What does D-day mean? Some say it stands for nothing? Some say destiny day or for the nazi regime doomsday and I say it satnds for the date on which any operation was due to begin.H-hour was the precise time of day that it was to start. The term allowed stratigests to talk about their plan before they knew exactly when it was to be carried out. So d+1 meant the second day of the operation, whenever that might turn out to be; H+120 meant two hours after the off. In yer opinnion what does it mean?
If I may put my profesional hard hat on, in planning terms it's quite common to draft a schedule in terms of "d"s and "h"s. For instance, you may want to draft a schedule starting on day "D": D-2 : depart from port D - arrive at beach and disembark D+1 - reach objective nr. 1 D+3 - reach objective nr. 2 etc, etc This way you can set up an entire schedule keeping the base date (D-day) variable, to allow for weather, tides, political decisions whatever. When at a point you arrive at a decision for D-day, say June 6th, then it's easy to add days to the base date and you have your calendar.
D-Day = Demarkation Day... Every operation had this designation, for instance the breakout from the Anzio beachead had a D-Day...As did Operation Dragoon (Southern France invasion). Etc...etc...etc..
I've heard a couple version of this. First version I've heard is that the D is really just a designation with no particular meaning. Second I have heard the D stands for Disembarck. Third, from a combat man's perspective, they were known to refer to it as "dooms day."
Every so often this old chestnut turns up. Rodi is absolutely spot on. The ‘D’ in D-Day does not represent any word, when assigned a date it advise people on which day an operation will take place. Similarly, H-Hour when assigned a time advise the exact time the event is scheduled. The military therefore give every operation a D-Day and H-Hour, with a plus and minus schedule so everyone knows what is supposed to happen and when. Still think the ‘D’ stands for something? OK, the French military use J-Jour…….hmm No.9
Yes, Za is correct. The terms D-Day and H-Hour were first used by the Americans in WWI. In Field Order Number 9, First Army, American Expeditionary Forces, dated September 7, 1918: "The First Army will attack at H hour on D day with the object of forcing the evacuation of the St. Mihiel Salient." The terms D-day and H-hour are used for the day and hour on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. They designate the day and hour of the operation when the day and hour have not yet been determined, or where secrecy is essential.
Of course I'm correct! I earn my life making up D-Days and H-Hours so I should know what the heck I'm talking about! Once again you can do a plan starting on a notional start date even if you don't know exactly when that date will be. For convenience you or your software calls this start date D-Day and then adds days to that (D+1, D+2 ... D+120 ... ad infinitum). No software back then but the principle was fine so we keep using it (many a Gantt and PERT chart did I do by hand!). When you do decide that your project's start date will be say June 6th then your D-Day will be converted into this June 6th, D+1 will become Jun 7th, D+10 will be Jun 16th and so on. Pretty convenient, really.
