1/21/2024 0 Comments Allied naval armada on d day![]() ![]() There were more than 2,000 casualties there on the first two days and in a way it was miraculous that more people weren't killed when you think of the bombing and the shelling which carried on for days afterwards. That was wishful thinking on the part of the British. There was an assumption, I think, that Caen must have been evacuated beforehand. The British bombing of Caen beginning on D-Day in particular was stupid, counter-productive and above all very close to a war crime. According to Antony Beevor in his book D-Day, The first two strikes on Caen resulted in numerous casualties to French civilians. ![]() US General Omar Bradley remarked after the war that We went into France almost totally untrained in air-ground cooperation." In the early stages of the Normandy campaign, this often resulted from insufficient communication between air and land forces, which had to get used to working together. Sometimes friendly troops were victims of misplaced bomb strikes. Īllied heavy bomber missions caused serious problems for both Allied ground forces and French civilians, during the early stages of the campaign. ![]() ![]() As a result, the city incurred heavy damage but German defenses went largely unscathed. The pilots however negated most of the effect by releasing their loads well back from the forward line to avoid hitting their own troops. Four hundred and fifty heavy aircraft participated, dropping 2,500 tons of bombs. On 9 July 1944, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery demanded a massive air assault against Caen in hopes of clearing the way for an attack the following morning. German troops were mostly located outside these areas. However, very few Germans occupied these municipalities. The Bombing of Normandy during the Normandy invasion was meant to destroy the German communication lines in the Norman cities and towns. Aerial view after the bombardment in Vire, Normandy, 1944 ![]()
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