Tomorrow, 80 years ago, the combined forces of America, England and Canada attacked the Germans at the Normandy coastline in Northern France. It was the greatest seaborne invasion in military history. Weather played a huge role. The original schedule was for today’s date, but the weather was simply too stormy to risk the casualties. A slight break in the weather forecast for the following day permitted the decision to go..
Operation Overlord, as it was called, was an attack of epic size. No seaborne invasion, the toughest of all military operations, had ever been approached on such a massive scale, and since that time, it has not been surpassed … probably never will. The objective was to land 175,000 allied troops on a 50-mile stretch of beach in Normandy on that first day. Their equipment included 50,000 vehicles, tanks and howitzers as well as countless tons of ammunition and supplies. To make the transit from England to France required more than 6000 vessels and 11,000 aircraft. As historian Stephen Ambrose described the scale, it was like moving the cities of Green Bay, Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin across Lake Michigan in one night. Can you imagine? To oversee this massive operation, General Dwight D. Eisenhower had been in England since early January 1944 directing the planning and making key decisions.