Codenamed Cobra, the Allied breakout from the Normandy Beachhead finally began late in July 1944 after a brief but intense planning stage. In directing Cobra U.S. General Omar Bradley left nothing to chance; as Cobra's objective was nothing less than breaking out of the bridgehead in Normandy in which the Allied army's had been bottled up for the better part of two full months. Bradley's plan was two-tiered; he first sought to breakthrough the German defensive positions near the Norman town of St.
In October 1942 yet another tipping point had arrived in the two year battle fought between Axis armies led by German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and the British Eighth Army. Although at one time or another each combatant army had won an advantage over its foe, this time Lieutenant General Bernard Law Montgomery's British Eighth Army stood ready to hammer Rommel's PanzerArmee - woefully overextended at the end of a deeply frayed line of supply across the North African desert.
The turn of events that would lead to El Alamein had begun late in the spring of 1942, when Rommel's army badly
