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Juno Beach was part of the invasion area assigned to the British 2nd Army, under Lieutenant General Miles Dempsey. The beach was divided by the Allied command into two designated assault sectors: Nan (comprising Red, White, and Green sections) to the east and Mike (made up of Red and White sections) to the west. It was to be assaulted by the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division, the 7th Brigade landing at Courseulles in Mike sector and the 8th Brigade landing at Bernieres in Nan sector. The objectives of the 3rd Division on D-Day were to cut the Caen-Bayeux road, seize the Carpiquet airport west of Caen, and form a link between the two British beaches of Gold and Sword on either side of Juno Beach.

In Saint-Aubin at the eastern end of Juno Beach, wrecked and beached landing craft line the shore.

The first assault wave landed at 0755 hours, 10 minutes past H-Hour and fully three hours after the optimum low tide. This delay presented the invading Canadians with a difficult situation. The beach obstacles were already partially submerged, and the engineers were unable to clear paths to the beach. The landing craft were therefore forced to feel their way in, and the mines took a heavy toll. Roughly 30 percent of the landing craft at Juno were destroyed or damaged.

As the troops waded ashore, there was little fire at first--mainly because the German gun positions did not aim out to sea but were set to enfilade the coastline. As the Canadian soldiers worked their way through the obstacles and came into the enfilading killing zones, the first wave took dreadful casualties. Company B of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles was cut down to one officer and 25 men as it moved to reach the seawall. In the assault teams, the chance of becoming a casualty in that first hour was almost 1 in 2. By mid-morning, hard fighting had brought the town of Bernieres into Canadian hands, and later Saint-Aubin was occupied. Progress inland past the towns was good, and, as some armoured units arrived in later waves, they briefly interdicted the Caen-Bayeux road. One Troop of the 1st Hussar tank regiment was thus the only unit of the entire Allied invasion to reach its final objective on D-Day.

By evening the 3rd Division had linked up with the British 50th Division from Gold Beach to the west, but to the east the Canadians were unable to make contact with the British 3rd Division from Sword beach--leaving a gap of 2 miles into which elements of the German 21st Panzer Division counterattacked. The Canadians suffered 1,200 casualties out of 21,400 troops who landed at Juno that day--a casualty ratio of 1 out of 18.