[petertheelf]

Greetings All. I am about to start teaching a unit on D-Day in a year 9 History class. Most of the footage I have of the actual landings is very poor qulity and very grainy, and generally uninspiring. I used footage from 1946 quite effectively for the Battle of Britain unit and would like to try the same with D-Day. Is there any campaigns or single missions which include hundreds of ships and landing craft which more or less accurately depicts the landings. I am also looking for missions which invlove the airborne landings, with lots of pretty parachutes and German flak flying everywhere. I have tried searching the M4T site with no luck. If anyone can suggest a mission offhand I would be very grateful for the help.

[Harper]

Forget about IL-2. Go out and rent the movie "The Longest Day" which is a black and white film from the early 1960's. A long list of famous actors are in that movie, not the crap we have today. Show that movie in class. They will actually learn something about June 6th 1944 and what took place that day.

[P/O W. 'Moggy' Cattermole]

afraid to say I haven't seen any dday missions although living in the qmb + it's likely I've not seen them. Definitely "the longest day" for clips or maybe saving private ryan, or band of brothers although I guess those last two may be a bit bloody for yr9's. Didn't stop our history teacher showing them to us though!

[Fisneaky]

see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162344/

[asheshouse]

The Longest Day --- excellent film to portray the full spectrum of D-Day as seen from all sides.
Can't recommend it enough.

Worth reminding them that it was the second landing on mainland Europe by the Western Allies, following the landings in Italy in Sept 1943, and of course the Soviet Army which was still bearing the brunt of the war was moving into Poland from the east.

[Harper]

The Longest Day --- excellent film to portray the full spectrum of D-Day as seen from all sides.
Can't recommend it enough.

Worth reminding them that it was the second landing on mainland Europe by the Western Allies, following the landings in Italy in Sept 1943, and of course the Soviet Army which was still bearing the brunt of the war was moving into Poland from the east.

Use the movie "The Longest Day" to protray the D-Day landings. Any more recent movies about Private Ryan and Band Of Brothers are rated "R" movies anyways. Way too graphic as well as violent. The Longest Day atleast doesn't go down that road like todays Hollywood. Anything else doesn't matter. D-Day was about the efforts to liberate Western Europe by the French, British, Canadians and the US. The Russians had no role in what took place in France nor in Italy.

[P/O W. 'Moggy' Cattermole]

Aside from drawing away vast amounts of manpower to the eastern front...

Like I said, being 15's as they are over in the UK was no deterrant to our teacher showing those to us at the dday part of the course.

[Fireskull]

Good day,

Many links are at this website with D-Day Normandy images:

http://history1900s.about.com/library/p ... exdday.htm


Also look on YouTube. Your class will remember that one! There are thousands of D-Day Normandy stills and videos on YouTube.

[asheshouse]

D-Day was about the efforts to liberate Western Europe by the French, British, Canadians and the US. The Russians had no role in what took place in France nor in Italy.

As Moggy has noted, if the bulk of the German army had not been committed to the eastern front it is debatable whether the D-Day landings would have been successful without a massive increase in resources. So the Russians had a big role in creating the right strategic environment to make D-Day possible. To increase resources in Europe might have required the US to scale back operations in the Pacific where major amphibious operations were proceeding at the same time.

In their turn the Western Allies drew away significant German resources from the Eastern Front easing the task of the Soviet forces from 1943 onwards.

Ashe

[StarGazer]

You can also find more personal footage from "Band of Brothers" and "Saving Private Ryan". These two will bring to a lesson the personal sacrifices that will complement general archival footage which shows much of the invasion at a distance.

I remember in highschool history being places and dates and events to remember. The personal issues combined with social, political, art and literature and other historical events finally made history jump out at me as it all started to make sense and become a trail of our human identity leading to the present - and I majored in it in the end.

Cheers,

[katdog5]

Greetings All. I am about to start teaching a unit on D-Day in a year 9 History class. Most of the footage I have of the actual landings is very poor qulity and very grainy, and generally uninspiring. I used footage from 1946 quite effectively for the Battle of Britain unit and would like to try the same with D-Day. Is there any campaigns or single missions which include hundreds of ships and landing craft which more or less accurately depicts the landings. I am also looking for missions which invlove the airborne landings, with lots of pretty parachutes and German flak flying everywhere. I have tried searching the M4T site with no luck. If anyone can suggest a mission offhand I would be very grateful for the help.

There is a pretty good german based mission (110s and 109s maybe) where youre ripping c47s out of the sky at night over an airfield in normandy area with tracers everywhere and parachutes....cant recall the name tho
Also, if I remember correctly either Medal of Honor Airborne or Brothers in arms has a very spectacular opening to the game just like youre looking for...im leaning towards brother in arms road to hill 30: see it here:


http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1595597/br...30_part_1/

[aj906]

Worth reminding them that it was the second landing on mainland Europe by the Western Allies, following the landings in Italy in Sept 1943,

Ummmm...aren't you forgetting Dieppe and Op. Chariot to name two others? D-Day relied on a lot of intelligence gathered from the Dieppe landings, so without that fiasco, D-Day would have been going in a lot more "blind" than it already did.

D-Day was about the efforts to liberate Western Europe by the French, British, Canadians and the US.

...And Australians and New Zealanders who were used in the first waves at D-Day. Or how about the Allies of all nations who overflew the battlefield in the lead up to, during and after the landings. It was a joint effort by the Allies, not specific nations.

Back to the original question, as a teacher myself, get your hands on a copy of Antony Beevor's D-Day: http://www.amazon.co.uk/D-Day-Battle-Nor...067088703X as there are some good sections you could use with the class.

Also, I took my class down the back oval near a hill. Stood 1/4 at the top of a hill with a load of squishy balls from the gym, and the other 3/4 had to run from a set distance to the top of the hill with school bags on and not get hit by the flying balls. Then rotated so everyone got a go. The further you got up the hill before 'dying' was rewarded with various things to give the kids an incentive not to 'get hit'. (Otherwise, "dying" means nothing to them.) Made the cncept of storming a defended position more real for them and gave them a kick out of "doing" history. Though, whether you can do that depends on the calibre of kid you have in the class and whether the school/parent body would be okay with something like that.

[asheshouse]

Dieppe and Operation Chariot were only raids not intended to establish a permanent foothold, unlike the Italy landings and D-Day. I would agree about the lessons learnt from Dieppe. They undoubtedly saved a lot of lives on D-Day.

[petertheelf]

Thaks to all of you who have replied to this post with excellent suggestions and comments. It looks like "The Longest Day' is the most popular, but the 'Brothers n Arms" and 'Medal of Honor" suggestion from catdog 5 was an excellent idea. I am going to assemble a montage of footage from the various films, and games into a proper sequence.

Using game footage is very odd for a lot of schools, however is one avenue which has not really been explored by educators properly. the idea is to treat the material critically as a text, and then get the students to decide if they are an accurate portrayal of events or not, by comparing them with other sources. One thing that is clear, is that the games, particularly 1946, can be used as an educational tool, and computer simulations are overlooked by most teachers.

Thanks again to all who contributed. It is a credit to this community that you support requests like this with such enthusiasm.

[Fireskull]

Remember, "Band of Brothers" has fantastic Normandy images, too. :wink: The 101st Airborne Division which parachuted into Normandy is featured in this motion picture series. The opening episodes have a bunch of amazing scenes.

Stephen Ambrose who was a critically acclaimed World War Two historian wrote the book upon which the movie was based. "Band of Brothers" was created by the same production team as "Saving Private Ryan". The weapons used in the filming were all 100% authentic WW2 weaponry.