First U.S. casualties from Normandy flown to America.

First U.S. casualties from Normandy flown to America. The first American casualties of the Battle of Normandy arrive in the Eastern U.S. on June 29, 1944, after a 19-hour plane trip from the British Isles. The wounded - a U.S. Army officer, twelve enlisted men and a U.S. Navy Seabee - were flown across the Atlantic to their homeland in the U.S. C-54 transport plane. Waiting ambulances will carry them to hospitals. Several of the men were part of the first Alliled assault wave to strike the northern French beaches with overwhelming force on June 6. One was a paratrooper who broke his leg when he hit the ground behind German lines in the successful Allied thrust to cut off the German forces in Cherbourg, the strategic deep-water French port that was liberated on June 26, 1944.