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D-Day is celebrating its anniversary today, 75 years after the 1944 landing in Normandy. The official name for the event was Operation Neptune and was the largest scale seaborne invasion in history. The effort from more than 200,000 heroic allied soldiers on June 6, 1944, unclasped Adolf Hitler’s hand from Europe. In celebration of their brave efforts today, the Imperial War Museum will release a fleet of aircraft which will take a route over England and towards the English Channel with a final descent on France.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8kkGIh_NXQ" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8kkGIh_NXQ</a>

<a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9219317/dakotas-heroes-d-day-fly-again-75th-anniversary-celebrations/" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.thesun.co.uk/news/9219317/dakotas-heroes-d-day-fly-ag...</a>

Approximately 280 paratroopers, made up of 130 UK troops from 16 Air Assault Brigade and 150 from the French Army’s 11e Brigade Parachutiste, will carry out a commemorative parachute descent onto fields on the outskirts of Sannerville, Normandy.

In the early hours of 6th June 1944, the same fields served as Drop Zone ‘K’ for the 8th (Midlands) Parachute Battalion, tasked with the destruction of bridges to restrict German freedom of manoeuvre.

Following the military parachuting The Red Devils, the Army and Parachute Regiment freefall display team, will do a display, including a tandem jump with D-Day veterans Harry Read and Jock Hutton. On D-Day, Mr Read, now 95, was a 20-year-old wireless operator and Mr Hutton, now 94, was a 19-year-old in 13th (Lancashire) Parachute Battalion.

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As part of the D-Day 75th Anniversary events, the BBMF recreated a parachute drop over Normandy with 16th Air Assault Brigade.

Availability of the BBMF Dakota ZA947 (8.33 kHz radio fitting), the crew (all volunteers who have other RAF roles), and of suitable weather squeezed the window of opportunity for a training jump at RAF Weston-on-the-Green, but persistence paid off, the practice was completed and all was set for France.

On 5th June 2019, the BBMF Dakota, mirroring the 139 Dakotas involved in dropping Parachute Brigades in June of 1944, carried 12 Paratroopers of 16th Air Assault Brigade to the Drop Zone at Sannerville, escorted by Spitfire Mk Vb AB910, an historic aircraft which flew numerous cover patrols over the D-Day invasion beach heads on 6 June 1944 and afterwards.

AB910 is currently painted in the colour scheme of a 64 Sqn Spitfire at the time of D-Day, with full invasion stripes, and Dakota ZA947 represents a 233 Sqn aircraft which was involved in Para-dropping operations on the eve of D-Day and subsequently in re-supply and casualty evacuation missions into and out of forward airfields in the combat areas.