GOLD BEACH
Gold Beach is 1st of 2, of D-Day beaches to be led by the British and was situated between Port-en-Bessin and Ver-sur-Mer the central most area of the D-Day invasion.
The objectives of Gold were to secure a beachhead, capture Arromanches to link with American troops at Omaha and to capture Bayeux to link up with Canadian troops from Juno.
Similar to Omaha, Gold beach was split into 2 components, an ariel and naval bombardment to clear German defences and an Infantry landing to capture the beach. In contrast to Omaha, the bombardments were highly effective in wiping out most of the German defences. The navel bombardments from HMS Ajax and HMS Argonaut proved to be extremely effectively providing pinpoint accuracy to take out 3 of the 4 artillery emplacements.
Infantry landing commenced nearly an hour after the American landings due to different tides. Rough seas made it tricky for Infantry landing craft, resulting in 20 of them being sunk or damaged by mines, however this did not slow British troops much as within an hour they had secured beach exits to push further inland and by days end they had completed their objective.
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