The D-Day landings are still, 80 years on, the largest seaborne invasion in history. The statistics are quite mindblowing. Over 7,000 vessels took part, with 5,000 of them responsible for landing the 150,000 plus troops on the Normandy beaches. Allied aircraft flew 14,000 sorties on the night of June 5/6 and dropped 18,000 paratroopers, who had to seize key objectives before the first troops could land.
Operation Overlord would have been impossible without the mammoth logistical build up which had taken place in the months beforehand. American forces started to arrive in Britain in January 1942, weeks after the US entered the war. It was called the ‘Friendly Invasion’ for good reason. Take East Anglia for example, where the USAAF ended up with 70 airfields – either ex-RAF stations or…