The huge Allied force that had set ashore on the Normandy coastline, more than a million men within three weeks of D-Day, gradually extended its width but not its depth. Cherbourg was captured on June 27, 1944, giving the Allies a major port for the flow of men and supplies. As of July 24 the Americans and British were still confined in the Normandy beachhead, which they had expanded somewhat to take in Saint-Lo and Caen.
On July 25, Allied troops launched Operation Cobra which broke through the German lines between Caen and Saint Lo and then fanned out into open country. The heavily armored U.S. Third Army, led by Lt. Gen. George Patton, turned the German left flank at Avranches, broke into Brittany, and then moved northeast to the Seine, to outflank Paris on the south. After the Americans had turned east from Avranches in the first week of August, a pocket developed around the German Fifth Panzer and Seventh armies west of Falaise. The Germans held out until August 20 but then retreated across the Seine. German restistance in France was effectively broken.
 
The Breakout! campaign is based on the events in France of late July and early August 1944: the initial breakout through Operation Cobra, the race to outflank and encircle the Germans in The Falaise Pocket, the series of battles at Argentan, Chambois, Trun, St Lambert-sur-Dives, Hordouseaux and Coudehard to close the pocket and the final battle at Hill 262 to cut off the German escape route.
The next chapter explains how to install Breakout! and the final chapter contains a map of the real battle of the Falaise Pocket.
The strength selection menus work as normal in Breakout! so you can select the American and German strengths and campaign mode also works. However the historical timeline in the campaign mode battle de-brief screen still refers to dates in the original campaign and some of the campaign splash screens also refer to the St Lo campaign.
You can save replays as usual but to replay a battle from Breakout! campaign you must make sure that the Data folder from Breakout! is the active one otherwise it will load the wrong maps.
I hope you enjoy these new battles for Close Combat, if you like them then drop me an email. Special thanks to Matthew Hills for writing CC Cartographer without which the new maps in Breakout! would not have been possible.
