Normandy Invasion :: essays research papers

As they hustling for a cross- route assault on France, the Western assort built up on British soil one of the largest and most powerful impact forces in history. For 2 months before the landing, while troops, equipment, and supplies poured into Britain, the assort air forces bombed railroads, bridges, airfields, and fortifications in France and Belgium and continued their attacks on German industrial centers.Postponed by delays in crowd the necessary landing equipment and by weather and tidal conditions, Operation Overlord, with Eisenhower in command, began on June 6, 1944, afterward known as D-Day. Throughout the preceding night, paratroopers were dropped female genitalia German coastal defenses to sever communications and seize key defense posts.Hundreds of warships and innumerable sm alone craft supported the invasion. Between 630 and 730 A.M., waves of confederative troops moved ashore amid Cherbourg and Le Havre in historys largest amphibious operation, involving approx imately 5,000 ships of all kinds. About 11,000 Allied aircraft operated over the invasion area. More than 150,000 troopsdisembarked at Normandy on D-Day. Because all major French ports in the north were mined and fortified, the Allies offhand two artificial harbors, with pontoons, breakwaters, and sunken ships. One of the harbors was destroyed by a severe Atlantic gale, but the other worked perfectly. Twenty pipelines below the Channel were used to bring in critical supplies of gasoline for the tanks.The Germans had anticipated an Allied invasion of western Europe at about this time but were surprised by its location. Gen. Gerd von Rundstedt, commander of German forces in the West, had expected the Allies to take the shortest water route and land at Pas de Calais. A British intelligence operation called Ultra, having broken key German ciphers, learned of his misapprehension. To take advantage on the situation, the Allies stationed a phantom army in Kent that beef up Rundstedts m istaken opinion. It may also have influenced Hitler to decide against sending make panzer divisions to Normandy, a decision that greatly facilitated the landing and the establishment of beachheads.