Warsaw, Occupied Poland · August 1, 1944 When British soldiers landed on Normandy’s Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches on June 6, 1944, they came upon Germany’s Leichter Ladungstraeger (“light charge carrier”) named Goliath, a tank-tread robot approximately 4 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 1 foot tall that carried 170–220 lb of high explosives. Known as the beetle tank to…
London, England · July 22, 1940 On this date in 1940 the British government created the Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization. For security purposes the SOE was concealed behind the name “Inter-Service Research Bureau.” (At the time the SOE was variously referred to as “the Baker Street Irregulars,” “Churchill’s Secret Army,” or the “Ministry of…
Cherbourg, France · June 26, 1944 On June 19–21, 1944, a violent gale hit the two huge Mulberry artificial harbors that the Allies had built in England, towed across the English Channel under danger of wind, weather, and enemy air attack, and planted off the Normandy invasion beaches on D‑Day-plus eight (June 14). The prefabricated harbors…
Mont Mouchet, South-Central France · June 20, 1944 During the Allied invasion of France (Operation Overlord), the Maquis and other French resistance groups played a role in delaying the arrival of German reinforcements to the Normandy beachhead as well as in the eventual Allied victory in France. The FFI (Forces Françaises de l’Interieur for “French…
Mariana Islands, Central Pacific · June 19, 1944 On this date in 1944 a huge gale hit the two gigantic artificial harbors known as Mulberry harbors that the British had built in England, floated across the English Channel, and deposited on Normandy’s beaches several days after the Allies’ June 6 invasion. The gale inflicted losses greater…
Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy • June 8, 1944 On this date in 1944, two days after the D-Day landings, a small piece of Normandy, France, became the site of the first American military cemetery to be established in Europe during World War II. On that first day the makeshift graveyard near the village of Colleville-sur-Mer was lined…
Normandy, Liberated France · June 6, 1944 It was a cloudy D-Day. Already Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe had surrendered air supremacy over the English Channel, when 71 years ago on this date in 1944 in Normandy, France, the U.S. First Army under Gen. Omar Bradley assaulted Utah and Omaha beaches, while to the east British and…
Sainte-Mère-Église, Liberated France · June 5, 1944 On this date in 1944 the people of Sainte-Mère-Église on the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy, France, retired to their beds on the eve of the largest air- and seaborne invasion in history—Operation Overlord. As early as 1942, U.S. military planners had been eying this crossroads town. If the…
London, England · June 4, 1944 Tomorrow, June 5, 1944, a Monday, was to have been the big day, the Allied invasion of a 50-mile stretch of German-occupied beach on the French Normandy coast. The invasion, codenamed Operation Overlord, had been pushed from May, when the weather had been perfect, to June to allow another…
RAF Aldermaston and Ramsbury Airfields, England · June 3, 1944 On this date in 1944 in Aldermaston, England, men of the 434th Troop Carrier Group and the 101st Airborne Division began moving 52 CG‑4A gliders and C‑47 Skytrain tow planes onto the airfield to lead the glider phase of Operation Overlord, the invasion of Nazi-occupied France….
