The Juno Beach Invasion

Indroduction

Juno Beach is the code name for the one of the five sectors of the Normandy beaches that the Allies invaded, Operation Overlord, on 6 June 1944, otherwise known as D-Day, during the Second World War. Juno beach was located between Sword and Gold sectors; this beach is 7km long and located between the villages of Graye-sur-Mer and St-Aubin-sur-Mer, the center of the British sector of the Normandy invasion. The unit responsible for the Juno sector was 3rd Canadian Infantry Division and commandos of the Royal Marines from Great Britain, with support from Naval Force J, the Juno contingent of the Naval invasion forces. The beach was defended by two Battalions of the German 716th Infantry Division with elements of the 21st Panzar Division sitting in reserve in Caen.

History

In 1942, the Allies decided to help out the Soviet Union and opened up another front to the war in Western Europe. The United States and Britain did not have a large enough military to mount an invasion at the time but they had drawn up plans to prepare for an invasion in case Germany’s western front weakened or the Soviet Union was put into dire straits. In August of 1942 the Canadians attempted an invasion of the French port city of Dieppe. It was a poorly planned and coordinated invasion that was meant to be a test the defense that Germany had established that ended in disaster, nearly 5,000 troops were either killed, wounded, or captured. In July 1943, British, American, and Canadian troops invaded Sicily as the western front expanded from Africa into Europe. The valuable experience from the amphibious landings in southern Europe would be used to launch to launch the largest invasion force in the world to crack open the solid ...

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...ion Jubilee, and moving to the successful invasion by the Allies in Sicily and moving into Italy. Many lessons were learned and applied to this invasion, with the early planning, the secrecy of the mission, the early bombardment, and prepping of the battlefield, and the “violence of action” with the invasion all along the coast of Normandy proved to make Operation Overlord a success despite not achieving all the initial objectives.

REFERENCES

Ward, Geoffrey C. and Burns, Ken, The War, An Intimate History 1941-1945. (New York: Knopf 2007)

Jordan, William, Normandy, 44 D-Day and The Battle of Normandy (Pro Libreis 2007)

Norman, Albert, Operation Overlord, Design and Reality (The Military Service Publishing Company)

Man, John, The Facts on File D-Day Atlas, The Definitive Account of the Allied Invasion of Normandy (Swanston Publishing Limited 1994)