Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Could the US have landed at Omaha Beach with less casualties?

My uncle got to the beach the hard way- - - -swimming through burning oil after his landing craft got hit by artillery fire. His back was scarred for the rest of his life, from his shoulders to his waist. Those burns probably saved his life, as most of the rest of his original unit were wiped out at the battle of the bulge, while he got assigned to a different outfit after spending a lot of time in a field hospital.

Canadian forces landed at Juno beach.
This link has a map and details-
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/normandy-invasion#SecrecyandPlanning

I agree about the Monday morning quarterbacking but if the press back then were like ours today, Eisenhower would have been raked over the coals for getting those guys killed when he ran for President as opposed to being a heroic figure....unless of course he had run as a democrat.

Of course, that's always the case with such an operation as grand as Omaha. So what?

Craters to seek cover in…. I’ve read or heard it said that most of the bombardment went to far inland to any good.

And if they had put up the lights, and the lights were discovered by a random patrol or even a soldier out for an evening walk….. the Germans might have realized what was coming and moved troops and armor around to defend Normandy, creating a much bigger disaster.

What if……is a game that goes both ways.

My hunting buddies father got lucky and got put on one of the decoy ships, I think he said around Norway to make it look like an allied invasion up that way.

What saves ALL of us at Normandy was Adolph Hitler. Even though von Rundstedt and Rommel had different ideas on how to repel an invasion(both KNEW it was Normandy and not at Pais de Calais), had he given them authority to move the 15th Panzer Army down in time, it would have been a LOT worse. And did I mention I grow weary of the ignorant "next time they can save their own asses" bullshit?

The main factor for the increased casualties at Omaha was the weather. It led to a cascade of other problems. If they had better weather, all sorts of things would have happened differently.

The bombing of the shore installations would have probably gone off. Low cloud cover caused the bombers to miss their mark significantly. This kept the beach fortifications intact and allowed the Krauts to put their MGs on the cliffs firing down.

If the surf was not as high, they would have been able to land the amphibious Shermans that were almost all drowned. If I remember, only one got onto the beach, and it did a bang-up job taking out German emplacements. Twenty of them making it to the beach would have been devastating.

There are a multitude of these what-ifs, and they all go back to the marginal weather. Ike knew this going in. It was a crap shoot.

Read:
The Far Shore (Annotated)
by Edward Ellsberg (Author)

Ellsberg was an informed eyewitness at Omaha.

At that point in history precision wasn't part of bombing. It is what we had to fight with. The greater truth is it was an operation pulled off on a grand scale with great coordination. Those men deserve our respect and admiration for what they did and the sacrifices they made.

I think the whole thing was a bad idea. I am sure we could have starved them easier . We also had no reason to invade some of the Japanese Islands. They were mostly out of food. Aint no one going to fight much with an empty stomach. Yes, this is hindsight, but what were those people thinking? Like many wars, it's a rich mans war and a poor mans fight.

Quick side storry.

Buddy of mine as a new private in Ranger Regiment was assigned "Bleacher Duty" for a jump demonstration during their annual Ranger Rendezvous.

An old man with a cane who could barely put one foot in front of the other approached the edge of the bleachers and paused. My buddy extended his hand and took the old fella by the elbow to help him up.

The old timer vigorously slapped his hand away and said "I climbed point du hawk M_TH_R F_CK_R, I can get up these bleachers!"

ABSOLUTELY.

The US learned a sad lesson about those tides the year before at Tarawa. They needed an extra high tide to get the landing boats over the reefs surrounding the islands. They miscalculated the tide and got a lot of men killed. The boats were bottoming out on the reefs and were sitting targets for Japanese gunners. My uncle piloted one of them. He got his boat in and unloaded. On the way back out for another load, a motar round landed in his boat. He spent the next year in a hospital.

I know nothing about the beaches and sandbars at Normandy but misreading the tides can be deadly.

And perhaps American staff planners had some reservations about British planning and tactics. Almost everyone can agree the British high command squandered lives shamelessly in WW1. Remember the old military saying, 'Generals are always fighting the last war', US planners may have had the criminal waste of manpower in France a mere 25 years before, in mind, and were shy of using British plans.

The Somme comes to mind.

dave

Tks.

IIRC the Brits were notably less aggressive than the Americans, taking a month or more to take Caen. This may have been repeated by some of their units (not the airborn troops) in Market Garden.

But, after five years of war they were actually running out of combat-age men by that point.

Bird, I take exception to only one word of your post, I would substitute your word "aggressive" and enter "effective'. I think the Brits were so disciplined that they would not adapt to a changing battlefield. Dogma, follow the plan at all costs, discipline, tradition above all else. The yanks would push, feint, feel out....find a weak spot and quickly take advantage. Classic Patton? But, I have been called many things, never a strategist.

In the article I posted the guy does skip over the prior amphibious landings by US Army troops.

Casablanca, Oran and Algiers (Operation Torch) 1942
Sicily 1943
Salerno 1943
Anzio 1944

Plus the Pacific Theater, so it weren’t like it was our first time at bat.