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Posted: 6/10/2021 11:59:02 AM EDT
[#1]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Depends on where he was placed and where the troops kept landing? Quote HistoryQuoted: Quoted: Omaha Beach was five miles long. No way that guy accounted for over half the casualties. Depends on where he was placed and where the troops kept landing? No single man with an MG42 is going to account for half the casualties at Omaha Beach. No German or American source has ever come anywhere close to confirming his account, yet there is plenty of proof that he didn't come anywhere close. Kinda like a Navy Seal who killed Bin Ladin........it sells books. |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 12:03:56 PM EDT
[#2]
Because the troops originally focused on trying to take the roads off the beach, which happened to have the heaviest defenses. Once the troops started to go up the bluffs and around the these points, they started making progress.
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Posted: 6/10/2021 12:35:57 PM EDT
[#3]
Quote HistoryQuoted: If you haven't been, go. I only gotb1 day there, but could go back to the coast for a week. I’ve been getting emails from a tour group for some time, now I think they are called “Beaches of Normandy” since things restarted after all the chyna virus shutdowns. I don’t recall what they may have went by before But they do guided tours of various European battlefields , and I think they had a sister company that did Pacific WWII battlefield tours. So has anyone taken one of these sorts of tours of the Normandy beaches and following battles? I’m wondering if they give you adequate time to see things? Can you easily go off on your own, or do you need to always follow the guide like a group of elementary students on a field trip? It’s not a cheap venture, and vacation time from work is limited. Possibly no one has used the group above, but what’s been your experiences with these sorts of groups? |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 12:39:36 PM EDT
[#4]
More Germans
The bluffs and terrain 8th Air Force 100% of bombs missed the target, unlike 9th Air Force which had approx 80% hits DD tanks did poorly, tide was stronger off Omaha rather then Utah Arguably some of the artillery behind Utah was interfered with by airborne troops…no airborne troops behind Utah. The original plan was flawed in that the troops were told to assault the draws, not the bluffs. In 1-2 cases, the fact that the 29th was totally green caused some problems. The British had ‘funny’ engineer tanks they offered to the US that Bradley turned down. While they weren’t supremely better, the weren’t DD and got on the beach. The Brits initially had a slightly better naval gunfire plan. |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 12:51:32 PM EDT
[#5]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Omaha was more heavily defended than the other beaches. There were more troops, machine guns, and light artillery. What also really favored the defenders was the topography of the beach - it's concave with higher bluffs. This allowed the Germans to set up more enfilading fire positions and have better observation for directing artillery and mortar fire on the beach. And there's your answer. |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 1:01:20 PM EDT
[#6]
Quote HistoryQuoted: The tactical low level bombers who were tasked with hitting the German fortifications encountered low clouds. The bombers who hit the Utah Beach fortifications went on down anyway below the clouds and hit their targets while the bombers who were assigned to Omaha simply dropped their ordnance thru the clouds from a higher altitude and missed the fortifications. The result was carnage on Omaha Beach. We had all-weather bombers in WWII? |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 1:09:39 PM EDT
[#7]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Biggest beach, cliffs, best defense, confusion in the landing (tides and wind blew landing craft of course) tanks didn't make it onto the beach... Many tanks did make it to the beach. |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 1:12:42 PM EDT
[#8]
How effective were the tanks that did make it?
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Posted: 6/10/2021 1:16:39 PM EDT
[#9]
You could have got to France via Italy or from Russia among other choices.
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Posted: 6/10/2021 1:25:19 PM EDT
[#10]
Quote HistoryQuoted: "The Beast" was real but I suspect the body count was sensationalized unless it also took in the wounded. On the 6th of June 1944 at around 5 a.m. the first shots started to ring out across Omaha beach. Wave after wave of American Higgins Boats landed on the beach. Severloh would take the initiative here with his Lieutenant telling him to not stop firing until they ran out of ammo. The defence was hectic with Severloh manning an MG42 which was supplied with ammunition by a sergeant that Severloh didn’t know. Between the waves of American troops, the barrel of his MG42 had to be swapped out with one of the 3 spare barrels he cycled throughout the defensive, often the just used barrel would burn the grass that it was rested on due to the sheer amount of ammunition which passed through it. As well as letting the barrel cool down in between waves of troops Severloh would take breaks and shoot at the oncoming wave with his Karabiner 98k to allow the MG to cool down. Overall after 9 hours of continuous fighting Severloh would fire 13,500 bullets out of his MG42 with another further 500 fired out of two Karabiner 98k rifles. In this time he killed an estimated 1000+ American soldier with some estimates putting that number up as high as 2000. https://historyofyesterday.com/the-beast-of-omaha-63a2e20f7917 So one man accounted for every single death on Omaha Beach? |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 1:25:42 PM EDT
[#11]
Quote HistoryQuoted: How effective were the tanks that did make it? Quote HistoryQuoted: How effective were the tanks that did make it? Define "effective." They provided good support and reduced a fair number of the beach defenses, but suffered high casualties, partly because, like the infantry, they were scattered on landing and generally operated individually. Without radios to talk to the infantry, coordination was done by someone approaching the tank, and casualties among those men were incredibly high (tanks tend to draw a lot of fire). Wikipedia has a passage regarding tanks at Omaha Beach: According to the commander of the 2nd battalion 116th RCT the tanks "...saved the day. They shot the hell out of the Germans, and got the hell shot out of them."[84] As the morning progressed the beach defenses were gradually being reduced, often by tanks. Scattered along the length of the beach, trapped between the sea and the impassable shingle embankment and with no operating radios amongst the commanders, tanks had to be controlled individually. This was perilous work. The commanding officer of the 111th Field Artillery, who had landed ahead of his unit, was killed as he tried to direct the fire of one tank. The command group of the 741st Tank Battalion lost three out of their group of five in their efforts. Additionally, the commander of the 743rd tank battalion became a casualty as he approached one of his tanks with orders. When naval gunfire was brought to bear against the strong-points defending the E-3 draw, a decision was made to try to force this exit with tanks. Colonel Taylor ordered all available tanks into action against this point at 11:00. Only three were able to reach the rallying point, and two were knocked out as they attempted to go up the draw, forcing the remaining tank to back off. Mike |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 1:29:48 PM EDT
[#12]
Quote HistoryQuoted: We had all-weather bombers in WWII? No we didn't. Look at the Bulge as well. Specifically planned during known regular bad weather to remove the Allies Air Superiority. WWII fighters and bombers used dumb fall bombs, had to be sighted by eye. Flight by Instruments was extremely primative then, so planes didn't fly if there was cloud cover. Way to dangerous: get lost, ball up the takeoff or landing, hit the wrong target, etc. The Night Fighters pioneered a lot of the early fighting by radar and flying solely off instruments. Near the end of the war there was some very early guided munitions in development. I remember reading about Corsairs using essentially wire-guided bombs to hit ships in port in the Pacific. |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 1:30:45 PM EDT
[#13]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Why didn't we just ignore the heavy fortified beach and triple stacked one of the smaller ones  I never understood the waste of life in war. Hey, there's this heavily fortified base/bunker/sector we have to fight through it. Go around Flank ? ? Attack a smaller area? Part of the reason the other beaches were easier was because they didn't have to face the guns at Omaha. Even if the Germans at Omaha had nothing to shoot at directly on Omaha beach, those troops were still capable of being against Utah and Gold. Splitting the invasion may have allowed the landings to be defeated in detail. While there Germans were outnumbers at the waterline, there was a sizable force in reserve, including armor, that could have cut them to shreds if Hitler didn't fall asleep and the mis-drop of paratroopers didn't confuse the hell out of the Germans. |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 1:34:05 PM EDT
[#14]
The other beaches weren’t as well defended as Omaha.
The Americans were told that they would be facing 2nd rate troops at Omaha including old men and boys when in reality what they came up against was the German 352 Inf. Division that were in Normandy for rest and refitting. About half of the 352nd were battle hardened vets of the eastern front and dug in with good positions, bunkers, mines covering the beach, interlocking fields of fire with good views from the bluffs and steep terrain they simply mowed down everything coming at them until they were flanked and overwhelmed. It could have been MUCH worse. |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 1:44:57 PM EDT
[#15]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Biggest beach, cliffs, best defense, confusion in the landing (tides and wind blew landing craft of course) tanks didn't make it onto the beach... This - it was the landing beach with the most easily defensible terrain compared to the others. Utah is too far away from the Gold, Sword, and Juno, so you have to land at Omaha in order to consolidate into a solid beachhead capable of withstanding counter attack and land additional troops and equipment. It becomes clear when you visit the ground and have a look at it. |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 1:54:18 PM EDT
[#16]
Quote HistoryQuoted: You could have got to France via Italy or from Russia among other choices. 1. Getting to France wasn't the objective, the objective was Germany. 2. "from Russia"? Who goes to France through Russia and Germany? No one. It makes no sense. You get off the bus in Berlin. 3. From Italy through France makes no sense either. It's like if Texas wanted to invade New York and went through Colorado to get there. 4. Invading Germany from Italy involves a few hills called the Alps. There's a reason no one wants to invade Switzerland. |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 4:25:04 PM EDT
[#17]
Quote HistoryQuoted: You could have got to France via Italy or from Russia among other choices. It was Churchill`s idea to go through the "soft underbelly" of europe through Italy. On June 4, the Allies had just reached Rome after months of dogged fighting thanks to the terrain and competent enemy leadership. Churchill wanted to compund that stupidity with an amphibious assault in the Adriatic into the Balkans to beat the Russians to Budapest. The US emphatically refused. As a result, the invasion of southern france, operation dragoon, was primarily a US affair. It was spectaculary successful because most of the german army was attempting to contain the Allied beachhead in Normandy. The troops left were short of ammunition. The landings were almost bloodless. Marseilles and Nice were captured fairliy quickly and intact. Along with Cherbourg, these ports meant two things. One, a bloody campaign to take the French Atlantic ports was unnecessary. They would remain in German hands till the end of the war in some cases. Two, there was no way the germans were going to push the Allies into the sea. By the end of August, the Break out from Normandy had occurred and the Patton would shortly link up with the US 7th Army that had had advanced up the Rhone River Valley from southern France. |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 9:00:02 PM EDT
[#18]
Quote HistoryQuoted: No we didn't. Look at the Bulge as well. Specifically planned during known regular bad weather to remove the Allies Air Superiority. WWII fighters and bombers used dumb fall bombs, had to be sighted by eye. Flight by Instruments was extremely primative then, so planes didn't fly if there was cloud cover. Way to dangerous: get lost, ball up the takeoff or landing, hit the wrong target, etc. The Night Fighters pioneered a lot of the early fighting by radar and flying solely off instruments. Near the end of the war there was some very early guided munitions in development. I remember reading about Corsairs using essentially wire-guided bombs to hit ships in port in the Pacific. Quote HistoryQuoted: Quoted: We had all-weather bombers in WWII? No we didn't. Look at the Bulge as well. Specifically planned during known regular bad weather to remove the Allies Air Superiority. WWII fighters and bombers used dumb fall bombs, had to be sighted by eye. Flight by Instruments was extremely primative then, so planes didn't fly if there was cloud cover. Way to dangerous: get lost, ball up the takeoff or landing, hit the wrong target, etc. The Night Fighters pioneered a lot of the early fighting by radar and flying solely off instruments. Near the end of the war there was some very early guided munitions in development. I remember reading about Corsairs using essentially wire-guided bombs to hit ships in port in the Pacific. Those were radar-guided bombs that you read about. They could be launched by Corsairs but the majority were from PB4Ys. My uncle was involved with them when they went active in 1945 - and 60 years later he swore that their existence was still top secret. |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 9:19:46 PM EDT
[#19]
Quote HistoryQuoted: We had all-weather bombers in WWII? Quote HistoryQuoted: Quoted: The tactical low level bombers who were tasked with hitting the German fortifications encountered low clouds. The bombers who hit the Utah Beach fortifications went on down anyway below the clouds and hit their targets while the bombers who were assigned to Omaha simply dropped their ordnance thru the clouds from a higher altitude and missed the fortifications. The result was carnage on Omaha Beach. We had all-weather bombers in WWII? Not in the modern sense, hence the poor results. The Allies did field air to ground radar on some heavy bombers which could distinguish land from water, which was good enough to identify a general target area on the coast or in a city along a river. I don’t know if any of the bombers at Omaha had it. There was also navigation equipment based on terrestrial radio transmitters, a precursor to LORAN. |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 9:40:25 PM EDT
[#20]
Here below you can see the scale of Omaha Beach compared to some of the other beaches:
Juno Beach:  Sword Beach:  Utah Beach:  Omaha Beach:  |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 10:31:59 PM EDT
[#21]
Quote HistoryQuoted: No we didn't. Look at the Bulge as well. Specifically planned during known regular bad weather to remove the Allies Air Superiority. WWII fighters and bombers used dumb fall bombs, had to be sighted by eye. Flight by Instruments was extremely primative then, so planes didn't fly if there was cloud cover. Way to dangerous: get lost, ball up the takeoff or landing, hit the wrong target, etc. The Night Fighters pioneered a lot of the early fighting by radar and flying solely off instruments. Near the end of the war there was some very early guided munitions in development. I remember reading about Corsairs using essentially wire-guided bombs to hit ships in port in the Pacific. Quote HistoryQuoted: Quoted: We had all-weather bombers in WWII? No we didn't. Look at the Bulge as well. Specifically planned during known regular bad weather to remove the Allies Air Superiority. WWII fighters and bombers used dumb fall bombs, had to be sighted by eye. Flight by Instruments was extremely primative then, so planes didn't fly if there was cloud cover. Way to dangerous: get lost, ball up the takeoff or landing, hit the wrong target, etc. The Night Fighters pioneered a lot of the early fighting by radar and flying solely off instruments. Near the end of the war there was some very early guided munitions in development. I remember reading about Corsairs using essentially wire-guided bombs to hit ships in port in the Pacific. Instrument flying in WWII was not as primitive as you suggest. WWII USAAF bombers were quite capable of flying on an overcast day. They even had instrument landing systems and radio navigation equipment, and some had radar. They could not bomb with anything like high precision through cloud though. Weather was effective cover for the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge because the tech did not exist to allow aircraft to find and hit dynamic point targets through cloud cover. |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 10:49:10 PM EDT
[#22]
Quote HistoryQuoted: We had all-weather bombers in WWII? No. The cloud cover was at 10000 feet or so. At Utah, the mostly B26s went NW to SE down the long axis of teh beach. They bombed from 4000 feet. They bombed visually, and if you missed it was usually a short or long bomb and hit some other German on the beach. To get through the clouds usually the lead bomber would fly on instruments and everyone else got in a real tight formation before the clouds and went up in a formation. This was to prevent a mid air collision. 8th AF wanted to fly N to S across the beach. They could mass more bombers at once. Problem was they were over the clouds. 22K or so. The radar return was off the cliffs, not the beach, and tehy bombed about 60 seconds late. So maybe 300 tons of bombs, for nothing. They did the same thing at Operation Cobra and had short bombs. |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 10:55:04 PM EDT
[#23]
Quote HistoryQuoted: How effective were the tanks that did make it? No to make this a Sherman thread, but... The 75mms were good against any bunker they hit, if they hit he aperture. Many German AT Guns were angled up and down the beach, so they had flank shots against side armor, and a hit= a kill. In general, most Shermans got ashore, fired off some rounds, killed a few Germans, knocked out maybe a bunker, then were knocked out. A small number landed in some areas covered from German AT fire and survived. Mostly luck. They didn't have enough in any one place to move forward. The British used the AVRE. Armored Vehicle Royal Engineers. It had heavier armor, a short stubby gun, and sometimes towed or carried other Engineer stuff. The big thing was they couldn't be floated, so by dropping, say, ten on one section of the beach, they could get through and penetrate the German lines and get behind the bunkers so the couldnt get knocked out. |
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Posted: 6/10/2021 10:56:38 PM EDT
[#24]
All but two of the tanks heading toward the beach sank en route.
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Posted: 6/11/2021 7:48:15 PM EDT
[#25]
Something to mention.
Eight months prior to D-Day, the Marines took heavy casualties at Tarawa, partly because their later waves had LCVPs, not amtracs and got hung up on the reef. In a later battle, Kwajalein, the 7th Infantry Division did quite well as they had far more amtracs. Their division commander, MG Cortlett, was reassigned to Europe and advocated that the lead waves should have amtracs, not LCVPs. He was overruled by many generals, including Bradley. While the bombing failure and tank failure had greater impacts, this was an issue. The amtracs could have used tracks to move up to the shingle, and because troops exit the back, not the front, this would have helped.  amtracs  LCVP, "Higgins boats" |
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Posted: 6/11/2021 7:50:41 PM EDT
[#26]
Quote HistoryQuoted: The Beast of Omaha Beach. Supposedly killed over 2000 by himself. One American researcher said The Beast had killed over 3000 after he did interviews with the survivors before they all died. Do a web search but its very hard to get honest answers about anything related to WW2. 
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Posted: 6/11/2021 7:54:04 PM EDT
[#27]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I read a story from one the landing craft pilots. I am not sure which beach but his craft was one of the first to hit the beach. From the story they dropped the ramp and wound up being a very bad spot. There where 3 mig42 directly inline with the ramp. The mg's all shot in to the craft, the pilot bailed out the back of the boat. He wound up hiding behind the craft until others came in, he crawled back on the boat and stated as far as he could tell no one made it off the ramp. Even his crew was dead. That was what 40 or so dead in seconds. The same kind of thing happened in ww1, many times. |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 9:23:22 AM EDT
[#28]
Quote HistoryQuoted: You could have got to France via Italy or from Russia among other choices. The US was bogged down in Italy *long* before the D-day invasion.
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Posted: 6/19/2021 10:01:24 AM EDT
[#29]
Quote HistoryQuoted: The Germans had a very good defense plan for Omaha beach. When you are on a landing craft with the front that opens and right in the sights of a machine gun in a bunker it's going to be a very bad day. That is one of the other misconceptions. Most of the pillboxes and gun mounts were set up to fire down the beaches instead of directly out towards the sea. Yeah, some were able to be trained to take out guys as they were getting of the landing craft 300-400 yards away, but most were set up for interlocking fire once guys were closer to the exits. I took this panorama at low tide a few years ago. You can see the "Dog Green" exit that the 29th Infantry fought to open up, made famous in the "Saving Private Ryan Scene." The gun mounts at that exit by in large do not fire towards the water line where I am standing, which would have been where men were exiting the landing crafts.  Attached File Attached File Attached File This brave man from my hometown survived the sinking of his duplex drive Sherman, but was killed by machine gun fire on the beach. It was the honor of a lifetime to place the flags at his grave and the American Cemetery nearby. For those that haven't been there, you must go. For those fortunate enough to get the opportunity to honor one of the men buried there, the ceremony is simple yet moving. Sand from the beach is gently pressed into the engravings on the headstone and appears almost like gold inlay. A US flag is placed towards the beach in the direction the liberators arrived, and the French flag faces inland.  Attached File |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 12:13:18 PM EDT
[#30]
That is one of the other misconceptions. Most of the pillboxes and gun mounts were set up to fire down the beaches instead of directly out towards the sea. Yeah, some were able to be trained to take out guys as they were getting of the landing craft 300-400 yards away, but most were set up for interlocking fire once guys were closer to the exits. This. The bunker in Saving Private Ryan was more like an Artillery OP. They were called "shnabelstand"" and they were not designed for MG positions. In real life sooner or later someone would start pumping rifle fire into the aperture and that would be that. Which didn't happen in the movie because Spielberg told the actors not to.  Many bunkers looked like this.  Notice there is a wall on the sea ward side, not the landward side, to protect it from fire and observation from ships, and its sector of fire was down the long axis of the beach. You can see that the wall is parallel to the line where the water meets the land, and the ships and aperture cant see each other, due to the wall. Sectors of fire looked like this:  Without getting into the weeds, moving off the beach and engaging the enemy to the flank like that is super hard. If you cant lay down enough suppressive fire, which you cant, you really need night, or in this case, a lot of smoke. Or maybe if the bombers hit the dust would have obscured that MG42 position so he was blind. As it was, he had a great sector of fire. This one did a lot of damage to A Co, 116th infantry. If you look in the distance where there are six people standing around, that's where A/116 landed in the first wave. That was far enough away that it would be hard to shoot into the bunker aperture, but close enough that the bunker could do a great deal of damage. The sector of fire looked like a kilometer, at least. The Germans were pros and set up these sorts of flanking enfilade positions all the time. |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 12:20:20 PM EDT
[#31]
Quote HistoryQuoted: The Beast of Omaha Beach. Supposedly killed over 2000 by himself. One American researcher said The Beast had killed over 3000 after he did interviews with the survivors before they all died. Do a web search but its very hard to get honest answers about anything related to WW2. There were only half that many American deaths on all the beaches combined |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 12:28:59 PM EDT
[#32]
Quote HistoryQuoted: You realize that the total killed at Omaha Beach was less than 1000 right? We did good at Normandy, considering what we were hitting. |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 12:30:03 PM EDT
[#33]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Horrific, but compare that to the Somme. 20x more killed in the first day attacking into prepared MG positions. We did good at Normandy, considering what we were hitting. Horrific? It wasn’t even a bloody nose compared to battles in the East that don’t get Tom Hanks movies of dubious accuracy,which are then considered the most authentic war movie ever... Tarawa was a far,far tougher invasion,to say nothing of Iwo Jima. |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 12:36:33 PM EDT
[#34]
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Posted: 6/19/2021 12:37:34 PM EDT
[#35]
10 Things That Went Badly Wrong on Omaha Beach
link 1. The Beach was perfect for an invasion 2. Germans were on Omaha beach in strength 3. Air Force bombardment failed completely 4. Naval bombardment was too short 5. Limited use of special tanks 6. Heavy Seas 7. DD Tanks launched too far out 8. Strong current caused troops to land all over the beach 9. Troops were dropped off on sandbars 10. Engineers were unable to create lanes in the beach obstacles That's a pretty good list. To a limited degree, lack of airborne operations behind Omaha hurt. Next to Sword beach, for example, the British did a specific raid on the Merville Battery, and everybody knows about events such as Easy Company E/506 and that battery they took out. Also, and this is mentioned by Jonathan Gawne in his book, in the trainup in Slapton Sands they experimented with smoke screens but the troops got confused by it, and the US elected not to do it. That was a big mistake. In the Pacific, there were very long naval bombardments. In the ETO they were much shorter. In the invasion of North Africa and Sicily it was a night landing. I believe at Salerno they used a lot of smoke. It was the worst of both worlds. the bombardment failed, no smoke, daylight. That never goes well. In WWI when both sides were in positions where there wasn't enough firepower, use night, smoke, fog, whatever. If you cant suppress with firepower, go when they cant see you. In the 1st ID sector the first penetration was in an area where beach grass caught fire and made a natural little smoke screen. Once that initial group of 100 men or so got offteh beach they rolled up the flanks and opened teh way for everyone else. |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 1:00:22 PM EDT
[#36]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I’ve been getting emails from a tour group for some time, now I think they are called “Beaches of Normandy” since things restarted after all the chyna virus shutdowns. I don’t recall what they may have went by before But they do guided tours of various European battlefields , and I think they had a sister company that did Pacific WWII battlefield tours. So has anyone taken one of these sorts of tours of the Normandy beaches and following battles? I’m wondering if they give you adequate time to see things? Can you easily go off on your own, or do you need to always follow the guide like a group of elementary students on a field trip? It’s not a cheap venture, and vacation time from work is limited. Possibly no one has used the group above, but what’s been your experiences with these sorts of groups? I think you are better off doing the trip yourself. Rent a car, book a hotel, read some books ahead of time and figure what you want to see. There are dozens of museums and cemeteries. It's easy to drive there and the food is good. |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 1:11:40 PM EDT
[#37]
The German division defending Omaha was the 352nd ID which was a much higher quality division than the two divisions defending the other beaches. 352nd had a lot of eastern front veterans, it was better trained, it was near full strength, and probably better supplied as it seems they had more ammo to keep firing than most other German defensive positions in Normandy that day.
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Posted: 6/19/2021 1:15:45 PM EDT
[#38]
Quote History Quoted: This. The bunker in Saving Private Ryan was more like an Artillery OP. They were called "shnabelstand"" and they were not designed for MG positions. In real life sooner or later someone would start pumping rifle fire into the aperture and that would be that. Which didn't happen in the movie because Spielberg told the actors not to. https://www.bunkerpictures.nl/pictures/france/seine-maritime/etretat/Schnabelstand-2.JPG Many bunkers looked like this. https://www.battleofnormandytours.com/uploads/2/5/1/7/2517577/6397907_orig.jpg Notice there is a wall on the sea ward side, not the landward side, to protect it from fire and observation from ships, and its sector of fire was down the long axis of the beach. You can see that the wall is parallel to the line where the water meets the land, and the ships and aperture cant see each other, due to the wall. Sectors of fire looked like this: https://scontent.ftpa1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/48369007_731775890513355_3554380840995651584_n.jpg?_nc_cat=109&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=9267fe&_nc_ohc=fqAZnmVN5ZAAX9hckG0&_nc_ht=scontent.ftpa1-1.fna&oh=70b7e781d33c3ede7fb69760a550b6c7&oe=60D29ECC Without getting into the weeds, moving off the beach and engaging the enemy to the flank like that is super hard. If you cant lay down enough suppressive fire, which you cant, you really need night, or in this case, a lot of smoke. Or maybe if the bombers hit the dust would have obscured that MG42 position so he was blind. As it was, he had a great sector of fire. This one did a lot of damage to A Co, 116th infantry. If you look in the distance where there are six people standing around, that's where A/116 landed in the first wave. That was far enough away that it would be hard to shoot into the bunker aperture, but close enough that the bunker could do a great deal of damage. The sector of fire looked like a kilometer, at least. The Germans were pros and set up these sorts of flanking enfilade positions all the time. Good post! The MG bunkers were pretty hidden and hard to see, and from a movie perspective just wouldn't have had the same effect as the more ominous looking shnabelstand structures. Also, there is a good chance that some of the hotels and homes on the beach also had MG and other rifle positions in them. We stayed in the Hotel De La Marine in Arromanches on what is Gold Beach. My imagination my have the best of me, but I have to think that the 3rd floor corner room that we stayed in likely had a position in it. It is the white building in this picture and was there on D-day.  Attached File  Attached File |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 1:31:43 PM EDT
[#39]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I think you are better off doing the trip yourself. Rent a car, book a hotel, read some books ahead of time and figure what you want to see. There are dozens of museums and cemeteries. It's easy to drive there and the food is good. Quote HistoryQuoted: I think you are better off doing the trip yourself. Rent a car, book a hotel, read some books ahead of time and figure what you want to see. There are dozens of museums and cemeteries. It's easy to drive there and the food is good. Quoted: I think you are better off doing the trip yourself. Rent a car, book a hotel, read some books ahead of time and figure what you want to see. There are dozens of museums and cemeteries. It's easy to drive there and the food is good. Agreed. With a little research you can do a really good self guided tour. The one benefit that we had to a paid tour was that our guide was able to speak with the caretakers at the American Cemetery and get us private access to the grave I posted earlier. It was in a section that was closed off to let the grass recover (we were there a couple months after the 75th anniversary). We liked our tour and saw some neat stuff, but not much that we didn't already know prior to our research. If you do go the paid route one benefit is they drive you around. |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 1:38:46 PM EDT
[#40]
Quote HistoryQuoted: This - it was the landing beach with the most easily defensible terrain compared to the others. Utah is too far away from the Gold, Sword, and Juno, so you have to land at Omaha in order to consolidate into a solid beachhead capable of withstanding counter attack and land additional troops and equipment. It becomes clear when you visit the ground and have a look at it. Quote HistoryQuoted: Quoted: Biggest beach, cliffs, best defense, confusion in the landing (tides and wind blew landing craft of course) tanks didn't make it onto the beach... This - it was the landing beach with the most easily defensible terrain compared to the others. Utah is too far away from the Gold, Sword, and Juno, so you have to land at Omaha in order to consolidate into a solid beachhead capable of withstanding counter attack and land additional troops and equipment. It becomes clear when you visit the ground and have a look at it. Omaha also had a couple of good roads leading off of it that were going to be strategically important to move men and material inland. The Dog Green Exit (D-1) was one of those roads at Vierville. That was also why it was well defended. The invasion plans have an amazing amount of detail about why and how each was selected, from the difference in tides needed to land large ships, to the length of beaches that could be used for logistics, roads leading inland, strategic cross roads to capture, etc. Then you add in that the allied brought their own ports with them (Mulburries) and it is just an unbelievably complex and well thought out invasion. Going in and flanking a few positions and killing some bad guys was important, but not the main objectives. |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 1:42:27 PM EDT
[#41]
Quote HistoryQuoted: The Beast of Omaha Beach. Supposedly killed over 2000 by himself. One American researcher said The Beast had killed over 3000 after he did interviews with the survivors before they all died. Do a web search but its very hard to get honest answers about anything related to WW2. Completely unprovable BEFORE it was debunked. |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 4:59:10 PM EDT
[#42]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Completely unprovable BEFORE it was debunked. I heard he used a nuclear 40mm grenade. |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 5:05:33 PM EDT
[#43]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Something to mention. Eight months prior to D-Day, the Marines took heavy casualties at Tarawa, partly because their later waves had LCVPs, not amtracs and got hung up on the reef. In a later battle, Kwajalein, the 7th Infantry Division did quite well as they had far more amtracs. Their division commander, MG Cortlett, was reassigned to Europe and advocated that the lead waves should have amtracs, not LCVPs. He was overruled by many generals, including Bradley. While the bombing failure and tank failure had greater impacts, this was an issue. The amtracs could have used tracks to move up to the shingle, and because troops exit the back, not the front, this would have helped. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Tracked_landing_vehicles_%28LVTs%29_approach_Iwo_Jima%3Bfig14.jpg amtracs https://ww2today.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Omaha-assault-craft.jpg LCVP, "Higgins boats" Interesting. I didn't know that. Was it a logistics thing? All the Amtracs were in service for the PTO, and moving them from there to the ETO would be too lengthy, and costly? |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 5:10:13 PM EDT
[#44]
I stood on Omaha Beach at low tide.
You can't imagine how exposed those guys were. Made me want to cry. |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 5:40:56 PM EDT
[#45]
Not to ask a stupid question, but why didn’t the planners use destroyers to take out the pillboxes with close range direct 5” fire BEFORE the Higgins boats rolled in and dropped ramp? Use those same destroyers to constantly fire suppressive 40mm and 20mm over the heads of the landing troops.
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Posted: 6/19/2021 6:50:27 PM EDT
[#46]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Interesting. I didn't know that. Was it a logistics thing? All the Amtracs were in service for the PTO, and moving them from there to the ETO would be too lengthy, and costly? My understanding was that there was a small number of amtracs in England, not allocated for anything. It was a classic case of ETO officers not being open to new ideas. Chiefly Omar Bradley. The ETO had had about four major amphib ops before that, they were all significantly larger then in the Pacific, and they looked down their noses. If you assume 20 pax per, they needed maybe 100 for the first wave. It wasnt a logistics issue. If you look at the first two photos Jblomenberg16 posted, it was a loooooong way in at low tide, and the amtracs would have been value added. ALthough some would have been smacked by AT fire. Id say it would have helped some. Shitcanning the DD tank idea and dropping them off the ramp at the beach, and the bomber fiasco were big contributors |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 7:37:08 PM EDT
[#47]
I would have to imagine that during the planning phase, there was a significant amount of argument and heated debate over how long before troop landings was the naval and aerial bombardment to start. Too much time and the Germans would have enough time to flood the area with reinforcements. Too little time and the beach defenses wouldn't be softened enough to make a difference. I'm thinking the latter is how it went down.
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Posted: 6/19/2021 7:50:04 PM EDT
[#48]
Quote HistoryQuoted: My understanding was that there was a small number of amtracs in England, not allocated for anything. It was a classic case of ETO officers not being open to new ideas. Chiefly Omar Bradley. The ETO had had about four major amphib ops before that, they were all significantly larger then in the Pacific, and they looked down their noses. If you assume 20 pax per, they needed maybe 100 for the first wave. It wasnt a logistics issue. If you look at the first two photos Jblomenberg16 posted, it was a loooooong way in at low tide, and the amtracs would have been value added. ALthough some would have been smacked by AT fire. Id say it would have helped some. Shitcanning the DD tank idea and dropping them off the ramp at the beach, and the bomber fiasco were big contributors When I was at Omaha Beach I was fortunate enough to tag along with a Sandhurst class that was there with a D-Day historian (I think it was Hastings). He said that at the British beaches, the ground commanders took control of the assault ships for the trip in, and were more likely to beach their LCTs and LCIs then run the tanks right onto dry beach. On the American beaches, the Navy commanders controlled the ships and didn't want the ships harmed by being too close to the beaches. |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 7:55:15 PM EDT
[#49]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Not to ask a stupid question, but why didn’t the planners use destroyers to take out the pillboxes with close range direct 5” fire BEFORE the Higgins boats rolled in and dropped ramp? Use those same destroyers to constantly fire suppressive 40mm and 20mm over the heads of the landing troops. There were mines off-shore. Also, around six destroyers were sunk on D-Day and the days following. |
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Posted: 6/19/2021 8:15:26 PM EDT
[#50]
It was defended by the veteran 352.Infanterie-Division, not kids and old men.
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