d-Day-NormandyNothing went quite the way the Allies had planned on D-day, June 6, 1944. Paratroopers were dropped miles from the right drop zone. Bombers missed their targets. Landing craft were launched too far out and deposited troops on the wrong beaches. Amphibious tanks filled with water and sank to the bottom of the sea. Fortunately, in war both sides make mistakes. The German high command responded to the invasion with paralyzing indecision. German commanders in the field were often confused and unprepared for the challenge confronting them. Courage, luck, and improvisation helped the Allies survive their own mistakes. By the evening of June 6, they were back on the European continent to stay.
The planes, most of them twin-engined Douglas C-47 transports, took off from England around 11 P.M. on June 5. It was a two- to three-hour flight to carry 13,000 men from the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne and the British 6th Airborne to their assigned jump zones. The paratroopers smoked or slept or were silent with their own thoughts as the hundreds of planes flying in V formations passed over the huge invasion armada on the seas below. All went well until they reached the coast of Normandy. There the planes carrying the Americans ran into a huge cloud bank and trouble. Many of the pilots were inexperienced. The combination of clouds and, in some cases, German antiaircraft fire, threw them way off course. As the "sticks" of American paratroopers jumped (each planeload of 18 men was called a "stick"), they drifted down over unfamiliar territory. Often they became widely separated from the other men in their units. A few landed right on target, but some wound up as far as 35 miles away from where they were supposed to be. |
Isserman, Maurice. “D-Day.” World War II, Fourth Edition, Chelsea House, 2016. American History, online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Details/398761?q=D-Day. Accessed May 2017.