They had to bomb the French railways to undermine German supply and reinforcement capabilities. They had to train and then assemble in southern England many dozens of divisions while deceiving the enemy into believing that their main attack would come in the Pas de Calais, not Normandy. To execute this plan successfully, the Allies had to undertake extensive preparations. By the end of D-Day, the Allies hoped, their forces would have captured the towns of Caen and Bayeux, and have consolidated the four eastern beachheads and the British airborne zone into a single salient. After these initial assaults had established five small beachheads, follow-up forces would land and advance inland. By then, three Allied airborne divisions would have landed to secure the flanks of the invasion.įinally, after heavy aerial and naval bombardments, British and Canadian assault forces would land on Sword, Juno and Gold, while American forces assaulted Omaha and Utah. To achieve this, on D-Day a vast naval armada laden with troops would cross the Channel under the cover of darkness and then, before dawn, drop anchor opposite the five designated invasion beaches: from east to west, Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah.
The Initial Joint Plan produced by the Allies in February 1944 stated that they would assault the Normandy coast to secure "as a base for future operations a Lodgement Area", which within three months would extend to the Rivers Loire and Seine. The initial success in establishing the "Second Front" locked Germany into a three-front war of attrition - in France, Italy and Russia (the Eastern Front) that would eventually overwhelm Hitler's Nazi Reich. The numbers of Allied forces committed, the preparatory work undertaken by all staff, and the bravery of thousands of ordinary service personnel transformed the monumental challenge of D-Day into one of the most successful military operations of all time. By the end of this day, American, British, Canadian and some French forces had established a significant beachhead in France.
"Neptune" was the codename given to the naval operation to transport and land the forces ashore, and "Overlord" referred to the subsequent campaign on the ground. On that momentous day, theĪllies launched the most ambitious opposed invasion ("amphibious assault") seen up to that time. This was the most important Allied operation of the Second World War.
D DAY LANDINGS CODE
Operation "Neptune/Overlord" were the code names for the 6 June 1 944 D-Day Landings on the Normandy coast of German-occupied France.