The Press: Bull’s-Eye

Jaws dropped last week as LIFE readers opened their magazines, on the newsstands only three days after Dday. On the second and third pages of the lead invasion article appeared a detailed, double-page panoramic drawing showing great Allied fleets of planes and ships hurtling from England toward a section of the French coast which would have been easily recognizable even without the names identifying its chief cities: LE HAVRE, CAEN, CHERBOURG. Explanation of this astonishing bull’s-eye: LIFE’S editors, knowing no more than any other laymen about where the invasion would strike, had simply chosen what seemed to them a likely spot. Like the seven other drawings in LIFE’S invasion story, this one had been engraved two months ago, laid away at the printers’ to await the fateful flash from England.