Essay About Glider Troops And General Dwight Eisenhower

Operation Overlord
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Operation Overlord
By 1944 World War II had lasted nearly four and a half years. The entire war now
depended on the success or failure of an invasion of France. The first three years of the war
had almost entirely been a chain of Nazi victories. They had succeeded in crushing Poland and
forcing France to surrender. Hitlers attempts at capturing England were halted by the RAF,
Royal Air Force. After the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on
the United States and forced Italy to follow.
By November of 1942 Hitler began to pay for his string of mistakes. In Egypt his favorite
General, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, had been defeated at The Alamein by the British Eighth
Army, after being trapped between two armies. Hitler, fearing he would be captured, ordered
him back. The fighting in Russia had been so severe and deadly that Marshal Stalin was
demanding an allied landing in France, so as to force Hitler to move his troops from Stalins
divisions in the East. The line of trust between Stalin and the allies was thin, but fearing Russia
would leave the was, the United States and Britain send Canadian soldiers and British
commandos to raid Frances Port of Dieppe. Nearly five-thousand troops were either dead,
wounded or captured by the alert German forces, it had been a disaster.
Britain and the United States were butting heads on whether to invade Europe at the
earliest possible opportunity. Britain argued that a failure of not capturing a strong hold on a
beachhead could set them back two years. In August of 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill met in
Quebec, Canada and the invasion was approved. The plan included the landing of allied troops
on different beaches, and also the battles that would follow, on the quest for Berlin. The
shortest route would be Dover to Calais, but that would be a place where Germany would
expect an invasion and would be heavily guarded. Now all eyes were pointing towards
Normandy. The distance was almost twice that of Dover to Calais.
The final review of Operation Overlord was held on May 15,1944 at the St. Pauls school
in West London. The plan had taken nearly two years to plan. Attending the review was
everyone who had a role in the plan. Some in attendance were King George VI, Winston
Churchill, General Dwight Eisenhower and General Bernard Montgomery. Many of the British
commanders in attendance had served in the first World War and were weary of sending mass
amounts of troops into a battle where the enemy may be laying and waiting for them.
The plan was complicated, precise and heavily relied on the element of surprise. Timing
and coordination were of great importance, a failure at one of the hundred points could send
the whole balanced plan in to chaos. The first assault wave would have eight division, close to
80,000 men. Three of the eight divisions, 1 of Britain and two of the United States, would be
airborne paratroopers and glider troops that would be dropped at night. The other five divisions
would be Infantry divisions and would land on five beaches at the crack of dawn. After the
Atlantic Wall had been broken by the first assault and a stable beachhead was obtained, more
than thirty-nine divisions would rapidly pour in.
Capturing a strong hold of a beachhead was crucial to the success of the invasion. The
beachhead would need to be able to hold back the inevitable counterattack of strong German
forces. A port would have to be seized to be able to supply necessary supplies for land invasion.
A strategic drop was to be made at the Contentin Peninsula of Normandy because its North was
Cherbourg a major harbor. Unless this mission was successful, supplies would have to be
shipped through open invasion beaches subject to attacks by guns, planes and “buzz bombs.”
British Admiral Sir Bertram would be responsible for five-thousand ships that would
carry the assault troops across the channel, bombard the enemy defenses threatening the
beaches, then send troops to landing crafts. Never in history had such a large fleet been
assembled. Chief Marshal Trevor Leigh-Mallory had many concerns about the plans. The
24,000 allied paratroopers and glider forces would be in unarmed and unarmored transport
planes, a mere thousand feet above the ground. Over a thousand twin-engine, slow planes
would each carry about twenty paratroopers and be towing a glider. The gliders would carry not
only a glider infantry but also extra ammunition, land mines, antitank guns, cannons and jeeps.
If the Germans caught on too quickly and counter attacked happened too soon, it could cost
them three-quarters of their airborne troops. When it came down to it Eisenhower had to make
the decision to let the airborne divisions take their chances, because if they did not make their
positions, the whole invasion could quite possibly