Major Components Of Operation Overlord

It was a normal morning for the German soldiers on June 6, 1944, along the coastline of Normandy. They woke up and started their morning chores when all of a sudden bombs started dropping, as they looked out the window of their bunker they saw the largest naval invasion fleet in history sitting on their doorstep. D-Day is a day that turned the tide of the war. If the Allies failed, then they lost precious time, momentum, troops, and supplies. If the Allies were victorious, then Hitler’s Germany and the rest of the world would see the war drawing to a conclusion. The three major components of Operation Overlord, also known as D-Day, included the planning and preparation; the deception of Operation fortitude; and the events that happened on sea,
Operation Fortitude was the main operation for making sure the Germans thought that the Allies were going to land anywhere except for the Normandy coast (Edwards 24). To do this the Allies had to have several factors all working together at once. One of these factors was the use of double agents and spies. The Allies used double agents or agents that claimed to be employed by the Germans, but were actually employed by the Allies to give the Germans false information. The next thing the Allies did was exploit the respect that the Germans had for American General George Patton. The Germans thought that any allied invasion would be led by him (“History”). So the Allies set up “First Army Group’s Headquarters” near Dover, England (Goldstein, Dillion, Wenger 6). To make the headquarters look and sound realistic the Allies supplied Patton with many inflatable tanks and made sure to give radio signals and movement commands to make the Germans think there would be a large invasion at Pas de Calais (“History”). The final factor the Allies used to confuse the Germans was the use of misinformation. For example, one day German Intelligence in Spain found the body of an Allied naval officer washed up on shore along with “official secrets” about where the invasion would take place (Edwards 24). The Allies also used many different ways to give misinformation, including sending many “secret decrypted messages.” Once
So Eisenhower went ahead and made the call for the invasion to be postponed to June 6 in hopes that the storm cleared. That decision ended up working in the favor of the Allies, because early in the morning of June 6 the Allies sent twenty-three thousand American and British paratroopers across the English Channel and dropped them in France (Zapotoczny). Although this did not go as planned and most of the men were either miles from where they should have dropped or were in small squads separated from the rest of their group in a very unfamiliar area (Edwards 33). However, these men knew what they had to do and no matter how small the group, they did some part of their job. For some groups, they cut telephone wires, captured or killed enemy messengers and soldiers and, in general, were a nuisance to the Germans. Meanwhile, other larger divisions were destroying bridges, taking down German defenses, or taking towns like the American 82d who captured the first town of D-Day at 4:30 in the morning (Goldstein, Dillion, Wenger 105).
A little later in the day, the naval invasion began with the Navies of the United States and Britain pounded the shoreline defenses of the Germans. The Navy's firepower was a key part of being able to take the beaches with as little casualties as the Allies took it with (Goldstein, Dillion, Wenger 87-88). Not only