A Day to Remember
These landing operations have a very clever name.
Howdy! It’s Joey, back with more Fun Fact Friyay. We’re heading to the beach with this fact.
The “D” in “D-Day” stands for “Day,” meaning people are technically saying “Day-Day” when referring to the Normandy landings in World War II.
Almost every military battle has a name (and typically, a codename). June 6, 1944 is when the Allies in World War II invaded Western Europe to defeat the Nazi regime.
This invasion of Normandy is part of Operation Overlord and codenamed as Operation Neptune. Yet, you probably best know it as D-Day.
It’s the largest seaborne invasion ever, and it led to the liberation of France and the eventual victory of the Allies during the war.
More than 150,000 Allied troops from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, and the free part of France participated in the invasion. The armada would put even the busiest city traffic to shame—we’re talking 50,000 vehicles, 11,000 planes, and 6,000 ships and landing craft.
Perhaps fittingly, the initial invasion was delayed a day due to poor weather in Britain. So, how did we end up with D-Day?
In the military, the terms “D-Day” and “H-Hour” are used to determine the precise times of an attack. They can also be used in tandem with numbers for other elements of the operation; D+2 would mean two days after D-Day, for example.
By this definition, there have actually been many D-Days over the years. But none of them have had the significance of June 6, 1944, so it is THE D-Day.
If you’d really like to pay homage to the name, feel free to repeat every word you use for the rest of the day. That that won’t won’t get get annoying annoying at at all all.