Powerful Colour Footage of the Beaches after D-Day

On 6 June 1944, Sergeant Ian Grant was among the thousands of men landing on Sword Beach in Normandy on D Day, armed only with a revolver and a cine camera. He was part of the Army Film and Photographic Unit (AFPU) and captured this incredible mute footage of the landings.

Reporting on D-Day and the campaign in north-west Europe offered an unprecedented opportunity for correspondents. The BBC set up a specialist War Reporting Unit in 1943 to train and organise its reporters for what was expected to be the most significant campaign of the war to date. 

The official film and photographic record of the D-Day landings was taken by No. 5 AFPU (Army Film and Photographic Unit) under the command of Major Hugh Stewart. Members of the unit were ‘embedded’ with formations preparing for the invasion. 

On 6 June 1944 – ‘D-Day’ – Allied forces launched the largest amphibious invasion in the history of warfare. Codenamed Operation ‘Overlord’, the Allied landings on the beaches of Normandy marked the start of a long and costly campaign to liberate north-west Europe from Nazi occupation. 

On 6 June 1944, two naval task forces landed over 132,000 ground troops on the beaches of Normandy as part of Operation 'Neptune', the seaborne invasion of northern France. The Western Task Force was responsible for the American beaches at Utah and Omaha, and the Eastern Task Force was assigned to the British at Gold, Juno and Sword.