D-Day

In English military parlance, D-Day is a term often used to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated.

The most famous D-Day is the beginning of Operation Overlord, the operation to liberate Western Europe from Nazi occupation.

The Battle of Normandy was fought in 1944 between the German forces occupying Western Europe and the invading Allied forces as part of the larger conflict of World War II. Sixty years later, the Normandy invasion, codenamed Operation OVERLORD, remains the largest seaborne invasion in history, involving almost three million troops crossing the English Channel from England to Normandy in then German-occupied France.

The main Allied forces came from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, but a total of twelve nations contributed units, the rest being Australia, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Poland.

The Normandy invasion began with overnight airborne paratrooper and glider landings, massive air and naval bombardments, and an early morning amphibious assault on June 6, "D-day". The battle for Normandy continued for more than two months, with campaigns to establish, expand, and eventually break out of the Allied beachheads. It concluded with the liberation of Paris and the fall of the Chambois pocket.