We examine recently unearthed reconnaissance photographs taken during the fierce battles that followed the Normandy Landings. On June 6 1944, the much-discussed allied Second Front was finally opened. Almost three thousand ships sailed to the French coast in what remains the largest seaborne invasion in history.

The formations that landed on the beaches of Normandy came from America, Britain and Canada. Free French and Polish forces also participated in the assault, as did troops from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Norway and the Netherlands. When they landed on the stretch of coast between the Orne River and St Marcouf, they were met by fifty divisions of the German Army. Rommel’s Wehrmacht put up extremely fierce resistance, ensuring the battle for Normandy would be slow and bloody; it would rage for more than two months.

This programme concentrates specifically upon ‘Operation Cobra’, the strategic move masterminded by US Army General Omar Bradley to break out from the Normandy area. Following the amphibious invasion, the allies had triumphed in the battles for Cherbourg and Cean. They now needed to break out of the bitterly contested beachheads they had established in order to pave the way for the liberation of France’s interior.

The operation was a resounding success. The advance guard of the American VIII Corps entered Coutances, at the western end of the Cotentin Penisula, on 28 July, after penetrating through the German lines. Cobra enabled allied forces to create the ‘Falaise pocket’, trapping German forces in an ever shrinking gap, and effectively clearing the way for the Race to Paris and the drive for the Rhine.

We recount the key moments, strategy and course of this dramatic breakout. Reconnaissance photographs, interviews with those who participated, as well as the input of expert historians, enable us to take a fresh look at this decisive moment of the Second World War.