Looking for help finding information about a paratroop mission that never happened

[A Canadian Cat]

OK I know how this is going to end - with me looking like a space cadet but I am going to ask anyway.

While doing some research a few months ago I stumbled on a sentence that indicated that after the Normandy invasion there was a plan to use paratroopers to help break out of the Normandy area. What I read was that the expansion of the area controlled by the invasion force was not expanding fast enough so a plan was hatched to use paratroopers to secure bridges inland the help facilitate the break out. It never happened because by the time the plans were ready the objectives were already secured by the ground forces. At the time I was trying to learn about something else and I failed to bookmark the link for later. Now I cannot find it.

I have spent two separate multi hour sessions trying to find the reference to that operation that never happened and I have come up empty. I have lots of bookmarks for other interesting stuff though:D

As I said at the being, this thread ends one of two ways: a) one of you says "sure I know all about that read this" or many of you say "you are out of your mind there was never such a thing, you must have been smoking the good stuff".

At this point I am willing to take the hit :cool: to my ego.

[JonS]

You might be referring to Operation WILD OATS.

This was supposed to be part of a multi-phase attack that began with 7th Armd Div hooking out to the right through Caumont, back through Villers Bocage, and then to the rear (south) of Caen. Simultaneously, someone (I forget which div. 50th Northumbrian maybe?) was to break out of the Orne bridgehead and head to the highground SE of Caen. The paras - 1 A/B Div - were to be dropped S of Caen to 'shut the door' between the two ground-based thrusts.

Leigh-Mallory was strongly opposed to the air drops, using his standard line about unacceptable casualties in the air (he'd tried to get the D-Day drops cancelled on those grounds, but was thankfully over-ruled by Eisenhower). The Orne bridgehead thrust never got off the ground for some reason, and the thrust by 7th Armd Div foundered rather spectacularly around Villers Bocage.

As I recall, it was primarily as a result of the failure of 7th Armd that WILD OATS was cancelled.

Also, from the Wiki page on 1 A/B Div:

While the 6th Airborne Division were still fighting in Normandy, numerous plans to parachute the 1st Airborne Division into France were formulated, all to no avail. In June and July 1944, the plans included Operation REINFORCEMENT, which was a landing to the west of St Sauveur-le-Vicomte to support the American 82nd Airborne Division, and Operation WILD OATS to seize Carpiquet airfield in support of the 1st Canadian Army. There was also Operation BENEFICIARY, intended to support the American XX Corps in capturing St Malo, and Operation LUCKY STRIKE which had the objective of seizing bridges across the River Seine at Rouen. In Operation SWORD HILT, the division was to isolate the port of Brest and destroy the Morlaix viaduct. Operation HANDS UP was intended to support the American Third Army by seizing the Vannes airfield.

Plenty of other options there you could be thinking of too