(Ebook) 82nd Airborne: Normandy 1944 by Steven Smith ISBN 9781612005379, 1612005373

(Ebook) 82nd Airborne: Normandy 1944 by Steven Smith ISBN 9781612005379, 1612005373

An account of the heroic D-Day actions of the US Army's first airborne division in the series that brings World War II battles to life. Since its formation on August 15, 1942, the 82nd Airborne, commanded by Major General Matthew B. Ridgway, trained exhaustively for their new role, which involved parachuting from C-47s and insertion by Waco CG-4A gliders. After participating in the invasion of Sicily and performing night parachute drops onto the Salerno beachhead in September 1943, the bulk of the division left for the United Kingdom and training for D-Day.Reorganized with two new parachute infantry regiments, the 507th and the 508th, joining the 505th, the division dropped onto the Cotentin peninsula between Ste-Mère-Église and Carentan on the night of June 5–6, in a mission codenamed Boston. Their glider-borne component, the 325th GIR, arrived the next day. Widely dispersed on landing, the division overcame its problems and strong German defenses to...