Been reading about the hard fighting on Omaha beach. They knew how tough it would be - General Gerow, the commander of V Corps, wanted to land his men under the cover of darkness to mitigate the losses, a plan supported by Admiral Hall, the commander of the naval task force.
Eisenhower, Bradley and Monty however overruled him and said that all landings should be simultaneous and they should all hit the beach a half-hour after dawn. Since these guys knew what they were doing (well, to a certain extent with Monty who was often all mouth and trousers) I assume there were pretty damn good reasons for not turning D-Day into N-Night, if you’ll pardon the phrase.
Was it just the difficulty of navigating landing craft at night? What would have happened if this had been attempted on Omaha?
Apologies if this had come up before but all I could find Googling was references to the airborne night-time drops.
In hindsight, the night time approach would have been a fine thing.
All the advantages of the day time landing didn’t turn out to be advantages… eg The bombardments didn’t do anything, the cliff climbers couldn’t climb the cliffs anyway, the tanks couldn’t get onto the beach fast, the landing craft had trouble finding the right place even at day time
However there is a political/morale issue… They may have decided to go through the motions with the bombardments… because they were worried there’d be refusal to rush a beach that had not previously been bombarded…
Not to be flippant, but there’s a reason no major amphibious landing of the war was conducted in darkness; landings were chaotic enough without adding in darkness. Night operations in general were much more difficult to conduct in WWII with the total lack of night vision equipment. The difficulty of navigating landing craft at night would have been a major problem, accidental collisions, loss of coordination and landing craft getting lost would have been a certainty. Units would have become separated in the dark, and the landings would have been far worse at getting anywhere near their assigned beaches than happened in daylight. Knowing exactly what was going on where would be very difficult, potential opportunities easily missed and friendly fire a certainty. The major problem that Omaha ran into wouldn’t have been helped in any way by a night landing in any event, that problem was it landed right on top of the 352nd Infantry Division, a higher quality German infantry division that Allied intelligence thought was still located at St. Lo.
A comparison of how badly scattered the airborne landings went is illustrative. The belief by the Allies at this point in the war was that airborne operations needed the added cover of darkness to cover their vulnerability. The result was always that drops were badly scattered as can be seen on the maps of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions intended drop zones and actual drop locations; note a number of planeloads dropped their sticks 20 to 25 miles from their DZs. Things went equally as bad at Sicily the year before; the men from one British glider were trying to get their bearings on where they had landed when a jeep drove up to them and they were informed that they had in fact not landed on Sicily at all but were on Malta. Trying a daylight landing for Market-Garden in September 1944 was considered risky as a daylight drop of that scale had never before been attempted, but the fears proved unfounded and the result was units were able to drop together as coherent units.
Air cover was the big issue. Even if it didn’t produce as many casualties as the air force predicted, it still had the effect of pinning German units in place. If Rommel had had his way he would have sent all his reserves to the beach sites as the troops were landing with the plan of defeating the allies before they could get off the beaches and establish a base. It was this possibility that Eisenhower wanted to avoid. So he scheduled the invasion for dawn so that it would be at least sixteen hours before the Germans would have night cover for moving reinforcements in.
As it turns out this ended up being an unnecessary precaution similar to what Isilder described. Hitler and Rundstedt were both cautious and didn’t send reserves to the beaches out of fears that these were a diversion and the real landings would take place elsewhere.
The image most people have of Omaha is that of the ramps going down and the Germans scything down the troops immediately, Gerow seems to have wanted to prelude this possibility by an earlier attack to increase the element of surprise. Personally I agree with you that had they managed to even reach the beach in good battle order it wouldn’t have made too much of a difference; the Germans would have probably just sent a few starburst shells up. That said I do recall that there were some successful night-time landings, Guadalcanal in the Pacific and Operation Chronicle (although it landed without opposition).
You’re right that most likely the pig’s breakfast that was Operation Husky probably put Ike off the idea of risking another night-time seaborne invasion, there were some that didn’t even want the airborne to go in at all (like Leigh-Mallory). I have read that low fog and cloud cover had a big impact on the drops, moreso than the dark, as well as German flak breaking up formations (pilots had been gi en strict orders not to take evasive moves or accelerate, but one can hardly blame them).
Despite it these badasses still did an admirable job, even though men from different divisions (!) ended up scraping together. Dunno if the fog would have been as bad at the beaches, but the choppy waters of La Manche combined with darkness might not have been a winning combination.
Thanks for the detailed reply, Dissonance, lots of food for thought.
There’s a fascinating article on the topic here, from an official US Army publication. I’ll quote the relevant section:
"THE SELECTION OF D DAY was governed by several factors, complicated by the need of satisfying Allied requirements in five different landing areas, each with its own problems.
It was desirable that D Day fall during a period when the days were long, for maximum use of Allied air power; when the moon was near the full, for better maneuver of ships and for easier night landings of airborne troops; and when tides were strong, so that beach obstacles would be fully exposed at low water and the landing craft could be floated far up the beach for convenient unloading at high water.
Further, D Day must be selected with reference to certain requirements for H Hour, the moment when the first assault units touched down on the beaches. These were: that there be an hour of daylight before H Hour so that the preliminary bombardment would be as accurate as possible, and landing craft could be more easily organized into formation for the assault; that the tide should be near half-flood, so that obstacles would still be exposed, but rock ledges near the shore in the British one would not be dangerous; and that the tide be rising at H Hour, insuring two high tides during daylight to facilitate maximum unloading of supplies. Certain groups of days came nearest to satisfying all these requirements: 21-22-23 May, 5-6-7 June, and 19-20-21 June were closest to the target date of 1 June. On 8 May, D Day was fixed at 5 June."
So I think it boils down to (a) the necessity for accurate artillery support (b) unit cohesion (c) tides. Reading through the rest of it, and with the eye of hindsight, my personal opinion is that a night attack would have been no less effective, perhaps more effective - the landings were all over the place, the artillery was ineffective, conversely German artillery and machinegun fire was effective - but they were not to know this when they made their decision.
There’s a world of meaning in those few words I bolded. A night landing would have been a disaster; trying to form up the landing craft, keep them from getting hopelessly intermingled and landing them anywhere near their intended beaches in the dead of night would have been impossible. Again, a comparison to the night drops by the airborne troops is illustrative; the average error in planes dropping their sticks was two miles with a substantial number dropping 20 to 25 miles off target from their DZs. The result was ad hoc units composed of whoever could be collected together from disparate battalions, regiments and even divisions were put together under whoever the highest ranking officer there was to be found who had to make the decision on what objective to try to try to head for as any hope of units being able to move on their assigned objectives went out the window when the paratroopers were jumping an average of two miles from where they were supposed to. Some landing craft missed their assigned beaches by hundreds of yards in daylight, but those that did still landed as organized units and most landed at or very close to their assigned beaches. A night landing would have resulted in intermingling of units, nobody landing where they were supposed to and the error in distances being much greater.
German artillery and machine gun fire was going to be effective day or night. There was a thread a while back asking why the beaches weren’t just drenched in smoke to cover the landings. Besides the chaos of trying to land with that much smoke, it would have done little to protect the landing. The German artillery and mortars were pre-registered on the beaches and the machine guns had clear interlocking fields of fire. They didn’t even have to actually see what they were shooting at to deliver accurate fire along the length of the beach. Lack of unit cohesion was a problem for the airborne landings, but they at least were able to form ad hoc units over several hours as they had landed behind the German main line of resistance and the beach defenses. Troops disgorging from landing craft into intense fire right in front of the German main line of resistance and beach defenses wouldn’t have any such luxury.
Again what made the landings at Omaha so bad was the presence of the 352nd Infantry Division in the beach sector which went unnoticed by Allied intelligence. The landings at Gold, Juno and Sword were not easy by any means but there was never the uncertainty that they could be held that there was at Omaha, and these beaches were counterattacked by the 21st Panzer Division on D-Day and the 12th SS Panzer Division on D+1, but the presence of these divisions was known and the counterattacks expected and prepared for. The landing at Utah was in comparison a complete pushover.
I’ll just pick this bit. I’m quoting from relevant sources, and I’m careful to qualify my statements with “in my opinion” and “it seems to me”. You’re writing as if your point of view was objective fact; you’re drawing your own conclusion from some maps. That would be acceptable if you were a professional historian on the level of Cornelius Ryan or Max Hastings, because your words would have weight, and you would have an incentive to make sure your conclusions were sound. But as far as I can tell… in fact your profile has no biographical details at all. You’re not even using your real name.
I was the first and so far only person in this thread to offer any kind of sourced answer to the original poster’s question. Your response was detailed, but without any sources it’s useless. I have no way of knowing if it is was nonsense or not. Generating a conclusion from maps is not acceptable. You’ve been here ten years, you don’t seem to have grasped that yet. “In the words of X, QUOTE (cite good source)”, it’s not conceptually hard; and if you can’t find a good source, you can’t substitute opinion, you accept that you can’t support your statements so you say nothing.
I’m not a historian and make no claim to be one, either directly or by implication or omission; and of course without the training and experience required to write effectively about historical matters even sourced references and qualified opinion can be misused, even innocently. I have to assume that an official US Army publication is legit, but for all I know it was full of propaganda that has been debunked time and time again. I don’t have the authority to tell. But it’s considerably better than bald statements of fact as per the above.
Dissonance knows his stuff. (AFAIK) he’s not a professional historian, but in any of the countless threads on WWII, I haven’t seen him (he, right?) ever really off.
You may want to do your own fact check on things which you want to challenge him on. Even professional historians can misremember things, so Dissonance shouldn’t be expected to never make a mistake, but it does save the embarrassment of being glaringly wrong.
I can’t access your link or the history.army.mil domain, perhaps it’s because I’m posting from Taiwan, which if unfortunate because that has been a great source of information.
I got that quote from the google search results, so I can’t read any more, but I’m sure you can have fun with it.
That failure is pretty well known. I’m surprised that you didn’t know about it.
A night landing would have been really difficult. The Allies had enough difficulty at Mud Bay with a battalion-sized landing, even though it was unopposed. Here.
Ashley Pomeroy, I don’t think I have ever heard of any explanation for why things went pear shaped on Omaha which has not included the presence of the 352nd division. So, frankly if you have an alternative explanation the onus is on you to prove it.
Omaha went poorly because of several reason. The 352nd was one of them. The highly inexperienced US 29th Infantry Division performed poorly (the other US division, the 1st ID was a veteren of North Africa and Sicily and did well) and Naval gunfire support was initially poor.
The issue of smoke and pre-registered guns is complicated.
No army, including the Germans, would just fire continuously into smoke hoping to hit something eventually. They have limited ammo. In addition, the guns would not be fixed at just one spot. They would do test fires to multiple spots and write down for a given setting where the shot landed.
So when a spotter tells them where a landing craft was, they would set their guns and fire.
Smoke might have hampered this process.
As it was, there was quite a bit of smoke at Omaha on D-Day due to all the shelling, things blowing up and catching fire. Some of the landing sites were missed due to this. Which is why smoke is a problem when the craft are coming in. (And it would take a miracle for smoke from smoke shells to stay over the bluffs.)
One of the better landings at Omaha took place at Dog Red where some grass had caught fire and allowed easier climbing up the bluffs. But that was protection from smaller weapons. (The Germans did set up markers on the beach and in the water to assist in training their heavier machines guns. So those were “pre-registered” in some sense. But even those don’t fire non-stop along the whole beach. Bursts at targets you can see.)
Well targeted, with the wind in the right direction, smoke shells would have helped a lot. But, given how lousy the initial shelling was and the weather conditions, chances are it would have made little overall difference.
I don’t see what my use of a handle on the internet has to do with anything, nor the fact that I have not provided any personal information about myself on an internet message board. I doubt even 1% of the people here use their real name. That the 352nd Infantry Division was the major problem encountered at Omaha is fact, it isn’t my opinion and certainly isn’t based upon conclusions drawn from a map. This is quite well known and I did not consider it to need a cite. If you want to read through some of my posts over the past ten years you’ll notice that I source things quite heavily and have more than a passing knowledge of military matters in general and WWII in particular. If all you wanted was a citation on the 352nd I’d have happily provided one.
And this is where irony bites you in the ass, Ashley Pomeroy. You were, in fact, neither the first nor the only person so far in this thread to offer any kind of sourced information. The maps I linked are from the Cross Channel Attack volume of the U.S. Army in World War II Series, the “Green Books”, the official US Army history of WW2, the exact same source you used. I used links from HyperWar: World War II on the World Wide Web where the books are mirrored because I’m getting nothing but a red x on a direct link to where the maps should be at www.history.army.mil.
Having in fact read a good number of them, I can assure you that the Green Books are quite accurate as far as things go (the existence of ULTRA was still classified at the time they were written for example) having been written with the interest of recording what had happened, blemishes and all and aren’t quite as dry as most official histories are. Most people would probably still feel compelled to try to gouge their eyes out trying to read them, but not quite as quickly as with other official histories.
Far fewer would have died but it would have been chaotic. Heinrich Severloh’s mg-42 nest was 500 meters from the beach, 75 feet above the water line. In darkness he wouldn’t have killed 1,000 GI’s.
Keep in mind that the Allied force were much stronger than the defenders. The Allies had a 3-to-1 advantage in soldiers, complete control of the air, and naval support. The defenders were largely second-tier troops. It was more important to land the troops with as much order as possible to take advantage of the superiority.
It’s instructive to note that the Inchon landings were also done in the day.
is correct, just a Britishism for something going wrong. Apropos to this thread I’ve heard it dates back to the war, if an RAF pilot tried to do a loop and it went wrong, literally going pear shaped.
