Back in the mid 1930s some amphibious 'map exercises' and staff studies were run through at the US Army staff school at Ft Levenworth. For some of these a invasion of Europe was proposed, using Britian as a base. These exercises and staff studies showed a marked prefrence for Normandy as the best location. The reasons were many. The port of Cherbourg was larger than the Channel ports, attacking out of the Cotien pennsula gave better acess to the larger Atantic ports of Brest & Bourdeux. The ports like Cherbourg were more difficult than the eastern Channel ports for the enemy to interdict. The railroads from the Normandy & Britiany region seemed to support attacking into central France better than from the French & Belgian ports of the eastern Channel.

Antwerp would have been the absolute first choice, except the coast is shallow & difficult to navigate outside the ship channels, the beaches are backed my marshes and 'wet' fields, and the countryside is cut up by cannals and levees. Antwerp has been amoung the top ports of Western Europe and its location makes it a wide door opening directly towards the Ruhr and north German plain.

The German obssesion with the Calis region was only partially due to Allied deception efforts. The Wehrmacht had never made a indepth study of amphibious operations and did not grasp the disadvatages of the eastern Channel region as a landing site.