Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings (68 page)

18.
Action Reports, USS
Hobson
, June 25, 1944, and USS
Laffey
, June 30, 1944, both USNA; Carleton F. Bryant, “Battleship Commander,” in Stillwell, ed.,
Assault on Normandy
, 185. See also Morison,
The Invasion of France and Germany
, 206–7.

19.
Bryant, “Battleship Commander,” in Stillwell, ed.,
Assault on Normandy
, 185; Action Report, USS
O’Brien
, June 29, 1944, USNA. The
O’Brien
had only been in commission for four months and 70 percent of her crew had never before been to sea.

20.
Carleton Bryant, “Battleship Commander,” in Stillwell,
Assault on Normandy
, 184–85; Action Report, USS
Ellyson
, June 29, 1944, USNA.

21.
Action Reports, USS
Hobson
, June 25, 1944, and USS
Chickadee
, June 26, 1944, both USNA.

22.
Action Report, USS Ellyson, June 29, 1944, USNA.

23.
Action Report, USS
Tuscaloosa
, July 26, 1944, USNA; Morison,
The Invasion of
France and Germany
, 203.

24.
Action Reports, USS
Tuscaloosa
, July 26, 1944, USS
Ellyson
, June 29, 1944, and USS
Hobson
, June 25, 1944, all USNA. See also Morison,
The Invasion of France and Germany
, 201–9.

25.
Weigley,
Eisenhower and His Lieutenants
, 105–6; Action Reports, USS
Tuscaloosa
, July 26, 1944, and USS
Nevada
, June 30, 1944, both USNA.

26.
Bryant, “Battleship Commander,” in Stillwell, ed.,
Assault on Normandy
, 186; Ramsay is quoted in Morison,
The Invasion of France and Germany
, 211.

27.
Von Schlieben and Rommel are both quoted in Harrison,
Cross Channel Attack
, 434.

28.
Harrison,
Cross Channel Attack
, 436.

29.
Ibid., 438.

30.
Collins,
Lightning Joe
, 223.

31.
Morison,
The Invasion of France and Germany
, 214–15; Collins,
Lightning Joe
, 225.

32.
Quentin Walsh, “The Capture of Cherbourg,” in Stillwell,
Assault on Normandy
, 197–98.

33.
Alfred Stanford,
Force Mulberry: The Planning and Installation of the Artificial Harbor off U.S. Normandy Beaches in World War II
(New York: William Morrow, 1951), 199. See also Appendices 5 and 6, 229–33.

Epilogue

1.
Max Hastings,
Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 175.

2.
George Patton,
The Patton Papers
, ed. Martin Blumenson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 2:477.

3.
Hastings,
Overlord
, 196.

4.
Philip Vian,
Action This Day: A War Memoir
(London: Frederick Muller, 1960), 151–57; ComUSNavEu, to COMBATDIV5, June 30, 1944, ComUSNavEu, Subject file, box 16, NA; ComUSNavEu, to COMINCH, July 6, 1944, Message file, box 13.

5.
Author interview of Don Moon, Washington, DC, February 2013.

6.
Testimony of Commander F. R. Lowe at a Board of Enquiry held on board USS
Bayfield
, printed in Jonathan P. Alter,
“My Dear Moon”: Rear Admiral Don Pardee Moon
(privately printed, 2003), no page numbers.

7.
Testimony of Captain Rutledge Tompkins at a Board of Enquiry held on board USS
Bayfield
, ibid.

8.
John R. Lewis Jr. Oral History, NWWIIM-EC, 7. Moon’s note is from Meredith Moon Collection. See also Alter,
“My Dear Moon.”
Officially, the cause of Moon’s death was “a gunshot wound to the head that was self-inflicted during a period of insanity which was the direct result of overwork and mental fatigue incident to planning and executing combat operations against the enemy.” Since then, some have speculated that in addition to the overwork, Moon could also have suffered from a physical malady. The near miss of the German bomb off Utah Beach (see
Chapter 13
) could have caused an undiagnosed internal brain hemorrhage. If so, the slow seepage of blood into his brain would have caused Moon periodic intense pain and confusion—or, as the Navy report put it, “a period of insanity.” Moon’s daughter, who was ten at the time of her father’s death and who later became a clinical psychologist, believes that this may well have contributed to her father’s desperate action on August 5, 1944.

9.
Karl Bischoff Oral History, LCI Collection, series B, box 11, NMPW.

Bibliographical Note

Though a complete bibliography follows, several particularly useful sources deserve special mention. On strategic issues, an indispensable source is a fifty-eight-volume history of the United States Army in World War II that is often referred to by historians as “The Green Book” series because of the binding. These detailed studies on particular campaigns of the Second World War were sanctioned and funded soon after the war by the Office of the Chief of Military History (formerly the Historical Division, Department of the Army). Though they were authored by different scholars, they constitute a kind of quasi-official military history of the United States Army during the Second World War. Many of them include invaluable maps—large, detailed, full-color fold-out maps placed in sleeves at the back of the original volumes. The most useful volumes for this study were Mark Skinner Watson’s
Chief of Staff: Pre-War Plans and Preparations
(1950); Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell’s
Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941–1942
(1953); George F. Howe’s
Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West
(1957); Maurice Matloff’s
Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943–1944
(1959); and Gordon A. Harrison’s
Cross-Channel Attack
(1951). They are listed individually in the notes and bibliography.

A parallel version of this source from the British perspective is a six-volume set entitled
Grand Strategy
, which was authorized and published by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office between 1956 and 1976. Like the American Green Book series, the volumes have different authors and were published at different times. Volumes 3 and 5 proved most useful for this project. Volume 3,
covering the period June 1941 to August 1942, is divided into two parts because J. M. A. Gwyer, who wrote Part I, found himself unable to complete the assignment, which was taken up by the general editor, J. R. M. Butler, who completed Part II. Both volumes (collectively listed as Volume 3) were published in 1964. Volume 5, which covers the period from August 1943 to September 1944 and includes the cross-Channel attack, is by John Ehrman and was published in 1956.

On the naval side, the semiofficial history of the U.S. Navy during the war was supervised and written by Samuel Eliot Morison and consists of fifteen volumes. The most useful volumes for this book were
Operations in North African Waters, October 1942–June 1943
(1946) and
The Invasion of France and Germany, 1944–1945
(1955). All fifteen volumes are available in a new paperback edition from the Naval Institute Press.

In the belief that history is essentially the product of the decisions made and actions taken by individuals, I have relied heavily on memoirs, letters, and especially oral histories in the compilation of this narrative. There are several particularly rich sources of these, including those recorded and transcribed as part of the U.S. Naval Institute’s Oral History Program; the large collection assembled by Stephen Ambrose at the Eisenhower Center, located in the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana; and the LSI Association Collection at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas. In addition to these archival holdings, several published works include important firsthand accounts. Among these are
Assault on Normandy
, edited by Paul Stillwell;
Neptunus Rex
, edited by John Prados; and
Eyewitness D-Day
, edited by D. M. Giangreco with Kathryn Moore. Also, Joseph Balkoski’s excellent books on Omaha Beach and Utah Beach include a large number of firsthand accounts. All of these are listed separately below.

In the notes for this work, I have cited the most readily available source. For example, whenever the minutes of a Combined Chiefs of Staff meeting are included in the published
Foreign Relations of the United States
(FRUS), I cited the printed source, citing the originals in the National Archives only for those meetings where the minutes were not published. Similarly, whenever possible, I have cited the published versions of the diaries of Alan
Brooke, Harry Butcher, Harry Hopkins, Bertram Ramsay, Henry Stimson, and others. I have also cited the published versions of the papers of Eisenhower and Marshall, and documents that are printed in Winston Churchill’s six-volume
History of the Second World War
. Only when documents do not appear in a published collection did I cite the archival source.

Manuscript Sources

Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York

Map Room Files

President’s Secretary’s Files

Meredith Moon Collection, Maui, Hawaii

Don P. Moon Letters and Papers

National Archives of the United States, College Park, Maryland (Archives II)

Action Reports

Record Group 38: CNO Files Record Group 218: Joint Chiefs of Staff

Record Group 313: Naval Operational Forces

Commander, U.S. Naval Forces, Europe (ComUSNavEu)

Allied Naval Commander, Expeditionary Forces (ANCXF) Records of Amphibious Forces (Flag Files)

Amphibious Forces, Atlantic Fleet (Red 619)

Historical Section, Overlord and Neptune

Record Group 337: Records of Army Group Headquarters

Record Group 407: Records of the 21st Army Group

Records of the German Navy, 1850–1945

National Museum of the Pacific War, Fredericksburg, Texas

LCI Association Collection

Oral histories (see list below)

National World War II Museum (Eisenhower Center), New Orleans, Louisiana

Oral histories (see list below)

Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, DC

Morton L. Deyo, “Naval Guns at Normandy.”

(Personal Papers Collection of Samuel Eliot Morison)

Ernest J. King Papers

Oral histories (see list below)

Swem Library, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia

John Lesslie Hall Jr. Papers

U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland

Action Reports, Ships Involved in Operation Neptune

USS
Ancon
(AP-66)

USS
Arkansas
(BB-33)

USS
Barnett
(APA-5)

USS
Barton
(DD-722)

USS
Carmick
(DD493)

USS
Chickadee
(AM-59)

USS
Chimo
(ACM-1)

USS
Davis
(DD-395)

USS
Doyle
(DD-494)

USS
Ellyson
(DD-454)

USS
Emmons
(DD-457)

USS
Forrest
(DD-461/DMS-24)

USS
Frankford
(DD-497)

USS
Gerhardi
(DD-637)

USS
Hambleton
(DD-455)

USS
Hobson
(DD-464)

USS
Jeffers
(DD-621)

USS
Jouett
(DD-396)

USS
Kiowa
(ATF-72)

USS
Laffey
(DD-724)

LCI and LST reports

USS
Nevada
(BB-36)

USS
O’Brien
(DD-725)

USS
Thompson
(DD-627)

USS
Threat
(ACA-124)

USS
Thurston
(AP-77)

USS
Tuscaloosa
(CA-37)

USS
Walke
(DD-723)

World War II Battle Action and Operational Reports (Mss 416)

U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland

Oral histories (see list below)

U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island

H. Kent Hewitt Papers

Oral Histories

(a)
At the National World War II Museum (Eisenhower Center), New Orleans, Louisiana

Wallace Bishop

Calhoun Bond

Ferris Burke

Ralph A. Crenshaw

Vincent Del Guidice

William H. Derbins

Nelson Dubroc

Joseph H. Esclavon

Robert L. Evans

Karl D. Everitt

Edwin Gale

Robert Giguire

George Goodspeed

John J. Guilmartin

George Hackett

Dorr Hampton

Curtis Hansen

Donald Irwin

Jack Jacobson

George Keleher

Richard G. “Jack” Laine

John R. Lewis Jr.

Paul Longrigg

Moses D. Manning

John McClelland

Robert H. Miller

William J. Milne

Kenneth C. Newberg

Donald W. Nutley

William T. O’Neill

Vernon L. Paul

Robert T. Robertson

Dean Rockwell

Horace G. “Skip” Shaw

Clifford H. Sinnett

Joel G. Smith

W. N. Solkin

William Steel

August Leo Thomas

Martin Waarvick

Orval Wakefield

(b)
At the National Museum of the Pacific War (Nimitz Educational and Research Center), Fredericksburg, Texas

Karl Bischoff

George T. Foy

Donald O. Good

Claude F. Olds

Charles Waters

(c)
At the United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland

George W. Bauernschmidt

Bernhard Bieri

Phil Bucklew

Roy Carter

Edmond J. Moran