rommel's naval advisor on d-day. he was in command of the naval forces. at one point in the conference, he said "on june 17, 1919, i was yo officer preparing to scuttle a german destroyer. 25 years later on the morning of the day plus one, june 7, 1944, i realized they had established a permanent beachhead and the war was definitely lost." so that is what happens on june 6. the war is now definitely lost for germany. but we have to make it so. because all of these germans are going to fight to the last round of ammunition. all of the germans whose family are being held hostage at home. the maniacal logic of the nazi regime, we are going to have to make this happen.

so that brings us to other decisions eisenhower makes. one that i can emphasize, don't have all the time in the world, but the landings at d-day. this is a sketch of the landing zones. they eventually come to look like this. by middle july, the germans successfully contain normative. there are two phases of normandy, one is getting ashore, the other is breaking out. by the summer, by mid july, it appeared the germans piecemeal -- piecemeal reinforcements by collecting all of the panzer reserves throughout france managed to plug holes in the allied bridgehead. the success of the entire enterprise depends upon breaking out and raking out immediately. one more month of reliable campaign to achieve our objectives, until we had to break out. decision number three, you

achieve a breakout. that in and of itself is an achievement. eisenhower is considered a strategist who lacked nuance. but whether the allied forces would move forward in the face of resistance in the area, it was something that came down to unspoken casualties, the chairman's casualties we are incurring. who is going to strike first? are the british going to strike first and draw a german armor into a counter attack or the americans? so we are sort of stalemated. finally eisenhower commits them to a breakout offensive. it does not matter the sector that was going to breakout, the idea was we were going to strike in two places. which ever, we would reinforce the idea. but we had to get two attacks. and off goes goodwood on july

18, 1944. montgomery goes first. and after a day and a half, the massive tank offensive, it is brought to a standstill. it is now bradley stern, july 20 it rains. he had another day to launch the offensive. on july 21, it rains. july 22, it rains. like 23rd, it rains. no offensive. as the 24th approaches, eisenhower has to ask montgomery for one more attack. do it again. montgomery's attitude is his turn. how does eisenhower get the attack? he goes to the british press in cooperation with churchill, stirring up stories about montgomery's caution, his refusal to attack the company exercises on the western front. he sacrifices montgomery's

reputation. finally on the 25th as the sun breaks, montgomery concedes. the american attack goes forward . supported by british resumption of offensive. and they get the combined offensive that they needed. that is a very critical point. in an allied command, this is expanding capital. i really think that you can -- i would say disappoint one side once. when you disappointed every side once, i think command is probably in great trouble. the breakout offensive is tremendous a successful, which brings us to another decision. this is number four. and it is this one. the battle of normandy is the battle for france -- [indiscernible] reverts the number to campaign

into the battle for france. and when their position falls apart, -- is in retreat for the german frontier. this corresponds w a recommendation -- you get carried away -- [laughter] >> this corresponds into a massive red army response, white russia -- a place like that, -- this corresponds with romania, finland suing for peace, successful landings in southern france and the german retreat of the rune river. the appearance that the entire german position, not just the german position in france, is going to collapse. put two armies under my command, american armies under my command. stop patton, i will drivethe nod

i will reach for lane and we will end the war by thanksgiving. this is an opportunity that will never come our way again. we can end the war i thanksgiving -- by thanksgiving." think of the proposal, if it is not end at thanksgiving, who is responsible for the millions of people who will die over the winter of 1944 and 1945? it i would give montgomery an opportunity to withdraw it. and montgomery refused it. my grandfather made a diary of the entry of the date he refused and he kept a similar diary entry and observed that date every year for the rest of his life. september 10, this is the day i asked montgomery to withdraw his idea. because of the mischief it was going to cause. finally, in substance to what is going on here --

in substance, montgomery's proposal is to put spearheads across the line and drive these spearheads to berlin. this takes the form of operation market garden. a three division, airborne division with a british court. they will race across thline and had to berlin. the suggestion here is the german army is dissolving. the german army has 220 divisions in the field. how do three divisions defeat 220 divisi■ons? the answer is the 220 divisions are trying to surrender. surrender is in progress. eisenhower says surrender is not in progress, we don't have an opportunity to win the war, we have an opportunity to assume position. so the inevitable counteroffensive will come

later. we can close the line. i think since -- it was a far more accurate appraisal of things because germans are not going for p.o.w. cages, they are going back to germany. they are reorganizing, mobilizing 600,000 troops in the fall. they intend to fight. but monger murray would not relieve eisenhower of the burden of that decision. finally eisenhower, on september 10th says you want to try it, do it. he orders montgomery to mount market garden, which of course proves the thesis that we are digging in for a long winter. decision number five is the command transfers eisenhower must make. montgomery will not spare reserves for the american battle that is raging in belgium unless montgomery is in charge of those reserves. so he has the past command that

she has to pass control. he has to disappoint bradley in december. and it is a great disappointment when bradley surrenders command to montgomery, and this is a dark chapter in allied command relations. but it is vitally necessary to weather the offensive of 1944, which we finally do. the final decision in 1945, which brings us to the world that we inhabit later, is this one. basically in the wake too close the wine along its lake -- but this one. the pursuit offensive into germany proper. in march and april of 1945. when we start to cross the rhine, montgomery resumes his agitation for berlin. and eisenhower as several people

in the conference noted, in april of 1945, we basically had an open front between our positions and berlin. the ninth army reached the river by april 9 with nothing between it and berlin. so why did we not press? i have given a lot of thought to this. it is an argument i make in my book that russell widely, a very esteemed historian, actually accepted, having fought otherwise for many years, eisenhower's mission to win the war in europe. that means defeating germany. what is happening in march and april 1945, what was not happening in august 1944, what is happening in 1945 is the germans are in fact surrendering, opening the border, inviting us to enter berlin. they are inviting us to enter blueback, enter vienna, enter

everywhere. they are proposing we start nato now. stop the russians. my grandfather's slogan during the vietnam war when he was asked about bombing policy, should we suspend the bombing to get negotiations? eisenhower's standard reply was does the enemy hate it? what do the germans want us to do? we will do the opposite until they understand we are not on their side. we intend to impose surrender on them. and so american forces declined the opportunity to go to berlin. american forces declined the opportunity to go to prague. until the germans finally come to his headquarters on may 6, 1945 to beg for 24 more hours and trying get people out of harm's way of the red army. eisenhower gives them 24 hours. then we will close the front and handle any german unit that

tries to surrender us to the red army. the mission of his forces fulfilled, two hours later, at 2:41 a.m. on the morning of may 7, 1945 when the germans realize the power, the force and determination of this ally, enemy in the west. and their determination to impose unconditional surrender on germany. so peace does come. the decisions have a great deal to do with the sort of shaping of the conflict. this is a hard and bitter peace. it is one that we grew up with. it is one that is announced by winston churchill when he goes to westminster in fulton, missouri. delivers a famous speech in 1946 in which he surveys the ruins of europe and what he calls the un-estimated sum of human pain and describes the iron curtain, which was descending on europe.

he affirms in this speech that the soviet union does not want war. ■wthey want the fruits of war without war. but thisre the western world to take an active stance to protect the freedoms of the countries we have liberated in 1944 and 1945. it means a hard and bitter peace. this was characterized by wars. we are on the verge of celebrating the 75th anniversary of korea, 60th anniversary of the beginning of the vietnam war. wars fought as a consequence of our cold war with the soviet union. also that accelerate the rise of asia and the ships in perspective underway by 1968, leading to nixon's pledge to end the war and win the peace. over time, we begin to realize the world has changed from the 1970's, early 1980's. we never really■ change our mins

about the great traumas we experienced when the war is fought, and they plague us still. the frustration in korea, the tragedy of vietnam and so forth. but there's an undertone here that is quite bright. in theate 1970's, ask yourself this question. say about vietnam, which is where we experienced a great defeat and setback. what is the true meaning of the vietnam war? that the united states failed its objectives in south vietnam leading to the communist nation and the loss of allies and so forth, doesn't mean the u.s. cannot act effectively in the world? does it call into question everything since 1945? or is it that the u.s. for 10 years wage they conflict in southeast asia that we thought might be lost at the outset.

8000 miles from our shores. fight that war to a stalemate which may have helped, and undertaking no other country could even conceive of doing. that tickles one of the aspects of the purely miraculous aspects of an operation where americans are going thousands of miles from home to defend others. what is the true meaning of vietnam. if you are in the country in the late 70's and the cold war is resuming over fear of nuclear weapons and so forth, you are asking yourself this question, whose side do i want to be on? several years pass, dark years, failure of arms negotiations, walkouts. in february of 1983, the principal new york times correspondent in washington writes a column. he said he's walking down connecticut avenue.

and he had a funny thought. the funny thought was i think we won the cold war, we don't know it. i think some people didn't know it. this was disclosed to the world in normandy by ronald reagan, 1984. in the first speech he gives, and i recommend anyone here, visit normandy the way you are visiting gettysburg. you go to a battlefield, go there. normandy has also seen symbolically as a beginning and an end. reagan's speech where he says here the rescue begins june 6, 1944. he then recesses to the normandy ceremony -- cemetery, and delivers an equally significant speech, in my opinion, where he re-dedicates ourselves to the cause of those who fell, the soldiers who came to normandy not as conquerors, but liberators. when the forces marched into

germany, they went not to pray on a brave and defeated people, but nurture the seeds of democracy among those who yearned to be free. today in their memory and all who fought there, we celebrate the triumph of freedom from a terrible war, we learn unity made in investable peace, it makes us secure. tempered and shaped by the realities of the postwar, it has succeeded. in europe, the threat has been contained. the piece has been kept. this land is secure. when we finally realized that land our true in europe became complete. there are some final chapters to write, we had perestroika, glasnost, a lot of changes underway in eastern europe.

we have revolutions of eastern europe, czechoslovakia, poland, hungary, romania. a significant milestone of the new soviet doctrine, not the brezhnev doctrine but the frank sinatra doctrine, meaning the soviets will now allow eastern europe to do it their way. the berlin wall comes down in 1990, the 100th anniversary of dwight eisenhower's birth, and a 1992 at the dawn of the 50th year that winston churchill spoke of, there is a dissolution of the ussr and the entity formed in response to norman invasi of 1917, sustained by the second german invasion in 1941, and after 50 years of reappraising their place in the worldgambling on the goodwill of the rest of the world after

such probation's. this amazes us still, because i don't think in reality that we grew up with, presence of the soviets and the prospect, however remote, of nuclear war. i think we can appreciate in hindsight that the strange alliance of 1941-1945 and subsequent tensions that could be stabilized over a period of however long it took, 50 years, that after a --tence e victor. now, that victor is some time ago. one thing about this conference is that weak knowledge that nothing is final, the war rolls on, and the battle of normandy is now history, the way that the battle of gettysburg is history, and so we study it. in fact we are living in a world

beyond the future of the postwar, but normandy, like gettysburg, will always be a significant place. it will have a special aura for the timeless quality it symbolizes which is ingenuity, bravery, dedication and courage, the qualities that we as free people have an qualities which we can summon when the times require it and when duty calls. [applause]

>> thank you. very nice presentation. i think the two words that you uttered, unconditional surrender, change the whole complex of the war. after the conference when they said that, the germans knew they were doomed, but that would've surrendered earlier, i do believe, after the assassination attempt on hitler's on july 20. the japanese would've never surrendered, but the italian did take the bait and they did surrender. so those change history, and also the domino effect from vietnam. we saw those in vietnam. thank you. the german war spirit, so to speak, is something that is a great puzzle. my wife and i really enjoyed watching a lot of foreign films,

we watched german films, french films, and a lot of these asked the question while we fought on, unconditional surrender. one of the things that stands out in washing these films, steeping everybody in crime, implicating them in the course of the regime, burning the bridges of the german people, so they can never contemplate surrender. this was done in a thorough and methodical way and i think it preordained a fight to the finish in germany. it was a fight to the finish until russian and american forces set foot on german soil. i it is because internal elements in germany realized that liberating forces were close enough they could now defy

nazi authority and get out from under it. until that point, herman's fought fanatically and the challenge we face in normandy was very daunting. japan, i don't know if they would've surrendered, that is a very good question. that is a war that i know much, much less about. there are a lot of projects at the universityf pennsylvania, i've had a number on the a-bomb and one of the interesting factors that turned up in several projects done on the a-bomb is japanese records that indicate july of 1945 in anticipation of an american invasion, the japanese air force of 8000 all designated, cozzi kamikaze were all prepared to greet the american landings.

there -- they each had a certain different level of intensity. we had to develop it, america was relatively safe in the 30's. remember, germany did not invade england, they were not going to be able to invade us, yet we developed a resolution, we saw the stakes, they were tangible, but we were able to connect those stakes to our future and therefore we are able to go abroad and accomplish the great work that we did. there is one right back there. >> you said the strange alliance

of 1941-45 and the hard and bitter peace of the cold war led to a final, eventual victory. how long would you say that victory lasted? basically, would you count only the 90's-2000 to september 8, 2001 as the period of victory? to, say, the russian invasion of ukraine and the resumption of conventional war in that victory? >> i would be really interested in susie's views on that. she has a lot of expert knowledge on that. my view is, this is through running speech projects and things like that, that the phase of this victory in with 9/11.

that faces what begins in 84 and 85. the thing about the reagan speeches, which are decisive in the 1984 election -- this is a good question for anyone doing speech analysis. they turn a close election into a cakewalk for reagan. i did the speeches have the impact that they do? because there is a message in these speeches which the american people receive and believe is credible, and endorse. that is that the cold war is in fact over. that is the message, and what happens starting in 85 and 86, remember the rededication of the statue of liberty in the summer of 86, history has ended? there is no longer any history, no longer any debate in theworls prevailed? this goes from 1984-2001.

of long pease. i think america realizes there are alternatives, there are people who have different ways and see us as antithetical to that. we can debate it. carol is tapping her watch, but i just want to say one more time how much it means to susie and me to be here at gettysburg, and i would say to associate ourselves with the normandy campaign that at one level or another we have associated ourselves with throughout our lives by virtue of living in this wonderful town. thank you. [applause] >> earlier today, president biden spoke in normandy, france, in commemoration of the 80th

anniversary of d-day, when allied troops liberated northern france from nazi occupation, marking a major turning point in world war ii. watch the president's remarks in full starting at a cut eastern on c-span, c-span now, or online at c-span.org. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, including midco. announcer:idco supports c-span as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy.

>> today, an unprecedented or model landed on the shores of normandy. >> these are the men who took the cliffs. these are the champions who helped create country. these are the heroes who helped end a war. >> 2 million suns jumped into like filled skies and met death on an even playing. >> the sons of democracy improvised and mounted their own attacks. at that exact moment, on these beaches, the forces of freedom turned the tide of the 20th century. >> it was hard and long and

traveled by weary and valiant men. history will always record where that road began. it began here, with the first footprints on the beaches of normandy. more than 150,000 set off toward this tiny sliver of sand upon which hung more than the fate of the war, but rather the course of human history. >> today we remember those who fail i will we honor all who fought right here in normandy. >> next, craig syms, arthur of world war ii at sea, analyzes the transport of troops along the english channel during d-day and the use of naval gunfire support during the invasion. this is just under an hour.

>> now that we made the airborne drops and are landing on the assault beaches, it's time now to bring in some fire support. we in the infantry always love to have that large caliber fire support give us a hand. so our speaker, nick speaker is well prepared to speak to that topic. dr. craig symons is professor emeritus of history at the united states naval academy where he taught for 30 years, to include four years as chairman of the history department. he has also served distinguished professorships at other institutions to include professor sategy in the tanning royal naval because it -- college in england and at the u.s. naval war college in newport, rhode island. 3lhe served years 1971-74, he

subsequently doctoral degree at the university of florida. over the years he came to fame as a distinguished historian, specializing in the american civil war and the naval history of the second world war. he is the author of 17 books, many of which have been translated into as many as six languages. my reading of all of his published titles here today would extend the length of his time to speak. suffice it to say his subject matter expertise includes biographies of american civil war leaders and a few of us in this room benefited greatly for the guidance exam, so thank you. his 2008 book, lincoln and his

admirals, u.s. navy and the civil war one the prestigious lincoln prize. his scholarship on u.s. naval history is also significant from the atlantic to the pacific oceans and back again. his book on the d-day landings which provides insights into his talk here today won the samuel eliot morison award for naval literature in the year 2015. his most recent work, published two years ago, takes us back to naval warfare in the pacific with the biography of admiral chester nimitz. along with his published works, a list of his justly deserved awards is extensive. a few include the u.s. naval academy's teacher of the year award in 1988, and research of the year award in 1998. the 2000 -- 2006 prize for naval

history, the 2014 naval historical foundation presented him with the commodore award for lifetime achievement. this past year, the pritzker military museum ordered him the pritzker -- awarded him the pritzker prize for lifetimeachi. ladies and gentlemen, dr. craig symons. [applause] >> thank you, tom. i don't know if i can live up to that. thank you everybody for coming back from lunch. i appreciate that, on a beautiful day out there. i want to thank the organizers of the conference, carol of course and tracy potts, and of course the eisenhower family. susan has spent so many years heading this organization. i told david last night at dinner that i was going to ex it was we had in

common. where are you, david? there he is come away in the back. he's going to make a quick getaway because this is embarrassing. he may not remember, he and i are graduates of the same institution, which is candidate, back in 1971. it was being explained to us early on the various sports in which we were expected to participate. among them, and he read off water polo, 90 said, no, water polo has been scrapped from the list because there was an officer candidate here recently who broke his finger laying water polo. i will leave it to you to guess who that officer candidate might've been. so anyway. my job today is to talk about the navy's role in the invasion of the normandy beaches, and in particular, about one episode which i used for the title,

which is not on the screen. and here is why. susan inspired me this morning by saying, imagine what it would be like if you had to conduct a complicated operation without any electronic support or backup , so just to live up to that expectation, none of my slides made it here today. [laughter] so i'm going without a net, and we will see how that works out. but the quotation that i used for my title was the navy saves the day, or words to that effect. it comes from omar bradley, who is a pretty credible source. who was so grateful for the support that you -- that the u.s. navy in particular, but royal navy ships as well, which pretty much did save the day, at least i will argue that, on omaha beach. before i do that, let me make a

couple of general observations that almost everybody in this audience and probably everybody in this audience is very sensitive to. but i wanted to reiterate them to remind us all of the broader context of this. first of all, the invasion of nazi-occupied europe was an amphibious operation. amphibious operations are the most difficult to carry out in more. in part, because this was a joint operation, as has been emphasized, susan mentioned it as well. it required a ground force army, of course. a sea force, the navy in this case, and the air force, coordinating three services in a tight and complicated timetable is difficult, but at d-day, it

was not only a joint operation, it was a combined operation involving several countries, again emphasized earlier, written, the united states, canada number france is often mentioned, but also norway, poland, belgium, denmark, the netherlands, even australia and new zealand were represented in this operation. so we have air, land, and sea forces of 10 or so countries, and even my arithmetic as a history major will reveal this yields 37 hierarchical command structures. that's one of the main reasons why very few people other than dwight david eisenhower could've carried this off. because eisenhower's great skill was his ability to bring people together, to coordinate and ameliorate difficulties.

john showed us like in that photograph, paratroopers making a personal connection, looking them in the prior to their lifting off. but he did that kind of thing, not only at the e-1 and e-2 level, he did it at the political level. he dealt with people like winston churchill and charles de gaulle, and for that matter, monty montgomery and g@,rge patton. so the ability to do that, i think, is the great strength that eisenhower brought to this operation. now today, thanks in part to steven spielberg and tom hanks, but many americans think about d-day, as i hope many of them will on this 80th anniversary year, they may conjure up that bit of footage that opens "saving private ryan," where the landing craft or heading toward

the beach and the sea spray is heading toward the rams as they go onto that horrible killing ground. i am personally grateful to tom hanks for his continuing interest in the second world war , and to sustain the memory of those events. he not only is a great actor, he is a great supporter of the museum in new orleans where he participates and also provides a lot of support for events such as this. so good for him. what on the other hand, starting with the story of d-day with the landing on all mahal beach or any other beach encourages modern students to overlook what happened in the weeks, months, and even years prior to that moment, including the assembling and training of the troops, the movement of the equipment, and

the men across a contested ocean from the western hemisphere to britain, past the german u-boats , the construction of training camps in britain, the assembly of their equipment, the dozens of practice landings all along the british coast, and of course , the cross channel movement itself. in opecomplex it stands virtualy alone, not only in the annals of the second world war, but at nash in the annals of warfare itself, for its size and complexity. and all of that part, up to the landing on the beach, was a naval operation, with its own codename, operation neptune. in this, the navy's role was not merely to facilitate the movement of men and equipment across the channel. army soldiers like to explain

that though the navy is really the -- they get us there and then we do the fighting. it is of course that,ut navies, and again i will use the plural in honor of the several navies that were involved, were central to the success of d -- d-day in a wide variety of ways, some of which i will talk about today. arguably the most important of which took place after the landings, not only to supply the men the food, the ammunition, the equipment, blood and plasma to the men fighting on the beach, but also to sustain them in. here's another generalization you already know, but it is worth keeping in mind nonetheless. that is that the invasion in europe was not the result of a single rush forward by that 165,000 or 170,000 or whatever number we use, the 24,000

paratroops and glider tubes that went in, that is the first wave. hollywood has encouraged us to believe that once that ramp drops and they run out onto the beach and beat the enemy, then it is done. in fact, opposed amphibious assaults require a series of landings, all day long on d-day, 15-20 minutes apart, and then dozens more than day in the day after that, and the day after that. and in the case of the invasion of normandy, the landings went on for weeks and even months. is that has already been mentioned from this podium, about 170 -- 170 6000 allied troops went on shore on d-day. later there are a million and a half of them. ships also evacuated the wounded

and the prisoners, sometimes in the same ship, which pose some interesting confrontations. they landed the jeeps and the other heavy equipment, all the supporting materiel necessary to enable an invading army to sustain itself, to build up to that million and a half men who made the march across central france and on to paris and eventually to berlin. so all of that is by way of arguing that the story of d-day, of course it is the story of the sacrifice and heroism of those who splashed ashoreutah, and goh is on the sixth of june, but it was also an extraordinarily complex maritime drill in which some 6000 or 7000 allied ships,

depending on how you count, maintained a supply chain of unprecedented size. so in talking about the navy's role in the d-day invasion, the size of the armada is often the first thing everybody cites. wow, so many ships, 6000, 7000, the personal memories of those who participated in that invasion, who gathered at the isle of wight, which was officially station zebra but everybody called piccadilly circus, was that you could see ships as far as the eye could see, horizon to horizon. here stories like i could've walked across the english channel stepping from ship to ship. the visual impact of that had legs. other popular themes of d-day, we have heard a few of them today, is the clever disinformation campaign that the

allies mounted to confuse the germans. operation fortitude, which sought to convince the germans landings would take place elsewhere, norway and calais, anywhere else but normandy. i think the reason that story has legs is we love the idea of thinking about, we outsmarted those goose stepping nis. look how we fooled those silly germans into thinking we were going someplace else. because of that psychology, i suspect that the impact of the disinformation campaign has been somewhat exaggerated. it helped, it surely didn't hurt, but it does not explain by itself, or even largely, the allies successes in normandy. another aspect of this is the construction of the artificial harbors known as the mulberries. i was pleased to hear don's

response to a query from you about the role the mulberries played. these are the artificial harbors. and i think it is the same psychology. those silly germans did not think we could come ashore in normandy because we did not have a port to unload all the material assets necessary to sustain a million and a half soldiers on a defended beach, so we will bring our own harbor with us. look how clever we are. it is kind of an interesting story. and it is clever, no doubt, the engineering is astonishing. and the story of its origins is interesting too. they were sitting around discussing how we could possibly logistically sustain this huge complex operation. a british general said, we have to capture a port, but they are heavily defended, we can't get

there in time. he said, all i can say is if we can't capture a port, we will have to take one with us. and everyone laughed just like you did around the table. then it got quiet and somebody said, why not? and of course, we did. now churchill, who loved gimmick weapons instinctively, was a huge advocate of this. the facility, mulberry a, constructed on omaha beach, and mulberry b off gold beach are often acclaimed to be one of the major reasons why the allies were able to be triumphant. even samuel eliot morison argued the artificial harbors were a key to allied success. far be it from me to contradict him, but i wonder if this is not part of that hindsight abo cleverness.

we can talk more about this during the q&a if you are interested. in the end, of course, none of this would have mattered without the courage and determination of the soldiers themselves who stormed the beaches, who dropped into the dark night, who glided down silently. so in that respect's spielberg's focus in starting on the landing is not entirely misplaced, but there is another aspect of the navy's role in the d-day operation that does sometimes get overlooked, and that is what i want to talk about in particular today. it is the role played by about a dozen allied destroyers, tin cans in the popular lingo. i saw someone wearing the baseball hat, tin can sailors. there he is. absolutely. tin cans, so-called because they are the smallest oceangoing

combatant. there is battleships, cruisers, destroyers. a lot of people think of destroyers, wow, that sounds like a fearsome weapon. the origin of it was they were designed to destroy tiny torpedo boats which the french and italians were building, so the royal navy said we will build a small ship that can take out the tour beat about, we will call them -- out the torpedo boats, we will call them destroyers. despite the fearsome name, tin cans is often more appropriate. incher. depth charges on the stern, torpedoes on the bow. they played a critical role at normandy. in the lengthy and complex operational plan written for d-day, the task assigned to the tin cans was to screethe invasion fleet from possible

interference by german u-boats. in fact, the u-boat threat has pretty much been neutralized by the summer of 1944. indeed, the only axis naval challenge at all they could pose to the invasion came from a handful of what the germans ca lled -- i love speaking german, it makes me feel fierce. fast boats in literal transition. kind of equivalent to what we called patrol torpedo boatts, s-- torpedo boats, small, a machine gun topside. it did have an impact on the allied training regimen before the landing when they attacked a flotilla of lst's. john mentioned this in his address this morning. on d-day,d

to charge and attack that fleet. i'm trying to imagine the expression on the face of the captain of this 80 foot boat with a crew of six being told, attack those battleships and cruisers. there is only about 6000 of them, so you should be ok. on the one hand it is what they might call a target rich environment. you can hardly miss. but on the other hand it had to be at least a little intimidating. it is you enters commanding these and send -- these ensigns, fired their torpedoes and went right back into port. given the circuman something. one torpedo did miss a british battleship and another headed directly for the allied command ship with a rather clumsy name.

it was the name of the estate in scotland given to the command ship. sir bertram ramsey was on board. that could have been awkward, but as it happened the ofcer of the deck on the largo saw the track of the torpedo went for ahead and missed by yards and instead hit a norwegian destroyer, the only allied sunk on d-day by the german navy. and that is because by 1944 the allies had secured near absolute mastery of the sea as well as the air. and while the u-boats and e-boats were meddlesome, they posed no serious threat to the invasion armada. the real crisis came as we know

on the beach. having had months to cite their guns, the germans on the high ground particularly at omaha crescent-shaped beach, and thank you for showing that john because my slides did not get here, or i would show it to you too. but the landing boats came into that killing zone and touched the surf under withering fire. german machine guns, i like to cite this quotation. german machine guns fired at the te of 1500 rounds a minute. that's each gun. that not all of them. that is 25 bullets per second. and the germans had 80 of these arranged in an arc around omaha beach. contemporaries describing it

said it sounded like tearing a piece of paper and have -- a piece of paper in half. that is how fast the bullets left the muzzle. i won't make you do the math. it works out to 2,200 bullets across omaha beach every second. that is almost more bullets in the air than air. the fire was so intense, see the -- so intense, some of the embarked crew did not leave the landing craft at all. machine good bullets killed the first four -- gun bullets killed the first four men and smacked clinging off the wall, kicking up water and serve. the soldiers just froze. and the navy cox minette this ter -- on the stern said, out, i have to go get another load!

and they did. the germans had artillery too, of course, and it was pretty busy, blowing up the landing boats and the larger lct's. landing craft tank, as opposed to the lst, landing ship tank, and lsi's, landing ship infantry. and as they did, even if they were successful in depositing their men and equipment ashore, they were blown up right there along the beach. what that meant was that the beachfront itself was crowded with smashed up and burning ships and vehicles. it looked like a maritime junkyard. and that meant the landing craft in the second wave and the third wave -- remember every 20 minutes, here they come. there is no place to land. they are going back and forth

looking for an open piece of sand where they can go ashore. the landings at omaha beach began at 6:30 that morning and by 8:00 the whole operation was in jeopardy. it was so bad, general omar bradley watching from offshore seriously considered calling it off. things were going a bit better on utah beach. his thought was we will retract from omaha and head for utah, but you can't retract men alread beach, you would have to just abandon them there. that is a hard call. that did not happen, of course, encouraged by the navy commander offshore. bradley decided he would just continue to push men and equipment ashore as fast as he possibly could and hope that

eventually the momentum of that would allow them to secure the beach. one of the things that saved them, literally saved the invasion -- here comes my central argument now -- was a handful of destroyers, most of them american but two of them british, that came to the rescue almost like the calvary riding to save the wagon train in an old western. skipping some of this stuff because i don't have pictures to prove it. as i mentioned in world war ii, the primary function of destroyers was to act as escorts for those convoys put forth across the north atlantic that brought the men and equipment to britain in the first place. their heaviest armament was a five inch gun next to those 12 and 14 inch guns.

five inch gun, five inch shot weighs 50 pounds. a 16 inch gun fires a shell wearing -- a shell weighing 3000 pounds. as i mentioned, their assigned job was to screen outside the invasion fleet to prevent interference by u-boats. by 8:00 on the morning on the sixth of june, things had changed. we have this beautiful detailed plan,it or at least adjust it. a lot of the destroyer skippers, seeing what was happening ashore, already moving in to see if they could provide close in gunfire support, but at 8:30 it became official.

that is when john leslie hall ñordered all the destroyer skippers to abandon their positions and close in on the beach to provide gunfire support for those troops trapped on omaha beach. most of you already know the peculiarities of the tides and geography of omaha beach. there is a one foot drop vertically for every 50 feet horizontally, which means it is a very gradual beach. if you have been there at low tide you can play a soccer game there. almost as flat as a table. it also means on low tide, it is a long way from the surf to the high ground behind it, whereas at high tide it is a relatively short distance. so the army tended to argue, let's land at high tide so we don't have far to go. the navy says it has to be at low tide so we can take outhe al

those impediments that rommel stuck into the sand, so they compromised. they did it have to hide, but -- they half tide, but a rising tide. that is important. if you fall and you are wounded, you can't crawl as fast as that tide is coming up the beach. that is a terrifying environment. battleships drew 38 feet, so they had to be like two miles off the beach to fire those big 14 inch shells. destroyers through 13 feet, so they could go in much closer. so hall ordered them to close the beach, and in his own words maintain as heavy a volume on fire on beach