There is little doubt they helped add confusion to the enemy's response that night. German general Max Pemsel, Seventh Army chief of staff, sent an entire brigade in a futile search for these bogus paratroopers.
GERMAN WAKE-UP CALL
Because the Allied airborne landings were scattered and chaotic, the Germans were almost totally confused about what was happening. The paratroopers spread more chaos by disrupting German communications. Telegraph poles were blown up, telephone cables cut. German units became isolated from their command posts. The unintended dispersal of the three airborne divisions actually led to the Germans becoming more mystified about the Allied targets and wider mission.
The Allied airborne troops on the ground outnumbered the Germans two to one. Along with the massive air operations, they helped overawe many of the inexperienced German defenders.
German military intelligence, the Abwehr, had learned of the coded radio messages that the Allies would broadcast signaling the French underground to begin widespread covert action supporting the D-Day landings. When the Abwehr heard the messages before midnight, they informed the Wehrmacht high command in the West that the invasion was imminent. Unbelievably Rundstedt and most other senior commanders discounted this action as only Allied disinformation. Ironically only in Pas-de-Calais did its Fifteenth Army commander respond by placing his forces on high alert. No one in Normandy was notified.
The absence of so many senior German commanders from their headquarters only added to the night's confusion. Rommel had left for Germany. General Friedrich Dollmann, commander of the Seventh Army, was at the war game in Rennes. General Fritz Bayerlein, commander of the crack Panzer Lehr Division, was with his mistress in Paris. General Edgar Feuchtinger, commanding the key-positioned Twenty-First Panzer near Caen, was believed to be somewhere incommunicado with female company. Both Rundstedt in Paris and Hitler at Berchtesgaden were asleep.11
However, General Erich Marcks, commander of the LXXXIV corps in Normandy, did respond quickly to the events in the early hours of June 6. At midnight several of his officers at his St. Lo command post gave Marcks a surprise party for his fifty-third birthday (June 5). After a glass of Chablis and a short celebration, Marcks and his officers began receiving scattered and fragmented reports that led them to conclude that something serious was afoot. Ironically, on June 5 Marcks had participated in a war game at his headquarters. He had taken the role of Eisenhower and had launched his “attack” into Normandy.
At 12:40 a.m. on June 6 elements of the German 242nd Infantry Division clashed with enemy paratroopers of the US Eighty-Second Airborne north of St. Mère-Église at Mountebourg. (See Map 5.) A few minutes later Marcks learned that British parachute units had seized the Caen Canal crossing at Bénouville and blew up the bridge over the Dives river. At about 1:45 a.m. Marcks was informed that the 711th Infantry Division near Cabourg had made enemy contact. Major General Josef Reichert had been playing cards with his staff members when two British paratroopers landed on the front lawn of his headquarters and were taken prisoner by the Germans. Reichert concluded that the Allies were about to land on the Cotentin Peninsula and the paratroops were designed to secure the far eastern flank of the seaborne assault.12
Other reports flooded into Marcks's command post. All this news convinced him to put the LXXXIV Corps and the Twenty-First Panzer on immediate top alert. Marcks then called General Max Pemsel, Dollmann's chief of staff, and told him that he believed the Allied invasion was definitely in progress. This was shortly after 2:00 a.m. on June 6.
Since his commander was absent, Pemsel immediately placed the Seventh Army (which had one panzer, two fully equipped infantry, and three static infantry divisions) on the highest state of alert and telephoned Rommel's chief of staff, General Hans Speidel, at La Roche-Guyon at 2:15 a.m. Pemsel repeatedly insisted throughout the night that a major invasion was taking place. Speidel then called Rundstedt to pass along Pemsel's conclusions. As both Rundstedt and Speidel were still convinced that the real invasion was to be at Pas-de-Calais, they believed that the paratroop landings were a diversionary attack to take attention away from the Fifteenth Army at Pas-de-Calais. To satisfy Marcks, they did take the Ninety-First Air Landing Division and mobile units of the 709th Infantry out of reserves to counterattack the American paratroopers in the western Cotentin Peninsula.13
As reports increased during these early-morning hours, Rundstedt's suspicions grew. He telephoned Rommel, who was at his home. Afterward Rommel spoke to Speidel and told him to ready a counterattack by the Twenty-First Panzer and concentrate all the divisional area reserves under one command. Then at 10:30 a.m. Rommel left to race back to France.
At 3:00 a.m. on June 6 Rundstedt ordered the highest state of alert for Army Group B. As a safety precaution he also requested that OKW release the Twelfth SS Panzer and Panzer Lehr Divisions to move them into Normandy. The request was rejected by General Jodl, Hitler's chief of staff, because the führer was sleeping, and no one dared disturb him to seek this permission.14
At 4:00 a.m. German major general Dietrich Kraiss, commanding the 352nd Division covering what would shortly become Omaha Beach, made a major blunder. He sent his reserve regiment on bicycles in pursuit of paratroopers who were in reality only Rupert dummies. This soon proved to be a costly error.
If Rommel had been in Normandy, he might have succeeded in persuading Hitler to release the panzers. Certainly he would have galvanized the senior staff officers to react more vigorously in mobilizing the local units. As Rommel had predicted in his diary, the Wehrmacht's muddled response showed the fatal cracks in this vaunted military machine. “Failing a tight command in one single hand of all the forces…victory will be in great doubt.”15 Without the panzers in the strategic reserve, only the coastal forces’ stubborn defense stood between the Allied invaders and establishing a successful lodgment in France.
In the early-morning light of June 6, a German artillery officer behind Sword Beach gazed seaward through his binoculars. He was startled to see the horizon filling up with hundreds of ships. He later recalled, “It was an unforgettable sight. I had never seen anything so well organized and disciplined. We watched, absolutely petrified, as the armada steadily and relentlessly approached.”16
THE CURTAIN RISES
Spanning an unprecedented length of fifty-five miles, the Allied fleet appeared off the Normandy coast. On the far western zone was the beach at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula code-named Utah. Ten miles to the east was Omaha Beach, west of the Norman capital of Bayeux. To the east of Bayeux were the British and Canadian beaches of Gold and Juno. The British beach Sword lay due north of the key crossroad city of Caen. (See Map 5.) An infantry division was to land on each of these five beaches.
The Normandy beaches have a very gradual rise. But tides greatly vary between eighteen to twenty-four feet. This means the width of the beaches has a great range between high and low tides. To avoid Rommel's numerous beach booby traps, Montgomery made the decision to land at low tide. Navy Combat Demolition Units were to clear pathways before the second and third waves came ashore.
Due to these tidal conditions the Americans landed before the British by sixty to eighty minutes. The attack was scheduled to begin two hours after low tide (6:30 a.m.).
Timing was a significant factor for the air and naval bombardment of German defenses in Normandy. Neither the Royal Air Force (RAF) nor the US Army Air Force would commit to either the size or timing of their D-Day bombing operations until shortly before June 6. Their lack of cooperation with SHAEF only added to OVERLORD's uncertainties.
At midnight before the landing began, over one thousand aircraft from British Bomber Command shattered the Germans’ sleep. This was the beginning of five thousand tons of bombs, aimed over the next five hours on ten major German gun batteries.17 This did not alert the enemy to the invasion since the Allies had been bombing all along the coast of France for many months.
Almost the entire US bomber fleet next took to the s
kies. Over 1,600 B-26 Marauders and more than 1,300 B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators appeared in a thunderous pathway ten miles across. “We went to bed about 11:30 p.m. on June 5,” recalled Glen Wiesner, a B-17 copilot. “Fifteen minutes later, the lights went on and a loud voice boomed, ‘Everybody up! Everybody flies today!’” This was the big day! “Crossing the English Channel…we could see that fantastic sight of the many, many vessels…. We were timed to bomb the enemy shortly before our troops hit the beach.” They dropped their bomb load just before 6:00 a.m.18
Casey Hasey, a B-26 squadron bombardier, attacked the long-range gun emplacement at St. Martin de Varreville minutes before the American landings. (See Map 5.) These guns had a range of up to twenty miles. Hasey remembered, “I zeroed in on those barrels sticking out of the concrete…the concussions I felt were strong, and heavy and scary…I couldn’t believe it. Not a shot was fired at us. Our suicide mission turned out to be a milk run—apparently we had surprised the Germans.”19
UTAH BEACH—“WE’LL START THE WAR FROM RIGHT HERE”
The planning and actual beach landings were controlled by the commanders of the American and British naval task forces. Admiral Alan Kirk decided to begin lowering the assault boats about eleven miles offshore in contrast to the seven to eight miles chosen by the British admiral. This was done to keep the US landing ships out of range of German shore batteries. Admiral Ramsay had taken the position that this was an unnecessary precaution as the considerable strength of Allied counter-bombardment would smash the German guns. Kirk's decision made the run to the beach three hours instead of two. It was about 2:30 a.m. when the Americans began transferring troops to their landing craft.20
The Western Task Force, however, did not open naval fire until 5:50 a.m. Kirk had reduced the preliminary bombardment to only thirty to forty minutes from the two hours recommended by Ramsay and implemented by Admiral Vian for the British Eastern Task Force. Kirk thought the Americans would gain the advantage of surprise. He was gravely mistaken.
In the midst of the naval bombardment at 6:00 a.m., 269 Martin Marauder medium bombers of the US Ninth Air Force attacked under the two-thousand-foot cloud ceiling. They dropped almost five thousand bombs along the length of Utah Beach, obliterating many German positions.21
The naval bombardment continued once the bombers departed. Allied destroyers picked out targets of opportunity. However, ship congestion offshore and the smoke and dust raised by all the shelling and bombing reduced the bombardment's accuracy.22
At 4:55 a.m. the first waves of infantry landed on Utah Beach. One of their targets was a strongpoint named W-5 commanded by the veteran lieutenant Arthur Jahnke of the 709th Infantry Division. Only twenty-six days earlier Rommel had personally inspected this position. Satisfied that Jahnke was working hard to strengthen his bunkers, he presented him with an accordion, an award that Rommel frequently gave out for meritorious service.
After the air and naval bombardment had knocked out most of Jahnke's strongpoint guns, he gasped in disbelief at the countless ships of Operation NEPTUNE heading for him. But they were landing at low tide. Rommel was wrong. Now all the German beach obstacles they had labored to lay were useless. The fields of fire from the German guns that were still functioning also had been set for a high-tide landing.
Then Jahnke saw a strange specter emerge from the ocean surf—peculiar small land vessels. They were the Allies’ ingenious DD tanks. These amphibian tanks had inflatable canvas flotation skirts and rear-mounted dual propellers to power them in the water. But they were fragile, safely launched only in calm waters. Lieutenant John Richer USN, commanding the DDs’ sea deployment at Utah Beach, fortunately decided to move their launch from six thousand yards to a calmer two thousand offshore. Of the forty DD tanks launched, thirty-one made it to shore where Jahnke watched helplessly as these tanks eliminated the German bunkers one by one.23
Behind the beach, where the first wave was targeted to strike, stood a row of ten-inch guns transplanted from the French Maginot Line, now dug into a high cliff. Below them were batteries of deadly German 88mm guns. However fate now intervened on the side of the Allies.
Three of the four pilot boats for the landing were destroyed by German mines. Due to the heavy current and in an effort to make up for lost time, the sole remaining control craft headed for the wrong beach.
The first wave landed two thousand yards (1.2 miles) farther south than planned into an accidental gap in the beach defenses. The assistant division commander, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the son of former president Theodore Roosevelt, came in with that first wave. Once ashore he figured out that it was the wrong place. Move the landing a mile northward or strike inland? “We’ll start the war from right here!” Roosevelt said. It was the right decision.24
By midmorning the German resistance had ceased. The US Fourth Division's greatest challenge proved to be moving through the dunes and the twelve-mile-square area flooded behind Utah Beach. At 11:10 a.m. the Fourth Division scouts linked up with paratroopers from the 101st Airborne. By day's end they were four miles inland.
The Utah landing was one of D-Day's major accomplishments. In fifteen hours, twenty-three thousand men landed along with 1,700 vehicles. The Fourth Infantry Division suffered only 197 casualties on June 6.25
OMAHA BEACH—“A HELL OF A MESS”
At 5:20 a.m. the first landing craft carrying soldiers of the Twenty-Ninth Division and First Division set off toward Omaha Beach. As they were launched ten miles offshore, it took them over one hour in heavy seas before they landed on Omaha Beach at H-Hour. “With unbelieving eyes,” recalled Franz Gockel of the German 716th Infantry Division who was stationed in a bunker, “we could recognize individual landing craft. The hail of shells falling on us grew heavier, sending fountains of sand and debris into the air.”26
The landing zone that Gockel defended was by far the toughest objective of the five OVERLORD beaches. Omaha Beach was a crescent-shaped amphitheater with high bluffs 100 to 150 feet in height nestled between cliffs at either end. Below a seven-thousand-yard beach of sand and shingle jetted upward at about a forty-five degree angle.
Above and immediately below the bluffs the Germans had placed guns of 75mm or larger caliber, thirty-five pillboxes, and dugouts equipped with 88mm or 75mm guns as well as sixty light and thirty-five small artillery pieces. In front of the fortifications were thirty-five anti-tank guns and eighty-five machine guns, six mortar pits, thirty-eight rocket pits, and four field artillery positons. Numerous booby-trapped obstacles and mines were strewn across the beach.27
These defenses were manned by the 716th Coastal Defense Division composed mainly of Slav and Polish “volunteers.” Also present were units from the 352nd Infantry Division, a tough, skilled, and disciplined collection of veterans transferred from the eastern front to Normandy. While being driven to Germany, Rommel recalled that only one of the division's brigades had been placed at the coast. The other two were held in reserve several miles away. He resolved that upon his return he would order Kraiss to move the remaining brigades to the coast.
Behind these defenses the Germans placed artillery positions and naval batteries in huge turrets to support the beaches. However nowhere in Normandy were these batteries sufficient to repulse the Allied fleet and landings.28
At 5:40 a.m. thirty-two amphibious tanks (DDs) were launched. Unlike Utah Beach they started too far out at sea by ten miles. The three-to four-foot waves swamped their flotation skirts, sending twenty-seven tanks to the ocean bottom. Few of the 135 tank crewmen were rescued. Also all the amphibious trucks carrying 105mm field guns sank. Omaha's assault troops had no field artillery and little tank support after landing.29
The naval bombardment began at 5:50 a.m. led by the battleships Texas and Arkansas. The American battleships were supported by British and French heavy cruisers. Flying giant French tricolor flags large enough to be seen from the shore, the Montcalm and Georges Leygues had to fire on their homeland.
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br /> During the bombardment 480 B-24 Liberator bombers dropped 1,285 tons of bombs aimed at thirteen specific targets. But the thick cloud cover from the weakening storm obscured the targets. The bombardiers had to drop by radar. To avoid hitting the Allied landing craft, they delayed an extra five to twenty seconds before releasing their bombs. Some landed up to three miles into the French countryside behind Omaha Beach. More cows and chickens were killed than Germans.30
Rocket launching vessels (LCTs) delivered the last phase of the bombardment. Each launching rack had 1,080 sixty-pound, three-foot-long rockets. Each LCT hurled sixty-five thousand pounds of ordinance at the beach. Eight LCTs were off Omaha. Because of a navigation error, these ships sailed in the wrong direction. Most of their ordinance fell short, landing harmlessly in the sea.31
The Germans in back of Omaha Beach waited, protected by their bombproof fortifications. None of the air, naval, or rocket bombardments penetrated or destroyed their bunkers.
Once this bombardment ceased, the eight hundred German troops took up their defensive positions. Behind their intact installations the Germans waited for the first wave of landing craft to reach the beach before they unleashed what became a hell-like killing zone.
Each American landing craft held thirty-one men and one officer. In the long ride to the beach the men became soaked and cold. Most were seasick after a heavy breakfast of bacon and eggs. Few took seasickness pills, fearing drowsiness in combat. Swamped in heavy seas, ten or more landing craft sank.
At 6:30 a.m. the first wave of 1,450 men jumped into the water off Omaha Beach from thirty-six landing craft. “They must be crazy,” said a German infantry sergeant in a bunker overlooking Omaha Beach. “Are they going to swim ashore right in front of our muzzles?”32
A fully equipped infantry man carried sixty to ninety pounds of equipment and several days of extra rations. Navy coxswains reacted to the heavy flow that day by dropping the landing craft ramps too early. Troops fell into water over their heads and drowned from the weight of their gear. Others stranded on sandbars were left exposed. Many who made it to the shore found it necessary to discard their equipment and weapons or had their guns jammed by wet sand.33
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