Normandy Coastal Batteries
6 June 1944 — Normandy Coastal Batteries
- Date
- 6 June 1944
- Target
- Normandy Coastal Batteries, France
- Force dispatched
- 1,012 aircraft
Narrative
In the hours before the seaborne landings, on the night of 5/6 June 1944, Bomber Command flew its heaviest single-night effort to date against the German coastal batteries covering the invasion beaches. Some 1,012 aircraft — 551 Lancasters, 412 Halifaxes and 49 Mosquitoes — dropped over 5,000 tons of bombs on ten batteries from Maisy and Merville to Longues and Ouistreham. Cloud limited the accuracy, but it was the curtain-raiser to D-Day and the largest weight of bombs the Command had yet dropped in one night, for the loss of only eight aircraft.
Sortie details (which aircraft from which squadron, which crew flew, the outcome) will populate this page once the TNA AIR 27 squadron-diary importer arrives.
The fallen
130 airmen in this archive died on 6 June 1944 or the day that followed. For a raid of this kind these are overwhelmingly the night's losses, though a death-date match is not by itself proof an individual flew this operation.
- Flying Officer Ethan Allen (25)
- Flying Officer Leonard Ralph Allman (24)
- Flying Officer James K. Anderson (24)
- Sergeant Kenneth Raymond Ansell (22)
- Flight Sergeant Edward Harry Frederick Atkinson (22)
- Flying Officer Thomas Frederick Barker (27)
- Warrant Officer Bruce George Barton (21)
- Flying Officer Joseph Francis Terence Beesley (21)
- Sergeant Ernest Leonard Belcher (22)
- Warrant Officer Class I Nathan Louis Berger (22)
- Flying Officer Douglas Gordon Biggs
- Flying Officer Francis Allan Boyce
- Corporal Harry Wilfred Boyd (23)
- Flying Officer William Stanley Brennan (32)
- Flight Lieutenant Wallace Hilton Brown (36)
- Flying Officer Ronald Henry Buchan-hepburn (21)
- Flight Sergeant Malcolm Robert Burgess (21)
- Flying Officer Alexander Donaldson Callander (21)
- Sergeant Marshall William Card (23)
- Pilot Officer Roy Frank Carol
- Flight Lieutenant Maurice Henry Carter (30)
- Flying Officer Irvine Nathaniel Caskey (24)
- Pilot Officer James Chute Chalmers (21)
- Flying Officer James Harrison Clark (24)
See all 130 who died on 6 June →
Source: Bomber Command Museum of Canada — D-Day: Bomber Command's Contribution →