June 6 - Sixty-six Years Ago

June 6, sixty-six years ago the Allied Invasion of Normandy, FR - a fight for democracy at the cost of thousands of lives.

“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough” said Robert Capa, photographer, who landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day. Taking over 100 picture of the event then sending the film to London for processing. A London darkroom technician dried them to quickly, the emulsion melts and less than 12 usable pictures told the landing at Omaha.
In 1954, Capa lived his own words. He died after stepping on a land mine in Indochina.

Crossword puzzles were the focus of British intelligence weeks before the invasion. The London Daily Telegraph published the answers to one that included key code names. “Overload” and “Neptune” (code names for the over-all operation and the landing operation) “Utah” and “Omaha” (the two American invasion beaches), and “Mulberry” (the code name for the artificial harbors planned after the invasion).
British Intelligence interrogated Leonard Dawe, a school headmaster and puzzle-maker. Conclusion, it was just a coincidence.

D-Day “Bigots“. was the code word for anyone who knew the time and place of the invasion. Reverse it and “to-Gib” used on papers of those traveling to Gibraltar for the invasion of North Africa in 1942.

The Allied forces hoodwinked Hitler in a unique way. Ingenuity and diversions. Its effect created two phantom fleets of bombers out of thin air.
First, parachuting dummies outfitted with firecrackers that exploded on contact behind enemy lines. Then Allied planes dropped strips of aluminum foil cut to a length to match German radar waves.

D-Day secrets almost exposed in Chicago at a postal sorting office when a package sent from Supreme Headquarters in London arrived a few months before the invasion and was accidentally opened. Critical invasion timetables and locations were seen by many unauthorized Chicago postal workers who were put under surveillance. The FBI concluded the U.S. General’s Aide, of German decent, was overtired and mistakenly addressed the package to his sister.

General Eisenhower said a single person “won the war for us”. Not Gen. George Patton or Gen. Douglas MacArthur. It was Andrew Higgins who designed and built the amphibious assault crafts used by Allies to storm the Normandy beaches. A shortage of steel prompted him to buy the entire 1939 crop of Philippines’ mahogany and his New Orleans company produced these now famous crafts.

This U-505 is on display at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. On June 4, the U.S. forces captured the sub off the African coast fearing a key code was broken and the Allied war effort compromised. The captured sub and its crew were hid until the end of the War and the Germans assumed it was lost at sea.

Freudian slips and D-Day remembrances. 2004, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin referred to the “INVASION OF NORWAY” instead of “Normandy“. Last year while attending an event with President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown refereed to “OBAMA BEACH” instead of “Omaha Beach”.