320 BRITTANY: Hitler's Final Defenses in France

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One of the prime objectives for the Allies following the D-Day landings was the capture of sufficient ports to supply their armies. The original Overlord plans assumed that ports along the Breton coast would be essential to expansion of the Normandy beachhead. This included the major ports at Brest and on Quiberon Bay.

The newly arrived Third US Army under Lt. Gen. George S. Patton was delegated to take on the Brittany mission. In one of the most rapid mechanized advances of the war, 3rd Army had the ports of Avranches and Quiberon encircled by the second week of August 1944. But changing priorities meant that most of 3rd Army was redeployed, meaning only a single corps was left to take the Breton port cities. The fight would drag into 1945, long after German field armies had been driven from France. Using full-color maps and artwork as well as contemporary accounts and photographs,