80th Anniversary of D-Day: Operation Overlord

Day-By-Day Itinerary

DAY 1 Flight to London

Guest travel independently to London on an overnight flight from USA.

DAY 2 London

Arrive in London this morning and check into the hotel, where the entire group will gather for an evening welcome reception. Our historian will treat us to our first lecture, with introductions all around.

DAY 3 London

The morning will feature key sites in London that figured prominently in WWII. We then proceed to the Churchill War Rooms, the underground nerve center for Britain’s war effort. We will also visit the Imperial War Museum, which houses authentic examples of WWII weaponry, tanks, and aircraft, and an exhibit of WWI trench warfare. Free time to enjoy London in the evening.

DAY 4 Portsmouth

Depart London for Bletchley Park where we will visit the center for intelligence gathered and used in the Allied War effort, code name Ultra. Here we will see the bomb, the British device that deciphered German communications and where the team of men and women code-breakers decrypted countless cyphers and messages of the Axis countries during the war.

After Bletchley, our destination is Portsmouth, the seaside town that became the staging center for the D-Day invasion. Here the Allies assembled the armies and equipment for the massive undertaking. Besides the hundreds of thousands of men, there were thousands of armored vehicles and the assemblage of sea vessels: landing craft of all kinds in addition to warships that made up the flotilla for the English Channel crossing. Nearby, General Dwight D. Eisenhower set up the advance command post of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, where he, Naval Commander Ramsay, Army Commander Montgomery and staff would meet to plan the invasion.

DAYS 5-9 Normandy

We will spend days 5-9 in Normandy (five nights) where guests will visit all the key sites mentioned below and attend the official 80th Anniversary of D-Day Ceremonies at the Normandy American Cemetery. 

• Following breakfast, we will board the cross-channel ferry and embark for Normandy as the troops did in 1944. In the afternoon, we will begin our visit to Normandy at Ste-Mere-Eglise, one of the villages where the American Airborne Division descended on D-Day. Here we will view and explore the iconic church where John Steele and his landing on the steeple are memorialized. We also visit La Fiere Bridge where the 82nd Airborne Division successfully delayed a German Panzer counter-attack against the Allied landing forces.

• We will begin “The Longest Day” at Brécourt Manor where Lt. Dick Winters with members of Easy Company successfully silenced German artillery firing on American troops landing at Utah Beach. From there we will visit Utah Beach itself, where the 4th Division landed, and the Invasion Museum that depicts their heroics. Next we will stop at Ste-Marie du Mont where the unique Renaissance-style steeple used as an observation post by the Germans still stands. From there, we will proceed to the town of Carentan where we will follow the exact steps taken by American Paratroopers during the Battle of Normandy.

• There will be a visit to Pointe-du-Hoc, where Rudders’ Rangers scaled the cliffs to neutralize heavy German guns defending the expanse of beaches on D-Day.

• We’ll spend the morning at Omaha Beach where the Americans landed and faced the strongest German resistance of the day and incurred the greatest losses. We will walk the beach and visit some of the German defense fortifications. We explore these sands from the tide’s ebb to the distant dunes to understand the emotions of the young soldiers of the 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions as they approached the “gates of hell.”

• We will pay our respects at the American Cemetery with its 9,387 American soldiers’ graves stretching along the top of the bluff overlooking the beach. In the afternoon we will view the battery at Longues-sur-Mer, a fine example of the great defenses that made up Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. We will proceed along the British Beaches from there to Pegasus Bridge, where the first shots were fired on D-Day. Here the British Sixth Airborne led by Major John Howard with a miraculous glider landing carried out a surprise attack that yielded great success in overtaking this crucial bridge across the Caen Canal.

DAY 10 Paris - CDG

After a final day of visits in Normandy, we drive through the lush, scenic countryside of Normandy and northern France on the way to our final hotel at the CDG airport. Please note that Overlord Elite Group 1 has final night accommodations at a Paris city hotel. Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours can help any guest who would like to book extra nights at a Paris city hotel.

DAY 11 Home

Checkout from the final hotel. Transfers to Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG).