October Legends and Americana Ending November 14th
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 11/15/2015
It's not often you can hold something in your hands that actually changed the world as we know it. This incredible set of documents, issued to an unknown U.S. Naval officer and stamped "TOP SECRET" with instructions to be burned after reading, is the plans for D-Day: the Allied invasion of Europe. Prior to the morning of June 6, 1944, Northern Europe had been under occupation by Hitler's armies for four years. For a long time the outcome for the Allies look bleak - in the summer of 1940 only tiny England remained free from German occupation. Gradually, the scattered remnants of the Polish, Dutch, Norwegian, Belgian and French armies and navies combined with the United States and Great Britain to plan the liberation of the continent. The planning for an invasion of this size was unprecedented - 500,000 men were to be put ashore the first day alone. The entire exercise was called "Operation Overlord" and the most important, and most difficult component of this operation was dubbed "Operation Neptune". As the name suggests, Neptune was the naval component of the invasion. Since the beginning of warfare, countless armies had tried and failed to mount a successful sea-born invasion. When the Spanish attempted to invade England in 1588, combat and bad weather led to a crushing defeat in which one-third of the invading force was destroyed and the rest turned back without ever setting foot on British soil. In 1940 Hitler wisely abandoned his plans for an invasion of England, even though the British Army was severely weakened after being forced to retreat across the English Channel - it was just too risky. Now the Allies were attempting to do what the German Army failed to do. For four years the Germans had been turning the French coast into an impenetrable concrete fortress called the West Wall. Bristling with cannons, machine guns and mined beaches, the liberation of Europe was going to be the most formidable obstacle any army in the history of warfare had ever faced.
For over a year thousands of the most intelligent officers from every allied service planned and re-planned every detail of Operation Overlord. The naval officers planning Neptune had the most difficult task. Not only were they responsible for coordinating thousands of ships from a half-dozen nations, but also managing the loading, transport and delivery of the 500,000 soldiers. Finally, in April, 1944 the finishing touches were put on Operation Neptune. The culmination of those years of planning resulted in the individually prepared and produced book of orders offered here. Between two hard covers bound with navy blue cord is over 300 pages including fold out maps, intricate timetables, bombardment instructions, English Channel mine sweeping directions and convoy ship positions. Opening the front cover brings you instantly back 70 years to a time the whole world's fate rested on a single day in early June. The first sentence on the first page of the bound plans sums up the whole operation: "This is probably the largest and most complicated operation ever undertaken and involves the movement of over 4,000 ships and crafts of all types in the first three days. The Operation Orders are necessarily voluminous." Voluminous is an understatement. So would be the word "rare": as is written on the front cover, these orders were "to be destroyed by fire at the conclusion of the operation". Fortunately for history, the unknown naval officer who was entrusted with this volume neglected to destroy his copy.
This archive also includes supplemental orders specific to that unknown officer's mission on D-Day. There are two bound volumes matching the large one. The first is "Assault Beach Defense Maps" which is augmented with wall-size color maps of the Sword, Gold, Juno, and Omaha beachheads. These incredibly top-secret maps not only outline each designated sector in each area but intricately marks every known gun emplacement, machine gun nest and road block - courtesy of the incredibly dangerous work done by the men and women of the French Underground. The second bound supplement "Text and Diagrams of Neptune Batteries" details every known German gun emplacement and the map coordinates needed to destroy them.
A soft-cover set of documents "Naval Administrative Orders-Enemy Coast" maps out what was expected if and when the invasion was successful. Chapters include the logistics of prisoners and casualties and the administration of captured ports down to the delivery of mail to the troops. The latest dated document from 15 May, 1944 is a rougher, more specific set of orders "Logistical Plan for U.S. Naval Forces Participating in Operation Overlord". These orders anticipate every issue that needed to be addressed by the thousands of ships involved including fueling, rations, radio frequencies and even the disbursement of money on payday.
And finally, the last set of orders narrows down the specific beachhead the unknown naval officer was responsible for: Omaha Beach, the most difficult of the five beaches invaded that morning. This remarkable document includes detailed renderings of the German defenses that defended that stretch of the Normandy coast. The steel anti-landing ship obstacles that lined the surf just off the coast are illustrated in cold detail and a full page is devoted to aircraft recognition including the black and white stripes painted on Allied planes specifically for the D-Day invasion. Omaha Beach is further broken down into smaller sectors, each of which is described in detail down to the terrain and tides. A particularly frightening section is entitled "Enemy Chemical Warfare Capabilities".
One last piece included in this archive enables us to pinpoint the exact area the original owner was stationed that historic day. The small, one-sided card-stock fold-out opens up to a surprisingly colorful illustration demonstrating the beach markings specifically used for Sector "Able", Omaha Beach.
The Invasion of Normandy was one of the most documented, filmed and written about military operation in history, but this archive is different. This is the framework that the Allied success was built upon. These yellowed, fragile pages reveal a moment in history when no one knew what would happen, when the only thing that stood between good and evil was a plan so massive it took the brightest minds from over a dozen nations to conceive it. In these documents we can see how intricately thought out each component was, down to the precise part one unknown naval officer played in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944. These are the plans for D-Day.