Proposed Airborne Assaults during Operation Overlord: Cancelled Allied Plans in Normandy and Brittany

The airborne landings on D-Day played a significant role in the success of the largest amphibious operation ever mounted. However, Operation Market Garden, the largest airborne operation ever attempted, failed to take all its objectives just over three months later. This book explores a little-known aspect of the Allies landings in France in the summer of 1944, looking at each of these operations in detail and using new research and original planning documents.

Format: Hardback
Length: 296 pages
Publication date: 02 May 2024
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books Ltd

The airborne landings on D-Day played a pivotal role in the success of the largest amphibious operation ever mounted. However, just over three months later, Operation Market Garden, the largest airborne operation ever attempted, failed to take all its objectives. It is noteworthy, however, that in the film A Bridge Too Far, Lieutenant General 'Boy Browning refers to a significant number of canceled operations since D-Day. What were these operations? Why do we know so little about them? And what can they tell us about Allied airborne planning and the way the Allies fought in 1944?

As James Daly reveals, plans were considered or drawn up for a number of ambitious airborne assaults that could have formed part of the Allies' efforts to break out of the beachheads. Of these, three operations, Wastage, Tuxedo, and Wild Oats, might well have been part of the fighting in Normandy itself. Operation Wild Oats, for example, was to see the 1st Airborne Division help capture Caen in conjunction with the British I Corps and XXX Corps. Three others, operations Beneficiary, Hands Up, and Swordhilt, were to be combined airborne and amphibious descents to seize the vitally important ports of St Malo and Brest, as well as the Quiberon Bay area in southern Brittany.

Airborne planning was frenetic and wide-ranging during this period. One operation would have seen gliders landing on a beach; another would have seen the airborne troops taking off without maps. Some of them were months in the planning; others were merely an idea that lasted for a matter of days. Far from being standalone airborne operations, all of them were part of a wider strategy, and several were major combined operations, effectively small-scale D-Days, complete with seaborne landings.

For the first time, this book.

Weight: 470g
Dimension: 243 x 166 x 29 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781399037433