Juno Beach
Juno Beach was one of five beaches of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France in the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944 during the Second World War. The beach spanned from Courseulles, a village just east of the British beach Gold, to Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, and just west of the British beach Sword. Taking Juno was the responsibility of the British Second Army with the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division landing as the assault force, transported and supported by a Royal Navy task force. The objectives on D-Day were to cut the Caen-Bayeux road, seize Carpiquet airport west of Caen, and form a link between the two British beaches on either flank.
The invasion plan called for two brigades of the 3rd Canadian Division to land on two beach sectors—Mike and Nan—focusing on Courseulles, Bernières and Saint-Aubin. It was hoped that the preliminary naval and air bombardments would soften up the beach defences and destroy coastal strong points. Close support on the beaches was to be provided by amphibious tanks of the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade and specialized armoured vehicles of the 79th Armoured Division of the United Kingdom. Once the landing zones were secured, the plan called for the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade to land reserve battalions and deploy inland, the Royal Marine commandos to establish contact with the British 3rd Infantry Division on Sword and the 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade to link up with the British 50th Infantry Division on Gold. The 3rd Canadian Division's D-Day objectives were to capture Carpiquet Airfield and reach the Caen–Bayeux railway line by nightfall. The beach was defended by two battalions of the German 716th Infantry Division, with elements of the 21st Panzer Division held in reserve near Caen.
The landings encountered heavy resistance from the German 716th Division; the preliminary bombardment proved less effective than had been hoped, and rough weather forced the first wave to be delayed until 07:35. Several assault companies—notably those of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles and the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada—took heavy casualties in the opening minutes of the first wave. Strength of numbers, coordinated fire support from artillery, and armoured squadrons cleared most of the coastal defences within two hours of landing. The reserves of the 7th and 8th brigades began deploying at 08:30, while the 9th Brigade began its deployment at 11:40.
The subsequent push inland towards Carpiquet and the Caen–Bayeux railway line achieved mixed results. The sheer numbers of men and vehicles on the beaches created lengthy delays between the landing of the 9th Brigade and the beginning of substantive attacks to the south. The 7th Brigade encountered heavy initial opposition before pushing south and making contact with the British 50th Division at Creully. The 8th Brigade encountered heavy resistance from a battalion of the 716th at Tailleville, while the 9th Brigade deployed towards Carpiquet early in the evening. Resistance in Saint-Aubin prevented the Royal Marines from establishing contact with the British 3rd Division on Sword. By the time all operations on the Anglo-Canadian front were ordered to halt at 21:00, the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division had succeeded in pushing farther inland than any other landing force on D-Day.
Background
Invasion of Normandy
In 1942, the Western Allies agreed to open a second front in Western Europe to take pressure off the beleaguered Red Army in the Soviet Union. While Britain and the United States did not yet possess the resources to mount a full invasion, invasion plans that came to be known as Operation Sledgehammer were drawn up, in case the German position in Western Europe weakened or the USSR's situation became dire. In August 1942 Anglo-Canadian forces attempted an abortive landing—Operation Jubilee—at the French port of Dieppe; the landing was designed to test the feasibility of a cross-channel invasion. The attack was poorly planned and ended in disaster; 4,963 soldiers were killed, wounded or captured. Following the Anglo-American victory against Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in North Africa in May 1943, British, American and Canadian troops invaded Sicily in July 1943, followed by Italy in September. By December the Allies' progress had slowed facing tenacious German resistance and the difficult geography of the Italian Peninsula.After gaining valuable experience in amphibious assaults and inland fighting, Allied planners returned to the plans to invade Northern France, now postponed to 1944. Under the direction of General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Frederick Morgan, plans for the invasion of France coalesced as Operation Overlord. With an initial target date of 1 May 1944, the infantry attack was conceived as a joint assault by five divisions transported by landing craft, constituting the largest amphibious operation in military history. The attack was later scheduled for Monday, 6 June 1944, and Normandy was selected for the landing sites, with a zone of operations extending from the Cotentin Peninsula to Caen. There were originally seventeen sectors along the Normandy coastline with code names taken from one of the spelling alphabets of the time, from Able, west of Omaha, to Rodger on the east flank of the invasion area. Eight further sectors were added when the planned invasion was extended to include Utah on the Cotentin Peninsula. Sectors were further subdivided into beaches identified by the colours Green, Red and White. Operation Overlord called for the British Second Army to assault between the River Orne and Port-en-Bessin, capture Caen, and form a front line from Caumont-l'Éventé to the south-east of Caen, to acquire airfields and protect the left flank of the United States First Army while it captured Cherbourg. Possession of Caen and its surroundings would give Second Army a suitable staging area for a push south to capture the city of Falaise, which could then be used as a pivot for a swing left to advance on Argentan, the Touques River and then towards the River Seine.
After delays due to both logistical difficulties and poor weather, the D-Day of Overlord, the largest amphibious operation ever, was postponed 24 hours to 6 June 1944. Eisenhower and Montgomery, commander of 21st Army Group, aimed to capture Caen within the first day, and liberate Paris within 90 days.
Juno
, the landing phase of Overlord, called for a five-division front spread across of coastline; three airborne divisions would also land in the pre-dawn hours of D-Day. Eisenhower and General Bernard Montgomery hoped to have eight infantry divisions and fourteen tank regiments in the Normandy beachhead by nightfall on D-Day. The landing zone was divided into five landing areas, with the Americans attacking Utah and Omaha, and the British attacking Gold and Sword. Juno, a stretch of shoreline between La Rivière to the west and Saint-Aubin to the east, was assigned to the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, commanded by Major-General Rod Keller. Juno included the villages of Courseulles and Bernières.It has been said the name "Juno" arose because Winston Churchill considered that an original code name – Jelly – sounded inappropriate. The code names for the beaches to be taken by British and Commonwealth forces were named after types of fish: Goldfish, Swordfish and Jellyfish, abbreviated to Gold, Sword and Jelly. Churchill "disapproved of the name Jelly for a beach on which so many men might die". It has subsequently been proven that the name Jelly was never considered, and Juno was chosen so as to use the initial letter of the naval task force assigned to the area.
Planning and preparation
German defences
While the German army had seen its strength and morale heavily depleted by campaigns in the Soviet Union, North Africa and Italy, it remained a powerful fighting force. Despite this, most of the German divisions along the French coast in late 1943 were composed of either new recruits or veteran units resting and rebuilding from the Eastern Front; altogether some 856,000 soldiers were stationed in France, predominantly on the coast. An additional 60,000 Hilfswillige, USSR and Polish members of the German army, served on the French coast. Under the command of Field Marshals Erwin Rommel and Gerd von Rundstedt, the defences of the Atlantic Wall – a line of coastal gun emplacements, machine-gun nests, minefields and beach obstacles along the French coast – were increased; in the first six months of 1944, the Germans laid of steel and of concrete. Rommel also surrounded the coast with four million anti-tank and anti-personnel mines and 500,000 beach obstacles.On Juno, the defences of the Atlantic Wall were greater than at many other landing sectors. The Germans assumed that the Allies would land during high tide, to minimize the distance during which they would be exposed on the beaches and created "a 'devil's garden' of beach obstacles... deployed in rows between above the low-tide mark". Strongpoints of machine-gun positions, antitank and anti-personnel artillery and bunkers were located every, manned by several platoons with mortars. Minefields were deployed surrounding these strongpoints, and additional defences were present in the Courseulles harbour.
The Calvados beaches of Normandy were defended by the 716th Static and 352nd Infantry divisions, with the Canadian landing zone defended by elements of the 716th. It was formed mostly from soldiers under 18 or over 35, comprising 7,771 combat troops in six battalions. While the 352nd was considered a first-rate division, the 716th was "accounted a better-than-average static division". These divisions generally had very few vehicles or tanks and had to rely on infantry and field regiments. On Juno the 736th Grenadier Regiment deployed four infantry companies, 7 Kompanie held what was to become "Mike Sector", the 6th was stationed in Courseulles, the 5th was at Bernières and the 9th held Nan sector and Saint-Aubin. A second line of four infantry companies and one panzer company was stationed inland. The 21st Panzer Division was deployed south-east of Caen and two battalions of Polish and Russian conscripts were stationed on the flanks of Juno adjacent to Sword and Gold.