The Navy is organized into two task forces: the Western Task Force, which is mainly composed of US warships, a total of 3 battleships, 10 cruisers, 30 destroyers, 280 other warships, and more than 1,700 landing ships, commanded by US Navy Rear Admiral Kirk, assembled in Belfast, and provided air cover by the 9th Air Force of the US Tactical Air Force. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

It has three formations: Formation U is responsible for transporting the 4th Infantry Division of the US Army to land on the "Utah" beachhead, Formation O is responsible for transporting the 1st Infantry Division of the US Army to land on the "Omaha" beachhead, and Formation B is responsible for transporting the 29th Infantry Division of the US Army to land on the "Omaha" beachhead.

The Eastern Task Force, consisting mainly of British warships, consisted mainly of 3 battleships, 13 cruisers, 30 destroyers, 302 other warships, and 2,426 landing ships, commanded by British Rear Admiral Vian, assembled at Grenok and provided air cover by the 2nd Air Force of the British Tactical Air Force.

There are four formations under its jurisdiction: Formation G is responsible for transporting the British 50th Infantry Division to land on the "Golden" beachhead, Formation J is responsible for transporting the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division to land on the "Juno" beachhead, S Formation is responsible for transporting the British 3rd Infantry Division to land on the "Sword" beachhead, and Formation L is responsible for transporting the second echelon of the British 7th Armored Division to land on the "Golden" beachhead.

The Navy also formed five naval artillery fire support groups with 7 battleships, 2 shallow gunboats, 24 cruisers, and 74 destroyers to provide naval artillery fire support for the five beachheads.

In addition to the US 2nd Air Force commanded by Lieutenant General Blayrecho and the British 9th Air Force commanded by Lieutenant General Cunningham, Eisenhower also threatened to resign and obtained from the British-US Joint Chiefs of Staff the British Strategic Bomber Force under the command of British Air Force General Harris and the command of the US Strategic Air Force Eighth Air Force in Britain under the command of US Air Force Major General Doolittle, so that the air force of the Supreme Command would have four air units.

The Airborne Forces are the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions of the United States and the 6th Airborne Division of the United Kingdom. This was the largest airborne force that the Allies could assemble in Europe.

To carry out this large-scale campaign, the Allies amassed a total of 2.88 million troops. The army has a total of 36 divisions, including 23 infantry divisions, 10 armored divisions, and 3 paratrooper divisions, with about 1.53 million people.

The Navy has about 5,300 warships in operation, including 13 battleships, 47 cruisers, 134 destroyers, about 1,200 destroyers, 4,126 landing ships, and more than 5,000 transport ships.

The Air Force has 13,700 combat aircraft, including 5,800 bombers, 4,900 fighters and 3,000 transport aircraft ******.

On the German side, under the command of Rommel at this time, there was no idleness, the entire coastline from Belgium to southern France, a total of 960 kilometers of defense line, was also in full swing of construction, and Germany's Atlantic barrier was still built at an accelerated pace according to the original plan, and there was no abnormal situation, of course, this was only for the Anglo-American coalition to see.

The closest section of the defense line to Britain was still the coastline with the most forts built and defensive forces, but the Normandy area was built very quickly, and the building materials needed were also the first to be satisfied.

By the beginning of June, the Germans had built only a few scattered support points along the 960-kilometre coastline, with the exception of Calais, 68 per cent east of the Seine and only 18 per cent west of the Seine.

In terms of coastal artillery, the large-caliber artillery deployed by the German army in the western coastal areas of France mainly included four 280-mm and three 381-mm shore guns in the Cap-Grry area, three 305-mm shore guns in the Vimena area, and three 406-mm shore guns in the western area of Sancart.

In order for the Allied strategic landing plan to remain unchanged, Rommel still had to make the Allies think that the Allied landing place he judged was Calais, but he invested a lot of manpower and material resources on the Belgian coast, and built 150 artillery batteries that could deploy 88 mm to 381 mm guns off the coast of Norway.

These forts were not built by Rommel, this is a fort is to fool the Printing and Distributing coalition forces, Rommel Azure took advantage of the crossing, and knew the landing location of the British and American coalition forces in advance, if you vigorously strengthen the Normandy defense, the British coalition forces are stupid pigs, they can't send soldiers to Normandy beaches to be hunted by the Germans.

Although these fortresses are not very useful, there should not be much problem in temporarily defending Norway, and the Allies will not go to Norway to land, and Norway does not border Germany, which is even more destined that the British and American forces will not choose to land in Norway.

In addition, Rommel repaired all the batteries built on the islands of the English Channel, with a total of 11 batteries equipped with 38 210 mm to 305 mm guns, which Rommel prepared in order to prevent the sudden convulsions of the British and American forces, and randomly chose a landing site.

On the entire 80-kilometer defense line of Normandy, there were 160 original fortress-type batteries, and there was only one fortress every 400 meters, which was equipped with a large-caliber artillery and a reinforced company of soldiers. The armament was 120 88-mm cannons, 280-mm cannons, 8 381-mm cannons, and 406-mm cannons.

In fact, the "Atlantic barrier" that was hyped up by the German propaganda department was actually just a name, and the spies of the Allied forces had already figured out all the defenses of the Atlantic barrier, and they also knew very well that the German Atlantic barrier was a showmanship, and Rommel certainly understood this.

However, this did not prevent Rommel from doing a little bit in the Normandy area to speed up the construction of the fortress on the drawing paper, and the artillery and ammunition forces in the fortress were all allocated widely.

You must know that there are 10 divisions and three independent regiments in Normandy with 180,000 troops, while in history there are only 6 divisions, and only two divisions are deployed on coastal defense, because they have to leave a large number of troops in depth to defend against possible airborne operations of the Allied forces, and in fact the Allied forces do the same.

And now Rommel had more than 50,000 troops of the four armored divisions that had been deployed in the depth of Normandy quietly moved forward to the forest 30 kilometers away from Normandy, and they were waiting for the Allied airborne, and it was precisely because of the advance of these four armored divisions that the German defenders in Normandy could naturally deploy 80% of their forces to the coastline.

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Thanks to the brothers for the monthly passes, thanks to the brothers for the rewards, thanks to the brothers for their recommendations, thank you for the falling leaves, the new book is in storage. (To be continued.) )