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Trains were at the heart of the D-Day landing strategy and the liberation of Europe, starting with strategic bombings that aimed to paralyze the entire French rail system.
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00:08In 1944, the Allies invaded Normandy, with one idea in mind, to liberate occupied France from Nazi Germany.
00:16Behind the famous naval operation was another logistical feat that has remained less well known.
00:21What is important is the chemin-de-fer, because it is the one who will allow the logistics,
00:26and the one who will allow to leave the beach, to leave the Norman coasts,
00:30and then to be able to liberate the rest of the territory.
00:32If there was no chemin-de-fer transported, the operation would be limited to the Norman coasts.
00:38The chemin-de-fer takes the following.
00:40The trains were at the logistical heart of D-Day and the Allied invasion of France.
00:45In the US and Great Britain, new trains were built with special rail battalions created.
00:49Millions of tons of manpower and equipment were transported across the Atlantic,
00:55then stocked out of sight on the English coasts in readiness for D-Day.
00:59To back up the initial forces that were sent on D-Day,
01:03railway locomotives and railway equipment were sent.
01:05Without the railways, winning the war was impossible.
01:09For the Allies, trains were a valuable asset, but also a formidable tool for the enemy.
01:14So prior to the landings, the network was taken out of service
01:17by bombing stations and strategic installations.
01:20It was part of a long battle in which lots of things were learnt.
01:27And one of the things that was learnt that certainly at the time,
01:30without the support of railways, you could not make sufficient progress.
01:34The most rapid, the most simple and the most economical is the train.
01:37Railways are an often forgotten part of the Normandy landings.
01:41The whole logistics aspects of the battle in Normandy is often forgotten.
01:47During Operation Overlord, trains remained an essential element in the Allies' faultless military strategy,
01:53the weapon that led to the liberation of France and to victory in the war.
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11:30The first mission for the MRS was to ascertain how much equipment the American army needed.
11:59In 1942 and 43, American factories were completely mobilized to take part in the war effort, which were already manufacturing
12:09locomotives for civilian use, converted their production facilities to comply with the army's needs.
12:22The question remained as to the most suitable equipment for this extraordinary logistical operation, because the European Rail Network had
12:30its own specifications.
12:32Every little detail could make a difference.
12:38During the September of 1942, the Americans envoient a delegation of American engineers, specialised in the fer, who will work
12:46on what they are going to put in place in Europe.
12:48Of course, things are very different from what they know in the United States.
12:53They have to be suitable for the French gauge, which is slightly smaller than the American gauge.
13:14The American engines are famously larger.
13:17They operate on the same floor for eight and a half, but they are wider and higher.
13:23And so the locomotives that they brought over had to be fit into the French tunnels and embankments and bridges
13:32and stations and whatever.
13:35To advance through Normandy, tracks, carriages, and above all, locomotives were needed, all fit for purpose.
13:45Like for the road vehicles, where they have defined some very different programs,
13:50with the Jeeps in vehicles lighters, the Dodge in vehicles mediums and GMC for cars,
13:55we will do the same thing for the ferroviaire material, with the locomotives of two categories,
14:00small and small, small locomotives 3S for maneuver,
14:05and smaller locomotives, polyvalent, for driving the train in line.
14:08And then they also call diesel locomotives for specific uses.
14:13This is still a recent technology, since we have essentially locomotives at vapor.
14:20Two steam locomotives labeled USATC, Transportation Corps, were created to support the Allies during Operation Overlord.
14:29The S-100 designed for maintenance, and the S-160 for long journeys.
14:35We need machines that are extremely simple and robust, and can be carried out by anyone.
14:44So, we need machines that are at simple expansion, that the fuel will be used only once.
14:55These machines are at simple expansion, which will have all the mechanical pieces,
15:00which will be at the exterior of the chassis, to be easily repaired.
15:07The pistons are even interchangeable between right and left,
15:10which allows easily to repair the pieces.
15:12We don't need to have the piece,
15:14but a generic piece allows the piece to repair the accident.
15:18These machines, by the way, reverse of the medal,
15:21will consume a lot of combustible,
15:24but in addition to a simplicity of use and a much greater reliability.
15:28Among the 382 American S-100s that were shipped to Europe, 77 of them ran for the SNCF under the
15:36code name 030TU.
15:39They were light, had three axles in a 030 arrangement, and could reach speeds of 50 km an hour.
15:46They were all manufactured within several months in the factories of HK Porter, Vulcan, or the Devonport Locomotive Works.
16:18The American engineers foresaw every situation and left no stone unturned.
16:23Even incorporating each national specification into the plans for the new locomotives.
16:30The engine is not the same between England and France.
16:34In France, we use a compressed air engine,
16:36that means we need a pump that sends air compressed air to release the engines,
16:40whereas in the United States, we use a empty engine.
16:43It's a system that works in the same way.
16:46It's the air that serves the engines,
16:47but on the one hand, in France, it's compressed air,
16:49and in the United States, it's a empty engine, we aspirate air.
16:54The two single continuous braking systems enabled convoys to come to a halt instantaneously,
17:00in contrast to the previous system where brake guards operated the brakes manually, carriage by carriage.
17:25To be pulled by these locomotives, carriages made specifically for the Normandy invasion were necessary.
17:34These vehicles are also prepared to be exploited for very little time.
17:39So we know that they are not very solid,
17:41that they will not last a dozen years,
17:43compared to what we like to do in the road that we usually do.
17:45These vehicles are that we want to use quickly,
17:47easily to destroy after the war.
17:51The MRS engineers had accomplished their mission.
17:54The S-100 and S-160 locomotives left their factories,
17:58and the American troops got ready.
18:01The next step was to cross the Atlantic to the UK,
18:04and wait for D-Day, whose exact date was still secret.
18:18Between April 1942 and April 1944,
18:22around 1,500,000 American soldiers and nearly 5 million tons of equipment,
18:27including hundreds of locomotives and carriages, were shipped across the ocean.
18:31The code name was Operation Bolero.
18:39Transporting rail equipment by ship was long and perilous,
18:43and German submarines, the U-boats, caused havoc.
18:47Convoys had to be escorted by heavily armed battleships,
18:51equipped with high-class radars.
19:00Soldiers were packed in tightly, to make as much room as possible for the equipment.
19:04The daily supplies for a single soldier had been multiplied by four since the First World War,
19:11not to mention the rolling stock,
19:13and all the accompanying equipment needed to rebuild the French railways.
19:20On a des locomotives en kit, des wagons en kit, par milliers, par milliers,
19:25destinés à la France, et on a même de la signalisation, on a même des voies, des rails, etc.
19:30Ils transportent à travers l'Atlantique ce qu'on pourrait appeler tout un mécano ferroviaire.
19:35Je dirais, c'est un réseau de modélistes ferroviaires, mais en grandeur réelle.
19:41Donc ces wagons, on va les transporter dans des bateaux,
19:44avec l'objectif d'en mettre le plus possible pour maximiser les transports maritimes.
19:49Donc on va les acheminer en kit, et puis on va les construire sur le sol anglais,
19:53pour ensuite les débarquer en Europe.
19:55Ou on va prendre des locomotives qu'on va amener quasiment prêtes à l'emploi,
20:00et on va les protéger pour le transport.
20:03On va les protéger par exemple avec des planches au niveau de la cabine,
20:05pour pas que les vitres soient cassées, on met juste quelques planches.
20:08Ça a même été pensé pour utiliser ces planches pour mettre en chauffe la locomotive.
20:13Donc c'est une vraie réflexion logistique qui a été prise très en amont.
20:20Thousands of American soldiers of the MRS arrived in towns and villages in England and Scotland,
20:26disrupting normal life.
20:29Cooperation on the railways, however, wasn't always easy.
20:33Comme on expédie ces matériels des semaines, voire des mois à l'avance,
20:37on peut pas laisser les personnels sans utilisation, il faut pas qu'ils se tournent les pouces.
20:42Donc on leur demande de s'entraîner, de rouler, voire de former des populations locales,
20:47des anglais qui vont être incorporés dans les bataillons,
20:50sauf que ça se fait parfois en force.
20:52C'est-à-dire que c'est les Américains qui veulent imposer leur système et qui n'écoutent pas les
20:56règles du vieux continent
20:57qui était en vigueur jusqu'alors.
20:59C'était un effort co-opératif, et il y avait des frictions entre les différentes nationalités.
21:07Mais il y avait aussi beaucoup de respect.
21:08Et l'un des travailleurs de la railways, c'est qu'ils sont les travailleurs de la railways,
21:13les Américains et les Britons, les deux.
21:16C'est-à-dire qu'ils étaient le même travail,
21:20peut-être avec différentes technologies et différentes customs et pratiques,
21:26mais c'est-à-dire qu'ils étaient les travailleurs de la railways.
21:31Au début de 1944, le préparation pour l'Operation Overlord
21:36a été un nouveau phase.
21:37All l'équipement nécessaire pour invading France
21:40a dû être移é à l'intérieur de l'inclin,
21:42à l'intérieur de l'inclin,
21:44à l'intérieur de l'inclin,
21:45à l'intérieur de l'inclin.
21:48Tens de thousands de trains were sent à l'inclin,
21:50au moins tens de thousands.
21:52Et c'était, comme je dis,
21:54c'était un extraordinaire operation.
21:55To move supplies over to Normandy,
21:57there was a whole chain along which the supplies would move.
22:01And the railways generally were the starting point for that.
22:06Helped by the railway's executive committee,
22:09the Allies gradually transported troops and equipment
22:12to the south coast.
22:14In the two months leading up to D-Day,
22:1725,000 special convoys were chartered.
22:22So gradually they were brought down to the south coast
22:25and some of them would have moved by road,
22:27but in many cases they were moved by rail
22:29and quite often they'd be moved quite long distances.
22:32Not just people on foot, not as troops on foot,
22:35but also vehicles like the Sherman.
22:40If you're moving a tank like this the whole length of the country,
22:44it was much better to move it on a train
22:47rather than driving a long distance
22:48that would cause wear and tear to all the mechanisms,
22:53the tracks, the engine, et cetera.
22:55It would keep the vehicle fresh for when it was needed in Normandy.
22:59They had to store the equipment, preferably on rails,
23:04because otherwise it would take a lot of hassle
23:06to get it onto the rails.
23:08They had to then ensure they could get it to the ports quickly
23:14and the roads were just impossible.
23:17The UK transport system was working over time.
23:21Every day, tons of equipment, weapons and supplies
23:24were moved across the country
23:25for the troops who were preparing for D-Day.
23:28So these freight trains were known as the tarpaulin armada.
23:32The tarpaulin is a piece of material
23:35that you lay over something to stop it blowing away.
23:39So a tarpaulin is a large piece of material
23:42that you would have put over the top of a truck
23:45so you couldn't see what was inside.
23:47So it was a material that was held on with ropes
23:50onto a railway truck so you couldn't see what was inside.
23:55Some of the rolling stock intended for the Normandy landings
23:59was being used in Britain,
24:00where they were already short of nearly 400 locomotives
24:04and 2,000 carriages to ensure sufficient transport for the Allies.
24:09To keep up with the pace,
24:11the UK provided heavy freight locomotives,
24:13which had been running since the 1930s,
24:16the well-known 8F class.
24:22So this is Stania 8F, heavy freight locomotive.
24:26It was the standard for the London Middle and Scottish Railway,
24:30one of the big four companies.
24:32But at the outbreak of the war in 1939,
24:35it became adopted by the Army and the Ministry of Supply
24:40as the standard freight locomotive for construction for wartime use.
24:48Well, you see the locomotive has smallish driving wheels,
24:53cylinders there, the piston driving via the rods on the wheels.
24:58Now the locomotive being a standard of the 1930s,
25:02used many large components of scarce materials,
25:07copper, brass and things like that for axle boxes,
25:12fire boxes, all copper in the boiler.
25:15So it was difficult to resource that material
25:19and so a more modern design was then adopted
25:23that used far fewer of these scarce materials.
25:29Coupled with these sturdy locomotives were flat-back carriages.
25:33They were the only type capable of transporting the parts
25:36needed to build ships and tanks.
25:39They were manufactured in different factories up and down the country.
25:44The whole industry was not concentrated in a single site,
25:48so you would manufacture components and they were brought together.
25:51So both for tanks and aircraft, there was a huge movement of materials,
25:58at which the railway played an absolutely critical role.
26:02From 1943, the British War Department started operating the austerity locomotives,
26:08fresh out of the factories.
26:09They were small, wartime locomotives, very similar to their American counterparts.
26:14Light, sturdy, cheap and efficient.
26:23Once the equipment had reached the south of the country,
26:26the Allies were faced with a new challenge.
26:28How to hide all these troops and rolling stock from the German intelligence service,
26:33who were flying over the coast looking for clues.
26:38So several huge depots were constructed in Newport, Tree Forest,
26:43Morton-on-Lug, Caduxton and Tidworth.
26:47For many long weeks, troops were stationed in specially organized areas,
26:52hastily set up in secret and above all, out of sight.
26:57The places they were going to generally were camps hidden away in the woods.
27:01They were temporary camps, generally.
27:03Most of the people would have been just in tents,
27:06so it was not like a military barracks or anything like that.
27:11And they were kept there for, in many cases,
27:15for several weeks or even more than a month,
27:19waiting until all the other troops were gathered in the area ready for D-Day.
27:24There was the most fantastic collection of American equipment
27:30that was being stored in all sorts of places across southern England.
27:35You know, in addition to a thousand locomotives,
27:37there was something like ten times that amount of wagons.
27:43There were carriages for people,
27:46and even things like signalling equipment.
27:51And all this had to be stored often with some sort of disguise,
27:56because there couldn't be targets for the Luftwaffe.
28:01To deceive the enemy and divert their gaze from the stations and impromptu depots,
28:07which had sprung up in the south of England,
28:09the Allies even went as far as constructing fake equipment,
28:12which they left in plain view for the Luftwaffe pilots to spot.
28:17Imaginez qu'on va pouvoir stocker des centaines et des centaines de locomotives
28:21à laquelle des milliers de wagons sur des triages réquisitionnés
28:25où, vu du ciel, on voit bien que les wagons sont les uns derrière les autres et ils ne bougent
28:28pas.
28:29Ça a dû être vraiment une gageur pour que les Allemands ne se rendent pas compte
28:32que ça allait leur tomber dessus quelques semaines plus tard.
28:35It was a great secret to hold, and of course it changed their lives.
28:38And they were preparing for, you know, one of the great invasions of military history, ever.
28:46The Allies' railway arsenal was now complete.
28:49But before embarking for the Normandy coast, the Allies had a last detail to fix,
28:54a detail that could set the German counteroffensive back weeks
28:58once the invasion had taken place.
29:02Eisenhower was adamant.
29:04The major transport routes of France had to be bombed,
29:07and in priority, the railways.
29:10The strategy of the Supreme Chief of the Allied Forces was summed up in two words.
29:16Transportation plan.
29:17A tailor-made bombing programme
29:19to destroy the effectiveness of the French rail network.
29:28L'objectif, c'est vraiment de frapper les trains pour que les Allemands ne puissent pas monter de contre-offensive
29:33blindés,
29:34pour qu'ils ne puissent pas amener leurs blindés trop rapidement vers la tête de pont.
29:37C'est vraiment l'objectif du transportation plan.
29:42The man behind the transportation plan was Solly Zuckerman, a civilian with quite an interesting background.
29:51He was a British university researcher specialized in the anatomy of primates,
29:56and after the aggressive German Blitz of London in 1940, he became interested in the science of bombing.
30:03Zuckerman was commissioned by Eisenhower, who had been traumatized by his recent failures in Italy and North Africa,
30:10to have the transportation plan.
30:12And he put the train at the heart of the plan.
30:18Ces débarquements ont été marqués, surtout en Italie, par des réactions allemandes très vigoureuses.
30:24C'est-à-dire, à peine les Alliés débarqués, les Allemands étaient capables de monter des contre-offensive blindés très
30:29puissantes.
30:32Et Eisenhower ont été en particulier très marqués par des scènes de chaos.
30:37Et pour Overlord, il a tout prix éviter ça.
30:39Et c'est ce qu'il dit à ses planificateurs, il dit, je vais être tranquille pour une semaine.
30:43Since the Germans would need these trains to transport their armoured divisions,
30:47then it was vital to prevent these trains running all the way to Normandy.
30:52Le cœur du système ferroviaire, ce sont les grandes gares.
30:56Et dans le cœur de ce cœur, il y a les dépôts de locomotives.
31:00Les dépôts de locomotives et les hangars de maintenance des locomotives,
31:03pour lui, c'est le cœur du réseau.
31:05Et donc, c'est en visant ces cibles particulières dans les gares qu'il pense qu'il n'y aura
31:10plus de maintenance possible
31:11pour les locomotives, qu'elles ne pourront plus être utilisées.
31:13Elles vont engorger elles-mêmes le trafic, qui, à défaut d'être détruit, sera paralysé.
31:21Allied bombers ont commencé à attaquer les renseignements français en juin 1944.
31:26La première étape, c'était de bombarder les portes sur la Seine,
31:29pour instiller doubt dans l'ennemi's mind.
31:38Si on attaque les ponts sur la Seine, ça peut être pour débarquer en Normandie,
31:42mais aussi dans le Pas-de-Calais.
31:44Et ce n'est que beaucoup plus tard qu'on va attaquer les ponts sur la Loire.
31:47Et ensuite, à la fin du mois de mai, on va passer à l'attaque directe des locomotives.
31:52Donc là, on va continuer à attaquer les gares, mais aussi directement les trains.
31:56Et bien sûr, si on bombait Normandie trop,
31:59les germains pensaient, pourquoi vous vous concentrez sur Normandie ?
32:01Donc nous devons bombar partout.
32:03Donc, pour chaque bombon que nous avons mis en Normandie,
32:05nous avons mis trois à quelque chose d'autre, en Belgique ou en Nord-France.
32:12Et de nouveau, targeting les railways et les installations
32:15pour éviter les germains de bringing renforcement dans la zone Normandie.
32:21En finalement choisissant à attaquer les trains,
32:23les Alliés connaissait que le bombing
32:25va causer des caissons majoriaux civiles.
32:28Un peu par un peu,
32:29le plan de transport s'est devenu un populaire dans la coalition.
32:33Winston Churchill, en particulier,
32:35était worried.
32:36Et cela a pris le plan dans le doute.
32:39Oui, Churchill était très, très concernant
32:41que, en libérant de France,
32:42nous devons cause massive destruction
32:44both au territoire français et à l'infrastructure,
32:46mais aussi à l'infrastructure français.
32:48Et il y a un argument
32:49si on bombait le plan de transport,
32:51comme il s'appelle « bombons de plombons »
32:54particulièrement les stations de carbone
32:55et les montants de route
32:56et les crossings en Normandie.
32:57Ou le plan de pétrole
32:58qui est derrière les germains
33:00d'entraider leurs tanks et leurs trains
33:02par amener aux refineries de l'huile.
33:04Tous qui ont aidé aux risques terrifiques.
33:26At the end of April 1944, the transportation plan was temporarily halted.
33:33Eisenhower threatened to resign.
33:34Behind the scenes, the crisis caused a clash between the leaders of the Allied forces.
33:41Churchill appealed to President Roosevelt to intervene.
33:57The American president took a few days to make his decision.
34:39The Allies had succeeded.
35:11They didn't know that D-Day was coming beforehand.
35:44It was here behind the four walls of Southwark House, an ultra-secret location still guarded
35:48by soldiers even today that the final preparations were made.
35:52The house remains legendary for heads of state and has been preserved in exactly the same
35:57state it was in on D-Day.
36:04So Eisenhower arrives here on the 2nd of June at the battle headquarters of Admiral Ramsey,
36:08where the naval operation Neptune is being executed.
36:12And the reason why he came here was that this was a very nerve center for the Overlord invasion.
36:17If they couldn't get them onto the beaches via the sea, the operation would fail.
36:24And in this room, which was then the library of the house, it was where the secrets were discussed.
36:30This was a really secure area guarded by marine commandos outside.
36:35And you could only come in here if you were in the top team.
36:42And here we have the D-Day map, the famous map that was used prior to the invasion of Overlord
36:48and then to plot Operation Neptune, which was the naval forces moving on towards Normandy and the liberation of France.
37:06While more than a million and a half men and women, among them tens of thousands of railway soldiers,
37:12were anxiously waiting for the go-ahead for the most dangerous mission of their lives,
37:16General Eisenhower had to decide behind closed doors on the best moment to launch the final phase of Operation Overlord.
37:26Count the weather, the tides and the sea levels, Eisenhower's teams came up with two windows.
37:32To make the most of the full moon, the troops would have to set out between June 4th and 6th.
37:38But the day before the planned invasion, the weather forecast was bad.
37:43This is an example of the charts, the meteorological charts that were being used by Group Captain James Stagg,
37:50who was Eisenhower's chief meteorological advisor.
37:53And it shows the build-up of D-minus, so two and a half days before the landings of the
37:586th of June.
37:59And it shows you how these depressions are moving,
38:02which of course was the reason why D-Day was first postponed from the 5th of June,
38:07and then reset for the 6th of June.
38:11From his library, at midnight on June 6th, Eisenhower gave the go-ahead.
38:19The first paratroopers were released almost immediately.
38:28At 5pm, General de Gaulle went on the BBC to confirm the launching of Operation Overlord.
38:36After a lot of combat, of fury, of pain, of pain, here is the decisive shock.
38:44The shock as expected.
38:47Of course, it is the battle of France.
38:51And it is the battle of France.
38:57The battle of the US is a surprise for the Germans.
39:01You know that the first Germans soldiers who saw the sky in the morning of 1944,
39:07they said that the sky is black in the avion.
39:09But it was nothing compared to what they expected on the sea.
39:13It was a huge fleet of thousands and thousands of boats who embarked
39:18and who, in a few hours, began to rebuild the French chemin of France
39:22to go to Paris.
39:24Over the following 87 days, up until the end of August 1944,
39:30more than 2 million soldiers landed in France,
39:32along with hundreds of locomotives, thousands of carriages,
39:36and millions of tons of equipment.
39:37In the large ports of Southampton and Portsmouth,
39:40the atmosphere was electric.
39:42This was the Allies' logistical rear base during Operation Overlord.
39:47So Portsmouth, where we are now, for example, has a naval base dockyard,
39:51and that was very important.
39:53But Southampton, which is another city that's quite nearby,
39:57the place where the Titanic had sailed from early in the 20th century, for example,
40:01Southampton had really extensive docks,
40:03and that was very important for moving supplies over.
40:06Somebody said that there were so many ships between Portsmouth and Southampton
40:11that you could actually walk on the decks between Portsmouth and Southampton.
40:15There were so many ships there waiting for this invasion.
40:21All the neighboring train stations were requisitioned to supply the ports
40:25from where the tons of railway equipment needed to liberate France would set out.
40:31But the big ports are really important,
40:33and not least because they have the infrastructure,
40:36often with the railways coming down near to the quayside,
40:39so that made it easy to bring supplies from depots that could be miles inland
40:46down to the port right next to the ships to load them onto the ship quickly.
40:50It was all about moving supplies and troops over to Normandy as quickly as possible.
40:56And those depots inland were all connected to the railways as well.
41:02To save time and cut down on maintenance,
41:05the locomotives and carriages that had only just been assembled a few days earlier
41:09were loaded directly onto the ferries, ready to go into action.
41:15For the part ferroviaire,
41:17we have built an integrated transport system,
41:20dedicated to the chemin of fer.
41:23We have this image of a barge with 60 homes on board.
41:26We will have the same thing for the locomotives
41:28at a much larger scale.
41:29We have boats dedicated to transport locomotives,
41:33we have boats dedicated to transport trains,
41:34and for that, we have in the south of England,
41:36we have villages that will transform in reserves of materials
41:41with roads on which we stock at the queue leu-leu
41:44of wagons, wagons, wagons,
41:45and other roads where we stock at the locomotives
41:47so that, in the days that follow the landing,
41:50very quickly,
41:51we embark these materials on board of specific boats
41:53and put them into exploitation in Europe.
41:56The American army convoys included boats
41:59which had been developed in New Jersey for commercial purposes
42:02in order to transport military trains
42:05that would be used in the battle of Normandy.
42:09The Allies made use of two sea trains
42:11which left from the port of Southampton.
42:14And so, we have the English ports
42:16which will charge the trains complete,
42:19really,
42:19the wagons per dozen
42:21on board of a single boat
42:22to be able to get in France,
42:24at Cherbourg first and in other ports,
42:26to be able to get immediately on the rails
42:28and go in exploitation.
42:29And so, we have the boats
42:32affected by these uses.
42:34We have, for example,
42:34the ferry boats
42:35which served,
42:36either to use civil
42:39to travel between two ports
42:42in which we have a boat
42:44which extends from the quay to the boat.
42:46We embark the locomotives,
42:47we embark the wagons,
42:48and at the other end,
42:50to arrive at the destination,
42:52the front of the boat opens
42:53and we can discharge these trains
42:55which go directly on the boat.
43:00Right up until the end of the war in May 1945,
43:03American trains set out across the Channel
43:06to guarantee a continuous supply
43:08of troops, food and ammunition.
43:12Operation Overlord was not just June the 6th.
43:14And of course,
43:15you know,
43:15it was the start of nearly a year's fighting.
43:19And lots more people came over
43:22in the days after D-Day
43:23than on D-Day itself.
43:25And one of the things was learnt
43:28that certainly at the time,
43:29without the support of railways,
43:31you could not make sufficient progress.
43:34Without the trains,
43:35nothing would have happened
43:36because there was,
43:37the only way that you could move things
43:38was on the railway.
43:39In short, really,
43:42the railways were crucial,
43:43absolutely crucial
43:44to the success of Operation Overlord,
43:47to the success of the operation of the war.
43:49And without the railways,
43:50as Churchill said,
43:51we couldn't have won the war.
43:53Without the railways,
43:54winning the war was impossible.
43:56From the very outset of Operation Overlord,
44:01trains were at the heart
44:02of the Allied military strategy.
44:05Thanks to the strength of American industry
44:07and the support of the British,
44:09the Allies were able to transport
44:11an unprecedented railway arsenal
44:13to within several kilometres
44:15of the French coast.
44:17The next step was to land
44:18on the Normandy beaches
44:19and write a new page of history,
44:22that of the liberation of France.
44:27and we'd be pleased to find out
44:28on the port of the New York Ooh
44:36in a village,
44:37It's worth it all.
44:38To my friends,
44:38And let's see.
44:38And we'd like us to,
44:39a moment of time
44:39to win the nation's
44:39but now they're slightly
45:03Transcription by CastingWords
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