What is "d-day"

D-day \D-day\ n.

1. (Mil.) the day designated for the beginning of a planned attack by a military force; in communications the day is often otherwise unspecified for security reasons; as, the day before D-day the troops will move into position.

2. 6 June 1944, the day of the landing in France, by troops allied against the Germans in World War II.

   Syn: 6 June 1944.

3. the day for commencement or execution of any elaborate planned activity; -- often used jocosely. [informal]

1918, "date set for the beginning of a military operation," with D as an abbreviation of day; compare H-hour, also from the same military order of Sept. 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. [Field Order No. 8, First Army, A.E.F.] "They designate the day and hour of the operation when the day and hour have not yet been determined, or where secrecy is essential" [U.S. Army Center of Military History Web site]. Now almost exclusively of June 6, 1944.

n. 1 (context historical English) June 6, 1944, the date during World War II when the Allies invaded western Europe. 2 (context figuratively English) The date of any major event planned for the future.

D-Day is a board wargame published by Avalon Hill first in 1961 and later re-released in 1965, 1971, 1977 and 1991.

An operational/strategic simulation of the Western Front between June and September, 1944, the game simulates the invasion by the Allies of France while it was occupied by the Axis Powers. The title references the Normandy Landings in France on 6 June 1944, but it is actually about the campaign to liberate France in World War II, while the invasion itself is a fairly perfunctory affair completed on the first turn.

One unique aspect of the game offers the Allied player the choice of where to invade. Players may (and often do) choose the Normandy beach where the actual invasion took place, but are free to invade at several other alternate locations, including the southern coast of France. The German player has considerable freedom as to where to place his starting pieces, but they do so without knowledge of where the Allied player will invade.

Although other games with much more complexity and realism have since been released, including Avalon Hill's early 1980s Fortress Europa covering roughly the same scale and subject matter, D-Day is still played in part due to its simplicity. Along with Stalingrad and Afrika Korps, it was considered one of the "classic" games released in the 1960s by Avalon Hill, all of which shared a similar move-attack-advance game system.

In the military, D-Day is the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. The best known D-Day is during World War II, on June 6, 1944—the day of the Normandy landings—initiating the Western Allied effort to liberate mainland Europe from Nazi Germany. However, many other invasions and operations had a designated D-Day, both before and after that operation.

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. For a given operation, the same D-Day and H-Hour apply for all units participating in it. When used in combination with numbers, and plus or minus signs, these terms indicate the point of time preceding or following a specific action. Thus, H−3 means 3 hours before H-Hour, and D+3 means 3 days after D-Day. (By extension, H+75 minutes is used for H-Hour plus 1 hour and 15 minutes.) Planning papers for large-scale operations are made up in detail long before specific dates are set. Thus, orders are issued for the various steps to be carried out on the D-Day or H-Hour minus or plus a certain number of days, hours, or minutes. At the appropriate time, a subsequent order is issued that states the actual day and times.

Other days such as A-Day ( Battle of Leyte), L-Day ( Battle of Okinawa) etc. have different meanings for the military.

Other languages have terms equivalent to D-Day such as "Hari H" ( Indonesian),Час Ч ( Russian), Dagen D ( Swedish), ( Slovenian), ( Basque), ( French), ( Irish), Tag X ( German), and ( Romanian). The initial D in D-Day has been given various meanings in the past, while more recently it has obtained the connotation of "Day" itself, thereby creating the phrase "Day-Day", or "Day of Days".

D-Day may refer to:

• Normandy Landings on June 6, 1944
• D-Day (military term)
• D-Day Dodgers, a term for those Allied servicemen who fought in Italy during World War II
• June 12, 2009, the final conversion date of the DTV transition in the United States
• Domino Day
• "D-Day", contemporary name for the Children's Crusade (civil rights) in Birmingham, Alabama
• Decimal Day (15 February 1971), the day the United Kingdom and Ireland decimalised their currencies
• Friday the 13th, when referred to in hexadecimal (i.e. D is hexadecimal for 13)

D-Day is a 2013 Indian action thriller film co-produced by DAR motion pictures and Emmay Entertainment Private Limited. The movie is directed by Nikhil Advani and stars Arjun Rampal, Huma Qureshi, Irrfan Khan, Shruti Haasan and Rishi Kapoor in the prominent roles. The film was released on 19 July 2013 to highly positive reviews.

D-Day is a 2015 South Korean television series that airs on jTBC on Fridays and Saturdays at 20:40 for 20 episodes beginning September 18, 2015.

D-Day is a real-time strategy war-game, that is set during and after the Normandy D-Day landings in 1944. The game features fully rendered 3D viewable from different angles. The player can take control of up to 60 different units, from snipers, to flamethrower units, and can take control of wheeled and tracked units. It is considered a sequel to Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps, which uses the same control system and engine, along with Monte Cristo's 1944:Battle of the Bulge.

The game features single player campaign modes, and a multiplayer mode, consisting of 8 players.

The game was released to coincide with the 60th Anniversary of the actual Normandy Invasion in June 1944.

"D-Day" is an 18-line Irish language poem by Pól Ó Muirí.

The poem concerns the nose-gunner of a B-24 Liberator flying over Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944. He is ag guí Dé/praying to God while holding I bpóca a léine taise tá pictiur/In the damp pocket of his shirt a picture of his lover from the Falls Road, Belfast. Outside Amuigh frid néalta colgacha an flak/though the waspish clouds of flak he hears the sound of the summer breeze and likens it to the wind over the plains of Minnesota back home, sounding like Siosarnach thostach thaibhsí na Sioux/the quiet whispering of the ghosts of the Sioux.