Daily Times

Today, hundreds of dignitaries are gathering around Normandy, the site of the allied landing in France that took place seventy-five years ago known as Operation Overlord. At first light on June 6th, 1944, approximately 140-160,000 allied troops stormed ashore at five landing sites: Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword.

The invasion fleet of largely civilian and naval transports numbered about 5000. About 170 were warships of destroyer size or larger including seven battleships, three American, four British. The landing was memorialized in Cornelius Ryan’s epic book The Longest Day and a movie by the same name and later the box office hit Saving Private Ryan.

The first eighteen minutes of Private Ryan was an extraordinary portrayal of the carnage of war especially at Omaha Beach. The first day, about 10,000 allied troops were casualties and 4500 were killed in action. Overlord marked the beginning of the end of Nazism and Adolph Hitler. War would end in Europe eleven months later almost to the day.

Perhaps because Hitler and naziism were so evil and existential to civil society, D-Day has become iconic, representing the beginning of the end of that deplorable threat. D-Day was welcomed by Moscow even though Stalin was bitter that the opening of a second front was so delayed with Russians paying the price in blood and treasure. Too many, Overload is remembered as the largest amphibious invasion in history. But it is not.

Ten months later, on April 1, 1945, about 180,000 allied troops and 6000 ships launched the invasion of Okinawa in the Pacific, code named Iceberg. Among the American forces were four Army and three Marine Divisions. Casualties were very light the first few days as the Japanese plan specifically allowed the allies to land before attacking with suicide ferocity. During the eighty-two day campaign the allies suffered about 75,000 casualties and about 15,000 killed in action. Japanese losses were between 85,000 and 117,000 killed and 7,000 captured.

In a desperate ploy, the Japanese Navy ordered Operation Ten-Go- a surface armada of ten ships including the super battleship Yamato to attack the invading force. Yamato and five other warships were sunk. Four escaped at the cost of 10 American aircraft and twelve Americans killed. However, it was the advent of the Divine Wind or Kamikaze that almost turned the battle.

Normandy’s unique place in history is to recognize and honour the courage and valour in storming those beaches as the predicate to destroying Nazi Germany. But, as with Okinawa, large scale amphibious assaults may indeed be history

Kamikazes were largely untrained Japanese pilots instructed to crash their aircraft into the allied surface fleet in suicide attacks. About five thousand Kamikazes were launched. Fortunately, only about eight percent hit their targets amounting to 368 ships. Over half never made it to the battle getting lost or running out of fuel en route.

About Normandy and Okinawa, both were, to quote Wellington, “close run things.” Had Hitler not withheld his Panzers contrary to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s pleas, and counter-attacked before the allies put sufficient troops ashore, Overlord could have been a fiasco like Gallipoli in World War I and Dieppe, the failed assault into France in 1942. Indeed, General Dwight Eisenhower, the overall commander, had prepared two messages: one for success and the other for failure.

Had ten or twenty percent of the Kamikazes hit, between five hundred and a thousand ships would have been damaged or sunk jeopardizing the whole operation. And if half the Kamikazes succeeded in crashing into the fleet, Operation Iceberg could have melted into oblivion.

Is there relevance today? D-Day will continue to have symbolic value. The question is for how long? Almost all its survivors on both sides are gone. As past wars lost prominence, this is likely to happen. Okinawa is largely forgotten.

But are large scale amphibious operations also past their sell-by dates? The only major amphibious assault since Okinawa was during the first months of the Korean War. On September 15th, 1950, in Operation Chromite, U.S. Marines landed at Inchon on the outskirts of Seoul completely surprising a North Korean army that had driven to the boot of South Korea. With its supply lines cut by the Marines, The invading North Korean army began a headlong retreat north. Fortunately, Inchon was virtually unopposed.

With deadly accurate precision weapons and should conflict occur between nuclear-armed powers, large amphibious assaults would seem questionable at best and exceedingly risky unless complete surprise were obtained. Even then a large force would seem highly vulnerable unless virtually complete control of the battle space could be achieved and maintained-another questionable proposition.

Normandy’s unique place in history is to recognize and honor the courage and valor in storming those beaches as the predicate to destroying Nazi Germany. But, as with Okinawa, large scale amphibious assaults may indeed be history.

The writer is UPI’s Arnaud deBorchgrave Distinguished Columnist. His latest book is Anatomy of Failure