Operation Overlord - Normandy Invasion

"Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death."
-Gen. Omar Bradley

In June 1944, the USS Augusta was the flagship of the Western Task Force of Operation Neptune which was the naval portion of the Normandy invasion (Operation Overlord), which included an Allied armada of over 5,000 ships. The Augusta stood out of Plymouth on 5 June with Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, and his staff, embarked.

In his autobiography (A Soldier's Story, Henry Holt & Co., NY 1951) Bradley described the Augusta just before embarking at Plymouth as follows:

The Augusta waited offshore, a rakish beauty among the snub-nosed LST's. Its curved yacht like bow and eight-inch turrets pointed toward the Channel. (Admiral) Kirk had gone ashore but Rear Admiral A.D. Struble, his chief of staff, welcomed us aboard. I was assigned the skipper's cabin, the one occupied by President Roosevelt in 1941 when he joined Churchill off the Newfoundland shore to draft the Atlantic Charter.

The army war room had been constructed on the afterdeck ordinarily used by the cruiser's spotter aircraft. It consisted of a temporary shed 10 by 20 feet whose sheet-metal walls were to pucker whenever the AA mount above it fired. The three overhead lights were caged and the face of the clock on the wall had been taped against concussion. The outer wall had been taped against concussion. The outer been papered with a Michelin motoring map of France. Next to it hung a terrain study of the assault beaches, neatly bracketed into letter and color designations. Between them a Petty pin-up girl lounged on a far more alluring beach. On the near wall a detailed map of Normandy described in concentric arcs the ranges of enemy coastal guns. Still another charted the disposition of enemy divisions in blurred red markings. A long plotting table filled the center of the room. There a naval lieutenant traced an overlay of the beach defenses. And on a waist-high shelf the length of the seaward wall stood a row of typewriters for the journal clerks.

Closing the French shore on 6 June, the heavy cruiser commenced firing at 0618, hurling 51 rounds from her main battery at shore installations.

During the bombardment on D-day Omar Bradley positioned himself at a steel command cabin built for him on deck, 20 feet by 10 feet, the walls dominated by Michelin motoring maps of France, a few pin-ups and large scale maps of Normandy. A row of clerks sat at typewriters along one wall, while Bradley and his personal staff clustered around the large plotting table in the center. Much of that morning, however, Bradley stood on the bridge standing next to Task Force Commander Admiral Kirk observing the landings through binoculars, his ears plugged with cotton to muffle the blast of Augusta's guns.

On 10 June General Bradley and his staff left the heavy cruiser to establish headquarters ashore. Augusta was bombed at 0357 on 11 June but escaped damage as the bomb exploded 800 yards off her port beam. The following day, anchored as before off Omaha Beach she fired eight 5-inch rounds at an enemy plane at 2343, driving it off. On 13 June at 0352 she sent 21 rounds of 5-inch at a German plane, and shot it down. Augusta drove off other aircraft and bombarded the shore with her heavy guns on 15 June and provided antiaircraft defense to the forces off Normandy on 18 June.

USS Augusta - Orders for the Day (6 June 1944)
Photo of Augusta off of Normandy Beaches
Announcement made to the crew of the Augusta on the morning of D-Day
Photo taken at Omaha Beach 2/27/00
D-Day Links
Read daily entries in the USS Augusta's War Diaries for the invasion

"I was aboard when Omar Bradley was aboard. He was a friendly person, he was respected by the crew. I don't think we were fired upon, while he was aboard. The German planes came over at night to drop flares, the flares came down slowly on parachutes. The area was as bright as day. The Germans did drop a few bombs while the area was lit up. Omar Bradley would go ashore, then return to the ship. On D plus 4 days he left for good to set up his command."
---Harry D. Moebus, Sr., Gunnersmate S1c (Augusta service: 2/43-1/46)
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Hanson W. Baldwin, military editor, New York Times, assigned to the USS Augusta recounts the
passage to the D-day Normandy beaches:

On Monday, June 5, Augusta, with hundreds of ships and craft ahead and astern of her, got under way from Plymouth Harbor, headed south into the Channel toward the "great adventure." The sea was choppy; mists hung low over the waters as we steamed independently at about fifteen knots through a swept and buoyed channel toward the Bay of the Seine. It was an eerie passage, almost sepulchral in the light fog. Visibility was adequate but limited. On the way, the loudspeaker told us of the fall of Rome the day before-brief cheers. Then, out of the mist, we passed the battleship Texas; then Black Prince and Glasgow, wearing the White Ensign, the Frenchmen Georges Leygues and Montcalm, a swarm of destroyers.

In mid-afternoon, I was startled briefly when we tested our 20mm and 40mm AA guns. Toward nightfall we speeded up
and then sat down in the wardroom to steak, mashed potatoes, frozen green beans, and cream peas, with the usual jokes about "the last supper" and feeding the condemned- men. Minute after minute, hour after hour, we passed great convoys of slow-moving landing craft, some of them making a rough crossing, all of them crammed (with the youth of Britain and
America. Some men waved, or raised a hand; there was an occasional cheer or yell, but for the most part the foreknowledge of what was to come, the storming of the beaches, and the querulous pangs of seasickness, dampened overt greetings.

Few in Augusta slept much that night; the adrenaline was flowing. It was after midnight before a smudged line, low on the horizon, revealed the coast of France. Then, as we closed, we heard the faint hum, distinct above the Augusta's blowers and the creaks and groans of a ship in a seaway, of aircraft engines-bombers and troop carriers bound for France.

BOOKS:

The Invasion of France and Germany 1944 - 1945 (History of United States Naval Operations in World War II) by Samuel Eliot Morison

War Photographer

D-Day June 6, 1944 : The Climactic.Battle of WWII - by Stephen E. Ambrose

D-Day Plus Fifty Years : The Normandy Beaches Revisted - by Henry Rasmussen

Currahee! : a Screaming Eagle at Normandy -by Donald R. Burgett, Stephen E. Ambrose

Operation Overlord (Normandy Invasion)