Normandy from a different angle

War History Online has an article about Normandy, as seen from above:

Ten years or so ago I was lucky enough to fly along the invasion beaches at eight hundred feet in a C-47. If you ever get the chance to do so, grab it with both hands.

Below is a bird's eye view of the five Normandy beaches:

On Sword, 21 of 25 DD tanks of the first wave made it safely ashore to provide cover for the infantry, who began disembarking at 0730.The beach was heavily mined and peppered with obstacles, making the work of the beach-clearing teams difficult and dangerous. In the windy conditions, the tide came in more quickly than expected, so moving the armor was difficult. The beach quickly became congested. Brigadier Simon Fraser, the 15th Lord Lovat, and his 1st Special Service Brigade arrived in the second wave, piped ashore by Private Bill Millin, Lovat’s personal piper:

Members of No. 4 Commando moved through Ouistreham to attack from the rear a German gun battery on the shore. A concrete observation and control tower at this emplacement had to be bypassed and was not captured until several days later. French forces under Commander Philippe Kieffer (the first French soldiers to arrive in Normandy) attacked and cleared the heavily fortified strongpoint at the casino at Riva Bella, with the aid of one of the DD tanks.
The ‘Morris’ strongpoint near Colleville-sur-Mer was captured after about an hour of fighting. The nearby ‘Hillman’ strongpoint, headquarters of the German 736th Infantry Regiment, was a large complex defensive work that had come through the morning’s bombardment essentially undamaged. It was not captured until 2015. The 2nd Battalion, King’s Shropshire Light Infantry began advancing to Caen on foot, coming within a few kilometers of the town, but had to withdraw due to lack of armor support. At 1600, the German 21st Panzer Division mounted a counter-attack between Sword and Juno and nearly succeeded in reaching the Channel. It met stiff resistance from the British 3rd Division and was soon recalled to assist in the area between Caen and Bayeux. Estimates of Allied casualties on Sword are as high as a thousand.

The landing at Juno was delayed because of choppy seas, and the men arrived ahead of their supporting armor, suffering many casualties while disembarking. Most of the offshore bombardment had missed the German defenses. Several exits from the beach were created, but not without difficulty. At Mike Beach on the western flank, a large crater was filled using an abandoned AVRE tank and several rolls of fascine, which were then covered by a temporary bridge. The tank remained in place until 1972, when it was removed and restored by members of the Royal Engineers.  The beach and nearby streets were clogged with traffic for most of the day, making it difficult to move inland.
Major German strong points with 75mm guns, machine-gun nests, concrete fortifications, barbed wire, and mines were located at Courseulles-sur-Mer, St. Aubin-sur-Mer, and Bernières-sur-Mer. The towns themselves also had to be cleared in house-to-house fighting.
Soldiers on their way to Bény-sur-Mer, three miles inland, discovered that the road was well- covered by machine gun emplacements that had to be outflanked before the advance could proceed. Elements of the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade advanced to within sight of the Carpiquet airfield late in the afternoon, but by this time their supporting armor was low on ammunition, so the Canadians dug in for the night. The airfield was not captured until a month later as the area became the scene of fierce fighting. By nightfall, the contiguous Juno and Gold beachheads covered an area twelve miles wide and seven miles deep.Casualties at Juno were nearly a thousand men.

At Gold, high winds made conditions difficult for the landing craft, and the amphibious DD tanks were released close to shore or directly on the beach instead of further out as planned. Three of the four guns in a large emplacement at the Longues-sur-Mer battery were disabled by direct hits from the cruisers Ajax and Argonaut at 0620. The fourth gun resumed firing intermittently in the afternoon; its garrison surrendered on 7 June.
Aerial attacks had failed to hit the Le Hamel strongpoint, which had its embrasure facing east to provide enfilade fire along the beach and had a thick concrete wall on the seaward side.  Its 75 mm gun continued to do damage until 1600, when a modified Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers (AVRE) tank fired a large petard charge into its rear entrance. A second casemated emplacement at La Rivière containing an 88 mm gun was neutralized by a tank at 0730.
Meanwhile, infantry began clearing the heavily fortified houses along the shore and advanced on targets further inland. No. 47 Royal Marine Commando moved toward the small port at Port-en-Bessin and captured it the following day in the Battle of Port-en-Bessin. Company Sergeant Major Stanley Hollis received the only Victoria Cross awarded on D-Day for his actions while attacking two pillboxes at the Mont Fleury high point. On the western flank, the 1st Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment captured Arromanches (future site of Mulberry “B”), and contact was made on the eastern flank with the Canadian forces at Juno. Bayeux was not captured the first day due to stiff resistance from the German 352nd Infantry Division. Allied casualties at Gold are estimated at a thousand.

Omaha, the most heavily-defended beach, was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division and the 29th Infantry Division. They faced the German 352nd Infantry Division rather than the expected single regiment. Strong currents forced many landing craft east of their intended position or caused them to be delayed. For fear of hitting the landing craft, American bombers delayed releasing their loads and, as a result, most of the beach obstacles at Omaha remained undamaged when the men came ashore.
Many of the landing craft ran aground on sandbars and the men had to wade fifty to a hundred yards in water up to their necks while under fire to get to the beach. In spite of the rough seas, DD tanks of two companies of the 741st Tank Battalion were dropped five thousand yards from shore, and 27 of the 32 flooded and sank, with the loss of 33 crew. Some tanks, disabled on the beach, continued to provide covering fire until their ammunition ran out or they were swamped by the rising tide.
Casualties were around two thousand, as the men were subjected to fire from the cliffs above. Problems clearing the beach of obstructions led to the beachmaster calling a halt to further landings of vehicles at 0830. A group of destroyers arrived around this time to provide fire support so landings could resume. Exit from the beach was possible only via five heavily defended gullies, and by late morning barely six hundred men had reached the higher ground. By noon, as the artillery fire took its toll and the Germans started to run out of ammunition, the Americans were able to clear some lanes on the beaches. They also started clearing the gullies of enemy defenses so that vehicles could move off the beach. The tenuous beachhead was expanded over the following days, and the D-Day objectives for Omaha were accomplished by D+3.

Utah was in the area defended by two battalions of the German 919th Grenadier Regiment. Members of the 8th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division were the first to land, arriving at 0630. Their landing craft were pushed to the south by strong currents, and they found themselves about two thousand yards from their intended landing zone. This site turned out to be better, as there was only one strongpoint nearby rather than two, and bombers of IX Bomber Command had bombed the defenses from lower than their prescribed altitude, inflicting considerable damage. In addition, the strong currents had washed ashore many of the underwater obstacles. The assistant commander of the 4th Infantry Division, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the first senior officer ashore, made the decision to “start the war from right here”, and ordered further landings to be re-routed.
The initial assault battalions were quickly followed by 28 DD tanks and several waves of engineer and demolition teams to remove beach obstacles and clear the area directly behind the beach of obstacles and mines. Gaps were blown in the sea wall to allow quicker access for troops and tanks. Combat teams began to exit the beach at around 0900, with some infantry wading through the flooded fields rather than traveling on the single road. They skirmished throughout the day with elements of the German 919th Grenadier Regiment, who were armed with antitank guns and rifles. The strongpoint in the area and another thirteen hundred yards to the south were disabled by noon. The 4th Infantry Division did not meet all of their D-Day objectives at Utah, partly because they had arrived too far to the south, but they landed 21,000 troops at the cost of only 197 casualties 

Images from Google Earth & Wiki

Rico says it was, truly, the longest day...