British Second Army’s landing area, with Caen as its main objective, stretched for nearly 25 miles (40km) from the seaside village of Port-en-Bessin (a little beyond Bayeux and next to the American landing beach at Omaha) eastwards along the coast to the flooded estuary of the River Dives at Cabourg, Between the offshore shoals, three sandy beaches, each about two miles (3km) long, offered suitable landing points, separated by between five and ten miles (8-16km) from each other. The British invasion would start with 6th Airborne Division dropping northeast of Caen before dawn, followed by amphibious landings by XXX Corps, led by 50th (Northumbrian) Division at Git?/;/Beach with Bayeux as its objective, and by I Corps with 3rd Canadian Division at Juno Beach, and 3rd Division (usually knovm as 3rd British Division to distinguish it from the Canadians) at Sword'Btzch. directly north of Caen. 6th Airborne Division would come under I Corps once contact was made.
The landing beaches themselves were gently shelving sand, fronted by little holiday villages which the Germans had turned into strongpoints. Other gun positions, obstacles and minefields of the Atlantic Wall stretched from the waters edge to between 400 and 800 yards (360720m) inland. Away from the beaches, the ground rose up into farm country of rolling ridges which reached down to the sea as cliffs at the western edge of Gold, separating it from Omaha by about ten miles. The River Orne, flowing with the Canal de Caen through the city of Caen and into the sea at Ouistreham just east of Sword, was the only major water obstacle on the British sector, except for the flooding of the Dives to the east.
The value of Caen and Bayeux to the British was obvious. Any town or city made a good defensive position, costly and time-consuming to capture. If the Germans could hold the old medieval town of Bayeux (once William the Conqueror’s capital as Duke of Normandy) they could prevent a firm link-up between the British and the Americans from Omaha Beach, and deny them the use of the roads leading into the heart of Normandy. Even more important, the British planned to build their Mulberry harbor at Arromanches, just west of Gold, and to use Bayeux as their main administration and supply centre. The same argument applied with even greater force to Caen, a city of 50,000 inhabitants with its own aerodrome at Carpiquet, and the most important Allied objective on D-Day. If they could hold Caen, the Germans could use the city as a defensive block to hold up the whole 21st Army Group advance.
For this reason, Montgomery placed great stress on his British and Canadian forces getting rapidly inland. For D-Day the first three divisions to land were reorganized into four assault brigades each, by the addition of extra armor, engineers and specialist troops, including two brigades of commandos. If everything went well, Montgomery hoped for British Second Army to capture the whole of its landing area from the Germans on D-Day, including Caen and Bayeux and the road linking them, to join up with the Americans, and to get armored forces well inland as far as Villers-Bocage and even Falaise. Against that, the worst fate which could befall the landings was to be destroyed on the beaches without ever getting inland at all.
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