'Wild Oats' was a British unrealised plan, within 'Perch' (i), by Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey’s 2^nd Army for an airborne landing of Major General R. E. Urquhart’s 1^st Airborne Division directly onto the airfield of Carpiquet, to the west of Caen in German-held northern France between Lieutenant General J. T. Crocker’s I Corps and Lieutenant General G. C. Bucknall’s XXX Corps, to aid the expansion of the British part of the 'Overlord' lodgement to the south-west (10 June 1944).

As part of the fighting by the British and Canadian forces to take Caen, the Allies envisaged several land and airborne offensives in order to pierce the front firmly defended by the Germans. Indeed, no less than three armoured divisions held the sector at the beginning of June 1944: these were Generalmajor Hyanzinth Graf Strachwitz von Groß-Zauche und Camminetz’s Panzer-Lehr-Division, SS-Brigadeführer Fritz de Witt’s (from 14 June SS-Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer’s) 12^th SS Panzerdivision 'Hitlerjugend' and Generalleutnant Edgar Feuchtinger’s 21^st Panzerdivision.

On 9 June the British forces' progress was brought to a halt by the German forces, and General Sir Bernard Montgomery, commanding the Allied 21^st Army Group, then met with Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey and Lieutenant General Omar N. Omar Bradley, commanders of the British 2^nd Army and US 1^st Army respectively, and proposed a modification of the 'Perch' operation which had began on 7 June. This new 'Wild Oats' operation was to encircle Caen on the east by Crocker’s British I Corps (51^st Division and 4^th Armoured Brigade) and on the west by Bucknall’s British XXX Corps (50^th Division and 7^th Armoured Division).

Furthermore, the new plan called for elements of the 1^st Airborne Division to be parachuted into the area of ​​Carpiquet, where the Germans occupied the airfield much needed by the Allies. Once the airborne effort had been implemented and succeeded, the 7^th Armoured Division was to take Evrecy and Hill 112.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, commander of the Allied air forces, was strongly opposed to the airborne part of the operation on the grounds that it posed unacceptable risks for the crews of the transport aircraft. In addition, Leigh-Mallory said, the designated targets would scatter the 1^st Airborne Division too widely for the lightly armed airborne soldiers to overcome far more heavily equipped German armoured forces.

'Wild Oats' was therefore cancelled, and only the encirclement of Caen was maintained as part of 'Perch'.