Lessons from D-Day
The Importance of Combined and Joint Operations
Col. Gregory Fontenot, U.S. Army, Retired
Soldiers from Company A, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division (Big Red One) disembark from an LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) and wade onto the Fox Green section of Omaha Beach (Calvados, Basse-Normandie, France) on the morning of 6 June 1944. American soldiers encountered the newly formed German 352nd Infantry Division when landing. During the initial landing, two-thirds of Company E, 16th Infantry, became casualties. (Photo courtesy of National Archives)
The eightieth anniversary of the Allies’ World War II invasion of France will be memorialized and celebrated in the United States and in Normandy. However, this article looks beyond D-Day to examine joint and combined operations in the context of a deliberate attack characterized both by time to prepare and good intelligence. All the means of intelligence gathering we have today existed then. We think of satellite imagery and cyber as new, but their predecessors were photo imagery from manned aircraft and signals intelligence. Technology has changed, but the basic intelligence means remain the same. The context also includes the estimates made by both Allies and the Germans. Future conflicts will be combined and joint and will assuredly include elements of irregular warfare. All these characteristics pervaded planning and operations for the invasion of France in 1944.
The material basis of war since 1945 in communications, intelligence gathering, air support, and fires has changed to the extent that an opposed landing on the scale and complexity of Normandy can no longer be conducted against a capable enemy. On the other hand, long-term strategic and operational planning and preparation—to include organization, intelligence gathering, force structure, and command and control—in the context of combined and joint warfare will continue to be required more or less as they were in June 1944. The scale of operations may be smaller, but the scope and complexity are arguably greater.
Coalition Strategic Planning
The broad coalition known as the United Nations began with discussions between the United Kingdom and the United States. In Origins of the Grand Alliance: Anglo-American Military Collaboration from the Panay Incident to Pearl Harbor, William T. Johnsen shows this collaboration began haltingly. Not until January 1941, after the introduction of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “lend lease” legislation, did staff talks begin that eventually cemented “the Grand Alliance.” From the British point of view, this was as much as two years later than they would have preferred.1
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/May-June-2024/MJ-24-Fontenot/
