The airborne assault which opened D-Day did not go entirely to plan. The first Allied troops to land in Normandy carried out one of the outstanding airborne operations of the war, when a glider-borne company of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry took the bridges over the Caen Canal and the Orne between Benouville and Ranville in an audacious pinpoint coup de main. The subsequent parachute and glider landings by the rest of 6 Airborne Division, on the other hand, were distinguished by their inaccuracy, which resulted in troops being scattered over a wide swathe of country. In spite of this, the objectives were largely taken, securing very quickly the Allies’ left flank, which would be held until the eventual ‘break-out’ in mid-August.
If the British paratroopers found themselves widely dispersed and often separated from their units, this was even more the case with the Americans. The order to 82 US Airborne Division was to capture Sainte-Mère-Eglise, a town in the Cotentin Peninsula astride one of the main roads to Cherbourg, while 101 US Airborne Division was to seize and control the routes leading inland from Utah Beach. In the event, the paratroopers were dropped across a huge area, rather than concentrated as intended. That they managed to achieve their missions was due to the same resourcefulness that the Americans had displayed in Sicily, with small groups, often comprising men from both divisions, coming together to launch vigorous attacks on German positions. Casualties were high, but there was no disaster of the sort predicted by Leigh-Mallory, who was man enough to write to Eisenhower to admit it.
The landings by 4 US Division on Utah Beach were successful, in spite of the current depositing the troops from their landing craft some 2,000 yards south of their intended destination. The achievements of the paratroopers made the passage through the marshy ground behind the beaches much easier and, although there was no clear perimeter, the Americans here were well established by the end of D-Day.
The contrast with Omaha Beach could not have been greater. Unlike at Utah, where the DD tanks had almost all swum ashore safely and provided excellent support for the infantry, off Omaha these mostly foundered, having been launched too far out in difficult seas. The bombing of the coastal defences had been inaccurate, causing little damage, and the reinforcement of a static coastal division by an experienced German field formation, 352 Infantry Division, came as a surprise to the invaders, in spite of it having been identified by Williams.