Saviours from the sky

Legendary air drop recreated

- Giles Sheldrick

ONE by one they dropped from the sky, landing with inch-perfect precision in the wheat fields of Normandy.

The flatlands of Sanner-ville, near Caen, designated "Drop Zone K", witnessed one of the first acts of D-Day with fearless soldiers from the 8th (Midlands) Parachute Battalion jumping into unknown on June 6, 1944.

Yesterday acres of sunlit farmland came alive once more during a breathtaking aerial display led by the RAF and British Army.

Across the clear blue skies of Northern France, wave after wave of paras glided to ground.

First, 250 British paras jumped from a mighty RAF Atlas A400M transporter, followed by 60 soldiers from the Canadian Army, 40 from the Belgian Land Component and 30 from the US Army.

The awe-inspiring sight was a stunning reenactment of the early hours 80 years ago today that saw 8,500 troops land by parachute and glider ahead of the armada that stormed the beaches nearby.

The soldiers from the 8th (Midlands) Parachute Battalion dropped from 37 Dakota transport aircraft in bad visibility before achieving all their objectives chiefly to cause confusion and distraction as fighting broke out across swathes of countryside behind the invasion beaches.

There are no known surviving D-Day veterans from 6th Airborne Division, whose against-the-odds heroics paved the way for the successful Allied invasion.

The unit was with drawn from battle on August 27, 1944, having spent 82 days in the thick of fighting in Normandy.

In that time it suffered 4,457 casualties, of which 821 were killed, 2,709 wounded and 927 missing.