Bombing of Normandy The Bombing of Normandy during the Normandy invasion was meant to destroy the German communication lines in the Norman cities and towns . However , very few Germans occupied these municipalities . German troops were mostly located outside these areas . On July 9 , 1944 , Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery demanded a massive air assault against Caen in hopes of clearing the way for an attack the following morning . Four hundred fifty heavy aircraft participated , dropping 2 , 500 tons of bombs . The pilots however negated most of the effect by releasing their loads well back from the forward line to avoid hitting their own troops . As a result , the city incurred heavy damage but German defenses went largely unscathed . The heavy bomber missions caused serious problems in the beginning of the operations in Normandy . The first two strikes on Caen resulted in numerous casualties to French civilians . Sometimes friendly troops were victims of misplaced bomb strikes . In the Normandy campaign , as in other campaigns , air and land forces had to get used to working together . U . S . General Omar Bradley remarked after the war that " We went into France almost totally untrained in air - ground cooperation . " In the early stages of the Battle of Normandy some " disconnects " did occur between the air and land communities . According to Antony Beevor in his book " D - Day " , " The British bombing of Caen beginning on D - Day in particular was stupid , counter - productive and above all very close to a war crime . There was an assumption , I think , that Caen must have been evacuated beforehand . That was wishful thinking on the part of the British . There were more than 2 , 000 casualties there on the first two days and in a way it was miraculous that more people weren ' t killed when you think of the bombing and the shelling which carried on for days afterwards . French civilians , caught in the middle of these battlefields or under Allied bombing , endured terrible suffering . Even the joys of liberation had their darker side . The war in northern France marked not just a generation , but the whole of the postwar world , profoundly influencing relations between America and Europe . " The bombings also destroyed 96 % of Tilly - la - Campagne ( Calvados ) , 95 % of Vire ( Calvados ) , 88 % of Villers - Bocage ( Calvados ) , 82 % of Le Havre ( Seine - Maritime ) , 77 % of Saint - Lô ( Manche ) , 76 % of Falaise ( Calvados ) , 75 % of Lisieux ( Calvados ) , 75 % of Caen ( Calvados ) . It is estimated that the bombings in Normandy before and after D - Day caused over 50 , 000 civilian deaths . The French historian Henri Amouroux in " La Grande histoire des Français sous l ’ Occupation " , says that 20 , 000 civilians were killed in Calvados department , 10 , 000 in Seine - Maritime , 14 , 800 in the Manche , 4 , 200 in the Orne , around 3 , 000 in the Eure . The most deadly allied bombings under the German occupation were these : Lisieux ( 6 – 7 June 1944 , 700 dead ) , Vire ( 6 – 7 June 1944 , 400 dead ) , Caen ( 6 June - 19 July 1944 , about 3 , 000 dead ) , Le Havre ( 5 – 11 September 1944 , more than 5 , 000 dead ) For many families who lived through the war , it was the arrival and passage of British and American forces that was by far the most tormenting experience . " It was profoundly traumatic for the people of Normandy . Think of the hundreds of tons of bombs destroying entire cities and wiping out families . But the suffering of civilians was for many years masked by the over - riding image , that of the French welcoming the liberators with open arms . "