Special Sub-Topic: D-Day: The Sea Armada Authored by: Ben41 Sub-topic of: D-Day

What was the code name for the naval phase of the invasion?

Neptune. The Roman god of the sea (Poseidon is the Greek equivalent). The famous female figure "Britannia", like Neptune, is always shown holding a trident to signify British sea power. "Husky" was the code name for the invasion of Sicily, and "Dragoon" was the code word for the invasion of southern France through the Mediterranean following the Normandy invasion.

Which of these British admirals commanded the invasion fleet?

Bertram H. Ramsey. Gen. Eisenhower liked and respected Admiral Ramsey, having previously worked closely with him in the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, Ramsey was killed in an air crash in 1945.

Approximately how many vessels, including landing craft carried on board other ships, made up the invasion fleet?

5,000. There has been some controversy as to the exact number of vessels in the invasion fleet. However, both Gordon Harrison in "Cross Channel Attack", which is the official U.S. Army military history, and Admiral Samuel Eliot Morrison in his naval history "Invasion of France and Germany" agree on the number 5,000. Stephen E. Ambrose in his book "D-Day" asserts that there were exactly 5,333 ships and craft of all types. He writes that there were 2,727 ships and landing craft which crossed the Channel under their own power and 2,606 Higgins boats and other craft too small to cross on their own.

According to the U.S. Navy, a "ship" was over a certain number of feet, and a "craft" was under that number of feet. What was that magic number?

200 feet. An LST (Landing Ship Tank) was 327 feet long, while the LCT (Landing Craft Tank) was only 110 feet long. All of the landing ships and landing craft were flat bottomed and hard to control in choppy and rough seas.

On the afternoon of June 5th, the allies suffered their first losses of the invasion when a minesweeper struck a mine and sunk with the loss of six men. What was the name of the ship?

USS Osprey. The minesweepers had a difficult and dangerous task, for the Channel had been heavily mined by the Germans. The minesweepers cleared one wide lane from the Isle of Wight to the assembly area and then swept ten lanes, two opposite each invasion beach, through the mine belt. Any ship can be a minesweeper once (until it hits a mine), but the trick is to detect and destroy the mines without hitting them.

The invasion fleet sailed from a number of ports in England and passed through an assembly area southeast of the Isle of Wight. What was the nickname of this area?

Piccadilly Circus. It was aptly named after London's famous hub where five major roads converge. It must have been a busy place.

There were three American battleships in the invasion fleet. Two of the American battleships were the USS Arkansas and the USS Texas. What was the name of the third U.S. battleship?

USS Nevada & Nevada. Initially struck by one torpedo and several bombs, the Nevada was the only battleship to get under way during the Pearl Harbor attack. She was struck again on her way out of the harbor and was run aground to avoid sinking in the channel and blocking it. She was refloated and repaired in 1942. After the war she was used in an A-bomb test at Bikini atoll. She survived and was decommissioned in 1946. Finally, she became a target ship and was sunk by naval gunfire and aerial torpedoes in 1948. During D-Day the Nevada bombarded Utah Beach while the Arkansas and Texas pounded Omaha.

There were also three British battleships. Which of the following was not one of the British battleships in the invasion fleet?

HMS Hood. The Hood was one of the ships pursuing the Bismarck and was sunk by one shell which exploded her magazine. Only three men survived.

Collectively, the six battleships were called what by the navy men?

The "old ladies". All of the battleships were old. The youngest of them was HMS Rodney which was commissioned in 1927. All of the others were commissioned between 1912 and 1917. However, these "old ladies" still had quite a kick with guns ranging from 12 to 16 inches. Some veterans of the landings claim that the vacuum created by battleship shells passing over actually lifted their Higgins boats out of the water. After pounding the beaches the ships shifted their fire to hit targets as much as fifteen miles inland. One nervous British airborne trooper, after hearing some of the huge shells pass overhead, is quoted as saying, "Blimey, ... they're firing jeeps."

Three German E-boats attacked the fleet and sunk one allied destroyer. What was the name of that destroyer?

Svenner. The Polish destroyer Slazak, HMS Middleton, and the Norwegian Svenner were providing cover for a flotilla of minesweepers. Three E-boats attacked with torpedoes. When the Svenner was hit amidship, she broke in two and sank in a "V". One of the E-boats was sunk by the battleship HMS Warspite, and the surviving two returned to their base at Le Havre. This was the only attack by the Kriegsmarine on D-Day.

One other allied destroyer was sunk by mines off of Utah Beach on D-Day. What was the name of that unfortunate ship?

USS Corry. The Corry went down with thirteen hands. Cornelius Ryan in "The Longest Day" tells an interesting, if somewhat macabre, tale of the Corry and her sister ship, the Herndon. Prior to D-Day there had been a great deal of kidding about who would make it back safely. As a joke, some members of the Corry's crew were giving ten to one odds against the return of the the Herndon. The Herndon's crew countered that the Corry would remain in port because of poor morale. The Herndon returned; the Corry did not.

Off either end of the British-Canadian invasion beaches two vessels, the X20 and the X23, were utilized as navigational markers to define the limits of the British assault zones. What type of vessels were they?

submarines. They were tiny midget subs. Each carried a crew of five with signaling devices to be activated upon surfacing before H-Hour(0630). These devices included an automatic radio beacon, a sonar transmitter, and a searchlight to be attached to a telescoping mast. The subs were in position on June 4th and surfaced in the morning darkness of the 5th to find that the invasion had been postponed. They spent another cramped day on the bottom before surfacing to perform their duties on the 6th.

Admiral A.G. Kirk, commander of the American task force, and Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley, the American ground commander, occupied what cruiser as their flagship?

USS Augusta. Four months before Pearl Harbor the Augusta carried President Roosevelt to his first meeting with Churchill in a bay off of Newfoundland. The Quincy and the Tuscaloosa were at Normandy during the invasion, but the Houston was in the Pacific.

The smell of what substance permeated the transports, the landing ships and the landing craft?

vomit. Although there was a break in the weather, the Channel was still rough. Most of the troops were seasick. Vomit coated the decks of the transports. It was worse on the LST's and other landing craft, especially in the Higgins boats where men and equipment were crammed together without room to move. Stephen Ambrose writes that Eisenhower smelled victory in the air, but to the troops aboard the transports and landing craft in the Channel the smell in the air was vomit. He quotes one green-faced GI as saying, "That s.o.b. Higgins--he ain't got nothing to be proud of, inventing this boat!"

The naval bombardment of the invasion beaches was planned to last how long?

1/2 hour. It was scheduled to begin at 0550 hours and last until 0620. H-Hour, the time the troops were to begin hitting the beaches, was set at 0630 hours. The bombardment actually began earlier. The Germans spotted the allied ships and began firing at about 0535, and the ships returned the fire. Although a number of factors entered into the decision for such a short bombardment, the primary reason was the desire to preserve the element of surprise. Allied planners feared that a longer shelling would give the Germans too much time to bring in reinforcements and prepare counterattacks. The results of the bombardment were somewhat disappointing. Most of the German gun emplacements survived the shelling, not because of inaccurate fire but because the emplacements were so well constructed. There were many direct hits on the casements, but even the huge naval shells failed to penetrate the thick steel-reinforced concrete.