From Cross-Channel Attack

The importance of the beach exits was, of course, as obvious to the Germans as to the Allies and local coastal defenses were grouped to deny their use to the attackers. On the other hand, the 1st Division had precise information on the location of these defenses and every provision was made to give the assaulting infantry the heavy fire support needed to knock them out.

At H minus 50 minutes, two companies of DD tanks (741st Tank Battalion) destined for the 16th Infantry beaches were launched 6,000 yards offshore and almost immediately began to flounder. Of the thirty-two tanks launched only five reached shore. These were the first of the casualties to the weather. There were others. The assaulting infantry was transferred from transports to LCVP’s ten to eleven miles offshore. At least ten of the ferrying craft were swamped on the way in. More serious for the operation was the sinking of much of the artillery. The attempt to ferry guns ashore in DUKW’s through the heavy seas proved disastrous. All but one of the 105-mm. howitzers of the 11th Field Artillery Battalion were sunk. Six of the 105’s belonging to the 7th Field Artillery Battalion suffered the same fate. Five of the six howitzers of the 16th Infantry Cannon Company were also swamped. In addition to these wholesale losses the 58th Armored Field Artillery Battalion, whos guns were mounted on LCT’s and had taken part in the initial beach drenching, lost three of its pieces when the craft carrying them hit mines. In short, the artillery that was planned to support the infantry attack particularly in the advance inland did not reach the shore.

Naval gunfire had temporarily neutralized some of the enemy batteries and fortifications but most of them were still able to fire at the incoming troops as soon as the bombardment was forced to lift inland. The 1st Division men in the first LCVP’s could hear machine gun bullets splatter against the steel ramps of their craft before they grounded. Debarking in water sometimes up to their necks, the troops on some sectors of the beach were met with a hail of bullets that drove some to seek shelter under the surf, others to scramble over the sides of the craft. Control of boat sections was thus often lost before the men were even started in to the beach. The troops, overladen with heavy clothing and equipment, waded slowly through the surf and through fire that increased as they approached the beach. Some stopped to rest or seek shelter behind obstacles. Some lay at the water’s edge and were able eventually to crawl in with the tide. But casualties generally were heavier among those who delayed in getting up onto the beach. Many of the wounded were drowned in the rising tide.

The first wave should have landed nine companies evenly spaced along the beach. Because of withering enemy fire and mislandings, however, the right wing all but disintegrated; two companies bunched in front of les Moulins, and the remainder of the landings (elements of four companies) clustered in the Colleville sector. One company was carried so far to the east that it landed an hour and a half late.

The experience of the 16th Infantry on the left flank of the division duplicated that of the 116th, as scattered landings and heavy casualties left the first boat sections incapable of undertaking their primary assault missions. In the 16th’s zone, however, one soft spot was discovered. Four boat sections of the 2d Battalion, 16th Infantry, landing between the St. Laurent and Colleville exits, crossed the beach with only two casualties from enemy fire.  The local defense of this sector of the beach was the Colleville strong point, which was planned as three mutually supporting resistance nests. Of these the field fortified position atop the bluff midway between the two draws was unoccupied in February 1944 and seemingly remained unoccupied on D Day. Apparent German negligence that left the beach northwest of Colleville without immediate defense was balanced at first by Allied ill fortune in landing so few men there. Except for those four boat sections of the 2d Battalion the first wave of the 16th Infantry (Companies E and F) touched down immediately in front, or east, of the occupied fortifications of the Colleville strong point and was there caught in machine gun fire as intense as that which decimated the 116th Infantry. Many of the men of Company E, hard hit and exhausted in their efforts to wade ashore, flopped on the sand and crawled in ahead of the tide; nearly half of them did not survive. Because of the swamping of most of the DD tanks and immediate enemy destruction of five of the company of mediums beached from LCT’s, the 16th Infantry had initially only a third of the planned armor support. Those tanks available went into action on the beach between the St. Laurent and Colleville exits.

The experience of the 16th Infantry’s later waves was similar to that of [later assault waves of] the 116th. Losses were lighter but the confusion and intermingling of units on the beaches became more serious. The two remaining companies (G and H) of the 2d Battalion followed by the 1st Battalion landed about where planned, due north of Colleville. The 3d Battalion completed landing on the left shortly after 0800. The 3d Battalion headquarters, however, landed to the west and could not join its troops for several hours. The 16th Infantry suffered another misfortune when the regimental executive officer, coming in with the first section of the headquarters, was killed together with thirty-five of his men. The commander, Col. George A. Taylor, did not arrive until 0815 with the second headquarters section.

Command was generally one of the gravest problems faced by assault units, not only because officer casualties were high and mislanding of command groups had left many units leaderless, but also because of extreme difficulties of communication. Three-quarters of the 116th Infantry’s radios were destroyed or useless. Furthermore, in the confusion of the mixed units, which were under heavy fire in some places, their men huddled along the shingle embankment or sea wall and generally shaken by the shock of the first few minutes of severe action, it would have been impossible for any commander to exercise control over more than a small group of men on a relatively narrow sector of the front.

In these first few hours on OMAHA Beach, the OVERLORD operation faced its gravest crisis. Deprived of the expected air support by accident of weather and preceded by a generally ineffective beach drenching, the 1st Division had gone in against the one sector of the Normandy coast that had anything like the kind of cordon defense which Field Marshal Rommel counted on to hold and smash the Allies on the beaches. Instead of attacking in the sector of one regiment of an overextended static division as expected, General Huebner’s troops hit on the front of a full attack infantry division, the 352d, whose presence in the coastal zone had been missed by Allied intelligence even though it had been in place for almost three months.

To the German officer in command of the fortifications at Pointe et Raz de la Percee it looked in these first hours as though the invasion had been stopped on the beaches. He noted that the Americans were lying on the shore seeking cover behind the obstacles, that ten tanks and a “great many other vehicles” were burning. The fire of his own positions and the artillery, he thought, had been excellent, causing heavy losses. He could see the wounded and dead lying on the sand.

Sketchy reports to V Corps and First Army must have painted very much the same picture for the American command. From a DUKW cruising 500 to 1,000 yards offshore, Col. Benjamin B. Talley, the assistant chief of staff of V Corps, radioed General Gerow what he could observe of the progress of the landings. Observation was difficult, and on the whole Colonel Talley refrained from reporting mere pessimism. However, he had to report something of the evident disorganization. He could see that the beaches were jammed with infantrymen and that enemy artillery and machine gun fire was still effective. He sent a message to that effect about 0930. What particularly concerned him was the fact that reinforcing waves were being held up by the continued enemy opposition and the LCT’s were milling around offshore like “a stampeded herd of cattle,” although some of the more daring commanders took their craft into the hail of enemy fire and beached them. This situation seemed to Talley to continue without alleviation until midmorning, and it was the situation conveyed to Generals Gerow and Bradley.

Already, however, as Talley sent forward his discouraging reports, the crisis was bit by bit dissolving. Among the groups of scared, tired riflemen huddled along the beach were a few intrepid leaders-officers, noncoms, and privates on whose individual backs the big responsibility at the moment lay. They began by example and exhortation to prod the men to get up, leave such poor shelter as they had found, and walk or crawl across the beach flat and up the hills where the enemy was dug in with rifles, mortars, and machine guns. From the larger perspective the combined weight of Allied arms was gradually wearing down the defenders. The 916th Regiment in the center of the 352d Division sector, while reporting that the landings had been frustrated, added that its own casualties were mounting chiefly from the heavy Allied naval fire and that consequently reinforcements were needed. Reinforcements, however, could not immediately be spared since they were much more urgently needed elsewhere.

The gravest immediate threat for the Germans arose to the east of V Corps where the British assault cracked through the coast defenses in some places during the first few hours. The British Second Army attacked with three divisions abreast under control of 1 and 30 Corps. Immediately on the flank of the American attack, the British 50th Division landed two infantry brigades supported by tanks of the 8th Armoured Brigade and assault teams of the 79th Armoured Division and the 47th Royal Marine Commando. The troops touched down approximately on time at 0725.

Opposition was heavy at certain points, but on the whole it was much less determined than at OMAHA. In the 50th Division zone le Hamel, strongly defended by the 1st Battalion, 916th Regiment, resisted until late in the day. To the east, however, the British division’s left brigade struck a soft spot in the German defenses. The strong point at la Rivière held out only a few hours and when it fell at about 1000 its defenders, the 441st Ost Battalion, attached to the 716th Division, broke and pulled out, leaving the road to Bayeux open. This development, however, was not known to the British. Opposition continued to be reported south of Buhot, at Ryes, St. Sulpice, and Summervieu. It was always difficult in the early stages of the assault properly to distinguish enemy delaying action from major opposition or to discover where the holes were in the German defense. The 50th Division, moreover, still had only its assault forces ashore. Rising tide had prevented effective clearance of underwater obstacles. Enemy opposition and mines delayed the opening of beach exits. Caught in the resulting congestion, the two follow-up brigades of the 50th Division were two hours late in landing. When they did arrive, they found their assembly areas still not entirely cleared of enemy. Elements of the 352d Division, in fact, were still on the Meuvaines ridge after midday.

From the German point of view the crumbling of the 441st Ost Battalion was immediately critical. The gap had to be plugged at once. The 915th Regiment reinforced (LXXXIV Corps reserve) had been stationed near Bayeux and had often practiced just the maneuver now required-counterthrust, toward Crépon. But earlier in the morning (at 0400) the 915th had been ordered to the Carentan- Isigny area to attack reported large-scale enemy airborne landings between the Vire and Douve Rivers. The report was discovered to be unfounded at just about the time the hole in the 716th Division opened up. Threatened with having his whole right flank rolled up, Generalleutnant Dietrich Kraiss, the commanding general of the 352d Division, secured corps approval for the return of the 915th Regiment. But an hour was consumed trying to reach the regiment. Then it had to countermarch almost twenty miles from a point nearly five miles west of the Forêt de Cerisy. The march was made partly on foot, partly by bicycle and French motor vehicles which suffered numerous mechanical breakdowns. Another three hours passed before even a portion of the unit was in position to attack. That delay proved crucial, for in those hours much happened to change the situation on OMAHA completely.

The D-Day Beachhead

First Army’s assault plans provided that the initial task of clearing the beaches be carried out by assault sections organized by boatloads. Troops were then to proceed inland to various assembly areas where they would be reorganized in battalions and regiments to carry out their subsequent D-Day missions of securing and consolidating the corps beachheads.

On OMAHA Beach the troops of V Corps in order to reach their assembly areas had to cross a beach flat, varying in width from a few yards at each end to about 200 yards in the center, and climb steep bluffs behind. Although the beach flat offered only patches of tall marsh grass for concealment, the bluffs had irregularities that could provide cover for individual riflemen. The plan called for clearing five exit roads from the beach and an advance inland generally along the axis of these roads. But despite naval bombardment and tank fire from the beach on enemy positions defending these roads all remained active during the first two hours of the assault. Movement off the beach, in consequence, at first took place between the exits. It began before 0800 in a number of independent actions by groups of men, never more than of company size and often much smaller. Some of the attacks had tank fire support; others were materially aided by the bold action of destroyers which came within a few hundred yards of the beach and delivered direct fire wherever they could observe enemy activity.

The original uploader was Factotem at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The original uploader was Factotem at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The original uploader was Factotem at English Wikipedia., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons