Volume 16 , Issue 20

NW Okie's Journey

Join us as we pay tribute and remember 70 years ago, 6 June 1944, and the Allied Invasion of Normandy, Operation Overlord, that took place during World War II (WWII). While Gen. Eisenhower led the Allied forces at Omaha Beach, Gen. Patton was heading a top-secret ruse to fool Hitler in Operation Bodyguard, complete with rubber tanks, body doubles, fake radio chatter and double agents. It laid the groundwork for D-Day success on 6 June 1944.

Nazi Germany was tightening its grip on much of Europe in the Summer of 1943. Allied military leaders decided to make the sandy beaches of Normandy the epicenter of a massive invasion to liberate the continent and turn the tide of WWII. The Allies took nearly a year to prepare for the complicated offensive, but knew that the entire D-Day mission could be doomed to failure if the Nazis gained even 48 hours of advanced notice on its location and timing. They launched an elaborate disinformation campaign, codenamed Operation Bodyguard, to induce the enemy to make faulty strategic dispositions in relation to operations by the United Nations against Germany.

The Allies employed a complex web of deception to persuade the Nazis that an attack could come at any point along their Atlantic Wall. The 1,500 mile system of coastal defenses that the German High Command had constructed from the Arctic Circle to Spain's northern border and even as far away as the Balkans. There were a dozen German spies in Britain who had been discovered, arrested and flipped by British intelligence officers. The Allies spoon-fed faulty information to Nazi double agents to pass along to Berlin.

France's Pas de Calais region was the most logical place in Europe for the D-Day invasion, 150 miles northeast of Normandy and the closest point to Great Britain across the English Channel. Allies passed over this region as a landing spot because it was the most heavily fortified section of the Atlantic Wall, but they wanted to delude Nazis into thinking they were taking the shortest route across the channel.

Since Allied code-breakers had successfully deciphered Germany's secret communications, they knew that the Nazis had fallen for the deception as D-Day approached. The allies stepped up their aerial attacks on Pas de Calais in the weeks leading up to the invasion to throw the Nazis off the sent.

The 70th anniversary of the largest seaborne invasion in written history and one of the turning points of WWII (the Normandy landings) was marked in style and with tears of joy as people remember veterans' bravery and sacrifice. The Normandy landings were the landing operations on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) of the Allied Invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during WWII.

On June 6, 1944 planes loaded with paratroopers of the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions spearheaded the Normandy invasion by jumping behind the German lines and coastal defenses. Paratroopers jumping from C-47 aircraft. Landing craft underway to beachhead firing artillery guns. This was D-Day, 6 June 1944!

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