Focuses on Vertical Envelopment in D-Day History

The D-Day exhibit inside Fort Campbell’s new Tennessee Wings of Liberty Museum does not begin on the beach. It begins behind it.

Inside the museum that officially opened this month is the story of June 6, 1944, told by the soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division who jumped into Normandy before dawn, landing behind Utah Beach to help open the way for the amphibious forces that followed.

The framing is intentional. The museum is dedicated not only to Fort Campbell’s units; rather, to the history of “vertical envelopment,” or the Army’s term for striking from above—whether by parachute, helicopter or other aircraft.

That makes the museum’s opening especially timely around Memorial Day and as Focus Features prepares to release Pressure, a new D-Day drama arriving in U.S. theaters May 29. The film follows the tense 72 hours before the Normandy invasion, when Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and British meteorologist James Stagg weighed weather, timing and the lives of thousands of troops waiting to cross the English Channel.

At Fort Campbell, where Focus Features and the USO recently hosted a media visit tied to the film, the museum offered a ground-level reminder that D-Day was not just one story, one beach, or one kind of courage. It was about command decisions, weather forecasts, airborne drops, amphibious landings and the soldiers ordered to make all of it real.

Key facts about the Tennessee Wings of Liberty Museum

The museum opened in May at Fort Campbell, which straddles Kentucky and Tennessee.

The museum’s exhibits highlight the 101st Airborne Division, 5th Special Forces Group, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and the broader Fort Campbell community. It frames much of Fort Campbell’s history through “vertical envelopment,” or the use of airborne and air assault forces to strike from above.

Its D-Day exhibit focuses on the 101st Airborne’s jump behind Utah Beach before Allied amphibious forces came ashore, with Fort Campbell officials saying the museum was built through donor support rather than Army funding.

Dr. John O’Brien, director of the Tennessee Wings of Liberty Museum and a retired Army colonel, walked visitors through the museum’s World War II section during the visit. The main D-Day tableau focuses on the 101st’s role behind Utah Beach and its linkup with the 4th Infantry Division coming ashore.

“If you remember your World War II history, the 101st jumped behind Utah Beach on the night of 6th June, morning of 6th June, and secured the landing spots for the amphibious force,” O’Brien said during the tour.

The display includes an amphibious tank, which O’Brien described as possibly the only one of its kind on display in the United States. At Utah Beach, he said, 30 of the tanks attempted to come ashore and 29 successfully made it. At Omaha Beach, by comparison, 30 tried but just one reached shore.

That contrast is part of the museum’s argument. O’Brien said the airborne forces behind Utah Beach played a major role in disrupting the German response.

“The big thing for the 101st and the 82nd who jumped behind Utah Beach is we so discombobulated the Germans that they could not counterattack against the amphibious forces,” O’Brien said.

By 9:30 that morning, he said, the 101st was escorting the 4th Infantry Division inland from Utah Beach. At Omaha Beach, he added, troops were still fighting to come ashore much later that day.

“Vertical envelopment forces made a huge difference,” O’Brien said.

Fort Campbell’s Legacy in Full View

The Tennessee Wings of Liberty Museum had its grand opening May 15, according to the Department of Defense.

Fort Campbell’s official museum page says the new museum opened in coordination with the 2026 Week of the Eagles and is accessible off-post through Wings of Liberty Way, giving the public access without requiring entry through the installation’s gates.

During the Fort Campbell visit, a senior installation leader said the museum had opened the week before and was built through support from the installation, legacy leaders and donors. No Army money was used to build it, he added.

The museum’s own public materials describe the project as fully funded through private support, while noting that work continues to complete exhibits and eventually establish an outdoor artifact park with aircraft and military vehicles.

That private support helped move Fort Campbell’s history out of the older Don F. Pratt Museum—which closed permanently in November 2024 to prepare for the transition—and into a larger public-facing space. The result is a museum designed not only as a military archive, but as a regional destination for visitors interested in World War II, Vietnam, Desert Storm, the Global War on Terrorism, and the special operations units tied to the installation.

The D-Day section is only the beginning. Nearby exhibits trace the 101st through Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands, the defense of Bastogne, and the division’s role in taking Berchtesgaden, formerly Adolf Hitler’s mountain retreat area in Germany.

One small artifact O’Brien pointed to during the tour was a child’s dress made from parachute material by a Dutch woman after Operation Market Garden. The white fabric came from a reserve parachute, he said, while the colored embroidery came from a resupply parachute.

It is the kind of object that pulls the museum’s big tactical idea down to human scale. Vertical envelopment may describe aircraft, drop zones and battlefield geometry. In the museum, it also becomes cloth, memory and the strange afterlife of war material in civilian hands.

D-Day Story Beyond the Beaches

The museum’s opening lands in a year when D-Day is also returning to movie screens through Pressure.

Focus Features says the film follows Eisenhower and Stagg as they face the choice of launching the largest seaborne invasion in history or risking the loss of the war altogether.

The pairing of the film with the museum gives Fort Campbell a rare two-part D-Day frame. Pressure looks at the decision before the landing. The Tennessee Wings of Liberty Museum looks at what happened once soldiers moved through the dark and into occupied France.

For service members and veterans, that distinction matters. D-Day can easily harden into a single image: landing craft doors dropping, men rushing into the surf, machine-gun fire from above.

The new museum widens the frame. It shows the airborne troops who landed first, the amphibious force they helped bring inland, and the military idea that still today shapes Fort Campbell’s identity.

The installation remains home to the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), the 5th Special Forces Group and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, better known as the Night Stalkers.

During a briefing on the visit, a senior leader described Fort Campbell as a place where airborne legacy, air assault culture and special operations aviation sit side by side.

That makes the museum more than a collection of relics. It is a map of how Fort Campbell sees itself, from Normandy to modern air assault operations.

The museum’s D-Day section offers a reminder that the invasion’s success depended not only on the troops who reached the sand, but also on those who dropped into darkness behind it. Their job was to fracture the enemy’s response before the beachhead could collapse.

At the Tennessee Wings of Liberty Museum, that story is no longer tucked behind the famous images of Omaha and Utah. It is the center of the room.