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00:00In 1944, World War II was reaching its dramatic climax.
00:10Rocket ships firing, aircraft flying overhead.
00:14As the Allies waged total war to liberate occupied Europe.
00:19This was a war in which all sides were learning as they went.
00:23From the beaches of Normandy...
00:26The water was full of blood. The water was bright red.
00:30...to the forests of Germany.
00:36Both sides deployed weapons of ever greater power and sophistication.
00:41And this tank suddenly gives the American a real big advantage.
00:45It's a very effective beast.
00:47This is the story of the Western Allies' final campaign.
00:51Told by the men on both sides who were there.
00:55You did what you did. You fire and you maneuver.
01:00He was my brother.
01:02On the 6th of June 1944, Allied sea, ground and air forces came together to launch the largest amphibious assault in military history.
01:21Codenamed Operation Neptune.
01:24It took 18 months of massive planning efforts.
01:29But what's known as the longest day came at a cost.
01:32With thousands of casualties on both sides.
01:35This is the story of D-Day.
01:39The beginning of the end of the war in Europe.
01:42By 1944, Nazi Germany had dominated most of Europe for over four years.
01:55But now, World War II was starting to swing in the Allies' favor.
01:59In the Mediterranean, German forces had been chased out of North Africa.
02:05And were dug in across Italy.
02:08And on the Eastern Front, in Russia, they'd suffered disastrous defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk.
02:14And now struggled to hold back Stalin's Red Army.
02:18While the defeat of Germany's feared U-boats allowed US troops and supplies to pour into Britain.
02:25Ahead of a much-anticipated Allied invasion of Europe.
02:29The question now was how to win the war.
02:33To win the war, Stalin had argued very strongly for the opening of the Second Front.
02:38Since 1941 and the invasion of the German forces into the Soviet Union,
02:44the Soviets had actually taken the brunt of the fighting.
02:48About 80% of the German army were fighting in the East.
02:52And this is why Stalin urged the Western Allies to open a Second Front.
02:57To basically relieve some pressure of the Eastern Front.
03:00And give the Soviets some breathing space, so to speak.
03:04Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that the Second Front would be launched in summer 1944.
03:10And the person they wanted in charge to coordinate the Allied nations.
03:16Was American General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
03:22General Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe.
03:28He had never seen frontline combat.
03:30But Eisenhower was an exceptional military planner.
03:34With an instinctive grasp of modern warfare.
03:37Eisenhower's abilities would be tested to the full.
03:41As he took on responsibility for the single most important Allied operation of the war.
03:46The first dilemma, where to land?
03:52The obvious choice was Pas de Calais.
03:55Just 20 miles from England and the most direct route to Germany.
03:59Which was why the Germans had concentrated their beach defences and troops here.
04:04So they turned instead to Normandy.
04:09If the Allies could establish a foothold in Normandy.
04:13They could then build up their forces and launch a breakout operation.
04:17Liberating Paris.
04:19And beginning the advance on Germany itself.
04:23The invasion would hinge on the success of the first 24 hours.
04:30Known as D-Day.
04:32Ground troops would be drawn from the 21st Army Group.
04:37Commanded by British General Bernard Montgomery.
04:40Seven British, US and Canadian infantry divisions.
04:45Three armoured brigades.
04:47And three airborne divisions.
04:49Were earmarked to spearhead the operation.
04:52The divisions with which the Allies were to fight the Battle of Normandy.
04:58And the rest of the 1944-45 campaign.
05:01Were a mixture of veteran formations.
05:04Which had fought in some cases from Egypt and North Africa.
05:08And then through Italy.
05:10And with them there were divisions going into action for the first time.
05:15Eighteen-year-old Frank Rosier was a private serving with 2nd Battalion,
05:20the Gloucestershire Regiment.
05:22A London boy that had survived the Blitz.
05:24He lost his eye after three months in battle.
05:27This is my first time in action.
05:29And there is a period of, we're not playing Cowboys and Indians in the woods.
05:33This is the real thing.
05:34Wally Harris was a craftsman.
05:36And one of the founding members of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.
05:41We felt privileged to think, well we've been chosen to lead the assault.
05:46And everybody was chuffed.
05:48While Edward Shames had just been promoted to Staff Sergeant of the 101st Airborne.
05:53Ahead of the landings.
05:55If you weren't scared you were crazy.
05:57Of course there were a lot of crazy guys including me.
06:00But we were still frightened I'm sure.
06:03By 1944 the Allies had won the battle for air and naval supremacy.
06:10Now US 8th and 9th Air Forces and Britain's 2nd Tactical Air Force stood by to support the landings.
06:18Nearly 6,000 aircraft in total.
06:21From the sea, 5 battleships, 23 cruisers and 105 destroyers would bombard German defenses before the assault craft landed.
06:33By spring 1944 there were 3 million Allied troops in Britain preparing for the invasion.
06:42Each division was given a designated staging area in southern England.
06:46As vehicles, weapons and supplies poured in.
06:50Units earmarked for the invasion trained relentlessly.
06:55But details about the landings, codenamed Operation Neptune, remained top secret.
07:02We never had any information at all.
07:06Where we were going in, we didn't have any pictures of an L where we were going to land or anything at all.
07:14No information at all.
07:16Alright, they might have given it to the officers, but we other ranks, we never knew a damn thing.
07:27While their own soldiers were kept in the dark, the Allies launched what's been called the greatest deception plan in history.
07:35To fool the Germans about the landing sites.
07:40To deceive the Germans, the Allies set up Operation Fortitude.
07:44They created an entire fake army in England, aimed at the French port of Calais.
07:49Calais was the closest deep water port in France to England, and it was a natural spot to invade.
07:56The Germans thought the Allies were coming to Calais, and Operation Fortitude convinced them of it.
08:02Ken Sturdy, a veteran of Dunkirk, found himself at the heart of the ruse to deceive the Germans.
08:09When we arrived there, there were dummy tanks made of rubber.
08:13There were dummy landing craft made of canvas and wood.
08:17All along the seafront at Dover were tents with big red cross painted on them to look like hospital tents.
08:26There were army signallers, there were RAF signallers.
08:29We deliberately aimed our antenna across the channel to Calais.
08:36And all the traffic, and it went on for about two weeks or so, was, we knew, was phony.
08:43But it gave the impression there was very large contingent gathering ready for the invasion.
08:49Eisenhower knew the Allied deception plan was crucial, because if the Germans were ready and waiting, D-Day could turn into a costly disaster, with tragic consequences for millions.
09:04On the evening of the 5th of June 1944, hundreds of Allied aircraft took off, bound for the Normandy coast.
09:15Operation Neptune, the Western Allies' invasion of Europe, was underway.
09:22In the first phase, 24,000 men arriving by parachute and glider would be dropped on both flanks of the invasion zone.
09:34The US 82nd and 101st, and the British 6th Airborne Divisions, were to seize key bridges, road junctions, and hold off German counterattacks.
09:47While shortly after dawn, US, British, and Canadian Infantry Divisions would land at five beaches along 50 miles of coast, codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword.
10:04When the beaches were secure, tanks and infantry would push inland, relieve the airborne troops, and prepare to resist the expected German counterattack.
10:17What paratroopers hadn't been told was that their units were expected to take 50% casualties.
10:24On the way in, they'd be highly vulnerable to German anti-aircraft fire.
10:29Carl Beck had lied about his age to join the army at 17.
10:35A year on, he was about to go into action for the first time.
10:40We picked up 20mm fire as we came over the coast.
10:46You're at 800 feet above ground line, and that 20mm fire is vicious.
10:53If you're ever in an airplane, it gets hit, and I hope you never are.
10:58It sounds like your head's in a bucket, and somebody's pounding on the bucket.
11:04As they neared their drop zones, heavily laden US paratroopers waited for the signal to jump.
11:11We were ready for the green light, and we were getting ready to shuffle out, and they had to shuffle because these guys, they could hardly walk getting out of that door because of the weight that they were carrying.
11:26The airborne forces were to be dropped behind enemy lines, where they would be cut off from support, sometimes for several days.
11:35This meant they had to take everything with them.
11:40Of course, the gear weighed about 150 pounds that I put on to get on that plane with the parachute.
11:47Everything we could possibly have, grenades, weapons, maps, the whole works.
11:54And some guys had mortars, 81mm mortar plates that they jumped with, machine guns, everything.
12:01Taff Gillingham is an expert in the equipment of the ordinary soldier.
12:07This is the uniform and equipment worn by the American airborne forces that jumped in Normandy in 1944.
12:13So they had a purpose-built jumpsuit designed specifically for the airborne forces.
12:18They carried gas masks with all the equipment that went with it.
12:21The traps all carried these, which were anti-gas brassards.
12:25They were hooked on, this loop went through the shoulder strap.
12:27And they were painted with a special treatment, so that in the event of poison gas being in the air, they'd turn red.
12:33So you would have an instant warning of poison gas.
12:37The equipment was the standard American fighting rig, with ammunition pouches specifically depending on roll.
12:46So in this case, these carried ammunition clips for the M1 Garand rifle.
12:51And this was actually a very good piece of kit, because unlike most other armies who had bolt-action rifles, the M1 was semi-automatic.
13:00So what that meant was that you could fire eight rounds straight off, and then it would spit the clip out at the end, while everybody else was still working their bolts.
13:07So the bayonet for the rifle, carried in a scabbard on the belt, was obviously for that moment when everything else was getting to the point when you'd run out of ammunition, and you needed something just to finish the job.
13:20The heavily encumbered airborne soldiers had now reached their jump points.
13:27Our routine training called for us to get a 20 minute red light, but all we ever got was a bell.
13:35And a bell just means unass this airplane, so the jump master threw the bundle out, and out we went.
13:41Have you ever been to one of these places where they have fireworks at night?
13:47Well, that's what we jumped in.
13:49As a matter of fact, you could hear the stuff and see the stuff going through your parachute, because there were tracers all around.
13:57We were going very fast, very low, one and a half oscillations that flam into the water.
14:04So that was an exhilarating experience there, to get us going.
14:12John Marr was one of many who landed in fields flooded by the Germans.
14:17Dozens drowned under the weight of their equipment.
14:20Others dropped straight into German-held villages,
14:24where one American, according to an eyewitness, had a remarkable escape.
14:43Many who survived the jump landed miles from where they were supposed to be.
14:49John Marr made landfall around 2am.
14:52The first objective was to find my platoon and the equipment bundles,
15:00and get organized and go fight as a platoon.
15:04That didn't happen.
15:07We were the worst scattered regiment in the entire drop of two divisions.
15:13Things had gone better for the British 6th Airborne.
15:17On the invasion's east flank, in an extraordinary feat of glider piloting,
15:24a small detachment landed alongside two vital canal bridges,
15:28and quickly captured them.
15:30Reinforcements then flew in to help defend these crossings
15:35against German counterattack.
15:37Glider pilot, Bill Higgs, made a dangerous approach into his landing zone.
15:46The Germans weren't daft, they put posts in to stop us landing.
15:50And I hit one of them halfway through, the wing,
15:54and knocked my right-hand starboard wing right off.
15:58But I was down all right, yes.
16:02Although the bridges were taken in a lightning assault,
16:05airborne troops were soon under pressure,
16:08defending against determined counterattacks.
16:10It was crucial they held out until the troops arriving by sea could reach them.
16:20Men now preparing to take on a formidable chain of beach defences,
16:25commanded by one of Germany's most brilliant generals.
16:29In the early hours of the 6th of June 1944,
16:39a furious aerial bombardment hammered the coast of northern France.
16:44Five kilometers away from Falonje,
16:47there was then inzwischen hell.
16:49And then I said to myself,
16:50Oh, look, what is that then?
16:52And then they came to the sky in the sky.
16:55And suddenly, at the sky in the sky,
16:59all the small stables fell down.
17:02And then I said, what is that then?
17:04Yes, he said, that's a bomb.
17:06And then we saw that,
17:10how the whole Falonje was together.
17:13Meanwhile, a vast allied armada
17:18of more than 6,000 ships of all sizes
17:21was approaching the Normandy coast.
17:26You could see the outline of the French coast,
17:29and I'm saying, my God, there's France.
17:31Wow, we're going to be there, we're going to go in.
17:33It was pretty damn exciting, I say.
17:36I felt pretty good about the whole thing.
17:40Hitler knew an allied invasion was coming that summer,
17:44and that northern France was its most likely destination.
17:48Therefore, he'd entrusted its defense
17:50to one of his most brilliant and charismatic commanders.
17:54Field Marshal Erwin Rommel won a reputation
17:58as one of Germany's most gifted generals
18:01during the defeat of France in 1940.
18:04While in North Africa, his cunning against the British
18:07won him the nickname the Desert Fox.
18:10Erwin Rommel is one of the most famous German generals
18:16of World War II,
18:17and he was a spectacularly effective general in North Africa.
18:22His great strength was the ability to maneuver,
18:25to manipulate, and to move quickly
18:27before the enemy could react to what he was doing.
18:30Rommel was famed for bold, aggressive action,
18:42but now he faced a very different challenge.
18:46With two-thirds of Germany's army on the Eastern Front,
19:02Rommel had to hold the Channel Coast with 35 divisions,
19:06just six of which were in the vicinity
19:09of the Allied landing zone,
19:11five infantry divisions,
19:13and the 21st Panzer Division.
19:16But many units were undermanned
19:18or considered unreliable.
19:21They were either static divisions
19:23made up of old men or young men
19:25or Soviet deserters
19:27or other troops the Germans didn't quite trust,
19:30or units that had come from the Eastern Front
19:32worn down by the fighting.
19:34Normandy was their rest and recuperation.
19:37These units had one advantage,
19:39the so-called Atlantic Wall,
19:42a chain of coastal defenses stretching,
19:45in theory, 2,000 miles from Norway to Spain.
19:50Hitler personally appointed Rommel
19:53to improve the Atlantic Wall defenses
19:55in preparation for an invasion.
19:57Rommel believed that the only way
19:59to stop the Allied invasion
20:01was to hit it when it was most vulnerable.
20:03the moment of coming ashore.
20:06So he made strengthening beach defenses
20:09his top priority.
20:11Under his watch,
20:12three times as many mines were laid,
20:14and half a million beach obstacles put in place.
20:18The number of heavy guns protected
20:21by covered concrete emplacements
20:23was also greatly increased.
20:25But in most places the wall was far from the impregnable fortress
20:34of Nazi newsreels.
20:36As soldiers such as Hans Heinzer found out.
20:40Und vor der Küstenstraße war ein sogenannter Schützengraben.
20:47So nach der Manier angelegt,
20:50wie vielleicht zu Zeiten des alten Fritzen.
20:52So zack, zack, zack.
20:54Dreiviertel Meter tief allerhöchstens
20:56und so alle 20 Meter war irgendeine Stahl- oder Blechkuppel.
21:01Und dann sind wir da rein und da haben wir gesehen,
21:04in dem einen war ein belgisches MG,
21:08in dem anderen war ein tschechisches MG.
21:10Wir haben uns nicht die Zeit genommen,
21:12überhaupt festzustellen,
21:13ob da auch die nötige Munition dazu da war.
21:16Und vor diesem Schützengraben war ein Drahthindernis.
21:22Und aus irgendeinem Grund
21:24hatte mein Kommandeur damals lange Hosen an.
21:27Wir sind da rüber,
21:29da hat sich die Hosen nicht zerrissen.
21:32Das war der Atlantik war, den wir da kennengelernt hat.
21:38The most powerful German units in France
21:41were the Armored or Panzer divisions.
21:44Rommel wanted these stationed on the coast,
21:47but he was only given three.
21:49The rest were held back as part of a strategic reserve,
21:52which could only be used with Hitler's approval.
21:55The two most important generals in the western theater,
21:59von Schweppenberg and von Rundstadt,
22:01were reluctant to release the panzers
22:03and wanted to keep them as a mobile reserve near Paris.
22:06But Erwin Rommel had experienced allied air power in North Africa,
22:11and he knew that keeping the reinforcements so far away from Normandy
22:16would mean that they would get cut to pieces
22:18when they did eventually try to move up to the front.
22:22Allied soldiers tasked with breaching Rommel's new defenses
22:25began transferring to landing craft.
22:29Rough weather, which had already forced Eisenhower
22:32to delay the invasion by 24 hours,
22:34made it a hazardous operation.
22:37The boats were going up and down,
22:39you know, the big boat and the landing craft.
22:43So you had to watch yourself
22:44or you'd get your feet caught between the two boats
22:48and you'd get injured.
22:49And actually some people fell into the water and drowned.
22:53When we were lowered over the sides of the ship
22:56with cabets and ropes,
22:59when the little boats hit the water,
23:01they were thrown around like matchsticks.
23:04The English Channel happened to be 15-foot waves on D-Day.
23:10So we were all soaked with the icy cold English Channel.
23:15And being that the LCAs had very low sides,
23:20the water was coming in,
23:22the bilge pumps could not get rid of the water.
23:25So we had to take off our steel helmets
23:27and bail out the water in order to stay afloat.
23:32As dawn broke,
23:33allied soldiers in the landing craft
23:35witnessed an awesome display of firepower
23:38to soften up the enemy.
23:40The battleship started bombing
23:42and I'm saying,
23:43my God, what is going on?
23:45This is incredible, guys.
23:47You know, I hope to God I live long enough to remember
23:50so I can tell somebody about it.
23:52Franz Goeckel,
23:54a soldier with 716th Infantry Division
23:57on Omaha Beach,
23:59had hoped this moment would never come.
24:01...
24:11...
24:12...
24:14...
24:16...
24:23...
24:24...
24:28some ends. The big guns were shooting the targets way far in and all we could hear was a shh.
24:39Due to local tides, US landings began at 6.30 a.m.,
24:44one hour ahead of the British and Canadians.
24:50At Utah, landing craft carrying troops of the US 4th Division landed in a weakly defended
24:56stretch of coastline, and was soon advancing inland with just 197 casualties.
25:04But off Omaha, things quickly began to go wrong.
25:08Here, the beaches were held by experienced German troops from the 352nd Infantry Division,
25:15and the preparatory bombardments had failed to dislodge them.
25:20US bombers, nervous about hitting their own ships, dropped their bombs far inland.
25:26And missed the beach entirely, while thousands of rockets fired from landing craft fell harmlessly into the sea.
25:34Not one rocket shield fell among the dam, or hit the beach line. They all dropped off into the water.
25:41As the landing craft, carrying 1,450 men of the assault wave, neared the beach,
25:48they started taking heavy fire. The eastern half of the beach was assaulted by the battle-hardened 1st Division.
25:56The Big Red One.
25:58When we came off of that boat, I lost one man alongside of him. My radio man was hit,
26:06I believe killed, because the radio itself, which was on his back, was hit,
26:13which means that the bullets would have had to come through him to get to the radio.
26:18I can remember looking at him, and as I stepped over him,
26:25and at that point, I didn't hesitate. I had already told the men, when the ramp went down,
26:37I turned around and yelled at my two squad leaders that were behind me, go straight in.
26:43You could hit a machine gun bullets going off the ramp, you know, because the Germans were traversing
26:48like this, hitting all the boats coming in. I didn't get but about 20 or 30 yards when the bullets
26:55were hitting around me on my feet, and there was an obstacle there that I made for,
27:06and I went down on one knee behind the obstacle for a short time, but just for seconds, because
27:14one bullet in one instance actually hit the steel.
27:19The western half of the beach was assaulted by men of the untested 29th Division.
27:25I was the fifth man on the left side of our little craft, behind Clarice Riggs of Pennsylvania,
27:33and he was gunned down on the ramp and went face down into the water. And I dove in behind him,
27:41and I was neck deep in bloody red water with my rifle over my head.
27:48The jury's just opened up. They knew we were going to be there. They were waiting for us. And in effect,
27:55A Company and part of B Company were massacred right on the beach. There was nothing left of them.
28:03Don McCarthy's landing craft was swamped before it made the beach. He and his comrades
28:27had to swim for it.
28:30When I went in the water, I went down head first in the water, but the air that was in the helmet
28:36pour me back up top. I got my CO belt. I got rid of everything. All I've got on is my little 29th
28:43Division jacket. That's it. The combat jacket is gone. The rifle is gone. My camera's gone. I'm saying,
28:49son of a gun. My dad will kill me because I lost the camera. And I said, God, please, please, please
28:55get me off this beach and I'll do anything you want in my whole life if you just do this for me now.
29:01And the smoke came over. That was the miracle.
29:04As GIs struggled to survive the first moments of the assault on Omaha Beach, they were desperately
29:13counting on tank support in the form of specially modified Sherman tanks.
29:18This amazing object is actually a DD Sherman tank. It's a tank that floated. The whole problem was for
29:32the Allies to invade the German beaches, we were going to need tanks very, very quickly to support
29:38the infantry. If you put all your tanks in one landing craft and they go ashore and that landing
29:44craft is hit, they all get sunk. If you can spread the tanks out, let them float ashore,
29:50then you're spreading your risk. And so they developed the Sherman and they call it the Sherman DD,
29:56duplex drive, using something called displacement. You put a canvas screen like we've got on this model
30:01here around the outside of the vehicle and it actually displaces enough water that you can float a 30
30:09tonne Sherman tank. The idea being the tracks can take you across the land, but in the water,
30:15they actually add propellers to the back of the vehicle to take it through the water and get onto
30:21the beach. For the Germans, there's accounts of them thinking these tanks as they're coming to shore
30:27are just canvas boats and suddenly that screen drops and there's a 75 millimetre gun of a Sherman tank
30:34pointing at them. And so that fear factor and the shock factor as well of those tanks coming ashore
30:40has an impact on the German defenders. On Omaha, American commanders insisted on launching the DD tanks
30:48three miles out into rougher seas than anything they'd trained for. The consequences were disastrous.
30:56The water would come up to roughly where that black line is and it's got about a three foot freeboard.
31:02It was considered safe to go in waves of up to a foot high, but nothing much higher.
31:0927 out of 29 tanks sank in six foot waves. And with only two of the tanks making it to shore,
31:18whole squads of infantry were mown down as they tried to cross 80 yards of open beach.
31:2427 out of 29 tanks. With U.S. troops at Omaha pinned down and taking heavy casualties, at 0730 hours,
31:32British and Canadian landings began at Gold, Juno, and Sword.
31:39Royal Marine Commando Vincent Horton, who had already dodged bombs and bullets in Italy and Africa,
31:46knew only too well the dangers that lay ahead.
31:51You never expect to survive. You always take the assumption that the first in are going to take the casualties.
32:01As the landing craft began their approach, the success of Operation Neptune hung in the balance.
32:08Another disaster like Omaha, and the entire invasion could be headed towards catastrophe.
32:15I say, oh, get a direct hit. And you can see all the bodies going up in the air and
32:21I don't think anyone lived out of that luck.
32:23As the first wave of British and Canadian soldiers approached the shores of Normandy,
32:30they ran a gauntlet of artillery fire, beach obstacles, and anti-tank mines.
32:38My craft hit an obstacle out in the water and it blew the whole front of the landing craft
32:44up in the air and I was towards the back, thank God. There was nothing but water pouring in and guys
32:49up in the front. They were all done for it. That was it for them. They were game over.
32:58British and Canadian troops thrown into the sea were encumbered not just by kit, but by their uniforms.
33:07The soldiers all had this rough, hairy, serge battle dress uniform, very hard-wearing wool.
33:13It was virtually waterproof in a rainstorm. Obviously, if you waded ashore, you'd be soaking wet,
33:17but the whole thing was great because it dried off as you moved around. You heated it up from
33:22the inside out. For D-Day itself, some of the troops were issued with what was called the 1942
33:27battle jerking. The intention of the designer was to have a one-piece garment that the soldiers could
33:32literally carry everything in one piece of kit. Every soldier was wearing this very, very simple
33:38life belt, which was worn around the neck and tied around the waist, and they would then have the
33:42thing half inflated so that it already had a bit of air in. And if when you came off the landing craft,
33:47you're in deep water and you got in trouble, you could then eject your fighting equipment
33:51and inflate this to actually keep you afloat until you managed to get ashore.
33:55But many men made a basic error with fatal consequences.
34:00Their life-saving apparatus, which they had around them, was quite often around their waist
34:04instead of being under their armpits. And because of the weight of their packs and ammunition
34:09they carried, sometimes they got in deep water and they would just turn over and drown.
34:18Troops that made it to the beach were under strict orders to keep moving.
34:22If you join particularly an infantry unit, 30, 40 of you in a platoon, your brothers, you are friends,
34:31you are brothers. And if one of you gets hit, your instinct is to help. But your orders were to run
34:36on and leave him. It's quite a tough thing to do, to leave your friend laying there.
34:42The scenes on Omaha are synonymous with the Normandy landings.
34:47But in contrast, many British and Canadian units faced much lighter defenses and were able to get
34:53ashore relatively unscathed. Crucially, unlike at Omaha, many DD tanks made it to shore.
35:00We launched into shallow-ish water. When we went off the ramp, the screen was fully up, you see.
35:11And so we were going through, avoiding the hedgehogs, which were these
35:16Arnstonsons with a 75-mil German shell on the top or a mine. And so we had to weave our way
35:27through the motoring along on the bottom. Like the DD, other specialized tanks were used to bust
35:34through German beach defenses. Amongst them, the Crab.
35:41This is the Sherman Crab. And the idea here is on the front of a standard Sherman tank,
35:47these boom arms have been led forward with a drum on. The drum rotates at about 142 revolutions a minute,
35:55and it spins metal chains. There's 43 of them here. And they beat the ground and blow up mines ahead
36:03of the vehicle as it goes forward. When they landed, everybody was doing their own thing.
36:10The beach master was trying to set up his post to control the beach. The flail tank was getting on
36:18with getting rid of the mines and the stretcher bearers picking up the dead. Everybody had a little
36:28job to do, and that was a marvelous thing. Meanwhile, at Omaha, survivors of the first two waves were still
36:37pinned down on the beach. One problem was that most of their equipment was at the bottom of the sea.
36:43They lost guns. They lost equipment. They lost Bangalore torpedoes, which was one of the biggest losses.
36:51Because without Bangalore torpedoes, we couldn't get through the barbed wire.
36:56A Bangalore torpedo was a five-foot section of pipe filled with TNT that could be screwed to another
37:03section to create a pole. This could then be pushed under barbed wire to blow a path through.
37:10Sgt. Reynolds found himself alongside one of the few men on the beach still carrying his torpedo.
37:22He gets the top of the shingle bank, and he slides it under the, across the top of the shingle bank,
37:29where the barbed wire was. The man took the second section of the Bangalore,
37:35clipped the two of them together, stuck a fuse into the end of the Bangalore, pulled the cord,
37:44which was the igniter, and got back away from the torpedo. And after five seconds, it didn't go off.
37:56So, anyway, uh, he crawls right back up without any hesitation, takes the bad fuse ladder out,
38:07puts another one in, looked back to see if he can back up,
38:12pulled the fuse ladder, and started backward, and only made just one little shove backwards. But he was
38:18killed by either machine gun or rifle fire before the Bangalore went off. My face is this close to his,
38:26and, and, and he's looking right into my eye when he died. And, and he died by just,
38:35he had a look in his face that, to me, at the time, was pretty much like surprise.
38:40And he just, he just closed his eyes and dropped his head. And this all happened in about five seconds
38:46time, and, and then the Bangalore torpedo went off. Of course, it blew a hole, and the, I was up
38:53immediately and through that barbed wire. Harley Reynolds was the first man in his sector to make
38:59it through the wire and up the bluffs. Along the beach, small groups of men fought their way out of
39:06the killing zone and onto the ridge that overlooked the beach. One inspirational figure that morning
39:13was the 29th Division's assistant commander, Brigadier General Dutch Cota.
39:21Norman Dutch Cota was a career soldier and West Point graduate, who preferred to be in the field
39:27with his men than sat behind a desk. On D-Day, he came ashore at Omaha with the second wave,
39:34and at 51, may well have been the oldest man on the beach. As an amphibious warfare expert,
39:40he'd warned that Omaha would be tough. Seeing the chaos that had engulfed the first wave,
39:48Cota rallied survivors and personally led a charge through the wire to restore momentum.
39:56In some sectors, Navy destroyers came to the rescue, blasting German positions from close range.
40:02The only thing that saved us was this U.S. Navy destroyer, the USS Frankfurt, came in real close
40:07without running the ground and started banging away at the hill. The skipper saw puffs of smoke,
40:12he figured it was machine guns firing, so he suppressed the fire up on the top of the hill.
40:17And that's what allowed us to get through the exit and get on up the hill.
40:20U.S. troops were in no mood for mercy. Although grievously wounded,
40:27U.S. troops were in no mood for mercy. But we had one ranger with us, and he had a submachine gun,
40:46and he emptied his submachine gun into these Germans. I wouldn't fire at anybody like that.
40:53But this ranger was so, uh, he had lost so much men on the beach, uh, he just went wild.
41:01On each landing beach, Navy officers were tasked with keeping the invasion moving.
41:06As units did start moving inland, German strongpoints, snipers and minefields slowed the advance to a crawl.
41:28On the invasion's western flank, American units advancing from Utah made contact with airborne forces.
41:38For Lieutenant Frank Gregg and his platoon of paratroopers, it was just in time to lend much needed assistance.
41:45I heard tank coming up behind me. I looked back and it was one of our tanks that had gotten coming over the beach.
41:53So the Lieutenant rolled his tank up there and he yelled down at me,
41:59Hey, Lieutenant, I got 30 minutes of fuel left in this thing. What can I do to help you?
42:06I said, You see that road junction right up there where that firing is coming from?
42:11He said, Yes. I said, That is my, uh, my Colonel wants me to capture that road junction and hold it.
42:19So if you could help us out, sure appreciate it.
42:23He says, Okay. He says, I'll throw a 75-millimeter shell in there and that'll, should quiet them down.
42:32So I said, Good. He cut loose a 75. It went bang right into the position.
42:38With each hour that passed, the Allied foothold in France became more secure,
42:43as reinforcements poured ashore from landing craft and ships.
42:48The feared German counterattack had yet to materialize.
42:53But German panzers were finally on the move.
42:56Their orders to drive the Allies back into the sea.
43:04Rommel had insisted that the Allies had to be defeated on the beaches in the first 24 hours.
43:10But no major German counterattack had yet been launched.
43:19Disastrously, Rommel himself was on leave in Germany,
43:23having been assured by weather experts that an invasion was impossible that week.
43:27As he raced back to France by car, the German panzer reserve sat idle all morning.
43:37Because the only man who could authorize its use, the Führer, remained wary of Allied intentions.
43:43The main reason that people always hear, and that's you can find every literature and
43:51in a lot of films, is the fact that Hitler slept through the attack and no one dared
43:56wake him up because he was a man who liked to sleep very long.
44:00There is some truth to that.
44:01However, there are also pure military reasons as to why the counterattack hadn't launched.
44:05The main reason for that is that the Germans were actually still expecting
44:09a second bigger and major invasion somewhere in the Padukali area.
44:14So because of that, they kept back their strategic reserve because they regarded
44:18in the early hours of the D-Day landings, the D-Day landings only as a diversionary attack.
44:23At the high command level, at Rommel's level and farther up,
44:27the Germans spent the whole day dithering about what to do
44:30and let go a prime opportunity to drive the Allies back into the sea.
44:36It was left to General Marx, commanding the 84th Infantry Corps in Normandy,
44:42to take charge of the situation.
44:47General Erich Marx was a highly skilled staff officer
44:51who'd taken part in the German invasions of Poland and France
44:55and helped plan Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.
45:01As a division commander on the Eastern Front, he'd lost a leg in combat,
45:05but remained in the army, winning promotion to General of Artillery,
45:10and in 1943 being given command of the 84th Infantry Corps in Normandy.
45:16D-Day, the 6th of June, happened to be his 53rd birthday.
45:21Marx ordered his strongest available reserve, the 21st Panzer Division, to make a counterattack.
45:31His final words to its officers,
45:33if you don't succeed in throwing the British back into the sea, we shall have lost the war.
45:38In this situation, General Marx unleashed the 21st Panzer Division. The 21st Panzer Division was his
45:46iron fist that he had in the Normandy area. The other German divisions were all of particularly low
45:52quality, one or two exceptions perhaps, but the other reserves were about 120 kilometers behind the
45:59beaches, and it would take some time to bring these up to engage in the fighting, not least because of
46:06attacks by French partisans, also by attacks by the Allied Air Force, so they understood these things would
46:11take time. At 4pm, lead units of the British 3rd Division, advancing from Sword Beach through woods and
46:21hedgerows, reported German tanks on the move. At this stage, the greatest threat came from the workhorse
46:29of the German armoured divisions, the Panzer IV. The Panzer IV is a hugely effective tank and they make
46:37over 8,500 of them during the course of the war. It starts its life as being an infantry support vehicle
46:45designed with a short-barrelled 75 millimetre gun, but Hitler insists it has a long-barrelled, high-velocity
46:5475 millimetre gun fitted to it. Very effective for knocking out enemy tanks, and the other great thing about
47:00the Panzer IV is they were able to upgrade it when it was in service. One of the reasons the Panzer IV
47:07was considered such a successful and well-designed tank was about the crew ergonomics. If we look
47:13inside, the commander's position is actually right in the middle of the turret, and he's actually got
47:20an eyeline on one side to his loader, who's loading that 75 millimetre gun, and on the other side to the
47:28gunner, who's actually doing the aiming and firing of the gun. He can actually just about see through
47:34to the front of the tank, where we've got the driver and the radio operator. And why that's important
47:40in the stress of battle, if you talk to veterans, that idea of a wink, a smile, a firm order at the
47:46right time, a calming voice, that can be just as important as the technology that you've got around you.
47:52The 21st Panzer Division launched its attack, but quickly ran into heavy fire from British tanks
48:00and anti-tank guns. By 9pm, a handful of Germans had fought their way to the Channel Coast,
48:07just in time for an awesome spectacle. A vast air armada approaching from the sea,
48:15250 Dakotas towing as many gliders. This was Operation Mallard, the arrival of the British 6th Air Landing Brigade,
48:26to reinforce the earlier airborne landings. Out to sea, the sky was black with aircraft, as they say,
48:36and you could see there would look like hundreds of planes coming in towing gliders. And, um, as we set
48:47off, the gliders started coming down. A couple of them would burst through this hedge, the side of,
48:56the right-hand side of the road. As gliders began landing behind them, the German units retreated back
49:03towards calm to avoid being cut off. As D-Day came to an end, exhausted frontline troops slept where they
49:14could, in scraped trenches or alongside their vehicles. It was a strange first night on D-Day,
49:21because we didn't attack anybody and nobody attacked us, at least in my case. I say to myself,
49:28son of a gun, we actually made it. And I'm thinking to myself, hey, Mum and Dad, I'm really in France.
49:37I'm here. I made it. We finished flailing in that field, and we just rolled up in our blankets
49:49and went to sleep. By the end of D-Day, the Allies had gained a vital foothold on the French coast.
49:58Though they had failed to reach several key objectives, including the city of Caen.
50:05But crucially, 160,000 British, Canadian and US troops were safely ashore. And in the days to come,
50:13that figure doubled. Over five days, more than 54,000 vehicles and 100,000 tons of supplies were also
50:23landed. But the human cost was high. It's been estimated that on that first day,
50:32there were around 3,000 British and Canadian casualties, and 6,500 American, about half of
50:39them at Omaha Beach. The number of German losses is unknown, but it's estimated that there were between
50:464,000 and 9,000 German casualties on that fateful day. Though the Allies were short of their objectives,
50:55it was clear that Operation Neptune had been an overwhelming success. In crossing the Channel and
51:02breaching the Atlantic Wall in a single day, the Allies had overcome the greatest obstacle standing
51:08between them and Nazi Germany. But for all the horror and heroism, D-Day was the first day in a bloody
51:16three-month battle for Normandy. And only the beginning of a long and gruelling road to victory in Europe.
51:25I'm sorry, it's been a long and a long time ago. But you are the only one here who will not make
51:41real peace since the first time. But you can see this. The first time you get to the division of the
51:47Transcription by CastingWords