by Jack
Published at sunrise…. in honor of the fallen heroes of Normandy.
On this day at sun up, the largest invasion fleet ever assembled in the history of the world landed at Normandy, France. It was called Operation Neptune and Overlord by the allies, and it took the Germans by complete surprise.
The beach fighting ranged from no resistance at Sword beach to a blood bath at Omaha beach. For invasion purposes Normandy’s coast was divided on the map into landing sectors. The Americans drew Omaha beach, the most heavily defended, with reinforced concrete machine gun nests and coastal artillery.
They were backed up by yet more artillery just behind the beaches and that included mortar companies to work-over infantry on the beach.
A day earlier and again about 45 minutes before the first landing craft hit the beach American B-17 bombers, and British Wellingtons dropped their bomb loads on the fortified German positions. But, because the allied bombers were flying too high, they did not inflict the 
damage on the German bunkers as they had hoped. The allied infantry soldiers paid a heavy price for this tactical mistake.
9000 soldiers died within minutes of trying to come ashore. Many were killed by direct machine gun fire before they could even exit their landing craft. Others drowned when they jumped
overboard to avoid being strafed and plunged into deep water with their heavy gear.
Over 425,000 Allied and German troops were killed, wounded or went missing during the Battle of Normandy. This figure includes over 209,000 Allied casualties, with nearly 37,000 dead amongst the ground forces and a further 16,714 deaths amongst the Allied air forces. Shown below is the Canadian cemetery at Normandy.
