The Genius Idea Behind "Invasion Stripes"

In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, a massive armada of 7,000 ships carrying 1 million troops from Britain, the United States, Canada, and dozens of other nations crossed the English Channel, bound for Normandy on the coast of France. Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Western Europe, had begun. The largest and most complex amphibious assault ever conducted, Overlord depended on thousands of sub-operations conducted in unison, including aerial bombardments and paratrooper drops carried out by an equally massive armada of over 11,000 aircraft, many of which were painted with distinctive black-and-white stripes on their wings and fuselages. But…why? What purpose did these markings - today so intimately associated with the D-Day landings - actually serve? Author: Gilles Messier Editor/Host: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila 0:00 Intro 2:44 The Problem 8:45 The Stripes Solution

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