Schwerpunkt: From D-Day to the Fall of the Third Reich by S. Gunty

need. Two American beaches, Utah on the west closest to the Cotentin Peninsula and Omaha several miles to the east of it, along with three British beaches to the east of Omaha, formed the landing zone. Before our men landed on the beaches, we raked the whole area with bombs to knock out as many Krauts and Kraut defenses as we could. Besides bombs, though, our aircraft dropped aluminum foil which we called “chaff” to deceive the Kraut radars. Payloads of chaff were thrown out of the planes around Calais so that this area would especially be picked up as blips on the Jerry radar screens. We also sent “radio messages” to and from our “hotspots.” These chaff drops and the fake radio transmissions were all undertaken to deceive. We used jamming systems which were installed on many of our ships and I’m happy to report that they apparently left the coasts of England relatively undetected. We have to keep the Krauts on their toes in the Calais area so that they will ignore, to the extent possible, the landing sites we are using in the Seine Bay area of Normandy. As the guy who jumped from the Empire State Building said, “So far so good…so far so good…”
    After the planes dropped their bomb loads, the ships we had sent to the area opened up with terrific amounts of naval fire. There were 34 cruisers and battleships and 100 destroyers all finishing off what the planes had started. When our bombers got back, I heard that they said Normandy now looked like the surface of the moon. I can believe that, what with the tons of bombs being dropped on it.
    Overlord called for about 3,000 Americans in the first wave of sea-borne landings on the far western beaches codenamed Utah and Omaha. British and Canadian troops were to land on the beaches farther to the east code named Gold, Juno and Sword. The landing plan for each beach was to have the assigned men land in continuous waves only minutes apart and, utilizing specified beach exits, they were to move off the beach and enter specified towns, road intersections or inland bridgeheads to seize control of them and thereby deny their use by the enemy. These men were brought up to the beaches in something like 4,300 troop carriers but before that, we had sent 300 minesweepers in to remove the obstacles and clear the way for the soldiers who’d be running up and over the beaches. Frogmen were also deployed to disarm what the minesweepers missed. These heroes neutralized as many of the obstacles that guarded the shorelines as they could in the short amount of time they had available. Two mini submarines were positioned so they could beam light signals to the approaching vessels sort of like floating lighthouses. We also sent in battleships to bombard the shore and the shoreline defenses with as much heavy shit as they could.
    Our infantry troops embarked in England, where they were loaded onto ships and taken to Zone “Z” in the English Channel which was nicknamed “Picadilly Circus” because of all the ship traffic. Troop transport ships took the men to the zone where they met up with the landing crafts which would then take them to the shores of Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword beaches. Off loaded from these transports, the men then climbed onto smaller boats, mostly Higgins boats designed by and named after an Irishman named, of all things, Andrew Jackson Higgins out of New Orleans. The Higgins boat was small but big enough to carry a fully loaded 36-man platoon. From what I heard, it had a shallow draft which would allow it to run right up onto the shoreline but I’m guessing the ride over had to be as choppy as hell. These Higgins Boats were fast and easy enough to pilot, I suppose, and its best feature was that the front end opened, which created a ramp that the men were supposed to climb down to get onto the beaches. This ramp could be dropped and raised so quickly that it was supposed to be possible for one of these boats to unload its men and supplies, back itself