D-DAY: Sunday is the 77th anniversary of D-Day. In honor of the occasion, we have compiled some interesting facts about the operation.
D-Day was originally planned for one day earlier. However, the poor weather caused a delay of 24 hours. In fact, there was some doubt for the Germans that the invasion would move forward on June 6, 1944. German commander Erwin Rommel was in charge in Normandy, but because he felt confident the invasion would not occur, he returned to Germany to help his wife celebrate her 50th birthday — and give her a pair of shoes as a gift. That is where Rommel was when the news arrived of the invasion.
During the preparation and execution of D-Day, around 17 million maps were drawn up.
Royal Engineers were dispatched in midget submarines to conduct covert assessments of the beaches and collected sand samples. Britain’s Major General Percy Hobart devised several specialist vehicles for the invasion, including armoured bulldozers and swimming tanks. Prior to D-Day, 30,000 practice launches were recorded.
The Allied deception campaign was so successful that even after D-Day, Hitler still believed the Normandy landings were a diversion to cover an attack in the Pas-de-Calais.
The oldest Allied battleship in action on D-Day was the USS Arkansas, commissioned in 1912.
One of the first shots fired from a ship on D-Day was fired by HMS Belfast, a vessel now permanently docked on the River Thames in London.
Just one in six Allied paratroopers landed in the correct place.
John Steele, a US paratrooper dropping into Sainte-Mere Eglise on the night of June 5, was not the lucky one of six and was left hanging from the church when his parachute became stuck. He was taken prisoner by the Germans but later escaped. Today, an effigy of Steele hangs from his parachute on the church in Sainte-Mere Eglise.
