SPECIALIZED ARMOUR HELPED THE ALLIES BURST THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR OF HITLER’S FORTRESS EUROPE.
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© RICHARD KLUNE/CORBIS
ON I 2TH OCTOBER 1066, Duke William’s elite cavalry charged repeatedly against the Saxon “shield wall,” the simple hut very effective defensive formation favoured by King
Harold’s troops. Repelled again and again, William watched on, probably sensing that victory was slipping from his grasp and that any chance of ever sitting on the throne of England depended upon finding some way to break through the seemingly impenetrable Saxon wall.
It’s unlikely that any of the Allied planners charged with breaching Hitler’s vaunted Atlantic Wall ever gave any thought to Duke William’s dilemma, but the parallels are striking. Allied success depended, first and foremost, on breaching the formidable German coastal defenses.
The Saxon shield wall consisted of wood and leather, effective against Norman arrows and pikes. Hitler needed something more substantial to defend Normandy itself from the modern Allied armies. His wall consisted primarily of steel and concrete.
The “wall” actually consisted of layers of obstacles forming a defence in depth extending from just offshore and along the beaches to well inland. The invading Allied assault infantry would first encounter any of a variety of steel contraptions designed to rip the bottoms out of landing craft. The German defenders placed these about 15 feet above the water level at low tide, thus presenting the invaders with an unpleasant choice: they could avoid the obstacles by landing at low tide, but by doing so they would expose themselves on an open beach in the face of heavy machinegun fire and risk drowning if they could not move inland before the tide came in, or they could land at high tide and risk being drowned when their landing craft impaled themselves on the underwater can openers.
Having reached the beaches, the attackers would then face further ranks of obstacles, including minefields, barbed wire, and machine guns positioned to provide mutually supporting crossfire as the invaders advanced across the open sand. Farther inland, beyond these frontline pillboxes, large-calibre guns, many fixed in reinforced concrete casements, overlooked the landing beaches. Finally, likely parachute and glider landing zones had been flooded or laced with stakes to make an airborne assault extremely dangerous.
But for all the apparent strength of the wall, it was brittle. The German commander in the west, Gerd von Rundstedt, did not trust it, believing that it might hold up the invaders for 24 hours, but that it would eventually give way. More than 18 million tons of concrete had been shaped into pillboxes, walls, and casements, but most of those were in the vicinity of Calais. The beaches at Normandy and elsewhere offered easier targets. And the troops manning the defenses were not top-of-the-line.
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© COR8IS; ABOVE: MICHAEL ST. MAUR SHEIL/CORBIS
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© CORBIS; ABOVE: MICHAEL ST. MAUR SHEIL/CORBIS
Still, Allied planners recognized the potential for a disaster if they took these defenses lightly. The example of Dieppe, where a force of Canadians had been decimated in 1942, amply demonstrated the need for specialized equipment specifically designed to overcome the German beach obstacles. The task fell to Major General Percy Hobart of the British 79th Armoured Division. From April 1943 onwards, the 79th Division began to train using tanks that became famous as Hobart’s “Funnies."
The Funnies were variants of two of the most common Allied tanks, the British Churchill and the American Sherman. Variants on the Churchill design included the Crocodile flame-throwing tank, intended to squirt burning fuel through the embrasures of pillboxes. The fuel was stored in an armoured trailer towed along behind the tank. Other Churchill chassis were modified to carry bridges or ramps that they could deploy over trenches or walls the Germans had placed to impede the Allied advance. Still others sported concrete-smashing Petard mortars.
Funnies based on the Sherman tank included the Crab, which carried a rotating drum with chains attached. The Crabs could clear minefields by flailing the ground with their chains in order to detonate the mines before they could do any harm.
Most famous of all the Funnies was the Sherman Duplex Drive or DD tank. The DDs were standard Sherman tanks with a foldable canvas screen attached to make them buoyant in water, and a propeller so that they could be launched offshore and then “swim” to the beaches to give heavy fire support to the assault infantry. In ideal conditions, this worked well, but the canvas screen provided the tank with a freeboard of only 12 inches, making them very susceptible to flooding. The tank crews could have been under no illusions about the dangers—they were issued underwater breathing gear.
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THIS PAGE THE TANK MUSEUM, BOVINGTON CAMP, DORSET
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PEGASUS BRIDGE
Read about a key role played by British paratroopers on D-Day by visiting British History Online at BritishHeritage.com.
In the event, the Funnies achieved mixed results. At Utah Beach, 28 of 32 DD tanks made it safely to the beach, although they arrived shortly after the assault infantry rather than ahead of it, as expected. At Sword Beach, too, nearly all of the amphibious tanks reached the shore. On the Canadian landing beach, Juno, the armour arrived 20 minutes late due to rough seas, during which time the infantry made slight progress, but once finally ashore, the tanks proved effective at opening exits from the beach.
At the American Omaha Beach, however, 27 of 32 DD tanks sank in the rough seas, leaving the infantry virtually unsupported. Omaha became the most hotly contested landing beach, and Allied commanders seriously considered abandoning the beach rather than feeding fresh troops into a bad situation. Gradually, aided by fire from naval vessels that came in close to shore, the invaders began moving inland.
The Americans had chosen not to use any of the Funnies other than the DD amphibious tanks, and their British colleagues believed they suffered unnecessary casualties as a result. This is probably true, although the Funnies that the American troops lacked proved most effective for the British in the days following the landings, as the troops moved inland. It’s unlikely that the Omaha Beach assault would have been any easier even had the full inventory of Funnies been used.
CONSIDERING THE SCALE and nature of the operation, Allied casualties on D-Day were thankfully and surprisingly low, particularly among the British regiments. Based on the results of amphibious operations in the Pacific, planners had expected a casualty rate of about 15 per cent. Even after the near disaster on Omaha Beach and the risky night-time drops of two U.S. airborne divisions, the American troops sustained about 10 per cent casualties. British and Canadian casualties amounted to less than 6 per cent of their total forces.
In light of the obvious parallels between the Invasion of Normandy in 1944 and the Norman Invasion of 1066, it would be interesting to compare the casualty rates of both campaigns. Unfortunately, it is difficult even to estimate the size of the opposing armies in 1066, and nearly impossible to ascertain the numbers of casualties. The best we can say is that both Duke William’s and King Harold’s armies probably numbered somewhat more than 7,000 soldiers. We might then be well justified in rejecting one contemporary estimate of 15, 000 casualties. However a casualty rate of 25 to 30 per cent seems in keeping with accounts of the fighting. It is interesting, then, that with all the modern weapons of war at their disposal, the combatants of 1944 came nowhere near the degree of lethality inflicted by the hand-to-hand fighters of the mid-11th century.
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© ASSOCIATED PRESS AP
1944:
ALLIED MILITARY CEMETERIES, NORMANDY
as ALLIED SOLDIERS INEVITABLY FELL during the Normandy campaign, many were buried in nearby churchyards or in isolated graves throughout the coastal region. After the war, many of these remains were moved to common sites created to honour the Allied dead. Among the most noteworthy of these military cemeteries are the British Commonwealth Cemetery at Ranville, the Bayeux War Cemetery, and the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial.
The cemeteries at Bayeux and Ranville are both devoted largely, though not exclusively, to British and Commonwealth soldiers. Following the liberation of Bayeux, the Allies established several hospitals there, and many of the dead in the cemetery were patients who could not be saved. Nearly 4,000 British soldiers are buried there, along with Canadians, Australians, and other Allied troops—as well as 466 German soldiers. The cemetery lies to the south-west of the town just off the ring road Allied engineers built to bypass the town’s narrow streets and opposite the Battle of Normandy Museum.
Ranville was a target of the British 6th Airborne Division, and many of the soldiers buried there served in that unit. About 2,500 soldiers are interred in all—322 of them German. Ranville is located north-east of Caen. Follow the D513 road to Herouvillette. Turn left and proceed another kilometer before turning left again into the village.
The Normandy American Cemetery, situated just inland from Omaha Beach, contains the graves of some 9,300 American soldiers. A memorial wall lists the names of another 1,500 servicemen whose remains were never identified. When the cemetery is open to visitors (daily, 9 am-5 pm, except Christmas and New Year’s Day) staff is available to help guests locate specific graves. The cemetery can be reached from Caen by taking the N13 highway through Bayeux to Formigny, then picking up the D517 to St. Laurent-sur-Mer and then the D514 to Colleville-sur-Mer.
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