At 4:15 AM on June 5, 1944, Allied Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the order to attack. The landing troops were scheduled to storm the 5 beaches of Normandy one by one, beginning at 6:30 AM on June 6.
According to Lam’s diary, HMS Ramillies begun steaming toward Sword Beach, Normandy in the early hours of June 6. The ship engaged in a fierce exchange of fire with German forces on shore, cleared the way for the landing troops that would followed.
Along the Normandy coast, Nazi Germany had a defensive line known as the Atlantic Wall. Lam’s mission was to bombard these gun emplacements, providing cover for the landing forces.
A torpedo that narrowly missed the HMS Ramillies ultimately struck another Allied vessel from Norway—the HNoMS Svenner. It was the only Allied ship sunk by German forces in the early hours of D-Day, claiming the lives of 33 crew members.
Comments
D-Day resulted in 10,300 Allied casualties
The top ten bloodiest single battles and sieges of the WW2,
ranked by estimated total casualties (military and civilian)
Battle of Stalingrad (1942–1943): 1.8–2.5 million
Siege of Leningrad (1941–1944): 1.15–1.5 million
Battle of Berlin (1945): ~1.28 million
Battle of Moscow (1941–1942): ~1 million
Battle of Kursk (1943): ~1 million
Battle of Shanghai (1937): ~300,000 casualties
Battle of Okinawa (1945): 150,000–300,000 casualties
Battle of France (1940): ~469,000 casualties
Battle of Luzon (1945): ~332,000 casualties
Battle of the Bulge (1944–1945): –400,000 casualties
Lam Ping-yu diary is now kept in the Chinese University of Hong Kong library.