ji Normandy would be unable to swing up against
bim for weeks. If he struck at Normandy, the
iroops at Calais would be blocked.
IKE SWEATS IT OUT
EISENHOWER was on a spot. His invasion would
have to be in late spring or early summer to
tive the air force long days in which to make its
superiority count. The spring tide would expose the
Nazi beach obstacles at low water and enable engi
neers to try to break them.
The commander’s weather prophets had picked
D,e date—June 5, 1944. On June 1 troops began
leading. More than 4,000 ships assembled in port*
along the English coast and at Belfast.
On June 3, the winds began blowing and the
tlouds dropped low. Early the next morning Eisen
hower postponed the invasion. The weather
prophets then predicted better weather for the 6th,
but they could not tell how long it would last.
Allied leaders watched their barometers and
iweated. They had estimated four days of good
weather.would be needed to insure success. Land
ings on the 6th under poor conditions could be dis
astrous. But if they were postponed again the tides
and other factors would not be right until June 19.
ind too many persons now knew invasion was on
is way. The secret might reach the Nazis.
Eisenhower grimly decided to risk it on the 6th.
Before dawn black-faced paratroopers, loaded
with so much equipment they could hardly walk,
seated themselves along the benches of huge trans
port planes. Airborne infantrymen eased themselves
into gliders between jeeps and guns. Fighter pilots
stepped into the cockpits of their planes. Battle
tip 'crews, holding the rails at their stations as
eir vessels plowed through the Bay of the Seine,
squinted through the mist to catch sight of the
toast of France. Thousands of ships, fast and slow,
irrived at their assigned places in an almost in
credible demonstration of split-second timing.
This was the invasion. This was the biggest thing
)f its kind in the history of the world.
INVASION
T'HE plans called for the Americans to land at
* two beachheads — “Omaha,” in the Vierville
Colleville sector of the bay, and “Utah,” near jSt.
Martin-de-Varreville. The British and Canadians
were to move in near Caen.
Warships shelled the beach areas. Rockets zoomed
from converted landing craft. Heavy bombers
roared up and down the coast, blasting pillboxes
and other defenses through the thick clouds with
their radar range-finders. Other bombers sped
farther inland, hitting airfields, troop concentra
tions, railways, truck convoys, communication cen
ters—everything within a radius of 100 miles the
Nazis might use against the invaders. Fighter planes
sought out the Luftwaffe but found few Nazis in
the skies. The airborne troops landed behind the
toast, dynamiting rail lines, cutting communications,
seizing crossroads.
The huge armada of landing craft moved to shore.
Infantry assault troops went first. Sprayed with
machine gun fire, they raced up the beaches to
pick out the pillboxes.
Then tanks roared in, followed by engineers who
would try to dynamite the criss-crossed poles of
wood and concrete strung along the shallow water
to halt the landing craft.
As the engineers began their work in the chilly,
waist-deep surf, mortar and artillery shells burst
all around them. Machine gun bullets whistled into
the water. The wounded frantically clutched the
poles and the torn bodies of the dead floated onto
the beaches.
The landing craft now moving in could not unload
in water. They needed the beach desperately. But
the obstructions still held them off.
One hope was left. The craft smashed head-on
into the obstacles. Some hung helplessly. Others
foundered. But most of them got past.
The invasion was less than half an hour old. More
engineers came ashore to clear the beach of mines
and set up traffic lanes for tanks and heavy guns.
New infantry raced in with heavy mortars, anti
tank and machine guns. Trucks and bulldozers be
gan to appear.
In three hours more than 20,000 men were ashore
at the three beachheads, and German defenses were
weakening. At Omaha beach, the Yanks ran un
expectedly into a Nazi counterattack division on
maneuvers and slowed down. Omaha’s coast de
fenses proved powerful, and the low clouds pre
vented bombing as effectively as had been planned.
But the beachheads were building up fast. Infan
try divisions were formed as more and more land
ing craft banged through. Boxes of ammunition
piled up. Tanks rumbled up the slopes and inland.
When darkness closed in on June 6, 1944, three
big spots on the Normandy coastline were cluttered
with bulldozers, tractors, tanks, anti-aircraft guns,
mortar, artillery, jeeps, trucks bullets, shells, and
many thousands of men who had breached the
The 'Big Three As They Met At Teheran
-———
(Left to right) Premier Stalin; President Roosevelt; Prime Minister Churchill.
Fortress of Europe and set the stage for some of the
mightiest battles of the war.
ENTER THE "MULBERRIES"
AT the end of invasion day, the Allies had 150,000
men ashore. The push across the Normandy
peninsula began.
The Germans had expected the invasion at Calais
since a landing at Seine Bay would leave Eisen
hower far from a big port to handle reinforcements.
Even now they thought the Normandy offensive
might be a feint, and Field Marshal Gerd von Rund
stedt, in over-all command, temporarily hesitated
in mounting a large counter-attack. But he had
large garrisons defending the ports on the peninsula
and the Allies, he reasoned, would be unable to
bring in enough supplies over the open beaches.
The British had foreseen this problem and long
before had laid an astute plan before General Ike.
Now the plan began to work.
As part of the invasion armada a fleet of tugs
chugged out from England, hauling concrete cais
sons. Off the beaches Seabees sank the caissons to
form a breakwater. Inside the breakwater floating
pierheads were set up, and pontoon roadways ran
from the pierheads to the beach. These artificial
harbors were called “Mulberries.” There were two
of them, capable of handling large ships—one at
the Omaha beach, and one in the. British sector at
Arromanches. Five smaller breakwaters—“Goose
berries”—were set up by sinking old warships and
merchant ships just off the beaches to provide a
refuge for smaller craft in rough weather.
The ingenious scheme solved the port problem.
During the first week the Allies moved- over the
"Mulberries” and “Gooseberries” 74,000 troops, 10,
000 vehicles and 17,000 tons of supplies.
The beachhead widened slowly. Bradley’s men
took the ancient cathedral center ot Bayeux on
the 7th, and cautiously edged into the little village
of Ste.-Mere-Eglise two days later. Rommel brought
up his tanks against Caen and the battle with Mont
gomery for that vital anchor of the invasion line
flowed back and forth while the city itself was
hammered brick by brick. By the end of the week
the Americans were a third of the way across the
peninsula, and their planes were covering the bat
tlefields from landing strips in France.
The blockade by air now paid dividends. Nazis
trying to move south found bridges smashed, rail
road lines bombed out, highways pitted. Truck con
voys critically needed at the front hid in the fields
to escape strafing planes that seemed to be every
where. Whole divisions were immobilized for days.
While Montgomery held Rommel, Bradley shot
across the peninsula to close it off and then swung
up along the road to Cherbourg.
Off the beachheads the weather gods now had an
ironic fling. The wind freshened during the night
of June 18 and then really began to blow. The
caissons in the Omaha “Mulberry” broke apart. By
the time the storm ended on June 22, more than
300 ships had been thrown up onto the beach—many
of them wrecked beyond salvage.
June 19, the day the storm reached its greatest
fury, was the day Eisenhower would have chosen
for invasion had he failed to go through with it on
the 6th.
Allied warships now moved over to blast Cher
bourg and the Yanks fought through the streets to
take the city on June 27. Engineers swarmed in to
get the harbors working. The battle for France lay
ahead.
NAZIS TRY THE ROBOTS
BRITONS who saw the end of their long ordeal
approaching with the invasion of France got
a shock only six days later.
On June 12 “the things” started coming into
London.
“The things” were eerie. As they shot across the
sky their tails of flame lit up the blacked-out Lon
don night. There was a hideous roar as "they came
close, a moment of dead and menacing silence, and
then thunder of falling buildings, shattering glasa
and the cries of the wounded and dying.
The Nazis called them their V-l—their Vergel
tungswaffe, their “vengeance weapon.” Britons
called them "doodlebugs” and “buzz-bombs.” They
were small, pilotless, jet-propelled aircraft, sent off
from launching platforms 100 or more miles away.
They skimmed over the roof tops day and night,
at speeds of almost 400 miles an hour.
The English who had suffered through the blits
of 1940 went back into their cellars and subway
barracks. Barrage balloons were rushed in to form &
ring around the city. New anti-aircraft stations
sprang up along the coast. Fighter pilots patrolled
the skies to shoot “the things” in flight.
In the first week 17 per cent of the robots were
shot down. In the second the percentage rose to 24,
in the third to 27, in the fourth to 40. But the
Vergeltungswaffe was a relatively cheap weapon
for the Nazis to make and use. And no matter how
successful their defense against it, Britons knew
they would not be safe until the launching sites
were overrun.
HITLER GETS BLITZED
BUZZ-BOMBS were expected to make it up t*
Herr Schultz, the German man in the street,
for having been bombed out of his own home by
the Allies. But Herr Schultz had many other wor
ries on his mind, and the heils he once shouted
when the trail of swastikas led to the gates of
Stalingrad now were lowered to a whisper.
Everywhere the news was bad. It was obvious
to Herr Schultz that another ally soon would be
out of the war, for the Russians in a summer
offensive beginning June 10 had broken the Man
nerheim line and captured Viipuri, Finland’s sec
ond largest city. It was obvious, too, that East Prus
sia, the Balkans and western Poland would soon