The sky above Normandy in northern France was full of men floating to earth in the minutes after midnight on Tuesday 6 June 1944.
The first to jump were 120 US Pathfinders under the command of Captain Frank Lillyman. They had sung songs on the flight across the Channel from their base in England to keep up their spirits. They left the aircraft with “wonderful” morale, recalled Lillyman, parachuting to earth without incident. They then went about their business with swift and silent precision, marking a series of drop zones with fluorescent panels and radar beacons for the imminent arrival of a huge airborne landing over an area of the Cherbourg Peninsula measuring 50 square miles.
Fifty miles east of the US Pathfinders, 60 British Pathfinders from the 22nd Independent
