WERE D-DAY’S AIRBORNE LANDINGS ALMOST ‘FUTILE SLAUGHTER’?
On paper at least the Allied airborne landings supporting D-Day were simple enough. The idea was to protect the flanks using two American divisions to the west and one British division to the east. The only problem with this was that nothing had been attempted on such a scale before and the landings the previous year in Sicily had not gone well. To make matters worse Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had flooded large areas of Normandy just behind the coast and sown it with obstacles quaintly dubbed “Rommel’s Asparagus”.
To some the whole
