Re: GROUP BUILD "OPERATION OVERLORD" H-HOUR 5 DAYS
No it's not your accent just my thick head.
Here you go:
June 4 Advance seaborn units begin to deploy to their assembly stations for the trip across to Normandy. The weather continues to deteriorate with heavy winds and a five-foot swell at sea. At Eisenhower's Headquarters the weather briefing is dismal. The timing of the invasion is very much in jeopardy. 0415 - Eisenhower orders a 24 hour 'hold'. The ships are recalled to port and the troops sweat it out in the holds.
June 5 In the Italian Campaign, Mark Clarks's Fifth Army enters Rome.
The weather being so miserable, the Germans pull in the small boats normally used to scout the channel. Dismissing any chance of a landing in the next few days, Rommel is on a long delayed visit to Germany and has stopped in Stuttgart -- it's his wife's birthday. The German higher headquarters begins a staff planning exercise with many commanders at the German 7th Army having already left for Brittany to participate in the exercise designed, ironically, to simulate an Allied landing in Normandy.
0330 There is a clear 'window' approaching from the west according to Ike's forecasters. The cross-channel weather will be rough, but minimally acceptable. Eisenhower says, "OK, let's go." H-Hour at Omaha is fixed at 0630, June 6th. The invasion armada begins to deploy. It's the greatest fleet ever assembled -- 2,727 ships and 2,606 other, smaller craft, 5,333 in all.
Later that day Eisenhower travels to an air base at Newbury to bid farewell to the members of the 101st Airborne Division before their C-47s and gliders carry them off to battle.
2100 Paratroop units from the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne and the British 6th begin to take off from fields all over southern England. Thousands of transport planes and gliders carry the troops who will be the first to land in France.
2330 The streams of Allied planes carrying the Airborne pass over parts of the convoys heading for Normandy. Some of the formations are so large, "they seem to go on forever" , the lines of planes stretching from horizon to horizon. Looking down, the pilots see the channel covered in ships.
June 6, 0100 The invasion begins. Glider and paratroop units begin landing behind the German beach defenses. Because of the darkness and the German AA fire, many units are dropped far off the intended drop zones. Most are scattered and disorganized at first, but take up the fight wherever they land. British 6th Airborne Division dropped northeast of Caen, near the mouth of the Orne River, where it anchored the British eastern flank by securing bridges over the river and the Caen Canal. On the other side of the invasion area, the U.S. 101st and 82d Airborne Divisions dropped near Ste. Mere-Eglise and Carentan to secure road junctions and beach exits. At 0130 the German Seventh Army received word from that landings from the air were under way from Caen to the northern Cotentin.
