M4Jess
Posts: 5140
Joined: 1/17/2002
From: DC
Status: offline
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Orzel Bialy
[B]Jess, since you are being so kind in donating your services...it's inspired me to do my part. :)
If you need help in the map-making and testing department I offer my assistance. ;) [/B][/QUOTE]
GREAT NEWS!!!
Orzel is taking on the 1stSS around Caen map! I will follow up with the battle design. Orzel and I jointly designed "D-Day" for 7.1
D-Day is a Mega Battle played primarily from the Allien side..
Here is D-Day for those of you that might like a copy. This verision is for 7.1 only..the H2H mod is comming soon.
D-Day*
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Description: "This operation is not being planned with any alternatives. This operation is planned as a victory, and that's the way it's going to be. We're going down there, and we're throwing everything we have into it, and we're going to make it a success."*
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Dwight D. Eisenhower *
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Description: "In a war such as this, when high command invariably involves a president, a prime minister, six chiefs of staff, and a horde of lesser 'planners, there has got to be a lot of patience,no one person can be a Napoleon or a Caesar."*
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Dwight D. Eisenhower*
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Description: "In the final days before D-Day, the assault troops received new uniforms and equipment, as well as these special supplies issued specifically for the invasion. General Bradley severely restricted the number of items issued to soldiers, so that they would not be weighed down by extra gear"*
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Dwight D. Eisenhower*
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Description: "The waiting for history to be made was the most difficult. I spent much time in prayer. Being cooped up made it worse. Like everyone else, I was seasick and the stench of vomit permeated our craft."*
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Pvt. Clair Galdonik, 359th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 90th Division D-Day*
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Description: The organization formed to direct Overlord was known as Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) SHAEF was created in January 1944. It replaced an earlier Allied planning organization, COSSAC (Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander) COSSAC had mapped out the original invasion .*
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Description: "After enduring all the ordeals and training in England, we felt like we were completely ready for anything, and we were very ready to fight the Germans, and we looked forward to the day that we could actually get into the real fight."*
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Sgt. Bob Slaughter, 116th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 29th Division*
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"On the day World War II began, Dwight Eisenhower wrote his brother, 'Hitler should beware of the fury of an aroused democracy.' Ike was right. Galvanized by the atrocities and conquests of the totalitarian nations, America sent her best and brightest to the beaches of Normandy, Sicily, Iwo Jima, and many other battlefields oceans away from her shores. The American sailors, soldiers and airmen came not to conquer, but to liberate, not to loot or destroy, but to bring life and freedom. Eisenhower told his troops, 'We will accept nothing less than full Victory!' After horrendous sacrifices, that is what they produced. The brave young men rode onto the beaches and into battle on Higgins Boats, built in New Orleans by Andrew Higgins, the man Eisenhower said, 'won the war for us.' Higgins was a patriot and a visionary capitalist, but he could not have built tens of thousands of ships in a few short years without a tremendous effort from his workers. In a scene repeated in cities all across the country, the people of New Orleans came together - black and white, old and young, men and women - to propel the war effort. Like their soldiers, they worked hard and made sacrifices because they all believed in the righteousness of their cause. They believed that, as a popular saying of the times had it, 'we're all in this together.' Their sense of duty, of right and wrong, their teamwork and their courage embody the American spirit. The National D-Day Museum celebrates the American spirit. Young and old will come to learn of their proud heritage. Since 1945, democracy and freedom have been on the march. But visitors will learn not just of what we have done. They will learn of what we can do. They will learn that we are still in this together."*
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Stephen Ambrose, Founder, National D-Day Museum*
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF D-DAY*
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Since Nazi Germany forced the British out of France to Great Britain in the spring of 1940, the Allies had begun planning a cross-Channel assault to retake the continent and defeat Hitler's Third Reich. By the spring of 1944 an elaborate plan--code-named Operation Overlord--was secretly in place to launch the attack. The Allies, led by American General Dwight Eisenhower faced an enemy determined to keep them from landing successfully anywhere along the western European coastline. To ensure against such a landing, Hitler ordered Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to complete the Atlantic Wall--2,400 miles of fortifications made up of concrete bunkers, barbed wire, tank ditches, landmines, fixed gun emplacements, and beach and underwater obstacles. These obstacles were specially designed to rip out the bottoms of landing craft or blow them up before they reached the shore.*
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On the eve of June 5, 1944, more than 150,000 men, a fleet of 5,000 ships and landing craft, 50,000 vehicles, and 11,000 planes sat in southern England, poised to attack secretly across the English Channel along a 50-mile stretch of the Normandy coast of France. This force was the largest armada in history and represented years of rigorous training, planning, and supplying. It also represented a previously unknown level of cooperation between allied nations, all struggling for a common goal-the defeat of Germany. Because of highly intricate Allied deception plans, Hitler and his staff believed that the Allies would be attacking at the Pas-de-Calais, the narrowest point between Great Britain and France.*
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In the early morning darkness of June 6, thousands of Allied paratroopers and glider troops landed silently behind enemy lines, securing key roads and bridges on the flanks of the invasion area. As dawn lit the Normandy coastline the Allies began their amphibious landings, traveling to the beaches in small landing craft lowered from the decks of larger ships anchored in the Channel. They assaulted five beaches, code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. By nightfall nearly all 175,000 men were ashore at a cost of 4,900 Allied casualties. Hitler's vaunted Atlantic Wall had been breached in less than one day. The beaches were secure, but it took many weeks before the Allies could fight their way out of the heavily defended Normandy countryside and almost a full year to reach and defeat Germany in the spring of 1945.*
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Operation Overlord was not just another great battle, but the true turning point of WWII in Europe. While the US and Great Britain had earlier engaged the Axis powers on the periphery of Europe (North Africa, Sicily, Italy), it was the invasion at Normandy that brought on the beginning of the end for Hitler and his Nazis. Had the invasion failed (See Eisenhower's Order of the Day), Hitler would have been able to pull troops from France to strengthen his Eastern Front against the encroaching Soviet Union. A second Allied invasion into France would have taken more than a year to plan, supply, and assemble. Hitler, meanwhile, would have further strengthened his Atlantic Wall, his newly developed V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets would have continued to rain down on England from launching pads across the Channel, and the Nazis' Final Solution against European Jews might well have succeeded completely.*
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Operation Overlord*
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Allied troops land on the beach at Normandy.*
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Formal planning for the invasion of Northwest Europe began in 1943. A group led by British General Frederick Morgan searched for the best point along the coast to strike and started drawing up assault plans. In May, at an Allied conference in Washington, a target date of spring, 1944 was set for the long-awaited attack. In December 1943 General Dwight Eisenhower was selected as Supreme Allied Commander of the operation. Eisenhower had directed Allied invasions of North Africa and Italy. He took up his new post in January 1944. Eisenhower approved of Morgan's selection of the Normandy coast in France as the invasion site, but he increased the size of the assault force. The operation was code-named "Overlord." The outcome of the war rested upon its success.*
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Eisenhower*
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General Eisenhower prepares for battle.*
Dwight Eisenhower's military career began at West Point, where he met classmate and future colleague, Omar Bradley. Although "Ike" showed promise, he was notorious for playing pranks and flaunting regulations. In a class of 164, he ranked 125th in discipline. After graduation he distinguished himself as a trainer and strategist. But he was eager to experience combat, and frustrated when he was kept stateside during World War I. His opportunity for combat command finally came during World War II, when he directed Allied Forces in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. He was selected to lead Overlord not only because of his success in the Mediterranean, but because of his ability to balance the diverse personalities of the commanders involved in the operation. Even Bernard Montgomery, whose relationship with Eisenhower was often strained, said of him, "He has the power of drawing the hearts of men towards him…. He merely has to smile at you, and you trust him at once."*
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Rommel*
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During World War I Erwin Rommel saw active service in the Battle of the Argonne, in Rumania, and Italy. Between the wars he became commander of his regiment. In 1939, now a colonel, Rommel commanded the Fuhrer Bodyguard Battalion at Hitler's headquarters. He soon requested command of a Panzer division and by February 1941 was posted to North Africa. There he commanded Germany's Afrika Korps, receiving the nickname Desert Fox for his skills as a desert strategist. Although he was eventually defeated there by the Allied powers and forced to surrender North Africa, he gained fame and admiration among the German people and became a favorite of Hitler. In November 1943, Hitler named Field Marshal Rommel Inspector of Coastal Defenses in France and charged him with strengthening the Atlantic Wall along the Western coast of Europe. He was soon in command of Army Group B. By May 1944 he commanded 45 infantry, airborne and Panzer divisions. These forces would be the first to respond to an Allied invasion. Rommel believed that due to superior Allied air power and unlimited Allied resources, an invasion of Western Europe had to be stopped on the beaches. In this, he disagreed with Field Marshal Gerd von Runestedt, overall commander of German forces in the West, who believed that it would be impossible to stop an invasion on the beach, but that one could be defeated by German divisions further inland.*
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Atlantic Wall*
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Concrete bunker*
Early in the war, Hitler ordered construction of defenses along the English Channel and Atlantic coasts of Western Europe. By the spring of 1944, more than 10,000 fortified positions were in operation along the "Atlantic Wall." The Atlantic Wall stretched along the 3,000-mile coastline of France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and the entire coast of Norway. But the most heavily defended area was along the Channel, where Hitler expected the Allied invasion. Hitler envisioned the Atlantic Wall as an unbreakable barrier, fortified with enough artillery and manpower to foil even a massive invasion attempt. Plans called for 15,000 concrete bunkers, ranging in size from small pillboxes to great fortresses. Three hundred thousand troops would man these defenses. Organization Todt, the elite construction group of the Nazi Party, would build the fortifications.*
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German mines lay scattered across the beaches.*
The workforce consisted of over 500,000 men, many of them prisoners of civilians from German-occupied nations, who were used as slave labor. As further protection against invasion, Rommel ordered the placement hundreds of thousands of mined beach obstacles along the French coast. Simple yet deadly, these obstacles were positioned along entire beachfronts. At high tide many of them were virtually invisible. These obstacles created a dilemma for Allied invasion planners. If their attack came during high tide many landing craft would hit mines. But if it took place during low tide, troops would have to cross a wider portion of beach while under enemy fire.*
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Landing Craft*
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A soldier's view from the inside of the LCVP, or "Higgins Boat."*
Allied planner knew that large troop-carrying ships could not land soldiers directly on a beach. They needed smaller landing craft that could be carried on ships, lowered into the water, loaded with troops, and piloted a short distance to shore. While several types of landing craft were used during World War II for amphibious assaults around the globe, the most famous was the LCVP (Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel), or "Higgins Boat." New Orleans boat builder Andrew Jackson Higgins designed the LCVP and his company built more than 20,000 of the craft and other vessels during the war. They were used in the major amphibious invasions of North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, and the invasions in the Pacific Theater. The boats could carry up to 36 infantry troops or a jeep, land them close to shore, and then return to troop ships to collect more soldiers. By lowering a steel ramp in the front of the boat troops and vehicles could be quickly and efficiently unloaded. Higgins was a master of rapid production. During the war he operated eight factories in New Orleans. His workforce grew from 50 employees in 1937 to 30,000 at its wartime high. At its peak, Higgins Industries produces more than 700 boats a month.*
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Normandy*
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Map of the English Channel, England and the Normandy Coast.*
The Allied commanders of Overlord searched for the most vulnerable point in the German coastal defenses. The assault area had to be close enough to Britain to allow adequate air cover. This meant it had to be somewhere between the Pas de Calais and Normandy's Cotentin Peninsula. It could not be heavily defended and had to be large and flat enough to enable the Allies to move large numbers of troops and supplies ashore. They chose a section of the Normandy coast between the Seine River and the Cotentin Peninsula. Because this area had no ports, they decided to build two huge artificial floating harbors, called "Mulberries," which would be towed to Normandy after D-Day to allow the supply of the landing force.*
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Deception Plans*
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"In wartime, truth is so precious that she must always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.*
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" Winston Churchill, 1943*
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The success of Operation Overlord depended heavily on preventing Hitler from learning the date and location of the invasion. The Allies needed to devise a plan that would keep the Germans in the dark about the invasion plans.*
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In late 1943, more than six months before D-Day, the Allies-aided by the French Resistance, German double agents, and their own elaborate intelligence operations-began strategic and tactical operations to keep the Germans out of Normandy. The main objective of the Allied deception strategy was to convince the Germans that an invasion would indeed take place-but not at Normandy. The most obvious choice for an invasion site was Calais, located at the narrowest part of the English Channel, only 22 miles from Britain. Hitler was almost certain that the Allies would attack here. The Allies encouraged Hitler's belief by employing an ingenious ruse. Throughout southeastern England they built phony armies, complete with dummy planes, ships, tanks, and jeeps. With the help of British and American motion picture crews, they created entire army bases that would look authentic to German reconnaissance aircraft. These "bases" gave the impression of a massive Allied buildup in preparations for an invasion of France at Calais.*
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The ruse worked. Hitler ordered a heavy concentration of troops and artillery in the Pas de Calais region. In doing so he left Normandy less heavily defended.*
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Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword*
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As dawn came to the coast, Allied troops in landing craft approached the beaches. The American 4th Division landed at Utah Beach and the 1st and 29th Divisions landed at Omaha Beach. The 2nd and 5th US Rangers assaulted the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc between the two American sectors. The British landed at Gold and Sword Beaches and the Canadians landed at Juno Beach. The first waves included 30-man assault teams and amphibious duplex drive (DD) tanks that plowed through the water under their own power. There were also Army combat engineers and Navy demolition teams. Their job was to clear beach obstacles and mark safe pathways for the later waves. Aboard the landing craft the men were pitched about. Many were violently seasick. Behind them the naval bombardment of the area behind the beaches continued, while, overhead, bombers went on with their work. Closer to shore boats began to hit mines. The explosions lifted some entirely out of the water. As the first waves neared land, shelling of the beaches ceased. It would not resume until the men were ashore and could radio back targets. Sometime around 6:30 a.m. the first landing craft hit the beach. D-Day had arrived on the beaches of Normandy.*
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Normandy countryside*
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Hedgerows hid German snipers from view.*
As the Americans moved inland from the beaches they entered an environment perfectly designed for their opponents. Western Normandy was covered with a maze of hedgerows-thick banks of earth 8 to 10 feet high covered with overgrowth and trees. For centuries, local farmers had used hedgerows to mark the boundaries of fields. Now they formed excellent defensive terrain. The Germans had pre-sited mortars and artillery on gaps in the hedgerows. Behind them they dug rifle pits and tunneled openings for machineguns. The hedgerows had to be taken one by one. The cost in time and casualties proved high.*
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Meanwhile, to the east, the Canadians and British were bogged down in their effort to break out of the beachhead and seize the city of Caen. The battle for Normandy developed into a long and deadly struggle. It was not until the end of July, after the British took Caen and the Americans captured St.-Lô, that the Allies broke out of Normandy. Only then Hitler realize that the Normandy invasion wasn't a feint for an invasion elsewhere.*
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Eisenhower spent 33 years on active duty, serving in World Wars I and II, and the Korean War, and earning nine U. S. service medals as well as 55 foreign decorations. He is best known for the role he played during World War II. When the United States entered that war, Eisenhower was a brigadier general working on the staff of General George C. Marshall. In February 1942, he was selected chief of the Army's war plans division; in November 1942, he became Commander in Chief of Allied Forces in the North Atlantic; from July to December 1943, he directed the invasions of Sicily and Italy; and on December 24, 1943, he was named to his most important role, that of Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force, leading the invasion of Europe.
It was this last position in which Eisenhower's leadership and military skills came to fruition. In it, he bore responsibility for the all important D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944, along the Normandy coast of France. After the success of that invasion. Eisenhower remained in the European theater for the duration of the war accepting the unconditional surrender of the German army at Rheims, France. He was one of five World War II Army generals to achieve five-star rank.*
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Eisenhower assumed the presidency in January 1953 and left it after two terms. He was succeeded by John Fitzgerald Kennedy.*
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Date-Line--- June 6th 1944 D-Day, you Commander control the invasion force..good luck!*
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Best Played as the Allied, CC off.*
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Map:Orzel Bialy*
Scenario:M4 Jess*
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Comming soon... SS Panzer Division I and the Battle for Caen!
_____________________________
 Im making war, not trouble~ 
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