Rare photos reveal the chronology of D-Day
Operation Overlord was
launched 75 years ago on June 6, 1944. Commonly known as D-Day -- a military
term for the first day of a combat operation -- it was the largest seaborne
invasion in history and it kick-started the Battle of Normandy, which
successfully opened a second, Western front in Nazi-occupied Europe.
American, British and
Canadian forces landed simultaneously on five beachheads in northern France,
with the support of more than 13,000 aircraft and 5,000 ships. Aware that the
Normandy campaign would be a crucial step in the war, the Allies prepared to
document it extensively through film and still photography. "Everything for
the year before was a buildup to that, in terms of resources, manpower and
planning, so the Allies knew it was going to be a huge deal ... or a deal
breaker," Anthony Richards, head of documents and sound at the Imperial
War Museum (IWM), said in a phone interview. "With that in
mind, it was really important for them to document it photographically and on film,
as a historical event but also for propaganda reasons."
Richards' latest
book, "D-Day and Normandy: A Visual History," contains
unpublished and rarely seen photographs of the beach landings, many of which
were taken by professional photographers embedded in specific units. "They were very
much on the front line with the troops going in. They were capturing the action
as it was happening. They would have been under fire, so they were obviously
very brave individuals who weren't holding back," Richards said... read more:
