RARE COLOR FILM OF D-DAY JUNE 1944 AND THE BATTLE OF NORMANDY

 
Over at the All That's Interesting website, the site's crew proposes an archival newsreel from the summer of 1944 (bottom), along with a color film of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy until the liberation of Paris (above). It is part of an article focusing on the easternmost point of the five attacks, Sword Beach.  

(Samuel Warde's article seems a bit hastily-written, without clear-cut editing, as he twice mentions "the city of Caen/ The city of Caen" while he shows a photo of British paratroopers with a Pegasus mascot but fails to point out that Lord Lovat's men who "were given the task of moving swiftly off the beach and joining up with the paratroopers … inland" did so at the captured crossing point code-named… Pegasus Bridge, one of the most eventful events during D-Day.)

Units of the British 2nd Army along with French commandos first landed on Sword Beach at 7:25 a.m. led by Lt. Gen. Miles Dempsey. Additionally, they were supported by paratroopers who landed in zones located a short distance inland from the beach.

German defenses were much lighter at Sword Beach than at other landing sectors such as Omaha Beach and by 8:00 a.m., most of the fighting on the beach was concluded. At about 9:30 a.m., two squadrons of Royal Engineers had cleared seven of the eight intended exit lanes from Sword Beach.

A more disheartening story is something that remained hidden for three decades, as in Top Secret, a dress rehearsal for D-Day six weeks prior, which turned out to be disastrous, Exercise Tiger.  Marco Margaritoff has the whole story and all the details over at the All That's Interesting website.

The Battle of Normandy during World War II remains one of the most hallowed military efforts of the 20th century. Tens of thousands of Allied troops valiantly stormed five beaches in France as part of the effort to liberate western Europe from the Nazis and create a second front to defeat the Axis Powers. But D-Day was almost canceled after a training operation known as Exercise Tiger went awry. 

Six weeks before the invasion of Normandy, American troops gathered at Slapton Sands in Devon, England, to rehearse for the upcoming battle. From the beginning of the exercise, things went terribly wrong. First, communication issues led to casualties when thousands of men were dropped into a practice bombardment. Then, the Germans attacked.

Patrol ships were meant to be guarding the bay from enemy vessels, but several German E-boats managed to slip by. In the early morning hours of April 28, 1944, they fired torpedoes at the tank landing ships that were part of the operation, sinking two of them and killing hundreds of men.

By the time Exercise Tiger was over, an estimated 749 American troops had perished. 

Click this link for a full account of the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944…