About a month before the Allied invasion of a 50-mile stretch of beaches in Normandy, France, Leonard Zerlin, then a 20-year-old B-26 turret gunner in the U.S. Army Air Corps, had a sense something major was coming.
Based in Bournemouth, England, he and a crew of five were among a squadron flying 38 planes for the 9th Air Force Bombardment Group, and all communication in or out of the base had been restricted. From atop a control tower he had already spied tons of equipment being amassed: Jeeps, trucks and tanks “as far as the eye could see.”
On June 6, 1944, at 2:30 a.m., there was no question, he said, something massive was underway.
“The 1st sergeant comes barreling into our barracks with paint cans,” the 100-year-old veteran from Thousand Oaks recalled this week just days ahead of the 80th anniversary of the Normandy D-Day invasion. “It was like a Hollywood set. The lights were on all of the planes and we were told to paint black and white stripes on the wings, fuselages and tails of each one. Every single plane on D-Day had stripes to reduce the risk of friendly fire.”
After painting, the crews were called into a briefing and discussed strategies they had trained on for more than a year. At 6:30 a.m., they were heading across the English Channel toward Omaha and Utah beaches.
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Flying low, between 5,000 to 8,000 feet, the small six-man B-26 Marauder bombed the beaches.
“We knew Gen. (Erwin) Rommel was visiting his wife for her birthday, and there wouldn’t be tanks,” Zerlin said, referring to the German general in charge of Germany’s defense of Northern France against the Allies. “We knew every obstacle on the beach.
“We strafed it until the ammo ran out,” he said. “We dropped six bombs, incendiary devices and delayed-action bombs.”
“The Germans had prepared for four years for the invasion,” Zerlin said, adding that they flew across the…
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