Impressed by the success of German airborne operations during the Battle of France, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, directed the War Office to investigate the possibility of creating a force of 5,000 parachute troops.

Training was therefore designed to encourage a spirit of self-discipline, self-reliance and aggressiveness, with emphasis given to physical fitness, marksmanship and fieldcraft.

Military exercises included capturing and holding airborne bridgeheads, road or rail bridges and coastal fortifications.

[22] In April 1944, under the command of 1st Airborne Corps, the brigade took part in Exercise Mush, in the counties of Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire.

[27] From around 00:50 the rest of the brigade arrived in Normandy after crossing the English Channel, transported in 108 C-47 Dakotas, along with 17 Horsa gliders carrying their heavy equipment.

[26] The 8th Parachute Battalion, landing on DZ-K along with the brigade headquarters, was tasked with destroying the bridges over the River Dives at Bures and Troarn.

[26] The village was defended in strength by the Germans, and the weakened battalion could only dig in and wait the arrival of commandos from the 1st Special Service Brigade later that day.

[34] By nightfall the brigade was deployed facing east, along the ridge of high ground from Le Plein in the north to the Bois de Bavent in the south.

[36] The Germans still held the village of Bréville, between the 3rd Parachute and 1st Special Service Brigades, which gave them a vantage point to observe the airborne division's positions.

One of the German prisoners was a battalion commander, who informed his captors that the 875th Grenadier Regiment had been virtually destroyed in the previous day's fighting.

[41] The following day, 11 June, the 5th Battalion Black Watch was attached to the brigade to assist in their attempt to capture Bréville, but their attacks were repulsed by the Germans with heavy losses.

They tried again on the 12th, and the German response was an attack by infantry supported by armour, which not only drove the Black Watch back, but almost overran the 9th Parachute Battalion's position.

[41] On 7 June 1 Canadian Parachute Battalion at Le Mesnil was attacked by units from the 857th and 858th Grenadier Regiments, supported by tanks and self-propelled guns.

[43] The next day the battalion was involved in several small battles, and on 9 June sent a reconnaissance patrol to check if the Germans were still occupying Bavent.

[49] The three divisions east of the Orne now became I Corps, and when issuing his orders Lieutenant General John Crocker, aware that the 6th Airborne had almost no artillery, vehicles or engineer equipment, did not expect them to advance very quickly.

To reach the Seine the division would have to cross three major rivers, and there were only two main lines of advance; one road running along the coast and another further inland from Troarn to Pont Audemer.

[53] The next day the brigade met heavy resistance just beyond Goustranville, on the Dives Canal and at Dozulé train station.

[57] In nine days of fighting the 6th Airborne Division had advanced 45 miles (72 km),[58] despite, as the divisional commander Major-General Richard Gale put it, his infantry units being "quite inadequately equipped for a rapid pursuit".

[58] In England the brigade went into a period of recruitment and training, concentrating on house-to-house street fighting in the bombed areas of Southampton and Birmingham.

Near the end of February the division returned to England to prepare for another airborne mission, to cross the River Rhine into Germany.

Their premature arrival stopped the Allied artillery and fighter bombers which were engaging targets in the area, especially anti-aircraft gun emplacements.

[68] It was during the landing that one of the Canadian medics, Corporal Frederick Topham, won a Victoria Cross, becoming the division's only recipient of the award during the war.

A hand-to-hand battle ensued, lasting 18 hours and eventually drawing in all three battalions; by midnight the town was secured, with around 300 prisoners taken.

The 3rd Parachute Brigade won the race and led the division to Wismar, arriving on 1 May only 30 minutes before the lead troops of the Soviet Red Army advancing from the east.

[86] The first incident involving the brigade came on 14 November 1945, when the Jewish National Council called for a 12-hour strike, which resulted in rioting in Tel Aviv.

[88] Early the following day the curfew was broken by large crowds gathering to loot and burn buildings, so the remainder of the brigade was deployed to the city under the codename Operation Bellicose.

[92] On 29 June Operation Agatha started; the brigade had been rotated to cover the south of Palestine, and were to search for arms and arrest any members of the Palmach in Givat Brenner and No'ar Oved.

[93] On 22 July the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was bombed, which was the catalyst for Operation Shark, the searching of every house and property in Tel Aviv.

[95] The brigade's next tasks were Operations Bream and Eel between 28 August and 4 September, which entailed the search of Dorot and Ruhama in the Negev.

For the first time army dogs trained in metal detecting were used during the operations, and they located a large arms cache in both settlements.