The Magnificent Eleven (D-Day Omaha Beach)

In the gray dawn of June 6, 1944, Robert Capa came ashore in the first wave on Omaha Beach with Company E of the 16th Infantry. Chest-deep in freezing Atlantic surf under devastating German machine gun fire, Capa waded behind tank obstacles, shielding his two Leica III cameras inside waterproof oilcloth bags.

He exposed 106 frames amidst shrapnel and gunfire before boarding an evacuation craft. A darkroom teenager in LIFE's London bureau accidentally melted most emulsions in a drying cabinet; only eleven surviving frames emerged — grainy, trembling, visceral. The blurring only magnified the terror and immediacy of history's greatest amphibious assault.