Talk:Invasion of Normandy/Archive 1

message: I changed it to 1,000 asshole.  It seems that in many of these types of pages people keep stating what were the casaulties as the number killed.  As a reminder, when you read in another source that there were X number of casualties it is not referring to the number killed. --Wdywtk 23:56, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Omaha

message: It's great to see this article reach Featured status today. :) And the addition of the Normandy invasion category should make it easier to fill in the missing areas of documentation noted below -- thanks Oberiko! Madmagic 18:33, Jun 20, 2004 (UTC)
:No problem, glad to help out. Oberiko 18:53, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Featured article status and Category:World War II Allied invasion of Normandy

message: Unlike the Allied forces, the German army was not conditioned to take individual initiative, and thus many groups waited for orders, while being overrun by the allies. 
Removed this for the time being, as it is misleading. German small unit tactics were based on a very high degree of indiviual initiative. It was the high command - in particular Hitler - who insisted on rigid adherance to orders. The above should go back in, but only when this issue is clarified.
:As I understand it the thing that hampered the German units on the beaches was not waiting for orders, but the fact that they had no transport. The Panzer divisions on the other hand could not be released from their reserve positions without explit orders from Hitler. DJ Clayworth 20:59, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: German initiatives

message: Removed 'the Allied worst fears were realised'. The Allied worst fears were that they would be attcked by strong armoured formations on day 1 and pushed back into the sea. This did not happen. DJ Clayworth 17:43, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Allied fears

message: [Re the story of ‘Saving Private Ryan’, the real ‘Ryan’ was Sgt. Frederick (Fritz) Niland who, with some other members of the 101st, was inadvertently dropped too far inland. They eventually made their own way back to their unit at Carentan where the Chaplain, Lt. Col. Father Francis Sampson, told Niland about the death of his three brothers. Two at Normandy and one in the Far East. Under the US War Department's Sole Survivor Policy, (brought about following the death of five Sullivan brothers serving on the same ship), Fr. Sampson arranged passage back to Britain and thereafter to his parents, Augusta and Michael Niland, in Tonawanda. There was no behind the lines Ranger rescue mission, ‘Ryan’ was not a simple private, his mother was not a widow nor is she believed to have received all three telegrams together, and, the bother believed killed in the Far East turned out to have been captured and later returned home. Fr. Francis Sampson wrote about Niland and the story of the 101st, in his 1958 book, ‘Look Out Below!’, ().]
I removed the above text from the article, not because its bad text but I think it belongs in Saving Private Ryan or somewhere similar. It's too detailed for this article. DJ Clayworth 16:09, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Saving Private Ryan

message: ``a) create a beachhead that would include the villages of Caen and Cherbourg (for its deep water port);''
These are not villages now, and I never heard they were at the time.
:They certainly were not. Be bold in editing. DJ Clayworth 15:22, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you. I had confused Caen with Ouistreham briefly. DJ Clayworth 16:41, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Cherbourg and Caen Beachheads

message: I removed a sentence saying that Port-en-Bessin was the destination of PLUTO, because the entry on PLUTO and other sites don't back it up. The first PLUTO came ashore in Cherbourg, two months after the landings (there may have been others later). DJ Clayworth 18:08, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: PLUTO

message: The article leaves much information and themes out.
For example, the civilian casualties (French). The following article gives a taste:
http://www.network54.com/Forum/thread?forumid=211833&messageid=1086434296&lp=1086747163
For the numbers of troops I found this at http://www.ddaymuseum.co.uk/faq.htm:
"On D-Day, the Allies landed around 156,000 troops in Normandy. The American forces landed numbered 73,000: 23,250 on Utah Beach, 43,250 on Omaha Beach, and 15,500 airborne troops. In the British and Canadian sector, 83,115 troops were landed (61,715 of them British): 24,970 on Gold Beach, 21,400 on Juno Beach, 28,845 on Sword Beach, and 7900 airborne troops." It seems the Americans had the most soldiers in action (British and Canadian listed as one number), which makes the comment on the John Wayne movie quite odd (Is that important?).
Also from the last noted website:
"Total Allied casualties on D-Day are estimated at 10,000, including 2500 dead. British casualties on D-Day have been estimated at approximately 2700. The Canadians lost 946 casualties. The US forces lost 6603 men. Note that the casualty figures for smaller units do not always add up to equal these overall figures exactly, however (this simply reflects the problems of obtaining accurate casualty statistics)." Which puts the Americans as having the greatest losses (back to John Wayne again).
Again the d-day website: "Between 15,000 and 20,000 French civilians were killed, mainly as a result of Allied bombing. Thousands more fled their homes to escape the fighting." It would be interesting to compare all these numbers and statistics with the recent Iraq war.
Also, odd that Charles de Gaulle is not mentioned in the wikipedia article. Apparently the Allies didn't trust him, informing him of the invasion only days before it all occurred. See
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/allies_at_war_05.shtml
I have nothing as of yet to back this up, but it seems the Polish organized more soldiers for the invasion than the French could. Many "Free French" soldiers were Americans, including my uncle. Whyerd
:There is actually a mistake in the math of the numbers given above. The numbers for British and other troops correctly add up to 83,115, the number given (including Sword, Juno, Gold and airborne) but the number of American troops add up to 82,000 (Utah + Omaha +airborne), which is higher than the 73,000 quoted above (but still not as high as the non-American). I suspect the wrong figure is one of the US beach figures (possibly Omaha, which is very high) as the D-Day museum quotes 156,000 as the total number of troops involved, which is 83,000+73,000, meaning there were about 10,000 more non-US troops than US troops. DJ Clayworth 20:51, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: (P.S. the same mistake is on the D-Day museum site DJ Clayworth 20:52, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: PPS Britannica gives 34,000 as the number of troops landed on Omaha. . DJ Clayworth 17:13, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  some missing sub-themes 

message: The German defenders positioned on the beaches put up relatively light resistance, being ill-trained and short on transport and equipment, and having been subject to a week of intense bombardment. The exception was the 352nd Infantry division (moved earlier by Rommel from St. Lo — according to Allied intelligence there should be only 2 battalions of 716th Division there)
How did we end up with a portion of this in present tense? Is this article really 60 years old? I would fix it, but I don't have much familiarity with WWII. I'd rather have correct information in incorrect tense than incorrect information in correct tense. Cheers. Evilweevil 16:59, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Present tense? 

message: I removed the following (about the swimming Shermans) because it's too detailed for this article. 
[Previous explanations suggested that they were launched too far from shore - why then did the tanks at the other four beaches suffer no such problems? New research suggests that the Omaha tanks were aiming for a church steeple on the visible horizon behind the cliffs. In order to maintain their line of sight it is believed that the tanks had to turn progressively away from the shore to combat the wavefronts pushing them down the beach, putting their sides virtually parallel with the waves/beach. This meant that the protective canvas flotation devices were easily swamped by the waves. If they had kept going directly forward with the front of the tank headed straight for the beach, they may well have reached it, as did most of the tanks at other beaches; see bleow for url link to more info].
It should go somewhere, but I don't have time to find it a home right now. DJ Clayworth 20:45, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I went back and resurrected it. A lot of the fumbling with this generally v.good article has to do with its curious title. "Normandy Invasion" would have been less confusing to begin with, and some editors want to equate "overlord" with the battle, "D-day" with the invasion, etc. Sfahey 15:38, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: It was at Sherman DD Oberiko 14:54, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: That's embarrassing, I was the one who deleted it. Probably because it was mostly about hippos when I did. I've restored and copyedited. DJ Clayworth 14:32, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Sherman DD

message: "a western invasion was not strictly required to defeat the German Reich". This whole paragraph has worried me for a while. While it may be technically correct, the Russians had been demanding a 'second front' for years, and presumably they still were, so I think some mention should be made of this. Does anyone have any information to the contrary. As it stands the passage seems to imply that the Normandy landings were made for the post-war benefit of the Western Allies, which seems unlikely if the Russians were still demanding a second front. DJ Clayworth 23:21, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe most historians would agree with this paragraph.  Russian forces probably would have overrun Berlin and eventually the rest of Europe without the Normandy invasion.  Also, the Russians kinda got a "second front" in the  Italian campaign.  This paragraph contains a lot of hindsight, based on the cold war. Sure, the main goal of Normandy was to kick the Germans out of Europe.  But allied commanders at the time were also very concerned about the Russians and their post-war intentions in Europe.Beanbatch 18:03, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

text: The Western Allies had promised Stalin a Western European Second Front in 1941. It was at the 43 Teheran conference that Stalin got his way. John Keegan states in a book I can't quite remember which, that Britain, in particular, wanted to avoid France, mostly due to memories of the 1WW. So, the Casablanca conference determined that Sicilly et al would come first. The Soviets, as far as I know, did not regard Italy as a "second front", unless you have sources to that say o'wise. The key phrase is "second front in Western Europe", maybe this needs an article in itself as it would explain the allies strategic thinking with regards to Operation Overlord, which may include speculation on it's effects on a future europe.80.4.124.205 14:46, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

text: That's probably mostly true. I think there were a lot of reasons for invading Sicily and Italy before France. France was much better defended and would have needed many more men to assault successfully, while the Americans in particular were still getting their men appropriately trained for amphibious assaults. Also there were already a lot of troops and landing craft in the Mediterranean doing nothing, thanks to victory in North Africa. From the British point of view an invasion of Italy might have pushed italy out of the war (it did) making passage of ships through the Mediterranean, and therefore communication with the Far East suddenly a whole lot easier. DJ Clayworth 16:46, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "necessary"

message: Hi wikipedians!
Due to the LARGE number of articles, operations, places etc. of this LARGE invasion, I have created a new coordination template for "The Battle of Normandy" : Template:Battle of Normandy. It is inspired by the rather small (but nice) Template:Normandy battle beaches. The idea is that this template could replace the contents of all "See also"-sections on all pages concerning the Battle of Normandy, to make it easier for the user/researcher to navigate through the immense amount of information. It serves also as a brief description of the various codes (Chicago, Pluto, Cobra etc.) and who went on which beach etc etc.
The left column lists the operations. I thought it would be logical to have these in chronological order. The middle column lists the key locations (my suggestion is alphabetical order) and the right column lists "See also"-subjects (my suggestion is alphabetical order).
Now, I am far from an expert on the Battle of Normandy; I would therefore appreciate if you guys take a look on it, make additions/changes etc. For starters, I will only put the template (under the "See also":s on the main page and on the pages for the landing points (Utah, Omaha etc.), in case you guys think the template sucks. Of course I would appreciate any opinion on the template.
Regards, Dennis Nilsson. Dna-Dennis 05:11, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  A new coordination template 

message: Is the German strength so unknown that there should be a "?" in the summary box?
Since it lists 200,000 Germans dead and 200,000 captured, shouldn't we at least list the strength as 400,000?
Maybe like this: ">400,000" or "~400,000". What do you think? Regards, --Dna-Dennis talk - contribs 07:36, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unknown German Strength? 

message: I think it would be a good idea to have an article on the Daily Telegraph crossword scare. This is a primary reference  but I don't even know what we should call the article. DJ Clayworth 14:36, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the information. I wasn't meaning to imply that you always make mistakes, but I was encouraging you to fact-check things very carefully. I would also encourage you to check and article carefully before adding information to it, in case contradictory information is already in the article. What I think would be appropriate here is to copy out the paragraph or so of the book that relates to this message. The problem here is that a different message indicating the imminent invasion is already recorded in the article. It may be of course that what is currently written there is wrong. it may also be (and this seems likely to me) that the BBC broadcast many messages that night, in which case we can't report them all. May I also say this this seems, without evidence, to be an unlikely message, because "les dés sont jetés" is such a well-known phrase associated with being committed to a risky endavour. It would be like using "we're going to invade now" as a codeword for an imminent invasion. DJ Clayworth 16:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Could you ask your teacher if he is sure about that? My understanding was that such messages were usually broadcast by the BBC at specific times reserved for such messages. At the appropriate time the announcer would say something like "here are some messages for our friends in occupied Europe", and then read a number of phrases. I've certainly seen documentaries where this is the way it was done. Doing it any other way would probably result in some confusion. The other phrase which is mentioned in connection with telling the Resistance that the invasion was imminent was known by the Germans to be a message to the Resistance - they just didn't know what it meant. DJ Clayworth 16:42, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Crossword scare