NORMANDY INVASION AIR ASPECTS OPS OVERLORD 06 JAN 44 10 AD 44 Introduction 1.

1. In Jan 43, President Roosevelt and PM Churchill met with their top Military advisors, the combined chief of staffs at Casablanca, Morocco. There the allied leaders agreed to invade German occupied Western Europe (France) in the spring of 44. Later, this invasion plan was given code name OP OVERLORD. In Dec 43, Gen Eisenhower was appointed the supreme Allied Commander of the great land, sea and air forces which were gathering in England for the invasion Eisenhower along with British ACM Tedder who flew along with the British and American Officers of their staff completed the complicated aspect of OP OVERLORD. The D-Day was planned between Ist May to 5 Jun but finally the amphibious operations took place on 06 Jun 44 due to weather and other reasons. The period being moon phase ideally suited the integration of Air Power during the night. Sea Land Operations 2. The choice of landing was to be done between Normandy Beaches of Bay of Seine and Pas-de-Calais close to Strait of Dover. For obvious reasons Normandy provided enough area of Beachheads, which could accommodate huge armada of one million American and British soldiers that were to disembark. There were also two large ports Cherbourg on the west and Le-Harvey in the east of both the flanks of the Bay of Seine. The American with 1st US Army were to land on the western front and the British 2nd Army were to land on the eastern front and the objective for the first day was the line St Mere Eaglise to Cean. In brief, the plan of attack was: (a) First to secure a lodgement area including, Cherbough-Cean and airfield sites.

(b) Next to advance to Brittany with the object of capturing posts south of Nantes. (c) To drive east on the line of Loire in the direction of Paris and north across Seine with the purpose of destroying as many as possible of the German forces, in this area of the west. 3. Opposed to Gen Eisenhower was Field Mshl Von Rundsted in overall command and under him was Gen Rommel whom Hitler had sent in Feb 44 to command troops in France. The British deception plan worked and the Germans made a grave miscalculation. They were convinced that the main landing will take place at Pas-deCalais and therefore to defend this coastline strongly they allotted it for more powerful garrison than any other sector. Air Operation 4. Eisenhower after North African campaign was much wiser and was convinced that OP OVERLOARD could not be successful unless the USAAF and the RAF could smash Luftwaffe together. The air plan by Tedder was made in two parts the preparatory phase and the assault phase. 5. Preparatory or Strategic Phase: The aim of the first phase was to Interdict and restrict enemy mobility in the following manner: (a) By crippling the French and the Belgian Railways. This was commenced of B-60. The attack on railways, the primary objective was the destruction of rail locomotive power through the bombing of Locomotive depots. Eighty of these nerve centres were selected and by D-Day 50 or more were destroyed. To corroborate this fact, before the bombing total of military traffic in France had exceeded 100 per day. By the end of April 44 the average had been reduced to 48 trains and by the end of May it had fallen to 20 trains per day. More

than 62000 tons of bombs were dropped on the above centres mostly in France. (b) By demolishing the Bridges in N-W France. This was to commence of D-46. In the attack of railway and bridges the underlying idea was not only to isolate the landing area, but also the whole forward area of operations between Seine and Loire by demolishing the rail and road bridges over these rivers. With this success the enemy was impeded in moving the 15th Army westward of the seine, and his troops in the south of France, north ward of Loire. Beyond lay another line of Interdiction, the bridges over the river Meuse and Albart Canal, the vital supply line for the 15th Army. With their th demolishing, the 15 Army got strategically bottled up and its westward line of advance was restricted. This meant that the 7th Army west of seine could not be rapidly reinforced. (c) By attacking Airfields. This was to commence of D-21. Besides the attack on communication, other preparatory ops were taken as a task by the Allied Air Forces the more important being the enemy coastal batteries and defences, radar stations and airfields within 130 miles radius of the battle area. Though the coastal defences were bombed for several weeks before the D-Day, the day before it, ten super-heavy radar sighted batteries were bombed as well as the whole of the Northern coast of France. This was done in order to confuse the Germans as to the actual locality, which was to be invaded. In all, more than 14000 tons of bombs were dropped on these targets. 6. Assault or Tactical Phase: This phase commenced on the night of 5/6 Jun 44 and the ac allotted for each mission were as follows: Sl.No. Allotted 1. Mission Beach cover Sqn 54 Sqns

2. 3. 4. 5.

Shipping cover Air support Offensive Ftr Ops Bomber escorts Striking force

15 Sqns 36 Sqns 33 Sqns 33 Sqns -----------------------171 Sqns

Total The timetable was as follows: -

(a) Air Borne troops, utilising 2,395 AC and 867 gliders to land at 2 AM. (b) Arial Bombing, for which were allotted 2,219 machines, to open at 3.14 AM, targets were coastal defences, beach obstacles and minefields. (c) The first wave of the invading fine divisions carried 4,266 landing ships and landing aircrafts to land at 6.30 AM. The landing was supported by the 2nd British and 9th US Tactical Air Forces. Every time a German Gun fired, it attracted a flock of deadly fighter planes flying ultra low level dropping small bombs and strafing the beaches and fortifications with machine gun bullet. 7. Throughout the D-Day and the ones that followed, Allied came in never ending waves across the channel, attacking any target they could see or to which they were directed by radio messages from the ground. At the same time, the light and the medium bombers of the tactical air forces and heavy bomber of the Strategic Air Forces struck further in land against road, railroads, bridges and all German troop concentration. 8. The Allied Air Force had established complete domination over the skies of Normandy. Assisted by direct air support and by the effective isolation of the battle fields the invading soldiers soon were securely established in a beach head seventy five

miles long and 20 miles deep. Thus air powder played a vital role in the success of OP OVERLORD.

Reasons For The Allied Success And Lessons 9. OP OVERLORD was an epitome of Air-Land-Sea battle and the first of its kind ever planned in the history of warfare. Various reasons for the allied success are mentioned below: (a) Political Will and Support. The allied Armed forces commanders enjoyed full support of the state leaders and the worldwide public opinion was with them. Roosevelt and Churchill provided the next course of action during the Casablanca, meeting in Jan 43 and left the planning to the men in uniform. (b) Unity of Command. One of the prerequisite for any joint operations concerning fighting forces from various countries is centralised control. Towards this Gen Eisenhower was appointed the supreme Commander of Land-Sea and Air Forces involved in the campaign. He had the liberty to select his deputies for various operations. (c) Joint Planning And Operations. A well-knit plan involving all three services was made, covering the minutest details, in a phase wise manner. The degree of achievement of the objectives in each phase was well specified for the operations to continue as planned. Contingency plans were drawn in case of any operations goes awry. (d) Organisational Capability. The Allied displayed remarkable skills of the pooling in all the resources in terms of logistics, then and their ability to mobilise them for conflict of such magnitude and importance.

(e) Security and Deception. The accumulation of men and material for such a massive ops was definite give away for an inevitable attack. The allies used deception in preparatory phase very effectively to mislead the enemy on the location and timing of attack. More recce missions were flown into the area other than the actual place of landing. Troops were concentrated close to the Strait of Dover simulating landing exercises with hectic wireless activity. The final result was admirable leading to Germans believing that the landings will take place at Pas-de-Calais instead of Normandy. This lead to the Germans fortifying the wrong place and ignoring Normandy beaches. Strict security and discipline was maintained. Coastal areas were banned to visitors, censorship was tightened, letters after a certain date were held back from delivery and foreign embassies were for bidden to send cipher telegrams. (f) The Allied commanders had been fresh from the North African victory and had become adept in undertaking the principle of Air Land joint operations. The phases of attack were so designed to achieve their objectives in the following manner: (i) Recce: During the preparatory phase intensive recce was carried out to identify, select, delegate and prioritise the targets. Extensive recce was also carried out for BDA and the enemy advances/retreats. (ii) Interdiction: - The Allied used interdiction mission to isolate the enemy from the battlefield during the preparatory phase. They were able to cripple enemys line of communication by severely damaging the French/Belgian railways. They achieved in demolishing the important road, railroad bridges in NW France and created bottleneck for the

enemy thus reducing this speedy advance of reinforcements. (iii) Air Superiority: - Allied virtually enjoyed total Air Superiority, during Op Lord one of the long term effects of otherwise unsuccessful strategic bombing of Europe by Allied was that the Germans were not able to produce trained pilots to face the enemy during the operations. The trained and experienced pilots were kept back in Germany to face the final blow. The loss experienced German pilots were easily disposed of by the Allied in aerial combat. Notwithstanding this fact, during the preparatory phase, the allies relentlessly attacked the German airfields, coastal defences and radar stations. There was no effective German opposition and allies dominated the skies and gave freedom to execute other operators. (iv) CAS: The Allied Air Forces carried out missions in the direct support of the landing army prior to and after the final landings on the D-Day. The amplify this, the operations were carried by a standing patrol of ten fighter squadrons taking care of meet not only the threat from the sky but also the Ground. (v) Search and Strike: - The allied did not the slow down after the successful landing of troops. They came in never ending waves. Searching and destroying the enemy strong point well behind the battle and in depth. They struck further in land against roads, railroads, bridges, and German concentration. However, one of the main limitations of these missions was Fratricide. The accuracy over the static targets was reasonably good, however

against the moving targets inaccuracy was due to primitive sighting technique. The fast changing ground scenario led to misidentification of ground forces leading to firing at own troops. Subsequently, the ac were directed to the German strong points by radio messages from the British or American Ground troops. Thus, may be, we can give OP OVERLORD the credit of evolving the concept of FAC over TBA (g) Morale. The allies had tasted emphatic victory during the North African campaign for the first time. It may almost be said that before Alamein, they had never tasted a victory. Fresh from victorious campaign their morale was very high. On the other hand the German were missing their sagging ego after North African debacle. The allies were aware that the Normandy ops i.e. re-occupation of Europe will be the turning point in the history of WW II, therefore they were eager and trained hard for the most important campaign of their life. Conclusion 10. Normally Ops proved to be a hallmark of a joint landsea-air campaign. The enormous resources of men and material were organised and mobilised adeptly and handled during the operations very skilfully. OP OVERLORD carved the way for future planning of any joint land-Sea-Air campaign of such magnitude. Many fresh lessons or principles emerged that become building blocks for the future. The use of Air power in support of ground operations was done in a very precise manner with well-defined objectives that contributed immensely towards the success of the campaign. The success was the turning point in the history of WW II where it gave impetus to the subsequent conquest of Germany.