14 obscure facts from the depths of WWII history. Even Mike might not know these.
Of the 29 DD (Duplex Drive) Sherman tanks launched from landing craft toward Omaha Beach, 27 sank in the rough seas because the canvas flotation screens collapsed. Only two made it to shore. The tank commanders and crews drowned inside. The decision …
Omaha Beach was divided into sectors named with colors: Easy Red, Easy Green, Fox Red, Fox Green — but the two least talked about sectors were 'Uncle Red' and 'Dog White.' The 116th Infantry Regiment assaulted Dog White sector and suffered devastatin…
The Normandy bocage — thick hedgerows of earth and tangled bramble that separated centuries-old farm fields — created conditions worse than any planner anticipated. The hedgerows were over 2000 years old, planted by the Romans and reinforced over mil…
At Pointe du Hoc, Rangers found the German coastal guns had been relocated to an orchard 1,300 yards away — but they didn't know this when climbing the cliffs under fire. A two-man patrol, Sgt. Leonard Lomell and Sgt. Jack Kuhn, stumbled upon the gun…
On D-Day night, the RAF dropped 500+ dummy parachutists (code-named 'Ruperts') across Normandy. Each dummy was rigged with explosive charges and firecrackers to simulate gunfire. German troops were dispatched to hunt phantom paratroopers, tying up en…
Rommel, anticipating airborne landings, ordered the flooding of low-lying fields behind Utah Beach. The resulting marshlands were 5-6 feet deep — deadly for paratroopers who landed in them with 80+ pounds of gear and couldn't swim. Many drowned in th…
Group Captain James Stagg, a Scottish meteorologist, personally convinced Eisenhower to launch D-Day on 6 June based on a brief window of improving weather that German meteorologists had completely missed. The Germans believed no amphibious landing w…
The village of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, made famous by the movie 'The Longest Day,' was not the first town liberated — that honor goes to Ranville, taken by British paratroopers of the 6th Airborne Division at 00:30 on D-Day. But Ranville was recaptured b…
Jean-Baptiste Biaggi, a French schoolteacher and resistance member, memorized the names of every German officer in the Cherbourg area and their daily routines. He smuggled this intelligence to the British using invisible ink written on children's exe…
When Cherbourg fell to American forces on June 26, 1944, German General Karl-Wilhelm von Schlieben was ordered by Hitler to fight to the last man and destroy the port facilities completely. Von Schlieben defied these orders and instead surrendered, k…
The Germans had built a sophisticated coastal radar network along the Atlantic Wall, but Allied intelligence had missed that the major radar installation at Pointe de la Percée, overlooking Omaha Beach, had been dismantled three days before D-Day. Th…
Before D-Day, the U.S. 23rd Headquarters Special Troops — known as the 'Ghost Army' — deployed inflatable tanks, sound trucks broadcasting fake radio traffic, and even fabricated unit patches near Calais. Their deception operation convinced German in…