Imperial War Museum 11 (H.39)
RAAF and RNZAF Participation
The part played by the Allied air forces in the build up to the Invasion was crucial. By day the RAF’s 2nd TAF, which had been formed in Norfolk on 1 June 1943 under Air Vice Marshall Basil Embry, and the US 8th and 9th Air Forces, blasted enemy targets in Northern France and Belgium. At night the ‘heavies’ of RAF Bomber Command added the weight of its bombs to marshalling yards and enemy positions. 2nd TAF and RAF Bomber Command consisted of all manner of foreign and Commonwealth personnel as well as British airmen. The part played by the far-flung dominions is often overlooked but their participation was significant. In May and early June Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) fighter and bomber squadrons were heavily involved in operations in support of Overlord. Tempests of 486 Squadron and Mosquito Intruders of 487 Squadron attacked the railway system of northern France. On D-Day 489 Squadron RNZAF Beaufighters patrolled along the invasion coast and in the week after the landings made 34 separate attacks on E-boats and R-boats.
On D-Day the Mosquitoes of 464 Squadron Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) attacked transport further east across the Seine. One Mosquito was brought down. Flight Lieutenant D. M. Shanks, navigator, survived and remained hidden until August. Australian piloted Typhoons of 121 and 247 Squadrons made ground attacks south of Caen amid heavy anti-aircraft fire. Three Australian Typhoons were shot down although one pilot, who had severe burns and a broken leg, evaded capture and reached the beachhead. After dusk on D-Day Mosquitoes of 488 Squadron RNZAF took over patrol duty and intercepted several Luftwaffe raids against the beachhead and claims for 20 bombers shot down in the first week were recorded. Lancasters of 75 Squadron RNZAF were among those who bombed Ouistreham on 5/6 June and who participated in other raids in the Normandy area on four of the six succeeding nights. In the attack on coastal batteries on 5/6 June RAAF Lancasters flew 67 sorties, the majority of them against German gun emplacements at Pointe-du-Hoc.
As late as June 1944, 11,000 RAAF officers and men were serving with the RAF or the ten RAAF squadrons. Australia also provided 168 of the 1,136 aircraft committed by Bomber Command, almost 15 per cent of the total. RAAF pilots flew six Lancasters of 617 Dambusters Squadron in a deception operation on 5/6 June and five more flew Stirlings of 199 Squadron in their deception operation. Just after midnight RAAF officers piloted 41 transports of the ten squadrons of 38 Group for the drop of the British 6th Airborne Division, the RAAF providing about one in seven of the pilots. In the week following D-Day 460 Squadron RAAF flew on five of the seven nights and flew 107 sorties. Each of the three other RAAF bomber squadrons operated on four nights.
Shipping off Lee-on-Solent looking towards the Isle of Wight on 5 June. In the foreground is the tug anchorage, the large vessel to the right is their depot ship Aorangi, a converted Canadian Australasian liner. Just discernible in the middle distance are tank landing ships and the minelayer turned LSE (Emergency Repair) ship HMS Adventure, and the cruiser HMS Despatch, a HQ base and AA defence ship (in the centre) with (top left) LSI(S) Prinses Astrid and LSI(H) Maid of Orleans. In the background are some of the roadway sections waiting to be towed to the Mulberry harbours.
Imperial War Museum 11 (A23720A)
Flying Officer Kazik Budzik KW VM
Spitfire IX pilot, 317 ‘City of Wilno’ (Polish) Squadron, which flew four separate patrols over the invasion beaches.
‘We must have been amongst the first fighter aircraft over the beachhead as dawn was just breaking upon our arrival. The invasion armada was enormous. Most of the landing craft were still heading towards the beaches. It really was quite a spectacle. There was flak everywhere though, mostly from the fleet, and that was quite frightening. Watching the start of Europe’s liberation was a fantastic experience, particularly the naval bombardment. You could see the guns fire and the shells landing on the coastline, getting further inland the more our troops advanced. It was amazing.’
Manfred Rommel, 15
about to celebrate his mother’s 50th birthday on 6 June.
‘Father had arrived from France on 4 June and we were planning a simple family lunch for my mother’s birthday. Speidel [Generalmajor Hans Speidel, Chief of Staff of the 7th Army in Normandy] kept saying he was not sure the landings had taken place and father should continue with his intention of speaking to Hitler about the strategy of repelling the invasion. My father disagreed with the other generals over this. He favoured a confrontation on the landing beaches while General Feldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt wanted the panzer divisions to be kept back to the north of Paris. Father was very calm and cautious, as always. He agreed Speidel should call back in an hour but he began packing immediately. When the call came, Speidel told him the landing had happened. The Navy had told my father before he left France that no landing would be possible because the seas were too stormy. It had not been an easy decision for my father to return to Germany but he had believed the Navy. Now he was getting reports of Allied landings from all parts of the coast. He was calm but he was not happy that he had been at home when it all happened. He left immediately for the 500-mile journey back to Normandy to lead the men who had long expected the invasion, yet had been caught by surprize just the same. Mother took it completely in her stride. I talked to my father a lot about how the invasion happened. For a long time, everyone thought the Allies would land in the Pas-de-Calais because it was the nearest point to the English coast, only 25 miles away. On the other hand, the German fortifications were strongest there, so Normandy began to be considered the likeliest.
‘One thing everyone believed was that the Allies would first have to capture and hold a harbour. But, of course, they brought over their own mobile Mulberry harbour – a masterstroke by Churchill, which no one could ever have imagined.
‘My father was tremendously impressed with the organization and the imagination involved. It was a glorious battle for the Allies and, as a soldier, he admired them greatly. Father knew from North Africa that the British were good soldiers. But, as he said, Normandy showed him they were even better than he had presumed. He knew by then that Germany could not win the war. He had often discussed it with me. He said anyone with common sense could see that the only solution on the Western Front was to achieve a position in which to make peace. He would say: “Even if you have to give in, as long as you are strong, you can achieve peace.”’
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had travelled back from the Normandy front to be with them and to give his wife a pair of grey shoes. At 7 am Generalmajor Hans Speidel, Chief of Staff of the 7th Army in Normandy, told them the long-feared invasion had started.
‘So it’s started then!’
Adolf Hitler’s unconcerned response after lunch on D-Day when the Fuhrer finally appeared and was told of the ‘invasion’.
Hitler held his first meeting about the landings at 14:00. It was not until nearly 17:00 that he finally gave permission to move just two armoured divisions and the counter-attack could not be mounted until the morning of 7 June, by which time the bridgehead was 30 hours old and it was too late. Hitler, and many of his generals, believed that Normandy was simply a diversion for a larger attack on Calais, a view he clung to until August 1944.
D – Day Fact File
More than 130,000 men are landed from the sea and over 20,000 men from the air in the first 24 hours. Americans suffer over 6,000 casualties. Casualties in British 2nd Armoured amount to 4,000 from a force of 82,000.
The end of D-Day establishes almost 155,000 Allied troops across nearly 80 square miles of France: 55,000 Americans are ashore, plus 15,500 who