SPERRO

The allied landings in Normandy on June 6 1944 were generally considered as more successful than anticipated. However, the landings on Omaha beach did not go well at all. After 6 hours of appalling loss, the american forces there were still at the waterline. Lack of signalled information from the beach to the fleet, resulted in inappropriate vehicles and troops being mixed up and bogged down.

At one point, the commander of the divisions that had landed on the beach, was seriously considering pulling the troops off and aborting the landing in this sector.

Why was the landing here so unsuccessful compared to the other beaches along the cost. What is the forums opinion?.

JC

Nemowork

The amphibious tanks that should have supported the landing were mishandled and sank

the airstrike that should have cratered the beach to make cover for the infantry missed and they were left exposed

they refused the specialist engineer vehicles that might have got them through the obstacles quicker

So many ways, any one of them would have been survivable, too many mistakes add up and you've got problems.

On the other hand the performance of the navy in driving their ships virtually onto the beach to give direct fire support on the bunkers and allow a breakout was impressive.

SPERRO

The axis forces in this sector were not superior than anywhere else and , were remarkably few in number yet, no decisive attempt to get off of the beach area was made until well into the day. It seems as if there was some sort of parallasis with the allied command?

JC

OpanaPointer

Not really. HyperWar: American Forces in Action: OMAHA Beachhead (6 June-13 June 1944)

HyperWar: US Army in WWII: Cross-Channel Attack

Fire_Raven

Gold, Sword, Juno and Utah landing beaches were picked not just for there access to points further inland but also because their sections of the "Atlantic Wall" fortifications were not complete.

Omaha was picked to link Utah with the British and Canadian beachheads despite the fact that more of it's fortifications were (or appeared to be in the case of Pointe Du Hoc) completed since it was a more obvious landing zone.

Operation Overlord - Normandy 1944 : Landings areas
This site has some nice info and a very nice array of photos(1 or 2 I haven't seen). If you look at the photos of the various beaches (including the famous photos of the Omaha landings by Robert Capra), the other 4 beaches were able to land their troops much closer to the actual "beach" and the German lines.

The troops at Gold,Juno, Sword and Utah were able to immediately engage the German defenders at closer range with more tanks and heavy weapons early on.

At Omaha several factors such as currents,weather and the terrain of the beach(at low tide many of the landing craft dropped ramps as far out as 3/4 mile out from the seawall leaving troops to wade through waist high water under enemy fire). The strong currents also played hell with the smaller landing craft which were launched much further from shore then they should have(the DD tanks were launched 6000 yards or 3.4 miles offshore) so elements of units were scattered all over the beach with many landing in different zones then they were assigned.

Between men landing with little to no equipment that was lost coming to shore and units being scattered so badly that effective attacks against assigned targets were never launched, the beach began to fill as the successive waves kept landing. Some of these waves were not front line combat troops but logistics units that just made things more crowded and confused on the beach.

So not only was Omaha a "tougher nut to crack" even before the landings but the unanticipated factors of weather and current on the landing troops made things worse. The other 4 beaches had fewer things go wrong during the initial landings which allowed successive follow up waves to push further inland.

redcoat

The landing at Omaha was not unsuccessful, in fact by the end of the day it was highly successful, it was merely the most costly in terms of casualties.

dragoner

The Beast of Omaha Beach:

A Killing Machine

Severloh took 40 years to begin to process what happened to him on Omaha Beach. He had taken up a concealed position on the eastern side of the beach along with 30 other German soldiers, and he recalls watching the horizon turn black with dozens of ships and landing craft racing for the shore. His commanding officer, Lt. Bernhard Frerking, had told him not to open fire until the enemy reached knee-deep level, where he could get a full view.
"What came to mind was, 'Dear God, why have you abandoned me?' " he recalled. "I wasn't afraid. My only thought was, 'How can I get away from here?' "
But rather than run, Severloh slipped the first belt of ammunition into his MG-42 machine gun and opened fire. He could see men spinning, bleeding and crashing into the surf, while others ripped off their heavy packs, threw away their carbines and raced for the shore. But there was little shelter there. Severloh said he would occasionally put down the machine gun and use his carbine to pick off individual men huddled on the beach. He is still haunted by a soldier who was loading his rifle when Severloh took aim at his chest. The bullet went high and hit the man in the forehead.
"The helmet fell and rolled over in the sand," Severloh said. "Every time I close my eyes, I can see it."
Severloh said he was the last man firing from his position. By mid-afternoon, his right shoulder was swollen and his slender fingers were numb from constant firing. When a U.S. destroyer pinpointed his position and began to shell it, he fled to the nearby village of Colleville-Sur-Mer, where he was captured that evening.
In Severloh's telling of D-Day, there are few heroes and several surprises. The German occupiers had warm relations with their French farm hosts before the invasion, he contends. Lt. Frerking, who died on D-Day, was an honorable man who spoke fluent French and once gave one of his men 10 days' punishment for failing to help an elderly French woman with her shopping bags, Severloh said. The U.S. invaders slaughtered farm animals and soldiers, he said, yet that evening he and his ravenous U.S. captors shared a baguette.
Severloh said he first told his tale to an inquisitive correspondent for ABC News during the 40th anniversary of D-Day in 1984. But the real breakthrough came when an amateur war historian named Helmut Konrad von Keusgen tracked Severloh down. Von Keusgen, a former scuba diver and graphic artist, said he had heard from U.S. veterans about the machine gunner they called the "Beast of Omaha Beach" because he had mowed down hundreds of GIs that day. Severloh confessed he was that gunner. Von Keusgen ghost-wrote Severloh's memoirs, published in 2000, and still visits him regularly.
The two men contend that Severloh might have shot more than 2,000 GIs. That's an impossible figure, according to German and American historians, who say that although the numbers are far from exact, estimates are that about 2,500 Americans were killed or wounded by the 30 German soldiers on the beach.
"My guess is yes, he helped kill or wound hundreds, but how many hundreds would be hard to say," Roger Cirillo, a military historian at the Association of the U.S. Army in Arlington, wrote in an e-mail. He added: "Omaha is like Pickett's Charge. The story has gotten better with age, though no one doubts it was a horror show. Men on both sides were brave beyond reason, and this is the sole truth of the story."
Hein Severloh said he takes no pride in what he did, but telling his tale has given him a sense of relief.
"I have thought about it every single day that God gave to me," he said. Now, he said, "the pressure is gone."

War and Emerging Remembrance (washingtonpost.com)


Axis History Forum • View topic - Hein Severloh " The beast of Omaha "

rehabnonono

Redcoat wrote:
We must remember that the entire day was really only an average day on the Russian front, so success and failure are relevant terms. They broke through; therefore a success.

Kevinmeath

The troops at Omaha were a 'better' Greman unit but that was only one factor, many other things played a part most of which have been posted above. Failure to use any of Hobarts 'funnies' (except DD tanks virtually all of which sank) played a part.

I seem to remember the British launched their landing craft closer in after a longer bombardment. The troops were less likely to be seasick.

In the end they did take the beach and the casualties wewre 'acceptable'.

Earl_of_Rochester

It would be interesting to see how many ships from the USN were involved in D-Day, I heard that about 90% of the craft were from the Royal Navy.

Incidentally, one of the closest ships to the shore of Omaha beach was HMS Vesper. My grandfather was providing gunfire support.

EoR