D Day Plan Essay

Guiding question: how was D-day planned

On June 6th 1944 it happened, D-day, a huge beach invasion, perhaps the largest in history, part of operation overlord, code name for battle of normandy. This was begining of a series of Attacks by allies which eventually lead to the battle of Berlin, which lead to the end of World War 2. This invasion that took 2 years to plan included operation fortitude a made up operation to trick the germans; a airborne mission to go behind enemy line and scatter the german defenses at the beach; then finally the beach invasion; the equipments also made a huge difference in saving soldiers live. This tragic victory with 209,000 allied casualty help end world war 2 at least a year in advance.

As the troops were moved from the Allied countries to England for the preparation of D-day, as the Allies would suspect, there will be an increasing amount of German and

Italian spy activities.

Therefore the Allies came up with a hoax: Operation Fortitude. The allies set up a huge amount of inflated tanks, landing crafts, and set empty camps. As the web site mtholyoke.edu said “A fake radio network was setup to simulate the traffic of an army preparing to invade.” (mtholyoke.edu) The plan worked and successfully tricked the germans to move all the main forces to Pas de Calais in France, where the attack was believed to set place. The plan worked so well that even after the day of the attack the main german force still haven’t been moved.

Equipment are also a huge aspect that affected D-day, since topic the equipments of all the countries would be too wide, the paragraph would be mainly focusing on U.S. paratroopers. The most commonly used weapon by are M1 garand

rifle, a paratrooper would carry up to 136 rounds, the M1 rifle was so effective because of its semi automatic firing, while other military rifles couldn’t do. Another commonly used weapon is the folding stock M1A1 carbine, it's a shorter version of a full length rifle, it's really lightweight and easy to carry. A web site informed that M1A1 carbine are usually issued to “radio men, forward observers, and vehicle drivers, as well as the soldiers who served on the multi-man teams operating mortars and Browning light machine guns” (http://www.wired.com/2012/06/d-day-paratrooper-gear-gadgets) The paratroopers also used Thomspson submachine gun, and M1911A1 Pistol. Wirecutters were also equipped by paratroopers so they could keep the their operation silence and go under barbed wire fences until they spot a hostile. another unexpected tool the paratroopers were given was cricket noise makers, a device invented for the orchestra leaders used to keep time for their players actually made a huge difference in keeping the paratroopers safe. Cricket noise makers were used to help identify friendly's since is was midnight when the paratroopers were dropped deep into enemy territory, it's really hard to identify enemy or friendly. How the cricket noise maker works is that, is the soldier spotted movement in front of them, they would make noise with the cricket noise maker, if they get a respond with the cricket noise maker, it means friendly, if not, they are clear to fire.
On the night of June 5th 82nd and 101st airborne division were parachuted behind enemy line to the western section of the upcoming invasion. The men from 82nd were to land on Zones “DZ” with the 101st mens landing east of them. The Drop zone was surrounded with marsh regions which proves a challenge to the soldiers who will be their T.S. type parachute and about 40 kilograms of equipment (88 pounds). Throughout the airborne operation the gliders are greeted by heavy german fire from the ground, lots of plane were hit and crashed before the soldiers even had time to get out. Therefore lots of pilots disobeyed the order and switched the green light (a light inside the plane that give soldiers permission to jump) even before reaching the landing zone. As a result of the disorganization the lucky soldiers found themselves miles away from their mission, while the unlucky ones landing in the marsh and drowned in bodies of water even less than one meter high. On a website the quote of John Taylor, parachutist of the 101st Airborne Division, tells: “those which jumped of C-47 before me are drowned in a marsh, just like those which jumped after me. I landed on a fine strip of land of a few meters broad which crossed the marshes.” this infers that the paratroopers suffered heavy casualties because of tones of incidents like this, lots of soldiers were shot and even tortured after having their parachute tangled in trees and high structures. Aside from the heazy loses, lots of soldiers managed to move toward their objectives while regrouping and collecting lone soldiers on the way. Thanks to the Paratroopers the german force was scattered and moved from the beach, but even with that, the U.S. lost 2499 marines on the beach that day. The outcome would have been tragic if there was no paratrooper attacks or operation fortitude.
D-day was so geniously planned that it tricked the Germen three time, all the Germen main forces stayed in Pas de Calais even after the day of D-day. The what surprised the Germans the most was the landing attack since the Airborne operation was huge, the Germans didn’t suspect another attack. Without the German forces scattered at the beach, there would have been a lot more casualties or even the possibility for the beach attack failing.