the divisions until Hitler approved. But Hitler was fast before Hitler at last asleep. It was 4 p.m. on von Rundstedt's approved employing two other divisions. The next day, word reached Hitler that copies of U.S. operational orders had been found that confirmed the landing in Normandy constituted the main invasion. Hitler order his panzer reserve into action, but Ultra intercepted his message. An Allied agent known as Brutus convinced the Germans that the captured U.S. orders were false. Hitler retracted his order and the Allies advanced. On Aug. 25, Paris was liberated, the Allied forces continued eastward, following President Eisenhower's "broad-front-" plan, which ultimately distributed armies along Germany's entire western border. They crossed the Rhine River on March 7, 1945. Germany surrendered on May 7. D-Da- y |