Veterans remember D-Day landings
Updated on 04 June 2009
D-Day veterans have been remembering the momentous military operation as its 65th anniversary approaches.
On June 6 1944, 156,000 British, American and Canadian troops landed and parachuted on to French soil in an effort to free Europe from Nazi tyranny.
Many thousands more served aboard the 6,000 troop ships, landing crafts and barges off the Normandy coast in Northern France.
Then Prime Minister Winston Churchill described the operation as "undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever taken place".
The Queen echoed those sentiments at the 60th anniversary commemorations five years ago when she visited Normandy to honour the "courageous and determined" heroes of the campaign and described the invasion as "one of the most dramatic military operations in history".
Thousands of paratroopers were dropped behind the enemy lines to capture bridges - including the vital Pegasus Bridge - railway lines and roads to prevent the German army sending reinforcements once the Allies landed.
Between the hours of 3am and 5am on June 6, more than 1,000 British aircraft dropped some 5,000 tons of bombs.
Tip-offs from French Resistance fighters, who also carried out over 1,000 sabotage attacks, helped the Allies target their bombing campaign to cause maximum disruption for the Germans.
The Allies had tricked the enemy into believing the main attack would come in the Pas de Calais, not Normandy.
Consequently, the beaches were less heavily defended and the Allies had almost total air superiority once they launched D-Day 24 hours later than originally planned because of bad weather.
Each of the landing beaches was given a codename on the Allies' secret map. The British and Canadians landed on Gold, Juno and Sword beaches to the east, while the Americans went ashore at Utah and Omaha beaches in the west.
Around 4,400 Allied soldiers were killed during the landings. Some drowned but most were gunned down as soon as the landing craft opened their hatches.
Men sheltered behind sand dunes, broken equipment and dead comrades in the carnage amid efforts to scramble to safety over the beach.
The last beach to be taken, at Omaha, proved the hardest for the men of the 1st and 29th Infantry divisions and Army Rangers.
Pre-landing naval gunfire and air bombardments had failed to soften German resistance.
D-Day locked Germany into conflict in France, Italy and Russia. It helped overwhelm Hitler's Nazi Reich and led eventually to the Allies victory in Europe in May 1945.
The Prince of Wales will attend the official 65th anniversary of D-Day in France on Saturday.
© Independent Television News Limited 2009. All rights reserved.
These news feeds are provided by an independent third party and Channel 4 is not responsible or liable to you for the same.
