WW II History

Veterans and world leaders commemorate 80th anniversary of D-Day landings

Today, on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, we reflect on the immense courage and sacrifice of those who launched a combined naval, air and land assault on Nazi-occupied France.

We continue to honour you all. Thank you for your service. #DDay80 pic.twitter.com/xLxmky4VKk

— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) June 6, 2024

A piper honours the exact moment 80 years ago that British troops landed on the Normandy beaches for D-Day.

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— GB News (@GBNEWS) June 6, 2024

From PA Cat

Eighteen Halifax heavy bombers left their base in Yorkshire about two hours after midnight, on their way to hit a German coastal gun battery in Normandy. No. 433 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force, had struck targets in Nazi-occupied France before. But this time, as they reached the English Channel, they realized they were on a very different mission.

It was the 1960’s.

Dad and 4 or 5 war buddies would get together for a mighty drunk at least once a year.

I remember one summer day being jammed into the back seat of a vehicle with 4 of my siblings.

Dad was in the front seat helping his buddy Vic to drive.

Seat belts weren’t even an after thought.

It was a booze run to the local plaza and the promise of treats for us kids.

We  bounced off the curbs as we weaved our way there and back.

I recall being embarrassed about the poor driving and not at all concerned about safety.

I got a bag of chips, a 10 cent one, and I think a Pepsi.

It was the 1960’s.

Once upon a time, we weren’t wimps.

If you did this country wrong — betrayed Canada or your fellow citizens in any way — you could very well find yourself swinging at the end of a rope.

The Times had many journalists and photographers on the ground during the 1944 invasion of Normandy. They were assigned to file stories from the war zone to appease the editor but they had to abide by strict censorship rules.

The Allied Expeditionary Force employed officials known as field press censors, who reviewed journalists’ work in situ before it was transmitted back to the newsroom. After approval, journalists took their images and stories to transmission services, which were not usually located near the censors’ base.

From an airfield west of London, Richard Rohmer flew southwards out over the English Channel on the morning of June 6, 1944. Off to his left, the sun was rising over occupied France, and he was going to take pictures for Allied intelligence to guide the invasion. The joystick in his single-engine Mustang fighter plane had a button to control a camera, as well as the guns. He was flying as the second in a formation of two, but here in the cockpit, he was alone, watching a turning point in modern history and feeling confident in its outcome.

Troops were fighting for democracy at home as well as abroad.

Shortly after midnight on 6 June 1944, Operation Neptune, otherwise known as D-Day, began.

Thousands upon thousands of planes and ships bombed and shelled Nazi defences in Normandy. The Allies then sent in 23,000 men in three airborne divisions and mounted, with 4,000 landing craft, what remains the world’s largest ever amphibious assault: five divisions, attacking five separate beaches.

Amateur archaeologists have unearthed five human skeletons missing their hands and feet under the former home of the Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring at Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair military headquarters in present-day Poland.

The remains, believed to be that of a family, were discovered as part of a dig at the site near the north-eastern town of Kętrzyn, where Nazi leaders spent large stretches of the second world war.

Mystery surrounds the chilling find, first reported by Der Spiegel, including the identity of the victims, the circumstances of their burial, and whether the Reichsmarschall knew the bones were there while he lived in the house.

The Great Escape wasn’t so great in the end. Almost all the Allied participants in the famous breakout from a German prisoner-of-war camp were captured and most were killed.

It has always looked as if the plan went wrong — but what if something more sinister was at work? Had the Great Escapers been betrayed?

A newly uncovered document in the National Archives has revealed that Flight Lieutenant Desmond Plunkett, the map-maker and unlucky 13th man out of the camp, believed the Great Escape had been brought down — by its own side.

A teenage cook whose heroics onboard a warship helped shorten the Second World War has been honoured in his home town after a public vote.

The regenerated centre of North Shields, North Tyneside, has been named after Thomas Brown, who was awarded the George Medal for helping to retrieve codebooks from a sinking German U-boat in October 1942.

The books were later used to crack the Enigma code by experts at Bletchley Park, enabling the British to decipher Nazi messages.

Since 2009, Indian and American teams have scoured the mountains in India’s north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, looking for the wreckage and remains of lost crews of hundreds of planes that crashed here over 80 years ago.

Some 600 American transport planes are estimated to have crashed in the remote region, killing at least 1,500 airmen and passengers during a remarkable and often-forgotten 42-month-long World War Two military operation in India. Among the casualties were American and Chinese pilots, radio operators and soldiers.

The operation sustained a vital air transport route from the Indian states of Assam and Bengal to support Chinese forces in Kunming and Chunking (now called Chongqing).