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I have this in a buffer:
aaa
bbb
ccc
ddd
eee
with the cursor on the first line. I do :execute 'normal! jV/ddd\<CR>y' which I expect should result in the middle three lines yanked. But what actually happens is it just ends up in visual mode on the second line with nothing yanked. What am I doing wrong?
The reason your command doesn't work is <cr> is not automatically expanded. Instead you need to use double quotes and a backslash.
execute "normal! jV/ddd\<CR>y"
Actually you don't really need to bother with visual mode here; what you want can be done using
2,/ddd/y
This means from second line, up till and including search for ddd, yank.
