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
D-Day naval deceptions D-Day naval deceptions Operations Taxable, Glimmer and Big Drum were tactical military deceptions conducted on 6 June 1944 in support of the Allied landings in Normandy. The operations formed the naval component of Operation Bodyguard, a wider series of tactical and strategic deceptions surrounding the invasion. Small boats, along with aircraft from RAF Bomber Command, simulated invasion fleets approaching Cap d'Antifer, Pas-de-Calais and Normandy. Glimmer and Taxable played on the German belief, amplified by Allied deception efforts over the preceding months, that the main invasion force would land in the Calais region. Big Drum was positioned on the western flank