Customer Reviews

D-Day 1944: Gold & Juno Beaches (Praeger Illustrated Military History)

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This is the second volume in the Osprey Campaign series' detailed examination of the D-Day landings. In this tightly packaged volume, author Ken Ford offers considerable detail on the less well-known British and Canadian landings on Gold and Juno beaches on 6 June 1944. Overall, the volume provides a decent campaign narrative combined with a high graphic quality in terms of maps and photographs. This volume is not quite as good as the first volume in this series, which covered the landing on Sword Beach, and this may cause some readers apprehension as to what to expect from the remaining two volumes on D-Day.

Gold & Juno Beaches begins in standard Osprey format with short sections on the origin of the battle, a campaign chronology, opposing leaders, opposing armies and opposing plans. The author provides five 2-D maps (German defenses on Gold and Juno Beaches, Allied landings on Gold and Juno, and the situation at midnight on D-Day) and three 3-D "Bird's Eye View" maps (the British 69th Brigade landing on Gold, the Canadian 3rd Brigade landing on Juno, and the Battle of Villers-Bocage). The two very detailed maps of the German defenses are particularly useful and interesting. Three battle scenes are included: HMS Ajax bombarding the German defenses, the landing on Gold and the German evacuation of Ardenne Abbey on 8 June). The author provides 28 pages on the Gold landings, 22 pages on Juno and ten pages on the week after the landings. A detailed order of battle for both sides is also provided. The bibliography is overly succinct and includes several out-dated books on the subject while ignoring several more recent and worthwhile books, such as Robert Kershaw's Piercing the Atlantic Wall.

The author displays a bit of a jingoistic tone in this volume, beginning with his suggestion that the Allied units had "sky-high" morale and superb training, whereas the German defenders lacked these attributes. Certainly any comparison of units like the veteran British 50th Division against the third-string German 716th Coastal Infantry Division will find the defenders at a qualitative and quantitative disadvantage. However, Ford glosses over the fact that most German units were liberally sprinkled with combat veterans and only the static units were lower in morale and tactical competence. The panzer, panzer grenadier and mobile infantry in reserve were certainly equal to the British units in tactical competence, and possessed solid, reliable equipment. Furthermore, the author tends to denigrate the performance of the 716th Division on D-Day, yet this weak unit managed to delay five Allied divisions for the bulk of the day and fulfilled its intended role. Ford's description of the collapse of the German "crust" defense around mid-day on D-Day as a rout does not ring true, since if it was a rout why did the British and Canadians fail to reach their D-Day objectives? It was not the failure of the coastal defense units - which were always viewed as expendable - but the failure to promptly deploy mobile reserves that ultimately compromised the German Atlantic Wall.

Ford's discussion of the landings is decent, but there is not much analysis. For example, the British landed very little infantry in the first assault waves and relied on armored engineering vehicles to breach the main obstacle belt, which was the exact opposite of the American methods employed on Omaha and Utah. The British methods were highly successful and kept their losses at an acceptable level. Ford also really only addresses the assault waves and spends little effort discussing the follow-up forces and the development of the beachheads. Nevertheless, readers can easily follow the action using this volume's text and maps.

This book provides a basic short overview of its topic for those with only an hour to an hour and a half to spare. It's one main weakness is that it lacks detail regarding how this part of the beach fit into the larger context of the Normandy landings (why land here instead of elsewhere? What was specific goal of landing here?). It does succeed at providing a basic and succint history of how the battle developed. Nothing new or innovative in terms of what has not been published before however.

The book also has excellent detailed maps of each of the specific major sub-sections of the beaches. These contain German strong points, bombardment schemes and troop movements with geographic detail. Book also has fairly good contemporary B&W photos (though these could have been better) along with some modern color photos. The one area, in terms of illustration, that the book is weak on is the lack of color plates regarding major equipment used and how "typical" troops from both sides looked like. Hence for the modeler, figurine builder or illustrater of very limited value. For anyone interested in a basic introduction, however, not bad.