Operation Mallard - Mallard

Mallard

In response to the initial airborne and naval landings, just after noon on 6 June, 21st Panzer Division received permission to attack. The commanders were informed by General Erich Marcks of LXXXVII Army Corps that:

"if you don't succeed in throwing the British back into the sea, we shall have lost the war."

East of the River Orne, the 125th Panzergrenadier Regiment headed towards the captured bridges. The column was quickly spotted and engaged for the next two hours by Allied artillery and aircraft causing heavy losses. At 16:00, to the west of the Caen canal, 1st Battalion, 192nd Panzergrenadier Regiment and the 100th Panzer Regiment successfully reached the coast between the British Sword and the Canadian Juno Beaches. Here they linked up with the 736th Infantry Regiment, which had been defending Lion sur Mer. The German units gathered their strength on the beaches and waited for further orders from divisional commander Generalmajor Edgar Feuchtinger.

Back in England, 256 Operation Mallard gliders carrying the remaining men and equipment of the 6th Airborne Division took off. Fifteen squadrons of fighter aircraft were deployed by the RAF to escort the gliders and towing aircraft. The force crossed the English channel unhindered, and arrived in Normandy at 21:00. As it was still daylight, previous navigation problems that had affected the earlier operations were absent. As the gliders approached the two landing areas they met with anti-aircraft fire from German defenders on the ground.

The gliders headed for two landing areas, Landing Zone 'W' (LZW) to the east of Saint-Aubin-d'Arquenay and Landing Zone 'N' (LZN) to the north of Ranville. The remaining troops of the 2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and 'A' Company, 12th Battalion, Devonshire Regiment landed at LZW. Given the limited availability of aircraft, even two lifts did not provide capacity to transport all of the Devonshire battalion, the rest of whom arrived by sea on 7 June. The 6th Airlanding Brigade headquarters, 1st Battalion, Royal Ulster Rifles and the 6th Airborne Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment landed at LZN, the latter equipped with the Tetrarch light tank – the first time that any tank had been flown into battle by air. Watching the arriving gliders, Major-General Richard Gale later wrote:

"It is impossible to say with what relief we watched this reinforcement arrive."

German reaction to the second airborne landings involved mortar barrages and small arms fire, but casualties were negligible. Generalmajor Feuchtinger of 21st Panzer Division watched the gliders descending and, believing the arriving force would threaten his lines of communication, ordered those elements of the division that had reached the beaches to withdraw to the north of Caen. The gliders' arrival had inadvertently stopped the only German armoured attack on D-Day.

Moving off LZN the 1st Battalion, Royal Ulster Rifles headed south to capture the villages of Longueval and Sainte Honorine. The 211th Battery, 53rd Light Regiment Royal Artillery then arrived at LZN equipped with eight 75 mm Pack Howitzers and were engaging German targets less than thirty minutes after landing. The 2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, who were the furthest away at LZW, crossed the Caen canal and River Orne bridges. These had been captured twenty-one hours earlier by their own 'D' Company who were now headed towards Herouvillette and Escoville. By midnight, the 6th Airborne Division was the only Allied formation to have seized all of its D-Day objectives.