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D-Day: the spearhead of the invasion
Hours before the assault on Normandy’s beaches got under way, British airborne troops launched an attack on targets in the French countryside. At stake, writes Saul David, was the success of the entire D-Day landings.
- Saul David
Published: June 3, 2025 at 5:03 PM
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The 28 men of D Company, 2nd Ox and Bucks Light Infantry sat in silence. As the huge plywood and steel glider – 67 feet in length and with a wingspan of 88 feet – began its final descent to the target, all that could be heard was air swishing down the fuselage and the co-pilot, John Ainsworth, counting down the seconds on his stopwatch, lit by a small hand-held lamp.
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Ainsworth then instructed pilot Jim Wallwork to turn 90 degrees to starboard. The second of these turns brought the glider on to a northerly heading. Directly ahead, clearly visible by moonlight, was the familiar outline of the Caen Canal Bridge that the pilots knew so well from the detailed model.
The five sappers and 23 officers and men seated behind the pilots were lost in their thoughts, each man contemplating what was to come and those he had left behind. Major John Howard had visions of his wife, Joy, and two children sleeping peacefully in their beds in Oxford. He could feel the small lump in his tunic’s breast pocket where he had placed one of his son’s first pairs of red leather shoes. Out of the open door he could see the river Orne and knew they were on course.
With the glider losing height rapidly, and rocking from side to side, Ainsworth yelled: “Hold tight!”
It was the signal for the men to adopt the brace position by linking arms and lifting their legs off the floor. Gripping their weapons tightly, the men tensed their bodies for impact. “I gritted my teeth,” recalled Howard, “and tried to pray but all I could think was ‘Please God, please God’ as we came in to land with a terrific crash, a splintering noise and sparks flying past outside the doorway.”
Skidding and bouncing twice on the uneven ground, the glider lost its wheels and landed on its metal skids at 80 miles per hour. Howard thought they were under fire, but in fact the flashes were just caused by the skids striking the stony ground. With a final roar, the glider came to a juddering halt with its nose through the bridge’s barbed wire defences, just as Howard had requested.
It was 12.16am on Tuesday 6 June 1944, and the D-Day landings had begun.
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Howard’s glider was the vanguard of Operation Tonga, the British airborne component of Operation Overlord, the long-awaited Allied plan to use 5,300 ships and 12,000 aircraft to land or drop 150,000 men and 1,500 tanks on or behind five beaches in Normandy. Tonga required the insertion of 8,500 glider-borne infantry and paratroopers from the 6th Airborne Division on the eastern flank of the D-Day beachhead. At the same time, 13,000 men of the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions would secure the western flank.
The 6th Airborne had four key objectives: to secure intact and hold two road bridges over the Caen canal and Orne river; to neutralise an enemy artillery battery at Merville near the coast; to secure a bridgehead between the rivers Orne and Dives; and to prevent enemy reinforcements (including panzer units) moving towards the British left flank from the east and south-east.
The first task – given to the 180 sappers and men of Howard’s D Company – was arguably the most important. They would land in six Horsa gliders at around midnight and capture the two bridges. Their possession was vital, not only to defend the eastern flank of the D-Day beachhead from a German counterattack, but also to allow an Allied breakout once the landings were secure. On the outcome of this single mission might the success or failure of the whole Normandy invasion depend.
Precious resources
Almost exactly four years earlier – in June 1940 – in the wake of defeat in Belgium and France, and the miracle of the Dunkirk evacuation, Winston Churchill had called for the raising of “parachute troops on a scale equal to 5,000” as one way of taking the fight to Nazi Germany’s ‘Fortress Europe’. It took years to get anywhere near that number.
This was largely because the RAF, fixated on strategic bombing, was unwilling to divert more than a few of its precious resources to the training and transporting of paratroopers and glider-borne troops who were mostly recruited from the British Army.
But Churchill’s unwavering fervour, and the single-minded determination of key pioneers like Louis Strange, John Rock, Eric Down, Richard ‘Windy’ Gale and Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning, meant that the size and scope of airborne operations became increasingly ambitious.
Major General ‘Windy’ Gale with men of the 5th Parachute Brigade at RAF Harwell in the hours before Operation Tonga. The success of the operation was pivotal to the entire campaign. (Photo from Alamy)
Handicapped during its early years by inter-service rivalry and a chronic lack of suitable aircraft and equipment, Britain’s airborne force gradually expanded from a single battalion of 500 men to three 10,000-strong airborne divisions: the 1st, 6th and 44th Indian, each composed of parachutists and glider-borne troops.
Wearing their distinctive maroon berets, steel helmets and Dennison smocks, the ‘Red Devils’ served with distinction in every major theatre of the conflict, including north Africa, Sicily, mainland Europe and the far east. They would play a starring role in some of the most iconic airborne operations in history: the Bruneval Raid of February 1942; the capture of the Primasole and Arnhem Bridges in July 1943 and September 1944 respectively; and Operation Varsity, the largest single-day airborne operation in history, near Wesel in Germany in March 1945.
Early missions were dogged by poorly trained pilots, the wrong type of aircraft, ill-chosen landing zones, overly optimistic objectives and inadequate planning and faulty intelligence. Despite these missteps, airborne troops proved their worth in an impressive number of roles, from small-scale raids and fighting like traditional infantry, to their favoured option: dropping behind enemy lines to secure vital ground and infrastructure in conjunction with a ground offensive. It was in this final capacity that Britain’s airborne force was expected to make a vital contribution to Allied victory on D-Day.
Men of the 6th Airborne Division receive a briefing ahead of Operation Tonga. These troops were specialists in landing behind enemy lines and securing vital infrastructure. (Photo from Alamy)
The man tasked with capturing the two bridges on 6 June 1944 was 31-year-old Major John Howard, born in a tiny two-up, two- down house in Camden, north London, in December 1912, the eldest of nine children. He was “proud of having come up from the ranks to achieve his position”, noted one of his men, “having once been an Oxford City Police sergeant, and he took his responsibilities very seriously indeed”. This meant that his company “had to be the best at everything, be it sport, marches, field exercises or physical and endurance training”. And it was.
On 15 April 1944, shortly after taking part in a full-scale divisional exercise, Howard was told by his commanding officer: “Your company will be the spearhead for the invasion... I feel absolutely confident that you will be able to pull it off.”
Over the next month, Howard worked tirelessly to fine-tune his plan: studying intelligence reports, maps, aerial photographs and a detailed model of the two bridges, which was constantly updated. He decided to target each bridge with three gliders, each carrying a platoon of men.
The first platoon would pierce the enemy defences, race across the bridge and take out any opposition on the far side. The second platoon would mop up the inner defences, while the third, if it arrived safely, would help whichever platoon was most in need. The sappers were to go straight for the chambers on the bridge holding the explosive (placed there in case the Germans wanted to demolish the structure), “cut wires, de-prime and remove it”.
Drilled to destruction
The last-minute training for the operation involved the ‘capture’ of two similar crossings in Devon. Howard worked his men until they ached, insisting that every platoon practised each of the jobs, “so that no matter who landed where and in what order, they would all automatically know what to do”.
So it proved on 6 June. Briefly knocked unconscious by the impact of the landing, Howard opened his eyes to see “the smashed doorway, the air full of dust, the holes torn in the side of the glider”. Up front the pilots were “groaning in the smashed cockpit”.
The glider that bore Major Howard and his men to Pegasus bridge, pictured on 8 June 1944. The glider’s crash landing into the bridge’s barbed wire defences signalled the start of D-Day. (Photo from Alamy)
Wrenching off his safety harness and grabbing his Sten gun, Howard rolled head-first out of the broken doorway. Directly ahead, barely 50 feet away, stood the large water tower on the east side of the canal bridge (later dubbed ‘Pegasus’ Bridge after the division’s winged-horse shoulder flash). The pilots had clearly done a marvellous job. Turning to the platoon commander, Lieutenant Den Brotheridge, Howard said: “Get cracking with your first section.”
In his rich Brummie accent, Brotheridge shouted “Come on lads!” and started running towards the bridge with his platoon in close pursuit. They were spotted by a lone German sentry on the bridge who fired a white ‘Very’ light which made him the target of multiple Sten guns.
While one section peeled off to deal with a pillbox, Brotheridge led the charge across the bridge, “firing from the hip as he went”. Private Denis Edwards remembered: “As we neared the far side of the bridge, still shouting, firing our weapons and lobbing hand grenades, the Germans jumped to their feet and ran for their lives, scattering in all directions. Relief, exhilaration, incredulity – I experienced all these feelings upon realising that we had taken the bridge.”
British troops cross Pegasus bridge on 9 June. Two Horsa gliders are visible in the background. (Photo from PA Images / Alamy)
There were two fatalities: Brotheridge, who had been shot in the throat and mortally wounded; and a lance corporal who was knocked unconscious and drowned when the third glider landed in a pond. Numerous other casualties left Howard, within a few minutes of landing, with only one officer left, and that was, recalled Howard, “Sandy Smith, who only had the use of one arm”.
Meanwhile, thanks to a navigational error, only two of three gliders had landed near the neighbouring road bridge over the river Orne, half a mile away. But there was little opposition and the reduced force was able to capture the bridge after destroying a machine gun post with a mortar round. When Howard got the news, he told his radio operator to tap out the success signal, “Ham and Jam!”
The Red Devils had captured both bridges intact; now they had to hold on to them. The first counterattack was by German armoured vehicles of Panzerjäger Battalion 716, which approached the canal bridge from the west. The only anti-tank weapon possessed by Howard’s men was a hand-held PIAT – its 21⁄2-pound projectile capable of penetrating 4 inches of armour – with an effective range of only 50 yards.
Lying beside the road, Sergeant Charles ‘Wagga’ Thornton was “shaking like a leaf” as he lined up his PIAT’s sights on the lead vehicle. Knowing he would not have time to reload, he waited until the black shape was just 30 yards away before squeezing the trigger. The armoured halftrack exploded “with a mighty bang”, followed by more “deafening cracks and thuds” as its load of ammunition ignited.
Fearing the defenders of the bridge were armed with formidable 6-pounder anti-tank guns, the Germans withdrew. This gave the relieving troops of the 7th Parachute Battalion time to reach both bridges, though they were 90 minutes behind schedule and down to a quarter of their strength because many had been blown off course or dropped in the wrong place.
For the next 12 hours, the men of 7 Para – including a young Lieutenant Richard Todd, the future film star – fought off a series of vicious German counterattacks from the west. They, and the rest of the 3rd and 5th Parachute Brigades – also much reduced in fighting capacity – were fortunate that the 110 tanks and two panzergrenadier regiments of the veteran 21st Panzer Division, stationed nearby, were not given the order to fight back until 8am, by which time it was too late.
Elsewhere, the men of Major Terence Otway’s 9th Parachute Battalion – reduced by mishaps to just a quarter of its size – had stormed and put out of action the four guns of the Merville Battery near the coast. “It was,” read the divisional report, “a disappointment to the battalion to find that the guns were of 75mm [calibre] only, and these were destroyed by Gammon bombs. It does not detract however from a magnificent feat of arms, and a display of absolute determination to overcome all handicaps.”
Whole ground shaking
As the sun rose on the morning of 6 June, just a few miles from the captured bridges and battery, the greatest amphibious assault in history was gathering momentum. At 5.30am, the British battleships Warspite and Ramillies began the Allied naval bombardment of the Germans’ coastal defences. “It was as though you could feel the whole ground shaking towards the coast,” recalled John Howard.
What Howard and his colleagues had achieved that morning was critical to the success of the D-Day landings. If Operation Tonga had failed, and the Germans had been able to retake the bridges, there might have been two immediate consequences: the isolation and destruction of the bulk of 6th Airborne Division east of the river Orne; and an armoured counterattack by the whole of the 21st Panzer Division against the eastern flank of the five D-Day landing beaches. Such an assault would have caused untold casual- ties and threatened the very success of the invasion itself.
But Tonga did not fail. Despite the inaccuracy of the drops (thanks to damaged Eureka radar sets, not enough Pathfinder teams, poorly trained aircraft crews and adverse weather), the 6th Airborne Division achieved all four main tasks set for it on D-Day. Over the next 10 weeks, the division was able to consolidate the bridgehead east of the Orne and beat off repeated enemy attacks.
British airborne troops pictured in Normandy on 6 June 1944. These soldiers would be called on to fight off repeated German counterattacks. (Photo from Alamy)
On 18 August 1944, the division crossed the Dives Canal – as part of the Allied breakout from the Normandy bridgehead – and by the 27th had captured Pont Audemer on the river Risle, just 10 miles from the Seine. It had, recalled Terence Otway, advanced 45 miles in nine days, “largely on foot against heavy enemy opposition and through difficult country”.
High praise indeed Lieutenant General Harry Crerar, commanding the First Canadian Army, congratulated Major General ‘Windy’ Gale on the “immense contribution” his division had made during the recent fighting, particularly the impressive “determination and speed with which his troops have pressed on in spite of all enemy efforts to the contrary”. By the time it re-embarked for England in early September, to prepare for its next big airborne operation, the division had lost 4,457 men: 821 killed, 2,709 wounded and 927 missing.
But it is for its valiant efforts on D-Day, and not the Normandy campaign as a whole, that the previously un-blooded 6th Airborne will forever be remembered. “It is doubtful,” noted a British newspaper report of 22 June, “whether there has ever been a body of troops who have been brought to a higher pitch of physical fitness, self-reliance and fighting skill. The gallant deeds of that magnificent division made history... As General Montgomery said yesterday: ‘The men of that division who died did not die in vain.”’
From left, Major John Howard (1912-1999) and Captain David Wood (1923-2009) of the 6th Airborne Division of the British Army stand beside the Pegasus Bridge over the Caen Canal during a first anniversary visit to World War II battlefields in Normandy, France on 29th June 1946. Major Howard and Captain Wood of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry led a glider-borne assault to capture the Caen Canal and Orne River bridges on D-Day, 6th June 1944. (Photo by James Jarche/Popperfoto via Getty Images)
Taking the fight to fortress Europe
Five more British airborne operations that shaped the course of the Second World War
Operation Colossus, 10–12 February 1941: X Troop explodes into action
The first British airborne operation of the war, Colossus tasked 36 officers and men of X Troop, 11th Special Air Service (later 1st Parachute) Battalion with parachuting into southern Italy and blowing up the Tragino aqueduct that provided water for the whole province of Apulia. They succeeded, though all 36 were captured as they tried to escape (and one, an Italian, was shot as a traitor).
While the mission did not achieve its strategic objective of discouraging Italy from fighting a war on two fronts – in Albania and north Africa – it was a tactical and moral victory, and proved the worth of Britain’s fledgling airborne force.
Operation Biting, 27/28 February 1942: Frost’s lighting strike
The radar system at Bruneval pictured before its capture by British paratroopers. (Photo from Topfoto)
Led by Major John Frost (of Arnhem fame), 120 sappers and men of C Company, 2nd Parachute Battalion attempted one of the most daring raids of the war. Their mission was to parachute into northern France to capture part of the new Würzburg early-warning radar system from Bruneval on the coast, and bring it back to Britain.
Though some men landed in the wrong place, and opposition was fierce, Frost’s troops dismantled the radar and took it and two prisoners to a nearby beach where they were picked up by the Royal Navy. “We thus became,” wrote Winston Churchill, “the possessors of vital portions of a key piece of equipment in the German radar defences and gathered information which greatly helped our air offensive.”
Operation Freshman, 19/20 November 1942: Gliding into trouble
SOE agents blew up the Norsk Hydro plant three months after a similar raid had ended in disaster. (Photo from Topfoto)
Operation Freshman was a bold, even foolhardy, attempt to land a glider-borne force of four pilots and 27 airborne sappers in southern Norway to destroy German stocks of ‘heavy water’, a vital component of nuclear research. Poor weather and faulty navigational aids dogged the assault on the Norsk Hydro plant, resulting in both gliders crashing miles from the target. Those not killed on impact were captured and executed by the Germans, the first victims of Hitler’s infamous ‘Commando Order’.
Three months later, six Norwegian SOE operatives blew up the plant after parachuting into the country, a feat immortalised by the British war film Heroes of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris.
Operation Market, 17–26 September 1944: The bridge too far
Allied tank destroyers roll across a bridge during the ultimately doomed Operation Market Garden, 1944 (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
This was the airborne component of Field Marshal Montgomery’s hugely ambitious plan to shorten the war by seizing river and canal crossings as far as Arnhem on the lower Rhine, 64 miles behind enemy lines. The British 1st and US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were to provide a ‘carpet’ for the ground troops of the British XXX Corps to advance over (Operation Garden).
Despite a litany of mishaps – poor planning, intelligence ignored, faulty radios and flawed command decisions – and fierce resistance by SS panzer troops, John Frost and 700 men were able to hold the north end of the Arnhem road bridge for almost twice the 48 hours they had been asked to. But ultimately it was ‘A Bridge Too Far’ – the title of Cornelius Ryan’s bestselling history – as the ground troops took too long to reach them and almost 8,000 of the original 10,700 men of the 1st Airborne Division and Polish Parachute Brigade were killed or taken prisoner.
Operation Varsity, 24 March 1945: The greatest wave
The combined force of 14,300 paratroopers and glider-borne infantry – from the British 6th and US 17th Airborne Divisions – made this the largest single-day airborne operation in history. They landed on the east bank of the Rhine near Wesel in north Germany to support an amphibious crossing by the British Second Army (Operation Plunder).
Learning the lessons of Arnhem, the troops were dropped in a single wave as close to their objectives as possible, and only after the ground troops were across the river. By the end of 24 March, they had linked up with the ground forces. It was, wrote General Eisenhower, “the most successful airborne operation we carried out during the war”.
Saul David is a historian and broadcaster. His latest book, Sky Warriors: British Airborne Forces in the Second World War, was published in April 2024.
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This article was first published in the June 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Authors
Saul DavidHistorian, broadcaster and author
Saul David is a historian, broadcaster and author of several acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction, including SBS Silent Warriors: The Authorised Wartime History (William Collins, 2021)
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