Dan Snow's History Hit - D-Day: The Land Invasion

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Dan and military historian Stephen Fischer record a moment by moment play of the dramatic and bloody first crucial hour and a half of D-day, as it happened. They breakdown the assaults across the Normandy Beaches including Sword, Omaha and Gold, where over one hundred thousand British, American and Canadian troops landed under a barrage of German fire in an attempt to turn the tide of the war against the Nazis.Stephen's latest book is called 'Sword Beach'.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW - sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

June the 4th, 1944. There are still those in the city that remember the marching columns. I've talked to people in their late 80s and 90s who saw thousands of young men marching towards the docks in Southampton. For hours on end, these lines passed through the suburbs to the north of the city. They were young men, some just old enough to buy a beer. A few, even younger, they'd lied about their age. But they all flooded into the middle of town.

And when they got there, some of the more perhaps romantically minded might have sensed ghosts on those walls. It was from here that Titanic sailed. It was from here that Henry V had launched his cross-channel invasion half a millennium before. Southampton is no stranger to sending forth its young on the high seas to meet with victory or disaster. When they arrived at the quayside, it smelt of salt, petrol, a damp of sea air. There were seabirds chattering. The ship's engines rumbled.

The mood was sombre and it was agitated. In the classic fashion of military operations, hundreds of men had had to hurry up and were now waiting. They were queuing to climb gangplanks. They were joining the men already on board in the ships that clogged Southampton water. Lines of vessels stretching off as far as the eye could see to the south. When we went up to Southampton, we saw all these ships. We'd never seen any ships before. I mean, I came from a manning village, there's no ships around that area. And they say that you could walk across the harbour without getting your feet wet. There was that many boats there, ships, boats, different crafts.

We didn't know what was going to happen. We knew that we were going to France through looking at these photographs and what have you. Then when we went down to Southampton we were assigned to one ship. We were told to put all our gear on our hammocks cots down below. Ken Cook was a private in the Green Howards. He was 18 years old and he remembers that weight. He was dressed in his standard-issue uniform, woolen shirt and trousers, green jacket with his unit's insignia on it.

Over this, he had his webbing, which is a kind of harness with lots of straps and pockets for his various accoutrements. He was festooned with canteens and ammo and grenades and his gas mask. On his back he had a rucksack with his rations, extra ammunition, a small first aid kit and a few personal mementos. Perhaps he had a photograph of his family, a letter from his sweetheart, maybe even a worn copy of a book or a novel. Personal items were certainly kept to a minimum,

yet to pick carefully. The kit could weigh up to a hundred pounds, like carrying three big cinder blocks on your back. Half past three, D-Day morning, Revali went down to the mess for our breakfast, which consisted of a mug of tea, a scotch porridge, and a corned beef sandwich, and also a tot of rum, which was to give it a bit of courage, I scotch porridge, and a corned beef sandwich, and also a tot of rum,

which was to give it a bit of courage, I think, you know. Afterwards, is that what we thought, you know. Then went back to our bunks, and then the message came over the town, and I said, hey, get all your gear together, get it, put all your gear on, and assemble up on the top deck. And we did that. And at certain times, somebody said,

you know, right lads, over the side, we went down the scramble nets into the landing craft. And you had to be very careful there because the landing craft was up and down and the main ship was up and down as well and you had to judge when you stepped off the scrambling net into the landing craft you had to time it so that you you didn't get entangled up in the land in those scrambling nets and we managed that okay there was no incidents regarding our landing craft.

Then we set off for the beach. Ken and his comrades couldn't be certain what was waiting for them on the beaches of Normandy. He would go through hell that day as he played his part in one of modern history's most pivotal moments. I was leaning over the side of the landing craft watching all what was going on.

The battleships firing, the rocket ships firing, explosions on the beach. You couldn't see much on the beach. Thinking it was like bonfire night, only a thousand times worse it was. Today on Dan Snow's History Hit, we've got a a first we're doing something a little bit different we have chosen the most important hour and a half of D-Day and we are going to tell the story as it happened we're going to go minute by minute so in theory if you hit play on this episode at 5 19 a.m British summertime sorry to be precise you've got to get things right here, you will be following the events precisely 80 years to the minute since they happened, since those dramatic beach landings in Normandy on D-Day.

So you can pause now and restart on the morning of the 6th of June, or if you want, you can listen on. This is like a live recording. No editing, no stopping once that timer begins, just pure history. And I'm joined for this by the one and only Stephen Fisher. He is really the best. He's an excellent military historian, and he worked with me to write this minute-by-minute account. Please check out his latest book on Sword Beach. It's an astonishingly detailed and gripping account of D-Day. So let's get into it. This is D-Day as it happened, the land invasion.

Soldiers, sailors and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force, you are about to embark upon the great crusade toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. Those were the words of Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was addressing his troops at the outset of the campaign to liberate Northwest Europe from Nazi German occupation. Those initial landings took place on the beach of Normandy in France in the early hours of the 6th of June 1944. We know them today simply as D-Day. Airborne forces landed around Normandy. Then at dawn the famous amphibious landings took place.

This is the Blue Ribbon Event. We are now going to take you through those initial beach landings in real time. The critical 90 minutes. Don't need your timers just yet, because just hovering on the verge of 6.30, let's get the wider picture, let's get the background. Stephen, let's start, because we're Brits. Let's start by talking about the weather. What was it like that morning? Well, it was still a bit rough. Of course, there'd been this storm that had swept across Britain and had postponed D-Day from June the 5th to June the 6th. And that storm is still sort of washing itself out in the channel.

So you still have a very strong northwesterly wind that's pushing the sea along the beaches. And that's going to be a big factor on D-Day itself. It's going to slide a lot of landing craft over towards the east. And you still have rough weather. Overnight, the convoys have sailed across the English Channel, some of them in Force 5, usually Force 4. So there's still some fairly big waves that have buffeted them. Several vessels have been lost as a result. And yeah,

it's not the nicest of days to be on the beach. So many of them mention seasickness. A lot of the guys are desperate to get on dry land. Yeah, and lots of sailors as well who were well accustomed to sailing, they reported that they were very seasick as well. Now, probably there's a lot of nerves in there as well. But yeah, it wasn't the nicest of crossings. On the beach, let's quickly, we've got some figures here for the Atlantic Wall. Hitler's famous Atlantic Wall, a lot more impressive on paper and in myth

than it perhaps was on the ground. Yeah, so in propaganda, it looked very impressive because, of course, the German newsreels are showing all of the strongest defences, the biggest guns, but it really wasn't quite as comprehensive as those recordings would make it seem. There's huge gaps in the Atlantic wall. It's mainly fortifications, strong points and stuff defending places where landings might happen, so beaches and that sort

of thing, but it wasn't wall-to-wall concrete as you would sometimes expect. Really, it's a series of strong points at different positions along the beach, all trying to cover each other, but there are gaps. And what might look to us a little bit makeshift in between those big concrete strong points, there's wooden stakes, something like 11,000 of them. Yeah. There are 5,000 obstruction beams, which are what, just big steel beams to... Yeah, so on the beaches themselves, anywhere where there's a possibility that a landing craft might come ashore, they're using various different obstacles, tetrahedrons, Czech hedgehogs, large stakes, timbers with mines on the top, that kind of thing. And Belgian gates, the element C,

which was probably the strongest defenses, they could completely stop a landing craft in its tracks. And these have been placed all along the Atlantic wall from Norway right down to the south of France. And there are numerous ones on the beaches of Normandy as well. Okay, in this 90 minutes we're about to discuss, in this sort of first wave, what kind of, all the way right down to the south of France. And there are numerous ones on the beaches of Normandy as well. OK, in this 90 minutes we're about to ask, in this first wave,

how many troops are we roughly speaking here on the Allied side? The Allies are going to try and put over 130,000 men ashore on the beaches, plus another 20,000 or so that have landed overnight in the airborne forces. So there's six infantry divisions that are going to be landed on the beaches. You've got the 3rd British Infantry are going to be landed on the beaches. You've got the 3rd British Infantry Division on the far right on Sword Beach. You've got the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division on Juneau Beach. Then you've got 50th Infantry Division in the middle, that's Gold Beach. Then you've got the Americans. You've got the 1st Division and 29th Division both

landing on Omaha. And then on the far west side, the far left of the landings, you've got Utah Beach with the 4th Infantry Division. Plus, you've got about the equivalent of an armoured division, maybe two armoured divisions, coming ashore to support them. Plus lots and lots of ancillary troops, commandos and rangers, adding almost another division of infantry. So it's a huge force they're putting ashore. Now, we're just about to hit 6.30 in the morning. The airborne landings, D-Day has started. There's been airborne landings since just after midnight.

There's been fighting. There's been fighting. There's been bombing raids on some of the German strong points on the coastal batteries. So there's already been fighting at sea as well. So there's a lot happening. The invasion is very definitely on. But really, people measure D-Day by that amphibious landing

when the first troops hit the beaches. And that's what we're going to do right now, folks. So buckle up. We're going to hit the button, Producer Yana is about to hit it. Friends, it is 6.30 on June the 6th 1944, off we go. Shall we start, interesting, with the German reaction because this airborne landing has been taken, lots of confusion going on. Rommel, people know, Field Marshal Rommel, he's not here, he's in charge of this Western Atlantic wall. He's in Germany delivering a pair of shoes for his wife's birthday at 6.30 in the morning. He is doing some flower arranging in his front room and preparing the shoes, which, by the way, don't fit.

What does his chief of staff call him and say? So Speedle has just called him from his headquarters in Paris to report that there's something happening on the Normandy coast. And it's roundabout now they're chatting to each other on the phone. Interestingly, they don't really conclude that this is the landing. They think that this might be a raid, perhaps something like Dieppe a couple of years previously. They're not really convinced that this is the invasion. And it's not for a couple of hours when there's another phone call

at gone 10 o'clock in the morning that Spiegel actually convinces Rommel and they realise this is actually it. And he barks at him, find out now whether it's the real thing. I love that quote. Now, friends, it is 6.31 in the morning. We're one minute in. What happens at 6.31, Stephen?

This is the big moment. So the landings on Omaha Beach are just starting. The very first infantry units and their supporting armour are going ashore. So we have several tank units that are landing directly from their landing craft, and we'll talk more about how the tanks got ashore a bit later. But you've also got the 116th Regimental Combat Team landing on the west side of Omaha Beach. And over on the east side, you've got the 16th Regimental Combat Team. And they are being put

ashore incredibly, actually, by British landing craft. Royal Navy units primarily are landing these first waves. And over on the western end, it's Lieutenant Jimmy Green of 551 Assault Flotilla, his flotilla, putting the very first troops of the 116th Regimental Combat Team ashore. And he takes them in. And they, at first, they're not experiencing any fire. It's all quiet on the beaches. And they're wondering if those preliminary bombardments have actually been successful. And he reports dropping his men off into fairly quiet beaches and fairly quiet waters. And the men disembark and start wading up to the beach as he then pulls his landing craft out and then withdraws.

But, of course, it's not going to be like that entire way. Yes, there's an account I was reading of a company of the 116th. They get, there's very impressive fire discipline the Germans have. They hold their fire, the men are wading in, and suddenly they are smashed with what was described as an impenetrable wall of lead. There was about 180 men in six boats. It's described 91 were dead within minutes. And the next day, there were only 15 men from that unit left in the fight. And you mentioned Jimmy Green. I met Eddie Wright, who's also a coxswain.

He's 19 years old on Omaha, British coxswain. And he would take men back in and out all day. And after that first wave, they knew what was coming. And he said he just wept as he would pick up more young men to take into the beach. And of course, as you mentioned, they'd been told, hadn't they, that hopefully, not unlike the Battle of the Somme, that there'd be nothing living left on the beach. There was an American general who famously said,

not a living soul will be left upon that beach after the bombardment. Yeah, and that was the kind of hope and that was the impression that all of the soldiers were getting as they watched this barrage as they're approaching the shore. Plus you've got the bombers going overhead and trying to completely pulverize those German strong points. It's not really what the bombardment was about. The bombardment was really meant to suppress these defenses. There was never the expectation that they would completely obliterate them. So in terms of suppression, it worked very well. It prevented the German

defenders from firing on the landing craft as they come into the shore. But of course, as soon as your own troops are ashore, you have to lift that bombardment. You have to stop dropping your own shells on the beach. And that's when the Germans can then start to return fire. And that's what happens on Omaha Beach. One lieutenant called Ray Nance describes what happened in those first few seconds. The bullets were so close, the air was full of flying metal, which you could hear but not see as it whizzed by, like bugs around your face in the summer. And we're going to be talking about that terrible fighting on Omaha through this podcast, but it is exactly 6.34 in the morning now, Stephen. What is happening right now? Well, of course, at the same time as this, you've also got the landings at Utah Beach. And at this exact moment, 4th Infantry Division, the 8th Regimental Combat Team, are coming ashore on Utah Beach. And they're

supported again by DD tanks that have been brought right into the beach by their landing craft. So Utah, of course, isn't quite as famous as Omaha. Everyone assumes that because Omaha was the bloodiest beach, that Utah was this sort of walkover. And that's not really the case either. And in fact, none of the beaches were easy. It's this misconception we have alongside Omaha. Utah is another very bloody fight, but it's a little bit more successful because the bombardment and the air bombing beforehand is a lot more successful. So there's a lot happening at Utah and there's still a fight to actually recover the beach. But it's not as easy. It's not the cakewalk that everyone thinks it is.

Now, you've mentioned these DD tanks. Let's get into the armour a little bit here. Let's get into these extraordinary floating tanks. Because actually at 6.35, which we're at now, they're being launched out to sea off Sword Beach as well. So we can wrap it all up for me. What's a DD tank and what are they doing? Omaha and Utah, they're now already ashore, but they're going into the beach on Sword as we speak. Yep. So a DD tank is essentially an amphibious tank. It has a large skirt, this canvas skirt around it, which creates a sort of hull and it makes the tank buoyant if it's put in the water.

creates a sort of hull and it makes the tank buoyant if it's put in the water. Now it can only go in very calm seas and it was only meant to launch a couple of miles off the shore and then power in under its own propulsion with some propellers attached to the driveshafts on the back and then it would emerge from the water in the very shallows just ahead of the infantry and then be able to neutralize strong points with its with its cannon from the shallows but it didn't quite work out that way especially on Omaha beach because the weather was still a little bit rough from that storm that had blown over so on Omaha beach on the western side supporting the 29th infantry division they decided the 743 tank battalion decided that they weren't going to launch and they went in on their landing craft all the way into the beach

and they land at H hour just as the infantry are coming ashore. The 741st Tank Battalion, who are on the eastern side supporting the 1st Infantry Division, they launched at 5,000 yards out. And unfortunately, that turned into a disaster. Most of them succumbed to the waves very, very quickly. And so over on the eastern end of Omaha Beach, you only have five tanks get ashore at H-hour, three of them delivered by one of the single landing craft that went all the way to the shore,

and two of the swimming tanks that actually made it to the beach. By miracle. And on that beach, we have accounts, by this stage, the beach is being swept by machine gun fire, by artillery. It's a killing zone, terrifying ordeal for those ashore. How much were the tanks able to help? I mean, you get an account, don't you? They weren't actually able to manoeuvre and fire as much as they'd like because there were so many infantry just hiding behind them. And indeed, there were so many wounded lying on the sand, they were worried about crushing their own men. Yeah. So on Omaha Beach, they don't have room to manoeuvre and they essentially become steel pillboxes that can just sort of stay where they are and bring their own gunfire onto the enemy defenses. And they work

to a certain extent like that. But of course, they're being picked off by the anti-tank guns in some of the bunkers that are firing along the beach. So they have a very rough time on Omaha Beach, as everyone does, of course. The British beaches, as you say, these are just about to launch. But at Gold and Juneau beaches, they've similarly made the decision not to launch the DD tanks because, again, the waves are just a little bit too rough. And so they go into the beaches on their landing craft. They land a little bit after HR, so they're not able to deliver exactly the same support as was intended. But at Sword Beach over on the far eastern end, with some of the sandbanks along the beaches,

the waves weren't quite as rough as you get closer into the shore. So they made the decision at Sword Beach, Commander Edmund Currie, on the lead landing craft headquarters, made the decision to launch the DD tanks. He took them in a little bit closer, they were supposed to launch at 7,000 yards,

but they went into 5,000 yards instead, and they launch right about now. They're going into the water. They're driving off the ramps of their landing craft, of their skirts up. They start making their way in towards the beach. And it's incongruous. These huge steel beasts, and they are floating threshold propellers on the back. They are one of the most extraordinary innovations of the war. It's bonkers. this this canvas skirt that just inflates around the hull doesn't seem like it's enough to actually you know make it buoyant and it barely is because you've barely got a foot of freeboard above the waves and in the force four seas that they were facing they weren't able to make the speed that they wanted they were supposed to go about four knots they could only make three so

they then get caught up with the landing craft on sword beach and we'll come to this later when the landings begin but they don't quite make it ahead of the infantry waves as was intended and as it's canvas the tiniest little tear in that skirt and suddenly water shoots in yeah and there's one landing craft at force s on sword beach and the lead landing craft drives over the ramp and then he tears the skirt on the piece of the the landing craft drives over the ramp and then he tears the skirt on the piece of the metal from the landing craft itself. And so, of course, he can't launch. He'll sink. And the DD tank's behind him. So they decide to take that single landing craft in with the leading waves a bit later. Right. OK. So it is now, friends, it is 6.40 in the morning.

We are 10 minutes into the beach landings. We've got naval... We should say something about the bombardment. You've mentioned it before. They're not alone on that beach, aren't they? We've got a massive firepower from a huge fleet assembled out to sea. And is that naval bombardment sort of opens up now on Sword? Does it?

But tell me about the bombardment more generally. So the bombardment then is a huge naval force that is there to pulverise the beaches as much as possible. But as I said, it's not expected that they will destroy everything. Really, it is a form of suppression to try and make sure that the Germans are keeping their heads down. They're not able to respond with their batteries and fire on the ships at sea. So at Omaha, that bombardment started at 5.50 in the morning, and they had 40 minutes of bombardment. And of course, the guns all lift as the infantry go ashore. On Sword Beach,

it's just starting now. So we have 45 minutes of bombardment before the leading infantry waves will land. And these are battleships, some of the most famous battleships in naval history. Where's HMS Belfast, the smallest ship? HMS Belfast is in the middle between Gold and Juneau beaches, and she splits her fire between those two areas. So there's different objectives for different warships. The cruisers and the battleships like Warspite, they're engaging the big coastal artillery batteries. Now, some of those are way off to the east.

They're closer to the half, and they are engaging them to make sure that they can't fire back out to sea. They have spotter aircraft helping them to hit their targets and make sure that the fall of shot is very good then you also have the closer vessels and this is mainly destroyer size vessels that have aligned themselves along the shore they're about two miles away and they are just firing their 4.5 4.7 inch guns all the beach. They've got pre-selected areas. There's particular strong points that they're targeting, or they just have a distance of the beach,

if you like, like a mile of coastline that they are chosen to target. And they're just basically smattering it with fire as much as they can. Then alongside that, closing in on the flanks of the leading landing craft, you have these smaller vessels, the landing craft support, the landing craft gun, which has two 4.7-inch guns on, landing craft flak with their 20-millimeter guns, and they're all pouring fire onto the strong points.

Now, at 6.41, we've got the captain of USS Corrie, Lieutenant Commander George D. Hoffman, disordered his crew to abandon ship. Tell me, why does the Corrie go down? So the Corrie is one of the support vessels over at Utah Beach. And yes, she's supposed to be bombarding the beaches. She gets involved in an artillery duel with Chris Beck Battery, which is about a mile inland from Utah Beach. And yeah, Chris Beck Battery manages to target Corrie with one of its spotters, and they bring down brackets of shells

on it. And for about 15 minutes, they're engaged in this little artillery duel with each other. And then Corrie is hit, just about HR, in fact, so about 6.30. At first, they think it might have been a mine, but it was almost certainly, in fact, it was a shell fire coming from Chris Beck battery. And yeah, at 6.41, the captain, George Lee Hoffman, orders abandon ship. And the men start to disembark in good order. But just a few minutes later, in fact, Corrie breaks in too and starts to sink. So it's a reminder that the casualties weren't all on the beach. They were naval casualties as well out at sea. So we've got the bombardment is going in. You've mentioned it, destroyers, but you've got landing craft as well, firing, just trying to saturate that coastline in front of the

advancing infantry, advancing assault waves. Let's check in back on Omaha Beach. We've got Creed Conwell, who was with the 29th Infantry Division. He's just landing on Omaha. And he'd been told, interestingly, by British trainers during the long preparation these men went through, don't do the Christian thing. Don't stop to help. It will keep you alive. On that day, I had no friends but me, which meant he just had to look after number one. You don't stop. You try and get, I guess, try and get some to cover on the beach. And then he said when they arrived at the beach, it was so loud we couldn't hear ourselves scream. There was never a moment when there wasn't shooting. Them at us and we at them.

Why does Omaha have this shocking reputation? So Omaha is a well-defended beach, although all of the other beaches are equally well-defended. In fact, some analysis that was conducted by the military after the landings they went ashore they looked at the level of defenses on all five beaches and they worked out that actually the the number of defenses per mile was pretty much average on all of them they're all roughly the same you have the same amount of guns and mortars and anti-tank guns per mile on omaha as you did on sword beach what you had at omaha that was different was the high cliffs the the bluffs, the sandy cliffs immediately behind the landing area,

and that gives the Germans a height advantage, and that makes a fairly crucial difference. It also restricts the number of exits that there are off the beach, and at Omaha, they're essentially trying to capture four draws, or we would call them chines in the UK, just these valleys. Little sort of ravines or valleys, yeah. Exactly, with roads on them that create an exit for infantry to march up and for vehicles, crucially, to be able to get up, because there's no way vehicles can get up the sandy cliffs. And that's really what makes Omaha as deadly as it is.

And the Allies had no choice but to land there because that was the only beach between Gold Beach and then Utah Beach over on the far west so it was essential they capture that. A vital link in the chain but when you go to Amarte you think this is not an ideal place for amphibious assault it just does not look like the kind of place you'd want to land troops at all. It is 6.45 in the morning exactly we've got naval gunfire now on Sword Beach the British beach let's talk a bit more about that smashes into one particular rather infamous strong point I learned from your book in particular called Cod.

Tell me a little bit more about the bombardment there. So Weedle's Strand and Nest 20, or German Resistance Nest number 20, was codenamed Cod by the British. And they gave all of the defences along Sword a fishy defence name. So there's also or redial strand on s18 was skate and uh redial strand on s21 was called trout um and these are the main defensive strong points in the immediate vicinity of where the landings will take place on sword cod is right in the middle of queen beach and um it's swords they're going to land on queen red and queen white beaches cod is right in the middle it's a company-sized fortification. Of all the defences along the beaches in the entire Normandy area, Cod is

probably the single strongest, singular strong point that they have to face. It's numerous anti-tank guns, mortar positions, heavy machine guns, all surrounded by belts of barbed wire, trench network connecting everything. So this is a formidable strong point. And the Allies knew this. They had plenty of intelligence about it. They had spotter planes flying overhead days in advance and captured the strength of the defences. So they knew it needed special attention. And a lot of gunfire, artillery fire from the ships at sea is now being dropped on it. And we can throw into that as well the Royal Artillery, who are firing their self-propelled guns, 105mm artillery pieces,

are now firing from the decks of their landing craft. Yeah, because they're meant to be used, they're a key weapon that you'd expect to use on land. Yeah. They're a standard weapon, if you like, for the British artillery, but they're just sort of propped up in landing craft and firing from the side.

Yeah, so these are self-propelled guns, so the gun already faces forward, which is very advantageous. And so they're lined up on their landing craft and firing well so these are self-propelled guns so the gun already faces forward which is very advantageous and so they're lined up on their landing craft and they are firing from the decks of their landing craft onto the beaches and they're trying to hit cod as well so a huge weight of fire is being brought down on on cod and the entire length of sword beach from luxembourg over in the east sorry in the west all the way to west, in the west, all the way to Wistrum in the west. There is one gap in this artillery fire, though. The Norwegian destroyer Svenner, which is a British-built warship, an S-class destroyer, had been sunk earlier in the day in the Kriegsmarine's one successful action of D-Day, about 5.30. They had launched several torpedoes from their destroyer-sized ships that had come out of the Havre,

and one of those torpedoes has managed to penetrate into the fleet and hit the Svena, breaking its back, and it has sank in two pieces, creating this sort of V-shape emerging from the waves. So Svena isn't able to take part in the bombardment, but even so, there's another dozen destroyers dropping shells on Sword Beach right now. And same on Gold. We've got Table, another strong point that you're keen on.

Yeah, so Table, Weedle Strangleness 37 um is one of the defenses that looks along the beach a gold jig beach and this is where the uh 231st infantry brigade are going to land later in the day and this is being targeted by a royal navy destroyer under the command of captain roger hill and he gives a very great account in his memoir destroy Destroyer Captain, of targeting this defence. And they knew, of course, what was in there. They knew the dangers it possessed. And he gushes in his memoir about how they brought down huge amounts of fire on it. And he says, we had pulverised that position. There was no way anything could be left alive there. Now, that's very much the impression that you get from the sea, two miles away for a pair of binoculars.

In fact, that strong point and the anti-tank gun that was inside that concrete bunker was practically untouched. Okay, well, we'll be hearing more about that in a second. So it is coming up. It is 6.49. Let's check in with Omaha. On Omaha, Lawrence Kanowski is leading a naval combat demolition unit, and he has just managed to blow a 100-yard gap in a line of obstacles on a portion of the beach called Easy Red.

He's a number of satchel charges. It's the kind of very small attritional breakthroughs that will start to see these poor infantry getting off the beach and getting into and through German defences. But Karnowski later says that really attracted a lot of German fire when he had that success. So he's sort of sticking his head above the parapet there, literally. Yeah. And the naval combat demolition units, they're absolutely crucial to the success at Omaha Beach. So these are the units that are tasked to blow up the obstacles, to clear lanes

through the beach so that armour can get up onto the road. And they win a presidential citation after Omaha, such as the bravery and the ferocity with which they carried out their tasks. They are absolutely crucial to the success on Omaha. We've got back at 6.50. We are on Utah. There's an account, isn't there, of a German officer. And we should probably, you've mentioned the extraordinary weight of fire being brought down on the Germans. It was deeply unpleasant for the Allies landing on the beach. It was pretty unpleasant to be in some of those German strong points, I imagine, as well. So tell me about the German officer, Leutnant Arthur Yankee. So Arthur Yankee is the commanding officer of Vigelstrandlnest 104.

the commanding officer of Vigil Strandal Nest 104. And they have already just been pulverized because just before the landings at Utah, the US Air Force, in fact, the 9th Air Force, have bombarded from the air these strong points. Now, theirs was a very successful mission because they flew along the beach. They came in from the north and then they turned and basically just head down the length of Utah Beach and drop their bombs on the strong points along the landing area. And they were highly effective. Arthur Yankee had to dig himself out from a half-buried shell hole that he was left in after the bombers had passed. He was lucky to survive and he's already injured, as are many of his men. Casemates had been blown open by the bombing raid. The trench network has been obliterated. Half of his men are wounded

and most of their weapons are either clogged up with sand or destroyed. So the weight of bombing that had passed over Utah Beach was hugely successful and makes a huge difference on Utah Beach in nullifying those defences. So it's not just naval gunfire, there is support from gigantic bombing raids as well. We'll hear about a less successful one in a second, but let's quickly check in Omaha West. The tanks and various things coming at the wrong place, you mentioned a lot of sort of longshore drift. Was it quite common at D-Day, people landing

not where they were expecting? Yes, a lot of units drift to the east with the tide and the storm that is pushing them along. All this northwesterly wind pushes everything a little bit to the east. A lot of landing craft that are now approaching Gold Beach, for instance, are already being swept off course. And it's not until they get much closer to the beach that they actually realise the effect that's having. It's pushing the DD tanks at Sword Beach. They're already off course. They're being pushed over to the east. They're going to make their landfall way, way, way too far to the east if they don't adjust. And around about now, in fact, they get a command from the leading ships and they start to turn to starboard so that they can laboriously head slightly into the weather and try and make

their way further to the west so that they make the right landfall. We should say as well, on Omaha and other beaches, how much communication is there with the people who are now clinging to this tiny fingernail, this toehold on the beaches of Normandy? A lot of wireless sets, we understand, are wet. There's not as much communication as they were hoping. are wet. I mean, there's not as much communication as they were hoping. Yeah. So a lot of the wireless supports were instantly lost. They were either saturated by water as they made their landings or the signalers are being killed. So there's not a huge amount of information coming off Omaha Beach at the moment. And that's making it very difficult to assess what's going on. Most of the commanders and their warships at sea are looking through their binoculars, but there's a lot of smoke and dust drifting over the beach as well so it makes it very hard to work out what's going on you start getting fragmentary

reports coming in about the the opposition they're facing and the slow progress they're making but for a long time at Omaha Beach nobody's quite sure or the commanders rather out at sea aren't sure just how bad the situation is and the situation for those men pinned down Omaha Beach is just shocking, shocking, traumatising for them. And the veterans at Gantz suggest that, you know, obviously they live with it until the end of their days. Now it's 6.53 and a bit. Let's look at some of the 8th Air Force. Let's look at some of the American bombings on the other beaches. We discussed the air activity on Utah. That was a big success.

Not quite replicated on other beaches. No, so right now over Sword, Juneau and Gold beaches, if some of the people on their landing craft look to the skies, in reality it's quite cloudy. But if they'd been able to see over the clouds, they would have seen a vast armada of bombers, B-17 bombers of the 8th Air Force heading towards the beaches. So these bombers are attacking Omaha Beach. They've

already dropped their bombs on Omaha, but they're also attacking Gold, Juno and Sword. But they're doing it slightly differently to the 9th Air Force at Utah. Whilst the 9th Air Force had flown down the length of the beach, the 8th Air force are coming directly across the beach from the sea so they have a much shorter window to drop their bombs literally as they cross the coast they need to drop their bombs on all of these targets these strong points and then overfly and then bank over to to the right and head out towards the english channel and can they see the coast through the clouds no because unfortunately the cloud cover is is pretty bad there's occasional little gaps, but certainly at Sword Beach, none of the bombers see their targets, and they're relying on radar

instead, which is fine for aerial bombing. But when you're trying to bomb precise targets, individual strong points, it's not going to be quite as successful. And this is where, unfortunately, 8th Air Force Mission doesn't really work. The vast majority of them overfly their targets. This is compounded by the fact that at the very last minute, they receive additional instructions that if there is heavy cloud cover, they should delay releasing their bombs. And this is because senior commanders were fearful of them dropping bombs on their own troops as they came into land.

We're now at 6.55, though, and the very first bombers are now overflying the beaches in Sword area. They're bombing various targets right along the length of the beach, well beyond the landing area. But the vast majority of them guided by radar and these new instructions to delay their bombing are now flying over the beaches. Just a couple of seconds means that they might fly a mile in land and they will miss their targets entirely. So the 100th Bomb Group, for instance, very famous with Masters of the Air at the moment,

they are actually attacking Weestrom and Veedle Strand and Nest Number 10, which is one of the strong points that actually fires down the beach at Sword Beach and will be attacked by French commandos later in the morning. But they overfly their target. By the time the French commandos get there, there are no bomb craters around that strong point at all. So 100th Bomb Group had

overflown their target per their mission parameters, per the instructions they were given. They delayed dropping their bombs, and most of their bombs fall harmlessly in fields and land. And there are accounts, aren't there, as the Allies push further inland of fields, absolutely decimate, like covered in bomb craters and dead animals, cows, but just that little bit further inland. Yes, and you can see it in the aerial photographs that are taken on the day. Huge fields, just absolutely uprooted by huge numbers of bombs that are being dropped on them, but yeah, in totally the wrong place. It was the busiest day, I think, of air activity in the Second World War, certainly one of, but there were something like 14,674 sorties in the 24 hours of the 6th of June.

That's about one every six seconds. That includes bombers, it includes fighters, it includes all sorts of different aircraft types, but just gives you a sense of the scale of the air activity. Speaking of air activity, we won't get too much into the airborne. Suffice to say, there are't get too much into the airborne. Suffice to say, there are paratroopers all around these beaches. Some of them are coalescing in units, others are by themselves trying to find each other. It's chaos. Pegasus Bridge, very famously, the first airborne landing of just after midnight on June the 6th. British troops land gliders,

bang, perfectly on target right next to these bridges across the big canal that joins Caen to the sea, securing those bridges. And there was some fighting during the night. It's a bit of a lull there at the moment, isn't it? Yeah, so obviously Major Howard and his troops, who landed by glider just off Pegasus Bridge, have captured the bridge. They've got a very small perimeter around it that they're now holding out. They've been reinforced by 7th Parachute Battalion, who landed a little bit after them and have now advanced down to the bridge. But as you said, a lot of them are very widely scattered.

They're still trying to find their colleagues. Not the entire battalion is there. So it's a very slim perimeter that they have around the bridge. And German forces are now starting to creep up from the surrounding towns. But there's a little bit of a lull as daylight comes. They can hear the bombardment in the distance. So can the Germans. They know that something is clearly up.

But one of the aircraft, one of those 14,000 sorties, is a Spitfire that overflies Pegasus Bridge. And the airborne forces lay out their recognition signals on the ground, big fabric panels to give the recognition signal and say, this is in Allied hands. And the Spitfire obviously observes that and then circles round and drops a little package for them. Major Howard sends somebody off to go and get it in case it's fresh instructions. It's actually the morning newspapers, which entertained the troops, but of course there was no mention of D-Day in it because that hasn't been released to the world yet.

And those troops, they've survived a few encounters with the Germans overnight. They can hear the bombardment. They know the beach landings are on the way, right? And their job is just to hold on there. Yeah. So they still have this mission. They're going to hold on to Pegasus Bridge most of the day. Although the commandos will pass across Pegasus Bridge later on in the morning,

around about noon, one or two o'clock, they just then carry on. They don't reinforce the bridges at all. They head off to the east, to Breville Ridge, where they have missions of their own. It's not until about 10.30 in the evening that Major Howard and his forces are actually relieved by the ground forces. That's quite the 24 hours of work that they had to do.

And they would have... How long would they have been expecting to hold out? I mean, the equipment they had, the weapons and things like that, ammunition, I mean, they couldn't hold out much longer, presumably. No, they couldn't have. And the expectation was that they would be relieved by land forces in the afternoon of D-Day. So it was a little bit late. Various complications in the landings at Sword meant that various different units had to be reassigned. And it's not until later that they're actually relieved. You're listening to Dan Snow's History here. I'm with the historian Stephen Fisher here at the Oracle of D-Day.

We are coming up to 0700. We're half an hour into our minute-by-minute account of the key 90 minutes of D-Day. And at seven o'clock in the morning, which is pretty much now, we're going to go and check in on Omaha again, because the second wave are landing. Obviously, things are confused here, but many ramps go down. They hit the beach from the second wave. These are infantry reinforcements. They're specialist weapons team. There's some headquarters elements here, so you're starting to get some more senior officers on the beach.

We've mentioned before, huge majority of radios have been knocked out by soaking. Waves are unexpectedly high, five to six feet. Inevitably, with the coastline, there are sandbanks offshore. The ramps are going down. Some men are drowning. They're going out in depths that are too deep for them. There's a lot going wrong, really, isn't there? Yeah.

So as the senior officers start to come ashore, they find chaos, basically. And as you say, lots of the landing craft, they're stopping quite far out. They're hitting sandbanks. And they think, is it this is the beach and it must be shallow water for the next 100 meters and so they disgorge their troops into the sea but then they advance and they quickly realize that it is an offshore sandbank and then they end up in deeper water up to their necks some of them even worse and yeah a lot of men don't make the beach because of the depth of water. For the troops that do get onto the shore, the tide is already racing in quite fast and it's pushing up much faster than expected. A lot of the beach obstacles are becoming immersed and the men who are sheltering behind them are forced to move further up the beach. Individual

parties now, and this is how Omaha unfolds. Individual little groups manage to make penetrations through these defences and up onto the coast road and then amongst the buildings and the trench networks that are actually just inshore from the beach. Probably the most significant action is what's happening with the rangers as they make their advances. So for anyone who's seen Saving Private Ryan, you'll be aware that this little ranger team lands on the western end of Omaha Beach. And this is actually slightly based in realistic facts. This is Captain Ralph Goranson of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, A Company. They do actually land on Omaha Beach at the far western end.

And like all of the other landing units, they are then pinned down. Half of his men are pretty much wounded or killed almost immediately. Because they're at the far western end, they have a little bit of shelter from the cliffs that actually run straight up to the beach. So this is just west of the Veerville Drawer, the western chine that makes its way up onto the fields. They then go up the cliffs, just like Tom Hanks does in saving private ryan they go for one of the steeper bits and they make their way up this this slightly collapsed cliff to a house that's on the top that has been reinforced by the germans and they very slowly start to make their way up

that way uh it takes a while and so it's a good half hour before they're even starting to reach the top of this but once they get up there they can then enter the trench network of one of these defences. And now the first rangers, if you like, are making it to the tops of the cliffs. It's sometimes said that these Atlantic wall defences, they could be quite strong, but they're very brittle. And the minute you puncture them, then they start to lose their effectiveness because you can work around the backs and the flanks. And that seems to be what's happening here. There was Charles Cawthorn of the 2nd Battalion of the 116th. He says the factors of weather, time, tides, and Germans resulted in, quote, shock, inertia, and disorder. The only salvation was the initiative and enterprise of

a relative few who rose above the wreckage of the plan. It sounds like the range you're describing there, but the casualties were obviously appalling. Captain Carol Smith of the 3rd Battalion, 116th, made a note. He said they landed, he thought, with 3,486 troops. And of those, around 1,000 were killed, wounded, and missing, around 30%. And of this, 80% of them were officers. And that represented more than, well, certainly in his regiment, more than half the strength of the, half the officer strength of the regiment. And so, but at the time, interestingly, it seemed like it was even worse than that because you saw death and destruction all around you. You got the

impression that you were sort of almost the only one left and you didn't realise how many units there were like you sort of trying to infiltrate and find your way inland. But a scene definitely of chaos. We've got to 7.04 in the morning. Around this time, what's going on? Let's talk about Rommel. What's the German? Well, talk about the Germans.

Anyway, Rommel's off with his wife. So the Germans have just agreed to release 21st Panzer Division. Now, this is a Panzer Division, a regular army. They're all based around Cannes. Most of the units are based around Cannes. Most of the units are south of Cannes, but General Marx has agreed to release them, and he's given them orders to head towards the airborne landings to the east of Cannes, crucially on the east side of the Cannes Canal. So already two units, 22nd Panzer Regiment under Oberst von Oppenbronuski and 135 Panzer Grenadier Regiment under Major Hans von Luck. They're now advancing up the eastern side of the canal to try and counter those airborne landings.

And that's crucial because they are going effectively the wrong way. They're just heading the wrong way. They're not heading towards the beach. They're heading towards these reports of airborne landing crazy yeah and it's going to play a big factor later because they then have to get across the khan canal to counter the landings at sword beach later on in the afternoon about midday they're going to be redeployed they'll get fresh orders and say no we have these amphibious landings that are happening at sword we need you to go over there pegasus bridge and horser bridge the bridge across the river, have both, of course, been captured by the airborne forces. They can't use those bridges, so they have to go all the way back to Cannes, which is being bombed. And so it is traffic chaos in Cannes to make their way across the river and the canal so that they can then advance against the landings

at Sword Beach. And in fact, that's going to take them most of the afternoon. So 21st Panzer Division isn't in a position to counter the landings on Sword Beach until four o'clock in the afternoon. And that's a huge delay. It's a huge delay. And those are effective units. Had they been hurled at the beach in the first minutes, first hours after landings,

they could have made a difference. They could have made a huge difference. Interestingly, of course, they could have also made a huge difference on the airborne landings. And it's actually the landings at Sword that then essentially saved the airborne forces because after deciding, no, we need to redeploy these Panzer divisions, they take them away from the airborne landings before they've had a chance to engage. Now, in fact, had those two regiments been deployed against the airborne forces who are scattered, they haven't yet been reinforced,

regiments been deployed against the airborne forces who are scattered, they haven't yet been reinforced, they have very small organised units, but not enough to resist panzers. Had those two regiments gone in against the airborne forces at midday before they were ordered back to Sword Beach, there could have been chaos on that side. So in many ways, it's quite lucky for the British and unlucky for the Germans that they didn't better think their strategy through. So interesting. Yeah, they did. So even if they pursued their original objective, at least it would have done something.

And they ended up achieving absolutely nothing. Pretty much. So we've got, just to check in again on Omaha, we've got six bulldozers have just arrived on Omaha Beach. Two apparently lost straight away to enemy fire. And it is said that the others, as we mentioned with the tanks earlier, the others are said to be unable to clear or get around, get their job done, which is clearing obstacles, because they are so conscious that they're actually very useful for the sheltering infantry

behind. So the operators think, poor infantry, let's just stay here and at least we're doing something for them. Yeah, the landings, of course, all rely on different units being able to achieve different things. No unit is operating in isolation. They're able to carry out their tasks because another unit is carrying out a different task. So whilst one unit is attacking a strong point, another is able to clear beach obstacles. The Omaha, all of that comes unstuck because there's too much happening. There's too much destruction being rained down by the German strong points. And so none of these units are able to operate in the way they originally intended. We have on Omaha got the famous German defender. He became something of a celebrity of the early 21st century. He was interviewed very widely in the British press

as one of the last defenders, Heinrich Severlohe. He claims to have fired 10,000 rounds on Omaha. And he did an interview in which he said he felt he maybe even killed a thousand or shot a thousand, maybe 2000 people. I mean, that seems like a lot, but he said, thinking about it makes me want to throw up. And his officer remarked as he was calling in artillery support, his officer looked out the American's landing and just said, poor swine. And yeah, there are accounts from Germans who were somewhat, yeah, baffled by the landings, if you like, by the sheer amount of men that are being advanced up the beach towards them that they can fire on almost with impunity. There's probably some slight exaggerations in some of these accounts. There's not as many people are necessarily being killed by them.

But certainly, you know, in the drama of the moment, and as you're just spraying away with a machine gun, it would be easy to think that there are thousands of people in front of you and you are mowing down thousands of people. Let's get, we are almost, well, we're coming up to 7.09, sort of at 7.09, 7.10, you get the US Rangers. You mentioned the Rangers before, but this is one of the most well-talked about and celebrated moments on D-Day. They arrive at the point of hock. Now tell me what that is. Yeah, so it's 39 minutes after the initial landings on Omaha Beach now, and literally the two flotillas of landing craft, the 520 and 522 Royal Navy flotillas of landing craft assault, they're a minute away from touching down at Pont du Hoc. So this is the clifftop battery that sits further to the west of

Omaha Beach but these guns at Pont de Hoc can fire on Omaha or Utah Beach. So free ranger companies are being landed at Pont de Hoc with this mission to scale the cliffs and they're being landed by Royal Navy landing craft. They have... And they are cliffs aren't they? I mean it's like something out of a movie, it's such a promontory sticks out to the sea, vast cliffs towering. These aren't like the sandy bluffs behind Omaha Beach that have a slight gradient on them. These are proper vertical cliffs. But these ranger forces are late because the Royal Navy landing craft that are taking them into shore at first, with the smoke and the gunfire that's all happening at Omaha Beach, and of course that current, they are heading for the wrong place.

They headed to another point, Pointe de la Perce, which is a couple of miles to the east. Again, that current has swept them. It's very difficult to pick out landmarks on a cliff face like that. And for a while, they are going too far to the east. And it's only as they approach it and get closer, they realise their mistake and they turn and have to head west sailing against the tide over towards ponte la hawks and they are banging into the waves and the wind so it's okay and that means that a couple of landing craft are

swamped by the seas and um and they arrive late so in fact now uh at uh 7 10 in the morning the very first landing craft lca 888 with, with Colonel Rudder on board, the commander of this force, makes landfall. And immediately, all of the other landing craft are coming in alongside. They had originally intended that they would deploy on both sides of the point, the proper outcrop of rock that makes up the point of the Hawk. But because they've all come from one direction, they all land on the eastern side of that point so already they're they're sort of struggling because they're not deploying as originally intended they're all coming from one direction but all of these men are now jumping out of their landing craft and surging up to the

bottom of the cliffs the germans of course have seen them coming and they've now come out of their shelters because the bombardment has stopped and they are able to fire down the cliffs and drop grenades onto these troops that are swarming up and trying to make their initial assault. Because the landing craft has spent so long at sea, the sort of harpoon hooks and ropes that were supposed to be fired from the landing craft that the men would then be able to use to scramble up the cliffs, they're waterlogged. And the ropes are absolutely sodden. So they don't have enough... They're too heavy, basically, and they don't make it... So they were going to use sort of propelled harpoons, almost like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean.

Yeah. The hooks would land on the top, and they'd scale the ropes. Medieval siege from Lord of the Rings. Yeah. But they're not effective because they're too heavy because of the wave action and the time at sea, so the ropes are completely sodden. So instead they're using scaling ladders or other ropes that they manage to get up.

Very, very slowly the rangers start to inch up the cliffs. There is help at hand. The Royal Navy and the US Navy start to fire with lighter guns onto the top of the cliffs. They manage to keep the Germans' heads down, and very slowly the rangers manage to make their way up the cliffs. Even then, of course, once they get to the top of the cliffs, their job isn't done. They now have to assault a gun battery, and for the next sort of 30, 40 minutes, they're engaged in very heavy firefighting around this strong point. And it's not for a while, it's not until they secure that strong point that they realise, pretty much to their horror, that in fact, there are no guns there. They've been withdrawn inland because of all of the Allied bombing raids that have been happening

over the past couple of weeks. Had those guns been there, they could have fired on Utah Beach or Omaha Beach. It was absolutely essential that they were knocked out. And the only way you can do that is with infantry, to be sure of it. But yes, to everyone's horror and dismay, if you like, the guns aren't even there. Now, a small party does go a little bit further inland. They find those guns in a field where they've been withdrawn undercover and they're able to neutralise them. But the Germans wouldn't have been able to bring them into play

on D-Day very easily anyway. But that does not detract from the unbelievable heroism and tenacity of scaling up those cliffs and taking Pont de Hoc, a moment that's gone down as one of the most celebrated and talked about on that day, the longest day. So we're coming up to, well it is now 7.14, coming up to 7.14 in the morning. Let's go back to Sword Beach because we are, well, we're getting quite near the actual infantry assault. So what's going on offshore on Sword? Well, the last few things I have to take you through.