On June 6th, 1944, there was no CNN, no Twitter or Facebook and the task of covering one of the biggest news stories of the century became radio’s challenge. The gargantuan task of reporting the D-Day landings in France [image] lead to the invention of the pool broadcast, where every network’s correspondents filed stories for broadcast across all webs. It was one of the first times that recorded news actualities were allowed to air. Prior to D-Day the networks had policies (and technology) that required news broadcasts to be live.

The CBS coverage of the first 48 hours after D-Day has been preserved and is in circulation among Old Time Radio collectors. In celebration of this historic day, here are three hour-long segments, starting before the official announcement and running through dawn. You’ll hear some amazing accounts by reporters who helped to define radio news for a generation.

CBS D-Day Coverage Part 1
CBS D-Day Coverage Part 2
CBS D-Day Coverage Part 3

Learn more about how radio covered D-Day HERE. And you can follow D-Day as it happened on Twitter.