Yeah, that was never anything like clear to me until our trip this May.No matter how often I see the film footage of the men coming out of the boats and wading toward the beach, I remain in awe of the courage, tenacity, and faith of the young men of that generation.
There were two British and one Canadian “beach” (they actually landed in a seaside town, some of them), plus Omaha, Pont du Hoc, and Utah beaches. Omaha beach was close to one of the Allied (British, I think) beaches. And there, practically everything that could have gone wrong, did. As in, no naval bombardment of the defenses there occurred, and although heavy bombers “targeted” them, their orders were so strongly biased against the possibility of a friendly fire disaster that their bombardment didn’t affect the beach defense - or probably any defensive position. In that respect, they shoulda stood in bed. And, as the planners knew perfectly well, Omaha beach was the easiest to defend, with a high bank close to the beach perfect for machine gun emplacements that you couldn’t necessarily see and target. The division which landed there got chewed up so bad that it never was worth much thereafter. It was unfortunate that the landing craft sailors were competent navigators; that division was right where it planned to go. The lodgment occurred on the left, where the First Division was (barely) able to make a way into the rear of that bank - and were able to roll up the German position from there.Utah beach was on the right of the entire landing attack, and there a lot went right - including the fact that the landing craft came in at the “wrong” place. They landed exactly where the Army planners had wanted - but the Navy thought it wouldn’t be possible to get there. Fortunately, they were wrong, and the sailors who accidentally landed there were “wrong,” too. There the bombardment of the defenses was well executed by Martin Maruder medium bombers flying at uncomfortably low altitude. And, incidentally, the session of “Band of Brothers” on D-Day dramatized an operation by E Company against three German artillery pieces behind Utah Beach. We were taken to the site of that famous small-unit action, and met the son of the French farmer who was there that day (and who got wounded by a gunshot).
Incidentally, Normandy is a dairy farming area, and their domestic cows were entirely unafraid of humans. So soldiers - of any nationality - skulking in the hedgerows had to shoot any cows who might notice them, and - curious - walk over towards them and betray their position.
As you know, weather on June 6 was so marginal that Eisenhower agonized over the decision to launch that day. The effect of weather on airborne units was significant - the armada of C-47s was so huge that when the visibility got bad pilots were terrified of having midair collisions. So they tended to scatter. Another problem was that that many C-47s made so much noise that Germans in Normandy could not help thinking that something was up. So the AA was on the alert. And The there weren’t that many C-47s available to drop all the paratroops in the one trip. So the AA was ready when they came back with the second load.
The combination of weather and effective AA - and C-47 pilots unused to being shot at - caused the paratroopers to be scattered all over Normandy. And one effect of that was that the Germans couldn’t make sense of the reports of paratroopers all over the place. A couple of paratroopers stumbled onto the staff car of the German officer in charge of Normandy defense - stopped it, and killed the general. They got valuable intel from his papers, too - but they were afoot in the middle of Normandy, they knew not where, and it took days to get the documents to Intelligence.
Our tour guide - who had a Master’s degree in History - asserted that parachutists were an obsolete concept in 1944 - that the cost of training special airborne units was higher than the cost of gliders - even single - use gliders - and when a glider landed, a cohesive military unit debarked. Gliders would be released at higher altitudes than paratroopers, and would tend to be able to navigate towards the objective. OTOH paratroopers were usually scattered - and at least somewhat disoriented - when they landed.
Thanks again.
This must have weighed very heavily on Eisenhower’s mind - ordering it knowing that so many would die, and then living with the knowledge of that for the rest of his life.
Sometimes men have to make decisions like that, and keep Faith that they are acting for what is Right, and that God will aid them.