The Armory Life Forum

On May 29, 1944, the commander in chief of the Allied Expeditionary Air Forces, Air Chief Marshall Trafford Leigh-Mallory, expressed his concerns to General Dwight D. Eisenhower about calling off the parachute operations associated with Operation Overlord. Leigh-Mallory warned Eisenhower that he forecasted “the ‘futile slaughter’ of two fine airborne divisions, whose casualties he predicted might run as high as 70 percent.” But Eisenhower knew without the airborne, the operation was incomplete.