Normandy Timeline

June 3    Embarkation of all troops is complete.  Over 100,000 troops are locked in their ships in ports throughout southern England.

June 4  Advance seaborn units begin to deploy to their assembly stations for the trip across to Normandy. The weather continues to deteriorate with heavy winds and a five-foot swell at sea. At Eisenhower's Headquarters the weather briefing is dismal. The timing of the invasion is very much in jeopardy.   0415 - Eisenhower orders a 24 hour 'hold'. The ships are recalled to port and the troops sweat it out in the holds.

June 5  In the Italian Campaign, Mark Clarks's Fifth Army enters Rome.

The weather being so miserable, the Germans pull in the small boats normally used to scout the channel. Dismissing any chance of a landing in the next few days, Rommel is on a long delayed visit to Germany and has stopped in Stuttgart -- it's his wife's birthday. The German higher headquarters begins a staff planning exercise with many commanders at the German 7th Army having already left for Brittany to participate in the exercise designed, ironically, to simulate an Allied landing in Normandy.

0330  There is a clear 'window' approaching from the west according to Ike's forecasters. The cross-channel weather will be rough, but minimally acceptable.  Eisenhower says, "OK, let's go."   H-Hour at Omaha is fixed at 0630, June 6th.  The invasion armada begins to deploy.  It's the greatest fleet ever assembled -- 2,727 ships and 2,606 other, smaller craft, 5,333 in all.

Later that day Eisenhower travels to an air base at Newbury to bid farewell to the members of the 101st Airborne Division before their C-47s and gliders carry them off to battle.

2100  Paratroop units from the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne and the British 6th begin to take off from fields all over southern England.  Thousands of transport planes and gliders carry the troops who will be the first to land in France.

2330 The streams of Allied planes carrying the Airborne pass over parts of the convoys heading for Normandy. Some of the formations are so large, "they seem to go on forever" , the lines of planes stretching from horizon to horizon. Looking down, the pilots see the channel covered in ships.

June 6, 0100 The invasion begins. Glider and paratroop units begin landing behind the German beach defenses. Because of the darkness and the German AA fire, many units are dropped far off the intended drop zones. Most are scattered and disorganized at first, but take up the fight wherever they land.   British 6th Airborne Division dropped northeast of Caen, near the mouth of the Orne River, where it anchored the British eastern flank by securing bridges over the river and the Caen Canal. On the other side of the invasion area, the U.S. 101st and 82d Airborne Divisions dropped near Ste. Mere-Eglise and Carentan to secure road junctions and beach exits.  At 0130 the German Seventh Army received word from that landings from the air were under way from Caen to the northern Cotentin.

0330 The assault waves begin loading in the landing craft. The seas are rough and the climb down the nets in the predawn darkness is a hazardous journey. The troops are in for a rough ride to the beach.  The cold sea spray soaks everyone almost immediately and the flat-bottomed LCVPs are tossed around like corks.  The high seas would swamp some landing craft during the ten-mile run from mother ships to shore. To assist the pumps, many of the troops bailed with their helmets.  Survivors would reach land seasick and wobbling.

0400  Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt orders two panzer divisions to move immediately toward Caen to guard against Allied amphibious operations in support of the airborne attack.  Informed of the order, Rundstedt's superiors at OKW placed it on hold until Hitler himself could concur. Since he was asleep and disliked being awakened, approval took many hours to come and stalled what might have been a powerful German response. The few officers of Rommel's staff present in the area were more energetic. In the early morning hours they ordered the 21st Panzer Division to Caen.

0558  As dawn came the entire horizon off Normandy between Caen and Vierville-sur-Mer had filled with the invasion armada.   Allied battleships and other warships begin to pound the German shore positions.   "They came, rank after relentless rank, ten lanes wide, twenty miles across, five thousand ships of every description," wrote one reporter that morning: "Coast Guard cutters, buoy-layers and motor launches," and "a formidable array of 702 warships." 

0630  The assault waves begin to touch down.  The situation on Omaha is the worst.  The beach was a tangle of obstructions: concrete cones, slanted poles, logs tilted seaward with mines lashed to their tips, and steel rails welded together at angles and so strongly set into the beach that their ends would stave in the bottoms of landing craft. The Germans had also made good use of a line of cliffs, four miles long and up to one hundred fifty feet in height, that paralleled the length of the assault beach. Dotting the ravines and draws that led through the bluffs with antitank and antipersonnel mines, they had scattered blockhouses, bunkers, and machine gun nests in strategic locations where they could dominate the shoreline below. Unknown to the Americans, the highly disciplined 352d Infantry Division manned many of those fortifications.

The troops could hear the steady beat of enemy fire on the ramp as they approached the beach.  Most landing craft grounded on a sand bar 50 to 100 yards out and the men waded in.  The water was whipped by automatic weapons fire as the men struggled through the neck deep water.  Some dove under water or went over the sides to escape the fire of the machine guns.  When they finally did reach shore they faced another 200 yards or more of open sand to cross before reaching cover at the sea wall

0638  Perhaps the worst area on Omaha was Dog Green, directly in front of strongpoints guarding the Vierville draw and under heavy flanking fire from emplacements to the west.  Company C of the 2d Rangers landed on this sector.   One of the six LCA's foundered about a thousand yards off shore, and passing Rangers saw men jumping overboard and being dragged down by their loads. The remaining craft grounded in water 4 to 6 feet deep, about 30 yards short of the outward band of obstacles. Starting off the craft in three files, center file first and the flank files peeling right and left, the men were enveloped in accurate and intense fire from automatic weapons. The troops attempted to dive under water or dropped over the sides into surf over their heads. Mortar fire scored four direct hits on one LCA, which "disintegrated." When the survivors reached the sand, some found they could not hold and came back into the water for cover, while others took refuge behind the nearest obstacles.

Shells from an antitank gun bracketed Capt. Ralph E. Goranson's craft, killing a dozen men and shaking up others. An enemy machine gun ranged in on the ramps of the second LCA and hit 15 Rangers as they debarked. Without waiting to organize, survivors of the boat sections set out immediately across 250 yards of sand toward the base of the cliff. Too tired to run, the men walked the three or four minutes it took to get there, and more casualties resulted from machine guns and mortars.  When the Rangers got to shelter at the base of the cliff, they had lost half their men.

0700  As the second wave touched down at Omaha the conditions were unbearable. Enemy mortar and artillery batteries, unscathed by Allied fire, poured destruction upon the attackers while German machine gunners raked the beach with fire.   Wreckage at the water's edge accumulated as landing craft became hopelessly entangled in the barbed wire and projecting beams of uncleared beach obstructions.   Little more than one-third of the first wave of attackers had reached dry land.   Lacking most of their heavy weapons, those survivors had little choice but to huddle behind sand dunes and in the lee of a small seawall that ran along the base of the beach. Many soldiers were killed outright, but some, wounded and unable to move, drowned as the tide moved in.  As further waves reached the beach they struggled through the rising tide under continuing German fire and mingled with the first wave survivors huddled along the seawall.

Naval gunfire had lifted as the leading landing craft neared the beach.  Spotters had gone in with the assault waves, but most were dead, wounded or their radios ruined.   The crews looked on in frustration as the slaughter on the beach continued.   Finally, U.S. destroyers ran in to the beach and, from only a few hundred yards from shore, blasted away at the German fortifications.  Some were so close they scraped the bottom.  They were able to use the firing of the pinned down infantry as spotters.

0730 - 1200  Inch by inch the troops on Omaha moved forward, up through the bluffs and onto the flatland above.  In the absence of much room to maneuver, their attack had been unoriginal, a straightforward frontal attack.   Not in any grand coordinated assault, but by squad and platoon they climbed the bluffs under murderous fire.  As the troops reached the top of the bluffs they took on the German fortifications in small groups, one-by-one, and gradually began to knock them out. 

The Rangers of Company C on Dog Green were up on the bluff by 0730. While the movement was in progress, Capt. Goranson saw an LCVP landing troops just below on the beach and sent a man back to guide them through the wire and mines to the top.

The Rangers found a maze of dugouts and trenches, including machine-gun emplacements and a mortar position. They began a series of small attacks which continued for hours. The boat section came up and joined in, but even with this reinforcement Captain Goranson's party was too small to knock out the enemy position. Three of four times, attacking parties got into the German positions, destroying the post and inflicting heavy losses. Enemy reinforcements kept coming up along communication trenches from the Vierville draw, and the Ranger parties were not quite able to clean out the system of trenches and dugouts. Finally, toward the end of the afternoon, the Rangers and the Company B section succeeded in occupying the strongpoint and ending resistance. They found 69 enemy dead in the position. This action had cleared one of the main German firing positions protecting the Vierville draw.

1335  The German 352d Division inaccurately advised Army HQ that the Allied assault had been hurled back into the sea; only at Colleville was fighting still under way they said, with the Germans counterattacking. This reassuring view was sent on to Army Group.  (At 1800 the Division corrected it's report. There was more bad news: Allied forces had penetrated  through the strongpoints, and advance elements with armor had reached the line of Colleville-Louvieres-Asnieres.)

1430  Follow-on waves continued to arrive on the beaches, often simply bulling their way through the uncleared obstacles.   As the tide receded, the remnants of the engineer demolition teams again went to work clearing lanes.  They had to work under harassing fire from enemy snipers on the bluff as well as enemy artillery, but they completed three gaps partially opened in the morning, made four new ones, and widened some of the others.  By evening, 13 gaps were fully opened and marked, and an estimated 35 percent of the obstacles on the beach had been cleared. Along the beach flat, units of the Engineer Special Brigade Group were making gaps in the embankment, clearing minefields, and doing what they could to get at the exits.

The Germans made use of the maze of communications trenches and tunnels and emerged from dugouts to reoccupy emplacements already neutralized. Snipers reappeared along the bluffs in areas where penetrations had previously been made. Above all, artillery from inland positions kept up sporadic harassing fire on the beach flat.

Working inland, the American units advanced in pockets, still uncoordinated in a single front.  Stubborn enemy resistance, both at strongpoints and inland, had held the advance to a strip of ground hardly more than a mile-and-a-half deep in the Colleville area, and considerably less than that west of St-Laurent. Barely large enough to be called a foothold, this strip was well inside the planned beachhead maintenance area. Behind U. S. forward positions, cut-off enemy groups were still resisting. The whole landing area continued under enemy artillery fire from inland.

1930  As evening finally approached, the beach was a shambles of burning and disabled vehicles, but the German positions along the beach were in Allied hands.  By nightfall, Allied power had prevailed all across the Normandy beachhead.

The Americans had yet to secure a front far enough inland to keep enemy artillery from hitting supply dumps and unloading points they were building along the invasion beaches.  Men dug in for the night wherever they could, some in the sand or on the bluff slopes. All through the shallow beachhead, along the bluffs, in the transit area, and around command posts, sniper fire continued and started outbursts of firing. There were no "rear areas" on the night of D-Day.

June 7   Units were reorganized and revised objectives laid out overnight. Only part of the D-Day objectives had been reached. More encouraging were the indications of badly disorganized enemy resistance. Not only had the Germans failed to develop any unified  counterattack, but they had shown little coordination in opposing an advance made on a broad front by widely separated battalions. 

A captured document laid down the German defensive policy which had been illustrated by enemy action against the advance of the 29th Division: "Do not," it advised, "become engaged in a positioned defense." The Germans had tried to stop the U.S. columns by use of small parties, well equipped with automatic weapons, supported by a few self-propelled guns, and ready to retire under strong pressure. These tactics, intended to delay by forcing repeated deployments, worked well enough up to June 8, but then failed against the gathering momentum of the attack. On that day, enemy defenses in the whole area north of the inundated Aure Valley collapsed as the 175th Infantry advanced on a rapid 12-mile route which may have taken the Germans by surprise.

June 9 - 11  Forward advances were taking place all along the expanding beachhead. V Corps directed an attack beginning at noon of June 9th by three divisions abreast. The 2d Division, taking over a 5,000-yard front north of Trevieres, captured the key high ground at Cerisy Forest. The 1st Division put its main effort on the right, its objectives lay along the high ground west of the Drome River between Cerisy Forest and the Army boundary. On the right, covering the drive south, the 29th Division crossed the Aure and reached the edge of the Elle River valley.

The advance of June 12 was designed to assist in the development of the offensive toward Cherbourg. Enemy attention and reinforcement might be diverted from that area if V Corps exploited the enemy weakness now apparent.  In this zone the remnants of the German 352d Division had been in action since dawn of the 6th.  They were showing signs of increased disorganization every day and were still the only important German force on a front of more than 25 miles.

June 13  German reinforcements have been arriving in ever increasing numbers, putting an end to the more rapid advances from the beach of the past few days.  Much further north the Germans launch the first of the V-1 attacks on Britain.

June 17  Von Rundstedt and Rommel request Hitler's permission to withdraw their forces out of the range of naval gunfire before launching an armored attack on the flank of Montgomery's Second Army. Hitler refused.

June 18  The Vll Corps cut its way across the Cotentin Peninsula and severed all roads leading into Cherbourg.

June 19  The greatest storm in decades lashed the Channel beaches.  Besides destroying nearly 500 small craft and beaching another 800 well above the high-water mark, the gale ruined the Mulberry harbor at Omaha Beach.  Resupply slowed to a trickle.

June 27   U.S. troops liberate Cherbourg, but German engineers had so thoroughly demolished the city's harbor that it would take three weeks of rebuilding before the facility could open to even minimal shipping and months before it would be able to handle cargo in quantity.

July 1  The Allies have established a beachhead 70 miles wide and had brought about a million men and 177,000 vehicles ashore. Yet, except around Cherbourg, their lodgement was in no place more than 25 miles deep, and in most areas it extended little more than 5 miles inland.

July 2   Hitler replaces Field Marshal von Rundstedt as Commander in Chief West with Field Marshal Guenther von Kluge.

July 9   Montgomery's British and Canadian troops at long last capture Caen.  He had  launched a massive air bombardment in hopes of clearing the way for an attack.  Four hundred fifty heavy aircraft participated, dropping 2,500 tons of bombs, but the airmen negated most of the effect by releasing their loads well back from the forward line to avoid hitting their own troops. As a result, the city incurred heavy damage but German defenses went largely unscathed. In the desperate fighting that followed, the Germans fought back viciously. Montgomery's forces entered Caen and took half the city but moved no farther. Casualty rates during the battle were appalling. Most infantry battalions sustained losses of 25 percent.

July 17 Two British Spitfire fighters attacked Rommel's open car and drove it into a ditch. Thrown from the vehicle, Rommel suffered head injuries so grievous that he had to return to Germany for treatment.   Kluge succeeded him, assuming command of Army Group B while retaining his position as Commander in Chief West.

July 18   U.S. troops had reached St. Lô three days earlier.   The garrison holding the town refused to yield.   In a battle that inflicted carnage reminiscent of World War I, the Germans gave ground only gradually, house by house.  The Americans had taken forty thousand casualties in the grinding twenty mile advance to St. Lô.

July 20   In East Prussia, the assassination plot to kill Hitler fails. The explosive device, hidden in a briefcase, is too far away from him under a heavy briefing table which takes part of the blast. Hitler is injured but not killed.

July 23  According to ULTRA intercepts of coded German radio communications, the enemy in Normandy has sustained casualties of more than 100,000 enlisted men and 2,360 officers killed and wounded.

July 25 - 30   Operation Cobra -- the breakout from Normandy.  Allied bombers pound a  wide swath in the German lines. Patton's 3rd Army smashes into the Germans and are out into open country.

July 28   U.S. troops take Coutances.

Aug 1 Polish Home Army uprising against Nazis in Warsaw begins; U.S. troops reach Avranches.

Aug 4 Anne Frank and family arrested by the Gestapo in Amsterdam, Holland.

Aug 7  Germans begin a major counter-attack toward Avranches

Aug 15  Operation Dragoon begins (the Allied invasion of Southern France).

Aug 19   The French Resistance begins an uprising in Paris.

Aug 20  Allies encircle Germans in the Falaise Pocket.

Aug 25  Liberation of Paris.

Sept 1 - 4 Verdun, Dieppe, Artois, Rouen, Abbeville, Antwerp and Brussels liberated by Allies.

Sept 13   U.S. troops reach the Siegfried Line.

Sept 17   The ill-fated Operation Market Garden begins. Montgomery uses three Allied airborne divisions to capture a narrow corridor with a series of bridges. The objective is Arnheim, Holland and the bridge over the Rhine. In spite of incredible heroism by the men, the assault fails to take the final bridge.

Oct 14   Rommel, implicated in the plot to assassinate Hitler, is offered suicide over arrest. After he takes his own life, Hitler orders a hero's funeral.

Oct 21   Massive German surrender at Aachen.

Nov 20   French troops drive through the 'Beffort Gap' to reach the Rhine.

Nov 24   French capture Strasbourg.

Dec 16   Battle of the Bulge begins in the Ardennes.

Dec 26   Patton relieves the 101st at Bastogne.

Primary Source:  Omaha Beachhead, American Forces in Action Series, Historical Division, War Department.  The Center of Military History, United States Army, CMH Pub 100-11.

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