18 obscure facts from the depths of WWII history. Even Mike might not know these.
Captain Frank Lillyman of the 101st Airborne was the first Allied soldier to land on D-Day, parachuting into Normandy at 00:15 to mark the drop zone near Sainte-Mere-Eglise. Weather and cloud cover scattered his team - only two pathfinders landed cor…
The Germans at Normandy were partly misled by 'Operation Bodyguard' — the strategic deception that the main invasion would come at the narrowest point of the Channel (Calais/Dieppe), not the beaches. This deception included fake radio traffic from a …
When Brigadier General Norman Cota waded ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day, he reportedly told Col. George Taylor of the 16th Infantry: 'There are only two kinds of people on this beach: the dead and those who are going to die. Now let's get the hell of…
Percy Hobart designed swimming DD tanks, flail mine-clearing tanks, Bobbin canvas-laying tanks, ARK bridge carriers, and Crocodile flame-throwers. Churchill personally demanded their inclusion. Flail tanks cleared 90 percent of Sword Beach mines. But…
Private Keith Gaze of 12th Parachute Battalion was shot in the head on June 6, 1944. Comrades covered him with a parachute. Hours later he woke, pushed it aside, and returned to fighting. He was shot again later that day, fatal this time. A Normandy …
The Allies towed 115 massive concrete caissons weighing up to 6,000 tons across the English Channel. Sunk to create breakwaters with floating roadways that flexed with tides. Mulberry A at Omaha was destroyed by a storm June 19. Mulberry B at Arroman…
The Vierville draw at Omaha Beach was defended by just 96 German soldiers in concrete casemates — yet they held off the 116th Infantry Regiment for over six hours. The German position was stronger than intelligence suggested because Colonel Gotthard …
U.S. Army Rangers scaled 100-foot cliffs at Pointe du Hoc under fire to destroy six 155mm German cannons only to find telephone pole decoys. Sgt. Leonard Lomell and Sgt. Jack Kuhn discovered the real guns in an orchard 1,300 yards away and destroyed …
Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., age 56 with a heart condition, was the only general officer to land with the first wave on D-Day. Carrying a walking stick, he landed on Utah Beach 2,000 yards off course. Rather than relocate thousands of in…
Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., son of President Theodore Roosevelt, was the only general officer to land with the first wave on D-Day. At 56 years old and with a bad heart (he carried a cane), he landed at the wrong beach in the first wave…
The Normandy American Cemetery at Coleville-sur-Mer overlooks Omaha Beach and contains 9,387 graves — mostly of Americans who died in the invasion of Normandy and later operations in France. But the lesser-known fact is that approximately 300 of thos…
The Normandy bocage — thick hedgerows of earth and tangled bramble that separated centuries-old farm fields — created conditions worse than any Allied planner expected. The hedgerows were over 2,000 years old, some originally planted by the Romans an…