Airborne forces critical equipment carried in 408 gliders daylight missions code-named Operation Bluebird, phase 2, simultaneous with the beach landings, and Operation Dove, phase 3. A second daylight parachute drop, Operation Canary, dropped 736 men of the 551st PIB with nearly 100% effectiveness late on the afternoon of August 15. The airborne objective was to capture the area, destroy all enemy positions and hold the ground until the U.S. Seventh Army came ashore. Operation Market Garden of September 1944, involved 35,000 airborne troops dropped up to behind German lines in an attempt to capture a series of bridges over the Maas, Waal
Canada in the World Wars and Interwar Years Canada's major contributions to the war was the Commonwealth Air Training Plan, in which over 140,000 Allied pilots and air crews received training at bases in Canada. Canada is widely recognized for its key role in the Battle of the Atlantic. The first major land actions of the war, at Hong Kong and Dieppe, were unsuccessful. The bulk of Canadian land forces remained undeployed until the landings in Sicily and Italy in 1943. In 1944, Canadian forces successfully captured Juno Beach during the Battle of Normandy, and by the autumn, an entire field army under Canadian command was instrumental in