EXERCISE IN FUTILITY

READING THE STORY about the donated D-Day broadcast tapes in the February 2020 issue (“WWII Today”), I was rather surprised to learn that the Luftwaffe had attacked the Allied armada in the English Channel heading to the Normandy landings.

I may well be in error, but everything that I recall ever seeing about enemy D-Day air actions that day stressed the fact that the Luftwaffe, except for a brief strafing run on the landing beaches by a pair of German fighter planes, was virtually absent from the skies.

MARTIN BLUMENTHAL
WORCESTER, MASS.

John D. Long, director of education for the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia, responds:

The short answer to Mr. Blumenthal’s question is that the Luft-waffe was able to fly somewhere around 100 and Cornelius Ryan’s . But there were others. Fortunately, there weren’t anywhere near enough to come close to stopping the invasion.