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The Allied invasion of Normandy on D day, June 6, 1944, was the largest, most complicated military action in history. Operation Overlord, as it was named, involved more than 4,000 ships, transporting men and shelling the Normandy shore; 10,000 aircraft, providing protection and carrying airborne divisions; and 130,000 American, British, and Canadian troops, a figure that, within a month, rose to 1 million. The event itself was preceded by months of diplomatic and political negotiations, strategic and tactical planning, and the critical guessing game, played with the enemy, as to when and where the landing would take place. The deception that led the Germans to assume the invasion would occur at Pas de Calais, the closest port to England, or even as far north as Norway, proved to be a great advantage because Allied bombing of roads and railways made the quick shift of German reinforcement troops intensely difficult.
The Normandy invasion began in the predawn of June 6. The Allies landed on five beaches--code-named Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha, and Utah--while airborne divisions were dropped farther inland to protect the flanks of the beaches against enemy counterattacks. The worst Allied casualties occurred at Omaha Beach, where the Germans, ensconced in fortified positions overlooking the beach, directed fierce fire at the landing vessels and pinned the American troops right at the edge of the water before they could make their way to the protecting shelf that rose from the beach. But Omaha proved to be the single exception in an attack with comparatively light casualties that saw the Germans confused and demoralized. At the end of the day, the Allies had secured the beaches and moved steadily inland, piercing the Atlantic wall with relative ease.
In the planning and rehearsal phase of the operation, security was a continuing concern. With so vast a collection of men and machines, complete secrecy and effective deception appeared to be an impossible goal. One source of apprehension occurred in late April, about six weeks prior to D day. During a rehearsal of the invasion off the small English coastal village of Slapton Sands, German E-boats slipped by the ships guarding the bay and torpedoed two transports. More than 700 men were lost. Serious as the incident was, it raised an even more ominous specter for the Allied high command: the possibility that the E-boats might have picked up survivors capable of leaking information.
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