Divided on D-Day

by Edward E. Gordon

Initially both Harris and Spaatz, supported by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, virtually declared war on the Transportation Plan. They saw it as a major interference with Harris's night saturation bombing and Spaatz's effort to devastate Germany's oil production.

  Tedder was able to persuade Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal, RAF chief of staff, to authorize a trial raid on a French railyard. On the night of March 6, Bomber Command launched a devastating attack on the rail center at Trappes that kept it from properly functioning for a month. The Transportation Plan was shown to be feasible.

  In mid-April 1944 after months of arguing, Eisenhower threatened to resign. Instead a compromise was finally reached by giving “direction” of the strategic air forces to the supreme Allied commander. In effect, direction was given to Air Marshal Tedder to liaison with Harris and Spaatz who remained in command of their bomber forces and continued the strategic bombing of Germany. Thus SHAEF was able to largely resolve the OVERLORD plan's ambiguities and the impasse over its bombing strategy. Tedder was able to direct specific requests to the bomber forces by selecting limited targets with high strategic priority.47

  While controversy raged over the OVERLORD Transportation Plan, in early 1944 the Allied air forces began a new phase in their offensive. During “Big Week” fleets of Flying Fortresses and Liberators were escorted to and from their targets by the long-range Mustang fighters now equipped with Merlin engines. They pounded German aircraft factories across Europe. Over six hundred German fighters were shot down, thus showing the superiority of the P-51 Mustang to anything in the enemy's air force. Though Allied bomber losses were high, the Luftwaffe lost many of its best fighter pilots. There were no replacements to fly new aircraft, even if they were delivered. After Big Week, the quality of German pilots began to decline. A combination of high pilot attrition and insufficient fuel for new pilot training gutted the Luftwaffe pilots’ proficiency. By June 1944 this effective air campaign reduced the Luftwaffe to a small and declining defense force.48

  General Adolf Galland who commanded German fighter operations agreed that by D-Day, “The Luftwaffe was not in a position to interfere with all these operations…. In France we still had only two fighter wings.”49

  The addition of Mustang fighters to the Allied air arsenal gave the Allies mastery of the skies over the English Channel and the Normandy invasion area. Heavy bombing did reduce German aircraft and oil production, but more importantly the Mustangs killed off the cream of German pilots. When D-Day began, the Allies had a thirty-to-one superiority over the Luftwaffe. On D-Day Ike could reassure his troops, “If you see fighting aircraft over you, they will be ours.”50

  One thing that was not achieved by D-Day was harmony in the Allied air command. The Allied air chiefs fought over their role and deployment, disputed Leigh-Mallory's orders, and did not have sufficient forward air controllers for close ground-air support. Throughout the Normandy campaign it took the combined prodding of Tedder and Montgomery to obtain the assets requested by Leigh-Mallory to provide air support for such ground offensives such as CHARNWOOD, GOODWOOD, TOTALIZE, COBRA, and the Falaise Pocket.

  Allied airpower was indeed critical before and during the entire OVERLORD operation. But as Max Hastings points out, an end to the squabbling between senior American and British airmen might have considerably eased the problems of the ground battle.51

  DECEPTION AND SECRETS

  The fate of D-Day largely rested on three factors: surprise, speed, and concentration of force. Operation JAEL (named after an Old Testament heroine who killed an enemy commander through deception) was the Allies’ overall plan to surprise the Germans on the day, time, and place for the invasion of Western Europe. The overall deception plan was code-named Bodyguard. One part of this plan was Operation ZEPPELIN. It was designed to convince the Germans that the Allies would launch an invasion in the Balkans and Greece and then press their attack through central Europe and Austria into southern Germany.

  Cicero was a Turkish agent who worked in the British embassy in Istanbul. He somehow obtained keys to dispatch boxes and photographed highly classified documents that he sold to the Germans. British intelligence seeded the boxes with false information. This influenced Hitler to reinforce the Balkans with twenty-five divisions that could have been in France for D-Day.52

  The other half of the deception campaign had three parts: Fortitude North, Fortitude South, and Bodyguard. Fortitude North was designed to convince the Germans that the Allies would invade Norway and that neutral Sweden would then join them. Next the Allies would take Denmark and invade northern Germany. Hitler was already obsessed with Norway. Two hundred thousand troops occupied the country. In May 1944, Rommel convinced Hitler to transfer five infantry divisions in Norway to France. The Abwehr (German Army Intelligence) intercepted a Fortitude North message that threatened Norway. Hitler stopped the reinforcements moving to Normandy.

  The objective of Fortitude South was to persuade the Germans that the D-Day landings would occur in the Pas-de-Calais sector, the narrowest part of the English Channel opposite Dover, England. It made the major ports of Boulogne, Dunkirk, and Calais within easy reach and offered the shortest land route to Germany. Also it was closer to the airfields in England, giving Allied fighters extended flying time. Because the German general staff believed this to be the most likely site for the invasion, the largest concentration of German troops and fortifications were placed in this coastal area of France.

  A key part of this deception was the creation of a fictional First US Army Group (FUSAG) under the command of General George S. Patton. It sought to convince the Germans that Patton's army would invade the Pas-de-Calais in July. To provide false information to German air reconnaissance, dummy invasion craft, tanks, trucks, and aircraft were lined up on Britain's east coast roads and ports.

  Britain's Ultra code-breaking program at Bletchley Park had cracked the German Enigma ciphers in 1940. These Ultra intercepts revealed that the Germans believed that there was a real First US Army Group (FUSAG).53

  Patton appreciated the importance of Fortitude South but did not enjoy his role in it. In a letter to a friend, he wrote, “I had some very interesting trips while I was working as a decoy for the German divisions, and I believe that my appearances had a considerable effect.”54 By May the Germans’ attention was firmly fixed on the Calais area.

  Bodyguard was directed at Hitler personally. It played on his rising paranoia. The Allies wanted Hitler to believe they would invade at Calais with a diversionary attack in the Balkans or Norway.

  Bodyguard's objective was to get Hitler to spread his armies throughout Fortress Europe. It succeeded. Field Marshal von Rundstedt, commander of German forces in Western Europe, complained that in trying to hold on to everything, Hitler would lose everything.55

  Unbelievably the secrets of D-Day were kept even though about 189,000 invasion maps were prepared for the OVERLORD operation. There were many gaffes. On one occasion twelve copies of the OVERLORD orders were blown out of Norfolk House, falling among the crowd in St. James Square, London. All the staff ran out of the building and quickly recovered eleven copies. Two tense hours elapsed before a Londoner handed the missing copy to a sentry across from the War Office. His identity was never discovered.

  In another incident a truck full of invasion maps overturned on a highway near Salisbury. In both incidents all the maps were retrieved before any unauthorized individual saw these top secret D-Day maps.56

  Innocent mistakes can happen. Sergeant Thomas P. Kane, an American soldier of German descent, worked in London's Ordinance Supply Section of SHAEF. By mistake he sent classified documents to his sister in Chicago. The package burst open in an Illinois mail-sorting office. Although they were shown to be innocent, all people in this classified secret drama were kept under close surveillance until after the invasion.57

  People lose things every day. A British staff officer traveling in a taxi left behind his briefcase containing Operation NEPTUNE's communication plan.
A conscientious driver soon turned it in to the Lost Property Office intact.

  In early June an American air force major general who was a friend and West Point classmate of Eisenhower announced during a reception at Claridge's that D-Day would occur before June 15. He compounded his stupidity by offering to take bets on his accuracy. Eisenhower demoted him and sent him back to America. Because of the officer's outstanding service record, he was not court-martialed.58 Luckily his bragging did not reach German intelligence.

  The invasion's most frightening potential security breach occurred when a senior British officer who worked on the Daily Telegraph crossword puzzle each morning began finding they included some of the invasion's most secret code words. Between May 2 and June 2, five crosswords included the words Overlord, Neptune, Mulberry, Gold, June, Sword, Utah, and Omaha. MI5 discovered that two schoolmasters in Surrey compiled the crosswords. The senior compiler had been authoring the puzzles for twenty years; his associate was a longtime friend. After a stringent examination they were found to be innocent. The episode was considered a bizarre coincidence. That changed in 1984 when Ronald French, a fourteen-year-old pupil of one of the crossword puzzle's authors, claimed he had helped insert the code words into the puzzles. French had heard them used by American soldiers stationed in Surrey while they were talking about the invasion. Fortunately, German intelligence did not study British crossword puzzles.59

  APRIL 7—EXERCISE THUNDERCLAP

  A comprehensive review (Exercise THUNDERCLAP) of OVERLORD planning was held on April 7 at St. Paul's School. A series of briefings by Montgomery, Ramsay, Leigh-Mallory, Bradley, Dempsey, and even the corps commanders covered the ground, naval, and air operations. Eisenhower and his planners were present, as was Churchill and Patton.

  Standing in front of a large Normandy map, Montgomery led off using a sixteen-page outline on D-Day and the subsequent OVERLORD campaign. (See Map 2.) Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey had the command of the British Second Army, composed of British and Canadian troops. They would land at three beachheads: Gold—British Fiftieth Infantry Division, Juno—Third Canadian Division, and Sword—British Third Infantry Division. Elements of the Seventy-Ninth Armored Division would land on all three beaches.

  General Omar Bradley had the command of the American First Army. It would land at two beachheads: Utah Beach (the Fourth and Ninetieth infantry divisions) and Omaha Beach (the First and Twenty-Ninth infantry divisions). In the early-morning hours of D-Day, the British Sixth Airborne Division and the American Eighty-Second and 101st Airborne Divisions would arrive by parachute and gliders to help secure the territory immediately behind these beachheads.

  Montgomery's whole presentation stressed offensive action. The British and Canadian objective of Caen, seven miles inland from Sword, was to be secured on D-Day. These forces would then move south and southeast of the city and take its Carpiquet Airfield. Soon afterward they were to take Falaise, twenty miles south of Caen.

  Meanwhile the Americans would take Cherbourg, capture St. Lo, and then advance thirty miles farther south to Avranches. (See Map 1B.) This would open the door to Brittany and its ports. The American forces would then wheel to the east toward the Seine River and Paris.

  Sometime during these operations, the First Canadian Army under General Henry Crerar would land and cover the British left flank, and then advance to the seaport of Le Havre. Meanwhile, the Third US Army, under the command of General Patton, would help clear Brittany, seize seaports, and then cover the First US Army's right flank on the march to Paris.

  In his April 5 presentation, Montgomery envisioned attaining all OVERLORD objectives in ninety days. (See Map 1B.)

  Through Ultra intelligence intercepts, the Allies estimated that on D-Day the Germans would have fifty-five divisions in Western Europe. The Allies could put ashore a little over seven divisions on D-Day. It was estimated that two panzer divisions could be mobilized against the invasion by that night, and that in five days, Rommel might have six panzer divisions to strike against the Allies.

  In the race to reinforce the bridgehead, the Allies planned to have over ten divisions onshore on D-Day+1, fourteen by D+4, and twenty-four by D+20. By ninety days after D-Day, all forty-five Allied divisions in Britain would be on the continent. This slow, methodical buildup of ground forces was made possible by total Allied air supremacy that could stop or significantly slow the rate of Wehrmacht reinforcements into the Normandy bridgehead. Eisenhower's support of the Transportation Plan, begun a week after the St. Paul briefing, was an essential element in making this strategy work.

  Neither on that day nor in his master plan did Montgomery call for building a defensive posture around Caen or making the city a hinge for the entire front. Instead he insisted that on D-Day he would take Caen and moving onward deploy British armor on the Falaise plain in a strong, aggressive offensive to firmly anchor the British flank and unbalance the German response.60

  Later Bradley and others present on April 7 agreed that Montgomery's concept of the Normandy campaign was not defensive. The capture of Caen by British and Canadian forces was never termed a holding action or a deliberate strategy for drawing in Rommel's reserves.61

  Montgomery's program on April 7 also correlates with General Dempsey's published operational plan for the divisions under his command. The entire campaign in Normandy's eastern bridgehead sector rested on this “fragile reed.” As historian Carlo D’Este states, “All future actions envisioned that day and noted in later documents and orders were predicated upon the successful capture either of Caen itself or of the Orne-Odon river crossings in the West.”62

  Historians Nigel Hamilton and Max Hastings concur that Montgomery's overambitious plans were designed to convince his fellow commanders and Churchill that he was capable of mounting an aggressive offensive campaign. At the very least, Montgomery was guilty of overreach. In the end his operational plans produced a muddled campaign and great discord among the other commanders.63

  PREPARING THE FORCES

  Until the fall of 1943, most American troops were dispatched to staff US Army Air Force units in England. The buildup of forces for OVERLORD began in October 1943 and continued until May 1944, with more than 100,000 troops arriving each month. The success of the naval war of the North Atlantic made this massive troop buildup possible. The defeat of German U-boat forces was largely due to the introduction of 260 new American escort destroyers, jeep escort aircraft carriers, new electronic anti-submarine/air defenses, and the Ultra intercepts that identified lurking German wolf packs that were then hunted down. No troopships escorted by the US Navy were ever lost.64

  On D-Day the Americans landed 130,000 men in Normandy; another 1.2 million followed by D-Day+90. With them came an endless river of equipment, including 137,000 wheeled and semi-tracked vehicles, 4,217 full-tracked vehicles, and 3,500 artillery pieces. Month after month, a ceaseless flow of transatlantic convoys unloaded an ever more massive stockpile of K-rations, petroleum, ammunition, blood plasma, tents—the endless variety and quantity of equipment needed to support the invasion. The average soldier in Normandy received six and a quarter pounds of rations a day.65 This logistical triumph was due to Ramsay's meticulous planning of Operation NEPTUNE.

  By D-Day the British assembled with nearly sixteen divisions, slightly over half a million men. This included some of their best battle-hardened men from the Mediterranean. Additionally the Royal Navy provided the majority of D-Day naval escorts, while the RAF contributed about four thousand first-line aircraft.

  Across Britain great tent encampments arose as troop assembly areas. Carefully camouflaged to render them unobtrusive from ten thousand feet, each was equipped with field bakeries/messes, water/bath facilities, and post offices.

  To properly prepare and train over a million men for the amphibious assault and subsequent battles, the entire local population in twenty-five square miles of west Devon was evacuated. Here the assault forces rehearsed with live ammunition. Other troop field exercis
es were held all over the United Kingdom. They were given odd code names, such as BEAVER, FABIOS, DUCK I, II, III, or TIGER. These war game participants ranged from special forces to entire divisions.66

  By May 1944 this great Allied army that was to crack Fortress Europe had become one of the best prepared invasion forces in history. All units studied and practiced how to effectively fight in a wide variety of battlefield conditions and terrains. Cooperation was stressed—both among naval, air, and ground units and the Allied forces of different nations. Yet, there were some notable glitches in this preparation.

  After the beach assault, the British faced defeating German forces around Caen. The American inland offensive operations were confronted with areas that the Germans had flooded and hedgerows (“bocage” to the French).

  The dictionary definition of a “hedgerow” is a simple row of trees or bushes that separate one field from another. What the Americans actually found in Normandy were six- and even eight-feet-high hedgerows trapped by a row of trees that added an impenetrable layer anywhere from six to twenty feet high. Tanks could not break through them and had to expose their vulnerable undersides to climb over them, thus making their guns useless. The bocage offered the Germans ideal defensive positions. “I couldn't image the bocage until I saw it,” said Bradley after the war.67

  In preparing the original COSSAC invasion plan, General Morgan had alerted the British Chiefs of Staff to the difficulties posed by the bocage. General Alan Brooke, one of their members, was also very much concerned about this bocage country. He had spent many summers there as a boy. In July 1940, he had led Anglo-French forces across this terrain before the Dunkirk evacuation. Similarly, Patton had also traveled extensively in this area as a soldier in World War I. He understood how disruptive it was for offensive warfare.

  Allied planners, however, failed to prepare the troops and equipment to meet the bocage challenge—a major gaffe. Aerial photos clearly identified an eight-square-mile hedgerow area behind the American beaches, divided by four thousand bocage enclosures. A battalion commander lamented, “We were rehearsed endlessly for attacking beach defenses, but not one day was given to the terrain behind the beaches, which was no less difficult and deadly.”68 This training failure greatly delayed the Allied breakout from the Normandy bridgehead.