Operation Tractable
▶ Explore on the mapOperation Tractable was the final Allied push to close the Falaise pocket, launched on 14 August 1944 by the First Canadian Army and Polish armoured forces advancing south from the Caen plain towards Falaise, while American forces drove north from Argentan. The Canadians reached Falaise on 16 August, and the two pincers met at Chambois and on the heights of Mont Ormel on 19–21 August, trapping the remains of the German Seventh Army and Panzer Group West. Some fifty thousand German soldiers were encircled; about ten thousand were killed and some forty thousand taken prisoner, though a substantial number escaped through the narrowing gap before it closed. The battle destroyed the German armoured strength in Normandy and opened the Allied advance to the Seine. The point recorded here is an approximate location for the battle area. The decision to close the gap with a deliberate attack rather than a faster, looser pursuit has been debated ever since, with some historians arguing that a quicker advance could have trapped far more of the German forces in Normandy.
Sources
- Wikimedia Commons — Charnwood (SVG, by EyeSerene)
- Wikimedia Commons — Operations Greenwood and Pomegranate, Normandy, July 1944 (EN.svg)
- Wikimedia Commons — Operation Tractable (SVG, by EyeSerene)
- Wikipedia — 352nd Infantry Division (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Wikipedia — Falaise pocket (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Wikipedia — Normandy landings (CC BY-SA 3.0)
- Wikipedia — Operation Overlord (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Related
Reuse this data: open dataset (GeoJSON / CSV, CC BY 4.0)