D-Day Encyclopedia

Everything You Want to Know About the Normandy Invasion

Barrett Tillman

• Publisher: Regnery History
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781621572879
• eBook ISBN: 9781621573128
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

This unique encyclopedia provides detailed entries for everything you ever wanted to know about D-Day, the invasion of Normandy. Organized alphabetically, the entries give detailed descriptions of weapons, equipment, divisions, air and naval units, geography, terminology, personalities, and more. Every Allied division that crossed the English Channel on June 6, 1944 has its own listing as do the major Axis divisions that fought them. Brief biographies of major military and political leaders on both sides provide a handy who's who of the campaign. The book also includes entries for related popular culture: GI slang, the best movies about D-Day, and major writers such as Stephen Ambrose and Cornelius Ryan. Cross-references make the book easy to use. With hundreds of entries, The D-Day Encyclopedia is an indispensable reference tool for history buffs and great browsing for readers who want to know more about World War II.

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A-20.

See Aircraft, American.

ACRONYMS.

The vocabulary of D-Day and World War II is hung on the framework of acronyms. The subject includes the evolution from SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force) to COSSAC (Chief of Staff, Supreme Allied Command), which oversaw the ETO (European Theater of Operations). Among weapons, the BAR was the ubiquitous Browning Automatic Rifle; PIAT was the British Projector, Infantry, Anti Tank weapon. Pluto was the “pipeline under the ocean,” supplying petroleum to Allied forces in France.

Naval acronyms included LST (Landing Ship, Tank) and LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, and Personnel), better known as the Higgins Boat.

In addition to hundreds of official acronyms there were many informal but even more popular versions: RHIP (rank has its privileges) and SNAFU (situation normal, all fouled up).

AIRBORNE OPERATIONS.

In the fifteenth century Leonardo Da Vinci envisioned airborne soldiers, and in the nineteenth century Napoleon Bonaparte pondered invading Britain with French troops in hot-air balloons. But not until the 1940s did the technology exist to transport large numbers of specially trained soldiers behind enemy lines and deliver them by parachute, glider, or transport aircraft.

German airborne forces included paratroops and glider and transport-lifted infantry, all controlled by the Luftwaffe. Eventually nine parachute divisions were established, but few Fallschirmjaeger (literally “parachute hunters”) made combat jumps. Nonetheless, Germany led the way in combat airborne operations, seizing Belgium’s Fort Eben Emael in 1940. The Luftwaffe also made history in the first aerial occupation of an island—the costly Crete operation in 1941. However, Germany’s Pyrrhic victory proved so costly that no Fallschirmjaeger division was again involved in a major airborne operation. Thereafter, the Luftwaffe parachute forces were employed as light infantry in every theater of operation. Two German airborne divisions, the Third and Fifth, responded to the Allied invasion in Normandy but were hampered by inadequate ground transport.

The British army authorized small airborne units in 1940 but did not form the Parachute Regiment until 1942. That unit served as a training organization, producing seventeen battalions, of which fourteen were committed to combat. The battalions were formed into the First and Sixth Airborne Divisions, the latter involved in Operation Overlord. Both divisions were committed to the Arnhem assault, Operation Market-Garden, in September 1944.

The U.S. Army formed five airborne divisions during World War II, of which three (the Eighty-second, 101st, [see U.S. Army Units] and Seventeenth) saw combat in the Mediterranean or the European Theater of Operations. The Eleventh served in the Pacific; the Thirteenth went to Europe in 1945 but was not committed to combat.

Apart from isolated uses of airborne battalions, the first Allied airborne operation of note occurred during Operation Husky, the Anglo-American invasion of Sicily in July 1943. Subsequent operations on the Italian mainland perfected doctrine and techniques so that by 1944 the United States and Britain could integrate three airborne divisions into the plan for Overlord. By isolating the vulnerable beachheads from German reinforcements during the critical early hours of 6 June, the airborne troopers gained valuable time for the amphibious forces.

Later uses of British and American airborne forces included the Arnhem operation in September 1944 and the Rhine crossing in March 1945.

Airborne operations were considered high-risk undertakings, requiring commitment of large numbers of valuable assets—elite troops and airlift—and incurring the danger of assault troops being isolated and overwhelmed. The latter occurred on a large scale only once, when supporting Allied ground forces were unable to reach British paratroopers at Arnhem, Holland, in September 1944.

Because they were by definition light infantry—without armored vehicles or heavy artillery—paratroopers were laden with enormous personal burdens. Many D-Day troopers carried nearly two hundred pounds of equipment, including their main and reserve chutes, life preserver, primary and secondary weapons and ammunition, water and rations, radios or mines, and other gear. It could take as much as five minutes for a trooper to pull on his parachute harness over his other equipment, and if they sat on the ground many men needed help standing up.

Normal parameters for dropping paratroopers were six hundred feet of altitude at ninety miles per hour airspeed. Owing to weather and tactical conditions, however, many troopers were dropped from 300 to 2,100 feet and at speeds as high as 150 miles per hour.

American paratroopers had to make five qualifying jumps to earn their wings, after which they received a hazardous-duty bonus of fifty dollars per month, “jump pay.”

The U.S. Eighty-second and 101st Airborne Divisions dropped 13,400 men behind Utah Beach on the west end of the Allied landing areas, while nearly seven thousand men of the British Sixth Division secured bridges behind Sword Beach to the east. The primary objective of the airborne troops was to isolate the beachhead flanks from substantial German reinforcement; the British were more successful than the Americans in doing so. The Sixth Division’s seizure of the Orne River bridges became a classic airborne operation.

The elite of the elite among paratroopers were the pathfinders, who were first on the ground. Preceding the main force by nearly an hour, the pathfinders were responsible for guiding troop-carrier aircraft to the landing zones and for marking the target areas. Specialized navigational equipment included the Eureka/Rebecca radar beacon, which transmitted to the lead aircraft in each C-47 formation, and automatic direction-finder (ADF) radios. Holophane lights were laid in T patterns on the ground to mark each drop zone.

Owing to fog, enemy action, and the confusion common to warfare, in Overlord only one of the eighteen U.S. pathfinder teams arrived at the correct drop zone. One entire eight-man team was dropped into the English Channel.

Because of wide dispersion over the Cotentin Peninsula, only about one-third of the American paratroopers assembled themselves under organized leadership, and many landed in the wrong divisional areas. One battalion commander roamed alone for five days, killing six Germans without finding another American. While some troopers sought cover or got drunk on Calvados wine, many others displayed the initiative expected of elite troops. In Normandy the airborne was especially effective in disrupting German communications.

Glider-borne infantry regiments were part of every airborne division, and though they did not originally receive “jump pay,” these soldiers were still part of an elite organization. Gliders possessed the dual advantages of delivering a more concentrated force to the landing zone and providing certain heavy equipment unavailable to paratroopers—especially light artillery and reconnaissance vehicles. Gliders were usually flown by noncommissioned pilots, who, once on the ground, took up personal weapons and fought as part of the infantry units they had delivered to the target.

AIRCRAFT

American

Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

The Flying Fortress embodied the cherished American concept of precision daylight bombardment. Developed during the mid- to late 1930s, the B-17 entered service in 1938, but production was limited by peacetime budgets. However, with four Wright radial engines, a four-thousand-pound bomb load, and a powerful battery of machine guns, the Flying Fortress seemed to live up to its name. Limited Royal Air Force use began in April 1941, but Bomber Command doctrine did not match the Fortress’s potential. Subsequently most British B-17s were flown by RAF Coastal Command.

For the U.S. Army Air Forces, the B-17 was a first-to-last warrior. A flight of B-17Es was caught in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 7 December 1941; G models remained operational on VJ-Day. B-17s of the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces delivered 45.8 percent of the USAAF bomb tonnage against Germany while sustaining 47.1 percent of the bomber losses—4,688 destroyed in combat. Twenty-three B-17 groups were operational in England by June 1944.

Combat experience over Europe demonstrated a need for additional armament, leading to the B-17G. With a remotely controlled two-gun turret under the nose, the G variant’s armament was increased to a dozen .50 caliber guns for its ten-man crew: pilot, copilot, navigator, bombardier, radioman, and five gunners including the flight engineer. Bomb bay capacity also was increased over the original model, reaching a total of 9,600 pounds for shorter-range missions. Top speed was 287 mph at twenty-five thousand feet.

The Army Air Forces accepted 12,692 Fortresses from 1940 to 1945, built by Boeing, Douglas, and Vega. Stable and easy to fly for a multi-engine aircraft, the “Fort” had the best safety record of any USAAF bomber of the era. In 1944 a typical B-17G cost $204,370.

Consolidated B-24 Liberator

Big and slab-sided, the Liberator was derided by Fortress pilots as “the box the B-17 came in.” However, it was faster and longer ranged, in addition to becoming the most-produced American aircraft of World War II: 18,190 Liberators were accepted between 1940 and August 1945. At the time of Operation Overlord the Eighth Air Force had seventeen Liberator groups.

The army ordered the XB-24 prototype in March 1939, calling for a 310 mph top speed; the first flight occurred just before year’s end. Powered by four Pratt and Whitney R1830 radial engines, the new bomber was clocked at 273 mph. Initial deliveries went to Britain as long-range transports and maritime patrol planes. The type entered USAAF service in the summer of 1941.

Like the B-17, the Liberator was found vulnerable to head-on attacks by German fighters, so armament was increased. In mid-1943 the B-24G, H, and J models were built with powered turrets at the nose and tail, raising total armament to ten .50 caliber guns. By the fall of 1944 some Eighth Air Force B-24 groups had reequipped with B-17s because of the Boeing’s greater service ceiling. The Liberator’s high-aspect-ratio wing enabled greater speed but reduced altitude.

Of 446 Liberators launched to attack Omaha Beach on D-Day, 329 actually dropped their bomb loads, through a near-solid undercast. Poor visibility and concern about harming friendly force...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• Z
• Bibliography