D-Day Timeline Interactive timeline focused on the events leading up to and following Operation OVERLORD

D-Day Timeline, 1944 January 15 January 16 March May May May 8 June

January 15, 1944 Erwin Rommel placed in command of Army Group B, splitting command for German troops in the West between Rommel, Von Rundstedt, and Hitler, who personally controls the Panzer tank divisions

January 16, 1944 Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower assumes duties as Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force, to oversee Operation OVERLORD, the Allied invasion of Europe at Normandy

March 1944 Lt. General George S. Patton placed in command of First U.S. Army Group (FUSAG) in and around Dover, a mostly fictitious army and the capstone of FORTITUDE South

May 1944 Due to success of Operation FORTITUDE, Germans believe that there are twice as many Allied divisions assembling in Britain as actually were; von Rundstedt placed in command over Rommel’s Army Group B

May 1944 French Allied agents send to London 700 radio reports and 3,000 written descriptions on German military positions

May 8, 1944 Eisenhower chooses June 5 as D-Day for the Normandy invasion

June 1944 By June, the Germans have fortified the “Atlantic Wall” with 20 million cubic yards of concrete, 1.2 million tons of steel, 6.5 million anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, 500,000 beach and underwater obstacles, and thousands of Rommel’s Asparagus (anti-glider poles)

June 4, 1944 D-Day postponed from June 5 to June 6 due to bad weather; in Southern England, 175,000 men, an armada of 5,333 ships and landing craft, 50,000 vehicles, and 11,000 planes sit poised to attack secretly across the English Channel

June 6, 1944 D-Day: Allies land in Normandy at five sites code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword; by nightfall nearly all 175,000 men are ashore at a cost of 4,900 casualties; Hitler’s vaunted Atlantic Wall has fallen in less than one day

June 18-21 1944 The Allies’ artificial harbor—or Mulberry—constructed at Omaha Beach is destroyed by a huge storm in the Channel; a second Mulberry at Gold Beach handles 7000 tons of supplies daily throughout the Normandy Campaign