Luftwaffe aerial recon prior to D-Day

[edwest]

Thank you, gentlemen, for the additional information. The following is from Hitler's Secret Commandos by Helmut Blocksdorf, originally published in German.

"Initially it had been Hitler himself who suspected Normandy as a possible destination for invasion. In May 1944 radio specialists of 15 Army (Generaloberst von Salmuth) and, independently, a Luftwffe signals company stationed in Guernsey, predicted that beyond a doubt the invasion would be at Normandy. Both passed their reports to Rommel's Army group Staff. 15 Army raised the alarm, but 7 Army (General Dollmann) and other coastal units which lay directly in the path of the invasion remained stood down. After the Allied landings began, battleworthy divisions such as 21 Pz. Div. and 12 SS-Pz. Div. Hitler Jugend received no orders for days. ... Many military specialists agree that a single battleworthy German division would have decided the invasion in Germany's favour provided the division could have, or was permitted to, become involved in events immediately as they unfolded. If all this muddle was due solely to operational mismanagement or the failures of the OKH is open to question."


The following is from On Special Missions by Smith, Creek and Petrick.


"The Allied invasion was running full tilt. I assumed that Kommando Goetz was moving west and reported our two jets [Ar 234s] ready for action. I also had a Ju 352 as a transport aircraft. Nothing happened! The traitors in the highest leadership positions did not want the invasion to be interfered with. On 17 July, we finally received permision (not orders) to fly to Juvincourt on the Invasion Front."



Best,
Ed

[Graham Boak]

Hmm...I think even more military specialists would disagree. Quite how any German division could move a significant amount on the day in the teeth of Allied air power is totally unclear - look at the reported delays of those which tried.

[Larry deZeng]

In my 50+ years of intensely studying this subject both in the English and German literature, the first paragraph you provided above is right on the money. I would only add that the troops on the coast were also "Alert Happy". "Wolf" had been cried so many times by the higher commands in the West during the 6 to 8 months preceding D-Day that the lower commands at Armee, Korps and Division level were sick of the constant alerts and had protested repeatedly up the chain of command. So, along comes May 1944 with some good intelligence finally in hand, only to find Oberbefehlshaber West and Luftflotte 3 reluctant to call yet another alert. The "cry wolf" theory worked!

The second paragraph above is hearsay and not consistent with the historical record. It sounds like a quote taken from one of the postwar S.I.R. reports (secret listening devices planted in the rooms housing captured high and higher ranking Luftwaffe officers who had been taken to the U.K. after the war for interrogation - most of the taped conversations were conspiratorial in nature in which alleged July 20th "traitors" were blamed for everything). Anyone who has read some of the transcripts of these conversations will agree with me. Some of the things said are - in hindsight - a real hoot!

Larry

[Bruce Dennis]

Ed: after my earlier post on this subject, I was nagged by a half-remembered passage from British Intelligence. I found it in vol 3, part 1, Chapter 38, page 326 ‘The German Air Offensive against the UK’

“After increasing during February despite the withdrawal of two of Peltz's bomber Gruppen for operations against Anzio - a movement that was disclosed by the Enigma at the end of January - the scale and tempo of the offensive declined from the beginning of March. At the same time, the GAF diverted some of its effort away from London to Bristol and Hull in the belief that they harboured invasion shipping. * And after the night of 18-19 April, when piloted aircraft carried out their last raid of the war against London, it devoted almost all its remaining effort to ineffective attacks against the ports where shipping was collecting for Overlord. On 25-26 April all Peltz's available bombers were thrown into two attacks on Portsmouth. Four further raids on Portsmouth followed before the end of the month. On 29-30 April 100 bombers, twelve of them carrying the FX bomb, attacked a concentration of ships, including the battleship King George V, at Plymouth. In all these attacks bombing was widely scattered and did little damage. In May, despite a change in the GAF's Pathfinding techniques, two large raids - against Bristol on 14-15 May and against Portsmouth on the following night - failed-to reach the target, and smaller raids against other south coast ports did little damage in return for heavy losses. In June - following the Normandy landings - the GAF confined its operations over the United Kingdom to intruder raids against East Anglian airfields. Except that it briefly returned to such attacks in March 1945, an intruder raid on the night of 27-28 June was the last major attack of the war on the United Kingdom by piloted aircraft. The Enigma, which had given warning of the imminence of the offensive and accurate information about the size of the forces the GAF planned to devote to it, provided little intelligence about the offensive once it had begun. It occasionally confirmed that the GAF's radio aids had been rendered ineffective by jamming. Before the FX raid of 29-30 April it disclosed that FX bombs had been brought into Bordeaux and that the GAF had knowledge of the battleships in Plymouth.

* A GAF Enigma signal decrypted on 23 February reported the receipt of information to the effect that Bristol was full of important invasion shipping.”

Refs are quoted if you want to follow up.

Hope this helps,
Bruce

[edwest]

Thank you, Bruce, for your time and effort. This information is very helpful. I have not spent decades, as some here, tracking down everything relevant but I'm continuing to check new sources. One is a book titled German Penetration of SOE, which I do not have yet. I am also looking into what the Germans may have known about the departure of large numbers of troop ships from the American east coast, as well as vessels carrying ammunition and vehicles.



Regards,
Ed

[JMSmith]

hi ed,

just a quick question, have you stopped posting ebay links for a reason, or are you just to busy.

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by edwest

I have not spent decades, as some here, tracking down everything relevant but I'm continuing to check new sources.
Regards,
Ed

Periodically in HW5 series Ultra files you will find a section headed "Attention Signals Security Officers" which sets out what the Germans are deducing from Allied signals traffic about the strength, location and intentions of Allied units. Essentially the Allies are watching the Germans watching the Allies ...

[odybvig]

It surprise me that nobody in this thread is talking about checking german documents about what they knew about the preparation for D-Day


Best from Norway
Olve Dybvig

[Larry deZeng]

Originally Posted by odybvig

It surprise me that nobody in this thread is talking about checking german documents about what they knew about the preparation for D-Day
Best from Norway
Olve Dybvig

Hmmm. The ULTRA intercepts that Nick Beale has commented on are German documents. The books cited in this thread, Kahn et al, are based on thorough research of the surviving German documents. Do you know of some surviving German documents that should be examined that the world has not seen yet? This is one of the highest interest questions from all of World War II and I know of no other that has received more scrutiny from historians and scholars. I think today, 65 years ex post facto, it can be safely said that there are no yet-to-be-revealed "smoking guns" out there on what the Germans knew or didn't know about the long-expected invasion. The Germans were deceived, bamboozled and hornswoggled by the Allied "Bodyguard of Lies" into believing the invasion would occur in the Pas de Calais area defended by AOK 15. It didn't matter what AOK 7 in Normandy or OB West thought, it only mattered what OKW and the Führer thought. And they only thought one thing: Pas de Calais probably in June.