Authors: Anthony G Williams
High above him, the protective umbrella circled.
Further out were the P-51s and the Reapers. Right overhead were the new Typhoon jets, burdened with the biggest auxiliary fuel tanks they could carry, but still forced by their short range to come and go in a regular shuttle.
The observer checked his watch and called ‘here we go’ to the pilot, just as the big ships erupted with fire.
The long flashes from their guns were followed by billowing smoke, almost obscuring the shock waves sweeping across the surface of the sea as the battleships opened fire.
Rodney
and
Nelson
were down there, the observer knew, lobbing their one-ton shells many miles inland.
They were joined by older British battleships and some American ones as well.
By comparison, the fire from the cruisers passed almost without notice.
As the barrage of fire continued, the invasion force started its crawl towards the shore.
First to hit the beach were the Tritons, amphibious armoured tracked carriers launched from a couple of miles offshore.
Some of these were fitted with old Cromwell turrets with 25-pounder guns for suppressing enemy
defences,
others carried Marine Commandos which they planned to deposit just inland from the beach danger zone, to protect the armoured vehicles against Panzerfaust-armed defenders. The LCTs went next, some carrying three heavy tanks, other a larger number of smaller vehicles.
Waiting further back were the bigger ships which would not approach until the shore had been secured: the LSTs, which could carry fifty tanks across oceans, and the LCI infantry carriers.
As the Auster circled, the observers saw more flame and smoke erupting close to the shore as the LCT (R) vessels reached close enough to let loose their terrifying stream of over a thousand rockets, fired in just half a minute.
The shoreline had by now disappeared under a pall of smoke as the first landing craft crept in.
Some smoke was laid deliberately to confuse defending gunners, but much was simply the result of the devastating bombardment.
The LCT slowed as it ploughed into the beach, the ramp quickly being dropped into the shallow water.
As the Churchill roared forward, a rattle of machine-gun strikes echoed through the vehicle.
The commander did not need to glance at his map to know the location of the Widerstandsnester, or resistance nest; he had memorised the carefully plotted positions days before, wondering about who had collected this information and the risks that had been taken.
The turret swung smoothly round and the commander peered into the periscope.
Just… there!
The tank’s HESH shell slammed into the German bunker, flattening into a cake of HE before the base fuze detonated, the shock wave blasting the bunker’s inner layer of concrete through the interior.
The machine gun stopped firing.
As the Churchill growled up the beach, passing a wrecked Triton, the commander could see other armoured vehicles pouring ashore; among the first were some of Hobart’s ‘funnies’, specialist Flails: modified Centaurs whose rotating chains thumped the sand to detonate the anti-tank mines which littered the beach.
Behind them came many Covenanters, carrying their cargoes of hand-picked infantry past the deadly beach and into the interior, their task to reinforce the Triton-mounted first wave and penetrate further inland to suppress all local resistance as quickly as possible.
Some of the Comet AA tanks were there too, not just to defend against aircraft but also to turn their 20 mm Polstens onto any suitable ground targets.
The Churchill lurched to a halt as it approached the crest of the low dunes behind the beach.
This point was most likely to be covered by a second line of PaK guns, whose reported locations were still being pounded by the ships offshore.
While waiting for the rest of his troop, the commander opened his hatch and peered behind him.
The growing light revealed a remarkable scene, the water covered with ships and craft of all sizes as far as he could see.
Great gouts of flame and smoke periodically came from the battleships in the distance.
Closer to shore, the water around the teeming craft erupted in splashes of all sizes as the surviving defenders fought back.
The noise was a continuous, mind-numbing,
battering
of machine gun and cannon fire punctuated by the blasts of explosions and the strange, express-train roar of heavy shells speeding overhead. The commander spotted three LCTs which had not made it ashore, victims of artillery shells or Teller mines attached to beach obstacles; they lay at odd angles, burning, and one suddenly tilted over and sank as he watched.
On the beach
itself
lay a Churchill, a track torn off by a mine.
So far, though, casualties seemed to be light; the bulk of the invasion force was getting ashore as planned.
The members of the Oversight Committee clustered tensely around the big table in the living room, now covered with maps and situation reports.
A junior Intelligence Officer kept popping in and out, bringing fresh reports.
Most attention, though, was focused on the first reconnaissance photographs which had begun to trickle in.
One showed an extensive area of marshland, water streaked with broad, parallel lines of foam from the hovercraft.
One line ended short of the land, the craft obscured by smoke.
Evidently, some of the defenders had reacted quickly.
The vast array of craft and larger ships was revealed in panoramic views.
Their neat arrangement was disturbed in several places as
smoking,
damaged ships were hauled out of station.
Some had run over Oyster mines too quickly, others been hit by those coastal artillery batteries which had so far resisted suppression by airborne troops, air attack or naval gunfire.
Overall, though, the big gamble appeared to be paying off.
‘So far so good,’ muttered Don.
‘No sign of the Luftwaffe yet.’
‘They’ll be there,’ said Peter quietly.
‘We know they’ve been training with their new jet bombers and we think they have some new anti-ship missiles as well.
They’ve been holding them well back, out of trouble, but they can’t pass up this chance.’
Mary had been scanning one of the reports.
‘The armoured units landed by hovercraft have met little resistance; that tactic seems to have been a complete surprise – it was definitely worth switching the landing grounds around to give the British forces a crack at the Cotentin Peninsula.
Key points along the Route Nationale 13 to Cherbourg, at Carentan, St Mère-Église and Montebourg, have already been secured. And the beaches to the east of the Vire, with the restricted exits, were taken from the rear. They’re now just waiting for the reinforcements from the beaches before moving on Cherbourg.’
Don felt a shiver of goosebumps. He remembered the terrible slaughter at
Geoffrey grunted.
‘There have been some losses in local tank battles, though.
Those Panzers are waking up. It’s a close match between the Churchill Two and the Panther, but the APDS shot should give our boys the edge.
A bigger problem will be the number of those PaK eighty-eights they have.
Our tanks will have to stay on the offensive, which means driving into the sights of their guns.
We tried to plot the positions of the PaK units but of course they’ll be moving into different locations now, the first our boys are likely to know about them is when they open fire.’
‘How are the Americans doing?’
asked
Don.
Geoffrey looked up from the papers he had been studying.
‘Not bad.
They’ve taken some losses but are getting ashore.
We’ll just have to wait and see how the new Pershing tank acquits itself though – the cavalry have had little time to get it ready.’
Charles picked up another paper.
‘The coasts of Europe are being blanketed by ‘Window’ to confuse the radar stations which we didn’t attack, every wireless communication station we could identify has been bombed or jammed and the decoy raids have all gone in on schedule.
Let’s hope those units don’t get carried away by success and forget they have to pull back before their supplies run out.’
‘What’s the latest weather forecast look like?’ This had been the object of more than usually obsessive study over the past few weeks, nearly leading to collective heart failure during the savage storm which had only ended at the beginning of the previous week.
‘Looks good,’ said Mary, ‘calm seas still being forecast for the next few days.’
‘Any reports of German reinforcements being brought up?’
Don asked.
‘Not yet,’ Charles responded, ‘I expect they’re still trying to sort out the decoys from the real invasion.
That shouldn’t take them long, though,
then
we can expect to see the first organised resistance.’
‘Every hour counts,’ muttered Don.
‘A successful landing is only the first step.
Sustaining the invasion will be a long, hard, grind.’
‘Radar contact; hostile planes approaching!’
The Commander turned to the indicated direction, binoculars reflexively sweeping the sky even though he knew that it would be some time before the bogeys were within visual range.
Most of the day had passed, so far with little Luftwaffe activity; a few Arado 234 recce jets, some of which had succeeded in evading the watchful Typhoons.
The LCT, not the most glamorous of warships, had been heavily modified to act as a fighter direction ship, a task betrayed by the massive radar aerials.
A new Allied IFF system was being tried for the first time in action, and it was working well in distinguishing the hostile aircraft from the swarm of Allied planes overhead.
The Commander was expecting trouble.
By now, the Germans should have identified the main invasion force and readied their first strike.
A stream of information was relayed to him from the Control Centre: several aircraft, coming fast from the east.
The outer screen of Reapers had already been vectored on to them, but it was clear they would only have a fleeting chance of interception, on a hazardous collision course; the attackers were obviously jets, travelling too fast to be caught in a tail chase.
The P-51s would do no better; only the Typhoons could match their speed.
The Control Centre was dark and stuffy, the controllers’ attention fixed on the green dots and lines on the radar screens.
The Commander looked over their shoulders, noted that there were only nine aircraft, still ten miles away.
A Reaper, identified by its IFF return, approached the first jet head-on.
The two blips merged,
then
broke up into many small pieces.
He winced; the Reaper pilot had misjudged his attack, kept firing his guns for a fraction of a second too long.
The eight survivors came on.
Typhoons were now closing with them.
This should be interesting, he thought.
Suddenly the green blips of the attackers multiplied as each split into two.
A missile launch, this far out?
He was puzzled: the bombers could not hope to control their missiles with any accuracy at such a range.
His puzzlement increased when half the blips – obviously the bombers – suddenly turned through 180 degrees and retraced their course before the Typhoons could reach them.
What was going on?
He went back on deck, and after a few moments’ searching spotted the missiles by the flares of light from their rocket motors.
They came on through an intensifying barrage of AAA fire from every ship within range, but most of the fire fell behind, the directors unable to compensate for the high speed of the missiles.
A sudden brilliant flash in the sky signalled a lucky hit, but seven missiles came on.
The Lieutenant-Commander watched, fascinated, as each missile’s course diverged and they began to dive towards the invasion fleet.
They were
huge,
he saw now, with stub wings and rounded noses.
Rounded?
The horrible truth suddenly dawned: those were radomes – the missiles were radar guided!
He swore suddenly as they plunged unerringly towards their targets and vanished from view almost simultaneously.
He held his breath, then groaned quietly as a seven massive explosions ripped through the fleet, billowing clouds of red-tinged smoke rapidly towering overhead.
Seven vessels had been hit, and badly by the look of it.
He turned back to the Control Centre.
The Typhoons would have to be reinforced, he decided.
Some should be stationed further out so they could reach the missile carriers before they could launch.
Others would be held close in and ordered to intercept the missiles – if they could.
This invasion was suddenly beginning to look costly, he reflected.
He just had to hope that the Germans didn’t have too many of those missiles.