submarines more efficiently so he could interfere with the invasion? he doesn't have that many left. the ones that have the snorkel which are the ones that could have made it around and into the bay of htthe seinne, they could not get out of the bag. >> the higgins boat drivers played a role, one earned the medal of honor. >> the higgins boat's, named for andrew higgins, who had a plan opposite new orleans who invented these by the tens of thousands. these are the ones with the drop front ramp.

they are very disposable, almost like tissues, because you can get one use out of them, maybe two. by the third time around, they are wrecked. but they are driven by navy crews. unlike the guys below thee throwing up on their boots, the got soon standing up at the back and driving the boat. navy coxswains are sometimes underappreciated for the role they played. anymore? naturally, as far as a way as you can get in the far corner. >> how did they clean up the mess as the battle was going on? >> along the beach. they towed off the junk ones and let them sink l in the channel,

or towed them off to clear passages across the beach. it didn't happen quickly. maybe by d+4 they were well cleared, but it took a while. he's got a book.[laughter] not fair. >> thank you for speaking. early on, you were mentioning the importance of operation fortitude and various other of the d-day landings that you feel may have been overemphasized in the historiographies. is there one aspect he would .2 of the entire d-day campaign that you feel should be more emphasized in public history? >> that is a great question. if it is true -- it is true that i think. [laughter] whether what i think is true is another question. that we have tended to give undue credit to the cleverness

of our operation fortitude or the mulberries, or the funnies we built as contraptions that we will be able to do all these clever things. they have one called a flail tank that had a cylinder in front with chains on it. the idea was it would drive in front of the troops and the chains would flail the ground, prematurely detonate the mines so you could follow through. that didn't work the way it was advertised. the d-day tanks that were supposed to be able to swim ashore. how clever was that? right to the bottom. i think there is a tendency to say let's figure out some clever way to avoid just have to do this by the courage and fortitude of the men who are going to do it. i don't think that is underemphasized. maybe never emphasized enough. what it took to do that and continue to do it.

i guess that is the one area. as i mentioned inoutset, the absolute crucial importance of general eisenhower to make all these disparate parts become part of a team. air, land, sea, brits, canadians, americans whether a boot or a truck, let's make this on the same team. there are a lot of aspects that get overlooked. what are you going to do about black soldiers in britain whose southern american soldiers don't want them in their pubs, but the british are perfectly willing to welcome? and eisenhower has to solve that problem, do. eisenhower's temperament, his ability to bring all these disparate parts together and make it work, that is key. one more, if there is one more. right there.

>> i did a research project a couple years ago about war journalist martha gellhorn who landed on easy read. i am curious to know more about the hospital ship. she mentioned that they felt very exposed because of their markings. i am curious to know what were the policies for protecting hospital ships? >> that is a great question because the broader question it imposes is how did the violence of war change what we thought of as the humane protocols of war? things you did by 1944 that you would not have considered by 1940. hospital ships are one of those. in the atlantic, and more particularly in the pacific hospital ships were just targets.

you could put a big redross on that big white ship and think we are ok. no you are not. what it suggests a lot of human nature, that it is possible for war to create its own momentum of violence, of what is acceptable, of what we can do. maybe one of the reasons it is even worse in the pacific than the atlantic is that the japanese in particular thought anybody who was not of japanese descent or ancestry was subhuman and anybody who was allowing themselves to be taken prisoner deserved whatever he got because he had lost his honor. it was not quite as bad as that in the atlantic, but there was a feeling of that, a sensibility that our backs are to the wall the future of civilization depends on this, so anything goes. martha gellhorn was exactly right. they were in a vulnerable spot and you didn't know at any given moment.

it gave the germans 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 is a theoretical because they didn't. thank you very much, everybody. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corpe, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> earlier today, president biden spoke in normandy, france, i commemorationn of d-day. marking a major turning point in world war ii. watch the president's remarks tonight at 8:00 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 wow. >> the world has changed. today, a fast and reliable internet connection is something

no one can live without, so wow is there for our customers with speed, reliability, and choice. it all starts with great internet. >> wowupportblic sothe public television providers. >> american history tv, saturdays odd c-span2 -- saturdays on c-span2. throughout the day you will see historic newsreel footage of the crossing landings, and airborne operations. at 3:30 p.m. eastern authors talk about american leadership during operation overlord and the legacy of the allied landing. d-day anniversary speeches from six presidents, from ronald reagan to joe biden.

at 11:30, kim polian explores the role of female spies. watch american history tv on c-span2. nhowerraht eyeasthis marks the 80th anniversary of d-day. it's >> we think we have a really nice mix of important themes that are going to be outlined today by some of the best speakers we could possibly find. what i am going to do right now rather than make any talk myself is give you three brief introductions of all three of our speakers. then susan eisenhower will lead off for us, followed by doug dowds and general matz. please understand, each of these

individuals has had such careers, i could spread quite a long time talking about each of them. i am going to be as distinct as i can be. susan eisenhower has had a versatile and impactful career as an educator, author, soviet expert, and administrator. her resume as far too extensive then to highlight the main aspects of her professional life. i will simply mention her work on arms control during and after the cold war american-russian partnership in space leadership of the original eisenhower institute her best-selling books about her grandmother and her grandfather, and her mentorship of gettysburg college students through her distinctive co about our times. susan's talk today will focus on early planning for operation overlord. our second speaker is dr. doug

dowds, who has and distinguished career in iraq before moving on to work at the pentagon, specifically as a chief speechwriter's the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.'s his current responsibility is director of the advance program at the u.s. army war college. some of you might recognize him as a talking head on various history documentaries. [laughter] right? [laughter] we call it that, folks. relating to american wars. this topic today will focus on the german defense at normandy which tends to be overlooked. and our cleanup hitter is general william matz. jr he is no stranger to this campus. he is a 1961 graduate of gettysburg college and he

subsequently went on to a very distinguished five decade military career, including a stint as a company commander with the ninth infantry division in vietnam, where he was wounded in the 1968 tet offensive. he later served as executive secretary to two secretaries of defense. he worked in the defense industry before retiring from the army in 1995. he has served on a number of important national commissions. as a capstone to his storied career, in 2018, president donald trump appointed him as secretary of the american battle monuments commission. that position he held until march of 2021. for our panel this morning, he will speak about allied airborne operations in normandy on d-day. with that, susan, the floor is yours. [applause]

>> thank you very much for that kind introduction. i would like to thank the eisenhower society and everyone who has made this possible. i am delighted by the extraordinary talent we have presenting today. i am ready to take a slightly different tact as we have such an extraordinary overview. it was memorable in every way and i think you have an excellent grounding in so many of the issues that were underway at the time. it has been an honor of mine over the years we have been engaging with a student group selected every year competitively to take five cadres to the normandy beaches.

when i go there now, there are so many people who are tremendously worried about whether the story is over because our veterans are passing away. and i keep telling them, the veterans who were here would so admire any attempt to cast the story again as a story of young people and what they accomplished. i tell my students that if you think about it everyone coming on shore was your age. and when we go to the american cemetery, i say, we are now standing in a kid's cemetery. i don't want to call you kids, kids, but it is a cemetery of young people. born by that age group arcs ordinary, based on decisions arrived at by their elders. it is with that note i would like to talk about one of those elders. i wrote a book called "how ike led."

this satisfied a lot of things for me combining what i knew about him personally, but also it satisfied a lot of strategic leadership, particularly what i don't think we have enough of today. this is the capacity to bring together a million moving parts, many of those parts we heard about earlier this morning and to make them into a coherent policy, a policy that would achieve the most important ends in the most efficient and effective way. this is not an easy thing to do or i think we would be in many places much better in contemporary life. but still, we were so blessed with a level of talent during that war that i am personally doing everything i can to help young people think about a set of complicated problems in a different way. i say to them, imagine the time we are talking about.

it's no computers, no google maps, no long distance phone calls, no augmented data analysis, no ai. all of the planning for this phenomenal invasion that required meaningful work. the different cultural backgrounds. and a different view of strategy together for the first time in warfarelish a set of goals. i would add to the many things that this operation led to was the a new way of war fighting. not just an alliance based war fighting, but a nationally integrated command and this was the first. that means the british and french, in many cases, and all of our allies were sitting in a completely integrated office

where there was no difference between your nationality. imagine what that took to come in at this job a little late in the day and to try to refashion an entire organizational culture in the short time it was still available for planning the invasion of normandy. this legacy also created a complete change in our military posturing in the united states. it led to the whole concept of the joint chiefs of staff. and certainly during the eisenhower administration, there were two major reforms to the defense department designed to realign the defense department in a way that would put civilians in charge of interservice rivalry and to manage that process. finally, it brings us to the point of my discussion this evening, sorry, this morning.

who was this man whose legacy during the war extended all the way to 1961 and beyond? he was a man who had strategic gifts, but he was also a middle child. he had a very outspoken, outsized older brother. he was one of seven boys, six surviving boys. he was a middle child who managed to reconcile family differences . so, he brought that talent to the european theater. let's back up again because it really wasn't discussed this morning because i was next up. but one of the things that is really impressive about the general's strategy for world war ii is they had to make a decision about where they would concentrate their resources, obviously. if you read eisenhower's diary, he complains a bit about having to go out and argue for the right level of resources for the

normandy invasion because we have a two front war, or two wars, he calls them. it was very clear that u.s. policy and strategy was your first, which frankly took -- europe first, which frankly took a lot of courage considering the u.s. was attacked initially by the japanese. adolf hitler made the fatal mistake of declaring war on the united states, and that opened the war for an assessment that if we could defeat hitler, it would significantly weaken the japanese. in any case, the numbers are legendary of how many people participated in overlord forces include 12,000 airplanes, 7000 vessels, 24,000 paratroopers, 160,000 soldiers deployed. think about the logistical challenges of getting all of

them food and water and rations and emergency medical supplies that they carried with them. and imagine that out of all these numbers only 15% of them were veteran combat soldiers. only 15%. the rest had not been in combat before. as i say to my students when we get to those speeches, the vast percentage of people who came on shore on that day did not know who they were, and they found out in an instant. they didn't know if they were brave. they didn't know if they were cowards. they didn't know whether they could manage their stress. they didn't know whether they would live through the day. can you imagine? only 15%. from what i understand, the way we handled it is we integrated those 15% with the other soldiers to provide some maturity in each of those units. still, it is extraordinary.

let me say something about the kinds of struggles of the man who took responsibility for the entire operation. as the young g.i.'s were in one of the most existential moments they would ever experience in their lives, you could say that dwight eisenhower was in an existential moment in the future of his career. what i think is moving about what i read and researched when i wrote my book, he cared not one wit about how he was remembered. i know thate. but if you read his musings and his diaries, not even dwight eisenhower even thought he --thought anyone would read them. now they are published everywhere. he muses about the

shortsightedness of the average human and promoting their intense personal outlook that most officers had, even in such a critical thing as war. how many times he went on to say that a principal effort was going to do its duty no matter where it led. and in doing so, he would be meeting a higher calling which was to serve something larger than himself. this is not too good to be true because this is deeply embedded in his religious beliefs that were fostered right here in pennsylvania not far from -- his father grow up not far from harrisburg as a matter of fact. but these deep-seated feelings of self-sacrifice can be seen in how he handled so many of the

arguments that are undertaken by the allies. there are so many crises we started to talk about today. but let me say the difficulty of bringing together a multinational group for the first time can be as simple as what kind of language are we going to use? are we going to call this the trunk of the car, or are we going to call it a boot? and not understanding what set of vocabulary words we were going to use took a tremendous amount of effort. there were also differences in how the british instructed strategy and how they used their resources, which made an impact on what choices they wanted to make the ones they could afford come on the ones that made sense to them. but then there was the american viewpoint, and america has never had alike. we are very oriented towards being focused toward direct

action, whereas the british have always been more interested in going around in a different and more indirect way. the effort to bring all those together underscored in a way one of the biggest problems eisenhower faced, and that was that the united states was becoming ascendant over its founding country and britain was beginning to lose its grip on its empire. in war, this is one of the subtexts of the war, the fight to try to keep that empire from imploding. without getting into too much more of those sorts of off subject details, let me just say that dwight eisenhower's main objective as i understand it and see it reflected in his diaries is his main job is what he

called unity of purpose to bring together in that upper echelons of the alliance a unity of purpose. and then, in diaries and other research there were times when i read it and i wanted to say, stand up for yourself granddad. for heavens sake, stand up for yourself. then i realized he had a different way of going about this. probably the way he managed dinnertime conversations when we were growing and that was to let some people win a few minor things, to hold back a bit, be an active listener, and then when you really analyze the problems that you were facing, he won every fight. so here is a short list of the headaches he had to deal with, and i know that the people coming along after me will give you the full detail on it, but first of all he had to deal with the skeptics of the plan.

the british did not like the idea of invading normandie and winston churchill did not come around or harden to the enterprise as the quote goes until within weeks of the actual deployment enormity. can you imagine having a boss that has no confidence you will pull it off? that was one thing. then the size of the invasion force. he thought of a huge battle at the very early stage, will we have five or we will have three? he thought that battle and did it through general montgomery. very smart. send up a guy that churchill respects and looks to for this point of information. the airborne decision he described earlier, he said in his diaries he was worried about the flat, but he understood that the airborne assault was the linchpin of the operation.

the transportation plan. the british war cabinet absolutely rejected this idea and i said sorry, we are doing it. fire me if you want to and i will resign from my position. he knew when to put the metal to the petal. i think in my book i said on the reflection i think he was a genius at knowing when to deploy his ego and went to suppress it. finally, we have the fight over strategic bombing, which was related to the transportation plan, logistical problems, not enough landing craft going into an invasion. a shortage of ammunition at the very last moment, and then a big fight about operation and bill -- operation anvil. there would be an invasion of

southern france to support the operation, and the british were opposed to it. churchill had renamed it operation -- it is such a british word. then i had to deal with both the germans, who were not only strengthening their defenses on the coast but were also moving divisions into the area, and the french. the deep divisions in france created a very important diplomatic strategic, and operational set of decisions. you can say at the end of the day the weather forecast was the most vexing, if you take the weather forecast in the context of using those airborne troops, this is one of the bravest things i think we will remember in history, and so early in the

war he complained about the british press describing him as timid, and he said, and i am looking for the cloak here -- quote here, it worries me to be thought of as timid where i have had to do things that were so risky as to be almost crazy. the fact is he did not show it. he did not show how risky it was. he had this capacity to project optimism, and for all of the veterans i met -- and he went out and visited as many people as he could who were preparing for this innovation. i wish i had the list in front of me but every possible moment he could he went out and talk to them and exuded this kind of optimism, and even more important he projected that

optimism to his british comrades and to our other allies. it is not surprising actually given the fact that he fought for every one of those things he was given. in the end on the evening of june 5 before he went out to see the airborne troops he wrote a note that said my decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. the troops, the air, the navy did all bravery and devotion to duty you could do. if any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone. this in case of failure note never had to be used, that is the man who led d-day. thank you. [applause] >> good morning. i would also like to think the

ice in our society, the guys in our institute and my gracious panel members. i think you for taking time out of your busy schedule. we will look at the other side standing in the adversary issues. we will you design methodology to understand the environment understand the guidance that were given, and how they defined the problem and what approach they opposed -- if they propose to use. how are things looking in 1944 in germany. let's go back to frederick the great, and they have a germany problem. it is in the middle of europe and they are surrounded and by an alliance of strange bedfellows they want the defeat of germany. if we think about what the extent of that excess empire is in both europe and north africa it will start to be rolled back starting on november 1943 with the invasion of north africa. this will be the first time american troops will fight german and churchill would routinely remind us you have not been war and to confront the

germans. it would not begin until february 1923 that we would see the turnaround at stalingrad and really the turning point that would continue to drive the germans back on the east for the rest of the war. that is what we find it in may of 1943, the battle of the atlantic turned. the allies will sink 135 u-boats. in the three years and three months prior to that point they had sunk 153. this gives the allies naval supremacy. it is a prerequisite necessary for the invasion of northwest europe. in june the combined bomber offensive with the british bombing at night and the americans following during today are following a directive that says you will target the german aircraft industry. what it does is forces german aircraft to come into the air. what did that translate to? between january and may of 1944 there are 2283 german pilots.

2262 of them will be shut down. that is a 99% turnover. this gives allies are supremacy. end of the prerequisite for the invasion of north africa. july 1940 three england ending the united states will invade sicily, and this will open up the mediterranean to shipping. invade italy proper. this breaks the tripartite agreement. italy is out of the war. that forces 10 divisions to go into the italian peninsula. spring 1940 the work, russia advances all the way across the east enemies there are some 200 german divisions fighting on a thousand mile front between the baltic and the plexi -- black sea. that gives you 50 divisions less . at well all of this is happening in the east the idea that something is going to happen

year, so what we find on top of all of this is the arsenal of democracy to supply not only the united states but all of our allies. what is the guidance? it starts in march 1942 when hitler's said let's build an atlantic wall. it is truly just a propaganda arm and you get a bunch of these pictures. that is a 1700 mile coastline you have to defend, and that is not a problem. the principle of the responses actually in the east. one thing that happens early 1942 is ronald will pull out of retirement. the oldest field marshal in the german army and the last question will do a study because he is a good professional and relies the event wall is a sham, to report, send it back to berlin and said hitler's should really read this. at that time in the war he does, which will lead to directive number 51.

he warns of the catastrophic consequences of the allies gaining a foothold in northwest europe. that is the problem statement and the response to that should be strength the western defenses and be prepared to drive the enemy back into the sea. to theat end the directive will also send a field marshal, the youngest and his staff to do an assessment of the event wall, and they will agree it is a shame. with that she will assign rummel the two army groups. this is when the atlantic wall starts to be built. there was a lot of study about where we will build our fences? they looked at where the allies landed in the past, and it is always been at ports, therefore they prioritize ports. moreover, for all of the reasons we talked about besides being under air cover and closeness to berlin, the idea that is the

most likely landing in the most consequential one, most of the resources go to calais. when they start to build the atlantic wall, this is strengthening western defenses. we should think about this is a living beast. when you see these concrete bunkers they will bill 15,000 of them. it is 1.2 million tons of german steel. 5% of german steel production is found in the rebar of those bunkers. the bones of the defense of these be connected by trends lunch -- trench lines. a thousand artillery pieces from 20 different countries and 21 different calibers. at this point you go those germans are so creative to use the captured artillery. true, except how do you resupply 21 different calibers of artillery. logistically it is a mess.

this is the muscle of the beast. then you have to think about eyes. 92 radar stations of which only 5% will still be standing on june 6. these are the eyes of the bees to sense with the adversary is coming. what is the skin of the beast? this ends up being the 6.5 million mindshe 500,000 to beach obstacles are arrayed in three lines between the low tide mark in the high tide mark. 325,000 telephone poles but in every field for which they think the allies might lend paratroopers and gliders and they fled the fields to reduce mobility of allies who might lend. that is the beast and the blood that flows through it are the german troops that are there. 800,000 of them under command of the west, except that the

germans have reached the bottom of their manpower barrel, so what you are finding as they are recruiting very old. the 700 90 regiment, the average age is 36. that the range of 52nd regiment, average age 18.5. 1/6 of those people are former eastern europe. they are from kazakhstan. so you have a problem with language and readiness. are they going to find well on the entry to be told it is a mixed bag. some fight well and others cannot wait to surrender. this is to reinforce the western defenses. what this means when we say this is only an act in progress only 18% of the event wallace built enormity -- dealt in normandy when the allies invade.

how do we drive them back into the sea? we have 10 divisions. this is what you think about what you think about the german army in world war ii. mechanized and motorized forces that combine arms and fight in a modern work. 23 of them are static defending the atlantic wall. it cannot find offensive operations and are not mobile. the panzer divisions are. what you will find is two different approaches. the first one is proposed by the commander of the west, and his attack dog is this guy. both of their experiences fighting in the east against the russians. what that would propose a stick wall is just a tripwire. it is an outpost offense, a minor delay. we should use a traditional doctrinal approach of using mass

reserves that once the allies commit to where they lend we larger them in i counterattacked. it is that the german air force should be able to support that counterattack. the thing we fear more than anything is allied naval gunfire for which we have no response. it was proven at the armored counterattacks in sicily as well as italy. it did not put all of that armor upfront. leave it in the back to account for paris and to be able to flow up to calais or normandy depending on where they lend. the other approach, this one largely the brainchild of rummel , because his experiences different. where did he get his experience? fighting the british in north africa. he will say the war has changed. ally air is destroying us. all of those reserves put in the

rear will never make it to the front. allied air will ensure they do not. we need to put that armor upfront. that atlantic wall is not a tripwire. that is the battle line. if the allies land and they take a hold for more than 38 hours we will lose. the assumption inherent in this is we have no german navy and we have no german air force. that is the debate that goes back and forth. truth be told these guys will push back. this is europe and not north africa. there are 66 days of desert, this is zero. there is cover, concealment. allied air will not be nearly that effective. as this debate continues because of two adult fiddler -- adolf hitler to make the choice.

two divisions he will put up toward calais. one of them he will put near normandy. three divisions are given to regroup and the south, and four divisions are given to bunch webb and berg -- von schw eppenburg. you cannot move them until hitler releases them. you are killing me, you are killing my focus of effort, my best divisions that should be able to gather attack, so therefore they get neither the advantages of one or the other of roach -- other approach. this is exacerbated moreover by a convoluted chain of command. you have adolphf hitler at the

top. the naval and air commander do not report to him. he report back to berlin, which means he has neither the authority nor the necessary cooperation of those two commanders. that translates to all of his commanders responsible for defending the beaches for which they are going to land. if you think about the ss units are in france they report to candler -- kimmler. hitler will repeatedly reach around the chain of command to speak to the people he wants to talk to. many people in normandy called is commended by confusion, and even the chief of staff said this is the problem of every tyrannical leader. you do not want to give too much power to anyone leader. this command-and-control system effectively slows down the decision-making of the german war machine on june 6 and thereafter. so what are the results of all

this? the germans have a one demand response. that is their first problem. the second one is we do not have a common operational approach about how we use our best routes , not in intent, posture, and how we use those divisions. next and unbelievable to everyone around in 1940 we have a hierarchical and rigid chain of command that disempowers subordinate commanders to act and react at the speed of the problem. ultimately for the german defense in europe and world war ii they do not have enough resources. there is a fair amount of senior german officers who were unwilling to apply a proclivity of mass armor reserves who failed to recognize the allies are coalition force who can fight in air, land, and see that her well armed and well led and

that traditional doctrinal approach is no longer suitable to the competitive environment. are the united states and our allies capable of responding to a radically changing national security environment in a more important for those who served in the armed forces, are we able to learn from the past anticipate the future and react to the ever-changing character of work? thank you.

-- neptune lasted june 6 through june 30, and i will talk about the airborne operation which consisted of three airborne divisions which i had the opportunity to spend nine years with what i was on active duty, and we cannot leave our british cousins out. the airborne troops total 23,400 .

6000 brits came innhower and is weather men were concerned about the sea state and getting across the channel while the weather plays a major role in airborne operations also. the biggest thing we worry about is the wind. that was not a major issue here, but what was a major issue is that obligation, the cloud cover, the density in the fog and we did hit that, in the existing weather conditions were worse over friends than they were over england and the channel. so when considering the airborne plan as someone already pointed out we had to take care of the vulnerable flanks.

the airborne operation took place at the peninsula here, so you had the eastern flank and the western flank. here are your beaches that the assault forces came across, so that was a major consideration and eisenhower was skeptical as tactical drops on the airport after the debacle we had an operation husky in sicily. a lot of lessons learned there on that one. the airborne operation consisted of the 82nd, the screaming eagles, and the pegasus patch for the brits. this is general matthew ridgway general taylor. these two folks participated in earlier airborne operations in

sicily and salerno. taylor was with the 82nd as a commander and ridgway was the commander. under him was general gavin, a real airborne trooper, so let me discuss a couple of things here. there was a diversionary plan as part of the airborne operation and it was called operation titanic. it consisted of dropping 500 paradummies inland off areas away from the actual landing zones. they dropped them in an arc like this. they called them rupert after rupert the bear, the comic strip there. 500 of them jumped in with sas troops. they had little notes attached

to one of these dummies. they are 3.5 feet high wrapped in cloth with sand to fill them out. they attach notes on them as they dropped in the early morning hours here. good morning hans. we have arrived. [laughter] but anyway, that was very successful, because it did draw on some of the german units to go and investigate that. in particular interrupt a couple of units that were close to where the 101st would jump into. let me show you the routes. the 82nd cayman of departure airfields in this unit flew straight south. when they got to the channel they went to altitude to get

under german radar. that is pretty low for those big, heavy airplanes. when they got to this point here there was a boat there with a light on, and the pilots could hone in on that. it had the codename hoboken. at that point, they made a left turn and came in from the west across the fnch coast and dropped paratroopers into this area. the glider troops followed this route and turned here and came in here. the glider troops did not come in until about 4:30 in the morning. when they hit the coast here is when the weather turned, extremely cloudy, navigation it was very difficult, and the

german flakka started to open up on them there. so as a result of that, there are 1047 aircraft. c46 aircraft coming in there. they had to disperse. some went hi someone did right some went low. that is the reason why some of the troops did not lend under drop zones. the brits came in here. they were outside also. they did not fly over the landing beaches like they did in sicily. 504 and 505th went into sicily. 504 had 23 friendly aircraft shot down by naval gunfire because the assault were right over the beaches. they also did not use pathfinders of that operation. these are some of the lessons learned that planners looked at

and eisenhower insisted that they make those changes, because i was skeptical -- ike was skeptical after the operation in sicily. they came in the western part and the british came in here. they flew into what they call a v formation. you see three aircraft in each v formation. that is something approached the 1-1st and 82nd. let me mention here quickly, the british airborne. if you go off the map here, you go to the beach. there were two vertical bridges -- critical bridges that has to be taken prior to the assault on the beaches.

later renamed pegasus for the brits and horsa after the british troop carrier here. this was a during operation, and in my view it was one of the best operations ever conceived and planned in world war ii. it consisted of six gliders. you see them here, 2, 3, 4 5. the 61 never made it. he took the wrong pairing and up four miles away. that is about .2 of one mile distance from bridge to bridge. six gliders landed 60 minutes after midnight -- 16 minutes after midnight led by the brits. they would carry 28 mthere were larger

than the american gliders that carried 17 or 18 men but within 15 minutes after they had landed, they totally took the small garrison by surprise. it was a small garrison, about 20 german soldiers. hans schmidt was the commander. howard was in the first glider and only a few meters from the bridge. they got out quickly and assaulted the bridge knock the germans out, and they only had two casualties. one lieutenant was killed, a british lieutenant was killed as he was crossing the pegasus bridge and one of the soldiers inside the glider was killed when the glider landed hard and broke his neck. this was a major in my view as i

said a major operation that sealed off these two bridges. this is a high-speed avenue approach, and there were a number of panzer units that could've easily come in and hit the beaches. the lending went well and eventually came up and linked with these folks and the rest of the british airborne jumped in and this area, so a very successful operation. you don't learn much about it, but i could not leave my british cousins out of it. they are so proud that operation, and they should be. howard would come around on tour and talk to us about this operation. next the u.s. airborne plan now. we had the western sector, and this chart shows you -- again here is utah beach.

this is the 82nd area here. this was about a 10 square mile area, and this is the one of the first -- the 101st. there are three for each division and three here. the aircraft came in this way from the west. they did not come across this way, so they came in and dislodge their troops this way. the photos you see here -- this is one of th