Today is the 70th anniversary of the Normandy Landings (Operation Neptune, Overlord)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9rqSqgpqTE

Speech by Australia's Prime Minister. It's pretty bad.



The reality could look worse than Saving Private Ryan. That's Omaha Beach. It wasn't a short jog to the bluffs.

All up the Allies landed 156k troops in Normandy on the 6th of June, 1944. Of those, since there's no official list of casualties, the Allies suffered 10k casualties, including 2500 dead (the more accepted figure), or possibly 4400 dead (newer research).

 

Wish all
People who lost their lifes in this war

Rest in Peace finally. AMEN.

 

brave men

 

What's up with that pack that soldier at dead center of the pic is toting? Is he a medic? Also the soldier just 'northwest' of him. Is that just some sort of waterproofing cover the other soldiers just didn't bother with or something?

On a second look, it looks like demo charges or a wrapped up bangalore torp rig, maybe. I'm likely wrong, of course, but I've never seen that before now.

 

Abbott's PMship is like if your clumsy dad got to run the country. He's such a monumentally bad politician - he doesn't understand how to appeal to the masses and weasel out of controversy like others in his cabinet and on the other side (ahem, Chris Pyne). I do somewhat like his policy direction, though I think he destroyed any good will he might have had by simultaneously cutting spending and raising taxes. He should have stuck to spending cuts and tax cuts, with spending cuts slightly outpacing the tax cuts to pay off the debt entirely in a few decades.

But I guess beggars can't be choosers, he's better than any Liberal government in recent memory.

 

Granny says, "Dat's right - you go Barney!...

War veteran makes great escape from care home to mark D-day anniversary
6 Jun 2014: Bernard Jordan, reported missing after leaving nursing home wearing his medals, found in France at commemorations

See also:

5 facts you may not know about the Normandy invasion
May 28, 2014 Five facts you may not know about the Normandy invasion:

 

The British people's greatest day: Cynics will say it's time to move on. But today raise a glass to the sheer ingenuity, courage and bloody mindedness of Britons like Stan Hollis, who turned a potential disaster into awesome victory

For all the critical contribution of the United States, this was the last great operation of the war in which the British took the lion’s share, and earned a lion’s share of the credit.

Think of the myriad British people involved, from the women industrial workers who made the ammunition to the WAAFs who packed parachutes, the WRNS who manned ops rooms.

Then there were the high commanders. General Sir Bernard Montgomery had been a celebrity since his victory at El Alamein in November 1942, but he was also intensely controversial — hated by the Americans, who thought him slow in action, unforgivably rude and patronising in speech.

But, under Dwight Eisenhower’s nominal Supreme Command, the operational plan for D-Day was overwhelmingly Monty’s. He directed both the landings and subsequent campaign ashore.

Even most of his critics conceded that nobody else could have done it better, from the moment early in 1944 when he insisted that the number of troops attacking on the first day should be doubled, whatever the difficulties about finding extra shipping to carry them.

Then there were the staff, thousands of officers often caricatured as boring blimps, almost all civilians in uniform, who worked for months in dreary huts and offices, converting the great plan into reality.

Millions of maps had to be printed in conditions of absolute secrecy; 25 square miles of south Devon cleared of the civilian population to enable amphibious training; arrangements made to ship two million men, 200,000 vehicles, 4,000 tanks and 6,000 artillery pieces from Britain to France.

British workmen built the huge artificial Mulberry harbours which Churchill himself had conceived, to be towed in sections to France and shelter both British and American supply vessels offloading from volatile Channel weather during the first weeks after the landings.

Clever British geeks devised a compound of grease, lime and asbestos fibres to waterproof vehicles. Others designed what were known as ‘the funnies’ — tanks modified to swim, or carry fascines (rolled-up bundles of wood) to bridge ditches, mortars to destroy pillboxes, flame-throwers and flails to explode mines.

Curiously the Americans, usually the most mechanically-minded people on earth, spurned these Limey gadgets — and paid a heavy price for doing so when The Day came on the beaches.

The intelligence planners – again, overwhelmingly British amid American scepticism – forged the superlative Operational Fortitude, the greatest deception in history, to keep the Germans guessing first about where the invasion would come, and later about whether another landing would follow elsewhere.

Operation Fortitude required collaboration between the code decrypters of Bletchley Park, the MI5 officers controlling German double-agents in Britain, the RAF’s reconnaissance squadrons and thousands of army signals personnel impersonating dummy units, which were used to deceive the Germans on troop positions.

It worked brilliantly: Hitler kept vital forces in the Pas-de-Calais — well to the north of the Normandy beaches — until August, amid his high command’s chronic uncertainty about what the Allies might do next.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/a...l-disaster-awesome-victory.html#ixzz33tdvp9gk

 

We in Britain really need to get over WW2, we lost the war in France 1939 and the Empire at Singapore in 1941. The Americans and USSR bailed us out. By this time in the war the British had unlimited US resources to play with and had been hardened by 5 years of war. D-day was a good operation, but by no means a great operation with a number of inland objectives not being reached and French resistence being destroy. Then the slow plod and massive mistakes like the bridge thing. Monty was a bad general, I mean it he just had massive amounts of American aid which allowed him to do things other British generals before him couldn't do. He always wanted massive advantages and always trying to do to much when he had it, and when he didn't have it far to fearful to attack. The only good British general in the war was Bill Slim. The really telling part of WW2 is that nobody remembers or even thinks about a British Admiral, Britain wins on the sea and creates alliances on land. The great problems of WW2 is we didn't win any naval battles, I mean the Italian navy was ok, but in years gone by we would have won battle after battle with heavy victorys. Also lets not forget what happened against Japan, which everybody in Britain does, even though Japan was the reason that Britain started re-arming in the first place. Also the mistakes not getting the very capable and modern French battle fleet to join us, rather trying to sink them and failing to do so while it was in port and couldn't move. Useless.

The British can be very proud of the Battle of Britain and Atlantic campaign, and Burmada-IndoChina that is it. The truth is that Britain hasn't won a serious war for well over a century and the Americans have won 3. We could have rebuilt after WW1 or WW2, but didn't because of progessive liberalism and socialism. We rebuilt after the Lord North disaster in the 13 Colonies which caused.

 

Google says sorry for ignoring D-Day...

Google Apologizes for Google Doodle Not Honoring D-Day
June 06, 2014 ~ Search giant Google has apologized for a row caused by not honoring the 70th anniversary of D-Day via its Google Doodle.

 

I was also surprised that they put something totally not related = 3=