Operation Overlord
 

better know as D-Day...68th anniversary of course it today. a tremendous undertaking, and a huge success for the allies. months in the planning, delayed a day because of weather. complete with staging training of a fake army, lead by the very real gen. patton..he initially was insulted when given his orders, but came to enjoy the job. and they did such a good one, they had hitler convinced the invasion would come thru calais, the closest point of land across the english channel. altho rommel insisted the atlantic wall was the true target, and pleaded for reinforcements, hitler ignored him and continued to send men and supplies to calais.


so...

who can name the five codenames for the beaches without looking it up?

Omaha
Utah
Juno
Gold
Sword

I still have my paperback copy of The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan published in 1959..And watched the movie several times...The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer...and other WWII books...
P.S. Cheated on the names, had to look up to find Sword, couldn't remember that one...

World War II aviator remembers 'do or die' on D-Day
 

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2...ls-ar-1968534/

we went back to the yorktown while in charleston memorial day weekend. went thru the medal of honor museum located on the ship, and i found a mistake-i have mentioned i'm a history nerd/geek/what have you, right? but it's a very important mistake, so emailed them..

:o

they had on the ww 1 timeline that we declared war on April 6, 1916. it stopped me dead in my tracks.

i'd like to go over there someday, and visit some of those places. patton's buried over there with some of his troops.

at any rate, the extensive planning and sheer logistical nightmare...i can't imagine how they ever managed to pull that all off, and keep the element of surprise. amazing!

Been to Charleston couple times...visited the waterfront but not the ship...

What you said in bold...always boggles the mind to think of all that...the element of surprse, remember a movie that was mostly about the methods used to throw the Germans off the track...some of that was covered in The Longest Day...

the story of how they had fake planes, fake army, tents set up, patton 'training' his 'troops'....the ingenuity was fantastic. when patton was first told was his new command was, he was angry (yeah, go figure-him angry!) but when they explained what they were doing, he not only signed on, he had a blast with it all.

history channel had a show called greatest blunders in history, or something along those lines. hitler's blunders were legendary. not listening to rommel, who said all along it was the atlantic wall (hitler said rommel was a defeatist) allowing the brits to evacuate at dunkirk when he had their backs to the wall, calling off the battle of britain and invading the soviet union, declaring war on us when japan attacked us...

i recommend ian kershaw's two volume set on hitler. it's just mind-boggling. 'hubris' and 'nemesis' are the titles.

as for charleston, been there several times now...lots of history to see. last time, went to both sumter and moultrie, saw the hunley (still in water while they try to get all the salt out), went to a museum downtown this last time, right acrossfrom the big visitors center...got to see a 7 barrel volley gun the brits had once issued to their navy91800's)-now that was something. they only ever made 600, as most of their sailors couldn't handle the thing. all 7 barrels fired at once! it'd break a shoulder-explains why they quickly fell out of use.