By the fall of 1941, the German war machine,
fed by the strong economic resources from their occupation
of countries throughout Europe, was determined to target Moscow next.
The Red Army and the civilians fought back vehemently
and suffered enormous casualties.
As events unfolded,
the creation of a front in Western Europe became as important as ever.
It was crucial to disperse the German forces and weaken their economic power.
But Western Allied forces couldn't create a full-scale front until 1943.
With battles stretching from the Pacific to Africa to this point in World War II,
it simply wasn’t possible to strike and liberate German-occupied France.
Only during the conferences in Casablanca and Tehran in 1943
was the decision made to regroup.
As a result, the Normandy landings, as part of Operation Overlord,
was planned for May 1944.
The Allies already had experience in similar operations.
The first attempt to deploy British and Canadian troops in Western Europe
was in 1942 in Dieppe, France.
It was an unsuccessful and costly battle for the Allies,
one of the reasons being the supporting British tanks
that couldn't get there in time.
Some of the vehicles were unable to reach the French town
due to engineering structures blocking their path
and unfavorable road conditions.
The Dieppe Raid, along with other military actions—
especially landing operations—
provided the Allies with the experience they later used in Operation Overlord.
The Normandy shoreline was a strongly reinforced bridgehead.
Back in 1942 the Germans started building the Atlantic Wall,
a coastal defense and fortification system.
Erwin Rommel, the commander of Army Group B in Northern France,
understood that the chance of stopping a possible landing
with just fortifications was pretty small.
This is why he counted on using the reserves of Panzer Group West
that were deployed in France along with the fortification structures.
The Panzer Group consisted of a big number of units
equipped with contemporary vehicles including Tigers and Panthers,
the troops were battle-hardened in Africa and on the Eastern front.
The Allied landing was guaranteed to be hard and demanding.
In the meantime, the Allies decided on the landing spot.
It needed to be close to the British Isles, so that the allied air force
could efficiently support the landings and engage the Germans.
Also, landing heavy vehicles required proper beaches
that were suitable for heavy vehicles.
The most fitting places
were on the coast near Calais, Normandy, and Brittany.
The idea of landing in Calais was declined
as it was seen as the most obvious.
The Germans thought so too; they posted military reserves there
and the region’s defensive structure system was reinforced.
A risky decision was made:
the landing must happen on the Normandy shoreline.
However, they were far from ideal for this purpose.
The German forces were least expecting to encounter the Allies here,
as they reasoned it was impossible to perform long combat operations
without the access to infrastructure of a large port.
To solve this problem, Allied forces developed artificial Mulberry harbors
and a piping system to provide fuel straight across the English Channel.
Tanks played a very important role in the operation.
They would cover the infantry and help with the advance.
But how do you deploy vehicles at the same time as the infantry?
How could these heavy vehicles
traverse the beaches and German engineering structures?
The tanks were modified with additional modules for this purpose.
The Americans invented Deep Wading Kits to traverse shallow waters.
Every hole in the hull and turret sides were sealed to be waterproof,
and the air intakes were equipped with special devices.
Their upper parts were easy to remove,
decreasing the time needed to make the tank battle-ready.
This helped to considerably increase the maximum forwarding depth.
Duplex Drive was a more radical modification
that converted a tank into an amphibious vehicle.
A metal frame was attached to the tank’s hull
that held a deployable rubbered tarp screen.
The screen was raised with the help of rubber tubes filled with compressed air,
which made the tank buoyant and it could move with the help of propellers.
It was lowered into the water from the landing ship along with the infantry.
The British side decided to focus on the vehicles
that could surpass the German engineering structures and defenses.
This task was assigned to military engineer, Percy Hobart.
His inventions were named Hobart's Funnies.
One of his most peculiar Funnies was the Churchill AVRE.
Instead of the standard 6-pounder gun,
these vehicles got a 290-mm Petard Mortar with incredible firepower
that was meant to destroy reinforced walls.
Another of Hobart's Funnies was a Churchill modified with a flamethrower
that was called the Churchill Crocodile.
The flamethrower was mounted instead of the hull machine gun,
and the fuel was towed in an armored wheeled trailer.
The mine-clearing Crab tank cleared the way for heavy vehicles,
and the bridge-laying Churchill ARK helped them cross tough terrain.
Almost everything was now ready.
However, the weather had to be considered as well.
For a successful landing, a good tide was necessary,
as landing vessels could be damaged by German underwater defense structures.
Also, the British wanted to expand the landing territory.
As a result, Operation Overlord was shifted to June 1944.
Three British landing zones were defined:
Gold Beach, Juno Beach, and Sword Beach,
as well as two Americans ones: Utah Beach and Omaha Beach.
The British command allocated a separate tank unit for each zone.
Hobart's 79th Armored Division and their Funnies were operating on Gold.
On June 6, 1944 at 7:25 AM, hundreds of soldiers of the 1st Battalion,
Hampshire Regiment, heard the "Ashore!" command.
The tension among the personnel was unbearable.
Clenching and squeezing their weapons in anxiety,
soldiers approached the shore in the landing vessels through the gusting wind.
But the German forces were ready to meet them with heavy fire.
The British suffered heavy losses within the first minutes of battle.
The Duplex Drive tanks
were landing directly on the beach because of the storm.
As soon as the vehicles started supporting the infantry,
German defenses in the landing zone were quickly penetrated.
Sherman “Crabs” and other engineering tanks
cleared the paths through minefields,
and the British forces started advancing deeper into German-occupied France.
The tensest events unfolded on Omaha Beach.
The 741st, 743rd, and 745th Tank Battalions
were supposed to support this zone.
27 out of 29 Sherman DDs of the 741st Tank Battalion
sunk while attempting to reach the shore.
The commander of the 743rd Tank Battalion
decided to land their Duplex Drive tanks straight on the beach.
A part of the 745th Battalion's tanks, along with the command staff,
couldn't reach the shore until 10 AM on the 7th of June
because of the storm and heavy fire.
The situation with the Allied forces seemed very dire in some places.
The troops were an easy target on the open shoreline,
which led to colossal losses.
4,000 men were killed or went missing in action that day on Omaha Beach alone.
However, the Germans didn't manage to place their reserves
and coordinate the actions of separate units,
which played into the Allies' hand.
This, along with the work of tankers and the engineering equipment,
helped retake and expand the landing zones further, and hold the bridgehead.
After the Allied landing,
their forces would go on to liberate France from German occupation
and pierced through Western boundaries of Germany, despite heavy losses.
At the same time, Operation Bagration, a massive Red Army assault,
was developing on the Eastern front,
which liberated the Byelorussian SSR, the Lithuanian SSR and part of Poland.
From this point onwards, the Allies had the upper hand, and as a result,
the end of the Second World War in Europe came much quicker.
Operation Overlord was the largest landing operation in history.
The great and valiant contributions of the UK, the US,
Canada, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, and Norway
all played their part in the victory on the Normandy shoreline.