In the early hours of June 6, 1944, U.S. Army Air Corps pilot David Hamilton flew a C-47 Dakota filled with British Pathfinder paratroopers over Normandy, France, on his first combat mission. U.S. Navy signalman Vincent Unger was sailing toward Utah Beach on LCI 525, a landing craft carrying about 200 infantry troops on the first wave of the invasion. Royal Air Force driver David Teacher of the 103rd Beach Unit was in the seat of his three-ton wagon on a landing craft waiting to be delivered to Juno Beach. And U.S. Army infantryman Gerald Anderson would soon land on Omaha’s “Easy Red” beach with the second wave of the 1st Infantry Division.
All of these veterans, young lads at the time but now in their nineties, returned to Normandy for the 75th anniversary of the pivotal Allied invasion that turned the tide of World War II in Nazi-occupied Europe. More than 300 WWII veterans, including about 65 U.S. veterans of the Normandy campaign, attended a series of ceremonies on June 5 and 6 that included paratrooper drops, aircraft flyovers, and remarks by dignitaries.
More In Aircraft
