June 5 1944:

More than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries placed at the Normandy assault area,
while 3,000 Allied ships cross the English Channel in preparation for the invasion of Normandy-D-Day.

The day of the invasion of occupied France had been postponed repeatedly since May, mostly because of bad weather and the enormous tactical obstacles involved.
Finally, despite less than ideal weather conditions-or perhaps because of them-General Eisenhower decided on June 5 to set the next day as D-Day,
the launch of the largest amphibious operation in history.

On June 5:

1981 - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that five gay men in Los Angeles were suffering from a rare pneumonia found in patients with weakened immune systems. They were the first recognized cases of what came to be known as AIDS.

On June 6, 1875, Thomas Mann, the Nobel Prize-winning German author, was born. Following his death on Aug. 12, 1955, his obituary appeared in The Times.

1944: D-Day marks start of Europe invasion
Thousands of Allied troops have begun landing on the beaches of Normandy in northern France at the start of a major offensive against the Germans.

Thousands of paratroops and glider-borne troops have also been dropped behind enemy lines and the Allies are already said to have penetrated several miles inland.

The landings were preceded by air attacks along the French coast.

About 1,300 RAF planes were involved in the first wave of assaults then 1,000 American bombers took up the attack dropping bombs on targets in northern France.

Dawn revealed the astonishing sight of serried ranks of ships heaving over the horizon and passing in wave after wave, packed to capacity with soldiers and weaponry

The Prime Minister Winston Churchill has told MPs that Operation Neptune - the codename for the Normandy landings - is proceeding "in a thoroughly satisfactory manner".

He said the landing of airborne troops was "on a scale far larger than anything there has been so far in the world" and had taken place with extremely little loss.

The assault began shortly after midnight under the command of General Bernard Montgomery.

Timing of the Normandy landings was crucial. They were originally scheduled to take place in May - then postponed until June and put off again at the last minute for 24 hours by bad weather.

Upwards of 4,000 ships and several thousand smaller craft crossed the Channel to the northern coast of France.

On this day, Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D.
Eisenhower gives the go-ahead for largest amphibious military
operation in history: Operation Overlord, code-named D-Day, the Allied
invasion of northern France.

By daybreak, 18,000 British and American parachutists were already on
the ground. At 6:30 a.m., American troops came ashore at Utah and
Omaha beaches. At Omaha, the U.S. First Division battled high seas,
mist, mines, burning vehicles-and German coastal batteries, including
an elite infantry division, which spewed heavy fire. Many wounded
Americans ultimately drowned in the high tide. British divisions,
which landed at Gold, and Sword beaches, and Canadian troops, landing
at Juno beach, also met with heavy German fire, but by the end of the
day they were able to push inland.

Despite the German resistance, Allied casualties overall were
relatively light. The United States and Britain each lost about 1,000
men, and Canada 355. Before the day was over, 155,000 Allied troops
would be in Normandy. However, the United States managed to get only
half of the 14,000 vehicles and a quarter of the 14,500 tons of
supplies they intended on shore.

Three factors were decisive in the success of the Allied invasion.
First, German counterattacks were firm but sparse, enabling the Allies
to create a broad bridgehead, or advanced position, from which they
were able to build up enormous troop strength. Second, Allied air
cover, which destroyed bridges over the Seine, forced the Germans to
suffer long detours, and naval gunfire proved decisive in protecting
the invasion troops. And third, division and confusion within the
German ranks as to where the invasion would start and how best to
defend their position helped the Allies. (Hitler, convinced another
invasion was coming the next day east of the Seine River, refused to
allow reserves to be pulled from that area.)

General Bernard Law Montgomery, commander of Britain's Twenty-first
Army Group (but under the overall command of General Eisenhower, for
whom Montgomery, and his ego, proved a perennial thorn in the side),
often claimed later that the invasion had come off exactly as planned.
That was a boast, as evidenced by the failure to take Caen on the
first day, as scheduled. While the operation was a decided success,
considering the number of troops put ashore and light casualties,
improvisation by courageous and quick-witted commanders also played an enormous role.

The D-Day invasion has been the basis for several movies, from The Longest Day (1962), which boasted an all-star cast that included Richard Burton, Sean Connery, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum-and Fabian, to Saving Private Ryan (1998), which includes some of the most grippingly realistic war scenes ever filmed, captured in the style of the famous Robert Capa still photos of the actual invasion.

King George VI broadcast a message warning of the "supreme test" the Allies faced and he called on the nation to pray for the liberation of Europe.

The Allied naval commander, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, said the landings had taken the Germans completely by surprise. There were no enemy reconnaissance planes out and the opposition of coastal batteries was much less than expected.

He added: "There was a slight loss in ships but so slight that it did not affect putting armies ashore.

"We have got all the first wave of men through the defended beach zone and set for the land battle."

A statement broadcast from Berlin at midday said the German troops were "nowhere taken by surprise". It said many parachute units were wiped out on landing or taken prisoner.

Hits were also scored on battleships and on landing craft from the "guns of the Atlantic Wall" - the German defensive positions.

President Franklin D Roosevelt told a news conference the invasion did not mean the war was over.

He said: "You don't just walk to Berlin, and the sooner this country realises that the better."

British troops on their way to Normandy to take part in the D-Day landings

The Normandy landings were the beginning of Operation Overlord - or the invasion of German-occupied Europe.

Originally planned to take place on 1 May 1944, the operation was postponed a month to allow time to gather more troops and equipment. The timing was important to allow for the right weather, a full moon, and tidal conditions.

To keep the destination of the landings secret, a deception plan Operation Fortitude was mounted which led the Germans to believe the main target was the Pas de Calais, much farther east.

When the landings finally began there were only 14 of the 58 German divisions in France facing the Allies. While there was stiff resistance at other beaches, Omaha was the only one where the success of the Allied mission was in serious doubt.

The invasion of Normandy was the largest amphibious assault ever launched. It involved five army divisions in the initial assault and over 7,000 ships. In addition there were 11,000 aircraft.

In total 75,215 British and Canadian troops and 57,500 US troops were landed by sea on D-Day. Another 23,400 were landed by air.

By 11 June the Allies had secured the Cotentin Peninsula beyond Cherbourg but progress continued slowly as the Germans put up fierce resistance. The end of the Normandy campaign came with the destruction of the German 7th Army in the Falaise pocket in August.

Although the Allies had reached the German frontier by September they decided to re-group during the winter, because of the failure of Market-Garden and the setback in the battle of the Bulge, and the invasion of Germany only began in January 1945.

On June 7:

1914 - The first vessel passed through the Panama Canal.

Panama Canal, waterway across the Isthmus of Panama, connecting the Atlantic (by way of the Caribbean Sea) and Pacific oceans, built by the United States (1904-14) on territory leased from the republic of Panama. The canal, running S and SE from Limón Bay at Colón on the Atlantic to the Bay of Panama at Balboa on the Pacific, is 40 mi (64 km) long from shore to shore and 51 mi (82 km) long between channel entrances. The Pacific terminus is 27 mi (43 km) east of the Caribbean terminus. The minimum depth is 41 ft (12.5 m).

From Limón Bay a ship is raised by Gatún Locks (a set of three) to an elevation 85 ft (25.9 m) above sea level, traverses Gatún Lake, then crosses the Continental Divide through Gaillard (formerly Culebra) Cut and is lowered by Pedro Miguel Lock to Miraflores Lake and then by the Miraflores Locks (a set of two) to sea level. The average tidal range on the Atlantic side is less than a foot (.3 m); that on the Pacific side is 12.6 ft (3.8 m).