Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach was one of five Allied beach landing sectors of the amphibious assault component of Operation Overlord during the Second World War.
On June 6, 1944, the Allies invaded German-occupied France with the Normandy landings. "Omaha" refers to an section of the coast of Normandy, France, facing the English Channel, from west of Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes to east of Vierville-sur-Mer on the right bank of the Douve river estuary. Landings here were necessary to link the British landings to the east at Gold with the American landing to the west at Utah, thus providing a continuous lodgement on the Normandy coast of the Baie de Seine. Taking Omaha was to be the responsibility of United States Army troops, with sea transport, and a naval bombardment force provided predominantly by the United States Navy and Coast Guard, with contributions from the British, Canadian and Free French navies.
The primary objective at Omaha was to secure a beachhead deep, between Port-en-Bessin and the Vire river, linking with the British landings at Gold to the east, and reaching the area of Isigny to the west to link up with VII Corps landing at Utah. The untested American 29th Infantry Division, along with nine companies of U.S. Army Rangers redirected from Pointe du Hoc, assaulted the western half of the beach. The battle-hardened 1st Infantry Division was given the eastern half.
Opposing the landings was the German 352nd Infantry Division. Of its 12,020 men, 6,800 were experienced combat troops, detailed to defend a front. The German strategy was based on defeating any seaborne assault at the water line, and the defenses were mainly deployed in strongpoints along the coast.
The Allied plan called for initial assault waves of tanks, infantry, and combat engineer forces to reduce the coastal defenses, allowing larger ships to land in follow-up waves. But very little went as planned. Difficulties in navigation caused most of the landing craft to miss their targets throughout the day. The defenses were unexpectedly strong, and inflicted substantial casualties on landing U.S. troops. Under intense fire, the engineers struggled to clear the beach obstacles; later landings bunched up around the few channels that were cleared. Weakened by the casualties taken just in landing, the surviving assault troops could not clear the exits off the beach. This caused further problems and consequent delays for later landings. Small penetrations were eventually achieved by groups of survivors making improvised assaults, scaling the bluffs between the most well-defended points. By the end of the day, two small isolated footholds had been won by the American forces, which were subsequently exploited against weaker defenses further inland, achieving the original D-Day objectives over the following days. American forces suffered 2,400 casualties at Omaha on June 6, but by the end of the day they had landed 34,000 troops. The German 352nd Division lost 10 percent of its strength, with 1,200 casualties, but it had no reserves coming to continue the fight.
Terrain and defenses
The coastline of Normandy was divided into sixteen sectors, which were assigned code names using a spelling-alphabet – from Able, west of Omaha, to Roger on the east flank of Sword. The area of beach that would become Omaha was originally designated X-Ray, from the phonetic alphabet of the day; the name was changed on 3 March 1944. The names of both Omaha and Utah were probably suggested by Omar Bradley, as two privates fitting out his London headquarters were from Omaha, Nebraska and Provo, Utah; they were not named after the corps commanders, who were from Virginia and Louisiana. Eight further sectors were added when the invasion was extended to include Utah on the Cotentin Peninsula. Sectors were divided into beaches identified by the colors Red, White and Green, corresponding to the colored lights used on naval craft to designate the port, amidships, and starboard sides.Omaha was bounded at either end by large rocky cliffs. The crescent-shaped beach presented a gently sloping tidal area averaging between low and high-water marks. Above the tide line was a bank of shingle high and up to wide in places. At the western end, the shingle bank rested against a stone sea wall which ranged from in height. For the remaining two thirds of the beach after the seawall ended, the shingle lay against a low sand embankment. Behind the sand embankment and sea wall was a level shelf of sand, narrow at either end and extending up to inland in the center, and behind that rose steep escarpments or bluffs high, which dominated the whole beach and were cut into by small wooded valleys or draws at five points along the beach, codenamed west to east D-1, D-3, E-1, E-3 and F-1.
File:German turret at Omaha Beach.jpg|thumb|One of six tank turrets reused from the VK 30.01 heavy tank project mounted on a Tobruk at Widerstandsnest 68, photographed in September 1944
The German defensive preparations and the lack of any defense in depth indicated that their plan was to stop the invasion at the beaches. Four lines of obstacles were constructed in the intertidal zone. The first, a non-contiguous line with a small gap in the middle of Dog White and a larger gap across the whole of Easy Red, was out from the highwater line and consisted of 200 Belgian Gates with mines lashed to the uprights. behind these was a continuous line of logs driven into the sand pointing seaward, every third one capped with an anti-tank mine. Another shoreward of this line was a continuous line of 450 ramps sloping towards the shore, also with mines attached and designed to force flat-bottomed landing craft to ride up and either flip or detonate the mine. The final line of obstacles was a continuous line of hedgehogs from the shoreline. The area between the shingle bank and the bluffs was both wired and mined, and mines were also scattered on the bluff slopes.
Coastal troop deployments, comprising five companies of infantry, were concentrated mostly at 15 strongpoints called Widerstandsnester, numbered WN-60 in the east to WN-74 near Vierville in the west, located primarily around the entrances to the draws and protected by minefields and wire. Positions within each strongpoint were interconnected by trenches and tunnels. As well as the basic weaponry of rifles and machine guns, more than 60 light artillery pieces were deployed at these strongpoints. The heaviest pieces were located in eight gun casemates and four open positions while the lighter guns were housed in 35 pillboxes. Obsolete VK 30.01 tank turrets armed with 75 mm L/24 guns were re-used in permanent fortified bunkers. A further 18 anti-tank guns completed the disposition of artillery targeting the beach. Areas between the strongpoints were lightly manned with occasional trenches, rifle pits, and 85 machine-gun emplacements. No area of the beach was left uncovered, and the disposition of weapons meant that flanking fire could be brought to bear anywhere along the beach.
Allied intelligence had identified the coastal defenders as a reinforced battalion of the 716th Infantry Division. This was a static defensive division estimated to consist up to 50% of non-German troops, mostly Russians and Ukrainians, and German Volksdeutsche. The recently activated but capable 352nd Infantry Division was believed to be inland at Saint-Lô and was regarded as the most likely force to be committed to a counter-attack. As part of Rommel's strategy to concentrate defenses at the water's edge, the 352nd had been ordered forward in March, taking over responsibility for the defense of the portion of the Normandy coast in which Omaha was located. As part of this reorganization, the 352nd also took under its command two battalions of the 726th Grenadier Regiment as well as the 439th Ost-Battalion, which had been attached to the 726th. Omaha fell mostly within 'Coast Defense Sector 2', which stretched westward from Colleville and allocated to the 916th Grenadier Regiment, with the third battalion 726th Grenadier Regiment attached. Two companies of the 726th manned strongpoints in the Vierville area while two companies of the 916th occupied the St. Laurent area strongpoints in the center of Omaha. These positions were supported by the artillery of the first and fourth battalions of the 352nd Artillery Regiment. The two remaining companies of the 916th formed a reserve at Formigny, inland. East of Colleville, 'Coast Defense Sector 3' was the responsibility of the remainder of the 726th Grenadier Regiment. Two companies were deployed at the coast, one in the most easterly series of strongpoints, with artillery support provided by the third battalion of the 352nd Artillery Regiment. The area reserve, comprising the two battalions of the 915th Grenadier Regiment and known as 'Kampfgruppe Meyer', was located south-east of Bayeux outside the immediate Omaha area.
The failure to identify the reorganization of the defenses was a rare intelligence breakdown for the Allies. Post-action reports still documented the original estimate and assumed that the 352nd had been deployed to the coastal defenses by chance, a few days previously, as part of an anti-invasion exercise. The source of this inaccurate information came from German prisoners of war from the 352nd Infantry Division captured on D-Day as reported by the 16th Infantry S-3 D-Day Action Report. In fact, Allied intelligence had already become aware of the relocation of the 352nd Infantry Division on June 4. This information was passed on to V Infantry Corps and 1st Infantry Division HQ through 1st Army, but at that late stage in the operations, no plans were changed.
When General Omar Bradley expressed concern about Omaha Beach in January, a Royal Engineers team of Captain Logan Scott-Bowden and Sergeant Bruce Ogden-Smith showed him a sample of sand from the beach. They had swum ashore in Normandy from midget submarines over thirty times, to obtain sand samples to see whether the beaches would support tanks. Scott-Bowden said to him "Sir, I hope you don't mind me saying it, but this beach is a very formidable proposition indeed and there are bound to be tremendous casualties." Bradley put his hand on Scott-Bowden's shoulder and replied, "I know, my boy. I know."