Based on his shallow draft boats used by oil workers in the Louisiana swamps, the LCVP (landing craft vehicle personnel) or Higgins boat, was a 30ft x 10ft craft carrying 36 men. Made of plywood, with a metal ramp at the front, it could power up to the sands and let soldiers charge into action. There were many other types used on D-Day but the agility of the LCVP was pivotal. General Dwight D. Eisenhower later said: “If Higgins had not designed and built those LCVPs the whole strategy of the war would have been different.”

Hobart’s Funnies

To combat German defences a whole new wave of fighting machines would be needed.

Major General Percy Hobart, an engineer and commander of the 79th armoured division masterminded them for D-Day.

Nicknamed “Hobart’s Funnies”, his vehicles included swimming tanks, known as Duplex Drive Tanks or “Donald Ducks”.

They were modified Sherman tanks, with an inflatable canvas screen attached and propellers at the back.

The DDs took just 15 minutes to deploy from two miles offshore.

Another innovation, a flame-throwing tank called the Crocodile, had a range of 110 metres and helped clear bunkers.

Flamethrowers known as “Wasps” were also fitted to armoured troop carriers.

The AVRE was an adapted Churchill tank with a mortar to demolish bunkers.

It could also deploy the “Bobbin” – matting to help tanks cross sand.

The “Crab” was a Sherman with a front flail to clear mines.

Going to war in a wooden aircraft

Made mostly out of plywood and fabric, some 867 single-use gliders would be used to deliver soldiers and equipment behind enemy lines on D-Day.

The main glider developed for the task was the Airspeed Horsa, which despite its seemingly flimsy construction, could carry 30 men as well as Jeeps and anti-tank guns.

With no engines, it was virtually silent and its main D-Day success was delivering airborne troops to capture vital canal and river crossings.

Fake Spitfires and blow-up tanks

A huge deception plan called Operation Fortitude tricked the Germans into believing the real invasions would be around Calais and Norway.

It involved the creation of two phantom armies, one in Scotland and the other in South East England. Dummy Spitfires made of collapsible canvas were built and placed on hoax airfields.

Special rubber and inflatable tanks, trucks and artillery were supplied by Shepperton film studios, while huge blow-up dummy landing craft were deployed at ports.

There were fake radio communications as well as decoy lighting to help complete the charade.

Later, intercepted communications would show Hitler was convinced the main invasion would come near Calais.

Dummy paratroopers

Another diversion tactic involved using 500 dummy parachutists, dropped behind enemy lines to confuse German forces and direct them away from the landing beaches.

Nicknamed “Ruperts”, the human-shaped models which were attached to parachutes, were made from hessian cloth filled with straw and sand.

They stood just 3ft high so they could be fitted on to the 40 aircraft to carry them, but when the dolls were in the air against a dark sky it was impossible to tell they weren’t full-sized men.

The Ruperts were dropped in four locations and designed to burst into flames on landing. Known as Operation Titanic it was a success – a whole armoured German division was sent to one drop.

The DIY harbour

To ensure the Allies kept their foothold in Normandy after D-Day, they needed a way of getting supplies to the troops advancing through France.

Rather than capture a port, they built their own – known as Mulberry Harbours. Two prefabricated structures were taken across the Channel and installed at Omaha and Gold Beach.

Costing £40 million, they were made from 210,000 tons of steel and millions of tons of concrete.

Old ships were first sunk as breakwaters then huge concrete caissons and miles of floating piers and roadways put in place.

Over 10 months from D-Day the Gold Beach Mulberry at Arromanches would see 2.5 millon men, 500,000 vehicles and four million tons of supplies unloaded.

Tide predicting machines

The exact times of low and high tide at the landing beaches needed to be known.

The aim was to have it low enough that defensive obstacles could be cleared, but coming in so that the length of time the troops would be out in the open would be minimised.

Despite not being told that the location was Normandy, British oceanographer Dr Arthur Doodson managed to gather enough data to use two of his specially devised tide prediction machines, involving 30 different pulleys and wheels, to work out that June 5-7 would provide the best combination of full moon and tidal flow.

When troops landed it turned out that his predictions were spot on.

Meanwhile, meteorologist Captain James Stagg used rudimentary data from weather stations to correctly advise that the date of the invasion should be delayed by 24 hours to June 6.

The Great Panjandrum

While most of the inventions designed for D-Day worked, there was one spectacular flop.

The so-called Great Panjandrum was designed to combat the strong concrete defences of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall fortifications along the French coast.

A weapon that could smash through them would allow troops landing on the beaches to pour into the gaps and advance.

Britain’s Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development adopted an idea from Wing Commander C.R. Finch-Noyes for a device called The Great Panjandrum.

It involved two 10ft steel wheels propelled up the beach from a landing craft by 70 rockets, joined by a drum containing 1,000 kilos of explosives.

However, when the final prototype was tested on a Devon beach in January 1944, it spun out of control nearly mowing down the generals and official cameraman there to see it perform.

The Panjandrum disintegrated and the project was soon abandoned, though one was recreated in 2009 on the same sands at Westward Ho!, Devon.

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