D-Day Museums

October 29^th, 2025

My first real night in Octi (I did spend one night in the van at my aunt’s place) was very comfy and I was surprised at how dark the inside was in the morning.  My curtains and window shades do a great job…almost too good, I think I’ll have to set an alarm every day, so I don’t miss half of the morning!

 

After some breakfast I wandered the 100 meters to the Utah Beach Landing Museum just before 10 am, when it was supposed to open.

  

Looking south from Utah Beach.

Some one horse "shays" (little two-wheeled carriages) enjoying the early morning calm sea.

A panorama of the beach:

A few tour guides were already in action outside of the museum with their clients, explaining more details about one of the statues, or a nearby coffee shop’s wall which was a remnant from the war.  I walked up to the automatic door of the museum a few minutes after 10 but it didn’t open.  Peering through the window, I noticed a man inside behind the ticket counter but figured they were a little late opening the place, but then an older couple walked up to the glass door and it opened up…I guess I just didn’t get there close enough.

The Utah Beach Museum.

I bet the soldiers would have liked to land this far up the beach...they actually had 700 yards to cover before they could reach the protection of an anti-tank wall.

It was a decent museum, and as usual, I started off looking at every exhibit, reading almost everything…but as the visit and day wore on, one tends to get “museumed” out and start skipping stuff.

The first thing I saw in the museum...it was called the Goliath.  It was a Nazi weapon which was an electric or gas powered remote controlled mini-tank filled with explosives to blow up enemy tanks.  I had no idea that they used these and the video showed that they looked quite effective.

All of the classic Nazi stuff...the flag, the uniform, the Luger...

Massive binoculars used to search for incoming Allied ships and planes.  Considered the best binos in the world at the time.

I thought this was cool.  It's a little parachute that had a homing pigeon in the little canister for French resistance fighters to send back info about the German's defences.

These were the instructions that accompanied the little feathered messenger.

A B-26 Marauder, a medium sized bomber that saw a lot of action in WWII.  The early models were known as "Widowmakers" as they had terrible handling on takeoff and landing which resulted in many accidents.  The US produced over 5000 of them between 1941 and 1945.

Part of the museum that looks out onto the beach.

I spent almost 2 hours in the museum and after returning to Octi, I decided to head to the D-Day Experience museum which boasts a flight simulator and 3-D cinema along with its museum which was spread across a few buildings.  I was concerned that the simulator and 3-D film might be booked up for the day but luckily when I showed up, there was still space.

With a bit of time to kill, I started at the small museum which was in a former house on a corner which had the words “Dead Man’s Corner” painted in large letters on the outside.  The Germans had commandeered the house before the D-Day landings and as the Allies advanced, an American tank had been hit right beside it.  A few of the soldiers had been incinerated inside but the dead tank commander was half hanging out the top of the turret and sadly was left there for several days.  Soldiers on both sides had more important tasks to deal with at the time.  Allied soldiers who were trying to get their bearings were often told “Just turn left at the corner with the dead man.”  And that later morphed into “Dead Man’s Corner”. 

Dead Man's Corner.

The museum inside the house had a number of dioramas and the main floor gave you an idea of what it would have been like when it was occupied by the Nazis.

The top officer in the command post.

Another room had been turned into a makeshift hospital.

Various types of explosives and a few detonators.

A German rocket launcher called a Panzerfaust.  I remember shooting these in some video games when I was a kid.

RTFM!  Look up that acronym if you don't know it.

A few of these fold-up bicycles were dropped from Allied planes to enable communications officers a faster way to get around.

I thought this was odd, or at least different and something I hadn't seen before.  This was the "gift shop" where you could buy actual items from the war:  knives, maps, uniforms, flags...you name it, it was probably there.

Would you like a big knife for 300-400 Euros?

How about some chewing gum for 55 Euros?!?

You could even buy a parachute!  2750 Euros...quite a lot more than the parachutes I sell in my paragliding business, and probably not as soft of a landing plus it probably weighs a ton.

Look at all the stuff on sale.

At 1pm, it was time for me to go to the simulator.  At first, our group sat down in a briefing room where a holographic image of a sergeant gave us a run down of what was at stake… “The Liberty of the World”!  Next, we filed into a large, darkly lit, hangar where a C-47 Skytrain plane was situated and then climbed aboard.

I should have taken a photo from the back of the plane, as we entered the simulator, but here's one from the front, after we crash landed.

Inside were basic seats, with no backs, lining both sides of the cabin.  We sat down, put on our seatbelts and prepared for takeoff.  The windows were replaced with TV screens, each of which were showing something different of the “outside” and it really did give you the feeling that you were sitting in a plane on a busy tarmac.

Looking out the "window" before takeoff.

The attendant made sure we were all buckled in.

We began to taxi to the runway and then promptly took off.  The fuselage did tilt from side to side and front to back to simulate the aircraft flying.  It did a decent job, but of course it couldn’t provide the G forces to give it a true feeling of flying.

Preparing for takeoff.

Taxiing to the runway.

Just after taking flight.

Very quickly we were flying over France with flak from the German guns below causing the plane to shudder.  The odd Allied plane we could see out of the “windows” was hit…followed shortly by our aircraft.  We began to plummet towards the earth and skidded into a field where the plane caught fire…and then the lights came on, the simulation was over, and we exited the aircraft.  All in all, it wasn’t bad.  I couldn’t imagine what the real paratroopers on D-Day must have experienced!

Entering enemy territory.

Heavy flak, just before we crash landed.

Looking back into the plane after the simulation.

After a bit more perusing of the museum in that building, it was time to watch the 50-minute-long 3D movie about the Utah landings.  It was a decent movie, and I think the last time I wore 3D glasses in a theatre might have been when I watched the first Avatar movie back in 2009 with my dad!

These were actual military jackets of somewhat famous soldiers.  The text below each garment said "I'm the jacket of so and so..."  Some of them were quite proud of their owners.

This American soldier has a crazy close call.  You can see the hole in the outer shell of his helmet on the right of a bullet that grazed his head.  It even damaged the helmet liner on the bottom, and the red hot bullet ended up under his uniform and was burning him until another soldier dug it out!

Yet another war diorama...but a pretty big and impressive one.

Jubilant Yankee soldiers who had captured a Nazi flag.

Originally, I thought I would go for the museum trifecta and visit the Airborne Museum in Sainte-Mère-Église, the town where the majority of the 13,000 paratroopers were supposed to land (many landed in the wrong spot), but I was done.  It was a good day…and I decided to head towards Mont Saint-Michel, which was my activity for tomorrow.