Science on the Normandy Beaches: J.D, Berna and the Prediction of Soi Trafficability for Operation Overlord

摘要

The Allied landings on the Normandy beaches, centered at Arromanches-les-Bains (Fig.1), have passed into the public memory as a heroic turning point in the Second World War. More than sixty years later it is not so widely recognized that the idea of such a large-scale attack—a major, opposed, landing of troops and equipment on an open coast—was all but unprecedented. In fact the closest precedent, the disastrous attack on Turkey in the Dardanelles campaign by Allied forces in 1915 during World WarI, was a deeply ominous one.