Cross-Channel Attack: The Official US Army History of the Operation Overlord D-Day Invasion of Normandy

On 6th June 1944 Operation Overlord was launched.

On the first day 1,200 planes provided an airborne assault, 5,000 ships battered the coastline with their shells and 160,000 men crossed the English Channel to land on the beaches of Normandy.

This was the beginning of the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe; this was D-Day.

No longer would the Axis forces have a stranglehold on Europe as the Allied forces created a much-need foothold on the shore of northern France after one of the most ambitious amphibious assaults in history.

Gordon A. Harrison’s brilliant account of this operation uncovers how the Allied commanders prepared for the assault from as early as 1941, and how German forces attempted to build their defenses in the expectation of the eventual attack. He then explores the details of combat operations of the Allied forces from 6th June to 1st July 1944. To do this he uses a wide-range of material including thousands of cables, memoranda, plans, journal entries and records from both the Allied and Axis forces.

Cross-Channel Attack is the U.S. Army’s official history of the D-Day invasion and should be essential reading for anyone interested in how this remarkable assault was planned and executed.

“well arranged” Alfred Vagts, The American Historical Review

Gordon A. Harrison was a former newspaper reporter and instructor at Harvard University, who holds the Doctor of Philosophy degree from that institution. During the war he served as a historical officer with the Third Army, taking part in five campaigns. His book Cross-Channel Attack was first published in 1951.