The length of the mov­ing span is 45.7 meters. The height above the water is 3 meters. On the night of 6 June 1944, just a few hun­dred meters apart, the bridges, orig­i­nal­ly named after the neigh­bor­ing vil­lages of Benou­ville and Ranville, became the main tar­gets of British air­borne troops dur­ing Oper­a­tion Dead­stick (part of Oper­a­tion Ton­ga). ). Hav­ing land­ed on Air­speed Hor­sa glid­ers, they coup de main cap­tured both strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant objects and held them until the main forces arrived, there­by sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­it­ing the abil­i­ty of the Ger­man com­mand to counter the Allied land­ing in Nor­mandy. Soon after this oper­a­tion, the Benou­ville Bridge was renamed in the Eng­lish man­ner — to Pega­sus Bridge from Eng­lish.- “Pega­sus Bridge” to per­pet­u­ate the feat of the para­troop­ers, who wore shoul­der emblems in the form of a myth­i­cal winged horse.

Also known under the code names Eng­lish. Euston 1 and Ham dur­ing the prepa­ra­tion and exe­cu­tion of Oper­a­tion Dead­stick.