On June 6, 1944, German troops from the 21st Panzer Division achieved one of the most dangerous breakthroughs of D-Day, slipping through the gap between Sword and Juno Beaches and reaching the Normandy coast near Lion-sur-Mer. For a brief moment, Kampfgruppe Rauch appeared to have split the British and Canadian beachheads in two. Then, at around 9 PM, the sky filled with roughly 250 Allied gliders during Operation Mallard. To the isolated German troops, the massive airborne formation looked like a deliberate attempt to land behind them, cut their escape route, and trap them against the sea. What they did not know was that the operation had been planned long before their breakthrough. This is the remarkable story of how timing, confusion, and one massive airborne operation helped end the deepest German penetration of the Allied D-Day beachhead.

Sources:
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war...
https://www.pegasusarchive.org/norman...
https://www.comitedudebarquement.fr/e...

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