This celebrated village is thirty minutes from Pointe du Hoc and was the first village liberated by the Allies. It was in and around Sainte-Mere Eglise at 2:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944, that many paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division landed off target (most famously, two Americans who dangled from the town's church steeple while Germans took pot shots at them), heralding the start of D-Day operations. A parachute with a dummy attached has been reinstalled on the steeple where Private John Steele became snagged.
While many paratroopers were killed before and during the landing, those who survived played critical roles in the successful invasion by securing roads and bridges behind enemy lines.
Built behind the church in 1964 in the shape of an open parachute, the Airborne Museum houses documents, maps, mementos, a Waco CG4A glider and a Douglas C-47 plane used to drop paratroopers.
