Battleships in World War II part of Operation Neptune, in support of the D-Day landings in June 1944. D-Day also saw the deliberate sacrifice of two old dreadnoughts ( and ), which were scuttled as part of the breakwater around the Allied Mulberry harbours. The sinking of "Prince of Wales" and "Repulse" off the coast of Malaya in 1941 demonstrated that even the most modern battleships could not hold off aerial attacks without decent aerial defenses. The British HACS fire control system had been rendered inoperable by the extreme heat and humidity of the Malaya tropical climate, and the anti-aircraft artillery had managed to shoot
Provisional Government of the French Republic on 3 June 1944, the day before Charles de Gaulle arrived in London from Algiers on Winston Churchill's invitation, and three days before D-Day. The CFLN itself had been created exactly one year earlier through the uniting of de Gaulle's ("Comité national français", or CNF) and Henri Giraud's organisations. Among its most immediate concerns were to ensure that France did not come under allied military administration, preserving the sovereignty of France and freeing allied troops for fighting on the front. After the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944, it moved back to the capital, establishing a new "national unanimity"