I’m not sure if this is the right place for this question, but here goes. I read a book about D-day from the German side and it states that all the D-day beaches were defended by about the same amount of troops and weapons.
So, why was Omaha beach such a blood bath while the others were not that bad ?
One big reason was geography.
Omaha Beach had a big cliff that had to be scaled and it was very difficult to do that.
Both Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers spent a fair bit of time depicting the fight on Omaha Beach.
I’m pretty sure there were other reasons besides Geography and I’m guessing someone else will come along and explain more about it.
Moved to IMHO (from Cafe Society).
The big problem at Omaha was that bad weather and navigational difficulties put most of the landing craft out of place, including the combat engineers. This meant that infantry landed without engineers and vice-versa, which meant that the engineers were exposed and cut to pieces, and the infantry didn’t have the ability to get through the obstacles in their path, and were cut to pieces. They also landed somewhat piecemeal, so the Germans weren’t really overwhelmed by a large US force landing all at once.
The weather also swamped a lot of the amphibious tanks (duplex-drive Shermans), so there was little armored support relative to the other 4 beaches.
Eventually, the forces in place couldn’t really attack up the beach entrances (the original plan) due to fierce German resistance, which managed to leave many units leaderless and aimless. The storming of the bluffs by elements of the 2nd and 5th Ranger Battalions as ordered by Gen. Norman Cota is what eventually broke the German resistance at the beach and got the US forces moving inland from Omaha Beach. This is the action where the Rangers earned their slogan of “Rangers Lead the Way” and is also what was seen in the first 15 minutes or so of “Saving Private Ryan”.
Well, a key thing here is that the claim just isn’t accurate. The beaches were NOT equally defended.
Omaha Beach, specifically, was largely defended by the 352nd Infantry Division, a division of skilled regular Wehrmacht troops. The Allies were not aware of this; they believed the beach was defended by the vastly inferior 716th Division, an irregular division comprised of conscripts from other countries who tended not to fight especially hard. So the American troops, in addition to all the confusion and chaos experienced everywhere else in Normandy, ran into hard-ass, well equipped opponents.
No other beach was as well defended; the Canadians had to fight through heavy resistance at Juno but that operation went better in almost every respect so the resistance was cleared away much quicker than at Omaha. The defenses at Gold and Sword were poorly deployed - not enough men at the beach - and the troops at Utah simply were not up to the task; most of the beach was covered by the 709th division, which was neither well equipped nor well trained, and essentially incapable of movement (a so-called “Static” division) and so incapable of reacting and adapting to the situation as it unfolded.
Was the Allied Naval bombardments of the other beaches more effective than the one on Omaha Beach?
Yes. As was the aerial bombing.
I think a whole lot of the blame has to go to Admiral Hall, who commanded the naval fleet at Omaha Beach.
He kept his fleet further out from the shore than the other naval commanders. This meant his naval bombardment was less effective (hardly at all effective, actually). It also meant that the landing boats had to travel further over the turbulent waters of the channel. Many more of them were lost with their troops before ever landing on the beach. Nearly 100% of the tanks capsized before reaching the beach, which made it much harder for the soldiers who now had no armor support on Omaha beach.
Of course, this allowed Admiral Hall to report far fewer of his ships were lost on D-day than at any of the other beaches – it was the invasion that was almost lost, instead. He ought to have been court-martialed. But that would have been bad for public morale; especially the relatives of all those soldiers lost at Omaha Beach.
There were many properly equipped regular german soliders on the defenses, and the defenses included hidden underground bunkers. They were totally unharmed by the earlier bombardment,
and knew exactly what was coming and what to do.
One particularly lethal thing at Omaha was the effect of the machine guns which would shoot down the length of the bench. There was a reason the “Tigers” were meant to climb the cliffs ASAP… But they couldn’t do it… They kept trying and failing… The tigers eventually turned to attacking the more gentle slopes…
Later in the day several destroyers came in very close to the shore to hit the fortifications with direct fire. The destroyers were instrumental in the breakout off the beach.
qnd just think how many fewer of our soldiers would have died if that had been done immediately, when they first hit the beach!