The Overlord Embroidery, echoing the Bayeux Tapestry created 900 years before to commemorate the reverse invasion of England from Normandy, is a narrative embroidery that depicts the story of the D-Day Landings of 6 June 1944 and the subsequent Battle of Normandy. The story is told across 34 hand stitched panels running in total to 83 metres in length. The embroidery was created between 1968 and 1974, and is now on permanent display at The D-Day Story, Southsea, Portsmouth.
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of France and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front.
A beachhead is a temporary line created when a military unit reaches a landing beach by sea and begins to defend the area as other reinforcements arrive. Once a large enough unit is assembled, the invading force can begin advancing inland. The term is sometimes used interchangeably with bridgehead and lodgement. Beachheads were important in many military actions; examples include operations such as Operation Neptune during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
Mulberry harbours were temporary portable harbours developed by the United Kingdom during the Second World War to facilitate the rapid offloading of cargo onto beaches during the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. After the Allies successfully held beachheads following D-Day, two prefabricated harbours were taken in sections across the English Channel from the UK with the invading army and assembled off Omaha Beach and Gold Beach.
Arromanches-les-Bains is a commune in the Calvados department in the Normandy region of north-western France.
The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial is a World War II cemetery and memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France, that honors American troops who died in Europe during World War II. It is located on the site of the former temporary battlefield cemetery of Saint Laurent, covers 172.5 acres and contains 9,388 burials.
Hobart's Funnies is the nickname given to a number of specialist armoured fighting vehicles derived from tanks operated during the Second World War by units of the 79th Armoured Division of the British Army or by specialists from the Royal Engineers.
The landing craft, vehicle, personnel (LCVP) or Higgins boat was a landing craft used extensively by the Allied forces in amphibious landings in World War II. Typically constructed from plywood, this shallow-draft, barge-like boat could ferry a roughly platoon-sized complement of 36 men to shore at 9 knots (17 km/h). Men generally entered the boat by climbing down a cargo net hung from the side of their troop transport; they exited by charging down the boat's lowered bow ramp.
The D-Day Story is a visitor attraction located in Southsea, Portsmouth in Hampshire, England. It tells the story of Operation Overlord during the Normandy D-Day landings. Originally opened as the D-Day Museum in 1984 by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, it reopened as the D-Day Story, following a refurbishment funded by a £5 million Heritage Lottery grant, in March 2018. The museum building was designed by the then city architect Ken Norrish.
The 79th Armoured Division was a specialist armoured division of the British Army created during the Second World War. The division was created as part of the preparations for the Normandy invasion on 6 June 1944, D-Day.
Operation Ironside was a Second World War military deception undertaken by the Allies in 1944. It formed part of Operation Bodyguard, a broad strategic deception plan instigated by the Allies throughout the year to help cover the June 1944 invasion of Normandy. Ironside supported the overall deception by suggesting to the Germans that the Allies would subsequently land along the Bay of Biscay. It complemented efforts to deceive the Germans into believing that the Allies would also land in southern France at this time. Bordeaux was an important port for the German war effort and had already been a target of commando raids two years earlier. Ironside intended to play on German fears of an invasion in the region, with the aim of tying down defensive forces following Operation Overlord in June 1944.
Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Normandy landings. A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, and more than two million Allied troops were in France by the end of August.
The National D-Day Memorial is a war memorial located in Bedford, Virginia. It serves as the national memorial for American D-Day veterans. However, its scope is international in that it states, "In Tribute to the valor, fidelity and sacrifice of Allied Forces on D-Day, June 6, 1944" and commends all Allied Armed Forces during the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France on June 6, 1944, during World War II.
Taxis to Hell – and Back – Into the Jaws of Death is a photograph taken on June 6, 1944, by Robert F. Sargent, a chief photographer's mate in the United States Coast Guard. It depicts soldiers of the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division disembarking from an LCVP from the U.S. Coast Guard-crewed USS Samuel Chase at Omaha Beach during the Normandy Landings in World War II.
The RAF raid on La Caine (1944) was an attack in Normandy by the Second Tactical Air Force of the Royal Air Force (RAF) on 10 June 1944. The attack was made on the château at La Caine, about 12 mi (19 km) to the south-west of the city of Caen, north of Thury-Harcourt. The château had recently been occupied by the HQ of Panzergruppe West, the command organisation for the German Panzer divisions in France and Belgium.
The U.S. Army Transportation Museum is a United States Army museum of vehicles and other transportation-related equipment and memorabilia. It is located on the grounds of Fort Eustis, Virginia, in Newport News, on the Virginia Peninsula.
Operation Astonia was the codename for an Allied attack on the German-held Channel port of Le Havre in France, during the Second World War. The city had been declared a Festung (fortress) by Hitler, to be held to the last man. Fought from 10 to 12 September 1944, the Allied objective was to secure the harbour facilities intact, to deliver supplies to the Allied armies in Continental Europe. The Allies refused to let the civilian population be evacuated, despite offers of free passage by the fortress commander.
The Airborne Museum is a French museum dedicated to the memory of paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions of the United States Army who parachuted into Normandy on the night of June 5–6, 1944. The museum is located in Sainte-Mère-Église.
Liberation Route Europe is an international remembrance trail that connects the main regions along the advance of the Western Allied Forces toward the liberation of Europe and final stage of the Second World War. The route started in 2008 as a Dutch regional initiative in the Arnhem-Nijmegen area and then developed into a transnational route that was officially inaugurated in Arromanches on June 6, 2014, during the Normandy D-day commemorations. The route goes from Southern England through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands to Berlin in Germany, then extends to the Czech Republic and Poland. The southern route starts in Italy. As a form of remembrance tourism, LRE aims to unfold these Allied offensives of 1944 and 1945 in one narrative combining the different perspectives and points of view. By combining locations with personal stories of people who fought and suffered there, it gives visitors the opportunity to follow the Allied march and visit significant sites from war cemeteries to museums and monuments but also events and commemorations. In April 2019, Liberation Route Europe became a certified Cultural Route of the Council of Europe.
Josef Fränkel was a Jewish engineer who, during the course of World War II, survived the Gross-Rosen concentration camp and went on to be a key figure in reestablishing the Jewish community in Darmstadt.
