FINAL (march 30)
DDAY’s Sunken Secrets
FINAL NARRATION
Prologue
Off the coast of France an international team is exploring a hidden battlefield.
Looking for the secrets of how the greatest naval invasion in history unfolded
Buried here is a treasure trove of ships, tanks, and potentially unexploded
mines.
These are the wrecks of D-Day
JUNE 6 , 1944
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For year - Hitler had devastated Europe – killing millions.
Now was the time for the Allies to make their move
Hendrix: It was an all out gamble. It was nothing less than the history of
western civilization
But the odds were against them
Atkinson: it's hell. It's about as bad as combat can get.
3 years in the making – this was the most epic struggle of the 20 century
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Lewis: These are the men who made the difference/ you should understand
that.
D-Day required the best minds in the military, working with scientists and
engineers
Hewitt: D-day is the triumph of technology and engineering
Ralph: The guys that planned the logistics for this were unbelievable.
New machines to break through Hitler’s vicious defense. Ingenious and
untested ways to deliver an invading army.
Beckett: this really helps you see how big it was
Today's expedition investigates how the Allies tipped the odds in their favor –
Andy – whoa look at that.
And brings veterans back – to the place where they nearly lost their lives.
Allen/Andy: Bet you never thought you’d see that again
New technologies and veteran’s memories come together to reveal a new
understanding of this hallowed ground
Hewitt –The hidden battlefield is one of our most sacred charges
Right now on NOVA, D-Day’s Sunken Secrets
Act I: The Hidden Battlefield
Tranquil beaches – violent war
Normandy – farms, tranquil beaches then underwater to reveal spectacular wrecks.
Along the north coast of France is the picturesque region of Normandy.
Charming villages. Farms … with their patchwork of small fields
And beautiful beaches - where Parisians come for a holiday …
But few realize that just beyond these tranquil beaches is evidence of the
biggest – and the most dangerous – naval invasion of all time.
Go underwater
The violence of that battle still lives in the World War 2 wrecks that lie just off
the coast.
These wrecks tell the story of D-Day.
Archives
June 6, 1944
7000 warships, 11,000 airplanes, and 200,000 men.
Crossing at dawn from England to these beaches of Normandy to liberate
Europe from the Nazis.
Four years earlier Hitler had conquered most of Europe – killing millions and
setting up the most epic struggle of the 20 Century.
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All along the north coast of Europe, the Nazis had built a vicious wall of
defenses to stop just such an invasion.
D-Day took 3 years to organize – and was the Allied Forces best chance to
retake Europe.
But the odds were against them –
And the future of the free world hung in the balance.
Clues to Victory:
It has now been 70 years since this battle that changed history – but the
magnitude of that invasion still inspires awe:
How did the Allied Forces of Great Britain, the United States, and Canada –
depleted by years of war – manage to pull it off?
Title: Sunken Secrets
Credit: Produced Directed and Written by Doug Hamilton
Narrated by Peter Thomas, D-Day Veteran (this should come on - after name)
Hewitt: One of the things we are learning is to treat the evidence of 20th century
battlefields as proper archaeology
Nick Hewitt, a historian at the National Museum of the Royal Navy, says that
these D-Day wrecks can tell us things no official document can.
Hewitt: The beauty of the D-Day underwater battlefield is the evidence is still there.
It’s all laid out for us. All we have to do is interpret the evidence to tell the story.
What is the true story of this invasion?
It’s referred to as D-Day but what do these wrecks reveal about the invasion
and how long it took to secure a foothold in Europe?
And what tales do they tell us about the necessary engineering that made this
all possible?
Hewitt: D-day is the triumph of technology and engineering. And what you see is
specifically engineered solutions to specific problems.
Buried here are inventions of scientists, engineers, and even maverick
businessmen – some of the unsung heroes drafted into this immense war
effort
These wrecks comprise one of the largest underwater archeological sites in
the world. As the 70 Anniversary approaches this site is beginning to get the
closer examination it deserves.
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Intro Magic Star
To understand this hidden battlefield – and these inventions - an international
team of oceanographers, historians and archeologists - has set out to
examine the evidence buried here.
Jacques: This is a new one
Andy: yes a new one right off of Utah beach
There are hundreds of ships, as well as tanks, guns, and potentially
unexploded mines.
The expedition team uses the latest in sonar technology, and even deep-water
submarines to investigate the remains of this epic naval battle.
Undiscovered evidence is being charted and explored – like this American
Sherman tank – one of the iconic weapons of World War 2.
How did this weapon intended for a land battle - end up here – intact and
underwater? It’s mysteries like this that the expedition will investigate over
the next six weeks.
Sylvain: There are few areas in the world where you have so many wrecks
concentrated in one area.”
Sylvain Pascaud – the director of the expedition – believes a systematic
exploration of this “lost fleet” is necessary to give a true picture of what this
battle really was.
Hewitt: When we think of the D-day landings, we think of a land battle. We think of
great movies, we think of boots on the beach. But actually, 6 of June 1944 was the
biggest, most complex amphibious landing in history.
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The expedition starts with a sonar-equipped catamaran – named the Magic
Star.
It is equipped with the latest generation sonar - submerged underwater in the
middle of the boat.
Onboard is the latest generation sonar - submerged underwater in the middle
of the boat.
SONAR uses sound waves transmitted through the water to image what is
below on the ocean floor.
Like this British ship
For a solid month the Magic Star will sail back and forth in up to 40 miles
stretches. Each pass revealing long strips of this hidden battlefield.
It’s like mowing the lawn - a 200 square mile lawn that is - with each pass
overlapping the last to make sure they don’t miss a spot
Sherrell: Voila. Volia. Tres, tres bien.
Or ship - on the ocean floor below.
This survey phase will reveal potential targets for further investigation – like
the mysterious sunken tank.
Onboard is Andy Sherrell who leads the team of sonar experts
Sherrell: We collect one line of data at a time. But as you can see here we are
combing line by line by line. We are trying to build a very large underwater
archeological map of the whole area.
Transition from expedition map to the DDay planning map
DDAY 101:
This area covers the site of the D-Day naval battle where the Allied Forces lead by Britain, the United States, and Canada - sought to regain a foothold in
Europe.
Four years earlier, the Nazis had conquered France – along with much of
Europe.
Ever since the Allied Forces had planned in secret how to fight back.
They needed to win a toehold in France, and then could drive up to Berlin from
the West. The Soviet Union would push in from the East – choking Hitler in the
middle.
The stakes could not have been higher.
Hendrix: What is at stake was nothing less than the history of western civilization. It
was an all out gamble – it was pushing all your poker chips onto the center of the
table.
Captain Henry J. Hendrix, the chief historian for the US Navy, says what was
involved in pulling off D-Day is hard to even imagine today.
Hendrix: The Germans had literally years to prepare the defense of the beaches. So
they are ready. They know if Germany is to be defeated the allies must enter the
continent somewhere – and the question is really where?
The options for the invasion were limited – and they had already tried
unsuccessfully in other locations. Two years earlier in France the Allies tried
to capture a port – in a town named Dieppe.
That battle against the fortified German positions there was a disaster. More
than 60% of Allied soldiers were killed or captured.
This failure haunted British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and changed the
course of the war.
In response to previous failures, President Roosevelt and Churchill met
several times in secret to create a new strategy.
The plan they devise was to overtake the region of Normandy from the
Nazis. And the naval invasion was just the beginning.
The entire plan was codenamed Operation Overlord. It would be a
surprise. The Nazis had expected an invasion at Calais – because it was so
close and had a large port.
Instead the decision was to go further down the French coast where there
were no large ports – and target the beaches of Normandy with a massive
amphibious landing – a much more difficult operation.
Atkinson: In an amphibious operation generally, there's no middle ground. You
either succeed or you don't. You get a sure and you move inland or you get thrown
back into the sea, unlike most battles where you can retreat and fight again the next
day. You can't retreat in an amphibious operation.
Hendrix: Overlord in Normandy is really the big gamble about whether democracy,
as we know it, was going to continue and survive and grow and flourish and that
people would be free as we thought that they should be free or whether Nazism and
the atrocities that Hitler was committing, genocide was going to succeed.
In the end, 5 landing beaches were chosen – two American, one Canadian, and
two British. They were given code names of Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and
Sword.
But even its chief architect wasn’t sure it would work. The night before the
invasion General Eisenhower wrote a letter taking the blame, if it failed.
Eisenhower: My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best
information available. The troops, the air and the navy did all that bravery and
devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault is attached to the attempt it is mine
alone."
Assessing the battlefield
Omaha Beach
Perhaps the best way to understand why Eisenhower was so worried is to
stand on Omaha Beach – and see what the Allies were up against.
Lewis: Omaha Beach is an excellent defensive location. If you’re the Germans what
you want to be able to do is kill anything on the beach.
Adrian Lewis, a former Army Ranger, is a history professor at the University of
Kansas. And he has taught military strategy to West Point cadets.
Lewis: The geographic formations here, the terrain, makes it excellent. From one
end where the landing takes place to the other end is about 4 miles long.
Lewis says any fighting strategy must begin with understanding the
geography of the battlefield.
Lewis: Omaha Beach is banana shaped. That banana shape is important. So
instead of having your weapon systems pointing out to sea, is to have them pointing
into the beach. So if I put machine gun positions, artillery positions on this
flank. More on this flank. Instead of having them point out to sea, I’m actually
having them pointing in and that’s what the German’s did.
This inward pointing fire – or interlocking fields of fire - created a deadly kill
zone on the beaches. This was a huge advantage for the Germans.
Lewis: Excellent terrain for putting in a defense. As a matter of fact, if I were doing
this thing, I’d rather be on the German side.
Act 2: Physical Obstacles and Solutions
In addition, the cliffs that surround the beach gave the Nazis the high
ground. It seemed that nature gave them every advantage in this crucial
battle.
Hendrix: You’re up against the weather. You’re up against the tide. You’re up
against the beach and when you are dealing with forces of that size it is hard to get it
done in the right way.
This area off the coast is known for unreliable weather and some of the
strongest ocean tides in the world. Those conditions are even difficult for
today’s expedition.
The challenge of the tides:
Pascaud: We’ve got three challenges// the weather, the tides and the current. I just
cannot imagine 5000 vessels, with 200 thousand men, in conditions like that. If you
disregard the weather, the current and the tide, you will be going absolutely
nowhere.
Time lapse of tides along Normandy coast.
Ocean levels here can rise and fall up to 25 feet a day!
The effects can easily be seen over the course of a few hours - on the
beaches.
Here when the tide is out, the width of the beach increases – a full 300 yards
wider at low tide!
The significance of that is it meant the soldiers on D-Day would be exposed for
much longer to the deadly Germany crossfire.
D-Day planner needed to understand every detail about the geography of this
battlefield to plan for the assault. But how do you get that information when
the entire country is under enemy control?
Top Secret maps:
Transition to UKHO – rolls of maps, top-secret documents
Evidence of the incredible effort to figure this out still exists at the United
Kingdom Hydrographic Office – one of the world’s leading producers of
navigational charts.
This building was an important intelligence site - it’s location a state secret. In
fact the building was camouflaged to hide it from Nazi bombers.
Inside top-secret documents still exist. Neptune was the codename for the
Naval Operation.
These artifacts aren’t quite like the sunken wrecks off the coast of Normandy –
but they are important evidence of ways the D-Day planners found around the
obstacles. An effort that began long before the invasion.
Howlett: You have mines here. Barbed wire entanglement here.
Cartographer Chris Howlett explains that mapping the Normandy region was
an extraordinary top-secret operation – that required math, science and daring
spy missions.
Low flying aircraft were dispatched over the beaches. And surveillance
photographs were taken at intervals throughout the day – documenting the
changing tides.
Howlett – These black lines are where the water line was on different tides.
Why was useful? Using those different tide levels, mathematicians could
calculate the exact slope of the different beaches – necessary to figure out
what vehicles could be used.
Knowing every detail of the beach was crucial. At Dieppe – the Allies
discovered only after landing that their tanks could not get traction on the
beaches there.
Every way of getting information was used – even past vacation postcards
were requested.
Howlett: They put out a public request for the people of Britain any postcards you
collected in your holidays to France before the war send them in to us and they may
be of use. And millions of postcards were sent in.
These postcards gave essential information about what the coast of France –
by now in enemy hands for 4 years - looked like. But not all the necessary
information could be gleaned from a safe distance.
Just off the Nazi controlled beaches lurks an X - craft. Inside this minisubmarine are 5 underwater spies.
Hewitt: Perhaps one of the earliest phases of the battle was the survey and
preparatory work carried out by men serving aboard miniature submarines – the XCraft, who were effectively secret agents.
The X craft were 50 feet long – and barely 5 feet high.
Some missions
lasted 2 weeks in these cramped quarters.
The surveillance gathered was used in making these maps – including some
from the perspective of the sea - showing visible landmarks on the beach - like
church steeple or houses.
These were crucial for navigating the landings.
Hewitt: They came up with a novel idea – the view at the bottom here is the view that
you would expect to see if you were coming in from a landing craft at any given point
along this map.
Jim Booth was a member of this elite submarine force – venturing into mine
filled Nazi controlled waters – with barely any navigational guides.
Booth: Navigation of course was difficult. Because then there were no sat and air. It
was the sort of classic old-fashioned navigational trip: pencil and ruler and
gyrocompass.
Booth’s mission was to go ahead of the invasion force and set up light
beacons – so the huge armada of Allied ships would know where to go.
His submarine was assigned to the British landing beach codenamed Sword –
the furthest east of the five beaches.
He would be one of the first soldiers in action on D-Day. He was in position at
0100 - military terminology for 1 am.
Time Stamp June 5 0100
Back on expedition –
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Today Jim Booth has come back to Normandy – to take part in the
investigation. This is no leisurely retirement cruise – the D-Day expedition has
brought in a team from Canada with two deep-water submarines.
Hewitt: The veterans who stormed the beaches of Normandy are the most incredible
people
Atkinson: No one can bear witness with the same kind of emotional intensity that
some who was there can. We are losing 600 veterans every day. When they slip
away they are in the shadows forever.
For the first time in 70 years Jim Booth will go underwater off the coast of
Normandy - just like he did for D-Day.
Daughters: There is a very small amount of worries – because he’s 92.
Booth: I haven’t been in a submarine at all since then. No.
Hewitt: I think you will find you can see a lot better of that one than you could in
yours.
Booth: We had no windows of course at all.
Ironically - this time the submarine is even smaller than the X craft. But Jim
Booth will only have to stay in the submarine for an hour - instead of the four
days he did before D-Day.
Today’s dive is in the exact same location off of Sword Beach. His shipmate is
military historian Nick Hewitt.
Hewitt: Any second now you will be underwater for the first time in 70 years. Here
we go
Booth: Look at that! It’s reasonably clear today too isn’t it
Hewitt: There’s a shadow
Sub:
Roger, I’ve got visual.
Hewitt: Jim’s role on the 6 of June is to mark the safe channel through the enemy
minefields. So, Jim has to go out with a small group of men, in advance of the
landings, navigate themselves to exactly the right spot, surface alongside – we must
remember - a mine field, and light of beacon so that the incoming ships can pass
safely through.
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It was in this spot off of Sword Beach that Jim Booth placed the beacons on DDay.
Hewitt: Did you have an understanding of how enormous the scale of it all was?
Booth: Almost everyone was just a tiny cog in this vast wheel.
His sub surrounded by mines, Booth and the x-craft crew had to find the exact
location to set up the beacons.
But with no lights on shore or RADAR – how did they do it?
Booth: It was very, very complicated. One must remember all of the navigation
aides had been switched off because of security. We knew we were in France. It
didn’t take very long to recognize it was a church tower.
In the end Booth and his X-Craft crew - navigated using the landmarks that had
been mapped by the Hydrographic Department.
Booth says that it was the Allies attention to detail in the planning that made
the difference - and that was a direct result of the lessons learned from the
disaster at Dieppe.
Booth: Dieppe was really intended to be a test run for Normandy. It did all the things
wrong. Those lessons were learnt and this was put into good force for Normandy.
But the one thing the Allies couldn’t control was the weather for the invasion –
and the forecast did not look good.
MET Office:
By May 1944, two million soldiers were in southern England – waiting for the
go ahead from their commanders.
And with 11,000 airplanes and 7000 ships involved in this complicated
operation, decent weather was required.
But the science of weather prediction was not what it is today.
General Eisenhower and his Supreme Allied Command had only limited
information – since satellites and weather RADAR wouldn’t be invented until
after the war.
Instead, weather data was collected at remote weather stations and sent to the
UK Meteorological Office in Essex, England.
Records like these – dating back 150 years – are still archived here. Including
those for the D-Day landings.
These maps detailed weather patterns and were meticulously drawn to chart
moving storm systems
Chris Tubbs: These were the weather maps that they used for that process. The
maps were produced every three hours whereas now they would be done only every
six or 12 hours.
High and low pressure systems – the atmospheric conditions that determine
the weather – were charted and analyzed at the headquarters.
Tubbs: The low pressures are basically bad weather, strong winds, rain, a lot of
clouds, the high pressures are mainly fine weather with lack of clouds and quite
warm temperatures, in June anyway.
At the center of the operation was Group Captain James M. Stagg. His
responsibility was to track the weather data and report it directly to General
Eisenhower.
He kept a personal diary that is still held at the Meteorological Office. It shows
the enormous pressure he was under.
The invasion was originally planned for June 5
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Diary: Saturday June the 3 Day of extreme strain, the weather situation got
worse. Two depressions below 98 millibars at one in June. Who could have
forecast this?
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Tubbs: This map was from June the 3 . And this is showing it typical bad early
summer weather in the UK.
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Before D-Day there were several storms lined up –
Tubbs: We’ve got a succession of low pressures across the chart. One here, one
here, one to the northwest. This is going to keep the weather what we called
unsettled: so clouds, rain, gale force winds in the Channel. Going to stir very rough
seas. So anybody who is on a boat crossing the Channel would be in danger.
Diary: Sunday June 4 , 1944. At 04:15 conference this morning assault for
tomorrow definitely canceled.
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The bad weather would limit air support and create treacherous conditions for
ships on the Channel. The invasion force is put on hold – but time is running
out.
Diary: Today it began to appear that there might be a temporary fair interval Monday
night. Should we advise to make use of it?
The timing of the invasion had been selected to correspond with the lowest
tide of the month.
This would give the Allies maximum time to unload men and equipment.
With the tide low and coming in – ships can unload and be carried out to sea
on the rising tide.
If the tide were high and going out, ship would get stuck on the beach as the
water receded.
Hendrix: If you are on a ship that makes land at high tide – and suddenly the tide is
running out. You either need to leave then or your ship is going to come and
ground in the mud flats.
Because of the changing tides, Eisenhower could only wait one more day. If
the weather didn’t clear, the invasion would have to be postponed for weeks.
Diary: I’m not getting rather stunned. It is all a nightmare.
Every day they waited there was an increased chance that German intelligence
would discover the huge invasion force poised at the coastline - and realize
that the invasion was coming.
If discovered the crucial element of surprise would be lost.
Tubb: This is the chart for Monday June the 5 . This was the original D-Day. There
was some crucial observations which made some of the meteorologists start to think
that the 6 could be possible. And these operations were up here in the north of the
Atlantic. And interestingly they marked thing things here that we don’t nowadays,
called Cols.
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Cols are a gap – or interval of calm – that can exist between bad weather
systems.
Tubb: Cols exist between areas of low pressure. And these were quite important for
this situation because they knew that if they could get into an area of a Col the
chances for getting the right weather for the landing were better. It wasn’t a definite,
but it was a possibility.
Lewis: It’s Eisenhower’s decision. The momentum had already built up. I’ve have
got everybody locked and cocked ready to go. The fact that the weather was so bad
it actually made it one of his harder decisions.
Diary: Monday June the 5 1944. After one hours rest Met conference at
0300. Fair interval confirmed and invasion put on final and irrevocable
decision. Whatever the outcome the decision is taken.
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Following this weather report from Stagg, General Eisenhower ordered the
invasion to begin. Later he broadcast his blessings to the troops.
Eisenhower: Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Expeditionary Force. You are
about to embark upon the Great Crusade toward which we have striven these many
months. The eyes of the world are upon you. Good luck and let us all beseech the
blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
Act 3: INVASION Launched:
Timestamp: 4:15 AM June 5 , 1944
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D-Day had begun – and there was no turning back.
The armada of Allied ships left England – and would sail through the night to
the five different landing beaches.
Hewitt: The scale of it is almost inconceivable: it’s 7,000 ships
Atkinson: And they include not only the ships that are carrying the infantrymen who
are going to the beaches – but they include bombardment ships.
Hendrix: Battleships after battleship. And destroyers.
Atkinson: All of those have to be launched from Britain. There’s intense
choreography that goes on. You will go here, you will go there, you will go at this
hour and so on
Hendrix – It was the most massive naval force that’s ever assembled.
Hewitt: D-Day is without doubt the single biggest, most complex amphibious landing
in history.
Adrian: The naval plan Operation Neptune encompasses 50 miles of beachfront and
hundreds of thousands of soldiers thousands of ships and landing craft. The
magnitude of it is incredible.
The landings were set for 0630 – early the following morning.
On the shores of Normandy - the Germans could only see the bad weather –
and thought that it would prevent any immediate invasion.
They also did not see that just off the coast were a handful of small X Craft
submarines. Onboard one was Jim Booth.
Booth: It was a hell of a time ago. 69 years. It is very emotional, very, very
emotional. It was sort of in the direction of the yacht. But where the last ripples
are. That was the distance. We saw the soldiers playing football. Here. That was
the day before actually. That was the day before. They didn’t know what was
coming.
Minesweepers:
Off the coast – Jim Booth and the X Craft submarines were not alone. An 18
year-old Robert Haga – from Virginia – was aboard the USS Chickadee. One
of the ships that left England ahead of the armada to perform the essential
task of clearing the nazi underwater mines. An extremely dangerous
operation.
Haga: June 5 1944 Underway for France.
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Haga kept a personal diary of these historic days.
Haga: The invasion will be early in the morning we are to go in first and sweep a
channel clear.
The Ocean’s Atlantic Wall
The Germans had heavily mined the English Channel as part of their Atlantic
Wall
Mines in WW2 – are like the IEDs of today’s wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. Low
cost weapons, but highly lethal.
The Magic Star team has not found any unexploded German mines so far,
since they were largely cleared for safety after the war – but can the sonar
reveal their effect?
Charles: This is pointed up here and looks like a bow
Andy: I think it hit a mine
They come across a Canadian ship called the Fort Norfolk – it’s bow was
broken off by a mine.
Andy: That is unbelievable
Charles: That is a gorgeous, gorgeous wreck
One mine can have a disproportionately large impact – sinking a whole ship
full of soldiers and equipment.
Hewitt: The important thing about all naval warfare. The equipment or the men
contained in it are an awful lot easier to destroy at sea than they are once they’ve
got ashore. A single mine could drown all those men, and destroy all their
equipment. It would take days of fighting to do the same job on land.
One place you can safely see some of these mines – and other military
hardware – is the Museum of Normandy Wrecks – in a little town called Port en
Bessin. It is a private collection of D-Day military equipment salvaged off the
coast here.
Axel Niestle, an expert on the German military – says the Nazis used four TK
different kinds of mines in the ocean off Normandy – the most common was a
contact mine.
Nestle: The whole body is filled with explosives. Once it goes up close to the ship it
can take a battleship.
These mines were anchored to the ocean floor and floated just below the
water’s surface.
The horns are detonators – something like a very large off / on switch.
Axel Nestle: And once the ship hits one of these detonators here, a chemical
reaction is started, the detonator is ignited, which is a primer, then the full charge is
going off.
The Nazi’s had heavily mined the bay just off the beaches – and so the Allies
had to sweep lanes clear just before the landings.
Hewitt: It’s very, very dangerous work. As one veteran described to me years ago,
everyone is walking kind of half crouched in anticipation of an explosion
Hendrix: We waited until the last instance. Minesweeping tells fyou where the
landing is going to occur. If you begin too early then you have already tip them off
on where the operation will be focused and concentrated.
Haga’s boat was third in a line in the minesweeping operation off of Omaha
Beach – next to the USS Osprey.
Haga: At 1800, the USS Osprey was hit by a mine.
Haga: I was on the bow of the ship. And uh, when it hit. the ship just lifted out of
the water and exploded. This mine hit the magazine that carried all the ammunition
in the ship
Six men on the Osprey were killed in the initial blast. These were the first
casualties of D-Day.
Haga: A lot of the crewmen and officers were blown out into the water and they
were badly burned. We were throwing ladders – rope ladders as fast as we could –
but they couldn’t see. So we were having to, sometimes, hook onto each other to
pull them up – and the skin would come off their arms. I still have bad memories
about that.
Haga has returned to Normandy as part of the expedition – and wanted to see
the newly installed Navy Memorial at Utah Beach – that honors many of his
fellow minesweepers.
The mine sweeping operation went on in view of the German controlled
beaches in the hours leading up to the invasion. Everyone was haunted by
the possibility that the soldiers there would sound the alarm.
But that never happened, perhaps because as part of Operation Overlord, the
Allies made a massive effort to mislead Hitler into thinking that the invasion
would be further north along the coast near Calais.
Fleets of fake military gear were positioned in England across from Calais –
and an extensive counter intelligence campaign was organized to deceive the
Nazis.
Atkinson: It's one of the most brilliant deceptions in the history of warfare. It's right
up there with the Trojan horse.
Gliders:
Not the Trojan horse, but on the night before the invasion another wood
vehicle was slipping behind enemy lines unnoticed – under the cover of
darkness.
There are two large rivers that cross the road between Normandy and Paris –
the Caen Canal and the Orne River.
The Allies realized they needed to capture these bridge - and other strategic
targets before the landings - or risk getting trapped on the beaches.
It was urgent to get men behind enemy lines and secure these targets. But
how do you do that without modern Apache helicopters?
One possibility was dropping paratroopers. But loud airplanes could alert the
Germans – giving them time to blow up the bridges.
So instead the job fell to men like Kermit Swanson, a farm boy from Minnesota,
who was trained to fly a silent wood glider behind enemy lines.
Swanson: Our mission was to fly that glider over there and land and try to keep from
killing ourselves. If we did that we completed most of our objective.
The objective was made more dangerous by the landscape of
Normandy. This farming region is known for its patchwork of small fields –
with fences formed out of a dense hedge of rocks and trees.
The plan was to land in the cover of darkness – and those hedges would not
be visible.
Swanson: You couldn’t see because it was dark.
The gliders could carry 12 men or even a jeep, land, and jump right into
action. If they landed safely.
These planes were made of wood, fabric, with a thin metal frame – and would
easily break apart if they hit an obstacle.
Don Patton: It was terribly dangerous to fly a glider. It was dark, it was overcast, you
were having to land into the little small fields. I don't think anyone would want to be
going 90 miles an hour and crash into a tree with only plywood as a barrier.
The commander for Allied air forces predicted in a letter to General
Eisenhower that the gliders could suffer casualties of up to 70 percent on DDay
The plan was to tow then across the English Channel with C-47 planes – just
after midnight. When they reached the drop zone – their tow-rope would be
cut
Then the pilots had about 3 minutes before they had to land – no matter what
obstacles were in their way.
Swanson: You are traveling at about 80 miles an hour. Now you make a turn,
downwind. And you’ve got three minutes and the wheels are going to be on the
ground. Probably got, three minutes of your life left.
Swanson, now 94 years old, says that it was the last 30 feet of the descent that
was the most dangerous – because you may hit a tree.
Swanson: I must have been 20-30 feet off the ground. I didn’t even see the tree and
I hit the ground like that and that took the wheels off and then you slid until you
stopped and everything got perfectly quiet and perfectly black and I said “anybody
hurt?” The guys behind me said “nobody back here” and about that time a cow
bellowed real loud, real loud, I said now you know where you’re at. We were in the
pasture
Timestamp: 0100 June 6
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Once on the ground these troops moved into position to take the strategic
targets.
Atkinson: What you are trying to do with these troops is trying to prevent the
Germans from counterattacking in your flanks before you have got enough combat
power coming ashore to repel these attacks.
The glider operation went better than expected – with less loss of life than
predicted. The troops took control of the strategic targets without alerting the
German command.
Along with the gliders, 13,000 paratroopers were dropped into France with a
mission to disrupt the German defenses.
These men were the very first Allied soldiers to touch French soil on the
morning of D-Day.
Back at sea - the armada of ships was approaching the coastline behind the
minesweepers – with Robert Haga aboard.
Jim Booth – and X Craft crews - were at work setting up the beacons.
The next obstacle was getting 150,000 thousand troops on shore – something
that the Nazis had spent years making sure would not happen.
Atlantic Wall:
Lewis: Germans were good engineers – they knew how to build bunkers, I tell you.
The thickness is from there to about here.
Ever since invading Europe, the Germans worked to build massive fortification
all along the north coast of Europe – including 15,000 bunkers overlooking the
beaches.
Lewis: Just take a look at this – you can see the entire beach and if you can see
something you can destroy it.
At this point in the war, the Germans knew their troops were stretched thin, so
defending their hold on the beaches was essential to their strategy.
Lewis: Defense is the stronger form of war, if your defense is well done, if you have
enough obstacles, enough mine fields, enough firepower, you can reduce the
number of troops you need.
Along the coast of France, these bunkers held powerful guns that could shoot
20 miles.
And the beaches were covered with a series of mined obstacles - hidden just
below high tide – that would destroy any ship that tried to land.
Including the famous hedgehog – crosses of steel that could rip open the
bottom of a ship.
All of this was part of one the most fearsome military fortification ever built. It
was known as Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.
Adrian: The Atlantic wall was strong and it was getting stronger day by day.
Atkinson: in the 6 months before June 6 Hitler allowed almost unlimited resources to
be poured into it. The German forces had almost doubled. So it’s pretty serious.
th
One of Hitler’s top Generals, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel was sent to the
front by Hitler himself – to fortify this powerful death trap.
The beach obstacles dictated a terrible choice to the Allies. Do you land at
high tide so your soldiers spend less time on the beach exposed to enemy fire,
or do you land at low tide to protect the ships from these obstacles?
Hendrix: Operation Overlord runs on the back of ships – so the men are coming, the
tanks are coming, the supplies are coming. And so it’s important the ships to
survive. / It’s all to preserve the logistic ships – because those are the irreplaceable
items of Operation Neptune. Without them Neptune fails.
General Rommel knew that landing at high tide would offer the shortest run to
safety for the soldiers.
At tide high - these deadly defenses would be
hidden.
But the decision had been made to land at low tide. The ships would be
protected from the deadly hedgehogs – but how do you protect your soldiers?
Higgins boat:
The answer would come from an unlikely place – a town better known for
music than the military: New Orleans.
Andrew Jackson Higgins was a colorful, local boat builder – who believed he
had the solution for the Navy.
He already had a boat, called the Eureka, that was built to navigate the shallow
waters of the Mississippi River – not Rommel’s deadly mines – but the logs
and sandbars here - so why not use them for beach landings?
The Navy was skeptical. It seems Higgins didn’t always follow military
protocol.
Strahan: As the Depression was going on business was bad/ and then he started
building boats for Rum Runners. Then he went to the coastguard and said, “I don’t
know if you noticed it but the opposition has a lot better and quicker boats” and then
he would build faster boats for the coastguards. Then he would go back to the Rum
Runners and say, “The coastguards has newer vessels, we need to build you
something a little faster.” So he did play both sides of the fence.
Today - at the National World War 2 museum in New Orleans, they are working
rebuild some of Higgins’ famous boats.
Tom Czecanski, the chief curator at the museum, is an expert in military
hardware He says to understand what makes the Higgins boat work – you
have to look under one to see the unique engineering of the hull.
Czekanski: The important thing here is that the hull churns up the water at the front gets lots of air in it. If you got water and air mixed together, that’s getting the boat up
just that little bit more that gets you on to the beach.
At the back of the boat, there was a specially designed metal structure that ran
below the propeller to protect it when the boat ran aground.
Higgins: Bring the boats on in and damn the obstacles.
The Eureka boat was designed for unloading cargo over the sides of the boat –
like illegal liquor. But the Navy’s cargo of soldier would need to climb over the
sides – making them vulnerable to enemy fire.
Was there a way to get the men out faster?
Naval engineers had seen Japanese boats with front-loading ramps, but no
one knew how to build them.
And so they asked Higgins to draw up some
plans.
Strahan: The Navy / had been trying it for over two decades, had been
unsuccessful, they wanted drawings. Higgins said, “Drawings, hell. You’d be here
in three days and I’ll have on in the water” which he did
Without a ramp it took 57 seconds to unload troops – with a ramp it took only
19 seconds.
Higgins Film: they could land quicker, exposed for a shorter time to enemy fire.
Strahan: - which saves you 38 seconds from being shot at on an open beach which
saved incredible numbers of lives.
Adolph Hitler knew of Higgins famous boat – and is said to have called him,
“The New American Noah.”
Landing strategy:
Not unexpectedly the sonar operators are unable to find any of these wooden
boat. It would have been difficult for them to survive the strong currents of the
English Channel for 70 years. . But there were many other landing craft made
of metal – which they did survive. And they come in all shapes and sizes.
Ralph: All of these wrecks are just out here and you don’t know it. If you could drain
this, people would go “Gawd, look at all of that” but you can’t.
In WW2 there were dozens of different kinds of landing craft – all engineered
for specific tasks. The famous Higgins boat carried soldiers – called personal
- or possibly a jeep – so the boat was labelled: Landing Craft Vehicle,
Personnel – or LCVP.
There were landing crafts with powerful guns - appropriately called landing
craft GUN – or LCG. The list went on: LCI – for infantry; LCM for Mechanized,
LCR for Rockets … And there was a whole class of larger ships, like the LST –
or Landing Ship Tank.
Ralph: I can’t even imagine …we’re sit here looking at something and trying to
decide whether it’s an LSM or an LST or an LSVP, there’s this massive amounts of
LSs. / The guys that planned the logistics for this were unbelievable.
Today the sonar team sees the signal of an enormous ship longer than a
football field.
Andy: All right
Even though the ship is buried beneath 100 feet of water - this new multi-beam
sonar is accurate within half an inch.
Millions of sonar points are detected and then translated into a 3-dimensional
image – that reveals intricate details of the engineering.
Andy: busted up
This level of visualization allows the team to make precise measurements that
help identify the ships.
Sherrell: We’ll go by it again
They make out what looks like a bow door – and what the sonar team thinks is
a vehicle still on the ships deck.
These features help them identify the type of ship which they can cross
reference with a military manual.
The ship they’ve discovered today is a LST – a Landing Ship Tank – the
workhorse of the Allied Naval Forces
LSTs were some of the largest landing vessels in the fleet – and played an
essential role in the D-Day invasion. They addressed one of the biggest
problems created by the new amphibious landing strategy: how do you get all
the gear the army needs onto the land?
Lewis: one of the ways to look at an amphibious assault is that it's a race. The race
starts the minute you hit the beach there and it's a race for build up, who can build
up the most forces the fastest.
Hendrix: In World War 2 tanks warfare dominates, so you are bringing a lot of tanks
across the Channel. They’re not flown in, they can’t drive there. So tanks, jeeps,
other vehicles had to be brought by ships.
Nick: You don’t need a port to use an LST. These are the chess pieces that get
moved around that global board. And they are probably the single most important
type of ship used in assault landings anywhere in the 2nd World War – massively
important piece of technology.
The US manufactured so many of these LSTs - they didn’t even bother to give
each ship a name – just a number.
Hendrix –These ships were built in the United States and then sent to England, 100s
of them / We had to change virtually every bridge on the Ohio River and on the
Mississippi to allow these combatant ships to make it back to the ocean and we did it
and we did it very rapidly.
Czekanski: One of the key elements in our technology was our ability to build
overwhelming numbers. That production was an amazing factor in our victory over
Nazi Europe and Japan.
Lewis: The engineering is not all that miraculous but the production, American
production. American capacity to produce volumes is what made the difference. We
could produce 50 to their 10. We win.
On the morning of D-Day these LSTs ferried men across the English
Channel. But they were too big to land before the German defenses had been
cleared. That’s where the Higgins boats came in.
Hewitt: In the early assault phases, you don’t want to put all your eggs in one
basket. You don’t want to put one big vulnerable ship on the beach, so you have the
famous Higgins boat and the British equivalent, which was small craft, capable of
carrying 30 men who could get into action immediately. And to be really crude about
it, if you lose one, it’s not the end of the operation. It’s 30 guys, not 800.
This landing chart shows where the large ships – like the LSTs - pulled up on
the morning of D-Day 11 miles off shore. Then there are smaller paths into the
beach for the landing craft, like Higgins boats.
For Ralph Wilbanks, mapping these wrecks on the ocean floor - is more than
just sonar science. His father fought in the Pacific – which makes these two
dimensional images really come alive.
Ralph: These boats that are blown up and pieces missing from them and even when
they dived on it the other day they had big holes in it. You could see where
something happened violent to cause that boat to go to the bottom, which had to
have been really catastrophic for the crew that was on the boat when it
happened. That’s the reason they were the greatest generation.
Question: It is very present to you even today?
Ralph: Yeah, tough place.
And as dawn broke on D-Day, it was about to get a lot tougher.
The massive fleet appeared just off the German beaches – a scene made
famous in the 1962 film The Longest Day.
Hendrix: if you’ve seen that classic scene in the longest day when the German is in
the pillbox and the morning mist begins to lift and then stretched out in front of him
from as far on the you know from the east to as far on the west as he can see, are
ships and they’re emerging out of that fog. It was the most massive naval force
that’s ever been assembled.
At 0530 –- it was time for the Allies to bring out their biggest guns.
And the Naval bombardment began.
Hendrix: You have to image battle ship standing maybe a mile, two miles off shore
Atkinson: This is going to happen right around sunrise because you can see what
you are shooting at.
Hendrix: So you are hurling these large bunker penetrating projectiles about the
weight of a Volkswagen. Its tremendously loud – it’s loud unlike anything you can
possibly image. The smell - the smell of cordite burning of gunpowder burning. is
something you won’t forget
The air force bombers also joined in.
The Americans had made the decision they were going to have a very truncated
Naval preparatory fire. It only lasted 35 minutes. If you were invading an island in
the south pacific sometimes the bombardment would last for days, but because/we
were invading an area where the enemy can reinforce quickly the decision was
made to do it quickly – let’s try to get on the beaches quickly. The
British/preparatory gunfire lasted closer to 2 hours. I think the British were right, as it
turned out.
old photo of Allen
The Channel was full of boats. The pillboxes were back up on the cliffs and they
were firing continuously.
Bill Allen was on an LST - bringing soldiers into Omaha Beach and remembers
this brutal start to the day.
Allen: I remember all the firing the noise. All the disasters and death. You’d see
someone who had been killed floating on the water.
Allen was a medic - with an overwhelmingly difficult assignment.
Allen: I was on the death detail. Started bringing casualties out to us and we loaded
casualties over the side of the ship by the time we would get them they’d be
dead. But ah, we’d clean them up the best we could. Identify them, to the fact - put
the dog tags. And you tried not to really dwell on it, I guess.
Painful memories like these prevented Allen from talking about his D-Day
experiences until recently. But today he has come back to Normandy for the
first time since 1944.
Welcome onboard
He is once again on a ship off the coast of Normandy. This time he isn’t
tending to casualties – but instead he has brought his wife, Idalee, two
daughters and two of his of grandchildren.
Allen: When I was here before, everything was so confused and noisy. Now it’s so
calm and peaceful. It is hard to realize the difference between the two.
Allen’s LST delivered men into Omaha Beach on the morning of DDay. Then
on their 4 trip into the beaches – they hit a mine and the boat sank. Today
the sonar crew can show Bill just want happened to it.
th
Bill looking at sonar image
Oh look here comes something. There’s the stern.
Bill: Boy that is something.
Brennan: I have been doing multi beam survey work for over 25 years. When we had
Bill, the veteran on, as soon as he saw that image, his story, his memories came
back. It was a way I had never seen multi beam data before.
Andy: Look at that big hole there. You think that from the mine?
Bill: Far as I know it almost had to be.
Brennan: because he could see fully the vessel that was blown out from under him,
on the sea floor...
Bill: You had a galley, down below, that’s where we ate.
Brennan: it was the first time I felt the multi beam data had a soul.
After 70 years of holding back his WW2 memories, Bill Allen - now at 88 - is
brave enough not only to return, but to go down in the small submarine to see
the ship he was on when it sank.
Sub pilot: Okay Bill, I’m going to get in the sub first. I’m going to get myself into the
pilot seat. Then we have a ladder that we are doing to drop down in.
Patty: Not to brag on him but I can’t think of too many 88 year old men who would
go down to where they almost lost their lives and revisit it and be excited about it like
he is.
Hewitt: One of the most important aspects of looking at this now and not waiting any
longer is that we still have veterans with us. We can still hear the testimony of those
who were there while we investigate the battlefield they fought on. If we wait any
longer, there simply won’t be any left.
The details of that horrific day – slowly come back during his dive with sonar
expert Andy Sherrell.
Sub: Top side, top side. This is AQ.
Andy Sherrell: Hard to believe huh?
Allen: Boy, I tell you.
Andy: Want to try to find the bow?
Allen: I’d like to see it
Andy: I’d like to see it, too.
Allen: We made three trips in, successfully, and started on our fourth trip.
Sherrell: How old were you?
Allen: I was just barely 19. I had finished lunch and come out on the top-side and it
was about 1 o’clock.
Allen: I don’t even know how to describe the noise it made that it made. It sorta
reminded me of when you step on a banana peel and you know how you flipflopping.
You know you going to hit the ground sooner or later.
LST 523 was sailing in rough waters when it came down mid-ship - directly on
a German mine. Allen was at the bow of the ship – in front of where the mine
exploded.
Allen: It just blew the ship completely in half.
Andy: And it happened so quick?
Allen: Yep. A real state of panic. Everyone began to jump off
On today’s dive Allen wants to see where that mine hit.
And it doesn’t take long before the expedition’s submarine is right on top of it.
Sub Driver: we are on the wreck. Over.
This is all that remains of the LST 523 – a rusting hulk of metal, over grown
with barnacles and algae. They can barely make out a tank on its surface.
Andy: Bet you never thought you’d see that again?
The explosion tore through the ship, and the bow that Allen was on was
sinking. Everyone began to jump off.
Allen: I knew I wasn’t too good a swimmer, but I knew that something had to be
done pretty quick because our bow was going down. what it boiled down to – was
which way I wanted to drown. Did I want to go down with the bow or did I want to
drown swimming?
Just at that moment, Allen saw a life raft – with a medic he knew from
Mississippi.
Allen: And he hollered at me, you can’t swim out here. Stay there, I believe I can
get in there to you. He got within, oh I guess, 12 – 15 feet of me, and I said I can
jump that far. I know I can. And I took off and I made it. We both had just one arm
over the raft. We picked up four more army personnel.
Allen and the others were saved, when a passing ship spotted their raft and
pulled them to safety.
Allen: Every time you close your eyes you just reliving the same thing, a blast, and
seeing those same sights. Some time after midnight I rolled over and Jack said, Bill
have you been to sleep yet. I said Jack I don’t think I’ll ever go to sleep.
They say farewell to the 523
Sub: We’re coming up. Saying farewell to the 523
Allen: On the ship we had a compliment of 145. The final count: 28 of us got
off. 117 was killed or lost.
Allen and family searching for grave.
For Bill Allen – another powerful way to reflect on his time during D-Day – was
taking his wife and family to the American cemetery that overlooks Omaha
beach.
Barbara: Daddy, what’s the name you are looking for? Stabil
Idalee: It’s just never ending
There are more than 9 thousand American soldiers buried here. One of them
was Allen’s commanding officer – Vito Stabil, a young doctor just out of
medical school.
Allen: He was an officer and the rest of us were enlisted men. But we were all
shipmates. There wasn’t that much distinction between us. He had a great life
ahead of him but it got stopped. But I appreciate being able to come to his grave,
very much.
Taps Lewis: In World War II 70 million people are killed. 70 million people. It is the most
significant event in the 20 century – bar none. Nothing comes close to it in terms of
shaping the world that we live in. And so … when you stand at that cemetery, these
are the men who made the difference. These are the men who did more to shape
the world that you live in right now than anybody else and you should understand
that.
th
Operation Overlord
The loss of life weighed heavily on D-Day planners.
Minimizing casualties was a solemn duty, and strategically essential.
One way to reduce casualties on the beach would be to make sure the bunkers
of the Atlantic Wall were taken out before the infantry landed. But doing so
would prove to be one of the biggest challenges on D-Day.
The Naval and air force bombing just before the landings were the first steps
to dismantle the bunkers- but then the guys on the beach also needed to have
the big firepower of tanks.
Lewis: One of the attributes of the tank is firepower. So main gun of a tank can
destroy bunkers, machine gun positions, it can penetrate some of the concrete
positions. Small arms fire, even machine gun fire from infantry will not do that.
The Allies had tried to put tanks in landing craft at the battle for Dieppe – but
the process of unloading made them sitting ducks. And contributed to the
slaughter.
So for D-Day the Allies needed to figure out how to get the tanks to the beach
quickly without putting them in boats.
So the engineering question was – can you turn a tank into a boat?
Nicholas Straussler specialized in engineering military equipment in
England. He had immigrated from Hungary - now under Nazi control.
Straussler took inspiration from the ancient Greeks. Archimedes discovered
that any object could float if it displaced enough water to offset the volume
that’s submerged.
Graphic: A morphing blueprint of the tank and floatation devices.
Archimedes’ principle was engineered into Straussler’s design – by deploying
an inflatable skirt that came up on the sides of the tank about four feet - it
turned the tank into a rather poorly designed, but adequately floating boat - at
least in calm waters.
You can see how Straussler pulled off his design on this tank, retooled by Bob
Gundy, a military vehicle expert. There is a framework made up of inflatable
support tubes – that are then wrapped by a canvas skirt. They were called
Duplex Drive tanks – or DD tanks.
With the push of a lever the support tubes deflate and the skirt would drop. So
the tank was ready to roll into action.
Timestamp 0625
These floating D-D tanks were to hit the beaches five minutes before the
troops went ashore.
But on the morning of the invasion the seas were dangerously rough – with
swells recorded at 6 feet high. When the tanks off Omaha Beach were
launched – they immediately started to sink – wave after wave.
Lewis: Let’s say you are one of these guys in the DD tank. Put yourself in their
place of those guys … four of them LCT, first one goes off into the water and
immediately starts to sink in and the second one rolls off into the water and it starts
sinks You are the third guy, what are you going to do? I don’t know. You ask
yourself why?
Atkinson: It's pretty hard to understand 70 years later. It was pretty hard to
understand then.
These were their orders. It was critical to get these tanks ashore. Even though you
saw that the guys in front of you were having trouble and, in some cases, gone
under, they kept pushing
There is a mystery about just how many DD tanks are still buried
underwater.
The definitive answer will come from the expedition’s
comprehensive sonar survey.
Sub: Once we close the hatch the submersible is pressure proof.
Adrian: I am a retired soldier, I spent a lot of time in the army. I haven’t done much
with the Navy, so going down the sub was a unique experience for me.
Sylvain: Ok Adrian, time to go.
Today Adrian Lewis and Andy Sherrell are going down in the submarine off
Omaha Beach – to investigate what happened to the D-D tanks. Sherrell has
located a group of tanks – not far apart.
Sherrell: We have the bottom in sight. The tanks over there.
Two battalions of 32 DD tanks were supposed to lead the way onto Omaha
Beach
Adrian: Most of them are gone now
Without them the infantry would inevitably suffer from an unrelenting German
attack.
Adrian: There we go you can see the main gun now. That’s it
The water in the English channel is so murky – it is only with the help of sonar
coordinates that Sherrell and Lewis finally locate one of the lost dd tanks
Adrian: You don’t see the skirt any more though
Andy: No, right around that edge though.
Adrian: Right that would have deteriorated – gone away.
Adrian: When we first saw the DD tank I didn’t recognize it
Andy: That’s pretty cool, huh?
These swimming tanks were not engineered for the 6-foot swells they found on
D Day
In all 27 tanks sank off of Omaha Beach
Adrian: Looks like the hatch is open. One of the front hatches is open. Which
would make sense so they could get out.
Lewis: My first thought is: the men in this tank, soldiers in this tank, who they were,
and did they get out? Those tanks are burial places essentially. You have to keep
that mind.
TIME STAMP: 06:30
Despite the loss of tanks - the Higgins boats – full of soldiers – arrived on the
beaches right on time. But the battlefield they faced was not what they were
expecting.
Atkinson: If you're an infantrymen on Omaha Beach at 7:30 in the morning, you're
really sorry you don't have more armor with you. Because it's hell. It's awful. It's
about as bad as combat can get. And there are men by the dozens then by the
hundreds who are being slaughtered all around you. And so, the fact that you don't
have the protection of a 33-ton Sherman tank next to you, firing back at that pillbox
over there or firing at that machine gun over nest over there, all you've got is your
rifle, means that you've got a difficult row to hoe for the next several hours.
Combat engineer – trained with explosives to blow up beach obstacles like
mines and hedgehogs – landed in the first wave.
Akinson: The job of those engineers was to blow gaps in these defenses. They
were to blow 12 gaps on Omaha Beach. About half of all those combat engineers
were killed, wounded or missing.
The plan:
Along with the floating tanks, the plan had counted on air force and naval
bombings to take out the German bunkers.
But it did not work – and so the
men on the beach faced the Germans alone.
Lewis: I’ve made the argument that the Generals failed. The Generals failed. The
plan did not work at Omaha Beach. This is why the cost was so high in terms of
American lives, in terms of number of soldiers killed because they had to generate
the combat power necessary to get over the bluff there at Omaha Beach.
Atkinson: No, there was no failure, in fact, the failure is entirely on the side of the
Germans. Omaha was a lot harder than they thought it was going to be, but, look,
the Germans had four years to build the Atlantic Wall. It took less than four hours to
crack the Atlantic Wall, including at Omaha Beach. Once those initial soldiers scaled
the bluffs at the back of the beach, and they're up on the escarpment, even though
the war is not over, the battle of Normandy has hardly been won, the Atlantic Wall
has been cracked.
Wave after wave of infantry kept coming. By 12 noon – after several hours of
brutal fighting - the first Americans had fought their way onto the bluffs
overlooking Omaha Beach.
The cost of that victory was very high. Even today there is confusion among
experts as to the total casualties - with estimates ranging from 2 to more than
4 thousand in the battle for Omaha.
The landings at the other four Allied beaches went more smoothly – with far
fewer deaths, although they were not without significant valor and causalities.
It is argued that one reason things might have gone better on the British
beaches were a group of inventions that the American army decided not to
use.
Ian Hammerston – a tank driver on Sword Beach - still has the landing map
from the Hydrographic department - that he carried in his pocket on DDay.
Hammerston: It suffered a bit from sea-water but that’s top secret.
Invention:
Hobart Funnies and Ian Hammerston.
Hammerston unit is famous because of its leader - Major General Sir Percy
Hobart.
Hammerston - He was an innovative character, who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Hobart was known as a brilliant but eccentric character, who Churchill
specifically called back into service for the preparation of D-Day. His unit was
known as Hobart’s Circus.
Hammerston: Hobart’s Circus it was called because from time to time all sorts of
ideas were dreamed up for dealing with situations and we acquired all sorts of
strange equipment.
Hobart’s goal was to engineer a way around the Nazi’s deadly obstacles.
One of his most famous inventions was the Flail tank - used to clear mines.
Hammerston: This is a model of a flail tank made by my son.
Ian Hammerston who piloted one of the flail tanks on D-D day shows how it
worked.
Hammerston: It is an ordinary Sherman tank but it has this apparatus on the front.
The chains on the front would spin around on this drum and thwack into the
ground. They’re like this. That’s a part of a chain that got blown off.
Atkinson: The British actually have a more inventive approach in some cases.
/Americans have the attitude, “We don’t really need those on our beaches; it
complicates our training.” And there’s a bit of a “not-invented here” attitude. These
are British gadgets, let the British play with them
Hobart’s engineers invented all sorts of clever ways of overcoming the
German obstacles – which became known as Hobart’s Funnies – though their
purpose was anything but that.
Flame throwers – for incinerating anyone inside the concrete
bunkers. Devises to fill anti tank ditches. Or create an instant bridge.
On June 6 , Ian Hammerston’s flail did successfully break through the
defenses at Sword Beach – and help clear the terror mines.
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Bill Allen’s LST 523 unloaded men bound for Omaha Beach in the morning –
and that afternoon they began to receive the causalities.
And Robert Haga, the minesweeper, kept working to clear the lanes through
the German underwater minefield.
By nightfall on June 6 , 1944 all five landing beaches were under Allied
control. Determining the exact cost in lives lost is difficult, but it is estimated
that there were at least 10,000 casualties, including 2500 deaths.
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Magic Star
But more death and destruction was yet to come, as the DDay expedition will
reveal.
The goal of Operation Overlord, the DDay invasion, was not just to gain a
foothold in Europe, it was to secure all of Normandy and ultimately drive
through to Berlin.
Hedgerows:
Carver McGriff – who landed on the other US beach, Utah – says to understand
the difficulty of fighting in Normandy, you need to walk around the small farms
that lie just off the coast here.
McGriff:
Imagine you’re a young second lieutenant – leading 25 kids like me
and your job is to take the next hedgerow – what do you do?
Despite all the years of planning for the invasion – the Allies were not
prepared for the obstacles they would face in the battles here.
The problem was easy to overlook. It was the ancient fences, which surround
farms in Normandy – called hedgerows. they seemed so unassuming.
One aerial photograph of 8 square miles revealed nearly 4000 small fields.
Atkinson: There’s a kind of terrain known as the hedgerow country. This is fields
that have basically turned into mini fortresses. The French have been farming that
area for a millennium and every farmer has been clearing the land by pushing the
rocks and debris and trees and what not to the edges of his fields. And consequently
walls have been built around the fields.
McGriff: The hedgerows were a virtually perfect defensive way for the Germans to
fight the battle and we had to find a way to get over them or around them.
Adrian: There was so much focus, so much energy on getting ashore that follow on
tasks, the advance, were not given the attention that they deserve in terms of
figuring out how you need to break through this stuff.
The battle for the hedgerows consumed the Allies – and their resources - for a
much longer than expected.
On D Day there were roughly 10,000 Allied casualties. But by the time
Normandy was taken six weeks later, another 200,000 Allied soldiers had been
wounded or killed, including McGriff’s squad leader.
McGriff: He died while lying next to me. In fact, he tried to talk to me and then was
not able. It was a long time ago. The memories don’t hurt like they did for a while.
But they’re always there.
Atkinson: It's important not to think that once June 6 turns into June 7 that
somehow the war becomes less intense. / The fighting in the Hedgerows is as awful,
in some cases, as anything that has occurred on Omaha Beach. So the intensity that
we see on June 6 is simply a foreshadowing of what's going to come over the next
three months in Normandy.
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Magic star
So What did it take the Allies to win control of Normandy in terms of men and
supplies?
Sylvain: One of the things that amazed us the most I think was the amount of wrecks
we found, the targets. We ended up finding 400 targets during our survey. That’s a
lot of wrecks.
The most astounding revelation by the sonar experts inside the Magic Star is
the vast majority of those 400 wrecks were sunk after D-Day – revealing the
extent of the enormous effort required to reclaim Normandy.
Hewitt: the really exciting thing for me an historian we can peel back the water and
expose the playbook of Normandy, just like assembling a huge jigsaw puzzle. It’s
just fascinating.
So we have evidence when the troops went to shore, and then we have evidence of
the support phase that took place for months afterwards. All of that is there.
Today the divers have found a barge carrying unusual crossbeam
structures – components used to replace bombed out bridges in France.
The barge was headed to one of the most extraordinary engineering projects
of WW2 – something designed to make it possible to unload all the necessary
gear and men.
It was, in fact, a pet project of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
Mulberry Harbors:
In London – just down the street from Churchill’s wartime headquarters – is
The Institution of Civil Engineers – where evidence still exists of this
ambitious plan.
These reams of detailed drawings – all resulted from a short, angry memo –
written by Churchill himself.
That memo got passed along to Tim Beckett’s father, Allan, a young military
engineer.
Beckett: My father was working at the time in the bridging department of the War
Office, Colonel Everall came to him with this memo - and said to him, “Beckett,
you’re a yachtsman, see if you can make something out of this.”
The memo resulted from a disagreement between President Roosevelt and
Prime Minister Churchill about possible locations for the invasion
Churchill was worried that there was no port in Normandy – and so these
landings could turn into another Dieppe.
His solution was as bold as it was daring. If the Allies couldn’t take a port by
force – then they would need to build one and take it with them.
Beckett: It’s astonishing, the scale of it and the new organisation required.
Tim Becket, a port engineer himself, says the plan was astoundingly ambitious
– certainly, the engineering challenges were: no one had ever conceived of
building a portable port.
Archives of a breakwater and ships unloading
Any port must first provide shelter for ships from the fury of the sea – and it
must also have a way to dock and unload the ships.
How could they engineer around the notoriously rough seas and changing
tides on the coast of France – and anchor a port onto the sandy beaches
there?
Churchill didn’t want to hear about the problems – so he dashed off his short
angry memo:
Beckett: Churchill’s memo is very famous. It says: “piers for use on beaches, they
must float up and down with the tide; the anchor problem must be mastered; let me
have the best solutions worked out. Don’t argue the matter –the difficulties will
argue themselves.” I think you can read into that that Churchill was pretty frustrated,
shall we say, when he wrote that. It’s a bit terse.
The challenge of figuring out how to solve these engineering problems fell, in
part, to the young Allan Beckett.
His initial idea was to build a road that would float up and down with the
changing tide. The problem was basic physics – how do you control the
movement of a floating road on a rough sea?
Beckett: Most bridges typically like to have four bearings, and they like their
bearings to stay more or less where they are. When you put a floating bridge on,
you’ve got a whole lot of movements. Obviously it’s pitching, going up and down,
and rolling, then you also have the load going on it as well. Now you either try to
resist that with a rigid structure trying to hold it all together or you go with it.
Beckett decided to go with it – he designed a floating road that consisted of
pontoons sitting on the water with roadways – like a bridge – spanning
between them.
Another part of the design were massive structures – that are still visible today
at low tide off the coast of Normandy. Like a jetty, these huge concrete
blocks were used to hold out the rough sea.
Andy: see the cassions that are submerged now
Seen on sonar, these structures make up some of the largest wrecks off the
coast here.
But to see what his father created, Tim Beckett goes just outside of Paris into
the world of virtual reality.
Nicolas: I think you recognize this place?
Tim: I certainly do
A French engineering company called Dassualt Systems, has re-created one
of these artificial harbors in 3D.
Beckett: We are walking along it. It’s as if we could touch it.
The codename of the project was Mulberry – and so these were known as
Mulberry Harbors. Two harbors were built – one for the Americans at Omaha
Beach and one British at the town of Arromarche.
Beckett: It is really very good.
Nicholas: Take your 3-D glasses and we will just into the 3D
The basic design of the Mulberry harbours was to create the needed
breakwater to block out the rough seas.
This was done in two steps – first old ships were sailed over from England –
and then dynamited and sunk.
Next came massive concrete structures - each the size of a 5-story
building. They were built in England, pulled across the English Channel.
These massive concrete blocks – called cassions – created the jetty that held
out the waves.
Beckett: I think the floating roadways he was particularly proud of.
Then came Alan Beckett’s roadway that stretched from the beach over floating
pontoons to piers where ships could dock.
These roadways needed to be strong enough to carry a 33-ton Sherman tank –
and yet flexible enough to accommodate the water’s motion. Engineering
around this was the key to Beckett’s plan
Beckett: You can see that the pontoons are pitching and rolling. The bridges are
following it. The bridge spans are not rigid they can go with the motion. They do it
by a rather clever detail. Can we go underneath the bridge. We’ve got a rigid
connection on the central member here. And all the other ones are pinned and that
allow the bridge to twist tortionally
Beckett: I always knew it was big, but I think this makes you feel how big it is and
how busy it was. It was the busiest port in the world for a few weeks.
Hendrix: There are such things such as war-altering technologies that once it's
revealed that you have that capability, it changes the face of battle. To take an LST
a Landing Ship Tank ship and land it on the beach and put the ramp down, it would
take it 10-12 hours to offload.
That’s because huge ships have to work around the tides – and all of that
takes time.
Hendrix: When we established the Mulberry Harbors, we were able to offload a ship
in 1 hour and 40 minutes
And all of this was anchored by a clever system that held the roadways in
place, designed by Alan Beckett.
Astonishingly the first of two massive harbours was functional in only 3 days
after the landings.
But then not even two weeks after the harbors were built - disaster
struck. One of the worst storms of the century blew down hard on the coast of
Normandy.
The American Harbor at Omaha Beach was completely destroyed.
But despite being designed to last only 3 months the British mulberry was in
use for nearly 10 – during which time it became known at Port Winston – for
the man whose angry memo got it built.
In all 2 and a half million men *
(millions of men) and a half a million vehicles passed across these floating
roadways.
They are just one of the many engineering feats and innovations that helped
the Allies prevail in this crucial battle of Normandy.
Continuing Danger:
The seas off the coast of France remained dangerous for months after the
landings.
The Germans still had control of ports to the east and west of the landing
beaches – and so they could send in submarines or drop mines from the air.
Hewitt: All it takes is one aircraft to fly through fast at night and drop half a dozen
pressure mines, and your nice safe passage area is suddenly lethal again.
Today the magic star crew has found a German U Boat submarine that
operated in the English Channel after the landings – finally being sunk in July.
Axel - The German navy, of course, put all its means it had available into the game.
George Bigelow was an Army private headed to the front. On Christmas Eve –
6 months after D-Day, he boarded the Leopoldville, a requisitioned cruise ship
bound for France.
A German U-Boat submarine lurking off the coast – torpedoed his ship. It
sank killing nearly 800 men.
Bigelow: If you can imagine Coney Island full of people swimming, that’s just what it
was like. It was just horrible. Guys were floating by with their heads down. You
could tell they were dead. Other guys were praying to their mother. // I couldn’t talk
about it for 20 years. It was that bad.
Today Bigelow has joined the expedition with his daughter Robin.
Instead of going down in submarines – they sent a robotic vehicle - and
George could watch the dive on a video feed from the safety of the ships
cabin.
Yes, it’s a very, very humbling experience, for me to be able to see this. The railing
is just like the railing I had a hold of when I let go. I feel right now just very thankful
and humble.
When the Leopoldville sank, Bigelow was thrown into the cold waters off of
Normandy. He was one of the lucky ones – he was rescued and taken to a
French hospital.
They put me in bed, and it’s funny the things you remember, because this nicelooking red-headed nurse, she took her hand, and brushed my hair back, just like
that, just like my mother did when I was real young. It was the most peaceful feeling
and it put me to sleep just like that
Summing it up:
Hendrix: The decades are sliding by, and we have fewer and fewer
eyewitnesses. And soon, the only eyewitnesses we'll have are these wrecks, and
they will still tell us their stories.
The D-Day expedition is providing new evidence of the scale and difficulties of
the Normandy Invasion. As well as helping to clarify the historical record.
By the time the Allies stop landing on the beaches in Normandy – months
longer than ever planned – millions of men and vital equipment had crossed
here and joined the battle to liberate Europe.
For the last 70 years, the cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach – has been the
most powerful memorial to the incredible battle here – and the high cost of
freedom.
Today the D-Day Expedition is providing another way to see and to honor this
sacrifice.
Lewis: I would make the argument for Americans there is a cemetery that’s
underwater also that Americans should be knowledgeable of that
Hendrix: The hidden battlefield of the ships and the tanks and the things that are
scattered on the bottom is a cemetery in and of itself. There are literally hundreds
of sailors and soldiers -- that have their final rest in the waters that lie beneath. And
this is one of our most sacred charges.
The sonar data collected on the expedition can now be used to reveal this
place that is, for so many, hallowed ground.
Hendrix: It's important that we maintain them, that we respect them, but that we also
have this opportunity to examine them for the story that they still have to tell to us.
Perhaps the importance of the Normandy invasion is best summed up by a
story about General Eisenhower, who asked to be reinstated in the Army after
serving as President of the United States.
Hendrix: Why? Because in Eisenhower's own words, 500 years from now, no one
will remember that I was president of United States, but they will always remember
that I commanded the troops at Normandy. And when Eisenhower was carried to
his grave in Abilene, Kansas in 1969, he went in an $80 soldier's coffin, wearing a
military uniform with only three ribbons, the ribbons he earned at Normandy.