seat to how issues are debated and decided with no commentary, no interruptions and completely unfiltered. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. >> if you ever miss any of c-span's coverage, you can find it anytime online at c-span.org. videos of key hearings and debates and other events feature markers that guide you to news worthy highlights. these appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos. this timeline gives you an idea to make it easy to debate in washington. scroll through on c-span's points of interest. >> the house will be in order. >> this year, c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other.

since 1979, we've been your primary source for capitol hill, providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of government. taking you to where the policies are debated and decided all with the support of america's cable companies. c-span, 45 years and counting, powered by cable. >> so now that we've 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 the large fire support to give us a hand. so our speaker, next speaker is well-prepared to speak to that topic. dr. craig symonds, at the naval academy, four years of the

history of the september and also served extinguished, bring tan britannia, and serviced in the u.s. navy 1971-1974, dr. symonds received his doctoral degree in florida. he came to fame as a historian specializing in the civil war,maritime history in the second world war. he's the author of 17 books many translated into six languages. reading all of the titles would extend the allotted time to speak. suffice it to say, his

expertise includes biography of american civil war leaders and civil war analysis from a few of us in this room benefitted greatly during our preparation for the gettysburg license field guide exam. so, thank you, dr. symonds. and abraham lincoln and won the prestigious lincoln prize. his scholarship on the naval history of war, allies of europe and d-day landings, and won the samuel elliott award in 2015. most recent worked published two years ago, with a biography

of admiral chester nimitz. and a list of craig's justly deserved awards is extensive. a few in honorable mention include the u.s. naval academy teacher of the year award, and the 2006 roosevelt prize for naval history n2014, the naval historical foundation presented women with a commodore dudley knox award for lifetime achievement. the last year, pritzker prize for a lifetime achievement in military writing. ladies and gentlemen, dr. craig symonds. >> (applause) >> thank you, 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, too. i want to thank the organizers

of the conference, carol, of course, and tracy pots and of course, the eisenhower family, susan who spent so many years heading this organization and i told david last night at drirn r dinner that i was going to explain what it was we had in common. where are you, david? there he is way in the back. he knows he's going to make a quick get away if this is embarrassing. you may not remember. we're graduates of the same institution naval academy school. and the reason it was explained the various sports we were expected to participate and make a choice and among them and he read off water poloen and he said, oh, no, water polo has been scrapped from the list of possible there was an officer condition who

broke his finger playing water polo and i'm going to leave it to you to guess who that officer candidate may have been. 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'll see how that works out. but the quotation that i used for my title was the navy saved the day or words to that

effect, comes from omar bradley, who is a pretty credible source, who was so grateful for the support that the u.s. navy in particular, but royal navy ships as well, who pretty much did save the day. at least i'm going to argue that, on omaha beach. before i do that, let me make general observations that probably everybody in this audience is sensitive to, but i want today reiterate them to remind of the broader context of this. first of all, the invasion of nazi occupied europe was an amphibious operation. it's an old aforrism in war that amphibious are the most difficult to carry out in war and also attributed to -- in part, because this is a joint operation as emphasized, my

friend john, susan mentioned it as well, required a ground force, the army of course, a sea force, the navy and in this case, an air force coordinating three services in a tight and complicated timetable is difficult. but in d-day, it was not only a joint operation, it was a combined operation involving several countries, again, emphasized earlier. britain, the united states, and canada, 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 a quick multiplication, even my arithmetic as a history major will reveal this yields

30 sets of hierarchical command structures and that's one of the main reasons why very few people other than dwight david eisenhower could have carried this off because eisenhower's great skill was his ability to bring people together to coordinate and ameliorate difficulties. john showed us ike in that photograph with the paratroopers making a personal connection, looking them in the eye prior to their lifting off, but he did that kind thing not only at the '01 and '02 or even 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 patton. the ability to do that is the great strength to eisenhower brought to this operation.

today, thanks in part to steven spielberg and tom hanks, when many americans think about d-day as i hope many of them will in this 80th anniversary year, they may conjure up that bit of footage that opens "saving private ryan." the landing graft are headed to the beach and the ramp drops out and 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's 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. but on the other hand, the story of d-day with the landing

on omaha 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 through 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. an operation so vast and so complex, it stands virtually alone, not only in the annals of the second world war, but 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 code name, operation neptune. in this, the navy's role was not merely to facilitate the movement of men and equipment across the channel, army soldiers liked to explain while the navy is really the bus driver. you know, they get us there and then we do the fighting. it is, of course, that. bu again, i'll use the plural in honor of the several navies that were involved, were central to the success of d-day in a wide variety of ways. some of which i'll talk about today. and arguably the most important of which took place after the landings, not only to supply the men, the food, the ammunition, the equipment, blood plasma to the men fighting on the beach but also to sustain them there.

here is another generalization you already know, but is worth keeping in mind nonetheless, the invasion of europe was not the result of a single rush forward by that 165,000 or 170,000 or whatever number we used on the 24,000 paratroops and glider troops that go in and that's the first wave. hollywood has encouraged us to believe that once that ramp drops and they run on the beach, they beat the enemy there, it's done. but, in fact, a post amphibious assault require a series v landing all day long on d-day, 15 to 20 minutes apart and dozens more the next day and 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, as has been

mentioned already from this podium, about 176,000 allied troops went ashore on d-day, but a month and a half later there were a million and a half of them. that didn't just happen. ships also evacuated the wounded and the prisoners. sometimes in the same ship which caused interesting confrontations. they landed the trucks, the jeeps, the other heavy equipment, all the supporting material necessary to enable an invading army to sustain itself, to build up to that million and a half men who made the wheeling 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 is, of course, it's the story of the sacrifice and heroism of

those who splashed ashore on omaha, utah and gold, juneau and the beaches on the sixth of june. which it was also an extraordinarily complex maritime quad drill in which some six to 7,000 allied maintained supply chain unprecedented size. when talking about the navy's role on d-day invasion, the size of the armada is often the first thing that, so many ships, 6,000, 7,000, the personal memories of those who participated in that invasion who gathered together in that site soul of the isle of white which was officially area zebra, but everybody called piccadilly circus, was that you could see ships as far as the eye could see horizon to horizon, and of course, you

hear stories, i could have walked across the english channel stepping from ship to ship. not quite true, but the visual impact of that had legs. other popular themes of d-day, we've heard a few of them today, the clever disinformation campaign that the allies mounted to confuse the germans, operation fortitude, which sought to convince the germans, the landing would take place elsewhere, norway, calais, anywhere, but normandy. and i think the reason that story has legs is we love the idea of thinking about we outsmarted those goose-stepping nazis, look how we fooled those silly germans into thinking we were going someplace else and because of that psychology, i suspect that the impact of the disinformation campaign has been somewhat exaggerated.

it helped, it certainly didn't hurt, but it does not explain by itself or even largely the allied successes in normandy. another aspect of this is the construction of the artificial harbors known as the mullberries. i was pleased to hear john a response from you, the role that the mullberries played and i think it's the same psychology. those silly germans, didn't think we would come ashore because we wouldn't have a port to unload the material assets necessary to sustain a million and a half soldiers on a defended beach so we'll bring our own harbor with us. look how clever we are. it is kind of an interesting story and it is clever, no doubt about it.

the engineering is absolutely astonishing and the story of its origins is interesting, too. they were sitting around discussing how we could possibly be able to logistically sustain this huge complex operation and a british general named hughes hallet, we have to capture a port. we can't because this they're heavily defended. we can't get that in time and hughes hallet said well, if we can't capture a port, we'll take one with you. and everybody laughed just like you did, around the table. then it got quiet and somebody said, well, why not? and of course, we did. now, churchill, who loved gimmick weapons instinctively was a huge advocate of this. the facility at mulberry a, constructed on omaha beach and mulberry b at gold beach are

often acclaimed to be one of the majors reasons why the allies were able to be triumphant. even samuel elliott morrison argued that the artificial arbors were a key to allied success. far be it from me to contradict samuel elliott morrison, but i wonder if that, too, isn't part of that hindsight about cleverness. we can talk more about this during the q & a if you're interested. in the end, none of this would have mattered without the courage and determination of the soldiers themselves who stormed the beaches, who dropped into dark night. who glided down silently. so, in that respect, spielberg's focus in starting with the landing is not entirely misplaced, but there's another aspect of the navy's role in the d-day operation and especially at omaha beach that does sometimes get overlooked and that's what i want to talk about in particular today.

it's the role played by about a dozen allied destroyers, tin cans and the popular lingo. and i saw them wearing the popular hat, where is he? absolutely. tin cans, so-called because they are the smallest ocean going combatant. i mean, there's battleships, cruisers, destroyers. and wow, at that sounds like a fearsome weapon. the origin, they were designed to destroy torpedo boats, and the navy said we'll make small boats to take out the torpedos. and they're torpedo boat destroyers, and tin cans is more appropriate, torpedos on

the bow, and 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 screen the invasion fleet from possible interference by german u-boats. in fact, the u-boat threat as we've heard has been pretty much neutralized during the summer of 1944, the naval challenge at all tould impose to the naval invasion is what the germans called -- snellbuten, i move speaking

german. it did have an impact on the allied training regiment before the landing when they attacked a flotilla. >> and john mentioned that in his address this morning. but on d-day, they were ordered to charge out and attack that fleet. i'm trying to remember, imagine the face the captain, 80-foot boat going out and attack the battleship and cruisers. there are only 6,000 of them so you should be okay. on the one hand, of course, might be called a target rich environment. it can hardly miss. but on the other hand, it will to be at least a little bit intimidating. the junior officers who commanded these boats, ensigns

and jg's left port, fired off the torpedos and went back to port. given the circumstances, they could hardly avoid hitting something. one torpedo just missed a british ship and then the command ship with the name of larg's. and that was the estate in scotland owned by mountbatten and and the naval captain sir ber trum ramsey was on board. that could be, as we would say, awkward. but on the deck they saw the track of the torpedo and missed by yards astern and instead hit a norwegian destroyer, the only allied ship sunk on d-day by the german navy.

and that's 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 and troublesome, to keep in mind, they posed no real threat to the armada. the real crisis, as we know, came on the beach. having months to sight their guns, and particularly omaha beach, john showed us, thank you, john for showing that, because my slides didn't get here or i'd show it, too. the boats landed on the killing zone and touched the surf under withering fire. german machine guns, i like to cite this because i can't get my head around it. german machine guns fired at the rate of 1500 rounds a

minute. that each gun, that's not all of them. 1500 rounds a minute, that's 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 in half, that's how fast the bullets left the muzzle. i won't make you do the math, it works out 2,200 bullets across omaha beach every second. that's almost more bullets in the air than air. the fire was so intense some of the embarked troops balked at leaving the landing craft at all. as one landing craft dropped its ramp, machine gun bullets killed the first four men right there in the front rank getting ready to leave, outrit killed

them and smacked clinging and clanging off the ramps and kicking up water on the surface and the soldiers froze and the navy come on, fellas, get out. i've got 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. it's kind of an alpha pet alphabet soup. the 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. and what that meant was that the beach front 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, as they head toward that beach. there's no place to land. 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 off shore, seriously considered calling it off. things were going a bit better on utah beach and his thought was we'll retract from omaha and head for utah, but you can't retract men already imposed on a beach, you have to

abandon them there. that's a hard call. that didn't happen, of course. encouraged by navy commander off shore, rear admiral john leslie hall, bradley decided he would just continue to push men and equipment ashore as fast as he possibly could and hope eventually the momentum of that would allow them to secure the beach. one of the things that saved them literally saved the invasion, and here comes my central argument now, was a handful of destroyers, most of them american, two royal navy, british, they came to the rescue almost like the cavalry 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 destories was to act as escorts for those convoys back and forth across the north atlantic that brought the men and equipment to britain in the first place. heaviest arm mament, five inch gun kind of a pop gun to the guns that the battleships were using. five-inch gun-- five-inch shot weighs 50 pounds. that's not inconsiderable. a 16 inch has a shell weighs 3,000 pounds and destroyers carried depth charges on the stern for use against u-boats and smaller anti-aircraft guns. as i mentioned their assigned job was screen outside the invasion fleet to prevent u-boats. but by 8:00 in the morning on the 6th of june.

things changed. we have a plan, but we have to scrap it or at least adjust it. a lot of the destroyer skippers seeing what was happening on shore already began moving in closer to shore to see if they could provide close in gunfire support, but at 8:30 it became official, that's when jimmy hall, john leslie hall, commanding group off shore ordered 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. ... beach. most you already know the peculiarities of the tides and the geography of omaha beach. there's a one foot drop vertical line for every 50 feet horizontally, which means it's a very grab drill beach. if you've been there at low tide, you play soccer game there. i mean, it's almost flat as a table, but it also means that a

low it's but it also means a low tide it's a long way from the surf to the high ground behind the beach where as at high tide is a relatively short distance. so the army tended to argue let's go at high tides we don't have far to go. the navy said no, no, no it has a low tide so we can take out the obstacles, the minds and all those impediments that were stuck in the sand. so they compromised. they did have to tide. but a rising tide and that becomes important. because you think and landing on omaha beach and a rising tide, if you fall and you are wounded, you can't crawl as fast as that tide type 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 five those big 14-inch shells. the destroyers drew 13 feet so they could go in much closer. so they were ordered to close the beach and in his own words maintain as heavy a a volume f fire on beach targets as possible. admiral bright who's on the text will submit more conversation about it. he got underrated and yelled get on them, men. get on them. they are raising hell with the men on the beach and we can't have that. we must stop it. that's what he was court in-flight magazines are probably, probably pretty close to that. and the destroyers skippers responded with enthusiasm, almost too much. self-evident that if i distort any other vessel grounds itself in shallow water off the beach that dodd with artillery pieces it's going to be hammered into

bits at the leisure of the gunners. nevertheless, the destroyers went forward, some of them 20 knots into water that was so dangerously shallow, and outside this what channels. hesiod was watching watching them from a nearby lct was horrified to see destroyers which is and must be out of control careening towards the beach at sass says it could at high speed. my god, he thought, they're going to write a ground right in front of the german artillery. and at the last minute the destroyer made a sharp turn, back its engines and was a starboard batteries blazed away with every gun it had point-blank at the defensive positions. another sailor on an lst, in his

words, watched puffs of smoke and mounds of dirt flying everywhere on the hillside as the destroyer passed swiftly by. more than a dozen allied destroyers responded to the call that morning, and nine of them were from destroyer squadron 18, destroyer squadron, baby language which david knows, has run 18 commanded by u.s. navy captain harry sanders. they spread out along omaha beach. two of them along with the british destroyer supported the army rangers who were sailing to pointe du hoc west of omaha. and we've all seen photos of that. such an astonishing scene. if you've notit been there, go quickly because it's eroding fast and if you want to get a sense of have a look at the time

and just try to understand the psychology of the men who made that klein, you should go. mccor joined by the harding took up positions near the center of omaha beach and five others led by the the squadron flagship frankford. with sanders on board steamed the eastern end of the beach near. these were the beaches green and easy. the destroyers took up positions. 800 yards off the surf line. now, given that gradual slope of the beach, they were pretty shallow center. in his official report, there were times when we had less than one inch of water under our keel. they were so close they were being by rifle bullets. these dozen or so destroyers constitute, only a tiny fraction

of. these supposedly 6 to 7000 ships that made up the allied armada. but they had a disproportionate impact on the outcome of that battle. at first, the destroyer captains had lot of trouble knowing what to shoot. i mean, there's high ground. yes. okay. but where on that high? the heavy smoke over, the beach, plus actual german camouflage made almost impossible to figure out where the big german guns were or even small ones for that matter. some of the german guns had been designed so that they retract it into enclosed sides. it came out fire and then retracted. they were using smokeless powder so you couldn't look for smoke to find your target. in theory, they were to coordinate with the men on the shore. they would radio out, coordinates, the gunners would adjust and call fire. but in in rush ashore early

morning virtually all of the radios became either destroyed waterlogged and communication was impossible. the ships couldn't talk to the men. the men couldn't talk to the ships. back to susan's board. why didn't they just call them on their cell phone right. anyway, it was well into afternoon before any radio contact the two was established. well, what do you do in the. there was one immediate benefit to the arrive of the destroyers, and that is that many of the german gunners fearful of disclosing their position, stopped shooting. that by itself was reprieve of sorts to the men hunkered down on that shingle. the slide that john this morning of them behind shingle. i had that slide too but it's not here but anyway. near the center of omaha beach, near a little called lemuel a

destroyer commander whose name is robert bier, a lieutenant commander who was captain of the gleaves class destroyer, carmack was scanning the bluffs looking for puffs of smoke or something that would indicate where the enemy gun emplacement was. he couldn't see a thing, but he did notice this, that the few tanks that had gotten ashore in omaha and of course, omaha, where a lot of the supposedly a duplex drive tanks that swimming tanks, 27 of 32 went to the bottom, weren't there. but of the few tanks that did manage to get ashore, they all seemed to shooting at a particular place well. they must see something i can't so he orders up the gunners to hit that spot. and then he pumped in about the five inch guns can fire pretty rapidly. they can off six or seven salvos in a minute. so he just fired several volleys

into that spot and then he noticed the tank shells were shooting. else it was like the tanks were a pointer here is where they are and then the the heavier guns on the destroyer off shore would use that pointer to target the german gun emplacements and. it worked out keep in mind there's absolutely nothing in that five inch thick operational order for d-day to suggest this kind of cooperation. this is kind of thing the sailors and the soldiers worked out on the fly without communication they figured it out. it's a spontaneous partnership that i think says lot about the ability of american sailors and soldiers to adjust to circumstances, the ground or for that matter, on the sea sea. now, not far away from the karmic, another destroyer, the mccook commanded by lieutenant

commander ralph ray mi. and he opened against what he assumed be german fortified positions, the cliff face. but they were so protected with 13 inches of concrete with that rebar that he couldn't have an impact on them. so had an idea he fired below them into. the cliff face carving away chunks of rock until the supporting structure underneath gave and the whole artillery position came crashing down onto the. a mile or two. further east. commander james marshall. captain of the doyle, another destroyer maneuvered ship among the landing craft that were swarming off the fox sector. he could see his or his language. he could see men ashore dug in behind a hammock of sand along the beach and the boats of the

third wave milling around off shore because they couldn't an open section of beach and a lookout. the doyle reported a machine gun emplacement on a steep hill at the west end of fox red beach. so directed two salvos on the site, then shifted to a case made at the top of the hill, fired more salvos and was to report rather laconically, the target destroyed. absent spotters in the air, or for matter on land other destroyer skippers also improvised one sailor on an lct happened to be looking at a line of bluffs west of the when he noticed that the bushes moved just a little bit and have a second lighter shell exploded on the beach and he kept watching that spot and it happened again. so he called skipper over and he says, skipper, let's see, that's putting a little bit to the left. you see that spot right there?

watch movement explosion. so the skipper got on the phone, called up. the nurse, which his words came in there, popped over sideways port side to the beach turned loose eight rounds of five inch projectile into the suspected. there were no movements of brush so how was it that the german gun emplacements were so i mean, remember that allied planes we've seen the graphic came in and just saturate the area with bombs not so much effectively on omaha and then the navy came in in an abbreviated naval preliminary naval gunfire support fired 12 inch and 14 inch shells into or at omaha beach all that ordnance had the ground shake sand and dust up into the air just obscured the whole beach looked powerful.

the tin cans had smaller, but their guns were precision aimed at specific targets. hit the beach beach master on omaha later claimed you could see the trenches guns and men blowing up where they were hit. there was no doubt in his mind words the few navy destroyer we had say the invasion inside an artillery bunker on omaha beach, a german commander phoned headquarters to report the naval guns are smack up our strong points we running out of ammunition. we urgently need supplies. there was no answer because. the line had gone dead. so for more than an hour from before nine, maybe 845 until well past, when the destroyer gunfire off omaha beach was virtually nonstop, all constant

firing, of course, depleted the ammunition of the destroyers there, their orders in that operation and command told them they were not to expend more than 50% of their available ammunition because you needed to have a reserve just in case. but this was an emergency, so they ignored all that. and the destroyers and sanders squadron expended just about everything they had. the uss emmons fired. 767 rounds, the mccook hundred and 75 is out of a thousand, and the carmack 1127, although where the 127 came from, i'm not sure sure. this now says slide shows, but no, it doesn't. so i'm moving on. so shortly before noon, the ships finally establish contact with the fire control parties on the beach who called in gunfire request gunfire support requests

to the destroyer beginning about 1130 noon and 1124 spotters ashore ask the frankfurt to target a concentration of german troops behind the beach. after the first shell, the scattered, of course, shore spotting had limits to the u.s. laffey received a request for support. and when the gunnery officer asked for target coordinates, this is the answer he got in the radio transcription. we were lying on our stomachs a ditch under enemy fire can't furnish you a spot. laffey opened fire anyway, and after several the spotter radioed back whoever was shooting at us was stopped. so you must have done all right right. one of the most memorable examples, cal fire that morning occurred when army spotters near colleville-sur-mer reported that the germans were the steeple of the church to direct artillery

into the beach. are there up in the steeple? i think you saw church steeple earlier. the emmons got the job of taking it down and after a few salvos it did a witness watching us from the and saw that it hit the steeple right near its base like you just chopped it down with a giant ax a few miles the west of veer ville, samarra the harding accomplished a similar against the steeple of the church there the harding's first salvo clipped off the cross at the top. sounds pretty sacrilegious. the sacrament it about ten feet down from that and the third ten feet down from that the army guy said, boy, those navy guys are pretty good there, chopping it off a piece at a time. the cumulative effect of all this was pretty decisive for the first time since they had landed on that beach, the man lying

face down behind that low of shingle and sand all along omaha beach were able to lift their heads and look about themselves for a off the beach as early as 1036. lookouts on the frankford noted allied troops were beginning to advance. oh, i'm good, thanks. thank you. appreciate that. and an hour later at 1037, the german defender began to come out of their positions with their up. by the next day, the troops were moving off the beach. now, to be sure, much of this is the result of the incredible bravery and determination of the soldiers themselves, which must never be discounted. but the destroyers did play a critical role in this postwar. bradley wrote. and this is where i got the title for this talk. the navy saved our hides as the

adjutant commander of the first infantry division, the red one said afterward, without that gunfire, we positively could not have crossed the beaches. thank you very much. i look forward to your questions. now, do we have a microphone for this round or here it is. look at this. okay. so if you have a question, wait for the mic. time. you don't have a question. that's okay to. this one. yeah. sounds like you probably could, but they need to pick it up on the c-span. no, it wasn't me. i miss third row. oh, sorry. we're going to have somebody test you out. my grandfather landed with the seventh, ninth a few days after d-day, was wounded.

a pillbox? sure. borg his wound wasn't bad enough to get evacuated off the beach for several days he got infected. he specifically told a story about they had to travel at night to england and that ships were sunk around them and they had to pull men out of the water covered in oil. so were they hitting mines if the if there was no german navy? yeah or torpedo boats, what was causing these ships to be sunk? it is mostly mines. the germans had several very sophisticated mines and in fact so sophisticated that they didn't even them until they were pretty sure where the allies were going to come ashore. they had oyster that rusted on the bottom. and one of the reasons the minesweepers didn't pick up is that counters would the first three go by and then blow under the fourth one? and there were other magnetic anomaly detectors in so that you didn't have to it or contact it. you could just come and it would recognize the iron hull of a vessel. so the german mines were quite sophisticated and very effective.

but your question raises a very important point. and that is to say that the last piece in particular, but the amphibious craft in general not only brought all those men and equipment to the shore and carried back prisoners and wounded that include apparently your dad, grandfather, grandfather. they did this round the clock, not just at night. i mean, he happened to be at night. they pretty much did this in a round robin basis. when you look at the logbooks of those lost, it took, i think i'm going to make up the numbers here. i think it's 8 hours to get across the channel. it took 3 hours to deposit to reload, another 8 hours another to nonstop 52 times back and forth across that channel never stopped motors never shut down. so so that went on all the time. and if he was going back at night. it's because that was when they finally had room for that particular wounded soldier to get back the copter cherbourg critical remember that landing

on utah beach was designed to cut across the attention peninsula and then head up and take cherbourg from the rear and that was a tough fight, but once they got cherbourg and cleared the harbor of the wreckage, the germans had sunk there. then they were able to use that to to resupply and reinforce and evacuate the wounded. so thank for the question that you get. here is mike's comment comment. thank you. let's say three or four questions. oh, three or four questions. well, i thought i'd get them early when donuts had some sort a submarine fleet left. why didn't have the screening out there trying to find 6000 ships or more in the atlantic. well why didn't doenitz deploy his submarines more efficiently so that he could interfere with the invasion? he doesn't have that many left. the few that he have are all operating out of the bay of biscay and the ones who have the schnauzers which are the ones that could have made it maybe who shan't and into the bay of

the seine to interfere with that fleet. they had them all bottled up. they just could not get out of the bay. escape. now, the other part is, as you know, the higgins boat drivers played a big role. one did earn the medal of honor and. a lot of them were killed. yes. the higgins. for those who don't know a name, for andrew jackson higgins, who had a plant opposite new orleans at algiers on the mississippi river, who designed and invented and built these by the tens thousands. these are the you all see and these are the ones at the drop front ramp. they're very disposable, almost like tissues because you can get one use out of them, maybe two by the third time around their wreck. but they're driven by navy crews and, navy crew of three, a coxswain and two machine gunners. and that coxswain, unlike the guys down there in a, you know below the thought line waiting shore throwing up on their boots, the coxswain standing up at the back, driving that boat and not once, but twice.

and then three times. and then four times. so i think navy connections are sometimes underappreciated for role that they played in the landing. thank you for that question. okay. any more from naturally as far away as you can get in the far. also. i'll ask one halfway through. all right. that's good. how did they clean up the mess as the battle was going on? it's been a long junkyard along the beach. yeah. they towed off the junk ones and let them sink in the channel or towed off to the side to clear passengers across the beach. it didn't happen quickly. maybe by d-plus four, they were pretty well cleared, but it took it took a while they took them off. oh, he's got a book? wait a minute. wait, that's not fair. so thank for speaking. but so on.

you were mentioning the importance of operation fortitude and the various aspects of the d-day landings that you feel may have been overemphasized in the historiography. do is there one aspect that you would point to of the entire d-day campaign that you feel should be more emphasized than public history? that's a great question. if it's true, i think well, it is true that think whether whether what i think is true is another question that we have tended to give undue to the cleverness of our operation fortitude the mulberries or the funnies we built as little contraptions as rube machines that we're going to be able to do all these clever things. they had one called a flail tank that, had a big cylinder on the front with chains it. and the idea here was supposed to drive up in front of the troops and then the chains would flail the ground prematurely, the mines, so you could follow

through. well, that didn't really the way it was advertised. the ddt tanks there were supposed to be able to swim ashore. how clever was that? right to the bottom. so i think there is a to say, let's figure out some clever way to avoid having to do this by the courage and fortitude of the men who were going to do it. and that's i don't think that's under m-4 sized, maybe never emphasized enough. what it took to do that and continue to do it so i guess that's the one area. and then of course as i mentioned at the very outset, the importance, absolute crucial importance of general eisenhower to make all these disparate parts become part of the a-team air, land, sea bridge. americans, whether it's a boot or a trunk, whatever you're going to do, let's make this. we're the same team and there are lots of aspects of this to

get overlooked for you can, learn about black soldiers in britain who southern americans don't want in their. but the british are perfectly willing to welcome. and eisenhower's got to solve that problem, too. so eisenhower's temperament, his ability to bring all of these disparate parts together and make it work, that's key. one more. one more. if there is one more right there. run, run, run. so i did a research project a couple of years ago about where journalist martha gellhorn, who stowed away one of the hospital ships. yeah. and laid it on. easy read. and so i'm curious to know more about the hospital ships mentioned. if i recall correctly, they felt

very exposed because of their markings. and so i'm curious to know what what were the policies for hospital ships and it maintained this gentleman's question in the middle over here some christian are more about that. yeah. no that's a great because what it what the broader it imposes is how did the violence of war change what we thought as the humane protocols war things that you did by 1944 that you would not have considered in. 40 and hospital ships are one of those in the atlantic and more particularly in the pacific hospital ships were just i mean, you could put a big cross on that big white and think, well, we're okay. no you're not. and i think what that suggests is a lot about human nature, that that is possible for war to create its own momentum of violence of what's acceptable of what we can do. and maybe one of the reasons it's even worse the pacific than in the atlantic is, that the

japanese in particular thought, anybody who was not of japanese descent or ancestry was was subhuman and of course, anybody who was allowed themselves to be taken prisoner deserve, whatever he got, because he lost his honor. it was not quite as bad as that, the atlantic. but there was a feeling of that. there was a sensibility that our backs to the wall, the future of civilized nation depends on this. so anything goes. so martha gellhorn was absolutely right. they they were, i think, in a vulnerable spot. and you didn't they were i thinknk in a vulnerable spot, and you did know at any given moment. it had the german the capability, better capability of attacking ships in the armada. i don't think they would have hesitated to hit the hospital ship. but that's a hypothetical because they didn't. so anyway, thank you very much, everybody. [applause]

>> c-span, were history unfold to daily. in 1979 c-span was created as a public service i america's cable-television companies, and today we continue to take you to congress and other public policy events in washington, d.c. and round the country. c-span, powered by cable. >> friday nights what c-span's 2024 campaign trail, a weekly round up of c-span's campaign coverage providing a one-stop shop to discover what the candidates across the country are saying to voters along with first-hand accounts from political reporters, updated poll numbers, fundraising data and campaign ads. watch c-span's to 124 campaign trail friday nights at 7:30 p.m. eastern on c-span, online or c-span.org or download as a podcast on c-span now, our free

mobile app or wherever you get your podcast. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. >> weekends on c-span2 on intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's stories and on sundays booktv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more including sparklight. >> what is great internet? is it strong? is it fast? is a reliable? at sparklight we know connection goes way beyond technology. from monday morning meetings to friday nights with friends and everything in between. the best connections are always at their right when you need them. so how do you know it is great internet? because it works. we are sparklight and we're always working for