When did the d-day start and end?

Answer 1

D-Day itself lasted basically the entire 24 hours of June 6, 1944. Paratroopers and glider-borne troops began landing around midnight, as June 6 arrived. The seaborne component started landing on the beaches at dawn. The five landing beaches were spread out over more than fifty miles of French coastline, in Normandy. Fighting somewhere or other in the beachhead went on all day.

The campaign in Normandy lasted about another nine weeks. The Germans brought up troops from all over to contain the Allies, who continued to pour in more men over the beaches. Eventually the Germans had committed practically all their forces in France south of the Seine River. The Germans continued to believe that the Normandy landings were just a gigantic diversionary attack, and that the REAL landings would soon come north of the Seine River, and so kept very large forces out of the fight for Normandy, north of the Seine, awaiting this attack which never came. US forces "broke out" of the beachhead in late July, through the town of St Lo, with General George Patton's newly activated Third Army leading. Part of Patton's command turned right and headed west to liberate the Brittany peninsula; the rest went left - east - and hooked around behind the Germans still in line facing the British and Canadians. This last move created the "Falaise Pocket", as the Germans facing the British and Canadians began to try to flee eastward on the only road available, which ran through the town of Falaise. Allied fighter-bombers ravaged the German vehicles attempting to avoid being surrounded (if the pocket were closed) by fleeing down this road. Some German soldiers did get away, but mostly on foot, without their tanks, without their trucks, and without their artillery. The "failure" of the Allies to "close the Falaise Pocket" and bag all these Germans is still controversial. The Germans who got away were in no way equipped to make another strong stand anywhere in France, and within a few more weeks basically all of France was liberated, with Paris being freed around August 25.

Answer 2

D day itself was June 6 1944. The D Day invasion lasts up to what was called the breakout, which was operation Cobra, led by Pattons 3rd US Army.