Pointe du Hoc, Cricqueville-en-Bessin, France
© Francis Cormon/Getty Images
Pointe du Hoc, Cricqueville-en-Bessin, France
Any day in which a combat operation is launched can be called D-Day, but for most Americans 'D-Day' is shorthand for the seaborne invasion that took place here, at the Normandy beaches on either side of Pointe du Hoc, France, on this day in 1944. The operation took 13 Allied nations roughly a year to plan, with Britain, Canada, and the US joining together in an amphibious assault on a 50-mile stretch of the Normandy coastline. The immediate goal was to take out the German battlements constructed here on the clifftop of Pointe du Hoc. Allied casualties surpassed 10,000 in the brutal combat of D-Day. But this decisive Allied victory turned the tide of the battle on the Western Front, helping to drive back Nazi occupation.
Related Images
Sun Voyager sculpture by Jón Gunnar Árnason in Reykjavik, Iceland
An old farm in the Shetland Islands, Scotland
The Skellig Islands, Skellig Michael and Little Skellig, in Ireland
The Skywalk on the Rock of Gibraltar
Rio Grande and Sierra del Carmen range in Big Bend National Park, Texas
Abu Simbel temples on the west shore of Lake Nasser, Egypt
Chimney Rock State Park in North Carolina
Hope Valley, Peak District, England
Bing Today Images
