ough fight, as the soldiers would have to run across open beach while under fire from machine guns, mortars, and artillery. The element of surprise and deception of the enemy would play important roles in the planning of the assault. (Vail 7)
             Although fewer Allied ground troops went ashore on D-Day than on the first day of the earlier invasion of Sicily, the invasion of Normandy was in total history's greatest amphibious operation, involving on the first day 5,000 ships, the largest armada ever assembled; 11,000 aircraft (following months of preliminary bombardment); and approximately 154,000 British, Canadian and American soldiers, including 23,000 arriving by parachute and glider. The invasion also involved a long-range deception plan on a scale the world had never before seen and the clandestine operations of tens of thousands of Allied resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied countries of Western Europe.
             Deception and trickery played a critical role in the allied victory. For months before June 6, the Americans and British had been sending easily de-coded messages between fake armies, making plans for an invasion one hundred miles from the actual one. These mesages told of a huge invasion force consisting of hundreds of thousands of troops, and thousands of tanks. However, radio signals alone couldn't fool the German Recon planes that flew over Britain. If the Germans heard about this great army, but couldn't find it, they wouldn't believe it existed; so false staging areas were set up all around the coast of England. Inflatable tanks, ships, and artillery were set up, along with thousands of tents, to give the impression of a functional army base preparing for an invasion. To top it all off, a dead body was dropped from a ship off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean Sea dressed as a high-ranking British General. He had a briefcase hand-cuffed to his wrist that cont!
             ained fake documents about the inva...