The Normandy Battlefields: Bocage and Breakout: From the Beaches to the Falaise Gap (Then & Now)

About this book

The Normandy Battlefields details what can be seen on the ground today using a mixture of media to provide a complete overview of the campaign. Maps old and new highlight what has survived and what hasnt; then-and-now photography allows fascinating comparisons with the images taken at the time. The Normandy Battlefields: D-Day & the Bridgehead ended as the Allies fought to expand their D-Day foothold. In Bocage and Breakout Leo Marriott and Simon Forty take the story forward as the success of the invasion continued into the Cotentin with Cherbourg falling on 29 June before it bogged down in face of determined German defense and the bocage countrysideinnumerable small fields surrounded by hedgerows each one hiding anti-tank weapons mortars and machine guns. As US First Army fought its way south on the eastern edges of the bridgehead British and Canadian forces were fighting a war of attrition around Caen facing the bulk of the German armor as division after division was fed into Normandy. Like a pressure cooker the fighting intensified until seven weeks after D-Day Operation Cobra broke the German line. Quickly Pattons Third Army operational from 1 August flooded through the gap exploiting the German confusion encircling what was left of the German armies in the Falaise Pocket and advancing quickly through into Brittany. Three weeks later the Battle of Normandy was over the routed German Armywithout most of its heavy weapons left in the Falaise Pocket or on the banks of the Seinewas retreating helter skelter back towards Germany and the Low Countries pursued by the Allies in a reverse of the 1940 Blitzkrieg campaign. The three months of war in JuneJuly 1944 were brutal with losses of front-line troops as heavy as in World War I. The German defense was tenacious particularly in face of Allied air supremacy. The Allies struggled to get into a position to allow their more mobile forces room for maneuver and and the fighting was ferocious. When victory came it came at a cost: 209 672 casualties among the ground forces including 36 976 killed and 19 221 missing. The Allied air forces lost 16 714 airmen. The corresponding German losses were even more significant: some 450 000 men of whom 240 000 were killed or wounded. More important to the Germans were the losses of heavy equipmenttanks assault guns artillery personnel carriers. As an example 12th SS Panzer Division had lost 94% of its armor nearly all of its artillery and 70% of its vehicles. With c20 000 men and 150 tanks before the campaign after Falaise it had 300 men and 10 tanks. Mixing text maps and images many of them specially commissioned including aerial photography The Normandy Battlefields: Bocage and Breakout explains and interprets the complexities of the Normandy campaign in an original and cohesive package. Table of Contents Introduction Opposing forces Timeline June 7August 28 Airpower by Leo Marriott Mulberry A Mulberry B Artillery Communications Traffic Management Tiger! Collateral Damage 1 The Cotentin and Cherbourg The North Coast Cherbourg 2 First Army in the Bocage Fighting in the Bocage La Haye-du-Puits The Attack of XIX Corps Panzer Lehr Counterattack The Battle for Saint-L 3 The Battle for Caen The Canadian Front 21st Panzer Division Operation Perch Operations Martlet and Epsom Carpiquet Operation Charnwood Operations Jupiter Greenline and Pomegranate 4 Breakout Operations Atlantic and Goodwood Operation Cobra Exploitation Third Army Operational Operation Bluecoat Operation Lttich Operation Totalize 5 Brittany St-Malo The North Coast The Battle for Brest 6 The Falaise Gap Third Army Advances Argentan Operation Tractable St-Lambert-sur-Dive 7 Aftermath The Forgotten Front Credits & Bibliography Index