Alternate D-Day locations?

[varyar]

The Pas de Calais thread got me wondering - where else could the Allies have realistically chosen to launch D-Day?

Aside from "it's closer to Paris and Germany," was there a reason they landed east of the Cotentin Peninsula instead of west? What about Brittany, Belgium or the Netherlands (north of the Rhine, say around Leiden or thereabouts) - did logistics on the Allied side and the Atlantic Wall and unit concentration on the German make them non-starters?

[Shaby]

First thing to take into account is air support. Draw a radius from British bases and it shows you areas where there is air cover. That was primary consideration. Others are accessible beach, no major ports and terrain favorable for offensive. This pretty much rules out The Netherlands. It is too easy to flood and defend.

Normandy was pretty much the only area that is compatible with all this requirements.

[Whodoyouthinkiam]

WESTERN JUTLAND!

Except....not really. Too heavily fortified, because the Germans feared that very possibility.

[Cymraeg]

Wait, I'm getting this vision about this chain of islands off the north-west coast of Germany... ARGH!

[varyar]

Oi! I said realistically.

[Archibald]

The dreadful frisian islands ! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA !!!

[wietze]

LOL organise a AH convention on one of the frisian islands?

and its not only germany, there are dutch frisian islands too

[MattII]

Could an invasion of Southern France (ie Operation Dragoon writ large) be chosen instead of an invasion of Northern France?

[Shaby]

Originally Posted by MattII

Could an invasion of Southern France (ie Operation Dragoon writ large) be chosen instead of an invasion of Northern France?

No, not in 1944 anyway. Too far away both from the main staging area - GB and the objective - Germany.

[Minchandre]

In Hearts of Iron I always like to hop through Norway, using a small surprise attack against northern Norway to capture some airbases and then bootstrap myself further south...but to be honest, the sheer scale of Overlord means that crossing the Channel is the best option, by far. Pas-de-Calais is the shortest trip, of course, but the Nazis also knew that and fortified accordingly. Picardie is too close to fortifications in Pas-de-Calais. West of the peninsula means the invasion force has to sail too close to the Channel Islands, which are tiny exemplars of Nazi might. Brittany is far, and if I recall correctly, the Breton coast is pretty rough.

Really, the best option is Pas-de-Calais, and Normandy is the best alternative. They could maybe have landed east of the Seine instead of west, but they wanted the port at Cherbourg. I guess if they'd landed west of the river instead, they could have gone for Le Havre? It's still that much closer to the build-up in Pas-de-Calais.

[Cymraeg]

The only realistic spot is Normandy. Britanny is just a little too far away, plus you only have the one major port there, Brest. It all comes down to the state of the fortifications in the area, the turnaround time for the shipping, the amount of aircover that can be concentrated and the number oif defenders in the area. Oh and the infrastructure too.

[von hitchofen]

land on Delta beach [Saint-Tropez] and besiege Cannes, not Caen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dragoon

c'est tres magnifique, ne c'est pas?

[Derek Jackson]

Was there anywhere on the Belgian coast?

[Cook]

Originally Posted by Derek Jackson

Was there anywhere on the Belgian coast?

There is the entire Belgian coast, but to get six divisions ashore you’d need the entire Belgian coast, from Dunkirk to Knokke-Heist and you face the problem of landing a very short distance from the concentration at Pas de Calais; you either somehow convince the Germans that the attack is going to take place somewhere further south, or you are very quickly fighting the largest concentration of German forces in Western Europe.

One thing to remember concerning the Mincemeat deception plan; it worked because it reinforced what the Germans already were already thinking and simply stopped them from reacting correctly when the landings actually took place at Normandy.

This is not to say that they didn’t consider Normandy as a possible landing sight, they did (Hitler in particular did, but fortunately did not act on his intuition), the problem for them was that their resources were very limited, and they had to give priority somewhere.

[Tellos]

Any other landing zone is simply either going to be a quagmire or cost so much it extends the war or requires a much longer time to plot. Also Southern France has the issue of resupply being much harder slowing any advance and giving Germany time.

[von hitchofen]

Originally Posted by Tellos

. Also Southern France has the issue of resupply being much harder slowing any advance and giving Germany time.

the supply routes via the south of France were absolutely vital to the liberation of France, and the attack on Germany
as nearly all the useable ports in the North, [Le Havre, Brest, Calais, Dunkirk, Lorient, St Nazaire]

were either
a] wrecked, or
b] in German hands, or
c] both

and the Mulberry harbour had sustained storm damage

there were lots of staging posts in the South also, free from U-Boat predation - Gibraltar, Malta, Corsica, Algeria, Sicily, et al...

ports like Marseille and Toulon fell easily, defended only by Ostruppen in some cases - and were largely undamaged

[AdA]

The allies considered four alternatives to Calais. A and B were in the Cherbourg Havre Area (Normandy and the Seine estuary) C was in the Somme estuary east of Dieppe and D was in the Belgium/south Dutch coast.
They went for the one with less risk of a deadly first week. The Somme is arguable. The Dieppe name had a rather depressing ring to it for allied hears in 44 though...

[MattII]

Originally Posted by von hitchofen

and the Mulberry harbour had sustained storm damage

Only the American one, the British one kept going for 10 months (8 of which saw it bearing extremely heavy traffic), despite being designed to last only 3.

[von hitchofen]

it was still a logistical bottleneck, however long it was open for

Operation Dragoon went much more succesfully and quickly, than the bloody and protracted attempts to break out of the Normandy beachhead

Dragoon began on August 15th 1944, Lyon fell eighteen days later

if they Allies had concentrated their efforts in the South, who knows what might have been possible?

[Alex1guy]

Fresian Islands, obviously.