The Allied invasion of Nazi-controlled France looms larger in our collective conscience than perhaps any other single battle in history. Even today, the logistics of the assault stagger the imagination: 7,000 ships, 3,000 planes, 17,000 paratroopers and nearly 160,000 American, British and Canadian infantry. The risks were immense. The Germans had erected the infamous Atlantic Wall, a seemingly impregnable belt of

fortifications and gun emplacements designed to repel such an invasion, and had littered the coast and countryside of France with two million mines. The invasion appeared to be a death trap-but Allied ingenuity saved the day. In the three years leading up to D-Day, the Allies had assembled an array of weapons and transport vessels specially designed to overcome Hitler's defenses-among them gliders, landing craft, minesweepers, and swimming tanks. This is the story of the maverick innovators who conceived of such an armory and its implementation into the largest amphibious invasion in the history of the world, and of the brave young men who wielded it so capably on the beaches of Normandy.