Omaha Beach at Low Tide At 12:05 AM on June 6, 1944, three gliders carrying an element of the British 6th Airborne Division silently cut loose form the their tow planes and drifted towards the Pegasus Bridge, one of the few bridges that led over the Seine towards Normandy.   Within fifteen minutes, the British paratroopers inside landed and stormed the bridge with heavy casualties. The first landings in Europe were made.     Around the same time, pathfinders equipped with powerful lanterns dropped all over the Cotentin Peninsula. Alone, outnumbered, and often in the wrong place, they were dropped to mark the way for the thousands of men coming in behind them.     In England, hundreds of transports prepared gliders with paratroopers carrying their body weight in food, supplies, and weapons. One witness recalled the paratroopers “kneeling in prayer“ as they prepared for takeoff. Actually they were too heavy to stand. They boarded the transports and prepared to drop over Normandy.     By 2 AM Normandy was alive with antiaircraft fire. Dakotas carrying the American 101st, 82nd and British 6th Airborne came under fire as soon as they hit the coast. Pilots struggled to keep their unarmed and unarmored craft stable long enough to drop their stick of eighteen paratroopers. Some drowned in Rommel’s flooded fields, some overshot the Peninsula and landed in the Atlantic. Twenty-five British paratroopers landed inside the German Fifteenth Army Headquarters.     The rest were scattered all over Normandy. Miles from their drop zones, alone and in ones or twos, then platoons and companies, the paratroopers started to accomplish their mission. The Germans were confused by the landings, plus the landings of dummy paratroopers, and did not react in time.     82nd Airborne Division units liberated the first town in France, Sainte Mére Eglise, early in the day. A stick of troopers from Company F had dropped on the town during a fire and was wiped out by the German garrison guarding the fire fighters. The 101st Division’s medical unit was captured, but the paratroopers occupied the approaches to the beaches and started fighting.     Meanwhile, the 5,000 ships of the Allied landing force were traveling through passages in the minefields in the English Channel. 2,000 ocean going ships, including old World War One battleships, modern cruisers, destroyers, torpedo boats, and the ubiquitous LSTs, escorted 2,000 landing craft of many different types across the Channel. A few ships were lost to mines, but they formed up offshore of the invasion beaches by 5 AM.     Colonel Walther Pluskat of the Wehrmacht's 352nd Infantry Division was roused by his commander and sent to what the Allies called Omaha Beach. From his vantage point in his bunker, he could see the Allied armada offshore and made a worried call to his commanding officer, saying 5,000 Allied ships were off the coast. “Don’t worry, Pluskat,” the CO responded, “the Allies haven’t got that many ships.”     But they did and they were off the French coast. Bombardment began immediately, the 14" guns of the USS Texas and HMS Warspite and the 12" guns of the USS Arkansas attempting to knock out the hardened casemates of German artillery. Waiting soldiers could actually see the shells on their way overhead. Tactical aircraft targeted heavy railroad guns and fixed heavy artillery more than a mile behind the beach.     Rommel’s designs would not even be breached by direct hits from battleship caliber guns. At Omaha Beach, lack of bomb and shell accuracy neither created shelter for the Americans about to land nor knocked out the guns overlooking the area.     At the other beaches, the Allies made progress. At Utah only 200 casualties were suffered before resistance lessened and the troops moved inland. The British also faced minimal opposition at Gold and Juno. The Canadians took many casualties in the first wave, but made additional landings and were off the beach by early morning. Canadian armor was crucial, at one point driving over the dead and wounded to attack German positions.     US Rangers tasked with eliminating German artillery in the heights overlooking both American beaches took heavy casualties climbing up the rock face of Pointe du Hoc, but despite later legends, located heavy guns inland and destroyed them. Only a handful of the Rangers remained to hold Pointe du Hoc against the heavy counter attack that was coming.     Omaha Beach was the key. The link between the Americans on Utah and the Allied beaches to the west, if Omaha could not be held, the invasion might fail.     At 6:20 AM, US 1st Army Group Commander General Omar Bradley watched the first and the second waves go in at Omaha. The men in the boats looked at the untouched church steeples and buildings beyond the beach and realized the air bombardment and naval gunfire had not landed on target.   Operation Overlord was the phase in the Western front of World War II that was fought in 1944 between German forces and the invading Allied forces. The campaign began with Normandy Landings on June 6, 1944 (commonly known as D-Day), among the largest amphibious assaults ever conducted when nearly three million troops crossed the English Channel and ended on August 25, 1944, with the liberation of Paris. Allied land forces that saw combat in Normandy on D-Day itself came from Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Substantial Free French and Polish forces also participated in the battle after the assault phase, and there were also contingents from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, the Netherlands, and Norway. Other Allied nations participated in the naval and air forces. Once the beachheads were secured, a three-week military buildup occurred on the beaches before Operation Cobra, the operation to break out from the Normandy beachhead began. The battle for Normandy continued for more than two months, with campaigns to establish a foothold on France, and concluded with the close of the Falaise pocket and the subsequent liberation of Paris in late August 1944 Admiral Graf Spee - Gallery Warships (Major Navies) The first years of World War II had shown that British destroyers were ill equipped to deal with concentrated air attacks and the Royal Navy suffered heavy losses as a result. In 1941 urgent consideration of the problem led to a naval staff requirement for a new class of large fleet destroyer with High Angle (HA) twin guns and an HA control system. It was decided that this main armament would be set forward in a superfiring configuration thus allowing all guns to engage a single target. Arcs of fire were increased by setting the bridge structure further aft than normal. The proposed AA armament were eight 40/60 mm guns in twin mountings set atop the middle and after deck houses to give all around, overlapping arcs of fire. These were to be supplemented by 20 mm guns positioned variously around the ship. Eight 21-inch torpedo tubes were to be carried in two quadruple mounts. A/S armament called for two depth charge rails and four depth charge throwers to be fitted. A new feature was the first use of stabilisers in a destroyer, allowing a steady platform for AA gunnery. With these parameters accepted a sketch design was submitted and approved in the autumn of 1941 and orders for sixteen ships (two flotillas) were placed under the 1942 programme. Considerably larger than the standard fleet destroyer, these ships were seen as a replacement for the Tribal class which had already suffered very heavy losses. With an overall length of 379 feet they were two feet longer than the Tribals and with a beam of 40 feet 3 inches were just over three feet wider. It was decided to abandon the usual alphabetical naming of destroyer flotillas and name these ships after famous land and sea battles, thus these ships became known as the 1942 Battle class. Allied Warships Australian warship listing Welcome to NavWeaps Naval Weapons Ships, shipbuilding, here and abroad "ALL THE WORLD'S BATTLECRUISERS" DATA PAGES: Navyhistory.com brings you the history of US Naval ships Imperial Japanese Navy Page The Dunkirk evacuation, codenamed Operation Dynamo by the British, was the large evacuation of Allied soldiers from May 26 to June 4, 1940, during the Battle of Dunkirk. British Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay planned the operation and briefed Winston Churchill in the Dynamo Room (a room in the naval headquarters below Dover Castle which contained the dynamo that provided the electricity), giving the operation its name. In nine days, more than three hundred thousand (331,226) soldiers 192,226 British and 139,000 French were rescued from Dunkirk, France and the surrounding beaches by a hastily assembled fleet of eight hundred and sixty boats. These craft included the famous "Little Ships of Dunkirk", a mixture of merchant marine boats, fishing boats, pleasure craft and RNLI lifeboats, whose civilian crews were called into service for the emergency. These small craft ferried troops from the beaches to larger ships waiting offshore, which were mainly large destroyer ships. Though the "Miracle of the Little Ships" is a prominent folk memory in Britain (and a great morale booster for the time), over 80% of the evacuated troops actually embarked from the harbour's protective mole onto the 42 destroyers and other large ships. The British Eastern Fleet (also known as the East Indies Fleet and the Far East Fleet) was a fleet of the Royal Navy during World War II and post war until 1971. The Eastern Fleet was formed by order of the Admiralty on 8 December 1941 [1] from the ships of the China Station and the East Indies Station, with its Headquarters in Singapore. During the war, it included many ships and personnel from other navies, including the Royal Netherlands Navy, Royal Australian Navy, the Royal New Zealand Navy and the United States Navy. Post-war, the Eastern Fleet became the Far East Fleet and operated in all Far East areas including parts of the Pacific Ocean. Collected here are documents from the 23 volume, 40 part, 25,000 page report of HEARINGS BEFORE THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON THE INVESTIGATION OF THE PEARL HARBOR ATTACK CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES SEVENTY-NINTH CONGRESS which was released on July 20, 1946. The Roberts class of monitors of the Royal Navy consisted of two heavily-gunned vessels built during the Second World War. They were the Roberts, completed in 1941, and Abercrombie, completed in 1943. Features of the class, apart from two 15" guns in a twin mounting (taken from two First World War era Marshall class monitors), were shallow draught for operating inshore, broad beam to give stability (and also resistance to torpedoes and mines) and a high observation platform to observe fall of shot. The A class was a flotilla of eight destroyers built for the Royal Navy as part of the 1927 naval programme. A ninth ship, Codrington, was built to an enlarged design to act as the flotilla leader. Two similar ships, Saguenay and Skeena were built for the Royal Canadian Navy The Pacific war environment with its enormous distances and fast paced carrier operations was unfamiliar to the Royal Navy. The technical implications may well have been better appreciated by Admiral King - a naval aviator - than by his British colleagues. The requirement that the BPF be self-sufficient necessitated the establishment of a fleet train that could adequately support an active naval force at sea for weeks or months. The Royal Navy had been used to operating close to its bases in Britain, the Mediterranean or the Indian Ocean, and purpose-built infrastructure and expertise were lacking. Fortunately for the BPF "the American logistics authorities... interpreted self-sufficiency in a very liberal sense

The Titanic Nautical Resource Center is dedicated to providing interesting and educational information on pertinent subjects relating to the RMS Titanic (and her sister ships RMS Olympic and HMHS Britannic, nautical maritime, boating, and other things of the sea. Now, let me invite you all to explore the site Excellent source for naval history ..... First and Second World Wars, campaign summaries and more.' Imperial War Museum, London HMS Ark Royal, the last Invincible-class light aircraft carrier to be completed, is the fifth ship of the Royal Navy named in honour of the flagship of the English fleet that defeated the Spanish Armada. Ark Royal is slightly larger than her sister ships and during construction she was fitted with a steeper ski-jump ramp, (twelve degrees, as opposed to seven degrees of the Invincible) to improve STOVL take-off performance for the Harrier aircraft. She is currently the flagship of the active fleet. Swan Hunter, formerly known as "Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson", was one of the best known shipbuilding companies in the United Kingdom. Based in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear, the company was responsible for some of the greatest ships of the early 20th century most famously, the RMS Mauretania which held the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic, and the RMS Carpathia which rescued the survivors from the RMS Titanic. As the name suggests, the company represented the combined forces of three powerful shipbuilding families: Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson. The company has effectively ended all shipbuilding and is now concentrating on ship design with just under 200 people employed. The Invasion of Normandy was the invasion and establishment of Allied forces in Normandy, France during Operation Overlord in World War II. It covers from the initial landings on June 6, 1944 until the Allied breakout in mid-July. The invasion was the largest seaborne invasion at the time, involving over 156,000 troops crossing the English Channel from the United Kingdom to Normandy. Allied land forces that saw combat in Normandy on June 6 came from Canada, Free French Forces, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. In the weeks following the invasion, Polish forces also participated and there were also contingents from Belgium. Czechoslovakia, Greece, and the Netherlands. Most of the above countries also provided air and naval support, as did the Royal Australian Air Force, Royal New Zealand Air Force and the Royal Norwegian Navy. The Normandy invasion began with overnight parachute and glider landings, massive air attacks, naval bombardments, an early morning amphibious landing and during the evening the remaining elements of the parachute divisions landed. The "D-Day" forces deployed from bases along the south coast of England, the most important of these being Portsmouth Utah Beach was the codename for one of the Allied landing beaches during the D-Day invasion of Normandy, as part of Operation Overlord on 6 June 1944. Utah was added to the invasion plan toward the end of the planning stages, when more landing craft became available. Despite being substantially off course, the U.S. 4th Infantry Division landed there with relatively little resistance, in contrast to Omaha Beach where the fighting was fierce. Utah beach, about 3 miles (5 km) long, was the westernmost of the five landing beaches, located between Pouppeville and La Madeleine. The Battle of Okinawa, fought on the Japanese island of Okinawa, was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater.It lasted from late March through June 1945. The battle has been referred to as the "Typhoon of Steel" in English, and tetsu no ame ("rain of steel") or tetsu no("violent wind of steel") in Japanese. The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of gunfire involved, and sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island. Okinawa had a prewar civilian population of 435,000, of whom an estimated 75,000 to 140,000 died during the battle. The Allies were planning to use Okinawa as a staging ground for Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese mainland. However, this need was obviated after a significant series of events which included the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet Union's declaration of war on Japan in August 1945. Japan surrendered and World War II ended. The British Pacific Fleet was, and remains, the most powerful conventional war fleet assembled by the Royal Navy. By VJ Day it included four battleships, eighteen aircraft carriers, eleven cruisers and many smaller warships and support vessels. Despite this, it was a dwarfed by the forces that the United States had in action against Japan. While it is difficult to argue that that the British fleet was critical to the war effort, it did participate in and protect the flank of the final Allied drive against Japan in 1945. Following their retreat to the western side of the Indian Ocean in 1942, British naval forces did not return to the South West Pacific theatre until May 17, 1944, when an Anglo-American carrier task force implemented Operation Transom, a joint raid on Surabaya, Java. The U.S. was liberating British territories in the Pacific and extending its influence. It was therefore seen as a political and military imperative to restore a British presence in the region and to deploy British military assets directly against Japan. The British government were determined that British territories, such as Hong Kong, should be recaptured by British forces. The British establishment, however, was not unanimous on the commitment of the BPF. Churchill, in particular, argued against it, not wishing to be a visibly junior partner in what had been exclusively the United States' battle. (The Australian and New Zealand forces that were active had been absorbed into US command structures.) He also considered that a British presence would be unwelcome and should be concentrated on Burma and Malaya. Naval planners, supported by the Chiefs of Staff, believed that such a commitment would strengthen British influence and the British Chiefs of Staff considered mass resignation, so strongly held were their opinions. Some U.S. planners had also considered, in 1944, that a strong British presence against Japan was essential to an early end to the war and American home opinion would also be badly affected if Britain did not put itself in the line. The Admiralty had proposed an active British role in the Pacific in early 1944 but the initial USN response had been discouraging. Admiral Ernest King, Commander-in-Chief United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, and alleged Anglophobe, was reluctant to concede any such role and raised a number of issues, including the requirement that the BPF should be entirely self-sufficient. These were eventually overcome or discounted and, at a meeting, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt "intervened to say that the British Fleet was no sooner offered than accepted. In this, though the fact was not mentioned, he overruled Admiral King's opinion". The Australian Government had sought U.S. military assistance in 1942, when it was faced with the possibility of Japanese invasion. While Australia had made a significant contribution to the Pacifc War, it had never been an equal partner with its U.S. counterparts in strategic decision-making. It was argued that a British presence would act as a counter-balance to the powerful and increasing U.S. presence in the Pacific. When the BPF arrived at Sydney, its new home base, in February, 1945, it was well received. The Australian government had prepared necessary facilities, supplies had been stock-piled and civilian homes were available for crews to rest and experience home life. The deployment of the BPF would not be straightforward. The Pacific War was a radically different operating environment requiring warships to remain at sea for extended periods, without ready access to land bases. Britain had previously depended on land bases for replenishment, and had to develop a fleet train to support its efforts at sea, far away from British bases. The effort made by Britain and its Commonwealth partners in the final stages of the Pacific war did manage to repair British prestige and influence. At the outbreak of war (as in World War I), the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) used auxiliary cruisers (converted merchant ships) and the Pocket Battleship Graf Spee to both threaten the sea lanes and tie down the British Royal Navy. In mid-1940, Italy declared war and the Italian vessels based in Italian East Africa posed a threat to the supply routes through the Red Sea. Worse was to come when the Japanese declared war in December 1941 and, after Pearl Harbor, the sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse, and the occupation of Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies, there was an aggressive threat from the east. This became reality when an overwhelming Japanese naval force operated in the eastern Indian Ocean, sinking an aircraft carrier, other warships and disrupting freight traffic along the Indian east coast. At this stage, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Alan Brooke wrote: We were hanging by our eyelids! Australia and India were threatened by the Japanese, we had temporarily lost control of the Indian Ocean, the Germans were threatening Iran and our oil, Auchinleck was in precarious straits in the desert, and the submarine sinkings were heavy. The fear was that a concerted Japanese stroke could chase the Royal Navy from the Indian Ocean, with dire implications for India, and that German success in the Caucasus and in Egypt would threaten the Persian Gulf.  Although World War I was fought mostly on land, ships were a necessary technological development as they helped to acquire resources and manpower. Commanding the sea allowed allies to prevail on the western front. “With more than two thirds of the earth’s surface covered by water, it would have been unnatural for man to neglect this playground as an idea site for thousands of battlefields…..” (Newman, Pg 204) Naval technology of the battleship prevailed during World War I.  The battleship during the war was a symbol of naval dominance and played a major role in military strategy.   The term battleship derived from the 19th century term “ship-of-the-line,” which was classified as being large in size, heavily-armored, and carried large and small caliber guns.  The “line” is in reference to the battle line ships formed in order to attack the enemy’s formation of ships.  British battleships were built with large guns and were able to fire much quicker than the guns on German battleships.  With time, modern designed battleships made several improvements in gunnery and were effective in aiming at the enemy with a shooting range of over 10,000 yards. With naval technology improving, it was important to stay ahead and therefore it was necessary to continually build bigger and better armored ships.  The quality of the battleship depended on the combination of armor protection, gun power and speed. Another ship that was a result of advanced naval technology was the battle cruiser.  The first British construction of the battle cruiser was designed with much less armor than the battleship.  This was an advantage at war as it made the ship lighter and enabled them to move faster across the water.  The purpose of the battle cruiser during the war was to be better armored than the smaller ships of the sea, but fast enough to escape larger ships that were fully equipped.  In addition to battleships and cruisers, the introduction of the submarine was one of the more important constructions in naval warfare history.  Military submarines had several advantages when used in warfare.  Being an underwater vessel, the submarine was safe from the firing guns from surface ships.  Submarines were mainly used for defense as they were hard to locate under the depths of the water.  Because of this, submarines were able to navigate quietly while sneaking up on their enemy.  Tactically submarines improved during WWI and were very effective; they became an important and useful technological advancement in naval warfare. Aerial technology began in China with hot air Balloons which were initially used for early military communication.   Balloons were not effective at war because they were large targets, clearly visible to the enemy, and unable to fly in foggy or windy weather conditions.  Balloons were used for observation purposes only as well as gather information on the enemy while directing where to fire.  “The air was a strange, intangible, and unpredictable medium, much more difficult to observe and understand than the sea.” The United States was late to support aerial technology and aviation.  The US navy did not purchase its first airplane until 1911, and soon after congress granted the funds in support of military aviation. Countries that felt vulnerable to attack developed their military aircrafts much sooner, therefore the Europeans had many more trained pilots and aircrafts than the United States.  By 1912 France, Germany, Russia, Great Britain and Italy all had a significant number of planes and aviators. Although they were ahead of the United States in that respect, none of the countries listed above had any aircrafts that were specifically designed for war.  They didn’t yet have the bombs or machine guns that were necessary for combat.  The US fell behind in using aerial technology for a few different reasons.  One reason was that they didn’t feel as vulnerable and were much less threatened by the other countries in the industrial world.  In addition, the United States had a military doctrine in place from 1914 until 1923.  In order for US aircrafts to be constructed for military use, the doctrine had to have stated that an aircraft’s purpose was for bombing and fighting.  The doctrine included neither of these things as it only stated that military aircraft missions were for strategic purposes and the examination and surveillance of grounds only, not for air-to-air combat.  When aircraft technology was developed it was for several different reasons for example commercial use, passenger transportation and air patrol.  Eventually though, airplanes became a dominant military arm during combat.  It wasn’t really until World War Two that airplanes were used for military purposes and that aerial technology was advanced enough for airplanes to be a determining factor in the outcome of war. Great air battles during World War Two involved innovative technology, and the decisive use of strategic air power.  With air power many new strategies of war evolved and enabled the military to view the battlefield from an entirely different perspective.  Strategic bombing was one tool of air warfare used as its purpose was to cripple a nation or states ability to wage war.  As a result of an aerial attack fear is installed in the enemy breaking their morale and leaving them weary of another attack.  “The airplane is an incomparable tool of war, as a combat weapon, as a means of gathering information, as a transport carrier of troops and supplies, as a destroyer of civilian centers and industry far behind actual battle lines.  Where air defense is inadequate or poorly organized, the military airplane has shown itself to be an irresistible weapon….” The topic of the use of technology in war has a lot of significance especially in developing a better understanding for the history of warfare.  Throughout history, the technology used for warfare has been both detrimental to us as a nation, as well as beneficial.  Several of the technological advances throughout history have helped aid us at war and enabled us to become a nation of mobilized force.   There is no doubt that technology helps ensure victory during times of war, but it is with these advancements that we must take on the responsibility for what we’ve created.  I’ve gained knowledge of not only how technology affects war, but how our experiences at war help us determine what new technologies we must create to benefit us when at war in the future; the two I’ve learned are interchangeable.   Researching technology and its influence on warfare has given me insight on how far we’ve come in terms of how we use technology on land, in water, and air in order to defeat enemies during battle.   The tools that we have created in order to conquer our foes are the very tools that have shaped us as an army, a navy, and an air force.

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