Operation Ladbroke was a glider landing of British airborne forces near Syracuse, Sicily, that began on 9 July 1943 as part of the Allied invasion of Sicily.

In March it was decided that the American 82nd Airborne Division and the British 1st Airborne Division would be dropped by parachute and glider just prior to the amphibious landings ; they would land a few miles behind the beaches and neutralize their defenders, thereby aiding the landing of the Allied ground forces.

The Commando Brigade, consisting of No. s 3, 4 and 6 Army Commandos and No. 45 ( Royal Marine ) Commando, to land on the extreme flank of the Allied Forces on Queen beach ( Sword ) and cut inland to join forces with two brigades dropped inland by glider and parachute.

* July 9 – 10 ( overnight ) – 160 British Army glider infantrymen land on Sicilys Maddalena Peninsula, seizing coastal artillery batteries, a radio station, and the Ponte Grande bridge in advance of Allied amphibious landings on the morning of July 10.

Although the Allied soldiers believed that they had burnt all of their maps, one from the second glider was missed.

In the movie The Longest Day from 1962 about the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944 this song is sung by the squadron of Major John Howard in a glider on its way to capture Pegasus Bridge.

* 1942 – World War II: Battle of Savo Island – Allied naval forces protecting their amphibious forces during the initial stages of the Battle of Guadalcanal are surprised and defeated by an Imperial Japanese Navy cruiser force.

At 02: 00 on 13 August, 40 squadrons were sent forward towards the enemy, followed at 03: 00, in eight columns, by the main Allied force pushing over the Kessel.

The Allied commanders agreed that Marlborough would command 36, 000 troops and attack Tallard's force of 33, 000 on the left ( including capturing the village of Blenheim ), whilst Eugene, commanding 16, 000 men would attack the Elector and Marsin's combined forces of 23, 000 troops on the right wing ; if this attack was pressed hard the Elector and Marsin would have no troops to send to aid Tallard on their right.

Attempts to organise an Allied force to prevent Marsin's withdrawal failed owing to the exhaustion of the cavalry, and the growing confusion in the field.

In Taviers on his right, he placed two battalions of the Greder Suisse Régiment, with a smaller force forward in Franquenée ; the whole position was protected by the boggy ground of the Mehaigne river, thus preventing an Allied flanking movement.

After the Allied landings at Normandy, Germany made attempts to overwhelm the landing force with armoured attacks, but these failed for lack of co-ordination and Allied air superiority.

* 1945 – World War II: A force of Allied aircraft unsuccessfully attacked a German destroyer in Førdefjorden, Norway.

The lack of equipment was particularly challenging and cholera hit the Allied expeditionary force.

Britain sent a short-lived ground support force to Portugal, and French forces evacuated Portugal as defined in the Convention of Sintra following the Allied victory at Vimeiro ( 21 August 1808 ).

With the growing possibility of an Allied invasion in the Balkans, the Axis began to divert more resources to the destruction of the Partisans main force and its high command.

The December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war against the United States gave the United States the leverage it needed, however, to force Moríñigo to commit himself publicly to the Allied cause.

The Red Army is widely credited with being the decisive force in the Allied victory in the European Theatre of World War II, having engaged and defeated about 80 % of the German armed forces, the Wehrmacht and much of the Waffen SS on the Eastern Front.

While the Allies ' ability to out-produce the Axis is often attributed to the Allies having more access to natural resources, other factors, such as Germany and Japan's reluctance to employ women in the labour force, Allied strategic bombing, and Germany's late shift to a war economy contributed significantly.

German intelligence used the agent reports to construct an order of battle for the Allied forces that placed the centre of gravity of the invasion force opposite Pas de Calais, the point on the French coast closest to England and therefore a likely invasion site.

** WWII: " Black Friday ": A force of Allied Bristol Beaufighter aircraft suffers heavy casualties in an unsuccessful attack on German destroyer Z33 and escorting vessels sheltering in Førde Fjord, Norway.

As the capital of an Axis country and a major transit point for Axis troops en route to the Eastern Front, Bucharest suffered heavy damage during World War II due to Allied bombings, and, on 23 August 1944, was the site of the royal coup which brought Romania into the Allied camp, suffering a short period of Luftwaffe bombings as well as a failed attempt by German troops to take the city by force.

In 1915, during World War I, a large Allied expeditionary force established a base at Thessaloniki for operations against pro-German Bulgaria.

From 1943 on, it was clear that a consensus existed in the German Army officer corps that of all Allied ground force commanders, the enemy general they feared the most was Patton.

This action remained largely symbolic ( at least from the Bulgarian perspective ), until August 1943, when Bulgarian air defense and air force attacked Allied bombers, returning ( heavily damaged ) from a mission over the Romanian oil refineries.

" Jerzy Jan Lerski writes " All in all, the Polish units, although divided and controlled by different political orientation, constituted the fourth largest Allied force, after the America, British and Soviet Armies.

During World War II they fought in their function as military police against the Allied forces, and against Yugoslav partisans as part of the Italian occupation force in Yugoslavia.

To block the Persian advance, a small force of Greeks blocked the pass of Thermopylae, while an Athenian-dominated Allied navy engaged the Persian fleet in the nearby straits of Artemisium.

As the Allied air force units on Singapore had been destroyed or evacuated by this stage, Gorton was put on the Derrymore, an ammunition ship bound for Batavia ( Jakarta ).

More than that, Allied air had complete superiority in the Eighth Army's sector.

Allied Arts had booked Marlene Dietrich into McCormick Place Dec. 8 and 9.

A couple of days later a balletomane told me he had telephoned Allied Arts for ticket information and was told `` the newspapers had made a mistake ''.

When D-Day arrived, they had made enough penicillin to treat all the wounded Allied forces.

He had stabilised the Allied position at the First Battle of El Alamein, but after a visit in August 1942, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, replaced him as C-in-C with Alexander and William Gott as commander of the Eighth Army in the Western Desert.

Whilst Allied preparations had progressed, the French were striving to maintain and re-supply Marshal Marsin.

A French reconnaissance under the Marquis de Silly went forward to probe the enemy, but were driven off by Allied troops who had deployed to cover the pioneers of the advancing army, labouring to bridge the numerous streams in the area and improve the passage leading westwards to Höchstädt.

Tallard wrote a report to this effect to King Louis that morning, but hardly had he sent the messenger when the Allied army began to appear opposite his camp.

By 16: 00, with the enemy troops besieged in Blenheim and Oberglau, the Allied centre of 81 squadrons ( nine squadrons had been transferred from Cutts ' column ), supported by 18 battalions was firmly planted amidst the French line of 64 squadrons and nine battalions of raw recruits.

With the battle still not won, Marlborough had to rebuke one of his cavalry officers who was attempting to leave the field – " Sir, you are under a mistake, the enemy lies that way ..." Now, at the Duke's command, the second Allied line under von Bulow and the Count of Ost-Friese was ordered forward, and, driving through the centre, the Allies finally put Tallard's tired horse to rout, not without cost.

With Marshal Villars sitting strong on the Moselle, the Allied commander – whose supplies had by now become critical – was forced to call off his campaign on 16 June.

Although Villeroi had the option of enveloping the flanks of the Allied army as they deployed on the plateau of Jandrenouille – threatening to encircle their army – the Duke correctly gauged that the characteristically cautious French commander was intent on a defensive battle along the ridge-line.

Although Henry Lumley ’ s British cavalry had managed to cross the marshy ground around the Petite Gheete, it was soon evident to Marlborough that sufficient cavalry support would not be practicable and that the battle could not be won on the Allied right.

Conversely, some of the Allied infantry who had just dealt a crushing defeat to the French at the Battle of Waterloo fully expected to have to fight again the next day ( at the Battle of Wavre ).

Hermann Göring had promised the Luftwaffe would complete the destruction of the encircled armies, but aerial operations did not prevent the evacuation of the majority of Allied troops ( which the British named Operation Dynamo ); some 330, 000 French and British were saved.

Overall, Yellow succeeded beyond what most people had expected, despite the fact that the Allies had 4, 000 armoured vehicles and the Germans 2, 200, and the Allied tanks were often superior in armour and caliber of cannon.

As the war progressed, Allied armies began using combined arms formations and deep penetration strategies that Germany had used in the opening years of the war.

This alignment originated in the Triple Alliance, and fought against the Allied Powers that had formed around the Triple Entente.

He had previously been a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II, and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe ; he had responsibility for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942 – 43 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944 – 45, from the Western Front.

The Allied leaders were " thunderstruck " by this from a political standpoint, though none of them had offered Eisenhower guidance with the problem in the course of planning the operation.

From then until the end of the war in Europe on May 8, 1945, Eisenhower through SHAEF had command of all Allied forces, and through his command of ETOUSA, administrative command of all U. S. forces, on the Western Front north of the Alps.

On the Western Front, no Allied army had penetrated the western German frontier, and on the Eastern Front, Germany had already won the war against Russia, concluded with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.