D-Day, 6 June 1944, is probably one of the best-known dates in history.
It marked the start of Operation Overlord, the world’s largest ever combined land, sea and air operation, and the moment when the forces of Britain, the United States and their allies landed in Normandy to begin the campaign to rid Western Europe of Nazi tyranny.
Perhaps inevitably, when we think of D-Day and Operation Overlord we tend to remember events across the Channel in France: the landings on the beaches of Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword; the capture of Pegasus Bridge and the storming of the Pointe du Hoc; the fighting in the bocage and the battle for Caen.
But while these momentous events are quite rightly in the forefronts of our minds, we should never forget that they were the result of years of painstaking preparations that largely took place on the British side of the Channel.
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It was here that the detailed plans for the invasion were put together and the specialist equipment that would be used in the landings was developed and tested. It was here, in conditions of great secrecy, that the troops were trained for the assault and the equipment and supplies that they needed for the undertaking were stockpiled.
It was from airfields in England that Allied planes supported the invasion - attacking targets in occupied Europe, providing aerial cover on D-Day itself, carrying paratroopers who would parachute into Normandy, towing gliders that would crash-land at key locations. And it was from dozens of ports, harbours and embarkation points largely along the south coast of England that the troops boarded the enormous armada of ships and landing craft that had been assembled to transport them across the Channel.
Hundreds of places in England have a D-Day story to tell. Julian Humphrys looks at ten of them here.
Best D-day sites
Bletchley Park, Bucks
Now the subject of numerous films and documentaries and visited by tens of thousands of people a year, this rambling late Victorian country pile and the huts and buildings in the surrounding grounds once housed an organisation so cloaked in secrecy that it would be decades before most people knew anything about it.
Bletchley Park was home to the Government Code and Cypher School – the secret organisation that decrypted coded enemy radio messages, firstly by hand and later with the help of the world’s first computers. By 1944 around 7,000 people were working here, three-quarters of them women, and they were handling an astonishing 5,000 intercepted messages a day. The information supplied by Bletchley had already been crucial in helping the Allies counter the U-Boat threat during the Battle of the Atlantic; it would now prove to be of immense value during Operation Overlord.
The signals decrypted here helped confirm the success of the scheme to mislead the Nazis over where the landings would take place, enabled the Allies to build up a picture of the forces opposed to them, and gave their generals advance information about what the German commanders were planning.
General Eisenhower would later write that the information supplied by Bletchley saved thousands of British and American lives. Today, Bletchley is an enthralling and evocative place to visit, with restored 1940s rooms in the house itself, and interactive exhibitions explaining the work that took place here and its contribution towards the eventual Allied victory.
We named it one of Britain's best World War Two museums
Hankley Common, Surrey
Knowing full well that an Allied invasion of Western Europe was only a matter of time, Nazi Germany set about fortifying the coastline of Europe from Norway to the Pyrenees with a series of strongpoints and defences that they dubbed the Atlantic Wall.
In reality, this so-called wall was far from complete on D-Day and the defences in Normandy were nowhere near as strong as those in the Calais area. Even so they were still formidable obstacles and, aware of the threat that they posed, the Allies developed a variety of ways to deal with them.
Specialist mine-clearing, bridge-laying and bunker-busting tanks were created and tested, and intense training took place to perfect the techniques needed to neutralise the German defences. Tucked away in the woods at Hankley Common near Farnham in Surrey is a remarkable relic of that training – the remains of a nine-feet high, 300-feet long replica of a German concrete anti-tank wall which was built by Canadian engineers in 1943.
The Canadians spent hours practising how best to destroy the wall and structures like it and the marks of their efforts can clearly be seen. The moss-covered wall is dotted with shrapnel marks, and in one place it has been completely blasted apart, exposing the rusting steel rods that formed its frame.
As it's part of the Longmoor military training area, Hankley Common is sometimes closed to the public. It’s also popular with by movie makers (the climax of the James Bond film ‘Skyfall’ was shot here) so it’s a good idea to check that it’s open before making a special visit.
See south-east-military-areas for details.
Tyneham, Dorset
The need for places where Allied troops could practice live firing and develop their street fighting skills led to several English settlements being cleared of their inhabitants in the months before D-Day.
One of these was Tyneham, a small village near Lulworth Cove in South Dorset. In autumn 1943 its 225 inhabitants received letters informing them that their homes and the 7,500 acres of heath and downland surrounding them had been requisitioned by the War Office and giving them a month in which to leave.
The letter said, ‘the government appreciate that this is no small sacrifice which you are asked to make but they are sure that you will give this further help towards winning the war with a good heart.’ The villagers, most of whom were tenants who didn’t own their homes, duly packed up and left but not before one of them pinned a note on the church door which ended with the optimistic words ‘We shall return one day and thank you for treating the village kindly.’ In fact they never did return.
Tyneham was retained by the government after the war and incorporated into the nearby Lulworth gunnery ranges. It remains in military hands today, a ghost village that has escaped the attentions of modern-day developers and remains frozen in time. This quiet, rather melancholy place can be visited on the days that the ranges are not open – normally at weekends. Most of its buildings are in disrepair and many are fenced off, but the church occasionally holds services and the old school building houses an exhibition about the village.
For opening dates and times visit tynehamopc.org.uk
Slapton Sands, Devon
The similarity of the long beach at Slapton Sands in South Devon to Utah Beach in Normandy made it the ideal place to rehearse the landing that would later take place there. At the end of 1943 the local inhabitants were moved out and Slapton was handed over to the US Army as a training area.
Six weeks before the actual invasion of Europe, it was the setting for Exercise Tiger, a week-long rehearsal that involved embarking around 30,000 US servicemen and then landing them on the Devon beach under live naval gunfire.
The first landings took place on 27 April and things soon went badly wrong. A mix-up over timings meant that some of the Americans landed at the same time as the beach was being shelled. As many as 450 men may have died. An even greater disaster would occur in the early hours of 28 April when a convoy of landing ships was suddenly attacked by a flotilla of fast-moving German torpedo boats. These raiders had actually been spotted by a Royal Navy corvette, but because the British and the Americans were using different radio frequencies, no warning never got through.
Two ships were sunk, another was badly damaged and 949 American servicemen lost their lives, a higher number than those killed in the actual attack on Utah Beach on 6 June. As the exercise was part of the build-up to D-Day the whole affair was kept under wraps at the time and full details of what had happened would not be known for forty years. Today an M4 Sherman tank lost in the disaster but later salvaged from the seabed stands by the road behind the beach as a powerful memorial to those who died.
Lepe Beach, Hants
Overlooking the narrow strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight, Lepe was a hive of activity in the build-up to D-Day. The narrow roads around it became major thoroughfares, crammed with vehicles, and this is the reason why even today there are so many concrete laybys along them.
The beach here was an important spot for the embarkation of men, vehicles, supplies, and equipment; the two strange four-legged structures just out to sea were known as ‘Dolphins’ and are all that’s left of the pierhead used to load ships departing for France.
If you walk along the beach keep an eye out for slabs of what look like huge concrete bars of chocolate. These are the remains of the beach hardening mats that were laid out so that tanks and vehicles driving down onto landing craft wouldn’t sink into the shingle. One tank regiment to embark here was the 4th/7th Dragoon Guards; their poignant memorial stands just behind the beach.
Lepe was also a huge building site. Six of the enormous concrete ‘Phoenix’ caissons that formed the breakwaters of the two prefabricated Mulberry harbours that the Allies erected off the Normandy coast were constructed here. The platforms where they were built and the slipways they were launched from can still be seen.
Unfortunately, these remarkable relics face an uncertain future. In the years after D-Day the sea has steadily taken its toll, undermining and washing away both the remains and the beach itself. At the time of writing, although there’s still much to see, a substantial stretch of beach is currently closed after recent storm damage rendered it unsafe.
www.hants.gov.uk/thingstodo/countryparks/lepe
Warsash, near Southampton
Even though it was heavily bombed during the early years of the war, Southampton’s position as the country’s premier passenger port ensured it would play a key role in naval operations during Operation Overlord.
Two thirds of the British and Canadian troops that landed on D-Day set off from the battered city and by the end of the war 3.5 million men had passed through its docks. Just to the east of Southampton, where the pleasant Hamble River joins Southampton Water, sits the village of Warsash.
Today, a multitude of yachts and pleasure craft jostle for space on its quayside but on the eve of D-Day this little harbour was filled with vessels of an entirely different nature: three flotillas of small landing craft, thirty-six in all, which were used to carry the 3,000 commandos of the 1st and 4th Special Service Brigades over to Normandy. With Bill Millin, his personal piper at his side, Lord Lovat, the 1st Brigade’s commander, would wade ashore from onto Sword Beach.
Then, in a scene immortalised in the film ‘the Longest Day’, he led some of his men south to reinforce the glider-borne troops who had seized the Orne Canal Bridge at Benouville. There’s a memorial and information board on the quayside at Warsash and a plaque on the Rising Sun pub which faces the spot where the Commandos embarked. The troops only received confirmation that they were heading for Normandy during the crossing, but Lovat later commented that some of the 177 French Commandos on board had already worked that out from the briefing photos they’d been given.
Southsea, Hants
Like its neighbour, Southampton, Portsmouth is closely linked with Operation Overlord. Indeed, it was from his headquarters just north of the city at Southwick House that General Eisenhower, the Operation’s Supreme Commander, took the momentous decision that the weather was good enough for the landings to take place on 6 June.
Portsmouth was the main departure point for units heading for Sword Beach and the sheer volume of ships anchored off Spithead prior to D-Day led observers to comment that if you looked down from the hills above the city it seemed that you could walk over to the Isle of Wight across their decks.
Today the seaside suburb of Southsea is home to the D-Day Story, a modern museum with exhibits ranging from the Dicken Medal awarded to Gustav, the carrier pigeon that first brought news of the landings back to Britain, to a 270-feet long embroidery depicting the events of the invasion.
The most striking exhibit is actually outside the building. LCT (Landing Craft, Tank) 7074 was one of nearly 7,000 vessels of all shapes and sizes that made the crossing on D-Day. She transported tanks from the 22nd Armoured Brigade to Gold Beach and is the last surviving tank landing craft from the D-Day landings.
After the war she was converted into a night club only to fall into disrepair and end up semi-submerged in Birkenhead Docks. Fortunately, with the help of an HLF grant she was eventually refloated and brought to Portsmouth where, after a thorough restoration and a carefully researched paint job, she was transported to her new home in nearby Southsea in 2020.
Duxford, Cambridgeshire
After playing an important role in the Battle of Britain (the 1940 Operations Room can still be visited) the RAF fighter station at Duxford near Cambridge was handed over to the Americans in 1943 to become home to the three squadrons of P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bombers that made up the 78th Fighter Group.
The Thunderbolt was a versatile aircraft. It could escort bombers on daylight raids into occupied Europe, but it was also capable of attacking ground targets of its own with bombs or rockets.
On D-Day the 78th flew missions from 3.30 in the morning until 11.15 at night, protecting the forces that were taking part in the landings and attacking railways, trains and German military columns in a bid to prevent the enemy from launching any counterattacks. Easily distinguishable by the black and white chequerboard patterns on their nose cones, the planes of the 78th were heavily involved in flying operations in the months that followed D-Day.
By the end of the war the Group had flown 450 missions, amassed 80,000 hours of flying time, and accounted for nearly 700 enemy aircraft - either in the sky or on the ground. But the price had been high – 113 of its young pilots had lost their lives.
Duxford is Britain’s best-preserved Second World War airfield and is home to the Imperial War Museum’s aircraft displays, including the huge purpose-built American Air Museum, it is Britain’s largest aviation museum.
Greatstone, Kent
At first sight the pleasant seaside settlement of Greatstone seems a rather unremarkable place, better known today for its spectacular sandy beach than for any significant historical event. But during the last year of the Second World War there was more to this little village than met the eye.
Many rapid military advances during the war had ground to a halt – not because of enemy resistance but because the troops doing the advancing had run out of petrol. Determined that the same thing should not happen to their forces after D-Day, the Allies put a great deal of effort into ensuring that their armies were supplied with the fuel they needed if they were to carry the war through France and into Germany.
One ambitious undertaking was an engineering project codenamed PLUTO (for Pipeline Under the Ocean) which laid two underwater pipelines to pump fuel over to France. The first of these (appropriately codenamed BAMBI) ran across to Normandy from Sandown on the Isle of Wight, while the second (equally appropriately named DUMBO) ran from Greatstone and nearby Dungeness towards Boulogne.
Between them these two pipelines would supply eight percent of all the fuel used by the Allies in Northwest Europe. To prevent any German planes that made it across the Channel from identifying what they were really used for, the pumping stations and administrative buildings at both PLUTO sites were disguised as the kind of everyday buildings you might expect to see in a seaside setting – garages, bungalows, even an ice cream parlour.
Greatstone’s Leonard Road boasts five such installations including three rather smart bungalows, now private residences, that once hid PLUTO pumping stations.
Madingley, Cambridgeshire
In 1943 the owners of the Madingley Hall estate near Cambridge gave 30.5 acres of land to the American military for use as a temporary cemetery, a donation that would be confirmed in perpetuity by the estate’s subsequent owners, the University of Cambridge.
One of the reasons why Madingley was chosen as a burial place was its relative proximity to the airfields of East Anglia where so many US airman had been stationed, and after the war the American Battle Monuments Commission selected it for its only permanent Second World War cemetery in the UK.
As work on the cemetery began, those of America’s war dead who were not repatriated at the request of their families were brought here from other temporary cemeteries in Britain. The cemetery was dedicated in July 1956 and holds the remains of almost 4,000 servicemen, many of whom had lost their lives during the intensive bombing campaign over Northwest Europe that preceded and followed on from D-Day.
A wall listing the missing bears the names of a further 5,000 dead who have no known graves including Glenn Miller, the popular bandleader, whose aircraft disappeared over the Channel in December 1944. The cemetery’s location is quite stunning. Framed by woodland to the south and west and flanked by a tall Portland stone chapel at the end of three rectangular pools to the east, its curved rows of white crosses are laid out on the north slope of a hill that offers extensive views over the surrounding countryside. On a clear day you can see the towers of Ely Cathedral (one of England's best cathedrals) in the distance.
Header image: US troops on the Esplanade at Weymouth, Dorset, on their way to embark on ships bound for Omaha Beach for the D-Day landings in Normandy, June 1944. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)