D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

Planners of Operation Neptune, the cross-Channel phase of Overlord, had spent months considering possible threats to the invasion fleets: submarines, mines, E-boats, radar and the Luftwaffe. Every precaution was taken.
    Mosquito squadrons were patrolling the French coast all night, ready to down any German aircraft which might sight the approaching fleets. Aircraft equipped for radio counter-measures were also aloft to jam the frequencies used by German night-fighters. Large-scale radar-jamming operations were carried out by British and American aircraft over the Channel. And for several weeks, rocket-firing Typhoons had attacked German radar sites all along the Channel coast from the Netherlands to Brittany.
    In Operation Taxable, Lancaster bombers of 617 Squadron dropped ‘window’, aluminium strips to simulate on radar screens an invasion convoy approaching the coast at Cap d’Antifer, north-east of Le Havre. This was assisted by a naval deception using motor launches and torpedo boats towing reflector balloons, which would look like large ships on radar. A similar deception plan, Operation Glimmer, consisted of Stirling bombers dropping ‘window’ opposite Boulogne. Mines were also dropped round Cap d’Antifer.
    One of Admiral Ramsay’s greatest concerns was a mass attack on the invasion fleet by German U-boats from their bases in Brittany. Naval anti-submarine forces were deployed, but the main task of covering the south-western approaches fell to 19 Group of Coastal Command mainly flying B-24 Liberators and Sunderland flying boats. The group included one Czech, one Polish, one New Zealander, two Australian and three Canadian squadrons. Even the RAF’s own 224 Squadron was a mixed bag of nationalities, with 137 Britons, forty-four Canadians, thirty-three Anzacs, two Americans, a Swiss, a Chilean, a South African and a Brazilian.
    Their crews faced long missions day and night, constantly patrolling the western Channel in box patterns from southern Ireland down to the Brest peninsula. When their radar picked out any submarine on the surface, the aircraft would dive, the front gunner trying to kill and wound as many as possible on the conning tower to impede a crash dive, then the aimer would release the depth charges. In Operation Cork, aircraft from 19 Group attacked forty submarines. One of 224 Squadron’s Liberators piloted by the twenty-one-year-old Canadian, Flying Officer Ken Moore, made naval history by sinking two U-boats within twenty-two minutes on the night of 7 June. To the embarrassment of Großadmiral Karl Dönitz and the high command of the Kriegsmarine, not a single U-boat penetrated the English Channel. Other Allied aircraft attacked German destroyers to prevent them from engaging the invasion fleet. Only fast German E-boats and later midget submarines managed to inflict any losses.
     
    On board the landing ships, soldiers whiled away the time. Some tried to sleep, some attempted to learn a little French from their phrase books, some read their Bibles. Many attended improvised church services, finding comfort in religion. On the British ship Princess Ingrid , however, God had appeared to be in a less reassuring mood when the bosun piped ‘Hands to church’ the previous afternoon. ‘Although attendance was entirely voluntary,’ wrote a forward observer with the 50th Division, ‘every soldier on board seemed to be at the service which was held on the upper boat deck. In the bows stood an Army chaplain behind a table covered by a table cloth on which stood a small silver cross. As we waited for the service to begin, the wind started to increase in vigor. A sudden gust flipped up the table cloth, the cross slipped to the deck and broke in two. Utter consternation in the congregation. What an omen! For the first time I realized what “fear of God” really was. All around, men were looking absolutely shattered.’
    On American landing ships, dice and poker games began, with bets made mostly in the new Allied occupation currency which General de Gaulle so abhorred. Aboard the USS Samuel Chase , war correspondents, including the photographer Robert Capa and Don Whitehead, joined in enthusiastically. ‘All are tense and all are pretending to be casual,’ remarked one soldier. ‘Bravado helps.’
    In contrast to the riotous gambling parties, there were many who said little. ‘Even though huddled together and cramped,’ noted Lieutenant Gardner Botsford with the 1st Infantry Division,