[Prophet in the wilderness]

Did they actually ran the destroyers into the ground to get as close to the German huge guns as possible ?
That must have been a sight to see to watch those destroyers take out the huge German gun locations.
If I was there, and knew our guys were in a difficult situation, I too would have ran the destroyers into the beach if I could and take out all the German defenses with the huge guns on the destroyers.

[MNJohnnie]

They scraped bottom a number of times but did not actually beach the destroyers. There is a story, possible fictional, that a tank was on the beach firing at a target. The destroyer used his fire as an aiming point and fired a load right into the German position. The tank commander head popped up, he looked out to sea and waved at the ship!

Can you imagine that? A huge ocean going ship so close to the beach they could see a guy WAVE at them?