User:Wdford/sandbox/Caen Planning

At St Paul's School on 7 April and 15 May Montgomery presented his strategy for the invasion. He envisaged a ninety-day battle, with all forces reaching the Seine. In the first phase the Anglo-Canadians were to capture Caen and advance south and south-east, to capture ground for airfields and to guard the eastern flank of the U.S. First Army as it attacked Cherbourg. Thereafter the British Army would pivot on its left at Falaise (40 km inland from Caen), pushing its right flank south to Argentan-Alencon and its left flank east to rest approximately on the Touques River. When this plan bogged down, Montgomery revised this plan to instead pivot on an Allied-held Caen in the east of the Normandy bridgehead, with relatively static British and Canadian armies forming a shoulder to attract and defeat German counter-attacks, relieving the US armies who would move and seize the Cotentin Peninsula and Brittany, wheeling south and then east on the right forming a pincer.