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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