Allies Seize Beachheads on French Coast, Invasion Forces Drive Toward Interior

Four Divisions of Paratroops Hop West Wall in Normandy | Other forces land on Channel Islands while air-borne divisions cascade down on Germans as far inland as Caen, France | Battleships shell enemy defenses | 11,000 planes give Allies air control

By the War Editor of The Christian Science Monitor | From Associated Press and other direct news dispatches

The hour of invasion is come.

The signal that all the world awaited boomed out around 5 a.m., Greenwich time, this morning. It had been delayed 24 hours due to bad weather.

“The eyes of the world are on you,” said General Eisenhower. “The hope and prayers of all liberty-loving people go with you.”

Some 4,000 vessels, said Prime Minister Churchill, with several thousand smaller craft, appeared off the Normandy coast. The troops, some of them using new and secret weapons, effected landings between 6 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. from west of Cherbourg to the Seine, and secured several beachheads on a 100-mile stretch.

Paratroop divisions – four British, accompanied by Americans and Canadians – and glider-borne troops simultaneously dropped at points on the coast, and inland as far as Caen, 30 miles west of Le Havre. Battleships of British and American navies trained 640 guns of from 4- to 16-inch caliber on coast forts.

They did their work so well that German resistance was surprisingly small.

Some small German E-boats and a few destroyers offered the only naval resistance reported. Allied naval losses were termed “very, very small.”

On land, this mighty expedition, commanded by General Montgomery, met no initial strong resistance. German aircraft reacted slowly to the paratrooper attack. It appeared to be overwhelmed by the 11,000 first-line aircraft which, according to Mr. Churchill, are available for the invasion.

Landings were effected on Jersey and Guernsey in the Channel Islands.

Rapidity with which the great flotilla of minesweepers, using 70 miles of sweep wires, cleared the way for the invading armada and the help of artificial fog produced by naval units, enabled the infantry to make quick landings.

The success of the paratroopers at the airfield had yet to be announced.

Announcement that heavy guns opened fire across the Straits of Dover at midday indicated that the invasion might be spreading eastward.

Channel waters were choppy and cloudy weather prevailed, but apparently not sufficiently to impede the invading forces.

Since French patriots had been warned by radio to keep out of an area within 22 miles of the coast, their activities did not begin immediately.

Details of the landings show these occurred west of the Orne River on the Cherbourg Peninsula, near Ouistreham, Arromanches, Carentan, Harfleur, and St. Vaast – all dotted along the Normandy coast.

The attack was preceded by a raid by 1,300 great bombers which roared over the Channel during the night in the heaviest aerial attack on the French coast.

The German Radio flashed news of the invasion three hours before Allied Headquarters came through with the report. General Eisenhower, it is said, waited to be sure of the initial success of the landings before releasing the intelligence.

Invasion: Huge Allied Army Strikes Normandy

American, British, and Canadian forces landed by daylight in massive strength on the Normandy coast of France and sped inland from quickly established beachheads. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower told his troops this grand assault was a crusade which must bring “nothing less than full victory.”

German opposition apparently was less effective than anticipated, although strong in many respects.

The sea-borne troops, led by Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, surged across the Channel from Britain on 4,000 regular ships and additional thousands of smaller craft.

They were preceded by massed flights of parachute and glider forces that landed inland during the dark.

Eleven thousand planes supported the attack.

The German Radio said the landings were made from Cherbourg to Le Havre – a strip of coast roughly 100 miles long – and later said additional landings were being made “west of Cherbourg,” indicating that the Allies intended to seize the Normandy Peninsula with its ports and airdromes as the first base of their campaign to destroy the power of Nazi Germany.

The initial landings were made from 6 to 8:25 a.m. British time (midnight to 2:25 a.m., E. W. T.) The Germans said subsequent landings were made on the English Channel isles of Jersey and Guernsey and that invasion at new points on the continent was expected hourly.

Aside from confirming that Normandy was the general area of the assault, Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force was silent concerning the location for tactical reasons.

Beachhead Reports Tell of Success

All reports from the beachhead, meager though they were in specific detail, agreed that the Allies had made good the great amphibious landing against possibly the strongest fortified section of coast in the world.

Reconnaissance pilots said Allied troops had secured the beaches and were pushing inland, some of them actually running in a swift advance. The unofficial word at headquarters confirmed this, while the Vichy Radio admitted the Allied drive inland was going right ahead.

More than 640 naval guns, ranging from 4- to 16-inch, hurled many tons of shell accurately into coastal fortifications which the Germans had spent four years preparing against this day.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill was able to tell Parliament that the shore batteries had been “largely quelled,” the underwater obstructions had proven less dangerous than feared, and the whole operation was “proceeding according to plan.”

Allied planes preceded the landings with a steady 96-hour bombardment, which reached its pinnacle in the hour before troops hit the beaches.

The air attack was thrust home through cloud banks 5,000 feet high.

The absence of German aerial opposition was remarked by nearly all returning fliers and correspondents. The Germans are known to have about 1,750 fighters and 500 bombers available for the Western Front, but it was supposed they had chosen not to risk them in an all-out first-day battle.

German naval opposition was confined to destroyers and motor torpedo boats which headquarters said succinctly were being “dealt with.” The Germans, as expected, blared on their radios all sorts of claims of vast destruction done to Allied fleets and forces, but with no confirmation.

In one defiant gesture, some of the German cross-Channel guns opened a sporadic fire on Dover during the afternoon.

Hitler Reported Rushing to France

Unconfirmed reports said Adolf Hitler was rushing to France. Presumably Field Marshal Gen. Karl Gerd von Rundstedt and General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel were directing the defenses from their headquarters in France.

German accounts through Sweden admitted that steady streams of Allied troops were continuing to land, particularly in the vicinity of Arromanches, about midway between Le Havre and Barfleur, and that tanks were ashore at several places. They said there was especially bitter fighting at the mouths of the Orne and Vire Rivers.

The air-borne troops’ principal scenes of operations were placed by the Germans at Caen and Barfleur. The Germans said the American 82nd and 101st Parachute Divisions had landed on the Normandy Peninsula, along with the American 28th and 100th Air-borne divisions. They said the British 1st and 6th Air-borne Divisions were operating in the Seine Bay area. The Germans complained that at some points dummy parachutists were dropped, exploding on touch.

The tenor of their accounts lent support to Mr. Churchill’s assertion that “there already are hopes that actual tactical surprise has been attained” and that “we hope to furnish the enemy with a succession of surprises during the course of the fighting.”

The Germans announced also that American reinforcements began landing at dawn, aided by artificial fog, and that in some places dummy parachutists were dropped to confuse the defense.

French Patriots previously had been warned by Allied radiocasts to get out of areas within 35 kilometers (22 miles) of the coast to escape the shock of battle and the gigantic aerial bombardment.

The Germans said the bombers ranged as far north as Dunkerque.

All England resounded with the thunder of their coming and going.

An Associated Press correspondent flying over the French coast in a B-26 Marauder reported seeing the fields inland strewn with hundreds of parachutes and dotted with gliders, while great naval forces fired into the coast fortifications.

U. S. Battleships Support Landings

United States battleships are supporting the Allied landings in France and United States Coast Guard units also are participating in the operations, it was announced.

American Marines likewise are in the fighting, manning secondary guns aboard the big ships.

Great flotillas of minesweepers led the way to the beaches for the Allied group troops, and the sweeping operation alone was described by headquarters as “the largest in history.”

The German Air Force reacted very slowly.

The German navy was represented only by a few destroyers and E-boats.

Berlin said the “center of gravity” of the main fighting was at Caen, 30 miles southwest of Le Havre and 65 miles southeast of Cherbourg.

Caen is 10 miles inland from the sea, at the base of the 75-mile-wide Normandy Peninsula.

Heavy fighting also was reported between Caen and Trouville.

The Germans also declared that Calais and Dunkerque, immediately across the English Channel from Britain, were under heavy air attack.

All night long London and England resounded to the roar of thousands of airplanes, some carrying bombs, some carrying men. Returning RAF bombers met big fleets of Flying Fortresses on their way out.

The forces thrown into operation were by far the greatest ever used in an amphibious operation. They had to be. An estimated 1,000,000 German troops waited in their fortifications for the great onslaught under crack Nazi leaders, Field Marshal Gen. Gerd von Runstedt and General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

It was reported earlier this week that Adolf Hitler himself had a special train ready to rush him to France to take over personal command as he did on the Eastern Front.

Despite these reports Allied military men expected Marshal Rommel to be the main tactician on German defense.

Although amphibious attacks are the most difficult in war, a quiet feeling of confidence characterized the Allied generals.

On several occasions thousands of troops, even with correspondents aboard, sailed out in great fleets to almost within shell range of German defenses in Europe as though they were going to attack while Nazi reconnaissance planes closely checked convoys.

These feints have been carried out on widely separated points.

Italy: Fifth Army Drives Nazis Northward

Fifth Army forces drove steadily beyond liberated Rome, some units plunging as much as five miles out from the historic Tiber River against what was officially termed “only weak resistance.”

“The battle to destroy the enemy continues without pause,” said a communiqué.

Lieut. Gen. Mark W. Clark’s troops have crossed or reached the Tiber all the way from Rome to the sea and enemy forces still in the flatlands below the city are in desperate straits.

In the coastal area alone well over 2,000 Germans apparently will be unable to scramble out of the Allied net because all Tiber bridges from Rome to the sea either have been blown up or captured.

In still-jubilant Rome, however, 11 crossings remained intact, and the Fifth Army poured across in a constant stream to chase the Germans fleeing northward in disorder.

Allied armored forces fanned out over a wide area. Infantry also has crossed the river in force and was reported driving due west of Vatican City. The only resistance anywhere came from isolated rear guards.

In the mountains east of Rome, German rear guards threw strong opposition against the British Eighth Army in an effort to cover the northward withdrawal of the main enemy troops in that sector.

The Allied air forces gave the German columns no rest. In the area immediately north of Rome more than 375 of their vehicles were destroyed or damaged by fighter-bombers. Heavy bombers meanwhile pounded Northern Italy rail lines, particularly in the Po Valley.

Russia:

Russian armies were understood to be massing and preparing to perform their part of the joint Allied task of crushing Germany with a blow from the East, combined with Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s invasion from the West and Gen. Sir Harold Alexander’s thrust up the Italian peninsula.

The invasion of Northwest France was the “second front” for which the Russians had called for three anxious years. But the “second front” already had ceased to be a political issue in Moscow before General Eisenhower struck.

Fresh forces of Nazi infantry and tanks attacking in the week-long German offensive in the Iasi sector in Romania were repulsed June 5, while Red airmen hammered the Bessarabian railway junction of Chisinau, 70 miles east and a little south of Iasi, Moscow reported.

The Germans were said to have used self-propelled midget tanks of the same type that gave only a mediocre performance on the Anzio beachhead. Most of the electrically controlled and explosive-filled vehicles were knocked out before reaching forward positions, the radiocast communiqué from Moscow said.

In the fighting near Iasi the Nazis lost 41 tanks and 33 planes, Moscow said. Much enemy transport and equipment were destroyed at Chisinau, and military objectives in the town also were hit, the communiqué added.

A German commentator said the Russians had brought up several hundred howitzers and numerous salvo guns and antitank batteries to the front, but that the German Air Force, employing more than 1,000 battle planes and fighter-bombers, silenced the new batteries in nonstop raids.

In the far north the Germans declared they sank two Soviet ships on each of two nights in naval battles between Nazi patrol boats and Russian speedboats and mine sweepers.

There have been reports for the past week of skirmishes in northern waters, where the Germans said units of the Red northern fleet have been making a determined attempt to break out of the Gulf of Finland into the Baltic Sea.

Over the entire Russian front there hung an air of tension.

South Pacific:

The sinking of a Japanese destroyer by a Liberator ranging toward the Philippines from advanced bases was reported by Allied Headquarters on June 6 along with the probable sinking of another destroyer off Dutch New Guinea and a 19-to-1 margin of victory over the enemy’s air force.

The reports also told of a successful flanking of Nipponese airdrome defenses in the bitter battle for Biak in the Schouten Islands and co-ordinated attacks on Truk by Southwest and Central Pacific planes during which a supply convoy was hit heavily.

The bag of 19 enemy planes was added to more than 30 listed in the previous day’s communiqué of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. The destroyers were the first reported caught under the bombsights of Southwest Pacific planes since March 21.

At Sea:

The United States Navy has revealed for the first time the sinking of an aircraft carrier in the Atlantic. It was the escort carrier Block Island, the 158th Navy ship lost during the war.

China:

Six separate Japanese columns, battering their way slowly toward the Hunan provincial Capital of Changsha, have achieved new gains at the expense of heavy casualties, and fighting raged on a wide front with American planes ceaselessly harassing the enemy, the Chinese High Command announced.

A communiqué declared the Chinese had scored successes in the western Hupeh area north of Hunan, but Japanese activity there has been looked upon as a screen for the more important Hunan offensive drive.