Allied troops on the landing crafts did not know if they would survive D-Day, but they knew the beaches had to be taken
It was shortly after midnight on Tuesday 6 June 1944, when a young German officer named Helmut Liebeskind slipped on his jacket and stepped outside into the damp night air. He was disturbed by the noise of Allied bombers flying overhead and wanted to see if anything untoward was taking place.
As he looked up at the sky he got the shock of his life. Trough a break in the cloud he could see “the shadowy forms of multi-engine bombers with freighter gliders attached”. Tis was not one of the routine bombing raids that happened most nights – the gliders were designed to land enemy troops.