Young Kurdish girls have been dying pretty much every night for the last thirty years. How do you sleep at night?
Juno beach, I one day wish to visit it.
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And Dieppe too, right?
Oh. My. God.
Not from the American knife in the back.
Yes from an American knife in the back starting with the Gulf war and our failure to follow through with support for their uprising.
Yep and Vimy Memorial in France, I hear its breathtaking.
I hope to visit Normandy one day as well.
Go in early May or Early June. You will find it a humbling and awe inspiring tour.
June would be ideal.
If you want to see it the way they saw it mid-late May. Remember the big storm that became a huge factor in the invasion was late and something of an aberration.
You’re right, but I think I’d rather have nice weather for a visit.
The bad weather actually helped the Allies. Even Rommel took off for a visit home thinking the bad weather would delay any invasion.
It both helped and hurt. The Germans figured nobody would invade with the weather that bad so they were in a relaxed posture but the rough surf also cost a lot of lives sinking the amphibious tanks, blowing landing craft miles off course and sinking a lot of them.
It also made the covering naval gunfire far less accurate than it needed to be making the landings on Omaha far bloodier than they’d have been otherwise.
It also had a major effect on both the airborne forces being blown miles off course and limited the precision of the pre invasion bombing strikes as well as the close air support missions during the early days of the invasion.
By every measure it was an absolute miracle the invasion did not fail completely.
Naval bombardment wasn’t effective against well protected Germans regardless of the weather. Besides the landings occurred during a lull in the storm.
Omaha was bad in large measure because the Germans had top line troops there, not the static units that were at the other beaches.
But you are right about the amphibious Shermans, few made it ashore.
It is when you have the 8"-15" guns well targeted.
The German bunkers were well built but they were not invincible.
Once the light cruizers and destroyers threw the rule book away later in the day and charged into the shallows many of them were destroyed with 4, 5, and 6" guns. That was what finally broke the stalemate and allowed the troops stuck on the beach to move forward off the beach.
One hell of a daring move by several of the commanders who were absolutely risking their careers and jail time for hazarding their ships.
I’m not much of a Navy Guy but the Navy literally saved the day with those moves.
The 1,000-1,400lbs armor piercing projectiles from the big guns would have played pure hell with the bunkers had they been able to hit them accurately but the heavy cruisers and battle ships could not be brought in close enough because of their deep drafts.
Well, that’s sort of made up.
they were buddies, but we also wanted to be their buddies.
Trump must have been joking.
What about the Aussies?
Oh. I thought you said they were allied with the NAZIs, not that they were neutral during WWII. My mistake…I guess.
