The Day the Ocean Turned Into Steel: D-Day 1944 #history
A handful of D-Day paratroopers in the leading aircraft had a bird's-eye view of what was happening as they crossed the Channel.
They could see through breaks in the cloud cover: 5,000 ships heading toward Normandy from England — described by witnesses as "
sheets of steel" in the sky and sea simultaneously. One paratrooper thought he could walk
forever just moving from the tip of one plane's wing to another — because there were so many aircraft in the sky.
They were flying into darkness and into probable death, and below them the largest naval
armada in human history was moving toward the same beaches. They saw it.
They thought about it for the seconds available to them. Then the door opened. The red light turned green. They went.
They could see through breaks in the cloud cover: 5,000 ships heading toward Normandy from England — described by witnesses as "
sheets of steel" in the sky and sea simultaneously. One paratrooper thought he could walk
forever just moving from the tip of one plane's wing to another — because there were so many aircraft in the sky.
They were flying into darkness and into probable death, and below them the largest naval
armada in human history was moving toward the same beaches. They saw it.
They thought about it for the seconds available to them. Then the door opened. The red light turned green. They went.
