Omaha Beach Invasion

Early morning hours on June 6, 1944, paratroopers from the British 1st airborne Division silently dropped and drifted to wards the Pegasus Bridge, one of the few bridges that led all over the Seine towards Normandy. Mo ments later, they stormed the bridge with voiceless casualties. The associate invasion of Hitlers Fortress europium has just begun (Dube, 2005).On those hours, lantern-equipped pathfinders dropped all over the Cotentin Peninsula. Alone and unaided, they were dropped to bull the way for the thousands of men feeler in behind them.At dawn, the sea invasion began as an Allied Armada disgorged thousands of parade at five shorees along Frances Normandy coast. Allied forces stormed the shores and battled the German defenses in a fight that would go down as the Longest daylight in history.The beachs terrain proved to be an important reckon in the dishonour (Lewis 2000). Its crescent form is bounded at every end by rocky cliffs and its tidal area is gently sloping. At the western end the shingle bank rested against a stone, which fades kick upstairs into wood, resembles a sea wall which ranged from 4 feet to12 feet in height. Precipitous bluffs then(prenominal) raised high up to 170 feet, dominating the whole beach and cut into by small wooded valleys.The Germans, earlier anticipating for an attack in the beachheads, constructed three lines of obstacles in the water. This consisted of Belgian Gates with mines lashed to the uprights, logs driven into the sand pointing offshore and hedgehogs installed 130 yards from the shoreline. The area between the shingle bank and the bluffs was both pumped(p) and mined with the latter also scattered on the bluff slopes (Gerrard, Bujeiro and Zaloga, 2003).Their troops were concentrated mostly around the entrances to the draws and protected by minefields and wire (Dube, 2005). for each one bunker was interconnected by trenches and tunnels. Machine guns, light artillery pieces and anti-tank guns accurate the angle of dip of artillery takeing the beach. No area of the beach was left un screeninged, and the disposition of weapons meant that flanking shoot could be brought to bear anywhere along the beach.The Allied forces forge of attack includes dividing the Omaha beach into ten sectors. The assault arrives were to start at 0630, which was coined as the H-Hour. Before that, the beach defenses will be bombarded by naval and aired hold in forces. The objective was for the beach defenses to be cleared two hours aft(prenominal) assault. By the end of the day the forces at Omaha were to have established a bridgehead five miles deep into the opposite territory. To execute this device the Omaha assault force totaled 34,000 men and 3,300 vehicles with naval support provided by 2 battleships, 3 cruisers, 12 destroyers and 105 other ships ( bathing tub and Eisenhower, 2003).However, during the initial attack, nothing went agree to plan (Lewis, 2000). Ten of the landing crafts have gone astray forrader they reached the beach and some were flooded by the rough seas. Some had regular(a) sunk. Smoke and mist hinders the navigation of the assault crafts while a heavy current served to push them to the east. The initial bombardment proved to be ineffective. Their mark fell too far inland, thus they hardly touched the coastal defenses. When the landing craft came closer to the shore, the were under increasingly heavy fire from automatic weapons and artilleryWith the failure of the initial assault, a second base one started coming ashore about two hours later. Their mission was to bring in reinforcements, support weapons and headquarter elements. Some relief against the mostly unsuppressed enemy fire was gained exactly because with more(prenominal) troops landing the concentration of fire was spread more about the many targets avail fit (Dube, 2005). The survivors among the initial forces were not however adapted to give much covering fire and the landing tro ops noneffervescent suffered in places the same high casualty rates as those in the low gear wave. The failure to clear sufficient paths through the beach obstacles added to the difficulties of the second wave now that the tide was beginning to cover those obstacles. The loss of landing craft as they hit these defenses before they reached the shore began to contri just nowe in the rate of attrition. As in the initial landings, navigation is be quiet difficult and the disturbing miss-landings continued to upset the Allied forces.From the Germans advantage point, at Pointe de la Percee, which is overlooking the entire beach, the assault seemed to have been stop at the beach. An officer there noted that troops were seeking cover behind obstacles and counted ten tanks burning. However, casualties among their defenders were mounting, chiefly as a result of the allied naval fire. At the same time they were also pass oning reinforcement, but their request could not be met because the s ituation elsewhere in Normandy was becoming more urgent for the defenders (Dube, 2005).As the battle progresses, events of the landing were starting to influence the next degree of the battle. The draws, which would serve as the pathway from the beaches to the inner territory, remained strongly concentrated by the defenders. The allies needed to go through these draws to achieve their main target for the day. Also, the issue of leadership began becoming a problem. Miss-landings and blunders in the original plan caused disorganization, and communication between units was compromised (Lewis, 2000).Despite the apparent disadvantage of the Allied forces position, continual waves of landings and naval artillery support eventually weakened the German defense.By early good afternoon the strong point guarding the draw at Vierville was silenced by the navy, but without enough force on the cornerstone to mop up the rest defenders the exit could not be opened (Dube, 2005). Traffic was event ually able to use this route by nightfall, and the surviving tanks of the tank battalion fagged the night scraggy Vierville. The advance of the initial assault teams cleared away(p) the last remnants of the force defending the draws. When engineers cut a road up the western side of this draw, it became the main route inland off the beaches. With the over-crowding on the beaches thus relieved, they were re-opened for the landing of vehicles.After the inland infiltration, clashes pushed the grip out scarce a mile and a half deep in the enemy area to the east, and the whole beachhead remained under artillery fire. In the evening, the affiliate arrant(a)d the planned landing of infantry, although but losses in equipment were high, because of handsome sea conditions. Of the 2,400 tons of supplies scheduled to be landed on D-Day, entirely nose candy tons was actually landed. Casualties were estimated at 3,000 killed, wounded and missing. The heaviest casualties were taken by the infantry tanks and engineers in the first landings. The Germans suffered 1,200 killed, wounded and missing. On the second day, the engineers constructed the first airfield to be built after D-Day, on the cliff near St. Laurent, and this was used by the Ninth Air Force to support the ground troops as, over the next two days, they accomplished the original D-Day objectives (Lewis, 2000).The complete invasion had not been materialized yet, and the objectives of the D-Day were not achieved. Hundreds of Allied troops are still coming, fighting is ominous, and both sides are unprepared. The D-Day, the Longest Day has ended, but the war on Liberation has just begun.ReferencesAdrian R. Lewis 2000, Omaha Beach A Flawed Victory, celestial latitude 3, 2000Alan Dube 2005, A Navy Soldier on Omaha Beach, August 15, 2005Dan van der Vat and John S. D. Eisenhower 2003, D-Day The Greatest Invasion A Peoples History, by November 15, 2003Howard Gerrard, Ramiro Bujeiro, and Steven J. Zaloga 2003, Campa ign 100 D-Day 1944 at Omaha Beach, July 23, 2003