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 Frazzled wrote:
When you look at the numbers of ships involved, its really staggering.

Yeah. There's an awesome scene in The Longest Day where a radar operator is looking at the screen on one of the battleships in the D-Day fleet and it is pretty much completely covered by signals. It really demonstrates the sheer scale of the invasion.

There's also Winters looking out the plane door in Band of Brothers as they fly over the invasion fleet.

My personal pleasure: the best scenese in the Longest Day are the two with the German squadron and whoever wrote his scenes. Its hard to portay sarcasm across languages, but you can tell its just dripping.

Also the scene where the corporal is looking through the binocs, sees nothing but fog. Then the fog clears. He sees thousands of ships and JUST FREAKS.

Ah here we are:

That's Major Pluskat and his dog Harras, but yes, that one really drives the point home.

Also, this is what happens when you mess with (USS) Texas:



I couldn't find any images of the Tiger Tank that took a near miss from the Warspite's 15" guns and had its turret flung 30 meters or so away, but suffice to say that any tanks going within 30 or so km from the beach would be having a bad day, and that's not taking the air strikes into account.

There's also an anecdote about British forces being pinned down by a sniper while pushing through the Bocage and calling back to the higher-ups for counter-battery fire against the woodland they thought the sniper was in. A few minutes later HMS Rodney obliged them and dropped a bunch of 16" high explosive shells in the woods in the single most uneven shootout in world history.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
That's Major Pluskat and his dog Harras, but yes, that one really drives the point home.

Also, this is what happens when you mess with (USS) Texas:

Spoiler:

I couldn't find any images of the Tiger Tank that took a near miss from the Warspite's 15" guns and had its turret flung 30 meters or so away, but suffice to say that any tanks going within 30 or so km from the beach would be having a bad day, and that's not taking the air strikes into account.

There's also an anecdote about British forces being pinned down by a sniper while pushing through the Bocage and calling back to the higher-ups for counter-battery fire against the woodland they thought the sniper was in. A few minutes later HMS Rodney obliged them and dropped a bunch of 16" high explosive shells in the woods in the single most uneven shootout in world history.

Yeah, there was very few places that could withstand a impacting battleship bombardment. Even super heavy gun implacements would be struggling after a few hits.

That definitely would be a very one sided engagement, though allied morale had to be solid knowing they had that kind of firepower behind them if they needed it. One solider with a radio could take on a tank, company or so.

Warspite was sad she was scrapped. She resisted everything including the effort to scrap her to the end. WW1 veteran, took even missile hits in thr med, and more. Old but when it came to big guns, old or not she was fearsome if firing in your direction.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
When you look at the numbers of ships involved, its really staggering.

Yeah. There's an awesome scene in The Longest Day where a radar operator is looking at the screen on one of the battleships in the D-Day fleet and it is pretty much completely covered by signals. It really demonstrates the sheer scale of the invasion.

There's also Winters looking out the plane door in Band of Brothers as they fly over the invasion fleet.

To allied scales. That was ONE fleet. There was more ships in the pacific, equal or more.

The scale of allies production was beyond any Axis dreams.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

The Allies were prepared for this.
Immediately means the armor travels during the day through wave after wave of aircraft attacks, into Allied tanks and antitank guns. Its the bockage fight but in reverse, except the Allies have more armor and massive air support.

If I remember correctly, there were indeed some panzer counterattacks in the bocage that performed dismally. The German warmachine had been designing tanks for sniping on the Russian steppe, which is very different from the close-range brawl of tank combat in Normandy. The big cats performed well in ambush, but were very poor at responding to being ambushed themselves, especially Panthers. Panthers suffered from a combination of restrictive turret optics and poor side armour relative to the front. The very long guns also frequently had issues traversing in close terrain. By contrast, the ubiquitous Sherman had a lot of advantages in this regard, being nimble and quick to aim at unexpected targets.

Additionally we have to remember, the Germans were defending 2,000 miles of coastline. If they put tank units close to the beaches, the Allies would not have actually had to face very many tanks. The remaining tanks would have been spread penny packet along the costs, to be shot up on the roads for weeks as they gathered.

Also, they did have assault gun battalions near the front- the division defending Omaha and the western half of Gold had a StuG battalion in reserve, which did counterattack near Bayeux and was repulsed without making much impact. StuGs are not as good as proper tanks, but they are still very effective when used to attack over known terrain with adequate support. There were also attacks by the 21st panzer near Caen on the 6th, which were simarly repulsed. In other words, the Western Allies could deal with panzer attacks well by June 1944.

 Haighus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

The Allies were prepared for this.
Immediately means the armor travels during the day through wave after wave of aircraft attacks, into Allied tanks and antitank guns. Its the bockage fight but in reverse, except the Allies have more armor and massive air support.

If I remember correctly, there were indeed some panzer counterattacks in the bocage that performed dismally. The German warmachine had been designing tanks for sniping on the Russian steppe, which is very different from the close-range brawl of tank combat in Normandy. The big cats performed well in ambush, but were very poor at responding to being ambushed themselves, especially Panthers. Panthers suffered from a combination of restrictive turret optics and poor side armour relative to the front. The very long guns also frequently had issues traversing in close terrain. By contrast, the ubiquitous Sherman had a lot of advantages in this regard, being nimble and quick to aim at unexpected targets.

Additionally we have to remember, the Germans were defending 2,000 miles of coastline. If they put tank units close to the beaches, the Allies would not have actually had to face very many tanks. The remaining tanks would have been spread penny packet along the costs, to be shot up on the roads for weeks as they gathered.

Also, they did have assault gun battalions near the front- the division defending Omaha and the western half of Gold had a StuG battalion in reserve, which did counterattack near Bayeux and was repulsed without making much impact. StuGs are not as good as proper tanks, but they are still very effective when used to attack over known terrain with adequate support. There were also attacks by the 21st panzer near Caen on the 6th, which were simarly repulsed. In other words, the Western Allies could deal with panzer attacks well by June 1944.

Thry did delay the assult on Caen by a day or two. Thry hopes to take it on d day 0 but it did not take long for allies to establish the enermous supporting links that began to feed tanks, artillary and many thousands of men onto the beeches only hours ago in German hands.

The engineers and armoured engineering units where making roads open as soon as they had vaguely secured the areas. In a matter of hours they had clear roads up the beech and the allied army of streaming up them.

It fell in a day to a few days and the impact on the invasion was not crippling.

 Grey Templar wrote:


The Normandy invasions were also conducted in large part because of pressure from Stalin. he wanted the allies to open a 2nd front to ease his efforts. In hindsight, the Russians would have beaten the Germans on their own eventually.

This is untrue. While Stalin did want the Western Allies to open a second front, the US had already wanted to invade mainland Europe well before the summer of 1944, but Churchill convinced Roosevelt that securing the Mediterranean was the higher priority. When the advance up the Italian boot stalled, there was no dissuading the US from a major amphibious assault in France.

As to the OP, I think the deck was pretty heavily stacked against the Germans. The Atlantik Wall was nowhere near the kind of tip top shape that Rommel wanted it to be, and was manned almost entirely by second rate garrison divisions that simply weren't good enough to throw into the meat grinder that was the Eastern Front. Add on top of this Hitler's refusal to pick a side when Rundstedt and Rommel disagreed about how best to use the panzers, resulting in a compromise solution that was probably the worst of both worlds, and you have a recipe for disaster. The Abwehr were nowhere near as effective as Allied intelligence so I highly doubt there was any chance at all that the Krauts would have blown the whistle on Operation Fortitude, and there was simply no way the Luftwaffe was up to the task of contesting the skies against the Western Allies. The Luftwaffe was too heavily depleted after the Battle of Britain, was already over committed in the Eastern Front and Italy, and had to maintain a large fighter reserve at home to fight off the constant and unceasing bombers.

Weather seems like the only thing that could have possibly gone wrong, and did in fact delay the invasion several times. For the Germans to repel D-day basically requires a miracle. They would have had to know the attack would come in Normandy, would have had to commit the bulk of their divisions in France to that area whilst simultaneously not giving this away to the constant Allied air reconnaissance in the months beforehand, and would have had to have the pilots, aircraft, and fuel necessary to contest the skies and deter any ships from shore bombardment. Just seems like an impossibly tall order.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
The Abwehr were nowhere near as effective as Allied intelligence so I highly doubt there was any chance at all that the Krauts would have blown the whistle on Operation Fortitude

This is almost an understatement. All but (possibly) one agent that was sent to the UK by the Nazis was captured or gave themselves up, many of them being flipped. The one who maybe didn't get caught might've killed themselves.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:


The Normandy invasions were also conducted in large part because of pressure from Stalin. he wanted the allies to open a 2nd front to ease his efforts. In hindsight, the Russians would have beaten the Germans on their own eventually.

This is untrue. While Stalin did want the Western Allies to open a second front, the US had already wanted to invade mainland Europe well before the summer of 1944, but Churchill convinced Roosevelt that securing the Mediterranean was the higher priority. When the advance up the Italian boot stalled, there was no dissuading the US from a major amphibious assault in France.

As to the OP, I think the deck was pretty heavily stacked against the Germans. The Atlantik Wall was nowhere near the kind of tip top shape that Rommel wanted it to be, and was manned almost entirely by second rate garrison divisions that simply weren't good enough to throw into the meat grinder that was the Eastern Front. Add on top of this Hitler's refusal to pick a side when Rundstedt and Rommel disagreed about how best to use the panzers, resulting in a compromise solution that was probably the worst of both worlds, and you have a recipe for disaster. The Abwehr were nowhere near as effective as Allied intelligence so I highly doubt there was any chance at all that the Krauts would have blown the whistle on Operation Fortitude, and there was simply no way the Luftwaffe was up to the task of contesting the skies against the Western Allies. The Luftwaffe was too heavily depleted after the Battle of Britain, was already over committed in the Eastern Front and Italy, and had to maintain a large fighter reserve at home to fight off the constant and unceasing bombers.

Weather seems like the only thing that could have possibly gone wrong, and did in fact delay the invasion several times. For the Germans to repel D-day basically requires a miracle. They would have had to know the attack would come in Normandy, would have had to commit the bulk of their divisions in France to that area whilst simultaneously not giving this away to the constant Allied air reconnaissance in the months beforehand, and would have had to have the pilots, aircraft, and fuel necessary to contest the skies and deter any ships from shore bombardment. Just seems like an impossibly tall order.

The LW had been decimated by the air campaign in 1st H 1944. As you noted bomber formations acted as targets for that drew in German fighters into pitched air battles with the now mustang reinforced interceptor squadrons. In tandem an additional campaign started prior to Normandy that sent roving fighter squadrons deep into France to suppress German airfields. This was effective and continued throughout the war (it was a later method the Wallies used to waylay 262 and Komet squadrons).

Much later the Navy employed a similar strategy in the Pacific (the "blue blanket"). It even contemplated using the fast attack fleet to happy Japan before Olympic with carriers armed only with fighters.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
The Abwehr were nowhere near as effective as Allied intelligence so I highly doubt there was any chance at all that the Krauts would have blown the whistle on Operation Fortitude

This is almost an understatement. All but (possibly) one agent that was sent to the UK by the Nazis was captured or gave themselves up, many of them being flipped. The one who maybe didn't get caught might've killed themselves.

Allied Intel was pretty much ahead of thr game everywhere. Unlike the UK, we had access to millions of disaffected citizens, the combined resources of multiple nations and best minds, forgers, mathematics and other minds of a good slice of the globe available.

Though without the vast alleince, the polish for starting to crack enigma, the British whom made the computers to crack it in near real time and Americans Magic whom broke Purple, the Japanese code systems.

We knew about the invasion of Russia before they did they just never trusted allied Intels answers. Even feeding it back via a known soviet spy who handily embecane a Intel delivery method.

 Frazzled wrote:

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:


The Normandy invasions were also conducted in large part because of pressure from Stalin. he wanted the allies to open a 2nd front to ease his efforts. In hindsight, the Russians would have beaten the Germans on their own eventually.

This is untrue. While Stalin did want the Western Allies to open a second front, the US had already wanted to invade mainland Europe well before the summer of 1944, but Churchill convinced Roosevelt that securing the Mediterranean was the higher priority. When the advance up the Italian boot stalled, there was no dissuading the US from a major amphibious assault in France.

As to the OP, I think the deck was pretty heavily stacked against the Germans. The Atlantik Wall was nowhere near the kind of tip top shape that Rommel wanted it to be, and was manned almost entirely by second rate garrison divisions that simply weren't good enough to throw into the meat grinder that was the Eastern Front. Add on top of this Hitler's refusal to pick a side when Rundstedt and Rommel disagreed about how best to use the panzers, resulting in a compromise solution that was probably the worst of both worlds, and you have a recipe for disaster. The Abwehr were nowhere near as effective as Allied intelligence so I highly doubt there was any chance at all that the Krauts would have blown the whistle on Operation Fortitude, and there was simply no way the Luftwaffe was up to the task of contesting the skies against the Western Allies. The Luftwaffe was too heavily depleted after the Battle of Britain, was already over committed in the Eastern Front and Italy, and had to maintain a large fighter reserve at home to fight off the constant and unceasing bombers.

Weather seems like the only thing that could have possibly gone wrong, and did in fact delay the invasion several times. For the Germans to repel D-day basically requires a miracle. They would have had to know the attack would come in Normandy, would have had to commit the bulk of their divisions in France to that area whilst simultaneously not giving this away to the constant Allied air reconnaissance in the months beforehand, and would have had to have the pilots, aircraft, and fuel necessary to contest the skies and deter any ships from shore bombardment. Just seems like an impossibly tall order.

The LW had been decimated by the air campaign in 1st H 1944. As you noted bomber formations acted as targets for that drew in German fighters into pitched air battles with the now mustang reinforced interceptor squadrons. In tandem an additional campaign started prior to Normandy that sent roving fighter squadrons deep into France to suppress German airfields. This was effective and continued throughout the war (it was a later method the Wallies used to waylay 262 and Komet squadrons).

Much later the Navy employed a similar strategy in the Pacific (the "blue blanket"). It even contemplated using the fast attack fleet to happy Japan before Olympic with carriers armed only with fighters.

A decline that had begun really from the very start of the war but had first accelerated in the Battle of Britain. Even in 1941-1943, the Luftwaffe losses over the Meditterranean and Western theatres was significantly greater than those over the Eastern theatre. By the time of D-Day, Luftwaffe operations in the West were entering a steep drop- particularly notable in the loss-per-sortie rate.

This article is a very interesting overview of how the western Allies played by far the most significant role in destroying the Luftwaffe even before 1944, and actually contributed significantly to the ability of the Soviet airforce to operate and perform sorties in support of the Red Army.

The chronic German shortage of oil didn't help either.

Yeah, there was very few places that could withstand a impacting battleship bombardment. Even super heavy gun implacements would be struggling after a few hits.

I don't know about that. Battery-30, which is definitely not called Maxim Gorky I and is (EDIT - was) one of Sevastopol's coastal-guns, took several direct hits from Dora and kept on operating. In reduced fashion for a while, true, but still.

I celebrated in style, fulfilling a life long dream of a B-17 ride( would have preferred am E/F over a G but it was amazing regardless)

 Excommunicatus wrote:

 Lone Cat wrote:
Even when The Allies already have The Mediterranean under their control by then ('Imperial' Italian Navy decimated to the point that it exists on papers and not as a real fleet, Sicily taken with Mafia boss recruited to Allies rank, Anzio/Antium and Via Appia became the next target.. etc.). There are other potential landing points Allies may exploit by the Med sea. (and even Monte Carlo, which also occupied by Axis). Why choose a beach that located next to Caen?

It was the shortest distance from England to Germany.

If you play Panzer General original before. if you (you can only play as Germany in the original game) playthrough route went to D-Day, if you won (hopefully Major Victory) you will go to Mediterranean side of France to defend it (and found out that this front was much more vulneralbe)

Shortest routes from Britain to Germany through Normandie = YES
Isn't there also a possibility that Francisco Franco will send his 'volunteers' to sting Allies war effort? so another reasons why Med France was not touched.

 Lone Cat wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:

 Lone Cat wrote:
Even when The Allies already have The Mediterranean under their control by then ('Imperial' Italian Navy decimated to the point that it exists on papers and not as a real fleet, Sicily taken with Mafia boss recruited to Allies rank, Anzio/Antium and Via Appia became the next target.. etc.). There are other potential landing points Allies may exploit by the Med sea. (and even Monte Carlo, which also occupied by Axis). Why choose a beach that located next to Caen?

It was the shortest distance from England to Germany.

If you play Panzer General original before. if you (you can only play as Germany in the original game) playthrough route went to D-Day, if you won (hopefully Major Victory) you will go to Mediterranean side of France to defend it (and found out that this front was much more vulneralbe)

Shortest routes from Britain to Germany through Normandie = YES
Isn't there also a possibility that Francisco Franco will send his 'volunteers' to sting Allies war effort? so another reasons why Med France was not touched.

Operation Dragoon exists you know that right?
And yes whilest this is wikipedia, it should serve to explain that Franco wasn't really considered a threat due to the dependance of the franco regime for food aid


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dragoon

Per an anecdote in the World at War from a man who seems to have a fondness for the bottle (Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, IIRC), Allied troops landed in the south of France and were greeted by a French citizen carrying a bottle of champagne and opining that they were rather late.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Lone Cat wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:

 Lone Cat wrote:
Even when The Allies already have The Mediterranean under their control by then ('Imperial' Italian Navy decimated to the point that it exists on papers and not as a real fleet, Sicily taken with Mafia boss recruited to Allies rank, Anzio/Antium and Via Appia became the next target.. etc.). There are other potential landing points Allies may exploit by the Med sea. (and even Monte Carlo, which also occupied by Axis). Why choose a beach that located next to Caen?

It was the shortest distance from England to Germany.

If you play Panzer General original before. if you (you can only play as Germany in the original game) playthrough route went to D-Day, if you won (hopefully Major Victory) you will go to Mediterranean side of France to defend it (and found out that this front was much more vulneralbe)

Shortest routes from Britain to Germany through Normandie = YES
Isn't there also a possibility that Francisco Franco will send his 'volunteers' to sting Allies war effort? so another reasons why Med France was not touched.

Operation Dragoon exists you know that right?
And yes whilest this is wikipedia, it should serve to explain that Franco wasn't really considered a threat due to the dependance of the franco regime for food aid


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dragoon

Post revolution Spain was not ina strong state and not up for a large military campaign. Its why they only supplied a few volunteers and never actively declared war or direct actions vs allies.

Between damage done, recovery and such. Spain was not in a very strong position to really be a active Axis nation.

Aye. Spain was for all practical purposes neutral. They were in a terrible economic position, and you could argue that they're still experiencing the fallout from the Civil War even to this day. The government they have today is actually a direct continuation of Francisco Franco's regime, albeit with a little more in the way of democratic reforms.

That isn't even a little bit true.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
That isn't even a little bit true.

He has a point as in the King just reeimplemented democracy after Franco's death instead of ruling as a Monarch.

However the democratic government now has not a lot incommon with the regime of Franco.
There's also a lot of the fallout from the Civil War still there, so that coalition governments only build on one side of the spectrum.

So does that make Westminster a "direct continuation" of Oliver Cromwell? I wouldn't say so.

That's not how I read the comment, either. I interpreted it, perhaps incorrectly, as suggesting that Spain's contemporary government is informed by Franco's fascism.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
So does that make Westminster a "direct continuation" of Oliver Cromwell? I wouldn't say so.

That's not how I read the comment, either. I interpreted it, perhaps incorrectly, as suggesting that Spain's contemporary government is informed by Franco's fascism.

Aye the statement above does sound wierd, suggesting spain would still be a dictatorship.

However it is a continuation. It's still spain.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
So does that make Westminster a "direct continuation" of Oliver Cromwell? I wouldn't say so.

That's not how I read the comment, either. I interpreted it, perhaps incorrectly, as suggesting that Spain's contemporary government is informed by Franco's fascism.

Its a continuation in the sense than the line of heads of state is unbroken, and without going too deep into politics the current government is starting to creep back towards Franco in a lot of ways. Just look at how the recent Catalonian crisis has been playing out.

Spain's government is not as far removed from it's WW2 state of affairs as most people think, nor as much as many would be comfortable with. And unlike other Constitutional Monarchy's he has real executive power, being both Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces as well as the head of state, Spain is about as close as we can be to having a regular Monarchy in Europe.

Do we know how many guys actually died during the D-Day ? It was such an incredible feat, needing so many department to work, and to work well, together (spies, airforce, ground troops, navy, battle plans...) !

https://www.historyonthenet.com/d-day-casualties

This website says it was something around 22,000 US dead, 335 Canadian, estimates of 2,500 to 3,000 British(no official numbers exist for the British), while the Germans lost between 4 and 9 thousand. Thats just the first 24 hours.

 Grey Templar wrote:
https://www.historyonthenet.com/d-day-casualties

This website says it was something around 22,000 US dead, 335 Canadian, estimates of 2,500 to 3,000 British(no official numbers exist for the British), while the Germans lost between 4 and 9 thousand. Thats just the first 24 hours.

That seemed extremely high, so I checked your source- be careful when reading casualty figures Those are the total dead, wounded, and missing counts. Most deaths estimates are around 4-5 thousand Allied deaths for D-Day.

 Haighus wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
https://www.historyonthenet.com/d-day-casualties

This website says it was something around 22,000 US dead, 335 Canadian, estimates of 2,500 to 3,000 British(no official numbers exist for the British), while the Germans lost between 4 and 9 thousand. Thats just the first 24 hours.

That seemed extremely high, so I checked your source- be careful when reading casualty figures Those are the total dead, wounded, and missing counts. Most deaths estimates are around 4-5 thousand Allied deaths for D-Day.

It was bloody on Utah, and the Rangers took some heavy losses holding back a German counter attack. Allied losses where lower on other beachs though.

Also the para troopers pulled some pretty high risk missions. Least one warship was sunk by German shore batteries.

Could be a fair figure potentially all in. Land, sea and air forces.

Very true.

Though at this point, it is fair to say that anybody who is still listed as missing belongs among the dead. Which would make the numbers a bit higher than the official confirmed death counts.

I think the D-Day Memorial lists ~4100 dead, of which something like 3/5 are American, and 2/5 are British and Canadian + a few other nationalities here and there.