Operation Cobra — Allied Breakout from Normandy

After seven weeks of grinding attrition in the Normandy bocage, US forces under General Omar Bradley launched Operation Cobra on July 25, 1944, with 3,000 Allied bombers saturating a narrow 7-km front. Despite tragic short-bombing casualties on American troops (including General Lesley McNair), the attack shattered the German line. General George Patton's newly operational 3rd Army poured through the gap, encircling German forces in the Falaise Pocket, liberating Paris on August 25, and racing 500 miles across France in six weeks — the most spectacular Allied advance of the European war.