Operation Beneficiary

'Beneficiary' was an Allied unrealised plan for a break-out from the Normandy lodgement area after 'Overlord' by means of a combined airborne and amphibious descent on St Malo on the northern coast of the Brittany peninsula (summer 1944).

The Allied force which was to have been used in this undertaking was centred on Major General R. E. Urquhart’s British 1st Airborne Division, and the operation was schemed as the means of facilitating the capture of this Breton port by Major General Walton H. Walker’s US XX Corps of Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley’s US 1st Army, thereby exposing the western flank of the German defence of northern France provided by SS-Oberstgruppenführer und Generaloberst der Waffen-SS Paul Hausser’s 7th Army.