If someone was standing on the beach in Southern England?
I haven’t read that anyone did, but if the weather conditions were right it is possible:
The only bit of France you can see from England on a clear day is Calais across the straights of Dover, a distance of about 20 miles. As you travel westwards along the coast in the direction of Normandy, the french coastline drops down south quite rapidly and the distance between the two countries increases by a large margin. Normandy is a LOT further from England than Calais, so the answer is ‘no’.
It wouldn’t be totally impossible. It’s around 100 miles across the channel from Normandy. Loud sounds can easily travel that far under the right atmospheric conditions. (The Buncefield explosion in 2005 was reportedly heard in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.)
During WWI people in England could hear the guns on the Western Front during a major bombardment, when the wind was right. So, I’ll go with “yes”.
I’d think that if a bomb dropping on France could be heard as far inland as London, then a 16 inch gun firing off the coast of Normandy could also ( under the right atmospheric conditions) be heard in, say, Brighton.
Brighton? If you follow a line north across the Channel from the invasion beaches you are much nearer to Portsmouth or Southampton than you are to Brighton.
Maybe a Brit who had relatives in the area will come along and answer the question difinitively.
not civilians, but military personnel stationed at the jump-off point on the opposite side of the channel.
I heard the Buncefield explosion, and I was about 70 miles away at the time. I don’t know how that compares to the largest explosions at Normandy, which would have either been battleship shells or air-dropped bombs.
It’s about 60 miles from The Isle of Wight to the Normandy invasion beaches btw.
It does need just the right atmospheric conditions, though. Many people much closer to the Buncefield explosion didn’t hear it. So for the D-Day bombardment, we’d need an inversion layer or whatever to have been in place on June 6th 1944.
Also, things like the aerial bombing of Caen would have been a lot of smaller explosions, relatively speaking, spread out over time, rather than one big bang at a single point, like Buncefield. The naval bombardment? I guess that could be similar to the Western Front guns in WW1, so I would guess that it’s just about possible that people heard it in England.
Yes, that can make a big difference.
Is that because it was inaudible, or because they were asleep?
I doubt they would have heard the blast of the guns, as they would have been pointed at France, and most of the sound energy would have been directed away from the UK. The loudest single noise was probably a salvo of 16 inch shells exploding nearly simultaneously, or a group of bombers releasing together. In both cases, that would be several tons of high explosives. I think the question is, what distance is an explosion of that magnitude audible at?
Even if they could have heard it, would they have been able to distinguish it from all the other noise? There was a lot of stuff going on at the time - I’ve read that the number of aircraft sorties on D-day was roughly 11,000. So even if it was strictly possible, it’s hard to imagine it could have been heard over all the other noise of the day.
I live a few miles south of Camp Pendleton. When the marines are firing their big guns, we can hear the deep and muted booms at night, but not in the day time. I’m guessing we’re 15 or so miles from the impact. If the people in England heard anything, it wasn’t much.
Unfortunately, this is a poor data point in regards to the OP question. The “big” guns the Marines are using are M777 155mm howitzers. The big guns used in the Overlord bombardment plan were battleship guns ranging from 12" to 16". To put those into the same units, that’s 304mm to 406mm. Furthermore, the Battleship guns used much, much greater propulsive charges than any modern land artillery piece does. Check out this videoto see how much powder they shove into the breach of a 16" gun.
I’m not sure I buy this, Alka Seltzer. First of all, the battleships were not directly up against the French coast. According to the Wikipedia page for the USS Texas, the ship was located approximately 11,000 meters off Pointe du Hoc. Depending on where this might be, the ship may not have been facing directly away from England. The 16-inch guns had a range of about 32 km, so the ships may have been closer to the UK than we might initially think.
Also, sound carries over water much better than it does over land, so I would think that the sound of a ship firing a battery of 16-inch guns might be heard across the water.
If you were living in southern England and were forewarned of the bombardment there is a way you could hear it. Just wade into the ocean until your ears were submerged.
I had to read the post twice. Thank God!
I was going to write that no one could hear the sound of the guns because in 1066 there was no such thing as gunpowder.
Did anyone else think the same thing?
Thats an interesting point. How aware were the people in England that ‘something was up’? I know in a general sense everyone knew there was going to be an invasion attempt at some point.
I doubt that people living in the area were oblivious to the fact that something huge was underway on the morning of June 6.
That’s the kind of personal history I enjoy hearing. You can’t sneak out an operation of that size. I’m sure there must be personal stories of some man out walking his dog on the beach and notices an armada of ships and planes headed towards France.