Omaha Beach Normandy
The operation began on June 6, 1944.
better known as D-Day with the Normandy landings. An air attack with 1,200 aircraft preceded an amphibious assault with more than 5,000 ships. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the Channel on June 6, and by the end of August more than two million Allied troops were in France.
The decision to launch a Channel crossing in 1944 was made at the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed commander of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force and General Bernard Montgomery was appointed commander of the 21st Army Group, which included all land forces involved in the invasion. The Normandy coast in the northwest
of France was elected
as the site of the invasion, with the Americans landing in the sectors code-named Utah and Omaha. The British at Sword and Gold and the Canadians at Juno. To meet the expected conditions at the Normandy bridgehead, special technology was developed. Including two artificial ports called Mulberry harbors and a series of specialized tanks nicknamed Hobart’s Funnies. In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted Operation Bodyguard, an extensive military deception operation that used electronic and visual misinformation to mislead the Germans about the date and location of the main Allied landings.
Adolf Hitler ordered Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to develop fortifications along the Atlantic Wall proclaimed by Hitler in anticipation of an invasion of France.
Omaha Beach was one of five beach landing sectors
designated for the amphibious assault of Operation Overlord during World War II. Omaha refers to an eight-kilometer stretch of Normandy coast. East of Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes to west of Vierville-sur-Mer on the right bank of the mouth of the Douve River. Landing here was necessary to connect the British landings to the east at Gold with the American landings to the west at Utah, creating a continuous settlement on the Norman coast of the Bay of Seine.
