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The Landing:
Juno Beach (Canadian)
Sword Beach (British)
Utah Beach (American)
Omaha Beach (American)
The Glider Assaults:
Pegasus Bridge
"Mulberry" Floating Harbours
The invasion called for a truly unique solution for the need to have safe, speedy and secure facilities for landing the incredible amount of men and equipment required for the invasion. Existing port facilities in France near the invasion zone (Le Havre and Cherbourg) were very heavily defended and would be impossible to capture quickly. The solution was to build massive floating harbours and tow them to France.
The actual owner of the idea of the floating harbour is still disputed, but among those who proposed ideas along these lines is Hugh Iorys Hughes, a Welsh civil engineer who submitted plans on the idea to the War Office and Vice-Admiral John Hughes-Hallett. Winston Churchill also drew on his experience in the First World War to create an artificial harbour in a meeting with Vice-Admiral John Hughes-Hallett. Churchill's memo of May 30, 1942 said: "Piers for use on beaches. . Must float up and down with the tide. . Let me have the best solution. . Don't argue the matter." The realization of the concept of floating harbours began to take shape when Hughes-Hallett moved to be Naval Chief of Staff to the Overlord planners. Eisenhower described the project – code named "Mulberry" as "a project so unique as to be classed by many scoffers as completely fantastic".
The proposed harbours required many huge caissons of various sorts to build breakwaters and piers and connecting structures to provide the roadways. The artificial harbours were secretly built in parts, which German intelligence mistook as being to block their seaports, and towed across the channel at 4 mph and sunk in place on June 9. Just 3 days after D-Day, the two harbours codenamed Mulberry 'A' and 'B' were in place at at Omaha Beach and Arromanches. A large storm on June 19 destroyed the American harbour, leaving only the British harbour at Arromanches which was eventually known as Port Winston at Arromanches.
Port Winston saw intensive use for 8 months, despite being designed to last only 3 months. For 10 months after D-Day, it was used to land over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tonnes of supplies.
Specifications: A complete Mulberry harbour was constructed out of approximately 600,000 tons of concrete and had over 30 jetties and 10 miles (15 km) of floating roadways with which to land men, vehicles and supplies on the beach. Port Winston is commonly upheld as one of the best examples of military engineering ever constructed and its remains are still visible today from the beaches at Arromanches.
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