D-Day

The Normandy landings – aka D-Day – took place on 6 June 1944, when Allied forces launched a combined naval, air and land assault on Nazi-occupied France. Several thousand aircraft and warships bombarded German positions along the coastline and dropped Allied soldiers behind the German defences, before troops landed on the beaches of Normandy. Codenamed operation Overlord, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history and marked the beginning of the campaign to liberate north-west Europe from German occupation. Total casualty figures are still debated, but it is thought that as many as 4,000 may have been killed on D-Day