D-Day 75th Anniversary

I quite enjoyed telling my 6 year old son about D-Day before school this morning after watching the news and a few youtube videos. He seemed to grasp what a big deal it was and why the veterans were upset telling their stories.

He was also at football training yesterday and everyone stopped to watch the planes fly over in formation to Dunkirk over Southend.
 
The success of the landings was due to:

1) misleading the germans about where the landings were to be with a brilliant deception campaign
2) massive air power mostly due to american industrial might

The Germans had there best formations near calais I believe, the main beachheads at normandy were defended by weak formations.

Without the sacrifice of the soldiers on the beachheads though none of this would have happened. Amazing men.
 
excellent speech by May at the new - I think - memorial site, on r4 this morning too.
https://youtu.be/46gnfqgQgJA?t=2065

[more appropriately dressed than green overcoat of yesterday ...... I think queen+her need to distinguish themselves from attending Ascott
..... sorry - but can't imagine Boris delivering such a speech ]
 
Whoever wrote Trump's D-Day speech knows how to turn the waterworks on. Amazing men.

Somehow I've never watched Band of Brothers before but I started watching it last night so I'm looking forward to watching more tonight.
 
My Grandad broke his back after his ship got blown to pieces along with some of his shipmates. He's been in a leg brace since the war and is still fighting fit at 94. He was unable to exercise like we do these days yet has never been ill or got overweight at all. Puts me to shame with my 16 stone mess of a body. He is a total legend to me but as with most of the vets they never do tell much about the experience and I don't blame them. Must have been horrific.
 
Liquid_Entity said:
My Grandad broke his back after his ship got blown to pieces along with some of his shipmates. He's been in a leg brace since the war and is still fighting fit at 94. He was unable to exercise like we do these days yet has never been ill or got overweight at all. Puts me to shame with my 16 stone mess of a body. He is a total legend to me but as with most of the vets they never do tell much about the experience and I don't blame them. Must have been horrific.
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Amazing. Why don't you use your Grandad as inspiration to get fit? If he could go through that I'm sure a bit of exercise is nothing.
 
I can't believe only 370 people are watching the youtube BBC feed. I guess most are watching on TV but I'd have thought there'd be more viewers online.
 
B&W said:
The success of the landings was due to:

1) misleading the germans about where the landings were to be with a brilliant deception campaign
2) massive air power mostly due to american industrial might

The Germans had there best formations near calais I believe, the main beachheads at normandy were defended by weak formations.

Without the sacrifice of the soldiers on the beachheads though none of this would have happened. Amazing men.
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You missed out luck.

The window for invasion was really quite small, had the weather changed, it could have easily turned into a "Dunkirk MkII" rout.

And had the weather not cleared up for the day, then we would only have been able to maintain the secrecy for a short while. The germans would have been hard to beat had they known where and when we were coming.
 
Orionaut said:
You missed out luck.

The window for invasion was really quite small, had the weather changed, it could have easily turned into a "Dunkirk MkII" rout.

And had the weather not cleared up for the day, then we would only have been able to maintain the secrecy for a short while. The germans would have been hard to beat had they known where and when we were coming.
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But it was actually the British Met Office that advised the landings to be delayed by a day, due to weather, so not so much just luck, but good old British meteorological intelligence.
 
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I took these at the 2017 D-Day Commemorations outside the Cafe Gondree at Pegasus Bridge. I think the gentleman in photo #2 spoke at the Bayeux British War Cemetery service today.
 
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