80 Years Since D-Day and the Battle of Normandy
FLASH
June 6, 1944
London— Eisenhowers Headquzarters Announce Allies Land in France.
The anxiously awaited FLASH came off the printer in the London bureau of the Associated Press at 9:33 a.m. local time, the exact time set for its release by SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) in Portsmouth, England and three hours after the first sea landings. From London, it ricocheted around the world, for the Allied invasion of Europe during World War II was the “number 1 Story of Our Times,” according to the AP’s internal magazine, The AP Inter-Office.
Editorial planning had gone on for months in New York and London. Everyone knew that the timing of D-Day, the largest amphibious landing in military history, would come down to a narrow window of relatively favorable weather conditions on the English Channel. But like the weather, fate would be indifferent to those who led the invasion from the sea or from the air. Of the nearly 160,000 Allied troops that assailed Normandy on June 6, 1944, 4,414 died that day. 73,000 Allied forces were killed in the ensuing battles across France.
(EDS NOTE - Typo on “Eisenhower’s Headquarters” is in the original)
D-Day signaled the opening of the Battle of Normandy, code-named Operation Overlord. In that battle, 20,000 French civilians died. Norman towns of great age and beauty were laid waste. Because we know how the story ends, we forget the price paid by the residents of Saint Lô, Pont-l’Évêque, Valognes, Caen, Cherbourg, Falaise and so many other villages and farms of Lower Normandy, partially or totally destroyed by Allied bombs meant for the German army. It would take two decades to reconstruct them.
Paris was liberated on Aug. 25, 1944, and Germany surrendered unconditionally on May 7, 1945. Finally, Japan surrendered aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sep. 2, 1945, six years and a day after the war began.
Text and photo curation by Valerie Komor, Director, AP Corporate Archives
Read more in the AP News story, "How AP covered the D-Day landings and lost photographer Bede Irvin in the battle for Normandy" by Valerie Komor.