An Exceptional Archive of D-Day Landing Maps, Operational Orders, and Intelligence Briefings.
Produced for U.S.N. Commander Royal Lovell, Promoted and Decorated for Safely Landing Men and Materials on D-Day.
An exceptional collection of D-Day planning materials entrusted to a Landing Ship, Tank group Commander, with highlights including a complete Neptune Monograph and a set of the April 6th separate maps of the landing beaches.
In addition to these well-known and exceedingly rare artifacts, the archive includes some additional materials with even more restricted distribution lists, including the Operation "Neptune" - Force "L" Operation Order, the definitive orders for the second wave of vessels traveling to Normandy's Eastern Sector on D-Day. These orders are known only in this example. The archive is further supplemented by the report Amphibious Operations - Invasion of Northern France, the very rare Cominch breakdown of the invasion published in October 1944 (as additional landings were being planned in the Pacific and the Low Countries), of which this example is the only one known to come to market. The archive is completed by Commander Royal Lovell's personnel files from the period 1942-1947.
These Top Secret and Bigot classified materials were prepared for Commander Royal Lovell, then Lieutenant Commander Royall Lovell (to be promoted, with backdate, only a week after the landings). He was a career officer who was perhaps best known for composing the third stanza of the Naval Academy's fight song Anchors Aweigh, which is also the Navy's unofficial marching tune. His service on D-Day included leading a group that landed the much-needed armored reinforcements at Mike and Nan sectors on Juno Beach during the second tide of the day. The ships making this follow-up journey were some of the most vulnerable of the crossing, as they oftentimes had to spend the most amount of time in the water due to their heavily loaded nature.
Lovell's group successfully landed their materiel and additional troops in the afternoon or early evening of June 6th, aiding the embattled Canadian soldiers that were making slow progress through Juno Beach. Lovell would be promoted shortly to full commander shortly thereafter and received the Croix de Guerre following the war for his part in the liberation of France.
The Neptune Monograph
The Monograph was the definitive briefing book issued to senior American officers in preparation for the D-Day landings. It included the summation of Allied intelligence on German coastal defenses, most famously with the report's two-sheet maps of Omaha and Utah Beaches.
In the lead-up to Operation Neptune, the code name for the allied landings on the Normandy Coast, several reports, maps, and coastal profiles were prepared for the Allied forces. Perhaps the most comprehensive and detailed of these was the Neptune Monograph, which summarized Allied intelligence with a particular emphasis on the American sector of Omaha and Utah Beaches. The report contained information of the highest sensitivity and bore the distinctive “BIGOT” stamp, the highest level of military security classification. The report was printed and distributed in extremely small numbers.
The official report produced by the Western Task Force following the Normandy invasion says the following about the Monograph:
“An attempt was made to include in one convenient volume, in graphic form as far as practicable, a compendium of the intelligence required by ships and craft…. The Monograph was distributed to forces, groups, ships and craft down to LCT’s. Intelligence in the Monograph was kept up to date by the dissemination of supplementary intelligence to be inserted in the volume. This included corrections to material previously issued, and new intelligence based on photographic interpretations and revisions and additions to the plans for the operation.”
The Monograph was issued under the authority of Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk, Commander of Task Force 122, which represented the huge fleet of landing craft and supporting vessels that would deliver American forces to the beach. Kirk’s role in Operation Neptune was of the utmost importance and the planning, preparation for and execution of the actual amphibious landings at Omaha and Utah Beaches were all his direct responsibility.
O.N.I Appendix VII Annexe A Series Maps
This archive possesses four of the five landing maps issued as Annexe A on April 6th. The lack of the Sword Area map may possibly reflect the fact that this map was less accurate and useful than the others in the set. The Operation Orders document says of a Sword Area beach chartlet that: "Very little information is shown. Sufficient instructions for ships and craft for SWORD are given in the Annexes to this section."
The story for the other four charts is very different - they represent the best mapping of the Normandy coastline that were distributed to officers in April of 1944. They were finalized just four days before officers were alerted to the landings and show intelligence recovered from the Resistance, Allied frogmen, and aerial missions.
This combines to form an extremely detailed map with defenses shown in pink overprint. Dozens of different structures are labeled throughout. Topography of the beaches is indicated and the subsectors are delimited.
Through May and into June, more detailed maps of individual beaches supplemented and corrected these larger maps. However, this was perhaps the most important series of maps to cover all the beaches and presented a definitive supplement to the information presented in the Neptune Monograph. Complete sets of the Annexe maps are of the utmost rarity, with only two known to exist, and a handful of additional examples of the Omaha Area map are known.
Amphibious Operations Invasion of Northern France
Unlike the other reports and charts in the archive, this report was issued following D-Day and represents the Navy's definitive breakdown of the successes and failures of the assault. This report, labeled COMINCH P-006," was produced as part of a series of reports on amphibious assaults and was of particular interest to the Navy as it was ramping up its landings in the southern Pacific.
The report covers everything in regard to the operation - weapons used, the strength and weaknesses of various armored tanks and land ships, logistics, medical evacuations, and much more. The textual report is supplemented by numerous sketches, maps, diagrams, and aerial photos to illustrate the happenings. The progress of various assault forces is discussed and interviews with key officers are transcribed.
Force "L" Operation Order.
This is the command order provided to officers who were part of Force L, destined to land on the beaches during the second tide of D-Day. The report and its amendments cover sailing times, sailing instructions, loading information, signals, codes, and everything else that would have been needed for an LST group flagship to survive a safe and timely transit with its group intact.
Commander Royal Lovell, U.S. Navy
Royal Lovell was born in 1903 as one of four children of Bertha Taylor and Verner Lovell in Fargo, North Dakota. His father, Verner, was a noted judge in Fargo and one of the leading Democrats in the state.
Upon graduation from high school, Lovell entered the Naval Academy in Annapolis. As a midshipman in the class of 1926, he penned the third stanza of the Naval Academy's fight song, Anchors Aweigh. The song had first been composed in 1906 by Charles Zimmermann with lyrics by Alfred Hart Miles, with two stanzas. Lovell's contribution (slightly revised by George D. Lottman) to the song was the only one ever to be adopted into the official version, evidence for Lovell's high standing in the fraternal nature of the 1920s Academy. Lovell's verses read as follows:
Blue of the Seven Seas;
Gold of God's great sun
Let these our colors be Till
All of time be done-n-n-ne,
By Severn shore we learn
Navy's stern call:
Faith, courage, service true
With honor over, honor over all.
Following his graduation from the Naval Academy, there is a gap in his records that persists until the 1930s. At this time, he was stationed in the South Pacific, with service in the Philippines. He continued to serve on various ships and bases for the rest of the decade. In 1941, at the start of the war, he is sent to Pasadena to train at Caltech for an aerological degree, to supplement the meteorological degree he had earlier obtained.
As a result of this training, he was sent to Samoa to serve as an aerological officer, accruing flight time for the next year, and possibly serving as a meteorological officer. In 1943, he is given orders to report to an LST training facility in Norfolk, Virginia, and from there he was sent to participate in the D-Day landings.
During the landings, Lovell was Lieutenant Commander of LST Group 50, composed of LST-138, LST-139, LST-524, LST-527, LST-536, and LST-537. Each transport vessel could hold up to several hundred soldiers, as well as armored vehicles. Of the LSTs that embarked, all safely made it across on the first day, although LST-524 later grounded on June 8th with casualties.
Lovell was evidently successful in the transport, for he was appointed Commander on June 13th, 1944, with back date to before the invasion. He served out the rest of the war in Europe and earned the Croix de Guerre for his role in the liberation.
Following the war, Lovell remained in military service until 1947, when he was discharged for health reasons. In his personnel files, we find several letters exchanged by Lovell that show him to have been an admired commander. Given the addresses which he provides for leave purposes following the war, he remained stationed in southern California. He died in 1985 and is buried at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, in San Diego.
The Assault on Juno Beach
Juno Beach was the central beach entrusted to the Eastern Task Force and invaded primarily by the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division. They were opposed by two battalions of German soldiers, the 716th Infantry Division and the 21st Panzer Division. The objectives of the Allied soldiers were to reach the road between Caen and Bayeux and to capture the Carpiquet Airfield.
The initial bombardment of beach positions proved less than effective at Juno, which led to heavy casualties for the first wave of attackers that landed at 7:35. However, within two hours, the soldiers had cleared most of the positions giving the heaviest fire. The next issue faced at the beach was the sheer amount of men who had been deployed and the inability to evacuate them off of the beach quickly enough.
By mid-afternoon, the initial problems clearing the beachhead had been improved and the additional men provided by follow-up forces, including Follow-Up Force L, but the forces continued to face steep resistance inland. The forces were able to achieve some, but not all objectives and a continuous front with the American sector would not be achieved until the 13th of June.
Complete Contents
Omaha Area - Top Secret
Landing map of Dog and Easy areas, and parts of Charlie and Fox areas. With purple defense overprint updated to 6th April 1944. 28" by 23.75".
Juno Area - Top Secret
Landing map of Mike, Love, and parts of Nan and King areas. With purple defense overprint updated to 6th April 1944. 28.25" by 23.5".
Gold Area - Top Secret
Landing map of King, Jug, and parts of Love and Item areas. With purple defense overprint updated to 6th April 1944. 37.75" by 23.25".
Utah Area - Top Secret
Landing map of Roger, Sugar, Tare, Uncle, and parts of Queen and Victor areas. With purple defense overprint updated to 6th April 1944. 23.5" by 37.5".
Sword Area - Not Present
Amphibious Operations. Invasion of Northern France. Western Task Force. June 1944. Secret. Cominch P-006.
This work bears a Secret designation updated to Confidential with a purple stamp to cover. Stapled to the inside front cover is an errata slip and a downgrade to Confidential designation, the latter dated 1946. Manuscript pencil to front cover reading "10 Copies Rec'd [illegible]." 10 1/4" by 8 1/8".
Collation: [i]; ii - v; [blank]; 1-1 - 1-23; [blank]; 2-1 - 2-28; 3-1 - 3-11; [blank]; 4-1 - 4-28; 5-1 - 5-40; 6-1 - 6-22; 7-1 - 7-4. Complete per "List of Effective Pages."
Top Secret. Operation "Neptune" Force "L" Operation Orders. Short Title: On/East/L. 20th May 1944. Copy No. 217.
The orders bear a range of dates, with the majority from 20th May, 1944, and some later addendums as late as 2nd June 1944. 13 3/8" by 8 3/8".
Top-Secret Bigot. Register No. 388. Neptune Monograph. Prepared by Commander Task Force 122 April 1944.
13 1/8" by 8 3/8". Contents: Page 1-88; Folio A-M.
Commander Lovell, USN Commander LST Group 50
Two sets of army-issued personnel files 12" by 9".
Rarity
The Neptune Monograph is considered the definitive source of pre-landing intelligence. It is here presented with a set of four (of five) landing maps that are the definitive cartographic representations of this knowledge in April of 1944 and are the only set to show all beaches in such detail (later pre-invasion maps, e.g., the six Neptune Bigot Assault Maps of Omaha Beach, may show particular beaches in further detail, but not the whole invasion). We are unaware of any other collection, institutional or otherwise, in which a set of maps coexists with the Neptune Monograph.
We are aware of institutional holdings of the Neptune Monograph at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, the National Archives in Kew, England, and the D-Day Story Museum. We are also aware of a copy in the Grant Verstandig Collection.
OCLC lists holdings of the complete set of five oversized landing maps (including Sword Beach) at the University of Oxford and the National Library of Scotland. We are unaware of any other sets of the maps. Examples of Omaha Area can be located at Texas A&M University, the British Library Reference Collection, and the National Army Museum in London. An example of the Juno Area map resides at the D-Day Story Museum.
We find no other holdings of the Force L Operation Orders through OCLC or related searches.
Examples of the Amphibious Operations Invasion of Northern France may be found at the National Defense University Library, the Navy Department Library, the US Naval Academy, the US Army War College, the Library of the Marine Corps, and the Australian War Memorial. An additional example may be found at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.