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Omaha - Bloody Omaha

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by stalti (U14278018) on Saturday, 5th June 2010

  watched a fantastic documentary on bbc2 tonight about the carnage of Omaha beach
  
  1st question
  i remember the first time i read about it about 15 years ago - and one of the main reasons given for the carnage was the refusal of the american planners to use the Hobart funnies - especially the use of the Sherman DD tanks - the swimming tanks that allowed armour to appear on the beaches the same time as the troops
  
  they were used on the other beaches with great success - is it true that they werent allowed on Omaha - could this be a reason for the carnage
  
  2nd question and slightly morbid for which i apologise
  the dead were obviously buried later - what happened to the bits apart from the uniform of the deceased - ie the webbing boots etc - were they re-used - obviously weapons were - but the rest ??
  
  st
  
  

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• Message 2

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  Posted by giraffe47 (U4048491) on Saturday, 5th June 2010

  They did have DD tanks, but they were released too far out to sea, and most were swamped by the waves - I think the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ did a program about it a while back, and located some of them underwater.
  
  Also the bombing was too far inland at Omaha, so the defences were almost untouched when the troops came ashore.
  
  As usual, it was not one factor, but an unfortunate combination of things that (almost) led to disaster, but for the actions of a few really brave and resourceful leaders who seem to often emerge when the hour of need is greatest.
  
  And one of those factors may well have been Good Ol' US refusal to listen to advice from anyone!
  
  
  
  

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  Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Sunday, 6th June 2010

  A major factor was the quality of the defense of the beach. Utah beach was only weakly defended, probably because its marshy geography made it an unattractive landing area.
  
  The three British landing zones were defended mostly by the 716th Division, a unit of "static infantry" which had spent most of the war as an occupation force in France and Belgium. This unit was badly lacking in combat experience. Worse, most of its men were too old, too young, foreign volunteers of dubious reliability, or men with physical disabilities. It was equipped to a modest level, by scraping together old stocks and captured weaponry.
  
  Omaha beach was held mostly by soldiers of a first-line infantry division, the 352nd. It was supposed to be in reserve behind the lines, but Rommel had assigned it a sector of the coastline. While the 352nd also showed signs of the increasingly bad state of the German army, with its own share of "Osttruppen" and too-young recruits, it had a significant number of experienced veterans.
  
  Elements of the 352nd had put themselves in strong defensive positions on the high ground that surrounded Omaha beach, from where the could cover the landing areas with machine-gun fire. The landing forces had to cross this killing ground to reach the few roads that led out of the beach and inland. While the German units on the coast were only battalion-strength and could not stop a determined attack without reinforcements (which did not arrive), they were in a position to inflict heavy casualties.
  

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  Posted by ffiill (U3925987) on Monday, 7th June 2010

  The bodies and the bits?-my uncle was a Fleet Air arm Officer second in command of an an air sea rescue launch-their job was to keep things clean-anything floating off shore in the water was picked up and recovered from human remains to gear.
  Likewise there were troops whose sole task was to keep the beaches clean ie minimise the blood and guts for following troops so as to keep up moral.
  As to the initial failue on Omaha suggest you read the book "The Bedford Boys"
  The frontal assault was led primarily by National Guardsmen and worst of all community based platoons of friends and neighbours(just like the Pals battalions of WW1)
  As described on the programme most of these men in the leading landing craft and they and their officers were killed outright by enemy fire or through drowning as they hit the beach.Towns like Bedford,New Hampshire had large numbers of their 18 year olds killed the Americans having learned nothing from the British WW1 experience.No Brit units in WW2 were town/community based.
  It has been argued that they were sent in first as cannon fodder to soften up the German defenses with more seasoned/better trained troops held back for later assault waves.

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