I had a cynical acquaintance of mine ask why the allies didn't move the invasion of Normandy either up or down the French beach just a few miles and save several thousand lives in order to avoid the Germans that were in place along the beaches where they expected the invasion. I couldn't answer his cynical implications about our uncaring Generals but I thought perhaps a historian on this site could answer this question.

I've wondered too. Kind of reminds me of the warfare of lining up and facing the enemy while firing into each others ranks.

I'm not an expert, but the entire coast of France was fortified. The Germans, thanks to a long term deception program, fully expected the invasion at Calais. In fact they kept most of their reserves in that area for over 24 hours as they considered Normandy a diversion and not the real invasion.

There are only a handful of places where it could have been done. Normandy was one of the more lightly defended areas. At least with intelligence available at the time. Looking back 70 years later, with the information we have today, another spot might have been better. But they didn't have a crystal ball.

I sure wish they had known that those big guns were not at Point du Hoc as they had thought. Would have saved a 100 or so brave Rangers who took those cliffs for nothing.

The allies had a whole fake army (rubber tanks, etc.) opposite Calais to fool the German spies and even a fake commander (Patton). It worked. Even after the Normandy landing, the Germans thought it was a diversion and the real landing would occur at Calais. The Germans held back valuable forces from attacking the allies for this reason.

They also chose the spots where there was adequate beachs for lands as well as locations the preperatory fire would have been the most effective. Actually one of the German artillery locations that was delivering so much fire on Omaha (can't remember what sector?) wasn't discovered until like 2007 or 08!

But the entire coastline was a fortress!!!

this....the Germans had the whole coast fortified leaving only two spots where it was possible....Normandy and Calais....whole lot was involved in the choice, the features of the beach, underwater features, was it close to roads they were going to need, strategic bridges.....gotta remember at this point in the war Rommel was pretty well in charge of the defense and the man was no fool....there is a reason it was called "Fortress Europe", the Germans had the whole coast where even the remote possibility of a landing happening from Britain locked up fairly tight....yeah in hind sight there was some things that could have been done different but given the info they had they werent even positive they could pull it off at either Normandy or Calais.....

hell they went so far as to covertly steal samples of the sand and mud at any possible landing spot to determine if tanks could even cross a particular beach.....and alot of the American losses fall on the brass, most the Americans turned down the specialty tanks the brits had made that would have made the lives of the troops a whole lot easier....

They needed the deep water port at Cherbourg and the beaches at Normandy were located close to it. Grabbing a beach is one thing, supplying an army long term is quite another. The Mulberries were just a stop gap measure to allow supplies to be off loaded until they could capture the port at Cherbourg. I forget all of the strategic reasons but being on a peninsula they could also cut it off from the main German forces and prevent it from being reinforced during our attack on it. Once in our hands, the peninsula would prevent the Germans from launching a counterattack from any point around 180 degrees.

Remember that a good part of the plan for Hitler's last ditch attack resulting in the Battle of the Bulge was to take the port of Antwerp.

What's that saying - "amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics."

What i never understood is why they didn't have more air cover when they landed. P 47s and such strafing the German lines would have helped.

Size matters...

You need a spot big enough to land AND supply an entire Army...

Cloud cover and imclement weather.

We also had the first hand experience of what not to do.

http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/second-world-war/historical-sheets/dieppe

That was one of the reasons Germany did not expect an invasion at Normandy; there was no harbor. The Mulberry artificial harbors worked until we had a foothold. Gerry was quite surprised by Normandy. I would say it saved lives instead of costing lives.

There are still parts of the Mulberry blocks there. I have a picture of me standing on one.

Read Stephen Ambrose's book "D Day" - actually read all of his books. Its a fascinating look into the leadership role Ike played and the sheer logistics of this invasion. Nothing in the history of man had compared as far as men and machinery. It worked. We aren't speaking German.

Ike was truly one of the greatest �managers� of all time. Negotiation the ego of Churchill and Roosevelt and managing to defeat a very experienced German Army that had some great leaders as well (if Hitler weren�t crazy we probably would have had to drop the bomb on Europe).

We owned the skies, but once the allies hit the beach you couldn't strafe and bomb.

One thing I never understood was why the heavy bombers were sent in perpendicular to the coast with orders to wait 30 seconds after crossing the coast before dropping their loads. Doing so put a lot of holes in cow pastures and the cows therein but did nothing to destroy beach obstacles and provide holes for cover.

I would have figured to send them in fairly low, 10 or 15 thousand feet or so in long columns three abreast and parallel to the coast. They cross the channel and then turn parallel to the coast when they reach it. Once a particular column had made their turn and was fully over the beach, the column leader calls "bombs away" and they all drop simultaneously. Maybe use waves of medium bombers, B-25's and 26's, doing the same thing an hour before the landing.

I know night bombing is tricky but the Brits would use Mosquitoes as pathfinders to mark targets with incendiaries, seems like they could have found some way to give the bombers visual clues to their targets.

They could have done that up and down the coast for a few weeks without giving away the location of the attack, the Germans would figure they were just weaken beach defenses all over. Then make a big raid on Normandy the early morning of June 6th. 20/20 hindsight, I know, but the way they did it sure seemed like a total waste of the bombers.


They did get it fairly right at the breakout, concentrating thousands of bombs on one small concentrated area and pretty well pulverizing every square inch of that area.

A good movie to watch is "The Longest Day". It is fairly accurate historically and tells the story from both the German and Allies perspective. Packed with big name actors and entertaining as well. The Germans were quite surprised by our choice of Normandy.

And read the book as well. "I tell you, Lange, the initial twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive. For the Allies, as well as Germany, it will truly be the longest day."

The next time you see your cynical acquaintance, you can tell him:

1. Moving the invasion up or down the coast just a few miles would not have avoided any Germans.

2. The Germans were not expecting us to invade where we did.

3. Our generals were not uncaring.

The rangers took Pointe Du Hoc to take out field guns that weren't there. The Germans had moved them inland and put timbers in their place to fool aerial photography. The intel available was decent for the time but not infallible. Sometimes you have to go with the best option overall which may not be the place of least resistance.

I always questioned..Why no aircraft carrier there?
Wouldn't it make sense?

Just finished this book, talk about hard fighting, landing at Normandy was one thing, fighting our way out of there to join up with the Americans was incredibly difficult.

Breakout from Juno: First Canadian Army and the Normandy Campaign, July 4-August 21, 1944 by Mark Zuehlke.

The ninth book in the Canadian Battle Series, Breakout from Juno, is the first dramatic chronicling of Canada's pivotal role throughout the entire Normandy Campaign following the D-Day landings.

On July 4, 1944, the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division won the village of Carpiquet but not the adjacent airfield. Instead of a speedy victory, the men faced a bloody fight. The Canadians advanced relentlessly at a great cost in bloodshed. Within 2 weeks the 2nd Infantry and 4th Armoured divisions joined coming together as the First Canadian Army.

The soldiers fought within a narrow landscape extending a mere 21 miles from Caen to Falaise. They won a two-day battle for Verri�res Ridge starting on July 21, after 1,500 casualties. More bloody battles followed, until finally, on August 21, the narrowing gap that had been developing at Falaise closed when American and Canadian troops shook hands. The German army in Normandy had been destroyed, only 18,000 of about 400,000 men escaping. The Allies suffered 206,000 casualties, of which 18,444 were Canadians.

Breakout from Juno is a story of uncommon heroism, endurance and sacrifice by Canada's World War II volunteer army and pays tribute to Canada's veterans.

I think that the aircraft carrier there was the H.M.S/U.S.S England.

Not needed really, air support from England was only minutes away and would have needlessly exposed a valuable asset to German fire.

Jim, your logic is right but carries knowledge of bombing techniques developed since. Bombing technique and accuracy was extremely crude at the time. Much of the saturation bombing you mention at the break out fell short of the German lines and even though the US troops had pulled back 1200 yards nearly 700 US troops were casualties of US bombs.

The reason the bombers did not want to bomb pallallel with the front line at that time was to reduce time exposed to ground fire concentrated along the line. That may have had something to do with why they didn't want to bomb parallel to the beach. It was a mess. Some paratroopers before dawn on June 6 were dropped as much as 20 miles off target. It was a mess with crude equipment and communication compared to today but our far-from-ideal state of the art attack beat the other side's far-from-ideal defense.

Will add that the comment by the acquaintance given in the original post reveals incredible ignorance on the part of the commenter.

Due to surprise in location and timing, except for Omaha the other beaches were relatively lightly defended. At Omaha they were unlucky enough to have missed intel that Rommel had moved a German division up where they expected a battalion.

Re aircraft carrier: Little need to risk such a ship when airfields in Britain were minutes of flight time away. Plus Admiral King hurt the Normandy invasion by hoarding equipment such as landing craft for the Pacific, and likely did the same with carriers. Real life, real people, real mess.

Oops. Typing while others answered.

After climbing the cliff and finding the guns gone, the American troops moved a bit inland and found them hidden in a woods not far from some German soldiers. They then destroyed the guns.

Folly, it's a reasonable thought. Some beaches the invasion rolled in with no opposition and others were killing fields. Hopefully nowadays we are flexible enough to shift resources and save troops. Back then it was not so flexible. I read stories of how the destroyers got into shallow water to pound the shore guns after realizing the bombers didn't take them out and the troops were being slaughtered.

Just Finished the book 'Dog Company, the Boys of Point de Hoc'.

For the record, The guns in fact were not in their hardened sites right on the cliff over the beach but they were deployed nearby in a field under camo nets. The Germans unaccountably never manned them because the Rangers fought their way to them and destroyed them with thermite grenades while fighting for the control of the beach was still ongoing. Then the Germans counterattacked and drove the Rangers back.

So they did complete the mission but not in the planned way.

The same units by the way played a huge role in other major battles including the Hertgen Forest bloodbath where they almost stumbled into the Wermacht buildup area for the Bastogne offensive.

1B

There were another few good reasons heavy bombers weren't used and I'll enumerate them.

1. The allies learned that bombing a defensive position to rubble didn't really hurt the defenders as much as hoped, and they had Monte Cassino as a lesson there. Rubble makes great defensive positions from which to fight, and difficult to attack and maneuver through.

2. As has been stated, accuracy sucked when compared to today. There actually was a facet of the invasion that called for saturation bombing, but it was nixed some weeks prior to the invasion. The excuse was that they needed near pristine beaches over which they could land vehicles needed to transport men and equipment after the breakout. So, that part of the plan was scrapped.

3. This is my own theory. One has to marvel at the courage it takes to face the kind of conditions our fathers and grandfathers met at places like Normandy and Iwo to name a couple. But courage is something often driven by sheer terror. You land troops on a beach that is pristine, and the only apparent cover is found in the positions that need to be taken, and you force the men to move forward. Give them lots of nice bomb craters into which they can jump and remain concealed, and it would have been impossible to generate the necessary manpower to take those positions. Look at the photos of men hiding behind the beach obstacles. Had the beach been strewn with man-made craters, the beachhead would have failed due to lack of effort to move forward. It simply wouldn't have worked. Courage is often summoned when there is no other choice. It was a savage, but expedient decision. There were failures in execution, but few if any failures in planning. It was a masterpiece!

Dan