SUB Lieutenant Tony Le Maitre was growing restless aboard Landing Craft Tank (LCT) 977, which was moored off Dartmouth at the beginning of June 1944.

As the ship's 1st Lieutenant, he had for weeks been receiving regularly-updated navigational charts pinpointing his exact route across the Channel. He was also sent precise maps of the beaches of Normandy.

Today, aged 82, he still has these Top Secret documents at his home in Starle Close, Canterbury.

When D-Day dawned, the accuracy of Sub Lt Le Maitre's navigational charts, as well as those with crew aboard all the other ships, would be put to the test.

"What amazes me to this day is the navigation, the sheer organisation, of these ships," he says. "All the secret navigational charts we received were transferred to our Admiralty charts, and that is what the thousands of ships drove by."

The 6,483 vessels carrying more than 130,000 US, Canadian and British troops were set to land on five beaches codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword on June 5.

This vast, top-secret military operation was delayed 24 hours by bad weather and D-Day became June 6.

Sub Lt Le Maitre: "By now all vessels had been moved to Area Z. This was the crucial set-off point, five miles across, on the most southerly tip of the Isle of Wight.

"My craft, LCT 977, was the headquarters ship for the 12th Infantry US Army, carrying about 70 troops plus guns, ambulances and trucks. We set off about midnight. The crossing was probably 80 or 90 miles.

"All ships had their own channels to follow and they kept to the starboard side, like driving on the right hand side of the road. If we didn't, 6,000 ships would be crashing into one another.

"It was traffic control on a vast scale, without gears, without flashing lights, and the astonishing thing in all this, is that the Germans had no idea.

"They thought we'd be coming from Kent and going to Calais.

"We arrived at the American Utah beach at H-Hour 6.30am.

"We LCTs were 400 yards from the beach. Behind us were the Landing Ship Tanks (LSTs) and behind them the big cruisers, heavily bombarding the shore.

"As far as the eye could see in the water were ships; on land, you could see the beach, sand, sand dunes and that was all.

"We were lucky at Utah. There was little opposition and we only had about five or six shots at us.

"But I made crossing after crossing over the next three months and some were awful, like giving people a lift, dropping them off and thinking: 'They'll be dead in 10 minutes.'

"On D-Day, we had about 15 minutes to offload.

"We had to be quick to let the next wave of landing craft come in.

"Those first 36 hours were vital. We knew it was important this was the invasion of Europe."

n The Americans had landed on Utah and Omaha one hour before their British and Canadian Allies in order to take advantage of the high tide.

On Utah beach, in contrast to the disastrous Omaha landing, the Allied objectives were achieved with relative ease.