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The Normandy landings, also known as D-Day, were a series of air- and seaborne landings in continental Europe by Allied forces.

In the ����ý’s new programme D-Day: The Unheard Tapes, remastered interview recordings of those who lived through D-Day are lip-synced by actors who resembled them as young adults, at the time of the war. The rare and never-before-heard tapes gave a unique look into the experiences of the soldiers involved, in their own words. Here’s what we learned from their stories.

1. The weather could have changed the outcome of D-Day

It’s no secret that D-Day, also known by its codename Operation Overlord, was the biggest seaborne invasion in all of history.

The five beaches - mission-named from east to west as Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah - were split among the Allied forces with mainly British troops focused on Sword and Gold, American troops on Omaha and Utah, and Canadian troops on Juno with British and other Allied nations’ support. The landings were planned for years, and one way that British intelligence gathered information about the beaches was having the ����ý stage a ‘French holiday photo’ competition, so the British public sent in images of pre-war France - including many useful views of the beaches of Normandy.

Weather charts were redrawn by hand every few hours to ensure up-to-date information was available. The Moon had to be full, with a spring tide with the right conditions for easier naval landing, and this only left a small number of dates within which the invasion could take place. Monday 5 June was chosen, but bad weather pushed the landing back to the morning of Tuesday 6 June, 1944.

It turned out this change of plan worked in the Allies’ favour:

“Had it been a clear day on 5 June,” says historian Dr Kate Vigurs, “German reconnaissance may have spotted the mass build-up of weapons, troops and ships along the south coast, and been better prepared.”

But if the Allied army had been delayed longer and instead gone ahead with the next planned invasion dates of 18-20 June, they would have faced the worst storm encountered in over 20 years!

2. The troops learned their missions in secret, sealed camps

While the Allied infantry was fully trained and prepared for the Second Front, not many knew the details of when or where the Normandy landings would happen until a few days before. At first, much of the training took place at the Combined Operations Training Centre at Inveraray, on the west coast of Scotland, but in the weeks building up, secrecy was paramount.

“Germany knew that they would be coming – and that it would happen soon – they just didn’t know where exactly, so keeping that detail from them was critical,” says Dr James Bulgin, Head of Public History at the Imperial War Museum.

From late May certain regiments were moved to sealed camps where no one was allowed in or out. Here, each unit learned their missions - however, sometimes the exact locations wouldn’t be divulged even until the moment of action.

“There were all sorts of guesses,” Private Wally Parr of the 6th British Airborne Division recalls in his interview. “Even when we were shown it… we weren’t told where it was.”

Wally was part of the mission to take over Bénouville Bridge (now known as Pegasus Bridge) along the Caen canal, executed before the morning of the invasion. This bold manoeuvre would prevent German troops from moving towards the beaches as D-Day was taking place, and airdrops such as this one were integral to the success of the operation. The sealed camps were left empty, or repurposed as prisoner-of-war camps.

3. Black Americans were also fighting segregation

Despite there being an all African-American battalion involved in the D-Day airborne forces, US units overall were segregated, as segregation was still in effect in the US. The 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion had to move 35ft-long pre-inflated explosive balloons to shore in order to protect the landing forces from German aerial attacks. The battalion was the only African-American unit to storm Omaha beach on 6 June.

It was one of the more dangerous jobs on the frontline, but black soldiers were prevented from volunteering for elite fighting divisions, such as the paratroopers. Instead, they served with the service battalions coming ashore in the afternoon of D-Day to support the units who'd landed ahead of them.

Men like Allen Price of the 3275th Quartermaster Service Company also faced racism from the other units when they had to interact during supply runs:

“That’s what hurt me,” says Allen in his interview. “[The white Americans] didn’t wanna feed you, after you brought them food and ammo and gas and all that other stuff.

“That’s what they was taught to think; they were superior to anything other than white.”

Allen was one of almost 2,000 African-American troops thought to have participated in the D-Day invasions.

4. D-Day was devastating for French towns

A lesser-known story of the D-Day landings is that of the French population beyond the beaches. Once Allied troops had made it past the sands, the plan was to annex the trading and road hub city of Caen, and the Cherbourg peninsula with its deep-water port.

However, the bocages proved difficult to navigate - particularly for American troops who were not fully prepared for that kind of landscape - and gave German soldiers the upper hand. This resulted in a long campaign of fighting between the Wehrmacht and Allied troops, and was devastating to those living in Caen. About 73% of the city was destroyed by Allied bombings that would cause damage lasting for decades to come.

André Heintz, a French resistance member, remained in Bon Sauveur hospital as a volunteer with his sister to take civilian casualties into triage. They realised that nothing about the shelter would indicate to the Allies that the building was a hospital, and so quickly came up with a remarkable plan: they used discarded surgery drapes to mark out a red cross in the vegetable garden.

“As we drew out the fourth arm of the cross,” said André, “a plane pierced the clouds. We thought it was going to nose-dive onto us… it reascended, and the Bon Sauveur was protected.”

It took six weeks to capture Caen, and within that time as many as 3,000 French civilians lost their lives. During the course of the longer campaign to liberate France, nearly 20,000 French civilians were killed, and many more wounded and missing.

The seizure of Caen and Cherbourg allowed the Allies to go onwards to Paris and force the Germans to retreat to Germany, where Soviet troops were closing in on the other side. German troops that remained in Normandy fled, or were captured by Allied forces.

Franz Gockel, a German soldier, was a prisoner of war for a further 18 months. When asked about his relationship with the American troops in that time, he said:

“They were people just like us. They said, ‘You fought well, we fought well’, especially the black people… They guarded us while [the others] were going about victory.”

Life after D-Day

Many of the recruits interviewed in the programme returned home and took over their family businesses, or pursued new careers. Some returned to the Armed Forces, either as mentors or volunteers.

Jim Kelly, 77, is a retired NHS worker living in Scotland. His father was James Kelly, a Royal Marine. Jim shared what James went on to do after the war:

“In 1946, he joined the Royal Marine Reserves in Merseyside,” he says. “For many years, he trained new recruits. I attended some of these training weekends with him. He made many friends through the Reserves, but not with any of the guys he had fought with.”

D-Day was a memory that many communities held much later after the war. From the 1970s, James Kelly socialised with other men from Different RM units and Commando Units, along with their wives and families - for example, they would catch a coach to Fort William for Remembrance day.

Jim shared another special tradition his dad kept:

“Dad and his friends travelled back to Normandy every year from the early 1990s to commemorate D-Day. Now, we as a family carry on this tradition on his behalf.”

You can learn more about the D-Day landings and the soldiers involved in the three-part series D-Day: The Unheard Tapes on ����ý Two, starting Sunday 2 June at 9pm - or you can catch up on ����ý iPlayer.

This article was published in June 2024.