I will be the first to admit I haven’t studied D-Day and Normandy all that much…
But this one caught me totally by surprise. I don’t remember EVER reading anything about a sixth beach to be assaulted!
h/t Stretch
Things like this just once again prove the ‘history’ we know isn’t necessarily what actually happened.
As more and more security clearances time out, things are coming out that shake up what we ‘think’ we know about WWII and causing history to be rewritten to take that into account.
Personally, I think the Brits are even worse with SOE, Bletchley Park, and other locations that were then and still are highly classified and those people take security more seriously than Americans do.
And as the years go by, Korea and then Vietnam information will be released, leading to even more rewrites.
The other thing I find interesting is the difference in perspectives between the troops on the pointy end and those sitting behind the lines (with the knowledge) and making decisions. Often the two perspectives are 180 out with the boots on the ground thinking the brass was either stupid or crazy or both… just sayin…
My father worked at Bletchley in the Japan section. He never went in to more detail than that until some of the books about BP were published. Then he was willing to say more.
One of the things he confirmed was that the Japanese had a standard start of message “Praise the Emperor” line which was almost always present in one form or another (I forget or maybe he did the exact details), which made figuring out the decodes of the rest a doddle once you got that one to show up.
What he never said until we did a tour of the place some 10 years ago was that he worked in the same hut as the bombe people which means he was almost certainly rather more than just a humble provider of “cribs”…. but he took the full details to the grave
That’s sad to some degree.
But my Dad was at Normandy and Bastogne and never talked about those either, unless we were watching a movie (Battleground) or a TV show (Combat).
Many vets were reticent to talk.
My Uncle Jim was at the Ardennes. When asked if he wanted to go see the movie Battle Of The Bulge he replied “No thanks. I saw the play. Didn’t like it.”
I had an uncle that landed on Utah Beach on D-Day, his name was Thomas Copper. I did not get a chance to know him because he was killed during the hedge row fighting during the battle for St. Lo in France. During the chaos he was captured by the Germans and held until Allied forces were able to free him and other captives and then went back into battle. During the fighting a smoke bomb was dropped on German positions for the bombers to drop ther load on but the wind shifted and the bombers inadvertantly dropped them on My uncles and other US Forces. He was taken to an aid station for his wounds but died there. His body was shipped back in a closed coffin and his funeral was held in my Grandmothers home. I have inherited the very last letter my uncle wrote to his mother (my Grandmother)I have some pictures of him with his father, my Grandfather, before he was shipped to England for the planned invasion of the Normandy Beaches. He was my Grandma’s youngest and I remember the sadness she would express when she was talking to me about him. Wish I could have met him.
My oldest Uncle was in Europe and never has talked about D-day. He was with Patton before D-Day and after D-Day was again given to Patton and not ever got hurt. My other Uncle was on the Missouri from when it came into service to 1947 and served on the gun that they signed the surrender on and he was never hurt.
My Dad, who was the youngest went into the Marines at 17 in 43 and Island Hopped until Okinawa where he was blown up and badly injured. He spent the next year in a Naval Hospital in traction and they let him out under Medical Retirement. He had gotten a broken back, 83% of his stomach gone, major slices all over his legs from top to bottom, and one opening from left top shoulder to right hip. He survived, would go back in to VA every 6 months to have his back straighten out, and never complained but he would never talk about it. I learned some about it from over hearing his best friend who was serving with him in the Marines and they would meet at home, drink, and talk.
None of my Uncles would talk about the war. My Uncles and my Dad are now dead as life has caught up to them.
Interesting. I hadn’t heard about a 6th beach, but I did know that several raids were planned and many of them carried out at locations other than the main beaches to support the main landings.
If you view the military as a spear, your point of view depends on your location. Those at the point see things far different than those at the butt of the shaft.
Aye…
The difference between what you can see through the windscreen of your vehicle, and what you can see from orbit.
Learn something all the time, don’t we? I had not heard of a sixth beach. Kind of humorous that the Canadians didn’t want to land at a beach called “jelly”!
To your general point, there is and will always be (I hope) a lot of ‘history’ that goes unreleased until a more appropriate time for its airing to the public, and in many cases that time never comes. I’m sure you know that from your own personal experience with some of the systems you dealt with in your career.
There were many people who advocated for the A-Bomb not to be used since doing so would advertise our capabilities to future adversaries. I can only imagine the capabilities of systems today that we don’t end up using for the same reason – setting off a technology race when our enemies realize what might be possible but that had previously been dismissed as impractical if even envisioned at all.
My father was drafted late in the war after working as a draftsman for a steel company. When enough buildings were done, my dad’s number came up.
He was in the 8th Air force, and was training for Chemical Warfare. However, he broke his collar bone in a “perfect” parachute landing fall and spent quite some time in the hospital. When he got out of the hospital, he was shifted to Draftsman and shipped to Okinawa just as the war was ending.
He passed away in 1970, but was willing to talk a bit about his role. I knew he was relieved when the bombs caused Japan’s surrender. Reading between the lines, I think he figured he’d be back to Chem Warfare if the invasion occurred.
Tom..
I agree.
How long did the USAF fly F117s before it officially announced that they existed?
It’s also a point to remember when people talk about “modern” weapons being supplied to the current war in Europe. Most of what is being supplied is decades old technology, and the current systems (which are not being supplied) has been through multiple upgrades.
So every time some conspiracy theorist talks about “stealth helicopters”, my response is that I would be bloody shocked and annoyed if the military had NOT at least attempted to develop low-observability rotary-wing aircraft.
Did I mention that I have little respect for the majority of conspiracy theories?
Cheers….
The public attempt to develop a stealth helicopter was the Comanche (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing%E2%80%93Sikorsky_RAH-66_Comanche). It was canceled. Forty plus years working at a Great Big Defense Contractor convinces me there is one around somewhere.
Thank
There are reasons it’s called “the fog of war”.
All- Thanks for the comments and the family history. Yes, there is much we don’t and never will know. WSF- Excellent point!
I get a wry chuckle out of the Poms (“Brits” to you ) unromantic approach to naming operations. “Operation Frog”, indeed….
As for calling proposed Commando raids a “6th Invasion Beach”, would you call the Ranger assault on Point du Hoc a 7th?
What I’m seeing is a sector named for mapping and planning purposes, in which a couple of raids were planned. Note that these were raids, designed to destroy specific objectives but not to take ground, establish bridgeheads and hold against counter-attacks until relieved, reinforced and supported.
Two different styles and purposes, but Mr Historian can only puff himself off as discovering something “important” , if he pretends that they are one and the same.
Raids, not invasion.
Cliffs, not beaches.
Supporting action, not main effort.
Pardon me if I’m a little touchy on the subject, but I’ve seen too much bad history applied to people and things that I value.
Talking about code-breaking, some of you may be interested in a book titled “Battle of Wits”, by Stephen Budiansky.
It discusses the fact that it was very much a dance or a chess-match. Each side would change, and the other side would have to catch up. So at one point, you might be reading the enemy’s mail, and then he would change and you may not be able to read it for weeks or months.
Anyone who tells you that once we broke a code, we had full access to everything the enemy transmitted, is being foolish. Even when we did have the codes broken, the sheer volume was such that not everything could be decoded, because we didn’t have the manpower.
One interesting example, not made public until very long after the event, was the communication between the Japanese Government, and their Embassy in Switzerland. That Embassy was the one through which the Surrender was transmitted, yet the instructions to do so – transmitted in the Imperial Diplomatic Code – were only decoded after the war was over.
Anti A-bomb conspiracy theorists claim that Japan was “trying to surrender” before Hiroshima, but we now know that the instructions to do so were only transmitted after the bombing of Nagasaki.
Pearl Harbour conspiracy-theorists point to broken Japanese codes as “proof” that we “knew” about the attack on Pearl before it happened.
The code broken at the time was the Japanese DIPLOMATIC code, not the NAVAL code. So we knew that the Japanese were declaring war, but we did not know where or when they would strike first.
Also, the Japanese were not stupid, and knew about op-security..
Sometimes the unknowns really do just confirm what is already known.
Peter- Very possible. Taking out the guns would have been a priority, no question.
Codes/cryptography…sigh… THAT is a whole ball of wax that can go in SO many different directions. And yes, each service had its OWN codes, so breaking one didn’t allow you to read others. You are correct that very few actual messages were read in anything approaching a timely fashion.
Peter W:”…the sheer volume was such that not everything could be decoded, because we didn’t have the manpower.”
So true. Until later in the war, it was even true for OUR OWN messages sometimes. One of the warnings about a possible attack on Pearl Harbor didn’t get decoded until after the attack due to the backlog of messages.
Roy…
You may well have read more widely than I. Can you recall the who, what and when of that msg regarding the attack on Pearl?
My first assumption would be that Pearl would be on a long list of potential targets, and any intel analyst worth his pay would have looked at it as a possibility…. Anything more solid than that?
Jim.
There is a diary somewhere of a German tank unit that came under fire from HMS Rodney. Forty percent of their tanks knocked out almost instantly and the personnel outside suffered worse. It seems that with 16” guns, a near miss….. isn’t.
Peter,
I remember reading in one of Gordon Prange’s books that a coded “war warning” message was sent to CINCPAC and General Short. Due to atmospheric conditions, it was sent by commercial telegram (IIRC). It wasn’t received and decoded until the raid was underway.
During the cold war, the USN had a top secret operation called “Ivy Bells”. Using a submarine, they tapped into one of the Russian navy’s undersea communications cables that crossed the Sea of Okhotsk. This cable was the main communications cable between their naval base at Vladivostok and the Russian mainland. The Russians thought their cables were secure, so they did not encrypt most of the messages. The operation was so successful, that the USN repeated the coup with another cable crossing the White Sea where most of the Russian navy’s northern fleet communications went. For several years, we were reading the Russian’s messages.
The operation was compromised by the traitor Ronald Pelton, an employee of the NSA who sold it out for money because he was in deep debt.
Roy- Sigh… yeah…