Omaha Beach
Introduction
Aptly named "Bloody Omaha", Omaha Beach was the codename for one of the five principal landing points of the Allied invasion on the early morning of June 6th 1944. It is approximately 4 miles long, embracing and overlooked by the communes of Vierville sur Mer, St Laurent sur Mer and Colleville sur Mer.
On D-Day the untested 29th Infantry Division, joined by 8 companies of U.S. Rangers redirected from Pointe du Hoc was to assault the western flank of the Beach. The 1st Infantry Division (the Big Red One) was given the eastern approach. This was their third amphibious assault of the war, after Africa and Sicily. The primary objective of the Omaha Beach assault was to secure a beachhead between Port en Bessin and the Vire River before pushing southward toward Saint Lô.
The German army had well prepared Atlantic Wall defenses, with various obstacles strewn along the beach, and the gentle downward slope providing an excellent "bleachers effect" field of fire. The German 352nd Division defending Omaha Beach was one of the better-trained units in the area. 27 of the 32 amphibious Sherman DD Tanks intended to give armoured support foundered in the rough seas before reaching shore, due to a combination of adverse weather and poor command. Many of the tanks were launched approximately 5 kilometers offshore, too far away for the fragile tanks. The Allied air bombardment of the beach defenses prior to the landings was largely ineffective: most of the ordnance fell too far inland because they wanted to avoid leaving craters on the beach which would fill with seawater and within which men could fall and drown and equipment would be submerged and lost. The initial naval bombardment proved just as ineffective due to the short time allotted to the naval guns (40 minutes), although it was reported to be the heaviest sea to land bombardment in the history of warfare. The result was German defenses left largely intact when the first assault waves hit the beach. It should be noted the standard MG42 German Machine gun could fire 1200 rounds per minute. Soldiers who were not immediately killed found almost no cover on the 400 yard-deep beach (at low tide), and what little cover provided by the beach obstacles was nullified by overlapping fields of fire pre-sighted by the Germans, or the incoming tide. Fogbanks and smoke from artillery fire created low visibility for the men on the beach, and many could only barely make out the cliffs ahead. The carefully planned assault became chaos as wind, waves, and current scattered most of the landing craft far from their assigned targets. Tired and seasick troops, weighed down by wet and sand-filled gear, could not run across the open sand (as often portrayed in movies). Most could only walk or trot the expanse toward the seawall. This is the only battlefield in history where to reach cover the men had to run towards enemy fire. How did they do it? Hein Severloh reflected on the scene below him on that grim morning:
"For the first time I realised how many dead had been washed up on the beach below by the high waves and rising tide in our sector. (This is where we will be standing.) On a stretch of beach about 300 metres long and several metres wide lay hundreds and hundreds of lifeless bodies of American soldiers, in places several on top of each other. The wounded moved slowly in the blood soaked water, most of them crawled, to the edge of the beach where there was an embankment about one and a half metres high, to find shelter behind it. I could only see about fifty to sixty Gis, who occasionally ducked and ran around on their own."
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