When D-Day finally arrived, Canadians had already made a significant contribution to the operation.
For several months, the Royal Canadian Air Force had been flying bombing sorties targeting roads, bridges, railways, airfields, and communications centres in the invasion area.
On the morning of June 6, 1944, they flew as an integral element of the 171 Allied squadrons sent to support the invasion on the ground and wrest control of the skies from the Luftwaffe.
At sea, Canadian destroyers
HMCS Algonquin and HMCS Sioux were among the flotilla charged with pounding the Germans' coastal defences with a relentless artillery barrage.
Alongside the armed merchant cruisers HMCS Prince Henry and Prince David that carried the 14,000 Canadian troops toward shore, the destroyers' job was made easier by the work of minesweepers bearing the maple leaf.
Before the Allied armada set off for Normandy, Canadian minesweepers had cleared a safe path across the narrow English Channel.
The path may have been clear, but the weather was rough -- leaving the thousands of soldiers who were landing that morning -- as well as engineers, medics, and logistics personnel -- tired, cold and seasick before the battle had even begun.
Like their Allies landing up and down the 80-kilometre stretch of Normandy coast, the Canadians trying to liberate Juno Beach were greeted by deadly fire from Nazi batteries that had survived the initial naval and aerial bombardment.
The divisions landing on Juno were hardest hit that day, as tanks meant to lead the landing troops were forced by high waves to follow them ashore.
The result was a bloodbath -- as soldiers struggled to cross the few hundred metres of open beach between the shoreline and a sea wall.
Only a handful survived.
But their bravery was emblematic of the heroism that drove Canadian troops further inland than any of their Allies on D-Day.
Noting the terrible cost of the day's victories, Veterans Affairs quotes a Canadian journalist’s account of the aftermath.
"The German dead were littered over the dunes, by the gun positions", he wrote at the time.
"By them, lay Canadians in bloodstained battledress, in the sand and in the grass, on the wire and by the concrete forts. ...They had lived a few minutes of the victory they had made. That was all."
Reflecting on the soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice that day, Veterans Affairs Minister John McCallum called it "almost incomprehensible."
"They jumped off the ships into water waist-deep, under heavy machine-gun fire. They died, or watched their friends die, beside them. They jumped out of planes into enemy territory.
"I don't think any of us can even conceive of even being called upon to do something like that for our country."
On that one day, 340 Canadians had given their lives.
Another 574 were wounded and 47 taken prisoner.
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CTV's Tom Kennedy travels to France to dig up new information about the crash of a Canadian plane, almost 60 years ago during the D-Day Invasion. more.
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More than 15,000 Canadians participated in the D-Day landing force
1,017 Canadians died during the first six days of the Normandy campaign, and by the end, about 5,020 Canadians were dead
For the first time since 1940, three RCAF squadrons flew from French soil as they fought Luftwaffe and bombed key ground targets
The Royal Canadian Navy provided 109 vessels, and 10,000 sailors to the 7,000-strong Allied armada
By the end of D-Day, the Allies had landed as many as 155,000 troops in France by sea and air, 6,000 vehicles including 900 tanks, 600 guns and about 4,000 tons of supplies
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