Omaha beach

[morse1001]

In defence of Sapper, he landed on sword beach on D-day and therefore has first hand experience of the actual landings.

Also, if you want I can e-mail you actual combat footage of both landings, which shows the major differeances in the beaches.

[jimbotosome]

Originally Posted by morse1001

In defence of Sapper, he landed on sword beach on D-day and therefore has first hand experience of the actual landings.

Also, if you want I can e-mail you actual combat footage of both landings, which shows the major differeances in the beaches.

I wasn't attacking sapper so he needs no defense. I have never attacked sapper.

Maybe this is an American thing, but we don't believe it is honoring someone to patronize them. Ironically, it’s considered an insult in the US to patronize someone, especially a veteran.

This thread was about Omaha, not Sword. If you want a discussion about Sword, start a thread. I would certainly defer to sapper on that one concerning what he saw, smelled, heard, felt, etc. But to say that the reason the US had so many slaughtered was because their commanders thought it ridiculous to buy a mortar tossing tank, then that is an insult to both the soldiers and the commanders and has never found the mark in the defense of it. The only thing the Petards were effective at was rolling up to a concrete bunker and firing a big mortar at it.

The US believed that there was far more utility in the M7s and M40s. It is rare when you need a close in mortar of the caliber 290mm that one or more 155mm rounds would not do, regardless of whether it was fired from miles 16 away or within 80 yards of the bunker in 88 range. There is no justification for having such a piece of equipment in your inventory to maintain, fuel and man. It is a one trick pony that you probably would never find a single scenario were you could use it and not use the M-40. In addition you would have to have one in every area to even use them where you can use the heavy howitzers.

There is another irony here. If I quote US commanders and soldiers that “were” at Omaha, you say, they are full of it and biased (I get this a lot). But with, sapper, who simply was not there, you accept it as though he saw the whole thing every second of the attack the entire day long and is an Omaha beach expert. Why the gross inconsistency?

The objective of the forces at Sword was to capture Caen while it was relatively undefended. They did sit around while the commanders debated whether a counterattack was coming from 21st Panzer. The fact that they were idle at all tells you it was not Omaha. The entire day at Omaha was sent dodging the floating dead bodies in the red surf crawling at the waters edge trying to figure out how to get armor ashore and how to keep from dying like most of their brothers around them. The armor did eventually make it to shore at Omaha, after it started to receive the suppressive Naval fire that Sword had for two hours before the first British tank disembarked, earlier in the morning, then they too began to make progress. The Navy could not be effective on Omaha for the same reason it also did not get the accurate bombing like Sword did. Visibility was poor. But until the Navy moved destroyers in and began blasting positions, NO armor made it to the beach. Most of the deaths at Omaha were before the first piece of armor made it. Had the destroyed armor have been a Petard, it would have sunk just as fast or exploded and burned just as bad (assuming they kept the ordinance in it from going up) when hitting the underwater anti-tank mines just as much as any other tank would have.

Rather than conceding that this original argument was specious, a feeding frenzy ensued as it often does here where folks decided that there is some kind of truth in corporate assault. The meretricious assault of choice seems to be to infer that I am bashing sapper and then join in as hyenas to brow beat me as being arrogant or insolent toward a veteran. Quite frankly it is very disgusting. I would rather post a thousand errors than one post of sophistry.

[morse1001]

But to say that the reason the US had so many slaughtered was because their commanders thought it ridiculous to buy a mortar tossing tank,

The report on the funnies conducted by the USA is now in the Eisenhower presidential Library and is available for public viewing.

Its contained in Diary, office C-in-C, Book X, PP A1022-A1026

[morse1001]

“The armor did eventually make it to shore at Omaha, after it started to receive the suppressive Naval fire that Sword had for two hours before the first British tank disembarked, earlier in the morning, then they too began to make progress”

Here is the pre-assault plan, which clearly indicates that rather than the two hours of naval bombardment, there was in fact on half an hour allocated on Omaha before the initial landings. However, it is worth pointing out that the main target had been bombed on at least four times in the previous three months, and again on the night before and on the morning of the landings.

“The assault landings on Omaha Beach were to be preceded by intensive air and naval bombardment in the half-hour before touchdown, designed to neutralize all known gun positions and to demoralize enemy troops in the beach defenses. For the period just previous to D Day air attacks were planned against coastal batteries in the NEPTUNE area, but only as part of a widespread program which put its heaviest attacks on the French coast north of the Seine. The Pointe du Hoe position, one of the priority targets in this pre-D-Day bombing had been hit on 15 April, 22 May, and 4; June. The RAF was to conclude the effort against coastal batteries with a concentrated attack between midnight and dawn of D Day; the coastal batteries from the mouth of the Seine to Cherbourg were the target of 1,333 heavy bombers dropping 5,316 tons of bombs.”
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/100-11/ch2.htm#Pre-Assault

“or within 80 yards of the bunker in 88 range”

As has been pointed out, there was only two 88s deployed on the Omaha beaches, the rest were made of 50mm Pak and 75mm Pak which were more than capable of taking out a Sherman. And the M7 was based upon the M4 hull.

. Had the destroyed armor have been a Petard, it would have sunk just as fast or exploded and burned just as bad (assuming they kept the ordinance in it from going up)”

No one is disputing that the Petard was vulnerable to gunfire, but that because it was based upon the Churchill tank, then it was better protected than a Sherman. One of the main weaknesses of the Sherman was the fact that if the Pak scored a hit near the turret, then the ammo inside would cook off. That is why the British in Italy devised a water filled jacket for the storage containers, it might have lessened the load carried but saved quite a few lives. I have a photo of a Sherman which was knocked out by a 50mm Pak during the battle of Overloon, the result of the internal explosion was to lift the turret off the tank.

“Rather than conceding that this original argument was specious, a feeding frenzy ensued as it often does here where folks decided that there is some kind of truth in corporate assault. The meretricious assault of choice seems to be to infer that I am bashing sapper and then join in as hyenas to brow beat me as being arrogant or insolent toward a veteran.”

The discussions on this thread and indeed the forum may at times get rather heated but that is because everyone has their own opinion and many are prepared to defend their opinions for all their worth. The thing is; do is not take it personally!!

[jimbotosome]

Originally Posted by morse1001

Here is the pre-assault plan, which clearly indicates that rather than the two hours of naval bombardment, there was in fact on half an hour allocated on Omaha before the initial landings. However, it is worth pointing out that the main target had been bombed on at least four times in the previous three months, and again on the night before and on the morning of the landings.

Well Morse, surely you are well aware that much of the bombing took place in the Pas De Calais area in order to not give away the actual position of the assault. Much of the positions in Normandy could not be hit by bombing. The guns were back away from the coast for that very reason. Yes, there was a half hour of bombing on Omaha, most of which was a waste because they could not see the positions and had no correction. This like the bombing was ineffective. In fact, one of the problems at Normandy is that the bombing didn’t create craters for the soldiers to use as fox holes and didn’t take out mine fields either. The air force carried the day inland by keeping the approaching panzer divisions from getting to the beaches. Otherwise we wouldn’t even be having a “what if” discussion on Omaha Beach.

Originally Posted by morse1001

As has been pointed out, there was only two 88s deployed on the Omaha beaches, the rest were made of 50mm Pak and 75mm Pak which were more than capable of taking out a Sherman. And the M7 was based upon the M4 hull.

It was argued and certainly not proven and a ridiculous claim. I get accused of making ridiculous claims by those that have never read anything about air power but claiming there were only 2 88s on Omaha Beach is beyond the pale.

Most accounts say there were many 88s on the beaches and behind. In addition there were three artillery battalions with 155s firing on the beach. I gave reference to that earlier but it went ignored. There were 12 strongpoints (that's right 12) on Omaha with 88s, 75s and mortars on both of them. Yes, a 75mm on a ridge would most definitely take out a Petard, just as easily as an 88 would. The Germans did run in some Pak38s up to Omaha, cannibalizing the area. But they were not what was shooting down the beaches into the water since they simply don't have the range. Pak38s couldn't penetrate the front of a Sherman either but they were shooting down on the top of them. But that is inconsequential because they never got close enough for Pak38s to be used. Sorry man there were plenty of guns capable of doing to the Churchills what they did to the Shermans if they ever managed to get ashore. Most didn't. You do realize it was the 88s and 155s that were putting the rounds out there around just one of the destroyers so heavily where the one seaman counted 11 simultaneous splashes around his ship alone and there were a lot of destroyers there so there was a LOT of long range artillery happening. We can talk about anti-tank weapons if we get tanks ashore and up close enough to the bluffs to get into the range of the heavy tank guns first. So, this idea that there were a few guns at Omaha and they pummeled armor even before it could get ashore and killed thousands of Americans is astonishing. You really need to go read a non-British account of Omaha. Here is a link where they have summarized it from the books of three “famous” historians. That out to carry some weight here of all places:

http://cghs.dade.k12.fl.us/normandy/...first_wave.htm

Originally Posted by morse1001

No one is disputing that the Petard was vulnerable to gunfire, but that because it was based upon the Churchill tank, then it was better protected than a Sherman. One of the main weaknesses of the Sherman was the fact that if the Pak scored a hit near the turret, then the ammo inside would cook off. That is why the British in Italy devised a water filled jacket for the storage containers, it might have lessened the load carried but saved quite a few lives. I have a photo of a Sherman which was knocked out by a 50mm Pak during the battle of Overloon, the result of the internal explosion was to lift the turret off the tank.

Again, these are not valid arguments. First of all the Churchill got the living dog crap beat out of it at Dieppe. The Pak38s would have to shoot down or at the its tracks to kill a Churchill but they could not kill a Sherman from the front either. The Sherman was not made of aluminum. But a Pak50 would take out both Shermans and Churchills with ease. Churchills got the crap kicked out of them virtually everywhere they went. They didn’t have a reputation of being a formidable tank in WWII. But to the US the Churchill was not as good as the Sherman because it had the same gun but was intolerably slow and heavy. Their armor could not resist that of German tanks as well. If you can’t beat the Tiger or Panther, you might as well have a Sherman where you can run. The allies had no tanks to compete with the Germans until the Pershing rolled out in Dec 1944 and they were few and far between. The German officers called the M26 “The Tiger Hunter”. They had no names for the other allied tanks that I know of unless they were part of a joke. Let’s face it morse, our tanks sucked (in a relative sense). But, then again, so did their planes, so we win that one walking away. That’s why they lost so many more tanks than we did on the Western front (rock-paper-scissors). But for some reason you seem to believe that the tracks on a Churchill could scale the anti-tank mine fields which they had on Omaha which were designed to bring the armor up into a large kill zone. Morse, grenades will break a track and knock it out by the fact they can then take a weapon of choice to finish it off, not to mention panzershreks or the heavy mortars they had there as well. It just isn’t going to happen. We are talking about getting ashore, not how to survive IF you could.

The British didn’t even use the Petard on Sword in an “under-fire” role. The first thing they brought ashore were Shermans and M7s, with the M7s even firing off the LCTs into the distance (they have a range of 16 miles) in hopes of hitting something. Why would anyone think a Petard would have carried the day in Omaha, I haven’t got a clue. I have not seen one argument that makes me think it would have been any different than the Shermans and M7s. It is a field bunker killer for when you don’t have artillery or mobile guns. It’s just not worth the cost to me.

But, the M7, which both the Yanks and Brits used, work very well. It’s called suppressive fire and it is very effective. But it does require you get some ashore. You fire the M7 howitzers at the gun positions and they would be “forced” to get off of those guns and get into their fox holes, just from flying slivers of hot metal that would cut them or their guns in half. Every gun they hit will no longer function. That was the original idea and a Petard just didn’t figure into it.


If you read your arguments on the accounts on this thread, you better research them yourself. Just because I didn’t “go off” on the ones who made then earlier, simply because I didn’t agree, and call them all sorts of names, did not mean they were tenable points. I see no benefit of ripping someone to pieces just because we don’t agree and I can’t answer every claim. I do appreciate that you are a gentleman in your disagreement. That is the kind of person I respect and do care about what they think of me. I hate to break it to them, but mudslingers and snipers just don’t have the affect on me that they think they do.

[Aber]

Originally Posted by jimbotosome

But until the Navy moved destroyers in and began blasting positions, NO armor made it to the beach. Most of the deaths at Omaha were before the first piece of armor made it.

As far as I can find details (mostly derived from the US Army official history):

741st tank battalion in support of 16th infantry regiment
3 landed by LCT, 2 swam in, 27 sunk

743rd tank battalion in support of 116th infantry regiment
2 LCTs with 8 tanks landed on the beach, 6 LCTs were lost

Not much but more than none

I could argue with a few more of the assertions that you'e made, but I'd love to know your response to this one first

[spidge]

Originally Posted by Aber

As far as I can find details (mostly derived from the US Army official history):

741st tank battalion in support of 16th infantry regiment
3 landed by LCT, 2 swam in, 27 sunk

743rd tank battalion in support of 116th infantry regiment
2 LCTs with 8 tanks landed on the beach, 6 LCTs were lost

Not much but more than none

I could argue with a few more of the assertions that you'e made, but I'd love to know your response to this one first

Good info Aber. Keep it coming.

[Kitty]

You lot are still arguing about this? Flamin' 'eck!
Kitty

[spidge]

Not arguing Kitty. Tut Tut.

[pupjada]

Why did the allies need to secure Omaha?