Watched the D DAY program last night (on again tonight) really interesting to watch! BUT what made me nearly fall of my sofa was when they said they had a practice on a British coastline to fine tune the soldiers! You'd think this was a good idea until they said that they wanted to make it as realistic as possible, so they asked the navy to bomb the practice beach with live rounds to tear it up a bit, then when the landing craft got up close and the soldiers were getting onto the beach they would set off smoke bombs! YES you guest it! Some silly bastard got it the wrong way around killing hundreds of them! You couldn't make it up could ya?
The best part of the D-Day invasion as all the spy stuff and double bluffing that went on before it. Making the Germans move all their main armour to the Pas de Calais, rather than keeping them in Normandy was very clever. But could've backfired massively. Especially, as the allies had got away with similar before Operation Mncemeat and the Invasion of Sicily. You talk about stupidity, but the Germans being too scared to wake Hitler up until after the invasion was the biggest.
God knows what would've happened if the invasion had failed... It was probably the moment when the war on the western front was decided. The Soviets had been pushing the Nazis back since Stalingrad, and the US had been winning ground in the Pacific since Midway. I know there was other conflicts afterward like Market Garden, but recapturing Normandy was the knife in the heart.
Talking of blunders. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-ignore-Sword-Beach-promotional-campaign.html
Yeah! i liked the idea of getting one of our top generals to be in charge of the tanks made of balloons a master stroke! It was so crazy it worked! The theory was where ever he was that's where the action was! For a couple of days he was in charge of balloons!
That's a disgrace. They still recognize Juno, Utah, Omaha and Gold, but not Sword? Something is not right there at all.
My Uncle told me the Yanks regularly used to bomb their own planes. They used to go on 1000 bomber daylight raids over Germany towards the end of the war and they used to stack the aircraft at different altitudes because of the sheer number of aircraft involved. If formations broke thewould end up directly under their own aircraft when they dropped their loads. I always thought him telling me that story ironic as he had the dubious distinction of being one of the few RAF bomber pilots to have dropped bombs on Bridlington!!!
Yanks? Friendly fire? Are you sure? That doesn't sound like them at all... That whole bomber thing is pretty bad. I'd be ****ting myself if I was in one of the bombers in the low altitudes not only at enemy aircraft, but also at the possibility a bomb going through the fuselage... All those men across all fronts were brave bastards. Respect.
They were barely men. Christ when I think what I was like at 19 or 20 and they were lining up to give their lives away.
If not for these wars I wonder how further advanced our civilisation might be... Amongst those 18/19/20 odd year olds, there's got to be a few genius minds died amongst them.
There were a lot of ****ups with the landings so if Hitler had been able to react quickly enough the Nazis could have made a much more effective defence, for example the defences at Omaha were not taken out by the bombings before the landings so the poor bastards who landed there were effectively made into WW1 style cannon fodder. Also the area around Normandy was dominated by hedgerows and the men weren't trained effectively to deal with this terrain once they got off the beaches. We got a foothold eventually but it could have easily been a disaster
Agreed, it's very short sighted considering most of them would've gone inland from Sword and fought in the battle for Caen. One of the bloodiest battles after the initial day. Just watching the re run of this programme. Quality.
I've often wondered that too. Soviets may have advanced right across Europe - creating pan-European vassal states including all of Germany, France, Benelux, etc. That would have put UK on the front line of the cold war.
If it hadn't been for the Dambuster raid,D-Day would've been a lot harder than it was. They took all the workers away from building the Normandy defences to repair the damaged Dams, they wasn't expecting the Allies to land there so didn't think it would need building up there. What channel is these programmes on please?
