D DAY (OPERATION OVERLORD)

                                            

D-day-The Greatest Air and Seaborne Invasion, The Allied Landings on the Normandy coast of German occupied France on the 6th of June 1944 , was one of the most climatic days of World War II. Ever since 1943 , The Western Allies had prepared for this operation, codenamed Neptune/Overlord. On D-day, the Allies landed 160,000 US, British and Canadian forces along with small French contingent to establish beachheads in Normandy.

                                                                       

BEACH ASSAULTS-The Allied amphibious assaults commence and took the Germans by surprised on the five designated beaches. at the Eastern beach "Sword" where British 3rd Division commenced its assault. here the assault force were comprised a combination of infantry, commando and armored units specialized for beach landings , The British forces fought their way off the beach and captured the fiercely defended German strongpoint at La Breche, While other Allied units fought their way east to Ouistreham.
3rd Canadian Infantry Division commenced its assault on "Juno" In the face of fierce German resistance , over the rest of the morning , British and Canadian units advance through St.Atubin and Courseulles . Further west the British 50th Northumbrian Infantry Division had commenced it's assault on "Gold" here the perliminary bombardments from Allied battleships and other small war ships suppressed German resistance and thus establish beachheads,
The assault of 1st and 29th US Infantry Divisions on "Omaha" even before , things had gone awry ,the fire support prove to be less effective , the Heavily loaded infantry struggled through the high water to the shore then encountered murderous fire that inflicted terrible casualties .

The Sherman flail crab- was a modified M4 Sherman medium battle tank designed for the obstacles in the Normandy landings. it was one of the specialized armored vehicles used during D-day, the crab mounted a flail-a set of heavy chains suspended on a rotating  drum in front of the tank, that was used to clear path through mine fields , could clear a lane about 3.3m . The chains would need replacements after a few detonations. it was first used in the British-African theater mounted to a Matilda,

The M4 Sherman was widely used by almost all Allied Armies it has prove itself to be sufficient but was outgunned and outclass by most of German Tanks and assault guns it's numerical superiority and cheaper to produce makes it possible to replace the destroyed ones ,

it owes its design from the M3 medium tank and transferred it's main gun to a traversing turret

with a 75mm L/40 gun ,M1 76mm gun .with a top speed of 48km/h proving it fast and agile.It was used during 1942 in Africa until the end of 1945 during WWII and yet still used by different nations after.

FACTS about D-day

:German garrisoned machine gun nest or in bunkers did single handedly wipe out an entire landing craft loaded with american soldiers.

:The Germans never expected an invasion due to bad weather, but still the allies continue the invasion.

: Hitler anticipated that the invasion will commenced at Calais, obviously because because its the shortest route.

: The Germans already knew the invasion where to happen and it is Normandy, the only question left was when, but Hitler strongly believed that the invasion will happen at Calais.

:The Allies at England used dummies and inflatable tanks and other vehicles to fool German Reconnaissance planes that the allies were preparing the invasion at Calais.

:The units conducting the Invasion did not know the locations of there landings.

:The Allied conducted lots of different of experiments modifications on possible armored vehicles variants.

:The D-day was supposed to be set on June 5 but postponed due to bad weather conditions.

:With the 'Second front ' successfully opened, the German Reich would subsequently find itself locked into fighting three-front war of attrition that would eventually  overwhelm it.