Description
Object description
Invasion Battlefront.
Full description
I. 'INVASION BATTLEFRONT.' Captured German footage shows Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel (Commander Army Group B) on his last inspection of the Atlantic Wall prior to the Allied landings in Normandy. Rommel walks around beach defences and sea wall fortifications accompanied by a large retinue of German officers (including General dr Artillerie Jodl ?). The Generalfeldmarschall is later shown visiting a Luftwaffe airfield where he inspects flying personnel and Messerschmitt Bf 109G-2 fighter aircraft parked on hardstanding outside their hangars (cf GWY 200). On a visit to Sturmgeschütz Abteilung 200, Rommel inspects men and machines in the field, viewing a Panzerhaubitze 18 auf SF 39 Hotchkiss (f) self-propelled gun on manoeuvres (and possibly a 7.5cm PaK 40 L/48 auf Gw FCM (f) self-propelled gun). A Somua half-track mounting a PaK 40 7.5cm gun drives past the camera, further illustrating the German propensity for adapting captured enemy (French) hardware for their own uses. Camera gun footage (CGF) shows the extent of the Allied air offensive against ground targets in the build up to D-Day. CGF shows Allied air interdiction on airfields, aircraft hangars, soft-skinned vehicles, electricity generating stations and train locomotives. A United States Army Air Force (USAAF) Martin B-26 Marauder bomber aircraft YD*C 131-772 overflies the Normandy invasion beaches. Aerial footage shows Allied bombs dropping and impacting in the environs of a French hamlet. B-26 Marauder aircraft (US Ninth Army Air Force) overfly Allied shipping on its way to Normandy. Allied landing craft are shown in an unidentified British port, United States Navy (USN) tank landing craft TLC 856 is moored nearest to the camera. Film footage taken from a landing craft shows the Normandy coastline with smoke columns rising in the distance. The commentary stresses the hazardous nature of the Allied undertaking and the strength of the German defences and underwater obstacles. British troops move cautiously along railway tracks burdened by personal kit and their Lee-Enfield No.IV .303-in rifles. Troops of the US First Army stand near a smoke-blackened and shell-pocked concrete blockhouse that formed part of the German coastal defences. German soldiers walk towards the camera with their hands raised in surrender, their approach is covered by a US military policeman armed with an M1 .30-in carbine. A dazed German soldier attempts to dig himself out of sand that has buried him almost to his shoulders and is presumably the result of a near miss by an exploding Allied artillery shell. A wall-mounted road sign reads "Montebourg 8.9km, Cherbourg 34.9km." At the Eastern end of the Allied area of control, soft-skinned vehicles (British 3rd Division or Canadian 3rd Division ?) cross a Class 30 bridge over the Orne River (Calvados). US General Dwight D Eisenhower disembarks from the cargo door of a USAAF Douglas C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft on his arrival in Normandy for a tour of inspection. Eisenhower is driven along a road lined with hedgerows in a US Army half-ton 4x4 Dodge Command Reconnaissance car. Brief footage shows Winston S Churchill and South African Prime Minister Jan C Smuts standing on the bridge of HMS Kelly prior to their arrival at the Normandy beachheads. Free French leader General Charles de Gaulle is ferried ashore to Juno Beach by a Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) 2.5-ton 6x6 DUKW amphibian on June 13 1944 and is later shown driving past small crowds of appreciative French civilians who line the roadside. A Jeep carrying General de Gaulle stops next to a parked Citroën ambulance so that a small child can hand the Free French leader a bunch of flowers. Back in England, hundreds of German prisoners of war file off a large landing craft (LCI/L ?) at an unidentified southern coastal port. The Wehrmacht prisoners board a train carriage under the watchful gaze of a British military policeman armed with a Sten 9mm sub-machine gun. CGF shows Allied air interdiction on a locomotive and ammunition train.
Physical description
35mm
