days before the targeted date of June 5, troops boarded ships, transports, and aircraft all along the southern and southwestern coasts of England. Troops stood waiting for days to hear the word go, at which point they would engage the Germans in the largest amphibious assault in history.The largest part of the deception didn’t take place until the night of the actual invasion. Upon the night of June 5th, American forces gathered across the channel from the Pas de Calais. Dummy troops, false radio traffic, dummy landing craft in the bay of the Thames river, huge but unoccupied camps, dummy tanks, all contributed to this mass deception. The American 82nd and 101st airborne divisions were dropped deliberately into an inundated zone at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula and suffered many casualties by drowning, but still secured their objective which was to mislead the Germans in where the actual invasion was going to take place. (Watson, Steve Pg 92The British 6th Airborne Division seized its unflooded objectives at the eastern end more easily, and its special task force also captured key bridges over the Caen Canal and Orne River. Unfortunately Allied commanders could not know if their deception plan worked until their troops were ashore. As the final invasion time neared, the Germans primary focus changed from the regions of the Balkans and Norway to the Pas de Calais. The concentration of Allied troops was so great, that an invasion of France seemed(Watson, Steve Pg 13) inevitable. Enormous Allied air superiority over northern France made it extremely difficult for Rommel, who was in German command on the scene, to move his limited reserves and could not scout out the seas to see if Allied ships were crossing the English Channel. Bombing attacks, sabotage by the French Resistance and false messages from compromised German agents all focused on the Pas de Calais with only minimal attention to Normandy. Also, German intell...
