Cotentin Peninsula

Early in the war Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, faced with grievous losses in the great encirclements of 1941, was agitating for a second front in continental Europe. The war in North Africa was not enough.

At 12:05 AM on June 6, 1944, three gliders carrying an element of the British 6th Airborne Division silently cut loose form the their tow planes and drifted towards the Pegasus Bridge, one of the few bridges that led over the Seine towards Normandy.

The Allies succeeded in landing on the coast of France, despite a tenuous hold on the center of their lines. If the German command structure allowed for independent action, they might not have stayed.