All five beaches were secured by Allied forces by June 11.įive days after the D-Day invasion, troops immediately began installing two massive temporary harbors that had taken six months to construct back in England. In the end, the Canadians at Juno captured more towns and territory than any other battalions in Operation Overlord. Similar to the Americans at Omaha Beach, the first lines of Canadian troops were gunned down en masse by Nazi artillery-estimates put the initial casualty rate at 50 percent-before pushing beyond the beachfront and chasing the Germans inland. Canadian troops at Juno Beach captured the most territory.Ĭanadian soldiers also suffered terrible casualties at Juno Beach, battling rough seas before landing on a heavily defended strip of shoreline. Video: Frank DeVita describes landing at Omaha Beach 13. Survivors described the Exercise Tiger fiasco as more terrifying than the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach. troops lost their lives after a fleet of German E-boats caught wind of the mock invasion and torpedoed American tank landing ships. Two months before D-Day, Allied forces conducted a disastrous dress rehearsal of the Normandy invasion on an evacuated English beach called Slapton Sands. The Allies used fake radio transmissions, double agents, and even a “phantom army,” commanded by American General George Patton, to throw Germany off the scent. The idea behind the ruse was to trick the Nazis into thinking that the invasion would occur at Pas-de-Calais, the closest French coastline to England. ![]() Allied forces carried out a massive deception campaign in advance of D-Day. D-Day was the largest amphibious invasion in military history.Īccording to the D-Day Center, the invasion, officially called "Operation Overlord," combined the forces of 156,115 U.S., British and Canadian troops, 6,939 ships and landing vessels, and 2,395 aircraft and 867 gliders that delivered airborne troops. COMMEMORATE THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF D-DAY WITH HISTORY TRAVEL™.
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