Wars on Map

Operation Overlord

D-Day Map: 6 June 1944, Hour by Hour

D-Day was not one landing but seven, on a fifty-mile stretch of Norman coast, each with its own timing, tide and enemy. Two airborne divisions went in behind the western end before midnight; a third went in behind the eastern end at almost the same moment; five seaborne assaults followed between 06:30 and 07:45. The map makes the shape of it legible in a way a list of beaches cannot.

Sources checked 2026-09-11 · Estimates are given as ranges, not single figures

≈156,000Allied troops landed by sea and air on 6 June 1944, of whom roughly 23,000 arrived by air.
≈7,000Vessels in Operation Neptune, the naval phase, including about 1,200 warships.
≈4,400Allied personnel killed on 6 June, from a names-based count. Total Allied casualties for the day are usually put near 10,000.

Why 6 June, and why the landings were separate

Overlord needed a short list of conditions to coincide: a late-rising moon for the airborne pilots, a low tide soon after first light so that landing craft could see the beach obstacles, and a sea calm enough to launch from ships offshore. That combination existed on 5, 6 and 7 June 1944, and then not again for two weeks.

The invasion was set for 5 June and postponed by twenty-four hours when the forecast turned. The Allied meteorologists identified a brief ridge of higher pressure behind the storm, and Eisenhower took it. German commanders, reading the same weather differently, had stood down parts of their coastal defence, and Rommel had gone home to Germany.

The five beaches had different H-Hours because the tide runs up the Channel from west to east. Low water arrives at Utah before it arrives at Sword, so the assault times were staggered by more than an hour across the front. That is the single fact that most explains the shape of the map: these were near-simultaneous, not simultaneous.

Sources
Imperial War Museums — D-Day 80 overview ↗U.S. European Command — Operation Overlord ↗Hastings, M. (1984), Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy. Michael Joseph

D-Day hour by hour

Times are British Double Summer Time, the clock the Allied operation ran on. Where accounts differ by a few minutes, the widely published figure is given.

  1. 00:16Gliders land at the Caen canal and Orne bridges

    Six Horsa gliders of the British 6th Airborne Division put down beside the two bridges inland of Sword. Both are captured within minutes — the eastern flank of the whole invasion.

  2. 00:20 – 01:30The airborne divisions drop

    Pathfinders first, then the main lifts: the US 82nd and 101st Airborne behind Utah in the west, the British 6th Airborne east of the Orne. Cloud, flak and navigation error scatter the American drops widely across the Cotentin.

  3. Before dawnBomber Command attacks the coastal batteries

    More than a thousand heavy bombers strike the gun positions covering the assault beaches through the night.

  4. 04:30The Merville battery is assaulted

    The 9th Parachute Battalion takes the casemates that threaten the Sword landings, after most of its equipment was lost in the drop.

  5. 05:30The naval bombardment opens

    Battleships, cruisers and destroyers of the bombardment force engage the coastal defences; landing craft begin their run in from the transport areas.

  6. 06:30H-Hour at Utah and Omaha

    At Utah the current pushes the first wave roughly two kilometres south of its intended sector — onto a weaker stretch of defences, which turns the error into an advantage. At Omaha the assault lands into intact positions of the German 352nd Infantry Division and is nearly stopped on the shingle.

  7. 07:10Rangers scale Pointe du Hoc

    The clifftop battery between Utah and Omaha is taken; the guns have already been moved inland.

  8. 07:25H-Hour at Gold and Sword

    The British 50th (Northumbrian) Division lands at Gold, the British 3rd Division at Sword, each with specialised armour to clear the obstacles.

  9. 07:35 – 07:45H-Hour at Juno

    The 3rd Canadian Division’s landing is delayed by offshore reefs and a rising tide, so parts of it come ashore against defences the bombardment has not suppressed.

  10. Late morningOmaha breaks out of the beach

    Small groups supported by destroyers firing at close range force the draws leading inland. The beach exits are open by early afternoon.

  11. AfternoonUtah links up with the airborne

    The 4th Infantry Division reaches elements of the 101st Airborne inland, joining the westernmost beachhead to the drop zones.

  12. 16:00 – 20:0021st Panzer Division counter-attacks

    The only German armoured division within reach on the day attacks into the gap between Sword and Juno and reaches the coast near Luc-sur-Mer in the evening, before withdrawing under air attack.

  13. 21:00The second glider lift arrives

    Operation Mallard brings further British airborne forces down east of the Orne in daylight, securing that flank.

  14. By midnightAshore, but short of the objectives

    Roughly 156,000 Allied troops are in France. None of the five beachheads has reached its D-Day objective line: Caen is not taken and will hold out until 9 July, Bayeux falls on 7 June, and the beachheads are not yet joined into a single front.

Sources
Imperial War Museums — D-Day 80 overview ↗U.S. European Command — Operation Overlord ↗Naval History and Heritage Command — D-Day ↗Hastings, M. (1984), Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy. Michael Joseph

The five beaches

Landed strengths are the figures usually published from the official naval and military histories, rounded. They describe troops put ashore on 6 June, not the divisions’ full establishment.

BeachAssault formationLanded 6 JuneFacing
UtahUS 4th Infantry Division (VII Corps)≈23,000German 709th Infantry Division, thinly spread across the Cotentin
OmahaUS 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions (V Corps)≈34,000German 352nd Infantry Division in prepared positions above a shingle bank and bluffs
GoldBritish 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division (XXX Corps)≈25,000German 716th Infantry Division, with strongpoints at Le Hamel and La Rivière
Juno3rd Canadian Infantry Division (I Corps)≈21,000German 716th Infantry Division; offshore reefs delayed the landing
SwordBritish 3rd Infantry Division (I Corps)≈29,000German 716th Infantry Division, with 21st Panzer Division in reserve near Caen

Airborne forces are not in this table: roughly 13,000 American and 8,000 British airborne troops went in by parachute and glider, which is where the remainder of the day’s ≈156,000 comes from.

Sources
U.S. European Command — Operation Overlord ↗Naval History and Heritage Command — D-Day ↗Imperial War Museums — D-Day 80 overview ↗Hastings, M. (1984), Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy. Michael Joseph

How many died on D-Day?

For decades the answer was a round estimate. A names-based research project by the National D-Day Memorial Foundation identified about 4,400 Allied personnel killed on 6 June 1944 — a count of individuals rather than a subtraction between strength returns, which is why it is now the figure most often used.

Total Allied casualties for the day, including wounded and missing, are generally put near 10,000. Omaha accounts for the largest share, with American losses there usually estimated between 2,000 and 2,500. German casualties on 6 June are far less certain; figures between 4,000 and 9,000 appear in the literature, and the records to narrow that do not exist.

One comparison is worth making carefully. D-Day was not the costliest day of the war, or even of the Normandy campaign — the two and a half months of fighting that followed cost the Allies over 200,000 casualties. The landings mattered because of what they made possible, not because of their scale.

Sources
National D-Day Memorial Foundation — names-based research into Allied fatalities of 6 June 1944Imperial War Museums — D-Day 80 overview ↗Hastings, M. (1984), Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy. Michael JosephDear, I. C. B. & Foot, M. R. D. (eds.) (1995), The Oxford Companion to the Second World War. Oxford University Press

What the map does and does not claim

The curves on this atlas are editorial anchors. They show that a given formation moved from southern England to a named landing sector on a given date, which the cited sources substantiate. They are not ship tracks, flight paths, departure ports or real-time positions, and their widths are equal because comparable reviewed force figures for each route have not been entered.

The airborne-before-seaborne order in which the routes draw themselves in reflects the recorded sequence of the operation. It is not a simulation of timings or speeds, and no front line or zone of control is asserted anywhere on the map.

For the weeks after the landings, the atlas has a separate layer for the breakout: Operation Cobra from 25 July and the drive to the Seine that followed.

Sources
Imperial War Museums — D-Day 80 overview ↗U.S. European Command — Operation Overlord ↗Naval History and Heritage Command — D-Day ↗

Open the atlas on 6 June 1944 — the five beaches and the airborne drops ↗

Mapped battles and campaigns on this subject

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Full notes on all 23 layers are on the battles page.