Kluckenbill
Posts: 278
Joined: 6/7/2000 From: Lancaster, PA, USA Status: offline
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Basically, lots of things went wrong on Omaha Beach.
The movie portray a Ranger unit that went in with the 29th ID on Omaha. I've seen it twice and although I am a veteran (3rd AD, '76-'80) , I've never been in combat, so I can't vouch for its realism.
Both the initial naval and aerial bombardments were relatively innefective due to horrible weather, difficult terrain and excellent defenses. Unfortunately, the invasion timetable was very restricted by the calendar (tides, day length, weather) so Ike almost certainly made the right decision to go, even with the questionable weather, rather than wait.
As stated earlier, very few of the Duplex Drive Shermans made it ashore due to the waves and surf. The plan was to take dozens of Shermans ashore in the first wave. Certainly things would have been different if they had made it.
Also destroyers did take the defenders under fire from 5 inch guns with reasonable success, but remember, there was a whole division of Germans on Omaha, probably 7-8,000 men, thats a lot of guys to suppress with one or two ships (try that in SPWAW and see how it works.) Unlike the Pacific, where the shore was pounded for days, in Normandy they didn't want to give the Germans too much warning so the bombardment was very short. Also they were worried about mines (we did lose several ships to mines, including at least one destroyer) so the big ships kept far out to sea.
Ultimately it was firepower, training, weight of numbers and personal valor that won the battle, at great cost.
As an aside, I know a guy who went ashore on Omaha with the 29th ID (it was mostly PA, MD and VA National Guard. I asked him if he saw much action in the war and he said "Not much, I was wounded in the first few minutes on D-Day and evacuated to a hospital in England, I recuperated enough to join my unit just before the battle of the bulge and I was wounded again after about a week in the line and evacuated again. I didn't recover until the end of the war in Europe." That's his idea of "not much" action.
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