The Big Drop: The Guns of Merville, June 1944

By John Golley

Book Overview

The Merville Battery loomed over Sword Beach, a deadly threat to the success of the Normandy landings. Its destruction became one of the most daring and crucial missions of D-Day.

The Big Drop tells the dramatic, bloody story of how the 9th Parachute Battalion fought to capture and neutralise this formidable coastal stronghold.

Field-Marshal Rommel himself had warned: "Whoever occupies this field will hold the key to the gateway of France and eventually into Germany itself."

Allied intelligence agreed, believing the battery's steel-reinforced concrete casemates held heavy-calibre guns capable of devastating the invasion beaches. The order was clear: the battery had to be destroyed.

After months of intense training on Salisbury Plain, Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Otway prepared to lead his men - packed into Dakota aircraft and Horsa gliders - in a lightning assault. But disaster struck when a navigational overshoot scattered the battalion across miles of countryside. Only 150 of the planned 750 paratroopers reached the assembly point. Underequipped and outnumbered, they attacked anyway.

Against overwhelming odds, the battered force stormed the battery - only to discover that the feared guns were outdated First World War-era howitzers. Yet their extraordinary courage and determination had helped secure the Allied foothold in France.

Drawing on original wartime documents and first-hand accounts from British and French survivors, John Golley vividly reconstructs one of the most daring and decisive raids of the Second World War.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H9LGGSF3
• ISBN13: 9798245159928
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"