I spent a rainy evening in Seattle talking at the bar with an older man who told me that his Dad was a tank driver at Omaha Beach. He said the one memory that persecuted his father all his life was having to drive over the bodies of wounded and dead American soldiers during that fight.
I shuddered when he told me of it happening and I can still recall the tone of his voice as he said it.
The difference between Omaha Beach, where most of the DD Shermans did not make it to shore to provide covering support fire for the Infantry, and Utah Beach, where most of the 70th Armored's tanks did get ashore through a combination of better preperation and good luck, is really telling about such things.
Even before that day, the 70th was an experienced ouytfit, with two previous successful beach landings under their belt. That is not to say that the 741st Tank battalion that landed at Omaha was poorly trained or inexperienced; but they lost more landing craft, [4 DD Sherman tanks per LCT] lost more amphibious Shermans to tidal action and enemy fire from being launched further from shore, landed in a mined area, and did not have the leadership provided by 4th Infantry Division's Brigadeer Gen. Theodore Roosevelt, who received the Medal of Honor for his leadership in redirecting the chaos of the Utah Beach landing.