Sword Beach lay in the area of landing beaches assigned to the British 2nd Army. It was divided by Allied planners into four sectors named (from west to east) Oboe, Peter, Queen, and Roger. The British 3rd Division assaulted it at 0725 hours on D-Day, with French and British commandos attached. Elements of the South Lancashire Regiment assaulted Peter sector on the right; the Suffolk Regiment assaulted the centre in Queen sector; and the East Yorkshire Regiment assaulted Roger sector on the left. The objective of the 3rd Division was to push across Sword Beach and pass through Ouistreham to capture Caen and the important Carpiquet airfield nearby. The attached commandos of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, had the mission of fighting their way off the beach and pushing through toward the bridges over the Orne River and Caen Canal some 3 1/2 miles inland. There they were to link up with forces of the 6th Airborne Division, which were to have seized the bridges in a glider-borne coup de main just after midnight.

The invading forces were greeted with moderate fire. They were able to put out suppressing fire, and by 0800 hours the fighting was mostly inland. By 1300 the commandos had achieved their most important objective: they had linked up with Major John Howard's airborne troops at the bridges over the Orne waterways. On the right flank the British had been unable to link up with Canadian forces from Juno beach, and at 1600 hours tank forces and mechanized infantry men from the 21st Panzer Division launched the only serious German counterattack of D-Day. The 192nd Panzer Grenadier Regiment actually reached the beach at 2000 hours, but the 98 tanks of the 21st Panzer were halted by antitank weapons, air strikes, and Allied tanks themselves. The counterattack was stopped.

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Commandos follow a Sherman tank on their way to linking up with paratroopers at the Ome River.

At the end of the day, the British had landed 29,000 men and had taken 630 casualties. German casualties were much higher; many Germans had been taken prisoner. The commandos had linked up with the airborne forces at the bridges, though the optimistic objectives of Caen and the Carpiquet aerodrome were still a long 3 miles away.