History of Sussex airfields around Sussex. During the lead-up to the D-Day landings, the people of Sussex were witness to the build-up of military personnel and materials, including the assembly of landing crafts and construction of Mulberry harbours off the county's coast. Five new airfields were built to provide additional support for the D-Day landings, four near Chichester and one near Billingshurst. A legacy of the D-Day landings are the sections of Mulberry harbour that lay broken and abandoned on the sea floor off the coast, of Selsey Bill, having missed the invasion. Sussex was an industrial county, from the stone age, with
John Howard (British Army officer) John Howard (British Army officer) Major (Reginald) John Howard DSO (8 December 1912 – 5 May 1999) was a British Army officer who led a glider-borne assault on two bridges between Bénouville and Ranville in Normandy, France, codenamed Operation Deadstick, on 6 June 1944 as part of the D-Day landings during the Second World War. These bridges spanned the Caen Canal and the adjacent River Orne (about 500 yards to the east), and were vitally important to the success of the D-Day landings. Since the war the bridge over the canal has become known as "Pegasus Bridge", as a tribute