During the Normandy invasion, could people on the coast in S.England hear the naval bombardment?

[El_Kabong]

I’ve personally clearly heard an explosion from just over 25 miles away, but unfortunately have no idea what yield of military explosive it would have been equivalent to. Probably more than a single charge for a battleship gun, however.

It would be interesting to hear from someone who was there at the time, but seems an outside shot that one would be lurking here.

[Alka_Seltzer]

@Kiber

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.

That’s a good point. I’m struggling to find a timeline of the bombardment, but Sword beach was bombed at 3:00 in the morning. At that time, there may not have been a lot of noise in the UK.

@BobArrgh

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.

That’s my point, because they were some distance off the coast they would definitely been firing to the south (I never said they were firing due south). It would affect how audible the guns were, but I’m not sure by how much. The blast of the guns is strongly directional, but a lot of energy escapes to the side. In the Nelson class ships, if the guns were fired abaft of the beam it would shatter the windows on the bridge.

@BobArrgh

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.

That’s true, but we have to consider the curvature of the Earth. Much of the energy would be absorbed or reflected upwards. Hence Ximenean’s point about weather conditions.

If people in the UK did hear anything, it would have been more likely to be rumbling noises rather than distinct explosions, as each sound would be taking a number of paths back to the listener, spreading it out.