German losses were estimated at 250,000.Īdditionally, 2,483 Normans connected with the French Resistance were executed before or during the campaign, while as many as 35,000 civilians died (the lowest estimate is 15,000) and 60,000 were wounded in the liberation. Some 209,672 allied soldiers were killed, wounded or went missing, 16,714 allied aircrew lost their lives. The campaign lasted 77 days (as against the 90 days predicted by allied planners), and resulted in the destruction of the German Seventh Army and Fifth Panzer Army in the Falaise Pocket by 21 August. Ironically, because of the casualties, the Normandy campaign ended up as more attritional than the worst battles of the 1914-18 war, something its commanders - haunted by the shadow of the Somme - desperately tried to avoid. That accolade goes to the 1943 invasion of Sicily - a far greater undertaking than Normandy and one from which many valuable lessons were learned. Nor was it the biggest maritime invasion of World War II. One of the myths of Operation Overlord (the codename for the invasion of France) is it was the biggest seaborne invasion in history. We have never competed with the Americans on anything like equal terms since. So, while the Normandy campaign ended with more of an American flavour, it was prefaced by our last hurrah on D-Day itself. So the clock started ticking as more US troops gradually arrived (and therefore started taking a higher percentage of the casualties) and eventually the Americans had enough men ashore to warrant their own Army Group and their own direct command under Eisenhower. The senior commanders under Eisenhower (an American) were all British, led by Montgomery. The allied co-operation for the campaign was the military forerunner of modern coalition warfare, Nato and the political antecedent of the EU No army in the world today could project such force and much of the effort on 6 June 1944 was British - about 60% of the troops landed were UK or Commonwealth (Canadians) the warships were predominantly from the Royal Navy - even the landing craft taking the Americans to Omaha Beach were manned by British seamen - and much of the air power came from the RAF. It was Britain's last day as a superpower. The cover of Time Magazine called the 1994 Normandy celebrations The Last Crusade, implying that in the future no single invasion fleet or military force would be so concentrated - the subsequent invention and deployment of atomic weapons with their awesome destructive capabilities would make such a fleet too vulnerable a target. In the previous nine weeks 197,000 sorties had been flown (at a cost of 1,251 aircraft and 12,000 aircrew) and 195,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on German military and communications targets. The aerial armada supported the landings with 11,590 aircraft, which flew 14,674 sorties. By the day's end, the Allies had deposited 132,715 troops and 20,000 vehicles directly on to the beaches, with another 23,490 parachutists and glider-borne troops dropped by the allied air forces.