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Fascinating and Lesser Known People Who Changed American History

Khalid Elhassan May 5, 2020 33 min

Normandy landings - Operation Overlord — Men of the 320th in Normandy. YouTube

7. The 320^th On D-Day and During the Normandy Campaign

Arriving on Normandy’s beaches alongside the infantry in 150 landing craft, the 320^th Barrage Balloon Battalion became the only American black combat unit to see action on D-Day. Braving enemy fire, they flew and maintained their flammable balloons at an altitude of roughly 200 feet. Tethered to cables, they created a hazardous thicket to discourage the Luftwaffe from strafing the beaches. Their conduct earned them a commendation from Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who cited the 320^th for conducting “its mission with courage and determination” and proving itself “an important element of the air defense team“.

In late July, 1944, part of the battalion moved to the recently liberated port of Cherbourg, while the rest remained in the landing beaches until that autumn. All in all, the black barrage balloon operators spent 140 days in France, before returning to the US, to prepare for the expected invasion of Japan. They had made it as far as Hawaii, when the atomic bomb ended the war.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.