My apologies for the quality of the above map but I could not find another one of the whole area discussed hereunder - you can enlarge it by clicking on it.
After the initial bloody battles on the beaches of the 6th June and the establishment of the beachheads the Allieds attempted to advance inland. After their initial surprise the Germans brought in some of their reserves to reinforce their troops near the coast.
The British army in the east advanced on Caen as from that city all roads led to the western part of Normandy and to Paris and German border in the east. Hitler ordered that the Germans army vigorously oppose this advance on the strategically important city on which there were eventually four assaults by Montgomery until finally it was heavily bombed and captured with the loss of many lives, both soldiers and civilians. It was a bitter and hard battle.
There was also heavy fighting just west of Caen at the village of Villers-Bocage where panzer ace Obersturmfuhrer Michael Wittmann of the 101st Heavy Panzer Battalian snuck in behind a column of British Cromwell tanks destroying some 13 tanks and troop carriers. He then entered the village and took out six more tanks until his own Tiger sufferred a hit. Wittmann and his crew escaped but were killed a few days later in a tank battle near Caen.
The reader should not be under any illusions as to the effectiveness and strength of the German army. Their soldiers were highly trained in all aspects of ground combat and a signaller could quite easily double up as a machine gunner, mortarman or join a gun crew - this was quite different to the American and British soldiers who were only effective in their particular musterings. The Wehrmacht soldier was highly disciplined and motivated at the same time being very innovative and had a thorough knowledge of battlefield strategy.
The equipment of the German army was far superior in quality to that of the Allied forces. Their Panzer tanks were superb and their Tiger and King Tiger tanks were in a league of their own. The Tiger was equipped with the dreaded 88mm cannon which had an effective range of 2,000 meters compared whereas the American Sherman or British Cromwell had to be closer than 700 meters to effectively attack its target. The allieds lost 4 times as many tanks as the Germans. The German M42 machine gun was highly accurate and had a fire rate of 1200 rounds per minute which was twice that of their opponents.
KING TIGER VI
What the German forces lacked at this stage of the war was airpower and the allieds had almost complete control of the skies over Normandy with the only real threat being that of the enemy's anti-aircraft guns which were very effective. The British Typhoon and American P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bombers wreaked havoc strafing and bombing German tanks, troops, trains and other targets.
It must also be taken into account that at the time of the Normandy campaign the Germans were also fighting on their eastern front and most of their men and materiel was concentrated attempting to oppose the Russian advance.
In the Allieds favour were their overwhelming number of soldiers and their almost unlimited supply of equipment. It was not uncommon for an American tank to be knocked out and within a few hours the crew (if they survived) picked up a new tank from their vehicle depot and rejoined the fight.
On the western end of the invasion the Americans needed to advance in the direction of St. Lo in order to consolidate their position which entailed them entering the bocage area of Normany.
The region that centres on St-Lô, just south of the Cotentin, is known as the Bocage, from a word that refers to a type of cultivated countryside common in the west of France, where fields are cut by tight hedgerows rooted into walls of earth well over a metre high. An effective form of smallhold farming – at least in pre-industrial days – it also proved to be a perfect system of anti-tank barricades. When the Allied troops tried to advance through the region in 1944, it was almost impenetrable – certainly bearing no resemblance to the East Anglian plains where they had trained. The war here was hand-to-hand slaughter, and the destruction of villages was often wholesale. The American forces suffered numerous losses in this area.
Now that the Allieds had established their foothold on the continent their next task was to breakout from the seaboard moving south and west towards the occupied countries and on to Germany.
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