Operation Overlord: D-Day, Utah Beach is the first Battle in the Allied Campaign.
Briefing[]
Preface[]
By the Spring of 1944, Allied forces had been rehearsing a full-scale invasion of German-occupied Western Europe for over a year. Operation Overlord was set to begin in May 1944, but due to unfavorable weather conditions and an insufficient number of transport vehicles, the attack had to be postponed. The invasion began on 6th June, with an airborne assault of over 1200 airplanes and the subsequent landing of 5000 land vehicles and 160,000 troops. The initial objective was the securing of beachheads along the Normandy coastline on the Cotentin Peninsula, the location of important port facilities at Cherbourg. The beach code-named Utah was the Westernmost landing zone, the location of a pyrrhic Allied victory. Although the Allied forces failed to reach these goals as planned due to a fierce German resistance, they secured a tenuous foothold that they later expanded, capturing Cherbourg and the Caen in July.