'Royal Flush' (i) was the US air operations undertaking by Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle’s 8^th AAF and Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton’s (from 7 August Major General Hoyt S. Vandenberg’s) 9^th AAF in support of the land forces committed in 'Neptune' (iii) and 'Overlord' by the suppression of German air activity and, wherever possible, by the delay if not the halting of German land movements toward the Normandy lodgement (6 June/August 1944).